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keep showing up?”
“It’s only happened twice,” said Reuben. “First time, they watched us. Not coincidence. Part of their effort to pin it on me. On an American soldier. But today—no, they had no way of knowing we’d decide to take a five A.M. drive to Ground Zero. They certainly weren’t going to time this invasion to fit our whims. The second day after the assassinations. Still within the time of maximum chaos. Who’s in charge? Nobody’s established the chain of command again. What will this President want? How long will he wrestle with the problems before he acts? Ideal time. Nothing to do with us.”
“Except that I don’t care who did this,” said Cole. “They were killing cops. They were killing uniforms. They may think they’re saving the Constitution, but they’re saving nothing. It’s all about imposing their will on unwilling people.”
“But Cole,” said Reuben. “Don’t you understand? When you have the Truth, then anybody who opposes you is either ignorant or evil. You rule over the ignorant and you kill or lock up the evil. Then you can make the world run according to your perfect Truth.”
“On the Left and the Right,” said Cole. “Same thing.”
“The English Civil War,” said Reuben. “On one side, Divine Right of Kings, patriotism, the status quo, the cool long-haired Cavaliers. On the other side, the Puritans, guardians of God’s word, short-haired, Bible-carrying perfectionists. Most people couldn’t care a rat’s ass either way.”
“The Puritans had Cromwell.”
“So they won. For a while,” said Reuben. “But as soon as they had power, they started trying to enact their program. No Christmas, no sports, can’t twitch on Sunday, lives of unrelenting work and prayer. No playing, no plays even. No bear-baiting. No heresy tolerated, and that includes the familiar trappings of religion. Ten years of that and the people were ready to bring back the kings—even if they might have Catholic sympathies.”
“So you’re saying that people will get sick of the excesses of whichever group of perfectionists just took over Manhattan.”
“Eventually,” said Reuben. “But that doesn’t mean they can get rid of the Puritans that easily. Cromwell died without a strong successor. Castro flat out didn’t die. Hitler and Stalin were too ruthless to be overthrown. Pol Pot just killed everybody. Whenever the fanatics take over, it’s a crapshoot whether you can ever get rid of them, at least without a long and bloody struggle, or decades of oppression. Generations.”
“So you’re saying you have limited optimism about the future.”
There was nothing to say to that. They drove in silence for a while as they took some back roads to avoid sirens and Cole studied the state map that Charlie O’Brien carried in his car.
Reuben knew Cole was right about the password to the PDA. The information on there might be the key to finding out where these weapons originated. There was that series of shipments that were going to the Port of New York, ostensibly for overseas shipment. But what if they only got to the port and sat on the dock waiting for the command to take over the city? The trouble was, Reuben wasn’t sure where the shipment originated. Again, it seemed much of it was coming from the Port of Seattle. But did that mean it came from overseas, or somewhere else on the West Coast, or maybe it originated in Washington, or maybe it was paperworked out of Washington but in fact was shipped from Mexico. For all he knew.
Still, it was a start, that link to Seattle. If he really had helped to arrange shipment eastward.
These bastards, plotting to take over New York City, and using government money to pay for it and government agents to handle the paperwork and payments.
Could Phillips possibly be clean? There he was in the White House. He had to be the one who notified the terrorists!
No, no, Reuben told himself. No leaping to conclusions. If they were smart—and so far they’ve been smarter than me—they’d never have the same guy working on shipments of weapons and serving as the inside guy to tip off the terrorists. They’d use two different people.
Two people inside the White House, betraying what was supposedly the most fanatically conservative presidency in history, to hear the Left talk about it—or an endemically corrupt, power-hungry government no matter who was in power, to hear the Right talk about it.
And who inside the Pentagon? It was time to call DeeNee and find out if she knew anything yet.
She wasn’t at the office, of course. Or maybe she was—on a Sunday with New York under attack, everybody would be called in. He called her cellphone anyway. She answered on the second ring.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” said Reuben.
“I got the preacher to hold the prayer till I’m off the phone,” said DeeNee.
“Not really, right?”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Not in Washington,” said Reuben. “If you don’t know—”
“I know,” she said.
“What do we know?”
“Well, we know you’re supposed to be under arrest near the Holland Tunnel,” she said, “and there’s a guy standing here telling me not to say this.”
The phone was apparently torn out of her hand as she said the last few words. A man came on the line.
“Do you realize how guilty you’re making yourself look?” Reuben recognized the voice of one of his debriefers.
