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Cole watched what Torrent did. He did not rush forward to speak to Cecily first; he did not hurry away as if he had pressing business to take care of. He merely stood and watched Cecily and the children.
Cole almost flinched when he saw Mingo head toward Torrent, followed by the rest of the jeesh. Did they mean it when they hinted at wanting Torrent dead? This was certainly an opportunity. Every man on the jeesh was capable of killing with his bare hands in a sudden, unpreventable movement. Even though none of them was back to full strength, it was where and how you struck, not necessarily the force of the blow, and Cole had a mental image of Torrent suddenly falling over dead as the jeesh walked away, dusting off their hands after a job well done.
No one would believe Cole had nothing to do with it.
Cole walked a little nearer, to where he could see the men's faces as one by one they filed past the President and shook his hand. "Thank you for coming, sir." "Well done, sir." "It means a lot to her, sir."
There was nothing in their expressions to hint at irony, and as they walked away, there was no microexpression of scorn or anger. They seemed quite sincere as they thanked him for being there.
When they had shaken his hand, they left. They apparently felt no need to talk to Cecily or the kids. They would see one another often in the days and weeks to come, everyone knew that. It was enough that they had been there for the ceremony.
Cole did not leave, however. Nor did he speak to the President—he, too, would have a chance to speak to him over the next few days. Torrent was clearly waiting for Cecily, and soon she sent her children back to the car with Aunt Margaret. Cole saw Chinma walk over and stand in front of the headstones, now that no else was there.
Cecily walked up to President Torrent. Cole did not retreat from his position. If they didn't want him to hear and see, they could walk away from him.
"Thank you for coming, sir," said Cecily. "I didn't expect it."
Torrent took her hands in his and said, "If there were anything I could do to undo the circumstances that led to either of those deaths, I would do it." The words sounded heartfelt.
The cynic in Cole thought: He is admitting that there was something he did that led to their deaths.
The believer in him answered: He made recommendations and decisions that put them in place to be killed, but they were all legitimate decisions, and their deaths could not have been foreseen.
Their individual deaths could not have been foreseen, but the fact that somebody would die had been certain. If Torrent really got Aldo Verus to start funding the development of high-tech weapons, he knew that someday those weapons would be used. And was it possible that Torrent had, one way or another, triggered everything else?
After all, Torrent could have brought the four members of the U.S. embassy staff in Bangui home a week before they were taken hostage by people with the handheld EMP. Why did he wait? Was it because he didn't want any assault on the embassy until the EMP was in place, so its effectiveness could be tested?
Had Torrent had anything to do with Reuben being assigned to think of ways to assassinate the president? Did he cause those plans to be given to terrorists? Did he suggest Reuben as the logical fall guy for the assassination, since he had thought up the plans? If he did, there was no way to pretend that it was a coincidence Torrent couldn't help.
At once another part of his mind found the excuse Torrent needed. Maybe he suggested that they find "a good tactical thinker" to develop the plan for them, and somebody else thought of using Reuben Malich. They might even have heard Torrent recommend him for some other purpose, and thought they could use him for this instead. Maybe they were even sticking it to Torrent—not everyone who worked with him was bound to love him, though you'd never know that to listen to the media. Setting up his protege for disgrace or death, just to show Torrent he wasn't as much in control as he thought.
All imaginary. I'm just making this up. Like people who speculate endlessly on the motivations of the aliens who abduct humans; they can speculate all they want, but they don't have any credible evidence that the aliens are abducting anybody, or that they even exist.
But once you start thinking this way it's hard to stop. The human brain, Cole knew, was wired to spin out stories, to assign causality.
Whenever something happened, the brain kicked in and said, This is because … and then the brain itself would fill in the blanks with whatever was available.
It was this propensity for causal speculation that led us to the great achievements of science and technology … and to witch trials and pogroms.
Isn't it enough that Torrent has single-handedly united our deeply divided country, contained a virus that he had nothing to do with causing, broken down the barriers to redrawing the map of Africa, and maintained the general level of peace on Earth that is essential to maintaining a prosperous global economy?
Isn't it enough that he's the best president since Lincoln, maybe the best ever?
But the seeds of doubt had been planted. They had taken root. Because Torrent's own writings showed that he had thought of everything, including the methodology that a man would have to use in order to set himself up as ruler of a country and, eventually, of the world. He had laid it out, not in one place but in this or that essay or article or speech, and then had spectacularly become the President of the United States and head of both major parties in a shockingly short time. If he were following his own plan, and working to become ruler of a global empire, how could it possibly look any different from this?
If he were a great statesman of Churchillian or Disraelian or Lin-colnian stature, and merely did the right thing whenever circumstances required him to act, wouldn't it also look exactly like this?
How, from the outside, could anyone know?
But there was a trail. If the guys on the jeesh were right about Torrent, then he had done more than plant a few seeds. If the seizing of the embassy in Bangui and the Sudanese raid on Calabar had been at Torrent's prompting or at least with his cooperation, someone would know it. Someone could put it together. Someone knew the truth—if Torrent was not what he seemed to be.
Torrent kissed Cecily on the cheek—one cheek, this wasn't France—and then walked back the way he had come. No doubt there was a squad of extremely nervous Secret Service agents at the end of his walk, checking their watches and scanning the view from drones overhead.
What if, unbeknownst to any of them, the greatest threat to Torrent's life had been right here at the ceremony, from men that he had often used to carry out his most difficult, sensitive, or dangerous assignments? Torrent had said it himself, once. Treason only matters when it's committed by trusted men. No one was more trusted than Reuben's jeesh—Cole's now. But not really anybody's. They were their own jeesh now, highly skilled, with access to powerful weaponry and experienced in using it. No one foresaw the danger.
If there was any danger. Because even if Cole were ready to denounce them, what could he say? There was nothing but innuendo, nothing that would
cause the Secret Service to do more than interview the men. And then they would know that Cole had accused them. It would be the end of their friendship.
