AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, if you’d bothered to call me first, I could have told you, of course they’d offer him a chance to answer you. Talking heads are bad television, nose to nose is good television.”
“Sure, but I didn’t think he’d do it. If you could have seen him yesterday! It’s like he’s a different guy. What a liar.”
“Yeah,” said Reuben. “But which one was the lie?”
Silence for a long time.
“You think I was being set up?”
“Why should I be the only one?”
“Now that I think about it,” said Cole. “He was so over the top. It’s like he studied the right-wing fanatic playbook. He even said ‘faggots.’ ”
“And dykes?”
“No. I guess he drew the line somewhere. He played me? You really think so? But why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if he played you, and if he did I don’t know why. But one thing’s for sure. The assassination of the President was a terrible thing, but it is not causing so much confusion that there’s any excuse for the military to seize power. If there is a coup, it’s just a naked grab for power. In fact, if there’s a coup, then we can almost count on it that whoever carries it out, that’s who gave my plans to the terrorists. That’s who tipped them off about the President’s location.”
“So it was a right-wing thing,” said Cole. “Like Oklahoma City.”
“Yeah, well, the Left had the Unabomber, though nobody ever seems to remember that his logic sounded just like Al Gore preaching about the environment—crazy as a loon, but full of all kinds of internal politically correct logic.”
“Wackos on both sides.”
“One man’s wacko is another man’s prophet.”
“Meaning one man’s Hitler is another man’s Churchill.”
“Except Churchill never thought up death camps.”
“You know what I meant. There really are good guys and bad guys. But before they have a chance to show you what they do with power, it can be hard to tell them apart.”
“Cole,” said Reuben. “Where are you staying tonight?”.
“I haven’t even thought about it.”
“Unless you’re independently wealthy, you can’t afford to stay in Manhattan on a captain’s pay.”
“Hell, I can’t even afford to park my car.”
“So come on out to West Windsor. I’m handing the phone to Cessy to give you directions from the city—she’s been coming here all her life, she knows the route better.”
Cessy took the phone. “He’s just lazy,” she told Cole.
As she gave him the directions, Reuben walked back into the living room. He had paused the program on Alton’s face.
“What’s your game, General Alton?” he said. “Are you that dumb? Or are we?”
/> ELEVEN
GROUND ZERO
The great breakthrough in human evolution, the one that made civilization possible, was the discovery that two alpha males could form intense bonds of ur-brotherhood instead of the normal pattern of fighting till one is dead or driven away. It is the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu—a man will plunge into hell for his friend. Thus the male DNA is tricked into sacrificing itself to the benefit of unrelated DNA; story triumphs over instinct; the monogamous civitas triumphs over the patriarchal tribe. Instead of one alpha male reproducing his superior genes over and over again, a far higher proportion of males reproduce, even though some die in war. All because human males learned how to trick themselves into loving each other to the point of suicidal madness.
When Cole got to Aunt Margaret’s house, with Cessy guiding him in on his cellphone like an instrument landing in the fog, it was after nine o’clock and all the news channels were full of stories of rumors of a coup, or stories of rumors that the rumors of a coup were a smokescreen to justify a right-wing—or, depending on the station, left-wing—takeover.
“I think,” said Aunt Margaret to Cole, “that you managed to upstage the funerals of the President and Vice President. And the Secretary of Defense might as well not have bothered dying, for all the attention they’re paying to him.”
