The Novel – The Writing Log

2025, Christian Sauvé

“Agent Carter, the King has authorized your license to kill… the President of the United States”

 

A few opening notes

• Mayhem on the Potomac is a novel written in the 40 days following January 20, 2025. It’s not polished, refined or meant to be.
• Read the writing log annex for more details about the intent and making of the novel.
• This novel, if it was a movie (and it really tries to be a movie), would be a robust PG-13 rating for action, violence, sexual references and mature themes. It’s a comic thriller with elements of action and suspense, and it riffs on a bunch of familiar spy-movie characters.
• Since it styles itself after a James Bond story, I suppose the big question is… which Bond? There is no simple answer – While I pictured Pierce Brosnan in my head as I was writing it, I tried to keep the swagger of Connery without the machismo, the drollness of Moore without the goofiness, the intelligence of Dalton without the sadism, the charisma of Brosnan without the smarminess and the ruthlessness of Craig without the melodrama. (Yes, Lazenby was Bond too.)
• This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
• This being said… this novel is obviously and unrepentantly about the forty-fifth-and-forty-seventh President of the United States. (Honni soit son nom.) Its genesis comes from the dark days following November 5, 2024, and the even-darker speculations about what would follow. I decided to channel that energy into something creative, and deliberately scheduled the writing to begin on the day of his inauguration. Still, names and a few details have been modified to give me some creative room. As you’re going to see, considerable comic liberties have been taken.

 

 

Prologue—From Russia, with Missiles

November 6, 2024—9:00—Voronezh Oblast, Russia—250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border

As the truck rolled to a stop inside the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army base, Harold Carter once again bemoaned the utter unworthiness of the Russians as opponents.

He and Saskia had carefully hidden among the crates in the truck compartment, put up a camo screen, poked small holes to see outside, been ready to stab anyone looking too closely at the truck cargo, been ready for a burst of sudden action and… the truck had rolled right onto the base and parked itself in the motor pool without any interference.

Whenever he wanted a laugh, back in his London apartment, he had a fondness for watching old Cold War spy movies. To someone in the business, they were outright comedies—but at least you had a feeling that those fictional Soviets were a serious force to contend with. Thanks to Hollywood casting, they all had blond hair and blue eyes, but they meant business. They offered a challenge. The slightest slip-up meant a stiletto in the back, a garotte to the neck or a bullet in the brain.

Alas, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had shown the Red Army for the clowns they had been all along. Murderous clowns, to be sure—but ones that needed sheer numbers to make up for a fundamental lack of seriousness. Two-and-a-half years into what was supposed to be a three-day invasion, their biggest assets were a three-to-one advantage over the Ukrainians and their refusal to stop bleeding profusely for every meter of ground gained.

Well, that and nuclear weapons, which explained what an agent of His Majesty was doing so deep behind enemy lines.

“Ready to go?” he whispered to the woman huddled next to him.

“Let’s do this,” she answered, grabbing two clipboards as they got up.

Even in the unflattering twilight of the back of a military transport truck and after a mostly sleepless night, Saskia Diestel still looked terrific. Light hair, round face, great figure—and, as he’d seen, equally skilled in bed or with a razor-sharp stiletto.

They’d travelled quite a road over the past two weeks. A request to look into the finances of an Anglo-German businessman with dubious links to middle eastern arm dealers has taken them from a Monaco casino to a Bavarian compound, then to Moscow for an underground bazaar of equipment “liberated” from active use. Carter worked best alone, but Diestel had been there when it counted.

After a last check, they slipped out of the truck unnoticed. They knew that the easiest way to get to the general’s offices was through the mess hall, so the only thing left to do was to find that mess hall.

Fortunately, the base lived up to nearly every other military base in the world, and for someone with military experience like Carter, finding his way to chow hall was almost instinctual.

Especially given that they hadn’t eaten in over twelve hours, ever since the shenanigans at the bazaar that had landed them in the truck.

They stuck close to the clutter of the motor pool and made their way to the central buildings. They knew better than to skulk—the best way to remain unnoticed anywhere in the world was to hold a clipboard like a weapon, walk briskly and keep one’s head high with an annoyed expression. No one wanted to mess with inspectors. 

There weren’t wearing military garb, but that ended up being an advantage—the leather jackets and sensible dark pants had been good enough for a shady underground trade show, and they did just as well on a base with civilian contractors. 

The motor pool parking wasn’t too far from one of the mess hall service entrances, so their exposure was limited. But what they were trading were fewer eyes for increased scrutiny. They lacked identification of any sort, though, so the brisk walk wasn’t just for fitting in. Diestel’s Russian was nearly flawless, but Carter wouldn’t necessarily want to try to speak for too long.

Once inside, they had a choice—one door leading to the kitchen, the other to a warren of corridors that may or may not lead them to the commander’s office.

“Split up,” softly said Diestel in Russian.

He nodded, but she was already gone in the corridors, leaving the kitchen for him. He pushed the swinging door open.

The place was nearly empty—of course, the breakfast had ended early, and the cleanup had been completed. The prep crew would take over the kitchen for lunch in an hour or so, but the focus now was on loading the freezer at the other end of the large room. No one batted an eye as he entered.

Carter could use that. If his understanding of the building was correct, he’d find the base commander’s office and his personal vault at the opposite end of the kitchen. Keeping his pacing brisk, he nearly made it. Except for when, with five metres to go, the door swung over and he saw—

“You,” he said to the commander’s henchman.

“You,” said the henchman, clearly recognizing Carter. Ty. Contemptuously.

They’d met a few days earlier. The henchman’s oafish face still bore the marks of the encounter—a bit of shrapnel, a few charred marks, perhaps even a touch of concussion, although the difference between that and the henchman’s naturally dim disposition couldn’t be that great.

In fact, Carter was surprised to see him alive, let alone walking around with a breakfast tray. By the time the guy’s jeep had exploded and slammed into the concrete building, Carter could have sworn that no one could survive that.

But, hey—Russian soldiers: not smart, but persistent.

The henchman threw his platter at Carter. The agent easily batted away. Weak.

Not waiting for more, Carter went for a quick jab to the stomach. Said stomach was large, it was easily punchable and it clearly hurt because the henchman audibly ooofed when Carter’s hand sank into it.

The clatter of the platter falling to the floor and the Russians’ grunt of pain attracted the attention of the cooks at the back. 

It would have been nice had the henchman gone down at the first blow, but Carter wasn’t so lucky. The Russian’s hand swipe caught him off-guard—no serious damage, but he was pushed back and fell to the floor. As the henchman tried to press his advantage, Carter kicked him hard on the knee and the big man fell down.

Laughter from the back told Carter that the henchman wasn’t a good friend of the cooks. Dratsa! Dratsa! Dratsa! he heard, which was probably Russian for Fight! Fight! Fight!

Carter got up, obliged—and didn’t hold back: Punch, punch, kick. The face, the stomach and, because he was getting annoyed, the groin.

Oaf henchman went down and groaned in a way that suggested he wasn’t getting back up soon. Good enough. To cheers from the back, Carter dusted himself off, grabbed his clipboard and went out of the kitchen to the adjoining officers’ offices.

He had feared that his Russian wouldn’t be good enough to spot the commander’s office, but there was no mistaking the ornate plaque next to the door. Nor Saskia gesturing him to hurry up, already.

They went inside, not really caring if anyone was there.

“Did anyone see you?” said Saskia.

“Bit of a galley scuffle.” Said Carter mildly.

She shook her head in what he now recognized as mild exasperation.

The office was ostentatiously more elaborate than what was appropriate for Russian military offices. The chairs were leather, the doodads were more luxurious, and a few boxes of western consumer electronics weren’t part of the usual décor.

But that was what they expected—the web of financial transactions that had alerted the accounting anoraks in Berlin and London had exposed an unusually repellent commander—not only someone willing to trade military hardware for cash and favours, but one willing to go the extra effort to be noticed by higher-ups in the hope of a promotion.

“Where is it?” he asked rhetorically as he scanned the room.

Saskia was doing the same—walking to the walls and overturning paintings to find hidden compartments.

Seconds later, Carter found it—and sighed at Russian incompetence. They’d heard the commander was vain and sloppy, but finding the lead-lined case under the desk was something new.

I guess he’s done with kids, shuddered Carter at the idea of him sitting for hours at his desk with that right next to his crown jewels.

He hefted the case and his grunt attracted Saskia’s attention.

“This is definitely heavy enough to be what we’re looking for,” he said.

Was it unlocked? Was the commander stupid enough that-

Yes, he was. It was. The latch flipped up without a code.

To be absolutely certain, he opened up the case.

Besides him, Saskia hissed audibly.

There it was. Neatly set in its hard-foam inset, one artillery shell, about fifteen centimetres wide and fifty centimetres long. Forty pounds, plus the ten-pound lead lining inside the case.

One of the finest engineering marvels of the nuclear age. A self-contained nuclear warhead, roughly twice as powerful as Nagasaki and fit to be mounted on exactly the kinds of missiles fired so often from Voronezh Oblast. An enhanced radiation bomb—a neutron bomb designed to minimize physical damage but irradiate a wide area.

But that wasn’t why Saskia had hissed. They’d known from their intelligence gathering that the commander had traded favours and funds to get that device for a very specific purpose fit to impress his superiors. But it was another to see its destination visually confirmed, stencilled on the warhead as a cruel jape.

Киев – Kiev.

Their attention has captivated by the warhead long enough that they didn’t hear the approaching footsteps, only the door opening.

But they weren’t the only ones caught off-guard. The commander entered his own office out of habit, eyes down on the paper he was holding, and only noticed the two intruders after the door had closed behind him. The perils of such a large office…

“You,” he said.

“Yes,” acknowledged Carter.

They’d met. Twice. Once when Carter had taken him to the cleaners at the baccarat table in Monaco, and another time before a shootout at the Moscow underground weapons bazaar. He’d been wary after their first encounter, and outright hostile after their second, so there was no way for this third encounter to go any better.

Indeed, the commander was already reaching for the pistol in his holster when Saskia quickly darted across the office and stabbed him in the neck. He groaned and sank to the floor, his neckline already reddening.

Carter raised his eyebrows.

She shrugged, reached down and twisted the knife.

Carter nodded and closed the case. Grunting, he hefted the case off the desk.

They exited the office and Saskia locked the door before closing it. The commander’s groans were already faint and getting fainter.

He couldn’t hurry all that much with a fifty-pound charge in his hands, but he did his best. Saskia cleared the way before him. They didn’t have to talk—they’d endlessly rehashed their options on the long covert truck ride from Moscow to Voronezh and this was the inevitable endgame at last.

Extraction. Getting out of here as quickly as possible. Saskia knew where they needed to go next.

The details of their upcoming escape were fuzzy, but the situation was clear. They were about two hundred and fifty kilometres away from the nearest friendly spot, and that spot was about a meter behind the frontlines between Russia and Ukraine. Too far for a road trip—even in the absolute best of circumstances, they’d be spotted and taken out within thirty minutes.

This only left two options—both of them airborne.

Alas, Voronezh Oblast didn’t have fixed-wing planes—the airbase was on the other side of the city, and they wouldn’t even make it to the gate.

But this base did have helicopters, and both of them could fly one. A bit. As long as you didn’t ask for more than going fast in a specific direction, and landing badly somewhere in a very large field.

Choppers it was, then.

Saskia led the way, clipboard at the ready. Behind her, Carter did the gruntwork of lugging the case. He tried to look annoyed, which wasn’t that far off from the truth.

They made their way to the helipads with ease. Around them, people noticed them and immediately lost interest. Some no-nonsense building inspector, with the poor guy carrying the inspection equipment. Nothing to see here.

They couldn’t afford to be picky about their horse out of town, but Saskia immediately went for the vehicle that Carter would have picked anyway—a Kamov Ka-60 transport helicopter, the likes of which could make it across the border in less than an hour and not look out of place anywhere. A dependable workhorse: exactly what they needed. An Orca, if Carter remembered the NATO reporting name correctly.

The paradox of military bases is that they are presumed to be so secure that anything inside it is often left wide open for quick access. This was no exception.

In other words: the door was unlocked; the keys were in the ignition and the helicopter was fuelled up. Pushing the case inside the closed-off cargo and putting on his headset, Carter had ended up in the pilot’s seat.

“You got this, Carter?” asked Saskia.

He did. The Ka-60 was a modern helicopter, with plenty of digital screens and streamlined controls. He flicked a few switches and was rewarded by the increasing rumbling of the main rotor getting up to speed. He’d trained on very similar models—and in a surprisingly capitalistic touch, the helicopter had been patterned on its Western equivalents to minimize the amount of cross-training for commercial pilots.

“Better make it fast,” said Saskia.

As Carter pushed the throttle to liftoff, he glanced and saw the henchman walking in their direction with a group of armed soldiers, pointing with one hand and holding his wounded side with the other.

“Let’s be polite and leave as we’re asked,” grunted Carter as the helicopter left the ground.

Some gunfire, increasingly distant, hinted that their new friends would have rather have them stay, but the delivery of the message was mixed. Carter got away from the base, then readjusted his heading and speed so that they headed West-South-West as fast as they could.

As much as this felt like a victory, they weren’t home yet. Not by a far shot. The henchman clearly knew that something was up, and any attempt to notify the base commander would uncover far worse than a stolen helicopter and worked-over adjutant. How they’d explain a corrupt weapon dealing ring is a detail that wouldn’t be pertinent when there was a runaway helicopter and enemy agents to catch.

Riding in intense silence, Carter pushed the helicopter as low as he dared. Which wasn’t all that much—flying a helicopter is essentially a controlled fall with unstable controls loosely nudging around a main rotor pointed upwards. Helicopters don’t want to fly, had told him one instructor in an ill-advised attempt to lighten up the atmosphere during one of his training flights. Simply keeping it pointed in the right director at a decent speed felt like enough of an achievement.

He still went as low as he could. Maybe the radars would be confused. Maybe the transponder somewhere aboard wouldn’t squawk back home. Maybe they’d get an extra five minutes before the next headache.

But Carter had, once again, underestimated Russian incompetence. In the end, they got forty minutes before being pursued. Saskia had taken care to buckle the case in the cargo hold and Carter felt more comfortable now that he had managed to puzzle out most of the Orca’s controls. 

Fifty kilometres away from the border, the radio’s common band lit up. Carter gathered much of it while Saskia held the conversation.

Standard opening:  You’re bad people. Please land the helicopter and nothing too terrible will happen to you.

Saskia playing dumb blonde: There must be a terrible mistake, sir, we’re just two innocent patriots out for an innocent joyride, tee-hee.

Growing impatience: Look, dudes, we’ve got missiles and we’re pissed.

Saskia, spouting nonsense for confusion: Hey, man, it’s okay to have a bad day. Who hurt you? Aren’t you due for a vacation soon?

Mask off: Let’s make this simple. Stop, or we’re shooting you down. Maybe there will be enough of you to put back in a box for your relatives.

To underscore this, a fighter jet screamed past them, wagging its wings as it did so. A shiny new Sukhoi Su-30, remembered Carter from his Janes Handbook.

We rated the royal treatment, thought Carter. They should have scrambled to get that plane as fast as they could, but even then, it should have arrived much earlier. Incompetence…

He didn’t have much choice, and dove the helicopter closer to the ground than he’d previously dared to. Any missile would strike them faster than they’d see it coming. 

They did have advantages, but not many. A fighter missile-versus helicopter encounter would have been unsurvivable around much of the world. Anywhere over a large body of water? Gone. Sahara Desert? Dead. Pancake-flat Kansas? Also, dead. The great British rolling lawns? Weeded out in moments. 

But here… this part of Western Russia was definitely not flat. Everywhere Carter looked, he could see jet-smashing hills, copter-saving valleys, sneaky snaking rivers and deadly electrical wires.

If only he could use that without first hitting the ground on his own. He dove even lower.

Just in time—the Orca’s antimissile alarm started blaring as it detected a missile being fired from the jet. Needing no further motivation, Carter slid the helicopter only a few metres above a river running west and tried to keep up his speed.

Behind them, the missile whooshed past them and hit the shore in a muffled thud.

Carter tried following the river, but not everything was working in his favour. While he was becoming a better helicopter pilot by the moment, he wondered how many more minutes were left on the counter. The river itself had a maddening tendency to meander. Frequent houses and land vehicles were regular reminders that the dangers weren’t all natural—electrical poles, bridges and covered docks were waiting for him to slip up, and that wasn’t even considering the trees.

Fortunately, the river had dug a deep bed in the neighbouring hills. They were, at least, partially hidden rather than exposed to even basic radar.

“Have you seen the jet?” asked Carter.

“Nothing yet,” said Saskia as she was fiddling with the radar controls.

If I was a jet, thought Carter, I would follow the river that the copter was following…

“Uh-oh.”

The river, as if to mock him, has decided to straight up for the foreseeable distance. Other than a bridge a few kilometres away, the way ahead of them was clear and they were as exposed as a duck in a shooting gallery.

“I’ve got a signal behind us,” noted Saskia.

The only way Carter could go lower and faster at this point would have been willing himself lower and faster. He willed it.

Behind them, the radar signal was getting closer and closer.

What is he doing? Why doesn’t he shoot?

A missile would have them dead to right in this set-up. 

He started zigzagging from one side of the river to the other, hoping that we wouldn’t hit anything. The green branches were a blur in his peripheral vision.

Why doesn’t-

Then he understood, and started cackling.

That pilot was being a show-off. Whether annoyed by Saskia’s patter or feeling as if the shot was so sure as to be unsporting, he was playing with his prey. A good story for the boys back at the barracks.

Well, I have another plan.

He eased off on the forward momentum.

“What?” said Saskia.

Just focus on us and nothing else, thought Carter as he dropped speed and levelled off the Orca.

In front of them, the old stone bridge loomed larger—a solid arch construction spanning two lanes, the kind of thing that vehicular traffic can depend upon for decades.

The next few things happened very quickly: The sound of a missile detection blared through the cabin, Carter slipped the helicopter under the bridge’s arches and abruptly pulled back, the helicopter rising past the bridge.

All of this was expected. What followed wasn’t. Well, perhaps in Carter’s best hopes.

The missile hit the bridge, sending a shower of stonework up in the air.

Then the fighter jet didn’t quite manage to clear the bridge. Whether overconfident, overly focused or simply unlucky, the lowered wingtip of the fighter jet caught on the blown-up rubble and went into a mercifully brief tailspin. It slammed into the shores of the river a few hundred metres behind the bridge, and Carter earned the rare right to stencil a plane silhouette on the side of his Austin-Martin.

But since things rarely go all that well in a field operation, the Orca wasn’t spared—the rubble hit the tail rotor and Carter immediately knew that he was in trouble. Still pulling up, the entire vehicle shuddered and a high-pitched whine clearly indicated the partial destruction of the helicopter’s tail.

This was now advanced-level helicopter flying, and Carter only remembered one word out of his training.

Autorotate.

He dropped the collective lift to disengage the main rotor from the engine and hoped he had paid just enough attention during that part of the classes. He didn’t have the altitude to make anything close to a smooth landing, so he just hoped they could at least walk away. Desperately pitching up and trying to ignore the swaying of the damaged vehicle, he saw the ground rush up to them.

The shock of hitting the ground was both expected and surprising. As the sound of torn metal testified about the sorry state of the landing gear, the impact drove them deep into their seats. He grunted.

A window smashed into fragments. The sound kept going on even well after they’d stopped moving.

“Oof,” he finally said.

Next to him, Saskia swore something in German. It sounded like relief.

He blinked and took stock of the situation. Somehow, he’d managed to keep the helicopter upright and in a controlled fall, putting him well ahead of most people flying a distressed helicopter. He’d somehow crash-landed right next to the road going to the bridge, and the racket they’d just made was likely to attract attention from the neighbouring houses. 

After unbuckling his restraints, he reached into the cargo hold and was relieved to find the nuclear warhead case still intact. Well, as far as he knew without a Geiger counter.

He unbuckled the case from the restraints and, grimacing, lifted the heavy case once more. Saskia had managed to get out on her own, so he joined her outside.

She nodded toward the bridge and he understood. Rushing before anyone looked too closely at the wreckage, they quickly slipped out of sight. There was enough unkempt brush and vegetation for them to remain undetected while still having a good view of the wreckage. 

It didn’t take a long time. In between the cars unwilling to brave the damaged bridge and the neighbours coming to have a look, they soon had a crowd. People mostly gawked at the downed helicopter—but few dared to approach it. There was no indication that anyone suspected its former crew of being within sight. Best of all, there was soon an assortment of unattended vehicles to pick from the curbside.

“I like the pickup truck,” he said.

“A sedan would be less conspicuous,” she said.

But what was really holding them back was timing. They would only get one chance to slip inside a vehicle and drive away. While their clothes could pass under light scrutiny, the heavy case limited their speed and their ability to slip unnoticed.

“Then there’s the rest, Carter. Have you thought about how we’re supposed to slip past the border?”

The border. Innocuous name for the world’s most dangerous battlefront.

“Well—“, he began.

Then he heard salvation—emergency sirens.

“Yesss,” drew out Saskia.

This is what they’d really been waiting for—a deliciously unstoppable emergency vehicle: fast, tough and unremarkable in its particularity. It may even get a free pass from the combatants at the border. 

Pretty soon, they had three picks—two police cars and one ambulance. If they waited longer, they could even hope for a fire truck, but that seemed greedy.

“Police car on the left,” he said.

“I drive, you pack the case,” she agreed.

“Fine with me. Give me the signal.”

She slipped toward the car, light and unnoticed considering that everyone’s attention was still on the wreckage. He saw her free up her jacket so that she could reach for the gun inside her holster in case of trouble. She approached the car and looked. Both police cars and the ambulance were clustered close by, and Carter saw that getting out cleanly would be a challenge—more cars were stopping and blocking the way.

She tried one door and shook her head—locked. Damn.

Her attention shifted to the second police car, and he could see her hesitate. One police officer was standing far too close to the car. It would be a gamble. She nodded at him to come up—there would only be one chance at this.

Lugging the case and trying not to show that he was now starting to hurt from everywhere, Carter approached the car. About fifteen paces away, he saw her start for the driver’s door. If they timed this well, she would manage to unlock the door right as-

No.

By a fluke, the officer turned and caught Saskia right as she unlocked the car door. Carter couldn’t understand what he was shouting, but the tone of voice was comprehensible enough, and the officer’s hand was already going to the gun holster on his hip.

Carter backed away a few steps until he reached Plan B—the ambulance. The door opened easily enough, and the engine was running as so to keep the vehicle ready to go.   No one inside, but Carter knew that—the paramedics were busy looking inside and underneath the helicopter’s wreckage. 

Shoving the warhead case in the passenger seat, he slipped into the driver’s spot, put the vehicle in drive and stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle lurched forward, and he twisted the wheel just so that it roared between the police officer and Saskia. As he hoped for, the crowd stepped back, the officer drew on the ambulance and he slammed the brakes just so that Saskia could slip inside.

He didn’t even wait for her to slam the door shut—as soon as she was half-inside, he stepped on it again.

The officer hesitated long enough that they got away without getting shot. But not without some grinding of metal against metal, as the ambulance pushed a few cars parked in its way. He had hoped to minimize the damage, but as the ambulance sped eastward, he thought that had gone rather well.

Saskia somehow managed to wrestle the case aside and find her seat. He buckled himself in as she did the same.

“Well done, Carter.”

“We live to fight another five minutes.”

Indeed, every minute brought them closer to a warzone, where the civilian authorities wouldn’t be so eager to follow. On the other hand, that still left them to sneak past the military presence at the border. Oh, and an enraged contingent from Voronezh Oblast on their tails, still eager to avenge their hotshot pilot. They had left quite a trail. 

“Time to call our friends,” he said to Saskia.

She nodded, took a lined pouch out of her pocket, opened the seal and slipped a phone out of it.

Would it work here?

From her conversation, it looked like it. They had been under orders to stay dark while in Russia, but this warranted an exception.

He kept wanting to go even faster, but the road wouldn’t take the speeds he aimed for—Russian roads weren’t great in the first place and after two years of fighting, the roads this close to the border weren’t maintained at all. He could see the traces left by armoured vehicle tracks on the side of the road.

Still, they were making progress. Traffic was getting increasingly lighter, to the point where they’d now spent a minute without seeing anyone else on the road. Good for speed, bad for conspicuousness.

The terrain was also getting flatter and smoother—as they sped toward Ukraine, forest turned to farmland, giving them even less cover.

The problem with the ambulance is that it had no off-road capabilities whatsoever—in the Orca, they could go anywhere, but now they were stuck to the roads. And the roads were magnets for roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers with itchy trigger fingers.

The only thing they could do was to race toward that.

Saskia’s conversation was getting involved, with what Carter could recognize as expletives on both sides of the conversation. He didn’t have anything to add—both the British and the German military weren’t even supposed to be in Ukraine, so they’d have to rely on instant international cooperation to live another day.

After a while, Saskia turned to Carter.

“What’s the news?” he asked.

“Mixed. The Americans are tracking the entire theatre. They say there’s a task force headed our way from the west, and what looks like roadblocks in front of us.”

“Sounds dreadful.”

“They’re telling us to keep going.”

“What’s the plan?”

“They’re still putting it together,” she said, her attention drifting toward the rear view.

They were now maybe five kilometres away from the frontier, and if Carter wasn’t mistaken, they could already start hearing the muffled thuds of munitions being fired. 

Was that a glint of metal in the air behind them? Considering the state of the road and the speed at which they were going, he couldn’t really focus too long on the matter.

“What’s that?” said Saskia.

In front of them, a very large plane was racing toward them, almost perfectly aligned with the road. A fat C-17 cargo plane variant, Carter guessed, although what a relatively soft-bellied cargo plane was doing in a warzone was something he didn’t understand.

“There they come!” said Saskia, looking behind them.

Carter chanced a glance in the rear-view mirror. No doubt about it: the glints were becoming plane-shaped, and growing puffs of smoke showed that they were putting their missiles to work. How the missiles were supposed to lock onto a vehicle was something that Carter wasn’t looking forward to finding out.

The C-17 kept racing toward them, and began expelling clouds of shimmering smoke and small bright rockets. Were they shooting at them? 

No. The plane roared a few metres over them and the visibility dropped significantly—they were now in a dark cloud of air-dropped smoke, flashing strips of plastic and metal-coated glass fibres.

As to underscore Carter’s sudden understanding of what was happening, a powerful explosion behind them rocked but did not damage the ambulance. Chaff—the C-17 had just dropped an entire cloud’s worth of radar-jamming countermeasures on top of them, and the missiles lost tracking, slamming harmlessly into the ground they’d just crossed.

No, not all missiles—as they watched incredulously, a missile passed them five metres to the right, then exploded.

The blast knocked them off course, and despite his best efforts, Carter was unable to stop the vehicle from toppling over. With a crash, the window next to Carter’s face exploded inward, showering him with cubical safety glass fragments. He tried to push his head as far away from the opening as possible, considering that they were still sliding on the tarmac at tens of kilometres per hour. 

The missile had been far away to spare them the worst of its power, but that means sliding a very long way rather than flipping over a few times. But the ambulance did stop eventually as it veered off the road in the adjacent gravel and finally into the ditch.

This wasn’t the end of Carter’s troubles, though, as the fifty-pound warhead case slipped from being wedged in front of the passenger’s seat and hit him hard on the shoulder.

Groaning, he unbuckled himself. Saskia was already scrambling to get out of the ambulance. Kicking open the already-damaged windshield, he extricated himself from the vehicle, dragging the case with him.

Outside, the air was still heavy with airborne fibreglass, and Carter tried not to think about what this would mean for his lungs.

The ambulance was firmly stuck into a ditch, making it impossible to push it upright.

“I hope they have more than chaff for us!” he shouted to Saskia. The explosion had rung his ears hard enough that it would take a while until he could hear normally.

At least he could still hear the roar of the C-17—they were apparently still in the air.

This roar was soon joined by some higher-pitched jet engines, as a few Russian fighters overshot their position. The fog was slowly dissipating, which was probably overall bad news considering that it would expose their position. 

For lack of any options, Carter and Saskia were both crawling into the ditch a few metres away from the ambulance—it was wide open fields all around them, and the vehicle was the biggest target around.

He was still dragging the case around, and by that time had developed a faint hatred for it.

Through the persistent ringing in his ears, he could hear Saskia shouting in the cell phone for further updates, carefully moderating hysteria and professionalism in an attempt to impress upon their interlocutor the gravity of their situation.

A lower rumble replaced the sound of the jets—tanks, Carter could see in the distance. And they were shooting, although not necessarily in their direction. What was going on?

They were still five kilometres away from the frontier, about ten from the frontlines, and they were on foot, shackled to a fifty-pound charge. Their prospects were getting grim.

Then one of the tanks in front of them blew up, explosive charges further detonating and sending the cupola flying into the air. 

Ah—a Russian tank, recognized Carter.

A few other loud booms told him that this wasn’t an isolated incident.

Hoping for the best, he looked farther away, and saw something he instantly liked—the boxy, low-slung silhouette of an M-1 Abrams tank. American steel, perfectly at ease slaughtering opponents on Russian soil. Patton would have shed a tear. The tank, and a few others dimly seen behind them, were advancing toward the ambulance.

Horrifyingly, he saw the main turret of the tank swivel from the destroyed Russian squad to the ambulance. Then it fired.

Almost too fast for the eye, the shell whooshed past them and landed straight into an advancing Russian armoured personnel carrier, blowing it up. Clearly, they hadn’t just been followed by jets. 

Still advancing at a ferocious speed, the Ukrainian tanks surrounded their position, taking potshots at any Russian vehicles still rolling around. The Russians hadn’t spared any expense in their attempts to catch them, and it was blowing up in their faces: From their vantage point in the ditch, partially obscured by the overturned ambulance, Carter could see at least half a dozen flaming wrecks. 

The Ukrainians hadn’t spared any effort either—two tank platoons had secured the area, backed by several aerial drones flying overhead. All of this made it safe for a Ukrainian Mi-17 transport chopper to land besides them. 

A familiar figure opened the door of the cargo hold—a fifty-something man with graying hair and a leather bomber jacket.

“Damian!” shouted Carter above the loud whopping of the helicopter blades as he climbed aboard.

“Carter!” said the man, handing them both ear protectors with integrated radios.

As Carter and Saskia put on their headphones, Damien pointed at the case and then at the helicopter. Two men jumped out and quickly brought it inside the helicopter. Everyone followed, and Damian shut close the door. As soon as he was done, the helicopter rose again and quickly pivoted back west.

“Made quite a mess, as usual,” commented Damian.

“I hope I won’t be charged for the rescue operation,” said Carter.

“Not a chance. The Ukrainians didn’t have to be asked twice to come in and kill some more Russians.”

“Did a fine job too, even if they cut it close.”

“You’re lucky I was in the area.”

“Somehow, you always are.”

“Someone’s got to clean up your messes.”

As the helicopter flew deeper into Ukrainian territory, Carter felt himself relax, finally. A few weeks of rest, a return to London, maybe another secret medal ceremony, all done.

He tapped the case with his foot.

“So, who’s going to tell the Americans we recovered one of their broken arrows?”

“Don’t care, and it may not matter too much.”

“What do you mean?”

Damien sighed, took out his phone and showed them the latest headlines.

“The Pennsylvania results are in. They just called the election for Blunt.”

Carter looked at Saskia, who reflected his own horrified expression.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected—the polls had been neck-and-neck for weeks—but there was really only one thing left to say, and they both said it at once.

“Aww, fuck.”

 

Roll credit sequence

 

 

 

Section 1 — The Washington Rules

Chapter 1 — For Your Spies Only

February 2, 2027, 12:26—Washington, DC—White House, Oval Office

Arugula salad dripped off Churchill’s bust. Behind, fresh ketchup stained the walls of the Oval Office.

The President was in a rage, again. After hurtling his burger-and-salad lunch across the room, Blunt had started giving an impromptu rendering of his greatest hits. Sputtering scatological terms and racial epithets, he railed against imaginary enemies, detailed his endless persecution and repeated speaking points that even Fox News didn’t believe. It all came out in a stream-of-consciousness jumble of grievances, half-finished thoughts and the usual superlatives.

The only remarkable thing about Blunt’s rage, thought Jonas McGuire, was how unremarkable it was. The idea of presidential anger should have been a class-five ideological hurricane fit to reshape national policy. And maybe it was, considering the chaotic nature of this administration. But it happened so often—every two or three days—that McGuire’s cowed reaction has quickly ossified into quiet stoicism.

At least he wasn’t the target. As usual, it was all against a vague and yet overly specific them, as exemplified by his latest punching bag—a Texas state senator who had said something reasonably critical of him, and so had been featured on Fox for the past twenty-four hours. She was now both individually responsible for the sins of every single one of his opponents, and also inept enough that it was a miracle she had been able to get out of bed that morning. Since she was both black and a woman, she was called stupid and crazy—the presidential repertoire of insults being as small and predictable as usual.

The small group of policy advisors in the room took it all in stride, occasionally nodding or making supportive noises. Jonas was sitting next to his boss, the communication director. Since he’d be writing the speech of what was supposed to be a serious presidential address, he had to be there to hear The Man himself. 

Not that it would matter much—by his estimate, two-thirds of the speeches he’d written had never been delivered—Blunt would maybe glance at the first paragraph, then go off on a rant that only occasionally related to the topic of the speech. It almost burned him inside, except that Blunt kept asking for his pen and everyone congratulated him on handling it so well.

Meanwhile, every day, his mind left his body a bit more.

He had to blink and force himself to pay attention to the petulant president. At some point, he had come to think of Blunt as a child. Not the sweet innocent youth that most families get most of the time (at least judging from his sister’s three adorable kids), but the temper-tantrum-throwing bad seed that had anyone considering sterilization. The prescribed playbook was exactly the same—let the tantrum run its course, reasonably placate the child with treats and promises, and walk away with the certitude that it would all be forgotten within hours, maybe minutes.

Judging from experience, he still had ninety seconds before Blunt would stop performing to his audience and his active attention would be required once more.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that. McGuire had first signed up on political campaigns while he was still in college, twenty years earlier. He wanted to make a difference, and from his understanding of the American political system there was no surest path to influence than working on a candidate’s staff, hope to win the election for them and then parlay that work into a staff position. He’d been lucky—his candidates usually won (when they hadn’t, he had spent a few years getting his teacher’s certificate), and his degree in philosophy had ended up being a valuable asset as a wordsmith. The people he’d worked with had been similarly driven, idealistic and at the right place at the right time—winning elections, taking on interesting files and advancing public interest. Obama had swept the floor in 2008 and 2012, but the state-level pols that McGuire had worked for had been elected. By 2016, McGuire had been working on the Pennsylvanian senate race at the time, so he had no special knowledge of Blunt’s out-of-nowhere rise.

Blunt has been, for most of his adult life, the punchline of Chicagoan jokes. A nepo real-estate slumlord so awful a businessman that he’d driven casinos to bankruptcy, he’d tried running for president in 2000 as nothing more than another vanity brand venture. He’d blustered his way in a major-party nomination contest in 2016 on pure faux-populist hot air, with content-free ramblings that could be interpreted as being about anything. But he somehow had charisma for low-information voters, and an uncanny ability to tap into the nascent economic anxiety. Somehow, he’d reshaped the party to his image, forcing old party figureheads into retirement or ridicule. The party platform had moulded itself to his self-aggrandizing agenda.

What’s going on with our Party? had been a favourite topic of down-ballot campaign staff, except for one thing: he kept winning. Opponents self-destructed, bent the knee or found themselves made irrelevant. “I’ll be Blunt” became a catchphrase. So did “Make America Grand Again.”  Do we really care if he’s an idiot blowhard? said the chattering staffers, if he’s in power, then we’re all in power.

As much as he disliked both the candidate and the message, McGuire indirectly benefited from the rising tide. His candidate had won Pennsylvania by a comfortable margin that allowed the entire staff to feel as if they were all geniuses. He had stayed in Philadelphia during that first term, but not by choice—competition had been fierce, and his feelers for a Washington job had not been acknowledged. 

Which gave him a well-informed spectator’s seat for the mess that was Blunt’s first term. Elect a clown, get a circus, as the saying went, and so Blunt’s limitations became painfully apparent once in power. Cheaply divisive policies, cruel political instincts, limited cognitive skills and a narcissist’s propensity for being swayed by anyone willing to praise him explained the disastrous policies, revolving-door firings, resignations and appointments, and historical unpopularity.

By the time COVID hit, the writing was on the wall—enough people had had enough of Blunt. That hadn’t stopped him from claiming election fraud, performing electoral interference of his own and ultimately spearheading a failed coup against the legislative. His replacement was a bland but competent career politician who was, most notably, not Blunt.

But Blunt never went away, and the quiet competent administration of his predecessor has the disadvantage of not being a match for the ceaseless bluster of his opponent-in-exile. To make a long absurd story short, Blunt has stormed back into the White House at the next opportunity, stoking the same populist rage.

This time, McGuire had been called up to Washington. He’d been key in the national campaign’s Pennsylvania outreach and this time people had remembered his work. While he half-suspected that he’d gotten in because other better and more senior people had been so disgusted by the first Blunt administration that they’d tapped out, he wasn’t about to refuse the position out of too-haughty scruples. He signed the contract and called his mom—Hey, I’m going to be working in the White House!

His mother had hung up on him.

As the President finally finished his harangue, McGuire thought, as he so often had in the past two years, that he would not have made the same decision had he listened to everything he’d been told. 

Blunt, having had his helping of performative rage, muttered a few words of support to the communication staff and dismissed them. They dutifully got up and left.

As they walked the tiny corridors leading to their cramped offices, McGuire knew that his colleagues were just as sick, tired and dismissive of Blunt’s entire shtick as he was. But not a single word against Blunt would be uttered in this White House. Blunt had attracted enough ambitious sycophants that unfriendly ears were everywhere, and the wrong wisecrack would be repeated to people eager to purge anyone less than entirely deferential. Months earlier, it had taken an out-of-Washington drinking hole and heroic quantities of alcohol before anything like true feelings had come out of his colleagues—and they’d never spoken of it again.

“I want a draft by five o’clock, McGuire,” said his boss.

“You’ll have it by four thirty,” he answered.

As he sat down at his desk to draft the speech, McGuire found himself dissociating again. The speech was simple enough—an address to Midwestern farmers, the same kind of thing he wrote four times a year—that he could let half his brain do the work while the core part of himself wallowed in self-hatred again.

He could quit, of course. Get up, walk past the guard post, throw his access pass to the bemused Marine and taste the freedom. He would be so light that his feet would leave the ground and he’d float away in boundless bliss. 

What always ruined that fantasy was thinking about the morning after. Waking up, unemployed and single in a city that hated his guts. While powerful enough in their functions at the White House, Blunt staffers were less than useless after leaving their jobs—their resumes were often enhanced by substituting their time on Blunt’s staff with a prison stint. He’d be stuck watching the news and being left out of everything that the news didn’t know, or left out. His former colleagues would declare him persona non grata, perhaps even an enemy and a target for Blunt’s Lunchtime Anger Hour. 

Yeah, no. He’d rather stay in, unhappy, than out and even unhappier.

By four o’clock, his writer’s brain had completed the speech. He’d thrown in all of the right figures, all the nice historical quotes, all the empty platitudes that Midwestern farmers (not salt-of-the-earth types, but most often millionaire businessmen with agricultural holdings and enough money to pay for the fundraising plates) would love hearing about themselves. He filed it, sent it to the communication director and checked that there were no emergencies.

Then he did another three hours of mind-numbing work, editing upcoming communication material for eventual publication. Op-Eds by a small-business-owning plumber praising Blunt’s approach to lowering taxes for the ultra-rich. An outraged housewife who thought that Blunt was a messenger from God, sent here to close the borders and deregulate the banking sector. A member of the black community, so grateful for the era of racial respect that Blunt has ushered in. 

That last one had been especially hard to write considering the latest round of riots, but it was the nature of the job.

On his way back home, the TVs were dutifully reporting the reality of living in the belly of Blunt’s America: deportations “accidentally” sweeping along American citizens who happened to be outspoken activists, inflation at seven percent, community book burnings in southern states, another plane crash caused by non-professional air traffic controllers, another racial lynching in Mississippi, another measles outbreak in Iowa, three women dying from back-alley abortions in a single day, more tariffs on food, botulism detected in fast food chains and teen suicide up. No wonder Blunt’s party had been thrashed in the midterm elections, with the House and the Senate decisively slipping away. At least the riots had died down a bit since then.

By the time he got to his apartment and retrieved his own personal phone, he wanted to lash out. So, he logged onto a dating site and poured out his true feelings through his pseudonymous identity, keeping up four separate women in the area know that he utterly despised the administration’s policies and couldn’t wait for the fat slob to go away.

He did feel better after that. But still fuming enough that he picked up when his phone rang, knowing fully well who it was.

“Hey, Hoosier,” said the female voice at the other end of the line. “Care for a comment?”

No names, never. The greeting has a codeword and a shared joke about their home state. You meet all sorts of people at Washington bars. Sometimes even members of the fourth estate.

“What’s the story?”

“I’m hearing that SecDef’s on the outs. Disagreement about upcoming policy change.”

McGuire’s heart skipped a beat. He did know things, but what did she know? There were levels to his understanding of the White House, and if some of those things could end up on the front page tomorrow, he still had some survival instincts.

“I can confirm that it’s not peace and calm between those two.”

He added nothing more. He knew it was enough to count as one of two corroborating sources. 

She waited. Then she apparently got tired of it. Deadlines, he knew.

“Nothing else out of you?”

“He’s pissed at that Texas state representative. Ten minutes rant.”

Now this was thrilling. Petty stuff, but maybe a dozen people knew about the rant. That upcoming policy announcement was far more important, but a lot more people knew about it. There was an authentic risk that he’d be linked to that lunchtime temper tantrum. His heart beat faster. 

“Oh? Getting under the big guy’s skin?”

“The usual slurs.”

“Give me more.”

“Hey, I confirmed a story. You go confirm mine.”

“Ugh, fine. Leave a note if there’s anything more.”

“You got it.”

He was almost giddy when he hung up. Take that, he imagined double-wielding extended middle fingers toward Blunt. You incompetent buffoon, you doddering relic, you demented man-child.

Abruptly feeling cocky about himself, he turned back to the most interesting of the text conversations he’d been having.

Hey there, he wrote, care for a drink?

🗽

London, England, 11:45—MI 6 headquarters

Carter pressed the trigger and scored another hit in the bullseye.

Target practice was, by far, the favourite part of his routine when he was stuck at headquarters. As much as he liked being in the field, or at least in off-site training, he did spend most of his time as an agent of His Majesty at the office. In between reams of paperwork and reports, both to write and to read, target practice felt good. Better than the gym—at least he had the physical satisfaction of feeling the gun recoil in his hand, and of materializing his will to put a mark on his target.

“Pretty good,” commented the armorer, who oversaw the range deep in MI6’s headquarters basement.

The target came back, and Carter had scored, as usual, three closely spaced hits right on the chest’s bullseye. 

“It’s going to be time for you to start trying for the head,” joked the gunny.

“Pff,” dismissed Carter, “I never do that.”

He secured the weapon, said goodbye and reluctantly made his way back to his office.

There, like the world’s dullest office worker, he opened his email and started reading the documents sent to him. The point of not being in the field was preparing for the next time he’d be in the field, and in between the physical and weapons training, that preparation meant reading up on everything and anything that could possibly be of interest on a mission. Public information or classified material, no matter—MI6 had analysts sifting through mountains of data and raw input to identify nuggets of interest, and they were the first to make use of it.

Carter sighed, and flitted from the description of a new Japanese street drug, to harmful drug interactions, to profiles of the latest Brazilian senior bureaucrats, to a description of cold-read techniques used by French conmen. Anything could be of interest, went the directive.

He sighed and wondered how long it would be before the next call. He shared his rather large office with two other agents and one executive manager and while the intention had been to create a bullpen of sorts, three bulls and a farmhand didn’t coexist harmoniously more than a few days at a time. They were due for forklift refresher training the next week, which would be a sorely needed change.

The truth was that covert agents of His Majesty weren’t asked to perform their very specific services more than three or four times a year. With regular SIGINT ruling the intelligence-gathering world, and networks of informants bringing back torrents of information back to the spymasters, the double-A agents (as the new nomenclature called them) were kept in reserve for particularly touchy situations… or even-rarer direct action.

Carter was seriously thinking about leaving early for lunch when the unflappable executive manager spoke up.

“Double-A G, you’re up.”

“I do have a name,” protested Carter.

“Not when you’re called up.”

He knew that. He rose, dusted off his jacket and began the trek to the top office.

The Director of Clandestine Operations (“D”) was the highest-ranking official the double-A agents would ever meet. Out of political self-preservation, anyone more senior flat-out refused to meet the dirty boys and girls that exerted the state’s monopoly on violence. Carter was comfortable with that, and so were his colleagues—Double-A agents, able to operate for weeks or months undercover, without support, usually featured a bizarre blend of patriotism (often masquerading for thrill-seeking) and maverick individualism. As a result, most of them didn’t really trust anyone unwilling to get their hands dirty.

D, on the other hand, had the chops. She’d stayed quiet about her own background, but she’d shown impressive ruthlessness in assigning missions and clearing agents for whatever was needed along the way. Carter liked her quite a bit—not that he’d ever admit it.

Before seeing her, however, there was a treat along the way—the delicious Miss Pennyworth, who guarded D’s doorway with efficacious straightforwardness.

“Eager for service, Carter?” she asked from behind her curly hair and glasses.

“My only regret is that I must leave too soon to ask you out for dinner.”

“Promises, promises. I guess I’ll have to languish for a few more months.”

“You become finer every year, so I’m just biding my time.”

“All right, get in. Whatever he’s got has to be important given that he’s spent the morning on the secure videoconference.”

Carter raised his eyebrows and walked into his boss’ office.

Her head was down, looking at her computer screen.

He scanned the office, noting that nothing had changed in the understated decoration. Some mementoes hinting at some military experience, police work, then intelligence gathering and management. Just enough to give herself gravity, but not enough to actually understand what she’d done. The remnants of a detonated shell had always fascinated Carter, but he’d never asked about it.

He sat down and, finally, D looked at him.

“I hope you’re well rested, Carter.”

“I’m ready to serve his Majesty.”

To Carter’s shock, D actually chuckled at that.

“What?”

“Agent Carter, the King has authorized your license to kill… the President of the United States.”

Carter nodded. His reaction to that statement needed to be calm and measured.

Internally, he was going out of his mind, but it just wouldn’t be professional to break the British stiff-upper lip ideal.

“Any questions, Carter?”

“I notice there’s no briefing book.”

“There’s this,” she said while pointing at the tablet on her desk. “Otherwise — there’s nothing on paper, given that only five people in the world know about this mission.”

“Let’s see—the King, the Prime Minister, you and me.”

“Plus, the Queen.”

“Interesting. I suppose that His Highness doesn’t merely get up in the morning and decides to take out the colonials’ leader.”

“Of course not. When I say that only five people know about it, I don’t mean that only five people have ever said it was a good idea. The concept has been rattling around Whitehall for the past two years and a half. This specific operation, however, comes straight from our new king.”

“I know he’s still new, but I didn’t know him to take such an interest in matters of state.”

“This is personal, Carter. Remember the coronation visit last month?”

“Yes.”

Protocolary events, street closures, protests and tear gas. London had been unlivable for a few days. Even the Daily Mail publicly gave up on Blunt when he couldn’t help but criticize all of England at a press conference. Even that idiot Secretary of State, Coughlin, had looked horrified at Blunt’s insulting ramblings.

“One thing that didn’t make the news is how Blunt groped a handful from the Queen.”

“Oh.”

“In front of the King.”

“Oh.”

“Daring him to do anything about it.”

“And so here we are.”

“To be fair, the King has been begged for this authorization for a while. Our sources tell us that it’s about time it happened, because there’s worse to come. It just took some excessive hubris to get things going.”

“So, what are the parameters?”

“You will understand if we bring the fewest number of people on this. For people within the service, you’re headed for Washington, with few other details given other than to give you the assistance you need before leaving. Over there, you are not to contact anyone at the British embassy.”

“Of course.”

“The problem, as you can understand, isn’t just to complete the operation. You must not be caught, and you must not have anyone identify you or England.”

“Indeed.”

“Since this is the kind of operation that doesn’t need a crowd and since you work best alone, we’re leaving the rest to you. Method, timing, cruelty.”

“Although I suppose that there’s a limit to the time it would take.”

“July fourth would be nice. More seriously, we’d like it done within days. Two weeks at most.”

“Anything else?”

“We’ve arranged for a cover identity and a passage through Canada thanks to our friends in Ottawa. They won’t look as closely at a land crossing, so that could buy you a few days before they get wise to your true identity.”

She paused.

“Carter, you’re headed to Washington. You’re been tasked with bagging the most high-profile target on planet Earth. Thousands of people are, to some degree or another, tasked with protecting this man from harm.”

“I understand.”

“This is not like going anywhere else, you understand? Take your book of Moscow Rules and throw it into the garbage, because this is worse. The Washington Rules. You’re going to be filmed by half a dozen cameras at all times. Tracked by the biggest surveillance complex ever built, and one with affirmed fascist traits. No one can be trusted.”

“Regular day at the office.”

“Do take this with some seriousness, Carter. You’re the representative that the King is sending to deliver his message.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“I notice that you haven’t asked about the morality or ethics of that sort of thing.”

“I wouldn’t be a double-A agent if I worried about such things.”

“Nonetheless, we did run the morality of assassinating this President of the United States — hypothetically—by our ethics board. Once they were brought back to their senses after fainting, they thought about it and agreed that it wasn’t just moral and ethical, but not doing it would be immoral and unethical.”

“Impressive.”

“I forget the specifics of their argument, but it had something to do with stopping Hitler back in 1938, a vigorous application of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance and a near-unanimous desire to, and I quote, ‘punch the guy in the face as many times as it took’.”

“This is not the ethics board I remember.”

“The crux of it being that peace can sometimes only be secured by measured violence. That the removal of a single person causing so much misery can improve the world. I’m afraid that you are the sin-eater in this situation – if it brings you any comfort, know that the wishes of an entire nation are with you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Grab that tablet before you go. And be sure to drop by the Quartermaster on your way out.”

Dismissed, he was already planning ahead by the time he got out of the door. He barely muttered a double entendre to Miss Pennyworth and was on his way to Technical Services.

If anything, D had understated the challenge of the mission. The truth about assassinations is that they were relatively easy… as long as you didn’t care if you got caught. Walking away from it was about ten times as difficult, and having no one ever discover who had done it was another ten times as difficult.

Considering that he was targeting someone with an entire organization dedicated to his protection, the bar was already sky-high to begin with. There were other problems—getting the opportunity to get close enough to the target to do something about it would be a challenge by itself. 

In Carter’s mind, his choices boiled down to only two or three options—long-distance, medical inducement or the good old close-up nighttime stabby-stab.

In the elevator on his way to the Quartermaster’s workshops, he finally looked at the tablet she’d left on the table. It activated to his thumbprints and password.

TOP CLASSIFICATION, said the cover page, MUST NOT LEAVE MI6 PROPERTY.

And then, on the second page:

Theoretical considerations regarding the removal of a high-profile target.

Good old D. Always eager to share what the best minds of the Service had come up with, even when they didn’t know if it was going to be used.

Feeling the force of a dozen killer boffins driving him forward, he stepped into the Quartermaster’s workshop.

It was a marvel that this kind of place still existed within MI6 headquarters. For an organization that did its best to stamp out any vestige of amateurishness and improvisation, it still tolerated the indescribable bric-a-brac of the Quartermaster’s own little domain. 

Everywhere Carter looked, he could see decades of gadgets, half-successful experiments, repurposed consumer goods and wild ideas given form. Tricked-out briefcases, explosives disguised as toothpaste, devices with hidden knives, watches that did far more than tell time, pens that hid all sorts of weaponry, and plenty of others. The cars, he knew, were too numerous and took too much space to be stored in MI6 headquarters—but there was a very nice garage in nearby Putney that had most of them. Those that survived the missions, that is.

The Quartermaster (“call him R”) was clearly expecting him. Pennyworth’s work again. 

“I’m told you’re off to see the Yanks, double-A G?” he said, storing his reading glasses in his shirt pocket.

“All in the service.”

“Well, let’s get you equipped. Frankly, there’s only so much we can give you at the moment. When it comes to guns, any local contact should be able to provide you anything you want with far better service than we can, without the hassle of slipping something through the border. No car either—considering the gridlock in the capital, you’ll be better off taking the metro.”

“I don’t take public transpiration.”

“You’ll change your mind. Generally speaking, with the controls at the American border, anything too fancy is a liability. You’re not going there to see your friend Felix, and I’m told they’re not going to help you out on whatever caper you’re working on. You can probably uncover a few black-market dealers—we’ll just make sure that your credit card has a high credit limit and that it’s regularly paid off.”

“I’m not sure why I’m here, then.”

“Ah, but you underestimate our capabilities for turning the average into the extraordinary. You will only need one thing from us, and as it so happens, that thing is going to replace an arsenal’s worth of gadgets.”

With an unwarranted flourish, R handed him a plain black cell phone.

“Really?”

“Pay attention, Carter, because I take my work seriously. This isn’t just a cell phone. It’s a cell phone that looks, smells and sounds but hopefully doesn’t taste like any other cell phone. Except that it’s secured in ways that our Benchley people tell me are impenetrable to even the NSA. No need for a Faraday pouch on this one—there’s a hidden alternate mode that piggybacks on a very ordinary operating system that will make you invisible to every tracking network they have.”

“I’m not excited.”

“Well, good, because the phone also has this.”

He looked at the screen long enough for it to unlock, pressed a few buttons and handed over the device to Carter.

“You’ll be one of the first to be able to use Barbara however you like. You dirty sod.”

“Barbara?”

“Our newest Artificial Intelligence agent. Able to duplicate the work of an entire support team, except that she never gets tired, snippy or sleeps with you and then goes into a depression because you’ll never reciprocate her affections.”

“You’re handing me a subscription to a cloud service as a gadget?”

“Now, now, Carter. We’ve built more intelligence in this device than is available in all of the House of Commons. Just speak to it. It can get you anything.”

“Oh really, R. Can it get me love? Can it make me feel accomplished as a man? Can it shine a momentary light in the existential despair of our lives?”

“I have been able to locate three high-end escort services in your area, sir,” said the phone in a deliciously sexy voice. “Do you have any preferences for tonight?”

Carter shut down the phone.

“Is it still listening?” he whispered to R.

“I’m not telling you. It’s all covered in the instructions, which I want you to read.”

Carter sighed.

“This is the worst Christmas ever.”

“Good thing I’m not Santa, then, because you would definitely be on the naughty list.”

🗽

Another day in Washington, another twenty-four hours of chaos.

The newest biggest headline was the Secretary of Defense’s resignation, causes unknown. But there was McGuire’s input showing up as “sources confirm the animosity between the President and the Secretary.” Far more people would read that snippet than the half-paragraph written by McGuire for the farmers that Blunt had managed to recite before launching into another tirade breathlessly covered by the press corps. This time, he was talking about firing teachers who taught that the Civil War was about slavery. Or something; everything was incoherent enough to be passed off as a policy statement, a joke, dementia and a non sequitur. Meanwhile, teachers were in fact being fired in this increasingly fascistic America.

As someone who knew why the SecDef had quit, McGuire wasn’t looking forward to the day, soon to come, where Blunt’s latest harebrained plan would be revealed. They hadn’t seen anything yet…

But that was for another day. For the moment, he was out of the White House and on his own damn time. Worrying too much about Blunt’s next move wasn’t good for anyone’s mental health, especially given how Blunt himself could forget all about it the next day. A lot of pundits had remarked that while the presidency aged everyone, Blunt seemed to remain the same age while the rest of the country aged prematurely.

If he stopped thinking of the day job for a second or two, he was feeling pretty good at the moment. For the first time in ages, he had a date—and the time to follow through. Dating in Washington for a middle-aged member of the Blunt administration was next to impossible. The crazy hours had something to do with it—you never know what kind of crisis would pop up every day, nor how the messaging would change. But more than anything else, most women flat-out refused to date anyone aligned with Blunt. The moment it slipped out in conversation, “I work at the White House” was an instant show-stopper. In reaction, McGuire, like others, had learned to lie—he worked in government and couldn’t say where, you understand, right—which was meant to evoke working for one of the hush-hush intelligence agencies. It didn’t last long, but then again neither did the relationships anyway.

What helped McGuire is that, frankly, he wasn’t a believer anymore. He despised Blunt and could rant at length about it. He was here making his money and gathering enough experience to get into the consultancy game in time for the next elections. Blunt wasn’t running again, so maybe he could join the VP’s campaign – after all, Kean had said a few times that he liked McGuire’s stuff. Or maybe he’d head out to the bigger states—Texas or Florida, to get a respite from this stupid cold weather.

Sniffling at Washington’s February cold, he made his way to the bar where he had scheduled the date. He was wearing a loud purple blazer—good for conversation starters, good for convincing people he wasn’t in the Blunt team, good for being easily spotted in a crowded place. She said she’d have a copy of Adbusters magazine, so that should be fun.

The bar was indeed crowded—everyone wanted to avoid the cold outside, and the place was getting close to the fire marshal’s limit. He scanned the room—he had a rough idea of what she looked like (curvy brunettes, his favourite), but as true Washington professionals, they’d refused to share pictures until the meeting.

In the end, they spotted each other simultaneously.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

They knew each other. They knew what they both did and where they both worked.

She was Sofia Ruiz, and she handled office business for Speaker Taylor—the speaker of the House, freshly installed in his new functions after his party’s spectacular showing at the midterms. They had been back-row attendees to a few meetings together. She knew exactly who he was.

“Well, I can’t say it’s been nice, Jonas, but it’s already over now,” she said while picking up her handbag and her magazine and getting up.

“Wait, wait—hey, Sofia,” he said, “if you go now, you’ll never know why I hate Blunt’s guts.”

She stopped, narrowing her eyes.

It was a gambit, sure, but then why did it feel so good to say it out loud?

And, frankly, there was something freeing about not pretending. Here was someone who knew exactly where they stood, so no lies and no deception. 

It was a terrible idea to consort with the other side, but what was his side these days?

“I’m not into lonely middle-aged maggats who lie for sex,” she said, “so while I’m hoping to get a good story out of this, you’re not getting inside my pants.”

“That’s fine.”

“And you’re paying for an expensive sit-down late supper.”

🗽

Two days later, Carter was landing in Ottawa.

His usual pre-mission preparations had been quick and left for the end—putting up his out-of-office message, making sure his apartment was covered during his time away, switching identities right away in London. The most unusual preparations had taken more time: reading R’s cell phone instructions (including how to unlock the phone’s secret mode with his biometrics), absorbing everything known about his target’s future schedule, reading the unofficial dossier that D had assembled for him.

He had a laugh in perusing the dossier’s conclusions. After several chapters of long-winded explanations as to why most conventional assassination schemes were utterly impractical for this specific target, the brain trust behind the report had recommended three options: long-distance, medical inducement or the good old close-up nighttime stabby-stab.

It was good to get confirmation that he was good at his job.

As for the rest, Carter read obsessively on Washington. History, geography, demographics, neighbourhoods—anything and everything could be useful. On the plane, he’d brushed up on the insanity of American politics, understood why there was only one skyscraper in the city, read about the curious demimonde status of the district of Columbia, and taken in the sorry state of Washington’s near-permanent gridlock. As much as he hated to admit it, public transit did seem to be preferable.

A junior CSIS officer was waiting for him at arrivals—and called him under the right alias, so at least that message had gone over in time. Not showing him any special deference, the officer drove him downtown with the bored expression of someone just being paid for this stuff.

Carter ended up in an office with a view of the Parliament buildings—three storeys up, behind a few doors and security checkpoints. After a few minutes of waiting, the junior officer consulted his phone and left. Ten seconds later, a black middle-aged man entered the room, followed by a rather lovely brunette with a Mediterranean complexion. After greeting Carter under his assumed name, all three sat down and got down to business.

“We’re always glad to help our English cousins,” the man said with a slight almost-French accent. French Canadian, Carter guessed. “Please excuse these surroundings. We didn’t want to attract undue attention by having you at our headquarters, so we borrowed a minister’s office.”

Cartner nodded. Made sense under his cover identity.

“I’d like to introduce you to Nadia—she will be accompanying you to Washington. We have our own business to conduct in town, and as you can appreciate, crossing the border as a couple will help. Nadia will provide you with documents for the crossing—you’ll be driving to Burlington, then taking a plane to Washington. Car and cover identities provided. Nadia already has arrangements in the other capital and will leave you to your own objectives.”

“That all seems very thorough.”

“You’ll be staying overnight at a downtown hotel, two blocks from here. Nadia will pick you at seven tomorrow morning. Your schedule will comfortably get you to Washington by suppertime.”

“Then everything is taken care of.”

“As I said, we like to help our friends. I have to head over to another meeting now, but please take this time to get acquainted with Nadia. She’ll be showing you to your hotel as well.”

The man got up, leaving Carter and that lovely woman alone in the office.

“I suppose they no longer have a hidden bar in these places,” said Carter with a smile. “You know, you have beautiful eyes—”

“Don’t,” she said with a perceptible chill in her voice.

“What?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not even—”

“You’re flirting, and that’s what you think is the express lane to sleeping with me tonight. Well, don’t bother. It. Will. Never. Happen. As soon as you understand that, then we can go on to a cordial working relationship.’

“But, I, just, wasn’t—,” he sputtered.

“Yes, you were.”

“You don’t even know me—”

“In the past two days, which is when I was assigned to your case, I have received five separate emails from London, all warning me against you and your methods. You see, you seduce, you leave.”

“Those are all frustrated, jealous women—”

“All five messages were from men who know you well.”

“Um.”

“I am not interested, Carter. I will play my role in getting you to Washington, but my cover story is that our relationship is in trouble and I’m going to dump you as soon as we arrive. Furthermore, every attempted physical contact from you will get you two punches the moment we’re alone. They won’t all be to the face.”

“I see.”

“I’m speaking the kind of language that you respect and understand. Are we clear on my expectations?”

“Yes.”

“Will my expectations be met?”

“Yes.”

“What will never happen between us?”

“We will never have sex.”

“Ahem.”

“I will never touch you.”

“Better, but not enough.”

“I will not even flirt with you.”

“Excellent.”

Now she was smiling.

“Let’s go have supper. Professionally, as colleagues.”

🗽

A quick scan of the headlines was wall-to-wall catastrophe. McGuire paged through the news reports put together by the clippings team. Blunt’s approval was in the dumps—even for a Teflon politician who seemed to be able to do no wrong for about thirty percent of the electorate, his latest polls had him south of twenty, which was dangerous. Lawsuits filed against his executive orders were overturning most of the actions he’d taken in the first year of his presidency. 

All of this was self-imposed—counter-tariffs in response to his own were driving up inflation, driving more people to poverty and unrest. Food riots had already begun in Detroit and Tallahassee, adding to the other riots blooming across the country. Blue-state governors and more than a few red-state ones had openly started to defy various federal edicts, and they were reaping their own approval ratings increase by standing up for their citizens. There was increased talk of a compact between aligned states—nobody calling it secession yet.

Even in Washington, the midterm results emboldened politicians of both parties to criticize Blunt. The slap in the face that had been the House and the Senate going over to the other side (The Senate by an unexpected margin; the House by a significant one) was still being felt across the capital and that meant not only legislative gridlock, but open defiance.

Blunt, to be blunt, was no longer politically useful. His endorsements meant nothing. His powers for the next few years were limited, considering that he wasn’t able to run again—and any talk of an unconstitutional third term was quickly shut down by politicians from his own party just as eager for the presidency. He was the lamest of the lamest duck presidents, and it had started as soon as the midterms were done.

All of this should have been terrible for McGuire. Nobody likes to work for a loser. The pressure gets more intense, the prospects get darker, the people get angrier, the hours get longer. When nothing is working, everything feels hollow, and no amount of applause from Midwestern farmers can quite make up for the fleeting sense of power flowing away.

But McGuire didn’t care. He was in love. Wait, no, that was way too big a word. Well, he was quite certainly in lust. Definitely with a huge crush.

His date with Sofia, despite the terrible way it had begun, had gone exceptionally well. True to his word, he’d taken her to an upscale Washington eatery and fritted away a chunk of his salary on a great sit-down meal. Having begun with devastating honesty, they’d kept going in that direction—since this date was a bust anyway, why hold anything back? 

The restaurant was followed by a surprisingly long walk through the cold on their way to “a little bar” she liked. They’d bared everything, shared their issues and belittled Blunt so thoroughly through one-upping stories that by the end of the walk it had felt as if they were six months into dating. He’d gotten angry, she’d gotten sullen, they’d made up half a block later.

At the bar, it just kept getting better. By the time they ran their little tests to make the other one crack in the ways they were dreading, they kept understanding more than finding flaws.

They both had some mileage, so it wasn’t as if they were love-obsessed teenagers. But it felt like it. 

It had to be hormones, though McGuire. Rationally, nothing like that made sense. Sure, they’d passed midnight by staring into each other’s eyes and going through those questions designed to force intimacy. But this was their last date, right?

Well, no. As promised, they’d kept their hands to themselves. Not even a polite kiss on the cheeks at the end of the night. But she’d said that she wouldn’t mind doing this again by the end of the week, and he’d said that he’d like that.

So tonight, he had another date.

And that made everything else feel far less important.

🗽

As promised, Carter was in Washington in time for supper the next day.

The trip had gone pretty well—once she’d made her point, Nadia (second name never given) had proven to be a most pleasant travel companion. The story she spun about herself while driving to the border was probably half fiction, but it sounded good—Lebanese parents, middle-class upbringing in Montréal, studies in political sciences, early working years at Global Affairs Canada, and then recruited by CSIS after impressing the right people. She had baited him by saying she’d been hired for her good looks and, knowing better, he had remained silent. Having passed that test, she’d relaxed a bit.

The border crossing at Highgate, Vermont, had gone as well as they could have expected—not much of a lineup, and yet barely a flicker of interest from the border guards as they handed their passports. They had good and unremarkable answers to the usual questions, and they’d been waved through without trouble.

Once inside the States, they’d switched identities for the flight to Washington, which had taken all of two hours. As she had promised, Nadia had disappeared as soon as they had landed—her part of the deal complete, and their return so uncertain as not to be included in the CSIS travel package.

One long taxi ride through late-afternoon traffic later (Barbara had been able to secure the taxi, but couldn’t do much about the congestion), Carter was at the rental property he’d paid for using his new credit card—the fourth floor of a Georgetown condo facing east. He could—barely—see the phallic erection of the Washington monument from his place. 

Once settled with his single suitcase, his first order of business was to go for a walk. First, to get a better sense of the immediate neighbourhood—you never know when you’d have to escape and run—but also to get some kind of food after a day of travel. As it happens, there was a nice little Italian restaurant on the next block—God save the king’s credit card limit and the Georgetown residents’ appetite for upscale fare.

As he was gathering information, Carter’s mind kept thinking about the next step. Being in Washington was nice and all, but what would be even nicer would be to leave it behind, mission accomplished.

Back at his place, he started poking around public information about the President’s next few appearances. MI6 had long flagged his declining physical health, and indeed his pace had slowed down significantly over the last few years. He barely left Washington anymore, and his public appearances were getting rarer. Many supposed that his declining approval ratings and sparser crowds also had something to do with it—a childish president ruled by his own impulses seldom did what he did not enjoy.

But there was something coming up soon that could work. The DC Auto Show took place in a cavernous convention centre, and the President was scheduled to deliver a keynote address on the renewal of the auto industry on his watch.

He was also scheduled to drive a truck.

Convention centres weren’t bad picks, as far as sniper shots went. Going up to the rafters was usually a great way to be spotted, but there were often offices high up with good sight-lines on speaking spots. You would have to be fast in cutting through the glass (otherwise the Secret Service would spot it in their security sweeps), and enough maintenance people would be there to blend in. Best of all, indoor locations didn’t have weather or wind factors—and if you picked the right spot, you had hours to prepare.

Could he make it happen in four days? Tomorrow would tell.

Chapter 2 — Try Another Day

Getting access to the Convention Center had been the easy part of the plan. The load-in for the auto show cars had reached a feverish pitch with hundreds of newcomers milling around. As usual, a clipboard and a stern expression had once again produced good results—especially given how many people were working at putting up the booths. There would be tight security around the cars, especially the expensive ones, but Carter was more interested in gaining access to the Convention Center’s maintenance corridors. 

He’d swiped an exhibitor’s pass left unattended during lunch (pushing the coat to the floor so that the former owner would think that the access card had fallen off rather than been stolen), and gained access to the small corridors leading to the administrative offices overseeing the convention floor. 

One office had been particularly promising: the last in the row, used as a temporary storage space while unoccupied… and with a good view of the speaker’s podium. On his way out of the convention centre, he had stopped by the registration desk to return the badge he’d “found” and, while the attendant’s attention had been distracted, had swiped another week-long access pass as of yet unclaimed.

Now that he had his shooting perch, the weapon was the missing piece, and the riskiest one.

He couldn’t just wing this with a .22 hunting carbine on sale at Wal-Mart. He only had one shot at this, and Carter was trained on military equipment. Putting Barbara through her paces, he had asked for a supplier for that kind of very distinctive weaponry. After consulting MI6’s databases, she had finally given him a name and number, warning that the goods were good but the odds were odd—the seller had an awe-inspiring ability to get what he wanted from military stocks, but he was also a famously paranoid eccentric who broke contact at the first sign of unease. They had more reliable suppliers, but at such short notice, he was the best and maybe only option.

The other problem was the money required to complete the purchase—sniper rifles, considering that they were purely killing instruments without much of a claim to animal hunting or home defence, were expensive precision equipment, and purchasing a military-grade one liberated from army stocks meant a hefty premium over the manufacturer’s suggested retail pricing. Furthermore, a black-market seller would not accept credit—only cold hard cash would do, and the prospect of withdrawing that much paper money from a credit card would earn some attention—not to mention exhaust cash reserves anywhere he tried it.

When queried, Barbara had explained that his credit card did not limit cash withdrawals, but the places that did convert credit to cash would not be so lenient. So, Carter had to space his withdrawals, both in space and time—dropping by ATMs throughout the day in between picking up a glass cutter, pocket knives and a sturdy equipment bag at hardware stores, maxing out the withdrawal limit at tellers, and trying not to grow uncomfortable about the amount of cash he was accumulating on his person. Then there was the paranoia that any system monitoring his financial transactions would flag his account as requiring more attention. Although, if caught, he could always blame it all on drugs.

By the end of the first day, he had been able to arrange a meeting with the dealer. Getting around Washington without a car was a pain, especially considering that his contact was deep enough in rural Maryland to be far beyond the Metro’s reach. In the end, he had rented something awful and undignified just to get around, constantly hyperaware of his driving — not just because of the traffic but especially of driving to the right.

It was getting dark by the time he made it to the dealer’s farm. It was amazing how quickly one could go from the capital of the country to bumpkinland—as the city receded, the roads became dustier and he was in a world of tractors, bales, fields and cows. The area he was in had seen better days—now everything was run-down, rusting and falling apart.

He had specific instructions on how to make contact. Stop the car on the road, honk, flash headlights thrice, honk again and then walk toward the farm. None of this felt like a good idea, but Carter didn’t have much choice—never mind the Washington Rules, he had a job to do and not a lot of time to spare.

Through the faint illumination of the sole light pole on the farm, he saw a property that was well past its prime. Buildings with flaking paint, trash piled up everywhere, plants and small trees reclaiming the once-prosperous farm for themselves. Rusted tractors that would never work again were prominently showcased in the central yard, and at least one of the cars overgrown with weeds had two flat tires.

Plus, it was cold.

“Yaw come here for that fancy rifle?” said a voice much closer than Carter had expected. The southern yokel draw thing was exactly like the worst comic exaggerations he’d ever heard.

“That’s correct.”

“Ooh, fancy talk from an Englishman. Now don’t you go no try to pay me in funny money.”

“I have American cash.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

The figure advanced into view. A thirty-something man, long hair under a red cap saying the usual trite slogan. More worryingly, he had a shotgun in his hand, loosely pointed in Carter’s direction.

“Mind lowering that weapon, seeing as we’re getting to know each other?” said Carter.

“Aw, sure. But you keep your hands from any weird business.”

That was fine by Carter. He did feel a bit naked without any weaponry on him. The missing weight of his PPK was like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

“Now,” said the seller, “you got that money close by?”

“In the car. You got that weapon close by?”

“In the house.”

“How about we each go get what the other wants?”

“I like the sound of that.”

As he stepped back and then walked to his car, Carter felt something wrong. This wasn’t his first weapon deal, and anywhere around the world, from Paraguay to Pakistan, they all followed a specific rhythm. Both parties had something that the other wanted, and it wasn’t in anyone’s interest to draw out the transaction. Except this guy acted as if he hadn’t decided yet whether to go through this—he was still sounding out Carter.

Logically, he should have driven off. Listened to his instincts. It wasn’t worth the trouble. There were other dealers and other ways of getting what he needed.

But there were also opportunities, here.

He took the bag of money.

He was midway back to the farm’s courtyard when something hit him in the stomach, hard enough to drive the wind out of him. As he tried to groan, he fell to his knees.

“Now ah don’t trust you no way, fed.”

Somewhere to his right, Carter heart the sound of a metal baseball bat being thrown to the ground.

“I’ll take that money, and no one will ever find you again.”

Chest still on fire from the baseball bat, Carter knew he had to move fast—he knew the routine and he’d been played like an amateur—a baseball bat to immobilize, then a shotgun blast to the head to resolve the problem.

Despite every impulsion to curl up on the ground and wait until the pain got bearable, Carter moved. He rolled to his right to confuse his opponent, and not a moment too soon as he heard the roar of a shotgun being fired where he had been. Striking out with his arm, he hit the weapon dealer at the knees and heard the satisfying groan of having inflicted injury.

He didn’t want to drag this out. He didn’t have much more than a few more seconds of adrenaline to carry him through. He hit the dealer again, and felt the shotgun fall to the ground. He struck the man again and felt him buckle down, then grabbed the shotgun.

Quickly straddling the weapon dealer, Carter brought the shotgun up to the man’s throat and pressed down hard. Maybe the shotgun had a second shell, and maybe it didn’t—he wasn’t going to risk another moment of vulnerability. There was more than one way to kill a man with a shotgun, and strangulation was one of the most effective ones.

There was nothing elegant in the struggle that followed. The man knew he had been bested, and he knew that you didn’t attempt such a mortal double-cross without paying a proportionate price. Meanwhile, Carter knew that the slightest slip-up meant death—without thinking about it, he had straddled the man with his legs positioned to avoid a kick to the crown jewels, and wasn’t merely content pressing the steel barrel of the shotgun against the man’s airways—he pushed and heard the throat cartilage break under the pressure. There was no going back after that.

This was not violence at a remove, and Carter hated it. He preferred shooting targets from a distance, not in a sweaty desperate tussle where you could see the man’s life slowly leave his eyes. But he was a professional assassin, and if that training worked excessively well at self-defence, well, he was also a beast fighting for his own survival.

Two minutes had been enough, but he counted three hundred seconds in his head to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t going to do this more than once. The pain in his midsection subsided to a barely tolerable roar. He would sport spectacular bruises, he knew, and the next few days would be tough. But the alternative was being buried six feet under somewhere on the farm’s back lot, never to be found again.

Carter got up, and his former opponent remained still. 

Now for the cleanup.

Carter figured that such charming personality types as paranoid weapons dealers did not live with other people. He took the car, and brought it closer to the farm so that anyone passing by would not notice anything amiss. He would have a few hours of work ahead of him, and he did not want to be disturbed.

First thing—move the dealer out of sight so that if anyone ever happened to drop by, Carter wouldn’t be forced to increase the body count. He found that the farm had one working tractor with a working shovel, and used that to carry the corpse farther away. Depending on how long he was around, he’d end up doing to the dealer what had been intended for him.

He carefully searched the man’s pockets and took out a key ring. It was time to see if the dealer had at least told the truth about the weapon being on premises.

Carter was exceptionally careful when getting into the house and searching it. Paranoid types were prone to idiosyncratic security systems, hidden compartments and booby traps in case the Feds got too close, and this specific dealer clearly had a lot going on. But Carter knew the tricks. He just had to be methodical about it.

He didn’t strictly have to search the house. He could have just taken the money and gone back to his Georgetown condo. But he suspected that, for all of his murderous intentions, the dealer still had an extensive cache of weaponry on-site, and Carter wanted something to replace the aching absence of a PPK by his side.

It took him two hours to unlock the room-sized safe where the dealer held the good stuff. He surveyed the house and found the locked door quickly (fortunately, the man believed in keys rather than in combination locks), but it took him much longer to make sure that one of the keys fit and to deactivate the overpowered booby trap (C-4 at the knees, with a laser sensor) that protected the room. He spent even longer making sure there weren’t more booby traps inside the room, and indeed found a tricky one that had to be deactivated after opening the safe.

His respect for the resourcefulness of the dealer went up slightly.

At least the man had the goods in the room—Carter found the sniper rifle laid out in a locker that also held assault rifles and hunting carbines.

In a stacked drawer unit, he found a few very handy 9mm Ruger compact pistols that would make up for his lack of Walther PPKs. Moving carefully as so to spot any further booby traps, he eventually inventoried the room’s arsenal—grenades and mines, but also a few shotguns, submachine guns and rifles. He found a substantial stash of cash in a bag hidden in a drawer, and a few more prosaic weapons displayed on the pegboard walls—knives, batons, blackjacks, tasers. Hooks on the walls held backpacks of food and ammunition, and a few shelves also doubled as survivalist prepping material—first aid supplies, food, water and batteries. 

Carter went shopping. There was a limit to what he could take with him, and he couldn’t count on being able to return to this place. Transporting an entire arsenal to a Georgetown condo would raise questions, and the rental car wouldn’t fit everything in the room. He would also have to dispose of all of this once the mission was over. He had to take what he needed—regretfully, he left the assault rifles and grenades, but stocked up on pistols, knives, tasers and ammunition for every weapon he took. He indulged by grabbing a shotgun, just in case, and obviously didn’t leave without the sniper rifle he needed so badly.

He wiped his fingerprints clean like a professional, and debated whether to smash a few things to make it look like a break-in. In the end, he settled for leaving the safe room door open. In the dark, he used the tractor to dump the body in the nearest thicket. This wouldn’t hold up to any competent investigator, but he was already risking it by doing it in the dark (the neighbouring farms were far away and used to tractor noises well into the night, but you never knew how unusual anything would be perceived) and didn’t have the time to do a proper coverup job. In the end, he hoped that there would be one obvious but wrong explanation for the investigators—weapon-dealing rivals breaking into the house, taking off with the money and a few small-time weapons, and quickly getting rid of an unpleasant competitor.

Then he got back to Georgetown, hoping not to attract any attention along the way.

At least he had teeth now.

🗽

Waking up the next morning was painful. His chest hurt, and he now had colourful bruises to explain why. He went to a pharmacy and then back to the condo before even thinking about breakfast. With over-the-counter products and common kitchen instruments, he followed a memorized recipe familiar to all double-A agents and fashioned a vastly more effective painkilling cocktail. It would make the pain go away for the day, without compromising his mental sharpness. The catch was that sustained use of that cocktail could severely damage his liver, but his drinking had already done that—he would worry about his liver when the rest of his body was safe and back in England.

There were still two days to go before the President’s keynote address, but Carter wanted to get back to the convention centre once more to set himself up in the empty office. He’d do it at night. That, unfortunately, meant that he had to spend the rest of the day spinning his wheels, waiting for the clock to run out. This was frequent on missions, but he didn’t have to like it.

In the end, he stayed home and watch TV all day, occasionally dozing off and waiting for his aches to dull. Doctors at MI6 had explained that the cocktail didn’t just dull the pain, but also helped the body kick its healing mechanisms in overdrive—the resulting slight fever didn’t necessarily make him feel any better, but at least something was getting done while waiting.

Carter let the TV blare on at a news channel—you never knew what you could pick up that could be useful. He paid particular attention to anything that had to do with the president’s agenda over the next few weeks. He didn’t entirely accept R’s explanation that the King was out to get Blunt out of the picture out of gallant chivalry toward the Queen. Sure, the King was barely in his forties and was markedly more impetuous than his father, but there had to be something else.

Unfortunately, anyone wanting a reason to kill the president was quickly overwhelmed. There wasn’t a single constituency that he hadn’t offended at some point in his life, let alone the four-plus-two years of his presidencies. The current controversies included the nationwide federal abortion ban; the refusal to provide disaster relief to states now that FEMA had been disbanded, the closure of military bases abroad and at home; the continued purging of “politically unreliable” federal employees like in the old USSR; inflation shock of tariffs still echoing on consumer prices; and a myriad of other decisions that were all so overwhelming that it was hard to select just one. As one wag put it — “He’d be perceived as ten times worse if he had only done a tenth of what he did.”

Other news reports marked the first five trillionaires, all of them Americans. Commercials for prescription drugs, health insurance companies and home protection guns were interrupted by reports on food bank usage, personal bankruptcies hitting all-time record highs and school shootings.

Was this like living in a failing empire? Carter recalled his grandfather talking about the austerity days in Britain following World War II, but it didn’t feel like the same thing.

Oh well; as the news briefly mentioned another mall shooting, Carter shrugged—it’s not as if whatever he was going to do was going to make things worse.

But, hey, you could now get hour-later deliveries through drones keyed to your phone.

He purposefully avoided eating before visiting the Convention Center—he wanted to keep his edge up. Walking to the Convention Center, while lengthy and unpleasant due to the cold, served the same purpose—and to avoiding scrutiny for the bag containing the disassembled rifle that he was bringing along that a trip on public transit or taxis could invite.

He did have a flash of concern as he checked in using his purloined pass—had it only been valid for the previous day? Would it have been invalidated as missing?

But no—he was waved in and saw on the floor that if the preparations for the car show were nearly complete, they weren’t over yet. That meant more people than he’d liked, but it also meant that he moved almost unremarked. Staying away from the booths, he made his way to the maintenance entrance, then navigated the small corridors until he found the office that he had identified on the previous day.

The office itself was in semidarkness—the piled-up boxes and displays further darkened the unlit room, but the lights from the show floor still illuminated it well enough to see. The secret of successful operations was to practise whenever possible, and he relished the luxury of being able to set it all up well ahead of time. He hadn’t just picked up the rifle at the weapon dealer’s farm—he had also taken a weapon maintenance kit that included everything required to disassemble and assemble the rifle. Taking the parts out of the bag, he put the weapon back together—the barrel, the firing pin, the bipod, the sight.

He was taking insane risks reassembling a rifle and planning to use it as-is without calibration—while he knew what he was doing, the accuracy of the weapon would be affected by the slightest turn of the screw or mis-aimed scope. There would be no imaginable scenario in which he could calibrate the weapon—shooting would make noise, and distance was needed to assess accuracy.

There were ways to minimize misalignment, and he was taking all of them—laser measurements, visual patterning of the screws, short-range view-finding, and so on. But as he whittled away the minutes preparing the weapon, he was acutely aware that he was skating on much thinner ice than usual. Could he go back to the farm and calibrate it there? No—that would mean coming back the next day with the rifle and that was an even bigger danger.

Finally, he set up his firing position. To minimize the chances of detection, the rifle would remain within the office—the hole in the glass would be just big enough for shooting through and allowing the scope to see without distortion. To reduce chances that someone would spot a hole in the glass, even if made a few minutes before firing the trigger, the hole would be made nearly all the way in the bottom-left of the window.

He set up the rifle and its bipod on boxes, at a downward angle toward the podium that had already been helpfully set up. That all looked good to him.

At some point, Carter realized that he had done everything he could to prepare. The only thing left to do was to stash the rifle in the office and go back to his condo.

He put back the office how he’d found it, and folded the bipod on the rifle. He wouldn’t disassemble the weapon —the boxes here were big enough to accommodate hiding the rifle, especially if it remained in the equipment bag he’d brought along.

He looked around—the hiding place had to be big enough, empty enough and accessible enough. There was really one choice—a few wide boxes stacked on top of each other until the last one was above eye level. That would do nicely. He climbed a chair, hefted the bag with his disassembled rifle and opened the box.

There was another bag inside the box, looking suspiciously out of place. Out of curiosity, he opened the bag—

—and found another sniper rifle.

He blinked twice, a cold prickling of fear at the base of his neck.

But Carter didn’t have time to think too much about it—the door unlocked and opened.

He didn’t have time to step down from the chair —the new arrival, a tall slim man with a square jaw and nondescript clothes, spotted him and immediately moved to strike.

Falling more than stepping off the chair, Carter dropped the bag, swung in kind, and ended up punching the other guy’s fist.

It hurt. A lot.

As they sparred a few more blows, parrying every time, Carter knew something—this was not a security guy, and if this was probably a higher-grade operative, he was foreign. He absorbed a blow and used the opportunity to hit the guy’s neck, and was rewarded by an “ouf” that didn’t sound American, or Anglophone.

After a few exchanges, it became clear that they were both holding back out of curiosity. As they traded a few more blows, neither were eager to make any noise, nor call for backup outside the cramped office.

What was going on, here?

Taking a chance that wasn’t a chance, Carter stepped back and moved his hands together in a T.

“Time!”

As he had hoped, his opponent stopped.

“Are you here for what’s in the box over there?”

His opponent blinked.

“Yes.”

“Does it look like what’s in my bag?”

Carter stepped back further to let the other guy know he wasn’t going to sucker-punch him with the oldest schoolyard fight trick.

The other man looked, saw the rifle in the bag and grew even more puzzled.

“Yes.”

His hands were still up in a defensive pose, but Carter could see him ever-so-slightly relaxing, perhaps more out of puzzlement than comfort.

“Then I’d say that we’ve got to talk before we fight again.”

“That seems appropriate.”

“We both know who’s going to speak at this podium tomorrow.”

“We do.”

“And the rifles suggest that we intend to do the same thing about it.”

“It does.”

“I suppose that our biggest question is who we’re each working for.”

“I suppose you’re not eager to talk?”

“Discretion is the better part of valour.”

“Well, I’m not much for secrets. I work for France, the country that has decided to do something about a problem that has been bothering everyone for years.”

“Right.”

“I’m Aubert Honniseur de la Cinq, known to the DGSE as agent Double-B H.”

“Really?”

Carter wasn’t impressed. The slight French accent wasn’t the most annoying thing about that guy.

“I’m the best there is from the best country there is. Hence me being first here.”

“I found this place yesterday.”

“I found this place the day before, and set up my rifle yesterday.”

“I had barely arrived the day before yesterday.”

“Well, this proves that France plans ahead of everyone else. Including where you’re coming from, which is…?”

“I’m not telling.”

“How rude. But don’t tell me. Your accent alone says it for you. But now that I think about it, you do fit the profile of someone who caused a bit of trouble for us last year in Paris. Someone who left a trail of destruction, property damage and very unhappy Parisiennes.”

Carter wanted to roll his eyes. The worse part wasn’t that Agent BBH (no, Carter would never stop so low as to think of him as an imitator—Aubert it would be) was annoyingly correct—it’s that he was enjoying this display of deduction.

“Agent Carter, I presume?”

“I knew Paris would be trouble.”

“Now that we are sufficiently but not mutually acquainted, how about we talk about what’s going to happen next here?”

“What will happen next is that you will take your bag and go back to Paris, and England will take care of taking out the trash.”

“Oh, no, no, no, Mister Carter. France was here first, and I will take the shot on her behalf.”

“With a rifle assembled in place, not calibrated and without an obvious escape route?”

“Your insecurities and bad planning are of no concern to me. My rifle was procured, anonymized, assembled and calibrated by embassy technicians last week, and brought here in one piece in a display case.

“Look, I’ve had about enough with—“

They both heard the door open, turned and brandished their handguns.

A stocky, mid-thirties white man stared at them and their guns. He was wearing unremarkable but practical clothes, and held a bag that looked awfully like one used to carry a rifle.

“Hey, fellas, you can see that I’m not a security guard, and I can see that you’re not exactly upstanding citizens. Now, are we gonna have to fight? I have a bigger target in mind.”

Carter blinked twice.

“Now, just how many people are lining up to assassinate the President?”

Chapter 3 — On Everyone’s Secret Service

The Washington, DC, auto show had come and gone without a shot. The President had rambled dangerously, whipping up hatred and division as if he just happened to be there while these things happened. There was some light clapping.

No one was up in the unused office during the speech; After a ten-minute standoff in which Carter, Aubert and the Yank stared each other down, France and England both agreed to cancel that specific sniping operation even if the larger goal remained. When the American newcomer shrugged and said that such orders wouldn’t apply to him, both Carter and Aubert had promised to leave a tip for the Secret Service to investigate this office.

The newcomer had scowled, but said that he was going to act anyway, later if not sooner. Both Carter and Aubert had promised to keep him in the loop. As awkwardly as could be imagined, they had exchanged phone numbers and promised daily check-ins. It had taken a very long time for them to leave, and then only as a group while carrying back their rifles. They’d found an emergency exit, and its best feature was that it locked behind them, preventing further access to the building.

Checking in with London had been the next priority. Despite R’s promise that his phone was secure, Carter did not enjoy discussing the specifics of the situation with D. His superior was clearly under a considerable amount of pressure, and that showed through an unusually high-pitched level of panic in her voice during the follow-up call the following morning minutes later.

“Are you crazy, Carter? An uncalibrated rifle inside a building? That’s idiotic! You would have been lucky to clip his ear!”

“If it was such a bad plan, why did three separate assassins come up with the same?”

“Because you’re all insane! Now I’ve got the Prime Minister getting cold feet—‘

“Would he rather let France take the initiative?’

“I’ve made that argument, Agent Carter. Don’t tell me how to do my job.”

“So, what’s next?”

“What’s next is the outcome of the most demented display of foreign policy I have ever seen and I hope to never see again. Our diplomats are using their most hush-hushiest of hush-hush methods to sound out who else, exactly, is sending people to Washington with murder on their minds.”

“It’s not just France?”

“It’s not just France, and not just your mysterious third guy, which I’m told we’re in the process of identifying. It turns out that France was already talking to Germany—”

Oh? The land of delicious strudels and the sweet Saskia?

“-New Zealand and Canada.”

“Canada?”

“That’s right. That one hurts considering that I thought we were best mates. It turns out that, thanks to your trip to Ottawa, Canada figured out before we did that this was a cross-purpose operation. I thought we’d made progress toward a US-less Four Eyes, but that theory goes into the bin unless we can salvage this omnishambles.”

“So, what do I do in the meantime?”

“Keep in touch with your two other competitive shooters, start thinking about another plan, and wait for our signal to regroup. If this goes the way I’m expecting it to, we’re going to end up with a bloody task force by the time we’re through. Probably a mission statement. Maybe even bookmarks and fridge magnets!”

The rant had gone on for quite a while, but at least it was more entertaining than spending the day waiting for something else to happen. Carter, Intolerable Frog and Annoying Yank (as Carter had called them in his phone contacts) were not only calling each other once a day, they had started a group chat and were sending each other recommendations on what to do or what to watch on TV. The Frenchman was particularly fond of trying out restaurants; the American was a connoisseur of hardware stores.

Carter almost welcomed each new reply: In between body weight exercises and field-stripping his weapons, he was going out of his mind, and being in touch with two people in more or less the situation (despite Annoying Yank’s boasts) helped somehow. Still, he wasn’t in the best frame of mind. He had started pointing at the TV screen and making pow-pow noises every time Blunt showed up, which was irritatingly often.

Two days went by, then three. The capital was getting ready for the circus that was supposed to be the State of the Union speech—one of the major political events of the year, in which the President showed up to a joint meeting of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to discuss the state of the nation and outline his priorities for the next year. All of which was going to be rambling and insane. When Carter asked if he could take his shot before the speech, D had remained noncommittal.

But on the fourth day, he got his orders—Carter, Intolerable Frog and Annoying Yank would meet that night in a relatively safe location. Others would show up—people who could help plan and execute more extensive plans. How many people? D replied that this was still being worked out by the Foreign Office.

That sounded ominous.

Carter hated everything about this—from top to bottom, sideways and inside-out. The Washington Rules were being shredded one after the other, and the most abominable scenario for an undercover operative was joining a group project. But what was the alternative? He was an agent of His Majesty, and His Majesty had decided that international cooperation was the way forward. Huzzah.

He puzzled over the given location of the meeting for a while. His instructions had been to make the metro to Pentagon City, which would take him out of Washington, DC proper and into Arlington, Virginia. From there he was told to take the exit to the Fashion City shopping mall and climb up to the third floor. He had the code to access the maintenance corridors, from which he followed a series of twisty back-passages to a door marked Tom’s Diner. 

As he made his way to his destination, he began to understand the logic of the place. Much better than an isolated warehouse where any amateur could set up a surveillance operation to keep track of anyone entering or leaving the building, this place was in the middle of a busy mall with a dozen exit points. It was linked to metro and bus routes in addition to a busy pedestrian flow (given the number of people going across the street to work at the Pentagon) and ample parking for everyone willing to pay for it. It wasn’t genius, but it wasn’t bad.

He pushed open the door and did not see what he had expected.

The décor itself was striking. Tom’s Diner was the first of a planned franchise of sit-down mall restaurants aping the classic 1950s dinner style. It sported checkerboard floors, bright red vinyl booths, speckled white tables and chrome accents everywhere. A jukebox was in the corner, and neon signs plastered the walls. 

The owner of the chain had bet heavily on a return to conservative values under the new president’s administration. But thanks to Blunt’s intentional recession, restaurant profit margins had become even more cut-throat and the place had closed within the year. Since few chains were jockeying for space in malls, this one and only Tom’s Diner stood along, gathering dust until anyone else foolhardy to try would repurpose the space for another restaurant.

But Carter wasn’t just gobsmacked by the atmosphere—despite being ten minutes early, there were six other people in the place, all of them sitting in their own booth. Damnably, the Frenchman had beaten him and he was staring at Carter in what looked like a friendly smile.

Not that he was the only one that Carter knew. In a booth next to the exit, he saw two women sharing the space. The lovely Canadian brunette Nadia, and, more shockingly, Saskia. He began to smile as she got up-

—and slapped him across the face.

“What?” he said, his hand rubbing his cheek.

“You said you’d call,” she hissed.

“Well…“ he began. Wait, had she believed that?

“Two weeks of rest and hot sex in the Bahamas after the Ukrainian expedition, and you’re making all sorts of cute little sounds about how we’re meant to be together but as soon as you’re back in your country—zip—the great HAROLD CARTER goes silent and moves on to the next conquest. You swine!”

She sat down, and Nadia nodded to her in approval. Not that this was the only humiliation—farther away, the Frenchman seemed to have far too much fun hearing all of this, and no one else in the silent dinner had missed a single word of the tirade.

Carter muttered a few excuses and found an empty table, hoping to disappear in time for the next entrance. But that wasn’t to be—Aubert slid in his booth.

“Oh, mon ami, I feel bad for you. I, myself, do partake into the pleasure of female company, but you have to let them down easy—no promises, no games, just fully-informed consent. The ladies are soft and fragile, but they are also very powerful when angry.”

“I’m not taking lessons from you, Frenchman.”

“Ah, but France has survived hundreds of years of broken hearts. It’s a national sport, and so are the apologies. Maybe we have something to teach you.”

“I said I don’t care—“

The noise of an opening door diverted their attention. The Annoying Yank was in the place, his square-jawed face taking in the crowd. Adding to Carter’s misery, he decided to go sit with them, further crowding the booth.

“Hey, England and France—”

Bloody hell, would anything stay secret here?

“—I guess I’ve got the green light to introduce myself. I’m Grayson Thorne. Working for myself, but currently affiliated with Australia.”

“I don’t care,” said Carter.

“Enchanté, Grayson!” said Aubert as if they were best buddies.

“I guess great minds do think alike, considering how we met. Sure, taking a shot from within a building wasn’t necessarily the best, but I was in a hurry. I barely had time to calibrate my rifle!”

Carter sank into the seat, hoping to go away.

Aubert took over the conversation, discussing the finer points of calibrating a rifle in a hurry.

As they two chattered away, a few more people entered the diner. As the minutes ticked to the agreed-upon start of the meeting, several strangers entered the diner and went to sit at their own booth. A short, stocky and broad-faced Asian. A thin, slim dark-haired European—Italian, thought Carter. A wisp of a girl with purple hair who went to sit with the two women who were pointedly not looking in his direction. An Indian man with a terrific head of hair and a killer grin. An older man entered the room, then made a big show out of removing his mask—the result was a slightly younger man with a Botoxed face and a winning smile. 

Finally, at exactly the appointed time, a tall, broad-shouldered, bald black man entered the room. He had an eyepatch, a scowl, a trenchcoat and no time to waste.

“I will not let this meeting drag on one second more than necessary. Enough is enough! Like you, I’ve had it with this snake in the White House! You’ve come to help, and we accept the help!”

Without stopping to talk, he swooped to the centre of the diner, his trenchcoat barely following.

“I’m Mick Jury, and I’ve been designated as your contact point here. I represent a small agency that was set up way back in the wake of Watergate to deal with something like this. A shield to be activated by our allies should we find ourselves in desperate circumstances! Don’t look for us in the phone book: we’re officially scattered in dozens of other organizations. We’ve been waiting for your call—My team can provide whatever you need, whatever you’re planning.”

He took a breath, but not really.

“The only thing we can’t do is pull the trigger. Our operating charter doesn’t allow it, and my team wouldn’t stand for it. We can open the door, we can unroll the red carpet, we can wave you in, but you have to do what you’ve come here to do. We are designed to take the blame if ever it doesn’t go well, and especially if it does go well.”

“Wait,” said the Botoxed smiler, “this isn’t a rogue operation?”

“Well, not really. Nearly everyone here is duly authorized by their government.”

“I’m out, then!”

The man exited the room with an energetic run.

Jury shrugged.

“Any questions?”

“There are a lot of people in this room,” said Carter.

“The President has made a lot of enemies.”

“What I mean is that there’s twelve times as many chances for this operation to be blown. Never mind the tradecraft—with all the cameras and electronic networks sniffing around—”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said a voice.

Carter looked at the speaker. He could have sworn that booth had been empty.

But it was occupied by someone whose face Carter would immediately forget the moment he wasn’t looking at it any longer.

“I should introduce myself. You can call me Gordon Laffer for now. I’m in back-office systems at the CIA. Liaison with the NSA, IT architecture, archives… that sort of thing. Frightfully dull. But I can and have scrambled anything that can lead to the creation of a digital profile on you. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be made if you do something stupid. But if anyone tries to query the shared systems for your whereabouts, well, they’re going to be disappointed. In other words, I’ve created something of an electronic shield for all of you.”

“All of us?”

“You’re not that hard to spot. Especially you, Agent Carter. We’ve kept tabs.”

Did everyone know who he was? They apparently would after this meeting.

“Having a friend on the inside,” said Jury, “is no excuse to get complacent. Keep being careful, but do understand that we’ve got your back. The real reason that we’ve brought all of you here today is to make sure we’re not stepping on each other’s toes. If you’re planning something, share it. This is not a competition—we all have the same goal.”

“That’s not true, though,” said Annoying Yank.

“And there’s Grayson Thorne, back from the dead,” said Jury. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you all may be willing to pull the trigger on Blunt for God and Country, but for me it’s personal. I used to be US intelligence, right, Jury?”

“That’s right. Fireborne program—one of our top assassins.”

“Do you remember what happened next?”

“I certainly do. Tell the story to the crowd, Thorne.”

“Blunt sold us out to the Russians during his first term. Gave them classified documents with documentation about American agents overseas. The Russians cleaned house, and not just in Russia. Every time they had a chance, they whacked us. I was off-shore near Beirut, tracking an arms dealer’s yacht when the FSU caught up to me. Shot me a few times and dumped me in the Mediterranean. I was rescued by fishermen and had amnesia for a while, but guess what?”

By this point in his confessional, Thorne’s eyes were practically glowing with anger.

“I hate that piece of garbage more than anyone else in this room. It’s personal. I want to stick a knife in his guts. I want to make his head explode with a shotgun blast. I want to dig a garotte deep enough in his fat neck that his head is gonna snap away from his body. Don’t get in my way.”

Silence in the room.

“Ooookay,” said Jury, “anyone else wants to tell their stories?”

It was a hard act to follow-up. No one dared.

“Any questions, then?”

“How are we going to decide how to do this?” asked an exasperated Carter. “Are you going to be an assassination workshop facilitator? Are you going to send up in breakout groups so that we can all come back and share our ideas on a whiteboard? Maybe have guest speakers? Make us draw for the privilege of sticking the knife in?”

“Well, I would expect us to agree on a plan.”

“The only interesting thing I’ve heard you say so far is that you can arrange for some cover and some resources. Can you be specific?”

“I can get you weapons, vehicles and access codes to restricted areas.”

“Fine, can you get us inside the White House?”

Jury hesitated.

“Well—”

“If you want to keep us around, I would be very careful with your next answer,” said Carter.

“Yes, I can get you inside the White House. But it’s going to take a few days to arrange.”

“Then I think we should not stop thinking about other ways to get this done.”

“Do you have any specific ideas in mind, Agent Carter?”

“Yes, I do. Tomorrow, the president is scheduled to go speak at a donor’s conference in the Blunt Tower casino. I’d like to be present.”

“If you try anything then and there, you will not succeed and you will not survive.”

“I’m not going to try anything. I’m going to do what all of us should be doing—recon. Trying to see who he is and how he behaves.”

“What, you’ve never watched TV?”

Carter bristled at the laughter from everyone else in the diner.

“One of us may get close enough to smell his fear when he realizes he’s going to die. I want to know more about him than just the TV.”

“We can get you access. But it still wouldn’t be well-advised to try anything there.”

“I can promise you I’ll leave my weapons at home.”

“Fine. Any other questions?”

There weren’t, really. Everyone seemed absorbed in machinations of their own. Carter has hoped to establish some initiative by stating he’d attend the casino event—but had he inadvertently given everyone else a few ideas? 

He hadn’t been lying about not having the intention of trying anything, though—attacking Blunt there was a suicidal frontal assault. He’d leave the gun at home, and focus on learning as much as he could.

A few people left the diner quickly. Others lingered—some even in discussions with others.

Carter approached Jury, wanting to make sure that everything would be taken care of. Aubert remained within earshot.

“You will find your entrance pass at the hotel reception, Carter. Ask for a letter to Arlington Beech.”

“I’ll be attending as well,” said Saskia behind Carter.

“And will you be able to do this without slapping Agent Carter again?” said Aubert.

“I can distinguish between business and pleasure.”

“Very well,” said Jury. “You will be… Lady Beech.”

As Saskia sighed, Carter suddenly found Jury slightly more sympathetic.

Chapter 4 — Casino Disloyal

The following evening, Carter was back in his element—wearing a tuxedo, and going to a casino to have a blonde bombshell by his side.

Taking a cab from his Georgetown condo to the Casino, he’d made good on his promise to leave the weapons at home. This way, he wouldn’t be tempted to try anything foolhardy. Although, in a pinch, he could improvise something.

Looking up at Blunt Tower after getting out of the taxi, he was struck once more by the inappropriateness of the gambling den. The “Blunt Tower: Casino and Hotel” had been one of the most dubious achievements of the president’s second term. Built in record time on the razed block that used to host the FBI’s Hoover headquarters, its gold-plated cubical mass twice exceeded the height regulations of the city. Visible for miles around, it was a crass display on Pennsylvania Avenue, right in front of the US Department of Justice. Despite public outcry, everything had been authorized by executive orders.

The interior was no less offensive, with gold being used as a primary, secondary and accent colour on everything from walls to carpets. Billed as a five-star hotel, it had been frequently reviled for failing to live up to its presentation—rooms were shoddily built, cheaply furnished and vastly overpriced. Still, the hotel was often full—any maggat with money to burn while visiting the capital paid their dues to their cult leader.

But Carter wasn’t here to stay; he was here to play. He didn’t have to look long in the lobby for Saskia—she was up and walking toward him the moment he had checked his coat. Taking her by the arm, they walked to reception.

“Do you have something for Mister and Lady Beech?” asked Carter.

Through their interlaced arms, Carter felt more than heard Saskia groan besides him.

The clerk nodded and fetched an envelope.

Opening it, Carter found two access passes to the night’s main event—a “fundraising get together of the presidential elite.”  He put the golden-coloured lanyard over this neck, displeased at the lack of elegance of the display over his black-and-white tuxedo. Saskia’s striking green satin dress didn’t look as badly disadvantaged by the gaudy pass, but then again—she looked stunning enough no matter what.

“What do you say we go play, my dear?”

“Of course, darling.”

They moved from the lobby, across the corridor leading to the restaurants and then on to the gambling area. Their passes were more than good enough to get through, although they still had to go through a metal detector before getting access to the casino floor.

Once inside, both moved past the cacophony of the slot machines, to the quieter and higher-stakes poker tables and small lectern installed for the occasion. Many people were there—even from Carter’s cursory understanding of Blunt’s ever-revolving cabinet, he could recognize a few faces—some of them gambling, others holding hushed conversations with each other. 

Saskia nodded and left Carter’s side—they’d cover more ground apart.

Carter stopped by the casino chips booth and made good use of his credit card’s high credit limit. One had to maintain appearances, after all, so he quickly scanned the poker tables to join a game.

He spotted a table in need of a player, and thought one of his fellow players looked familiar. Probably a Washington type whose picture he’d seen while researching the city and its administration.

The dealer cut cards effectively, and Carter found himself getting back into one of his favourite past times. The man whose face seemed familiar quickly became Carter’s main opponent, toying with him and often facing off directly with him after the opponents had folded.

Then the lights dimmed. The dealer finished the hand, recalled all cards and the room went into a hush as Blunt was introduced. People got up, and everyone’s attention turned toward the podium and the President behind it. Without much ado, Blunt started speaking in his usual off-the-cuff style.

“Thank you very much, everybody. I want to thank you all and congratulate, I mean, just this is a very big congratulations to our donors and supporters.”

Carter tuned out as the speech went into the usual meaningless platitudes, and then immediately to the more unusual incomprehensible word salad. He was more interested in the people around him—who were watching, who were bored, who were paying rapt attention. And the Secret Service bodyguards, never too far away.

The best description he could find of the crowd was—dutiful. People listened because they had to, and put up appearances. Of course, the cult-like nature of this administration had long since weeded out anyone who wasn’t fully devoted to the leader. The early days of the administration had been focused on a purge of anyone even seen as being less than enthusiastic, and since then people had been fired left and right for even being merely ambivalent about the administration’s often-insane plans.

While billed as a short series of remarks, the speech kept dragging on and on. People were shifting on their feet, looking away, desperate to get away but held back by fear of offending the more devout. Carter briefly paid attention to the President’s so-called speech.

“I always felt the border was first because I felt that people could really understand that you can’t have people pouring in from the prisons all over the world and from mental institutions all over the world and dumped into our country. So, I talked about that much more so than I did inflation. I mean, inflation was terrible.”

Carter zoned out again, his brain trying to escape the void of nonsense they were being subjected to. Any sustained effort to understand the non-sequiturs, self-aggrandizing use of superlatives and rambling hops from one topic to the next was actively damaging.

At long last, after a long list of grievances against the usual suspects (and that congresswoman from Texas), Blunt ran out of steam.

“Nobody and we have the best policy. And again, as they say and we say and I’ve been saying for a long time with the party of common sense and we’re the party that’s going to have the best administration ever. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.”

And then he was gone, with the agents leaving along with him.

So that was it—a brush with the presidency, noticeably less impressive than was traditional. What was more interesting were the reactions and mutterings of the people around him now that Blunt had left.

“What an idiot.”

“Can’t wait until he’s gone.”

Carter kept quiet and dealt his cards. After a few minutes, he was up by five figures—a respectable showing. Not wanting to overstay his welcome, he took back his chips and nodded to everyone.

The other man got up and followed him, catching up with him at the bar.

“Impressive showing, Mister Beech.”

“Well, thank you. You did well yourself.”

“Nonsense. You made money off of me. Few people can claim that.”

“I’m honoured. Would it help if I paid back some of it by offering you a drink?”

“Please.”

Carter turned to the bartender, who was finally paying attention to him.

“Vodka Martini with a scoop of strawberries, pineapples, peaches, raspberries, bananas and chocolate syrup. On the rocks. Hold the vodka. Throw in an olive. Blended, not shaken.”

Ignoring the bartender’s horrified face, he turned to his new acquaintance.

“What about you?”

“Er… Gin and tonic.”

“So, what brings you here tonight?”

“I’m here to provide my support to President Blunt, of course. And to meet new people.”

Carter heard the blender pulverizing the ice.

“Charmed. I’m new to the Washington scene, so I’m afraid I’m out of its social circles.”

“Well, if you’d like, I could introduce you to a few people. What is your area of expertise, Mister Beech?”

“Global Imports. European arbitrage.”

“How interesting. Looking to expand in the United States?”

“Aren’t we all?”

The disgusted bartender handed them their drinks—a neat glass for Carter’s new acquaintance, and a mug of slurry with a straw for Carter.

“Let’s go to one of the back rooms, Carter. There are far more interesting games being played in there.”

Carter nodded and followed. At last, he was getting somewhere. No matter where a casino was in the world, the real action took place away from the general public, away from the din of the slot machines, away from the security cameras.

Carter’s new acquaintance, whose face he was still trying to recall, took them past a set of closed doors, then into a short corridor leading to a smaller room.

The salon had more in common with the champagne room of gentlemen’s clubs than any gambling backroom that Carter could recall. The tackiness of Blunt’s casino was ramped up to actively harmful levels here, with gold velvet clashing with gold-plated chairs with gold-hued faux leather with gilded table surfaces. A touch of smoke hung heavy in the air. It was a lot to take in.

Still, it wasn’t as shocking as the identity of the seven other men in the room as Naoise made introductions. Immediately, Carter knew who his new acquaintance was—he had simply looked the wrong way in assuming that the man was a Washington official. He was Ivan Naoise, pharmaceutical CEO and billionaire—although that last wasn’t much of a distinction when everyone Carter recognized was worth at least a few hundred million dollars. Conservatively, Carter estimated that the room’s occupants owned at least collective three trillion dollars. All of them linked in some way or another to the Blunt administration.

“How about playing a few hands with us, Beech?”

“It’s for laughs,” said a curly red-haired youngster that Carter recognized from social media. From owning a social media network. “A few thousands a hand.”

Right. Carter could probably afford half a dozen hands at most.

Oh well; at least his backer was His Majesty himself.

Carter sat down with a smile.

“Let’s have fun, then.”

“That’s the spirit!” they laughed. “No dealers, no cameras, just straight Texas Hold’em rules, no limit!”

Carter wasn’t fooled. At best, he was a fun little distraction while the best buddies billionaires were having a fun night out. At worst, he was going to be fattened up for ruin—they’d drive the stakes high and then extract their price.

One of them, a bald and rather ungainly fifty-something who nonetheless had a different high-profile actress at his side at every red-carpet gala, dealt the cards. 

Carter took his cards coolly and adjusted them with barely a blink.

It was a middling hand. But of course, you didn’t play the cards—you played the other players.

He threw in a few chips. Half the table folded during the first round.

He drew cards that made his hand slightly better. Doubled down.

Eventually, he won the round. None of the players had cards markedly worse than his—and that’s when he knew he was being played. How long would they keep him around?

The chatter around the table was surprisingly loose—news and business and women and politics. They clearly knew much about the current administration and where it was going.

Periodically, he slurped from his drink.

Carter was strung along for a few more hands—somehow winning when his holdings were getting down, enough to carry him a little bit longer. He played conservatively, as a player with a weaker position would do in trying not to be forced away from the table.

But part of it was getting a crash course in how the other players behaved. Underneath his mild and amiable composure, he was furiously analyzing everything he could see. He didn’t have the years of shared history that these players had, did not know their tells and could not anticipate how they would react in specific circumstances. There was a flip side to that, of course:  they didn’t know him either—he was the wild card around the table, and maybe that explained his presence here.

They certainly relaxed the more hands he survived, or was allowed to stay on. Talk drifted away from what you could read in the news to more insider knowledge. At some point, as Carter was furiously calculating his odds for the ongoing hand, one of the billionaires dropped a bombshell he seemed inordinately proud of.

“Of course, markets will be disrupted by the State of the Union speech when Blunt will announce that he’s withdrawing the US from NATO and the United Nations.”

Carter lost track of his count.

“What do you make of that, Mister Beech?”

He knew better than to skip a beat.

“Well, I expect that this will lead to a renewed special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom,” he said with a smile.

That was apparently the right answer.

“I knew that you were one of the good ones,” said Naoise. 

Carter lost that hand, but had learned two things from it.

The first was that this was really why he was here, with Blunt in his crosshairs—and why everyone else had sent assassins as well. SIGINT or other sources had learned of the withdrawal a week or two before, and had decided to take action. They had tolerated years of childish self-destructive decisions from the American administration, but this was finally going too far. Something had to be done, and ascended Vice-President Kean would not pursue that specific policy. Perhaps a message would be sent to the new occupant of the White House—See what we just did?

The second thing that Carter learned was that Naoise was a card cheat.

You couldn’t be a good poker player without understanding how to cheat, of course—solely for spotting it when it happened. And Naoise was being pretty good about his trickery—no obvious card palming, probably no use of special devices, no marked deck that Carter had noticed.

But somehow, when he dealt cards, his cell phone was always on the table in front of him, reflective face up. Somehow, the cards he dealt always went over the cell phone. Somehow, he was able to anticipate cards better when he dealt them, folding early or staying in with uncanny premonition.

In other words: he was using his phone as a mirror to see the cards he was dealing.

There was some skill involved—Carter could admire the speed at which he dealt the cards, and the well-organized memory that allowed him to keep track of them.

But one unresolved question was whether the other players didn’t pay attention, or whether they tolerated as a harmless affectation. These guys were gambling minuscule fractions of their wealth—why disturb their fun?

But Carter’s stake was somewhat higher.

In fact, now that the NATO withdrawal was out in the open, Carter had something far more pressing to do—report back to the assassins’ club to talk about timing. Considering that the point of this international collaboration effort was to keep global order, it would be best if the President did not deliver his State of the Union speech.

But then, just as he was about to bid everyone a good night and cash in more or less what he’d brought in, Naoise said something very curious about an upcoming trade restriction.

“At least we won’t have to worry too much about that with Kean in charge.”

The context was ambiguous and would have applied just as well to the next term, but from the sharp glances that the man got from the other players around the table, this was someone slipping up, and Carter wasn’t going to make it worse by even acknowledging it. Fortunately, by this point, the other players were used to the one tell he deliberately cultivated—being intensely aware of his cards.

Instead, he stayed in the game, and raised the ante, knowing that he’d lose.

In the end, he surprised even himself by winning the round. Maybe the others were off their game.

Staying in for a few more rounds to alleviate any suspicions was a mistake—time had flown, and before long one of the hosts made noises that suggested that the night was up. Then what Carter dreaded finally happened.

“How about we make it interesting, Mister Beech?” said one of them—Raymond Thursk, the pseudo-futurist that somehow collected high-profile aerospace, automotive and media companies. The one that had often usurped the spotlight away from the president, who was eventually publicly put in his place and yet never completely disowned by the White House. Thursk was the big kahuna in the room—the world’s first trillionaire, and the one with the most aggressive style of play. He and Carter had often been the last two people standing in their rounds.

Ugh, here it comes.

“Let’s heighten the stakes. Let’s go off chips. IOUs versus IOUs. No ceiling.”

Four of the players withdrew, but did not go anywhere.

I was fattened, and now it’s time for butchery. I am the night’s entertainment: See the peon dance.

“I’m game,” said Carter. 

What else could he say?

Plus, well, it was interesting.

With fewer players at the table, Carter resolved the question of who would deal the cards by handing them over to Naoise. 

“Make’em good ones,” he winked.

The chutzpah always made them laugh.

It was down for four of them—Thursk, one health insurance mogul who got easily spooked, Naoise and Carter. Would everything he had picked up during the night be enough?

All right, this is the test. Play the players.

Naoise shuffled the cards and handed them—slightly slower than other players, considering that he was still up to his cell-phone-mirror tricks. Still, this was one advantage that Carter had over the other players—he knew the cheat would play to his own advantage, which meant that he now saw more than just his hand.

The cards were not good: Green quintuplets, one quart short of a stacked house.

Carter stayed in and drew again.

Somewhat better. Purple quads, just short of a full farm.

More uninteresting poker neepery followed, which led to this:

“I’m feeling good about my hand, Beech,” said Thursk. “How about you?”

“Best one of the night yet.”

“How about this?”

He pushed his entire stack of chips on the table. Considering how much he’d won already, this was a tidy sum, more than Carter would ever come to collect in a decade in the service.

But did he have a good hand? The tell-tale smirk that had been there most of the night on his winning hands was missing.

That took care of one player.

The health insurance mogul wasn’t having a good night and did what he did best—he folded.

That took care of a second one.

Now Carter was really curious about what Naoise would do.

But Naoise was no fool, and he knew better than most what was going on.

“I’m out. Good game.”

“I’m short of chips at the moment,” said Carter, “but would you accept a note?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll double your wager.”

Twenty years of salary. Why not?

There was a very satisfying flash of panic in Thursk’s eyes. But appearances were everything to these bulls. And they were playing for peanuts—what was a second peanut?

“Then I’ll raise,” said the trillionaire.

“I follow.”

“Then let’s see the cards.”

They land them down. Carter has a backdoor blind flush, heavy on the buttoned kings.

Thursk could only produce an ante-leveraged burnt-out six. The other men gasped.

Carter was now immensely richer, and the trillionaire imperceptibly poorer. At the current return rate of his investments, he probably made it back in two blinks of an eye.

“Well played, Mister Beech.”

“You’re a most gracious host.”

“We’ll keep you in mind for our next games, now that you can wage along with the big boys.”

There was a laugh, but there was no mistaking the flash of anger in the trillionaire’s eye. The humiliation would sting—beaten by a mere commoner. 

Carter had made a dangerous enemy tonight.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take Lady Beech shopping.”

A few of the players—those who’d retired before the last hand—congratulated Carter and slipped him a few business cards. He’d probably made their night—no doubt fulfilling their dreams of seeing Thursk taken down a notch.

At least the chips and IOUs would be valid, they told him. Carter nodded as gracefully as he could, and took his winnings.

Outside the private rooms, the casino floor was noticeably sparser than earlier. The racket of the slot machines was louder without the bodies to absorb the sounds, and those who were still on the casino floor at this time were closer to chronic gamblers than social climbers.

He cashed out his chips and IOUs, marvelling at the total sum, and headed to the lobby. He’d taken four thick stacks of fresh bills and put back the rest on the credit card. One of the senior accountants at MI6 was about to have a very interesting morning, perhaps even a heart attack.

Against all odds, and his were pretty good that night, he found Saskia sitting near the exit of the casino, sure to spot him.

“Well, how was your night?” he said once they were reasonably private in the lobby.

“Made a few contacts. Broke even. Had three gentlemen pay me a drink.”

“Productive.”

“And you?”

“I do have some crucial information. And a fat stack of bills”

They grabbed their coats and headed for the exit.

“I was thinking we should check out the area. Round the block.”

“You spotted the tail too?”

A bulky man had been staying close ever since Carter had cashed his winnings. Whether an opportunist thief or a representative of something more sinister was still to be established.

“You should take a taxi,” he said.

“And miss the excitement? No chance. Besides—“

She purred in his ear.

“-I’d miss out on a chance to let you fondle me besides the garbage bins.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I do like a man with a fat stack of bills and crucial information.”

Ah. She wanted to know before everyone else.

They exited the casino and, rather than immediately head to the taxi stands, walked west on Pennsylvania Avenue, turning the next street corner to walk beside the hotel-casino complex. The streets, already sparse, became even more deserted away from the main avenue. Their tail kept farther away, but he wasn’t hard to spot. Carter grew more concerned when he saw him raise a phone to his head.

“We’re about to get some company.”

“How much money did you win, Carter?

He told her, and she gasped.

“We are definitely making out tonight.”

“Most of it belongs to the King.”

“But not all of it.”

They turned the corner to E Street, completely deserted, and the men made their move—suddenly, three large goons and one smaller man converged on them, boxing them in. The smaller man was very familiar.

“Mister and Lady Beech,” said Naoise. “I don’t think you understand how much I dislike being shown up at the poker table.”

“What I do understand,” said Carter, “is that you’re such a poor player that you need to cheat with your cell phone trick.”

That clearly stung, but Carter wasn’t going to let it stay there. He pointed at the three goons.

“Is that your entire crew? Do they know you cheat at cards like a two-bit hustler?”

“Guys, I think they both would enjoy a trip to the hospital. Or they will by the time we’re done.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” said Saskia.

The goons charged, but they were expecting a proper British businessman. Carter was not. He missed having his gun—this would have been over already. Still, he wasn’t without resources and showed it by going low and causing the first goon to flip over him and land on his neck.

A second goon charged, but he was already low enough to punch him where it counted—followed up a second later by a knee at exactly the same area. 

As Saskia delt with her own goon in her own way—nails across the face as an opener, kicks sideways to the knee as a closer—Carter turned his attention to Naoise, who clearly understood that he was way in over his head. The billionaire drew back, suddenly terrified.

Carter advanced on him.

“How do you know about the NATO and UN withdrawals?”

Naoise got some of his arrogance back and cackled.

“We know everything. We decide everything. Blunt is a useful puppet. You can’t—“

Carter advanced again. Naoise stumbled on the curb and fell back.

“What did you mean, earlier, when you said that it wouldn’t matter once Kean was in charge?”

Naoise laughed.

“You haven’t figured it out?”

“I want details.”

“Then beg for them,” said Naoise in defiance.

Carter knew what he had to do. He didn’t exactly like it, but there was no choice—Letting Naoise go free would bring the world on his head at a bad time. Furthermore; had Thursk sent Naoise and his goons to take Beech out? But as he considered the options at his disposal, a shot rang out and the billionaire dropped dead on the sidewalk.

He turned. Saskia held the smoking gun.

“One of the goons had a piece on him,” she smirked.

“I’m not sure he was done talking,” he said while pointing at the body.

“Yes, he was, and we couldn’t let him walk away.”

She had been busy while he had been talking:  Underneath the harsh white streetlamps, all three goons were face down on the street, dark liquid pooling underneath their throats.

He raised an eyebrow. She produced her ever-present stiletto.

“You had that in the Casino?”

“Ceramic blade. A girl needs protection.”

“Let’s go, and let’s hope that the electronic shield that the guy promised at the dinner will hold.”

Chapter 5 — A View to a Shiv

After a restless night, Carter woke up in time to catch D right after her lunch break. Once more hoping that the phone was as secure as R had claimed, he went looking for answers.

“You knew that Blunt is about to announce his withdrawal from NATO and the UN.”

“Very well, you figured that out. Who told you?”

“I spent the evening swimming with sharks. They boasted about it.”

He thought about mentioning the Kean thing, then decided to wait.

“So, the queen being groped wasn’t true?”

“Oh no, Carter—she was groped, and that’s what finally pushed the King into approving this mission. So, you’ll be defending both the Queen and Country.”

“Do the other countries know about it?”

“The groping?”

“No, not the groping.”

“Well,” said D, “I’m not the one who sits at the high-level diplomatic conversations—”

“You’re deliberately misleading me. You’re not part of the diplomatic circuit in the first place, which means that this is all being discussed between intelligence agencies rather than foreign offices.”

From her sharp sigh, Carter knew he was right.

“We compared notes and found that a blend of SIGINT and HUMINT all pointed in the same direction. Most countries sent someone without telling others, and before long we decided to join forces.”

“Fine. We’re having a meeting later this morning. The timetable will be moved, perhaps to tonight.”

“Best of luck, then, Carter. We’ll see you soon.”

🗽

Tom’s Diner never closed, and didn’t have to wait for the night to fall for its union of assassins to congregate. Carter had sent a meeting request to Jury before going to sleep, and by mid-morning they were back to plotting a presidential assassination on red vinyl seats.

“We have to strike tonight, tomorrow at the latest. The State of the Union speech is coming up, and announcing a withdrawal from NATO and the UN is what we’re trying to prevent.”

“I agree,” said Aubert. “The sooner France is done with this, the quicker we can go back to celebrate America.”

“I’m with them,” said ever-practical Nadia. 

There were several more grumblings of agreement from the assembled assassins. So much so that Jury couldn’t say no.

“All right! All right! Enough! But while you’ve been all agreeing on when to do it, I’m not hearing anyone talk about how to do it.”

“You said you could arrange for access to the White House,” reminded Carter.

Jury looked pained.

“Yes… we can.”

“For tonight.”

“…yes.”

“Then there’s nothing else to discuss.”

“On the contrary, Agent Carter, I think there are still at least two crucial things to discuss. Starting with who’s going to actually do it.”

Several voices spoke up at once, all volunteering for the privilege.

“This is ridiculous!” said Jury. “You can’t all go at once! Pick someone!”

He pointed toward the person as his left, the somewhat goofy-looking Asian man.

“You! Where are you from, and what’s your specialty?”

“Oh, no, no!” said the short stocky man. “I from Taiwan—I observe, no kill anyone.”

“That’s not going to help.”

“You!” said Jury to the South Asian man with the great hair.

“My name is Khan—and I’m pretty good with helicopter-mounted machine guns, shooting assault rifles from rappel lines and punching people off the top of moving train cars.”

“None of this is even remotely practical!”

“You!” to the purple-haired young woman cosplaying as a cat.

“I’m a coder, not a killer.”

“This ain’t a video game!”

Jury shook his head.

“You!” to a quiet Italian-looking fellow.

“Well, I am the chief exorcist for the Vatican.”

“An exorcist?

“Well, you never know.”

“Impossible! Look—the hit takes place in the White House tonight. I will give you the codes to enter the residency, but the rest is up to you—there’s security systems and guards and a president who doesn’t go to sleep until two o’clock and has regular insomnia. Only one of you can go in, and this is absolutely not sure to succeed. Who in their right minds still wants to go forward with this?”

Nadia, Saskia, Aubert, Thorne and Carter all rose.

“Who’s got a solid plan to get out afterwards?”

Disappointed, Thorne sat down.

“All right, let’s hear your bright ideas.”

“Knife,” both said Nadia and Saskia, who had obviously been spending quite some time together.

“Meh,” shrugged Jury. “Messy, and no chance of a coverup. What about you, Frenchman?”

“Ah, well, my country has asked me for one thing, and that’s for me to take my hands, wrap them around his neck and choke the life out of him. As he will look at me, not understanding a thing for the last time in a life that has made everyone else miserable, I will approach him, give him la bise on both cheeks and say, ‘France has always taken care of America’.”

Jury thought about it for two or three seconds, enjoying the dramatic delivery.

“That’s asinine,” said Carter, “your hands won’t fit around his neck, his fat tissues are too developed for you to block the flow of his carotids, and the moment he wakes up, he’s going to struggle in a way that’s going to make you surrender immediately.”

“Was that a joke about the might of the French military?” said Aubert as he advanced toward Carter.

“Look, my country didn’t capitulate like Vichy did—‘

“Well, that was eighty years ago. Recently, my country didn’t throw a self-defeating caprice and go sulking away from the European Union.’

“If you keep it up, I’m going to regret my vote against Brexit!”

“Boys!” both said Saskia and Nadia.

Carter could have strangled Aubert, but that would have been too poetic.

“And what’s your plan, Carter?” asked Jury.

“Thiosulfate Dioxide, intravenously.”

At the back, Laffer chuckled.

“All right, what’s so amusing?” asked Jury.

“Just get him a syringe and let him loose,” said the quiet man at the back.

“What’s the trick?”

“No trick,” said Carter, recalling pages of the brief he’d read—medical inducement section. “Just a product that interferes with the statins medication he takes and provokes a heart attack. Barely detectable, and that’s only if you pay attention and know where to look.”

Jury looked at Carter thoughtfully.

“I’m sure no coroner will be all that surprised to find a man of his age, weight and physical condition dead from a heart attack,” continued Carter.

“That would be the best way out.”

“I just need to get close enough to inject it.”

“And access codes are all you need?”

“I’ve infiltrated more secure areas on more continents than anyone else here—”

“Ahem,” said Aubert.

“-and as long as I can get inside, I can do the rest.”

“Well, that’s the best proposal I’ve ever heard, and that includes the one I made to my wife!”

Jury made a note on his phone and slowly made his way to the exit.

“Very well, Agent Carter. You will get the access code and how to use it later this evening, and a syringe of Thiosulfate Dioxide will be delivered within minutes to this location. God save the King and not the President, and may He have mercy on our souls.”

He gave one last look at the group of assassins and gadflies before leaving.

“I hope most of you get a good night’s sleep, because it’s going to be a brand-new world tomorrow.”

🗽

The true mark of a professional writer, thought McGuire, was the ability to deliver something good despite virulently disagreeing with what he wrote.

He’d had plenty of practice over the past two years, but the document in front of him took the cake. 

State-of-the-Union-speech-v7-proofed-last-revised-final-edited-validated-final-v3.doc

One hour of material. An entirely new agenda, fit to rival the first few weeks of the administration. A flurry of executive orders. Withdrawal from NATO and the UN. The end of federally administered Social Security, with all payable accounts going to individual 401Ks. Privatization of Medicare and Medicaid. Rescission of the federal anti-miscegenation act. Punitive tariffs between blue and red states. And more. There was enough here to start marches on Washington, nationwide riots and requests to leave the Union.

And still he polished the text. At the last read through, the President had seemed unconcerned about the ramifications of the speech’s policy agenda, and asked for more statements about his own achievements. McGuire thought he was already close to parody already, but his even more over-the-top-suggestion had been enthusiastically greeted. 

That was enough to get his approval and solemn assurances to his cabinet that he would deliver the speech as-is. The policy stuff bored him—all of it was coming from Kean’s office and his policy think-tank anyway. But sprinkle a few references to the upcoming carving of his face on Mount Rushmore, and suddenly he could get through the dull part of the speech.

As he increasingly did, McGuire had the feeling of living twice at the same time—typing away on the keyboard and making the changes requested, but also somewhere far away in his head, watching himself do what was asked of him. Textbook dissociation, he knew, and it was growing worse—sometimes, he forgot entire hours he spent working. Like—no recall at all once he was back in his apartment.

The one thing that kept him going was Sofia and their increasingly naughty trysts. Not being supposed to be in love made it even better—now he understood the Carville/Matalin couple. Ruiz was clearly into him—and he was into her. They barely discussed politics now—it was food and dumb movies and sex and-

Suddenly, two big guys entered his already-cramped cubicle, interrupting his train of thought and abruptly snapping him back to a singular perspective.

“Yes?” he asked.

They said nothing, but suddenly Vice-President Kean entered the office.

“McGuire!” he said, offering his hand. “What great work on the State of the Union speech!”

Surprised, McGuire mumbled a few thanks and shook hands. Kean’s grip was very firm.

“I’ve been keeping track of your work. My office gets copies of every speech prepared for the president. Great stuff—a shame it’s not often delivered as-is.”

“Thank you, sir”

“Opportunities are waiting for someone like you. My speechwriters are great but you, you’re in a class of your own. Hang in there, you’ll be rewarded.”

McGuire mumbled a few further words of thanks, and then his cubicle was empty.

Dealing with Blunt took so much focus that he’d practically forgotten that the Vice President had been there for the rehearsal. It wasn’t the first time that he’d met him, of course. Every time had been unpleasant, though. Kean was an odd duck—a football star who’d parlayed stardom and two Super Bowl rings into a political career, hobnobbing with billionaires and think-tanks. With the looks of a gracefully aging matinee idol and some slick charm honed by decades in the public eye, he gradually amassed a considerable amount of influence behind the scenes. He was a gifted fundraiser, someone who could schmooze all kinds of different audiences and someone who could take on the press without alienating them.

On TV, he was the near-perfect image of a great politician. The problem was that in-person, away from the cameras, he carried a different kind of energy. Ambitious. Calculating. Coiled to strike. As much as Blunt was mean and stupid, Kean was mean and smart, which made him more dangerous. He was the one bringing policy proposals and ready-made executive orders (most of them proposed by oligarch-funded think-tanks) for the president to sign. McGuire didn’t just not like him—he wanted to pull away every time he got close.

Shaking his head, he put away the visit and started thinking about tonight. Rather than go to each other’s places, the plan had been—take-out, then a night at a hotel. Have an early nap, she’d suggested. You won’t sleep much tonight.

🗽

The President of the United States retired to his private bedroom, quite satisfied with himself. His mood brightened even further when he saw that his burger and fries had been left on a table minutes before—still warm under the silver dome.

He changed into his gold velvet bathrobe, and dug into his late supper with a smile. As usual, he had played them all like puppets. Talked to Fox News in the morning, told them a few things and like that he had set the entire day’s worth of news for the nation. Every channel he watched, even those fake news ones, at least spoke about him. 

As the burger’s juicy fat dripped down his chin, all he could think about was winning.

Yes, everything always went his way. All the losers and small brains trying to keep him in line, to tell him what to do, to annoy him with what he wasn’t supposed to do—where were they now? Gone. Left behind in his trail. He always won. The Supreme Court told them he was always right. The lawsuits went away. The opponents dropped to their knees and begged him to forgive them. Media sputtered, but he still had his way. Always.

His burger finished, he took a few bites from his fries, then let them rest—the burger had been enough.

Sure, his wife could scream—and scream she had tonight, for some reason or another. But she wasn’t any more important than the others. Let her cry herself off to sleep in the other bedroom. 

The next few days would be even better, he thought as his pulse quickened. He’d deliver that speech to the house, watch his opponents squirm and hear the offended reactions. None of that would matter. The good ones would see how presidential he was, more than anyone else in the history of the country. They would do what he told them to. If anyone spoke up, his allies and fans would shut them up. It was good to be a president.

Yes, he thought as his heart beat wildly, the next few days would be the best. No matter the results of that election—it hadn’t changed much. His opponents were cowards, losers and idiots.

He went to bed, smiled and closed his eyes, his heart thundering in triumph. Everyone who stood in his way was gone. The unfair lawsuits had been dismissed. The screaming activists were always made to look like fools. The wimpy intellectuals were always shown to be useless. He was the greatest. He had won.

And that was the last thing he ever knew.

🗽

Carter carefully stepped through the hallways of the White House. There was a balance to be achieved here between avoiding detection and not being conspicuously seen as trying to avoid detection. He didn’t want anyone to notice him, but trying too hard to escape attention would immediately brand him as an intruder.

So, he did the usual sober-clothes clipboard and tool bag thing, hoping to pass not as a Secret Service agent, but some kind of inspector contractor. At least the entrance code had worked and the capped syringe was in his pocket as promised. Trusting Jury didn’t come easily, but he didn’t have much choice—at least he remained hyper-aware of where he was. If the syringe’s content didn’t work, he could always try strangulation.

He had made his entrance in the West Wing—always busy as a policy centre and working offices of the President, which meant that someone entering the building at 4 AM wouldn’t necessarily be noticed so much as if he had tried to get through the East Wing, traditionally reserved for the First Lady and her largely working-hours staff. The plans of the White House had been included in the brainstorming paper he’d been asked to read—and if he needed a reminder, the overall layout of the place was widely available from public sources.

The hardest part remained—the central Residence Villa, and its security refinements that did not show up on official plans. That was the part that made him nervous—the Secret Service guys, the hidden motion detectors, the security cameras, maybe even a physical lock on the President’s bedroom. At least he knew that the President slept alone—there wouldn’t be another person in the bedroom to manage along the way.

So far so good, he thought as he went through the Press Center into the main building. A few cursory glances, but his demeanour seemed enough to put guards at ease. He had a cover—an urgent request from maintenance to go fix audiovisual wiring in the First Family’s Games Room, which just happened to be in the top floor of the Executive Residence.

But so, far, no interest in his carefully crafted lies. 

A Secret Service agent stood in the Entrance Hall, blocking his way to the third floor.

“Hey,” he nodded, a clipboard and tool bag in evidence.

“Hey,” the Secret Service agent nodded back. “Mind if I take a look inside?”

The tone was not threatening—Carter had the impression that he was more looking for something to do than anything else.

Carter opened the bag, and finally his work during the day paid off—going around second-hand stores to find used tools and weathering the rest to reinforce the impression of a seasoned maintenance guy. A little bit of dirt, grease and metal scoring—all convincing enough that the agent gave back the bag without thinking too much about it.

“Thanks,” said Carter and that was it.

He needed to be more careful on the third floor—this is where the obvious path to the President’s Bedroom was, and he wouldn’t be able to claim being on his way to the top floor.

As he navigated the presidential space, he wondered—Were the past presidents on the wall condemning him, or cheering him on? The last time the British had visited this place with harmful intent, two hundred years earlier, they had burned it down. But then again, none of the past presidents would have stomached the desecration of the office that Blunt had brought.

He became far more careful on the third floor, all the way to looking suspicious if anyone looked at him. He stayed close to the walls, switched his walking cadence to near silence, and headed for the service corridors. This is when stealth became paramount.

And also useless. As sources had revealed to British Intelligence, the Blunts did not like the Secret Service in their lives. As a result, the floor where they lived had nearly no agents. One in the central corridor, periodically walking the perimeter, but no one stationed at his door. Strife between the President and the First Lady had probably shaped this new policy, and it’s not as if Blunt took suggestions from anyone.

That suited Carter just fine—making sure the guard was looking away, he slipped from behind a column and tried the bedroom door. Unlocked. Now, for the final obstacle—would he open the door to an insomniac President watching TV, or a sleeping man?

He opened the door and saw Blunt in bed, but he was neither awake nor sleeping.

The President was lying on his back, with three knives stuck in his chest.

Well, this changes everything.

Carter should have turned away, gone out and run away back to London.

Instead, his curiosity getting the best of him, he approached the Presidential bed.

No doubt about it—the blue-hued Blunt has been stabbed three times. Three knives of various shapes and origins were firmly embedded in his chest, near the heart. One of them hadn’t been as cleanly inserted as the other ones, but all were jammed in the cavities of the thoracic cage.

But stabbing hadn’t killed Blunt.

There was very little blood around the knives, suggesting that he hadn’t been alive when stabbed. Even the one knife that had been more nervously inserted, making ragged edges, had very little blood around it.

Something interesting just happened.

But it wasn’t Carter’s job to figure out what—although he had his idea. The syringe was useless, the deed was done, the president was dead. There was nothing else to do here.

Well, maybe two things.

He took a picture.

Then, with gloved hands, he carefully pulled one of the knives a few centimetres back, then plunged it back down.

🗽

Carter made his way out of the White House with a very convincing air of neutrality, which was really more a blank expression considering what he had just seen. 

The President had died during the night, most likely early. Then either three persons with a knife, or one person with three knives, or just about any number of people with a cumulative total of three knives had stabbed the already-dead president. 

The why wasn’t that important, but the who would prove more elusive. It was clearly his fellow international assassins’ doing—they had backed down suspiciously quickly once Carter had assumed (he had thought) the leadership of the operation. But they had bidden their time, got in early to best Carter, and done what they had come here to do. Most of them would be on planes flying out of Washington by now.

Ah well—at least the mission was over. Once reasonably certain that he was alone on the streets of the capital, he dialled MI6. It was early morning over there, and D herself answered.

“Yes, double-A G?”

“The target is down. Some strange circumstances, but I am safe and the mission is complete.”

“Excellent. I will inform the king. Are you in need of immediate extraction?”

In other words—am I sending the SAS from the embassy to get you out of a police chase?

“I am not in need of assistance. I will be discreet in my return.”

D signed off, and left Carter with a beehive of a problem to unpack.

Should he make a run for the airport or the border? Airport, no—international controls would be harsh, and there was no way he’d board a flight to London or anywhere else before the news of the President’s death would break. Depending on how things would play out (and the death of Stalin would be a sober drama compared with the utter panic about to engulf the White House) minutes, hours or even days would pass before the truth about the President’s posthumous circumstances would come out. Did he want to be sitting in an airport lounge when the shutters came down?

Grabbing a car and driving up north had its own share of problems, most of them related to arriving a day and a half later at the frontier when a no-expenses-spared manhunt would be in full swing—and looking like someone who had driven a day and a half. Going to the Embassy for extraction would be tantamount to broadcasting his guilt. He hoped Laffer’s electronic shield would hold.

He didn’t have to go back to the Georgetown condo—he had sanitized it throughout the day and thrown the weapon into a nearby dumpster. But he had no better ideas.

Hell, at this point, might as well go for broke. There were a few loose ends to wrap up.

The texted Jury—I want another all-hands meeting, midmorning.

Section 2—Hunter, Killer, Assassin, Spy

Chapter 6 — Maybe Say Maybe Again

Carter had never felt so omniscient than in watching TV on the morning a presidential death would be announced. He, and admittedly one-to-three other people, already knew that the biggest news story of the decade would happen that day. He knew details that would not emerge right away. He already anticipated several of the headlines. He could predict just how bad of a day many people would have.

He just didn’t know when it would begin.

Flipping through news channels was useless—once it happened, it would be wall-to-wall coverage of the same things anywhere he would look—it would spill from news channels and invade nearly everything. Everyone with the slightest level of alerts set on their cell phones would get updates throughout the day. Ominous footage of the White House would be omnipresent, no matter how often you changed channels or which site you visited.

So, he waited.

🗽

McGuire’s reptilian brain recognized a panic signal and woke the rest of him up with a jolt of adrenaline.

He recognized the sound—this was his cell phone, and the sound was the ringing tone (shrieking tone, really), he had set for certain messages from his boss. Those that contained specific keywords.

As Sofia stirred besides him, he looked at the phone and saw the five digits he had dreaded: 90210

It was a joke between his boss and his team, and it wasn’t meant to stay a joke. He stumbled for the remote and turned on the hotel room TV, because that’s half what the numbers told him to do.

TV-level event; rush to the office.

He had one of those jobs where overtime could be reasonably anticipated by the content of the headline news, and he wasn’t looking forward to what would pop up on the screen. What had Blunt done, again? What kind of dumb nonsense had he vomited on social media overnight, again?

“What’s going on?” mumbled Sofia next to him.

“Whatever it is, you will probably want to check in as well.”

The TV finally landed on the news channel.

PRESIDENT BLUNT TAKEN TO HOSPITAL, said the chyron, with footage of the White House complete with emergency vehicles flashing lights.

They looked at each other, wide-eyed. They both had been in public media long enough to recognize that this was the kind of headline that editors put up because something terrible had happened, no one wanted to talk (or had time to talk) and this was the only information they could verify.

But there was no limit to what this information could lead to. People didn’t go to the hospital for bumping their toes on a table leg. 

But they did go to the hospital as a corpse.

McGuire kissed Sofia, who was now sitting and checking her phone, then was out of bed and heading to the bathroom as quickly as possible. Their evening had been incredibly dirty (they used the new anti-sodomy laws passed in twenty states as a checklist), but they had taken a shower before going to bed, which meant Jonah was mere minutes from checking out. Sofia followed him into the bathroom and they spent a few too-short minutes bumping into each other while getting ready.

“You think he’s dead?” she finally said, vocalizing the question of the moment.

“I hope he is,” he said. 

“I know he is,” he said after a pause.

And with that, he felt something he thought was past him—hope.

Since they’d brought a change of clothes, there wouldn’t be any rumpled clothing-of-the-past-day embarrassment, and they were ready to go within minutes. Still, they stopped to kiss.

“If I’m right, the next days are going to be a madhouse.”

“Yeah, but think of last night as a preview of what’s going to happen the next time we’re together.”

And with that, they were off. 

With every successive alert on his phone, McGuire knew: Blunt was dead, and the White House was not prepared for it:  PRESIDENT BLUNT STATUS UNCERTAIN; BLUNT TAKEN TO HOSPITAL FOR CAUSES UNKNOWN; WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS MUM ON BLUNT HEALTH.

He jogged more than walked to the White House, his professional-looking attaché case hiding his rumpled clothes from the previous day and a few unmentionables. Trying to get to the usual West Wing entrance was a hassle—there was a media circus, and even regular employees were having a hard time getting their valid passes looked at by the overwhelmed security guards.

It ended up taking longer to cover the fifty-yard security perimeter of the West Wing than the three-quarter mile from the hotel. The security guard looked curiously at him during the X-ray scan of his attaché case; McGuire said nothing.

Once inside, he knew from the barely repressed panic that Blunt was gone, but there was something more here—no one seemed really sad about it, just anxious to know what was next.

He ended up arriving just in time, by a margin of about thirty seconds. He barely had time to open his workstation that his boss crashed into his office.

“McGuire! Thank God you’re there! Come with me, now.”

From the tone, he knew better than ask questions or refuse. He got up and followed, and grew concerned the closer they got to the Oval Office. There was one possible reason for this and…

He had guessed right. The first thing he saw, besides the twelve people crammed into the small Office, was a camera-ready Kean behind the Resolute desk, and Supreme Court justice Gabford holding up a bible.

As spikes of anticipation prickled at his scalp, the weight of the moment was not lost on him—This was historic stuff, and he would show up in the pictures. As if to confirm, the White House Chief of Staff spoke up.

“President Blunt was pronounced dead at Walter Reed a few minutes ago. We will now swear in Anthony Kean as the President of the United States of America.”

As both Kean and Justice Gabford positioned themselves for the cameraman, McGuire knew he was just here to add texture to the photo—to provide legitimacy for this first inauguration (there would be another, vastly more public one) and ensure that it didn’t just look like the hastily arranged affair that it really was.

Still, he gulped when Gabford began the Presidential Oath and Kean repeated it — “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The room applauded, but in a muted fashion. Like everyone else, McGuire had trouble processing that Blunt, at long last, was gone. The chaos would end, the presidential rages would go away, and perhaps they’d do some progress at last rather than being bogged down in another series of unforced errors.

Kean couldn’t resist one impromptu speech before the crowd dispersed.

“Everyone, I want to thank you all for being here. I know that the passing of President Blunt is a shock to all of us, and we’re going to need some time to process this. But beyond the oath of office that I just took, I can assure you—I’m going to carry his legacy and his ideals further than they have been, and in a way that our nation will respect.”

McGuire didn’t quite like the undertone of that, but he drank in the straightforward, elegant delivery. Everything was clear, to the point, coherent.

Everyone was dismissed—or nearly everyone: before walking out of the Office with his boss, McGuire couldn’t help but notice the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and the National Security Advisor sticking around.

🗽

More people were present in Tom’s Diner than Carter expected — The Vatican Exorcist and Laffer were gone, but nearly everyone else was there. The three women shared a single booth, Bourne was talking to Aubert at the front, and the two Asian observers were apparently… showing each other photos on their cell phones?

Carter had walked in only two minutes prior to the called-upon time, and that was still too early for him. His instincts were telling him that something was off, and ignoring them was another Washington Rule thrown into the dumpster.

Outside the diner, the world learned than Blunt was gone—the new president has been sworn in and had addressed the nation. It had been refreshing to hear an articulate president again—the lack of overused superlatives alone had been worth the assassination.

Or assassinations, or whatever had happened that night in the President’s bedroom.

“Ah, splendid work, my friend!”

Aubert gave him a bear hug, and then two very uncomfortable kisses on the cheeks.

“Can you feel the world taking a deep breath? From Tokyo to Paris, people are waking up to a better tomorrow. I apologize for yesterday’s harsh words. I will forever resent you for not having been able to do it myself, but you did right, mon ami.”

Carter didn’t correct him just yet and sat down in the booth next to him and Thorne. Maybe he was lying through his teeth about not sticking a knife into the President before Carter got there, but he didn’t think so—the Intolerable Frog had plenty of irritating traits, but he had been scrupulously honest—to a fault—in his dealings with Carter. 

But the other people who had transformed Blunt into a pincushion were in this room, and Carter was maybe the only person in the world with a personal interest in finding out exactly what had happened.

At exactly the appointed meeting time, Jury stormed into the room, his trenchcoat once again barely keeping up.

“Congratulations, everyone!” he said while taking his place in front of his audience. “Mission accomplished! Blunt is no more, and a new presidency has begun!”

As Jury kept talking, Carter frowned—the man was standing much closer to the papered-over front doors of the diner than usual. They were locked, right?

His phone buzzed. He was tempted to ignore it—probably a media alert.

But wait: he hadn’t configured any media alerts. And everyone who would reach him was either here, or in London knowing that he was not to be contacted without prior agreement.

He gave up and looked at his phone. The sender was a G, followed by a laughing emoji. Gordon Laffer.

But the message was more ominous.

Jury is betraying you all. Agents closing in. GET OUT.

As his eyes focused on the last two words, he nudged Aubert and showed him the phone.

“I’m with you to the end, friend,” whispered the Frenchman.

Carter wasn’t fond of talking about any end, but the sentiment was what he was looking for. Who else in this room could he trust? Before he could do react, Saskia sent him a text.

Laffer texts: Jury’s a snake. Police closing in. Fight?

With Aubert looking on, he replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

Then he looked at Thorne and raised an eyebrow. Somehow, the message connected.

Saska was most likely getting Nadia on-board. The Asians were too far back to be reached, and he hoped that the girl hacker could duck. That gave them five people against what would probably be twenty SWAT agents. But each of the assassins was packing, and thus worth a few ordinary SWAT officers.

When would they rush in? Jury was probably holding the button, and his type had to show off. His little debriefing was clearly leading up to something. They’d see it coming.

“We opened the doors, rolled the red carpet and you stepped in, friends!” continued Jury. “But surely you know that you’ve reached the end of the road, right? We can’t let you walk away from this—”

“False,” said Carter, then drew his pistol and shot Jury in the chest.

The bald man staggered against the front doors. Carter knew that he was wearing a bulletproof vest, so it was more a warning shot to destabilize him than anything else.

Everyone in the diner, alarmed by the gunshot or prepped for it, ducked as close as they could to the floor. A good thing too, as almost all of the papered-over windows of the diner blew in.

Showered by the cubical chunks of tempered glass, Carter kept his sights on the front door where Jury had gone out—they would soon be overrun by trigger-happy SWAT officers, and their chances didn’t look good.

“Try not to kill any of the cops,” he said over the lingering din of the explosions.

“Of course,” said Aubert.

“Whatever,” said Thorne.

He saw the first SWAT officers come in, and fired low. He was already close to the ground, and the policemen wouldn’t have any bulletproof cladding on their legs.

The cries of pain and thuds of heavily armed bodies told him he was right. The screaming SWAT officers piled up at the front entrance and stopped coming. Behind him, gunshots told him that the women had more or less managed the same with the back entrance.

Some of the fallen SWAT men tried to shoot at them, but a few shots to the arms took care of that. 

Look, guys, rehabilitation will take a while, but at least we’re not killing you.

The screaming got louder, and some of them ineffectually tried to pull back into the mall. From what Carter could hear from his muffled ears, there was also a lot of shouting coming from within the mall itself.

“Kitchen!” he heard the Taiwanese man shout as he moved toward the back.

Given the incoming flash-bangs through the windows, the kitchen sounded like a great idea right now.

Along with his two comrades in arms, he moved toward the centre of the restaurant—there was some advantage in no longer being where SWAT thought they were and to have some protection from the vinyl seats.

As they did, they met the women in the middle. The two Asian men kept going toward the kitchen and they followed.

They made it past the swing doors without a moment to spare—by the time rear-guard Thorne held the door closed behind him, the muffled THUMP and light of the flash-bang grenades were still overwhelming—had they stayed in the seating area, they would be blind and deaf by now.

The bad news was that there were an awful lot of SWAT agents inside the kitchen.

The good news was that the two Asian men were handling them.

The well-coiffed Indian was in his element jumping over the counter, sliding over the surface, firing automatic pistols with crossed arms, then stretching them wide open and shooting some more. He never lost his smile and great hair.

Carter was less than impressed seeing him wink at Saskia with a wide grin, even as he felled two more SWAT officers.

Meanwhile, the stocky goofy Taiwanese was busy running through the kitchen screaming, “I don’t want to hurt you!” while, in fact, hurting them a lot—through pots and pans, knives, banging their heads over counters, parkour-jumping through an open cart, swinging heavy grill plates and kicking them inside the (inactive) refrigerator units, then breaking off the handle. There was a Fred Astaire quality to the way he moved like a dancer, every single gesture a harbinger of pain for his opponents.

The way he was going around his business like a Taiwanian whirling dervish, Carter was thankful that the frying vats were empty and cold.

Neither of them needed their help.

“We need to get out,” he said.

“Obviously,” said Saskia.

“Of course,” said Aubert.

“Yes,” said Nadia.

“Big brain,” said Thorne.

“I mean, how do we punch through a SWAT squad when we’ve got exactly two exits and handguns?”

“More than handguns,” said Thorne.

“What?”

“I stashed a few rifles and bulletproof vests under the counter,” he said, nodding toward a nearby prep station. “Just in case.”

“How many?”

“Five.”

“That works,” said Carter.

“Not much ammo, though.”

“Burst mode, not full auto.”

“That works,” said Thorne.

Quickly, before the next assault, they divvied up.

“We can’t all stay together, but we don’t have enough firepower to each go our own way.”

“Teams: Boys versus girls?”

“That works,” said Saskia.

“We’ll take the back,” said Nadia. 

She nodded at the void left by the two Asians, who had incapacitated all of the SWAT officers in the kitchen and had now fled through the fire exit where they, from the sounds of it, were tearing through whoever was left in the corridors.

“Then I guess we get the front,” grumbled Carter. Wide-open spaces, snipers on the rooftops, civilians screaming their heads off, probably a locked-down area.

Sounded like fun.

“Stay in touch,” said Saskia to Carter with an oddly affectionate tone.

“I look forward to it,” he said, meaning it.

As farewells went, this was a good one.

The women left first.

“I’ve got an exit plan,” said Thorne. “Just follow me.”

He looked at the other two men with a smile.

“It’s time to do what we do best: Wreck some stuff.”

Moments later, they were out the door.

Things were easier with a rifle and a vest, thought Carter. Half a dozen SWAT officers had ventured into the restaurant, and the three agents quickly dispatched them. Carter noted with some relief that Thorne had gotten the message about not shooting to kill the policemen—although the trail of broken knees and arms would wreak havoc on DMV’s rehabilitation services.

As they made their way out of the front door, Carter frowned – the boots worn by the screaming officers they had felled didn’t look like standard-issue SWAT gear. They looked more like the high-end material favoured by paramilitary and personal protection personnel. Maybe the local department had a bigger budget.

In the mall outside Tom’s Diner, the three of them faced lighter opposition than they’d expected: Only a few scattered officers who quickly took cover when a few warning bursts were fired in their direction. Whether this was because they had already felled most of the attackers or because Jury had decided to save his forces for another day was immaterial to Carter—he just wanted to get out of there with the minimum amount of fuss.

All three of them did make a good fire team—they were disciplined, instinctively covered their thirds, stuck to the walls, made themselves small targets, and pre-emptively took cover to prevent any SWAT gophers from popping up and taking a shot at them.

There were still a few exceptions, handled quickly—while the mall had clearly been evaluated a few moments earlier, the screams from the fallen officers (all of them still alive, noted Carter) would have cleared any stragglers.

Their objective was the second floor of the parking garage: Thorne had said that he had a car there ready to go. While Carter’s own rental was parked elsewhere, it would be easier for him to get there from the roads rather than try the underground metro—which would be a deathtrap of closed corridors and limited sight-lines.

The area that worried them was the escalator, exposed in plain sight and yet better than the closed-off elevator. They made a zigzagging sprint for it, bullets whizzing past them and smashing open the glass facades of the upscale shops, chipping at the marble and killing a few plastic mannequins along the way. Still, they made it, quickly sliding down the escalators on the rubber handrail —and the gunfire grew less frequent once they were one floor down.

They still weren’t done, though, and a small team of SWAT officers was guarding the exit to the parking lot. All three men of Carter’s team dispersed, finding refuge behind the mall’s columns. They had cover, but they were exposed at the back—they couldn’t stay there very long.

So, they didn’t. After a few exploratory shots, they moved, criss-crossing the corridors and making use of the concealment they could find. Kiosks; planters; poster board. Shooting at the officers blocking the way to the doors got them results—the first they hit bad enough to take them out of the equation, and the later ones retreated to a safer position.

The weather outside was chilly, but still felt like victory. Despite the blaring police sirens and the flashing lights reflected in the distance, they had apparently made their way out of the SWAT perimeter. 

Getting out of the parking would be another matter entirely. Three stories of outdoors parking, with only two exits. Dozens of federal agents being directed their way, and the Pentagon right across the street. The exists probably had spike strips on top of spike strips.

At least Thorne seemed to have a plan despite the police sirens growing louder.

“C’mon, we’re not far.”

Indeed, he pointed them toward a smart, powerful and forgettable black Chevy Equinox, backed into a spot three berths next to the exit.

“How did you find a place so near?”

“By parking here at five-thirty, three mornings ago. It’s called planning.”

They got in, with Thorne handling the driving, Aubert in the passenger seat and Carter at the back. Thorne didn’t wait for them to get comfortable—he was already roaring out of the exit and gunning it toward the north end of the parking building.

“Safety belts are not optional for what’s coming next.”

Two clicks quickly followed. At the back, Carter saw the police lights speeding toward them.

“I thought someone like you would appreciate a bigger vehicle than a mid-sized SUV,” said Aubert conversationally.

Wait, there were consumer vehicles larger than this?

“You’re absolutely right, my French friend, but my favourite SUV pick has a height of 75 inches, whereas this specific vehicle has a height of 66 inches.”

Carter couldn’t help but notice that, even with the necessity to outrun to police, Thorne was driving the vehicle far, far more quickly than it was safe if he was to turn at the exit to the lower floor.

“And how, I am afraid to ask, will nine inches of difference going to be important?”

“See, it’s all about preparation. Measuring four days ago. Parking three days ago. Arranging for a large steel road plate to be installed two days ago. Angling and shoring it up yesterday.”

Now that Carter knew what to look for, he wasn’t so concerned about Thorne driving too fast toward the north end of the building.

He was scared of what would happen afterwards.

“I don’t think that’s a good plan—“

The SUV kept roaring ahead, toward a tiny, tiny ramp flagged with orange construction cones. 

“The measurements check out,” said Thorne, “although the rental company may have to repaint the roof.

The SUV slammed into the orange cones and took the ramp made by the steel road plate, right over the building’s low cement wall and toward the air outside the parking.

Seeing the Pentagon building in front of them, Carter heard the loud scraping of an SUV roof grinding against the upper concrete barrier—

—then experienced moments of weightlessness as the vehicle fell two stories to the ground—

—then felt himself slammed deep into his seat as the SUV hit the pavement with a loud noise under them, bounced up a few inches, then fell back into the parking lot’s exit lanes.

Thorne wasn’t phased—he quickly regained control of the vehicle, turned hard right, then lucked on to a green light to turn left, and was soon on Highway I-395 heading deep into Virginia. 

Amazingly, the stunt had paid off—no immediate pursuit. Although the scraped roof of the SUV would be hard to miss if there was any kind of airborne surveillance.

“Jolly good show,” recognized Carter. “I supposed that the next step of the plan is to ditch this somewhere?”

“Of course.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll bid you goodbye at that time and go my separate way.”

“Don’t like my driving, Carter?”

“I love it so far, but I’ve got my own stash of weapons and cash to retrieve. Let’s stay in touch through the group chat. How about we rename it The Wrecking Crew?”

Chapter 7 — The Team with the Olden Farm

Not for the first time, McGuire wondered about the similarities between the White House staff and a beehive. Today, as he sank into busywork, his topic of contemplation was the transfer of power in a hive when the Queen died. 

Did the drones have to update the hive’s website to make sure that the new Queen’s headshot, biographical information and previous achievements were updated, alongside a tastefully sober notice in reminiscence of the former Queen? Did they have to go through the former Queen’s calendar of speaking engagements to determine which ones were still valid, which one had to be pushed back and which ones were simply unsuitable or unpalatable to the new Queen? Did they have to update mastheads and office plates and parking places?

The former Vice President’s team had invaded the White House, and more than a few people in the deceased president’s employ had found themselves placed on paid leave, awaiting their inevitable dismissal. Such was the life of the political staff, but this seemed awfully well orchestrated for the morning following an unexpected transfer of power.

But McGuire had found himself spared—even as he saw his boss shown the door, he was told that the new president liked him. Whether this was a temporary reprieve remained to be seen—there he was at his workstation, slaving away at updating mundane communications, but maybe he’d have to look for a new job later today, tomorrow, next week or somewhere down the line when the new president didn’t like him anymore.

“McGuire? The new boss wants a few minutes of your time.”

He got up and followed, because there wasn’t anything else to do. Kean had, to the best of McGuire’s knowledge, spent the entire day since being sworn in multiplying five-and-ten-minute conversations with staff, executives, politicians and foreign heads of state—receiving congratulations, sounding out policy shifts, giving orders to shape his working environment. For McGuire to get a slot at this time was… frightening.

He was ushered into the Oval Office, with only the new Communication Director at his side to face the freshly sworn-in President.

“McGuire, thanks. Very quickly—please review the State of the Union speech, reshape it to my style, knowing that I’ll be able to deliver it as-is. Frame it around paying homage to the Blunt policies. I’ll send a few more ideas by tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep in mind that we’re shifting the State of the Union speech to a different venue this year—none of that stale speech to both chambers stuff.”

“Yes, sir?”

“We’re having the official inauguration and a national memorial service at the Ellipse next week. The casket in the middle, the White House in the background, the Washington Monument at the back. Very big, very dramatic. Both chambers will be there to pay their respects, so I’m doing the State of the Union there. Live. Outdoors. We’ll arrange it so that there’s nice sunlight on my side. This is going to be an event for the history books. Mourning, but looking forward.”

“Yes, sir!”

“No significant policy shifts. I’m still thinking whether I’ll announce social security privatization there or later. Couch the NATO and UN withdrawal in terms of the necessity for the United States to make its own choices in an increasingly dangerous multipolar world, protecting its interest and so on. It will lay down the groundwork for the territory annexation we’re planning, but don’t put that in yet.”

“Yes. Sir.”

“One more thing—we’re going to tweak this speech down to individual commas over the next few days, and I won’t be working from this office. Being here today is for show, but as soon as the clock hits six, I’m headed into the Emergency Operations Center until next week. You’ll be down there often. These are crucial days for the nation, McGuire, and I want you by my side.”

🗽

One of the favourite tactics of the Blunt administration had been to release a flood of equally idiotic actions and communications so that anyone trying to refute or address a specific one quickly became irrelevant in an escalating chain of nonsense that always obscured crucial points.

It seemed fitting, then, that the actions of Carter and his fellow agents had a similar impact. Considering that the nation was barely beginning its presidential grieving process, a significant shootout inside a mall right next to the Pentagon barely rated a mention in the “other news” of the day.

Which suited Carter just fine—having taken a few elementary precautions, such as sticking a moustache, a gray wig, a hat and a pebble in his shoe to alter his gait, he made his way back to his stash of money and weapons through the Metro—always with a vigilant eye, but not spotting anything concerning.

This would not last long—he had to get back to the car and put some mileage between him and DC. How much mileage remained to be determined, but he wouldn’t call D before being safely outside the metro area.

Patience was key, though—he overshot his metro stop, then doubled back to spot a tail… even though he knew that most tails were electronic these days. He circled his parked rental car twice before being convinced it was safe to enter, and at the car he ran a checklist to make sure he wasn’t being followed or set up for a car bomb. Barbara thought he was in the clear, but Barbara was programmed to make him happy, not necessarily to give him accurate information.

And yet, and yet, despite all of his preparations, he had to slam the brakes in trying to leave his parking spot because a shapely Audi stopped right in front of him, and a just-as-shapely Saskia waved to him from the driver’s seat. Nadia and that other purple-haired hacker girl from the diner got out of the Audi and made their way to the rear seats while Saskia hurriedly parked the car. As the German joined them, Carter appreciated that all three were travelling light.

“All right, let’s go,” said Saskia with a smile when she was buckled in.

Carter wanted to argue, but he could appreciate the urgency of the situation and stepped on the gas.

“I don’t recall this part of the plan,” he said mildly as they left the parking behind.

“Well, my friends in the back and I were talking about contingency plans, and it occurred to us that you probably had a much less conspicuous getaway car than mine, you probably had a place where to lay low, and you probably would not mind having three lovely ladies along for the ride.”

“That doesn’t explain how you found the car.”

“Oh, Harry, you really should not have brought me back to your rented condo the other night.”

She shook her phone, and he saw that he had tracked down the car thanks to a consumer-grade tracking device, probably slipped into his stash bag while he had been sleeping. As if her leaving him without saying goodbye hadn’t been bad enough.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Time to brush up on your countersurveillance skills, Harry. Although—”

She got closer to his ear and whispered.

“-I don’t think you mind all that much if I’m doing the stalking.”

Carter said nothing and sulked for a few minutes, making unusually good progress through the traffic lights at this time of the day. He had a specific destination in mind—the isolated farm where he had confronted the weapons dealer. Chances were good that the former arms dealer didn’t get a lot of visitors… so it would work as a hideout for a day or two. There was enough space in the two-storey farmhouse for the four of them, and they could at least have some comfort in knowing that they had an arsenal at their disposal.

On the car radio, the latest news updates were fascinating for what they did not say—according to reports, Blunt had died of a heart attack, and there were no mentions of the knives stuck in him. Funerals would be held the next week on one of the biggest stages that DC had to offer—the Ellipse Park between the White House and the Washington Monument. There was barely a mention of an incident at the Pentagon Mall, although reports were that all suspects had been caught inside the mall—clearly an attempt to save face given the FBI’s dismal performance. 

“Glad to see you made it out alive,” he finally said to Saskia.

“There wasn’t anything to it—the two guys cleared the way ahead of us, mostly, and we were able to slip into the Metro station without fuss. How about you?”

“Slightly more complicated.”

“Glad to see you’re still here. Missed me?”

“We’ll see. And who do we have here at the back?”

“Harry, I’m disappointed that you don’t remember me,” said Nadia.

“Not talking to you. I’m referring to the purple-haired Comic-Con refugee.”

“Harry, you’re not being nice.”

“We’re not going to a convention.”

The girl temporarily let go of her laptop and pulled her wig up, revealing a head of shorter brown hair.

“No, but the purple-haired Comic-Con refugee passed unnoticed because she looked like a harmless purple-haired Comic-Con refugee and not like an escaping assassin, and by extension so did her girlfriends.”

“Emily’s on our side, Harry. You should listen to her story.”

“I’m in no need of someone to build me a website,” said Carter.

“No, but have you noticed that we haven’t hit a red light ever since leaving the parking?” said Emily.

Carter had noticed.

She lifted and shook her laptop so that he could see it in the rear-view mirror.

“A thank you would be nice.”

“Thank you. Okay, I’m listening.”

“I’ll keep it short. I’m ex-US military intelligence, cyber-warfare division. I had to leave when Blunt fired all trans people from the military two years ago. Fortunately, I had made contacts abroad back when we still held Five-Eyes exercises, and the New Zealanders were happy to take me in, citizenship included.”

“Huh.”

“I may not be as in-your-face about it than our friend Thorne, but this is personal for me too.”

🗽

McGuire got to leave the White House at the end of the day solely on the promise that he’d make it back an hour or two later. He needed a break to eat supper, he had left something in the oven, he needed to change clothes, he had forgotten to shut down the TV—whatever excuse worked.

He rushed home far more quickly than someone in need of a quick refresh—and once home, he went straight to his own computer. The one with a hidden partition, dark web spoofing, connection to his neighbour’s Wi-Fi and very specialized communication piggybacking on torrenting packets.

He simply wrote: Kean intends to pursue Blunt policies with vigour and more intelligence. NATO/UN withdrawal still in funeral SOTU speech.

🗽

The farm was just as Carter had left it. No one had come knocking. The front door was closed but unlocked and the arsenal in the safe room was still there. Saskia and Nadia were quite pleased at the stash. Emily kept complaining about the spotty Internet connection. 

Carter checked, and the body was still hidden in the thicket. Meanwhile, the women took up the farmhouse’s second floor, leaving Carter on the couch of the living room.

The décor of the farmhouse was regrettable—a mixture of jingoistic propaganda, libertarian wanking and macho straightforwardness. Carter was tempted to tear it all down, but maybe they’d settle for burning down the building when they left—they wouldn’t be able to sanitize it anyway.

The women left again after thirty minutes—they needed essentials at the nearest Wal-Mart, and Carter was only too happy to have some time alone. Maybe they’d be back, maybe they would not. He only had an hour or so before D would be asleep, so he made the most out of it and asked Barbara to set up a secure call.

“Finally, Carter.”

“It’s been an eventful day.”

“I suppose that the ruckus at the Pentagon mall was your doing?”

“Not entirely, but I was involved.”

“And what about those complications you mentioned?”

“Well, I suppose that this will cost me a knighthood, but I didn’t kill Blunt.”

“What?”

“He was already dead by the time I got there, but there’s more.”

He explained the three knives stuck in the man like a voodoo doll, and his preliminary conclusions from the absence of blood around the wounds.

“Notice how they went with the dead-of-natural-cause explanation today. No mention of the knives.”

“But that seems like a point to clarify, Carter. You wouldn’t have any evidence or theories, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, I did take a picture.”

“That will get the highest classification in the land. Send that right away. Anything else?”

“I’m pretty sure I know at least one of the stabbers. I can keep digging for the rest.”

“Please do. What’s your current situation?”

“Holed up in rural country with three other agents. Low chances of detection, although we can’t stay here for more than a few days. We had a guardian angel to fuzz the electronic traces, but I’ll have to check if he’s still helping. Do I need to extract?”

“Not right away, Carter. New information has emerged. We would like you to remain close to Washington for the moment.”

“Am I being sent back?”

“The situation is fluid.”

Right.

After ending his briefing with D, Carter debated for a moment, then sent back a message to G-laughing-emoji: Are we still under the shield?

Surprisingly enough, he got back an answer within thirty seconds: Yes, but I don’t know how long. Things are chaotic and I may not be able to help.

Not entirely at ease, Carter used the last of the daylight to explore the farm. The property had long stopped being a working farm, and it was littered with dead rusting vehicles, growing brush that wasn’t being cleared up, and pieces of equipment left to disintegrate in place. But one thing he had missed in the dark was that other parts of the farm were still being maintained. 

Carefully exploring the property, always on guard against booby-traps, he found a rather impressive garage that held three cars and plenty of mechanical equipment. A locked metal shed had him being even more cautious until he defused one IED and unlocked the door.

It was another arsenal, even bigger than the previous one. Now, Carter understood why the dealer had been recommended. In addition to larger machine guns and RPGs too bulky to fit in the house, there were pallets of rifles and smaller arms, munitions, grenades and mines. Indeed, a claymore mine was standing guard against unauthorized visitors until Carter very delicately deactivated its trigger.

This was all fascinating, but the problem was—just how long could they stay on the farm? Given time, the Surveillance State of America would catch up with them: they had left traces everywhere. It would only take a dogged effort from a hundred people to piece all of this together. Then they’d knock at the door with a flash-bang grenade. Or worse, depending on how quickly they wanted to end this. Domestic drone strikes were not unheard of in fascist America.

Thinking about all of this, he tried making himself a cocktail out of the ingredients at the farmhouse and ended up spitting it back into the sink—he wasn’t built for moonshine and liquor-store swill.

He was still nursing a vile sugary pop when the women came back with food. They took the news of another arsenal well. It didn’t take long during the meal for them all to think back and poke at the morning’s events.

“Clearly, we were set up—but just how far back? Who is Jury working for? Did that organization even exist, or was it just something to placate us?”

“Was it always part of the plan to dispose of us?” said Saskia, while she was using a knife to clear her fingernails.

“Needed another knife to replace the one you used last night?” said Carter, slightly exasperated.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. The pushpins in Blunt’s body.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How you ended up going to the White House and stabbing him in the chest.”

“I never did anything like that? I was asleep. Are you crazy right now?”

“Wait—,” said Nadia.

They all turned toward her.

“I’ll deny it in official documents, but since I can’t stand see you two argue—Saskia didn’t do that.”

She smiled weakly.

“I did. I got the code off your phone—”

Now it was Emily’s turn to look embarrassed, noted Carter.

“-then I went to the White House with the intention of doing the deed. But he already had two knives in him and was dead before any of that happened. I still stuck mine in.”

“But why?”

“Have you forgotten everything he ever said about our country? Canadians have two modes: Either we’re sorry, or we’ll make you sorry.”

🗽

The Presidential Emergency Operations Center underneath the White House was among the most secure locations in the world. It used four-factor authentication—to get in, you have to know the day’s code, have the weekly pass, have at least one piece of biometric information validated and have someone vouch for you in the entrance lobby. A fifth factor was arguably how the armed guards at the entrance were feeling, both inside and outside the hermetic entrance. The heavy door swung on hinges designed to accommodate its twelve-inch thickness, and didn’t stay open any moment longer than what was necessary to get in.

The entire bunker was on its own electrical, ventilation and network grid, with optical relays to minimize any physical connection between the free-floating bunker and the outside world. It wasn’t even where people thought it was—while the location of the Situation Room was historically advertised as being under the East Wing, a lengthy excavation project under the North Lawn in the 2010s was the only public hint that the facility had been relocated elsewhere after an extensive series of renovations and upgrades. Three hundred metres down, it would resist a direct nuclear hit on the capital, and could accommodate the President and his staff for several months—as long as they weren’t picky on the food, the décor or the company.

McGuire’s ears popped as the door closed and the bunker’s positive-pressure air circulation system reasserted itself. The new Director of Communication took him to what was called the octagonal office—an eight-sided room in which the President conducted business when he occupied the bunker. The décor down here was strictly utilitarian—gray walls and ceramic floors, with occasional US pageantry to break up the monotony.

He had been warned that the time it would take to get to the President (and then come back) would be twice as long as the time they’d spend together, but that was not unusual in a world where staffers routinely waited hours until meetings with more important people wrapped up.

Kean looked up from his surface screen, his rarely seen reading glasses on top of his nose. 

“McGuire! Splendid rework on the speech. We’re much closer to its final form than I would have expected by now.”

As McGuire, Kean and the new Communication Director sat down to talk, three people stayed in the room with them. McGuire wasn’t too sure how to call them—they were part of the ill-defined entourage that accompanied the former Vice-President under the nebulous title of “advisors.”  Scuttlebutt among the former White House Staff was that they were linked to some of the trillionaires with which Kean was closely associated. But in what capacity? Advice, or oversight?

“The one place where it still needs a bit of work is toward the end. Not forceful enough. By the beginning of the speech, we mourn the old doddering moron, but by the end of it they have to know that I’m the one in charge.”

McGuire’s greatest skill, he knew, was to keep an utter poker face no matter what he heard. He made an agreeable sound.

“Blunt was a clown, but while the distraction he offered was useful, it could only go so far. Thankfully, we were spared the lamest of the lame duck presidents. Now the adults are in charge, and now we set an agenda for the next decade. The past two years were a warm-up. Next up—no messing around. None of the distractions, just pure focus on enacting our agenda.”

“Right!”

“Americans are sheep—a third of them want to be told what to do, another third doesn’t mind, and the last third will get in line quickly when an example will be made of the most visible ones. All of them take too much for granted. Let’s see how much opposition we get after the social programs are cut, after they have to show that they are aligned with the country if the country is to take care of them. But that’s for later. For now, I want a corker of a conclusion to that speech. I want everyone to fear what’s coming next. I want them scared of each other so that all that counts is the country moving forward. Any ideas?”

McGuire felt himself retreating inside his skull as his mouth spouted off a few ideas—go back to the American Carnage speech, go back to the post-9/11 rhetoric, go back to anti-Red discourse, or go back to WW2 propaganda. But with a modern spin—in a world where people could print their own guns, download specific instructions for bomb-making and fly their own killer drones, it wasn’t enough to secure the borders—you had to expand the borders, and you had to put safeguards inside the borders as well.

Kean nodded vigorously.

“Yes, yes, yes, you know where I’m coming from. You couldn’t stand Blunt anymore, right?

“That’s right, but he was the President.”

“Don’t worry—I’m the one in charge now. You understand where I’m going—One North America, one United States, it’s still our manifest destiny. Checkpoints inside so that we don’t let things slip out of control. That’s all for the next few years, but it has to be prepared ahead of time. 

He winked at him.

“In ten years, I want everyone to look back at this speech, your speech, and say—this is where it all began. This is where, if we listened well, he told us everything that would happen next.”

🗽

“The situation has evolved, Agent Carter, and the King is once more in need of your services.”

“Which would those be, D? I offer a wide range of them.”

“Cabin fever is getting to you, double-A G. What’s for sure is that we won’t need any of your bedroom skills.”

“That still leaves quite a range.”

“The King has authorized another assassination mission. Against the new president.”

Carter sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Should I start a subscription service?”

“I understand your attempt at levity, but this is serious business. The new president remains just as bad a threat to Western Democracies as Blunt was. Perhaps worse, given his lack of obvious limitations.”

“And you’re no doubt aware that the new president hasn’t been seen in two days, and is rumoured to be hiding in a bunker?”

“Yes. We are an intelligence service.”

“So, unless you can get me inside that bunker, there’s nothing to be done for the foreseeable future.”

“If you can’t go to the mountain, wait until the mountain comes to you.”

“I don’t think that’s how that saying goes.”

“Nonetheless, the new president will be above ground and exposed to the elements in a few days.”

“The funeral, inauguration and speech event they’re having? Are you out of your mind?”

“Opportunity calls, Carter. Will you answer?”

Carter answered all right, most of it unprintable.

“We’re not sending you alone and unprepared. Right now, your international colleagues still present in the area are being briefed by their governments to league up again. This is an ensemble performance, and I urge you not to work alone. Also, we’ve got someone ready to give us a lot of information about next week’s logistics so that you can come up with a plan of action.”

“I sense a catch coming up.”

“It means heading back to Washington to get the information and move into your new base of operation. Not in that order.”

“I trust you’ve found us a nice place.”

🗽

All things considered, it was a nice place.

A relic of another era, the former headquarters of the Good Governance Foundation had been built at a time when trust still ran high in the stability of progressive democracies. A space had been identified on the outskirts of Washington next to a traffic roundabout with easy access to New York and West Virginia Avenue. A four-storey building had been erected quickly, with a few apartments on the top floor, loading facilities at the back, conference rooms at the front, and office spaces in the remaining areas of the building. A large park at the back, ample green space on the edges of the property—the point was to have a comfortable place where scholars from around the world would stay for a while, present their findings, learn from each other and take those ideas back to their respective countries—a non-profit campus dedicated to the importance of competent, humane public administration.

The Foundation had closed down six months into the second Blunt presidency.

The building being too eccentric to satisfy anyone else’s requirements, especially as the United States faced a self-inflicted economic recession, it had sat unoccupied since then. Which made it ridiculously easy to secure for a shadowy and well-financed holding company patterned on the just-as-shadowy and well-financed lobbying firms on K Street.

Finances that were generous enough for a crash team of contractors to put back the building in working order (electricity, water, air conditioning, network connectivity, bug sweeping) barely a day after its acquisition. All of it concluding minutes before the arrival of its new occupants.

Carter had mixed feelings about using a former NGO headquarters as a base of operations. The location was a bit too far away from the main highways, but was safely ensconced in an anonymous industrial park far enough from downtown Washington to be reassuring. Amenities were good, and having bedrooms on-site simplified things. But there was something ominous about putting that many eggs in one basket—it would only take one nighttime raid from the FBI to strike out all of them, and he was already itching to make getaway preparations.

On the other hand, he was warming up to his colleagues in arms. The two Asian men were gone: If D was to be trusted already, they were both in their respective countries but willing to come back if needed. Carter didn’t think it was necessary—The remaining six of them could take on the United States Government again, and if they couldn’t, two more operatives would not make much of a difference. 

“My friends!” said Aubert with arms wide open as he entered the conference room.

The Wrecking Crew was back together again—Thorne and the Frenchman had been surprisingly eager to join them here, and the windowless conference room at the centre of the building was going to be their base of operations.

Emily had taken on the role of the Wrecking Crew manager—presenting information and facilitating the discussion. Which was just as well, because she was the only one of them used to briefing other people—the five others were usually debriefed by other agents. 

“Here are the latest aerial shots of the Ellipse,” she said, throwing a few pictures on the main screen.

They did have a lot of information—the new administration had been expansively outspoken about how this was going to be a rebirth of the nation—an old president mourned, a new president sworn in, a new state of the nation. The Ellipse would have seating for both houses of congress, and a much wider area open to the public. Tickets had been snatched within minutes. This was as much a message as an event.

“We don’t have as much visibility on the counter-protests,” she continued. “Online chatter is animated, all hotels within a hundred-mile area are fully booked, and the police are recalling every single available body to work on the streets that day.”

What they didn’t have was a plan. Carter once again re-ran the parameters of the event in his head, and still came up short. They’d gone over it many times—Despite the open-air concept, there wasn’t anything to be done. The buildings around the ellipse were impossible to infiltrate to get within sniper range. Anything airborne and unauthorized would be shot down within ten miles of the Washington monument. Infiltrating the crowd and taking a shot was not just suicide, but would blow up the operation as being foreign-led. 

“I still think the helicopter plan is the best shot we’ve got,” said Thorne. “Get on a military base, get a copter, fly low within range, shoot missiles and get away.”

“We’ve been over this. Too much collateral damage,” said Emily.

“Ask me if I care. After the past few years, everyone in that crowd deserves to be shot.”

“Our mandate is to minimize casualties,” pointed out Nadia.

“Your mandate,” said Thorne.

“Then the question is—are we doing this in three days, or later?”

“The problem with later is that Kean goes back into his hole and we don’t have a shot for weeks. Who knows what damage he could do during that time?”

“Look, we’re not getting anywhere with this. And we only have three hours before the Watergate meeting.”

“Right, let’s get on that.”

Chapter 8 — Spyfall

Carter had tried telling D that he wasn’t the right person for executing an intelligence operation in the middle of downtown Washington. Appealing to elementary tradecraft principles, he had underscored how informants were usually developed over months by a single long-term case officer, earning trust along the way and ruling out the possibility of them being a double agent. Carter didn’t know Washington, DC, particularly well, and as D herself had pointed out, it was by far the single most dangerous operating theatre for opposing forces.

D had not been swayed. In a few clipped sentences, she had impressed upon Carter the necessity to move fast; that the informant was expediting the meeting; that the MI6 station at the embassy was clueless; and that no one did it better than Carter, not matter what “it” was.

In other words, agent Double-A G—this is urgent and you’re the best we have.

So that’s how Carter found himself once again taking public transit under disguise. None of this sat well with him, nor having Saskia come around for the ride. 

He knew that most of his unease was self-created—a common affliction of agents under disguise is to be intensely self-conscious about not looking like they usually did, convinced that everyone around them could see through the fake beard, gray wig and shabby clothes. The truth was that nearly everyone was so self-absorbed in their own personal dramas that they never even bothered to give more than a cursory glance at anyone else, which created plenty of opportunities to slip through unnoticed.

Still, Carter had reservations. Meeting a White House informant not even a kilometre away from the White House seemed like folly itself, even if the meeting had been set up in the celebrated but anonymous Watergate Hotel. He and Saskia were playing the part of an aging couple out for a bit of tourism in Washington, and some naughtiness in a five-star hotel. But the real naughtiness inside the hotel room booked by the informant would be slipping secrets about the new administration’s plans for the event at the Ellipse. The Watergate had been chosen for its sprawling nature—it was easy to get in and out in multiple ways.

As the underground train rolled toward their station, he glanced at his field companion. Saskia looked composed and serene, but he had already so much experience in the field with her that he wouldn’t even try to guess what she was thinking. Even a brunette wig, dowdy clothes and make-up accentuating her aging lines couldn’t hide how good she looked.

Focus, Carter.

The train slowed on final approach to Foggy Bottom station. Soon enough, they were climbing up the stairs to the surface, keeping to the right and accentuating the twenty years that their disguise had given them. The only visible concession to the nature of their trip was their footwear—both were wearing shoes they could run in, although both had an insert to subtly alter their gait. That should be enough to fool any dumb surveillance mechanism connected to the cameras, but they wouldn’t necessarily fool human scrutiny. Still, they’d take their chances: they only had a few hundred yards to walk from the metro to the hotel, and then back.

At least they weren’t in the thick of federal Washington—Foggy Bottom station exited on a pedestrian mall in the middle of a university campus, which did a lot to lower the number of uniformed policemen and, consequently, his paranoia levels. Moving slowly, they made their way across the mall, and then south-west on New Hampshire. The street was quiet, bordered by trees still leafless in February. There were advantages in busy streets, and other advantages in quiet ones. Here, at least, they could keep an eye on every movement. A row of parked cars provided an additional degree of comfort. After all, the favourite grab-job tool of counterespionage teams across the world was always the black van—slowing down next to its target, then two or three burly goons rushing out, hitting their target hard enough to incapacitate and stuffing the hapless agent inside the van—total time: twenty seconds at most.

But their fears were unwarranted. The curves of the Watergate loomed larger the closer they got to their target, and the Washington street plan along their way was a confusing mess of angled intersections and traffic circles that discouraged unwelcome black vans looking for a quick exit.

Their only remaining worry was getting the number of the room booked by the informant, but a query at the front desk for an envelope for the Bierks got them the access card and the four digits they were looking for. Taking the card, Carter kept up the cover by waggling his eyebrows at Saskia, who did chuckle a bit.

Nonetheless, the idea of voluntarily getting into a strange hotel with a strange possibly-informant-maybe-thug was not cheerful. They’d know soon enough.

The door of the hotel room had been left almost imperceptibly unlocked, so Carter opened it. Saskia was ten metres back, and had removed her heel inserts so that she could bolt if necessary—although escaping a hotel through the staircase was not a winning proposition if the opposing side was halfway competent.

Carter’s doubts started to dissipate the moment he looked inside the room. The curtains had been drawn, which was a basic way to avoid telephoto snooping. The lights were on to make sure there weren’t any scary shadows, and the informant—a middle-aged man with an expanding waistline—was sitting on the bed, hands clearly visible. He wasn’t calm—he seemed about to jump up and run away when Carter entered.

So far, so good—all tell-tale signs of an amateur, but a well-meaning one.

Carter knocked on the door with the predefined signal—toc, toc, toc-toc, toc-toc-toc

“I’m sorry, I’m looking for my aunt,” said Carter.

The informant exhaled in recognition of the passphrase.

“I apologize—she must be—held up in traffic.” Said the informant, clearly trying to say the right passphrase and not the one telling Carter that he suspected that he had been followed.

Carter entered.

“My partner will come in the room in a moment.” He warned the informant with his voice low and steady.

From previous operations, he knew that informants were like easily spooked animals—you had to work as hard to put them at ease as to get the information they had to give you.

Saskia entered, and she seemed to put the man at ease. Good-looking women often did that.

The two agents sat on the other bed, distant enough not to alarm the man.

“I’ve never done this before,” said the man haltingly. “My communications have always been electronic—”

“You’re doing fine,” said Carter. “We’re not going to give you our names, we’re not going to ask for names. You tell us what you want.”

“Right. Good. Okay. Well, I’m—I’m a White House staffer who’s had direct contact with the new president since last week.”

Carter had been briefed about the man. Jonas McGuire, codename TYPIST, a long-time political operator who ended up with the single worst job in the world—speechwriter for Blunt. MI6 occasionally heard from him whenever international chaos was fomented in the Oval Office, which pleased Whitehall and the officially non-existent Four-Eyes to no end. They had asked whether McGuire wanted payment for the information, and he had flat-out refused.

Which was intriguing to Carter. Most sources’ motives boiled down to one of four—Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego. He had turned down money. McGuire was not acting out of having been compromised by MI6. He didn’t have the swagger that the smarter-than-you ego-driven sources had. It had to be Ideology.

“I’ve heard a lot of things that I don’t—that I think you should know. After all, I suspect that the heart attack last week wasn’t a heart attack. You clearly got my message about UN/NATO withdrawal.”

Carter nodded. Wait, what did he know about the heart attack?

“Was that your doing?” asked McGuire.

“I was in his bedroom that night,” simply said Carter.

Saskia, to her credit, kept a straight face.

“Wow,” said the man, equally frightened and impressed.

“We’re not hearing that his administration is going to be any different,” suggested Carter as a prompt to get McGuire to talk. He’d get back to the heart attack in due time.

“And you’re absolutely right. Look, Blunt was a paper tiger—basically a signature machine for the real apparatus behind him. Either I wasn’t exposed to it or I fooled myself that it wasn’t that bad, but it was that bad. Kean is much worse—he’s just as much of an authoritarian, except that he’s controlled and he’s on message.”

“Easier to follow, too.”

“Yeah, my speeches are getting straight through.”

Kind of slipped there, McGuire, thought Carter.

“Is he in charge?”

“That’s a good question. Kean looks the part and behaves the part, but he’s not a thinker. He’s always followed by two or three advisors, and I really wonder what role they play. They come from the think-tanks set up by the tech billionaires, but I don’t know anything more. Maybe you can find out.”

He handed them a USB key. Carter was prepared for this—he took a key fob (complete with three keys) from his pocket and removed the rubber covering the USB port.

“We’re not going to take your key, but this device does a complete copy of the material.”

One of R’s last-minute gifts and reluctant adaptations to the twenty-first century—you did not accept a USB key, because it may be helpfully bundled with a tracker. You made a copy and you examined the copy. As a bonus, the copy looked like something that was not a USB key.

As the devices copied the material, McGuire continued talking.

“I’ve put a few things in there. Photos of those advisors. Photos of a few other people, no roles or names given, who have spent a lot of time with Kean in the bunker. There’s one tall black guy, bald with an eyepatch-”

Carter did blink, but that was the extent of his reaction.

“-completely out of place in the White House. You have to understand that the people that work with Kean have more money than God and government. They have their own paramilitary forces. They basically act as if they own the place, because frankly they do.”

Carter’s mind spun in many, many directions. He made a conscious effort to put a lid on those speculations and listen to McGuire.

“Kean’s plan comes straight from those guys, I’m sure. We’re talking manifest destiny turbocharged with christofacist fervour. Breaking all international agreements. Destroying more federal social programs. That’s all on the key. This is not what-“

A break in his voice.

“—this is not what I signed up for. I’m having severe dissociative episodes these days, and the only thing, the only thing that keeps me sane is telling someone who can do something about this.”

He nodded, and Carter nodded along with him. As far as motivations went, McGuire was in a category of his own—not solely guided by Ideology, but guided by his own id. Maybe it should be MICES—the last S being for being able to Sleep at night.

“Kean is a hard target deep down in that bunker.”

“Yeah, forget it. I don’t know how to crack this. I’ve included a few documents we’ve received about the Ellipse show, and it’s not going to be any easier when he emerges like the groundhog for that day. I mean, they’re talking about flying boltguns that day.

“Boltguns?”

“Ah, yes. Top-secret military stuff. I guess I’ve said enough to be hung already. It’s on the USB drive. Boltguns are new aerial drones built around a 180-degree recoilless railgun—essentially a free-flying sniper rifle. Show up anywhere under those devices, and they can punch a hole into you from two thousand yards away. You’re not going to be able to do anything against those.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Carter with more confidence than he felt.

“Hey, look, good job with Blunt, but that was essentially removing the brakes on a runaway train. Every day, I feel like I’m in 1930s Germany.”

“I understand,” said Saskia. “We’re here to stop that.”

The red transfer light on the key fob turned to green, signalling that the data transfer had been completed. McGuire had gone silent, as if he was done.

“Is there anything else on your mind? You mentioned something about the heart attack not being a heart attack.”

“There’s one thing. Speculation. Kean always speaks of a ten-year plan, which sounds like a round number, but I think that there’s something else behind it. Something you probably figured out anyway.”

“What is it?”

“Three weeks ago, we reached the mid-point of Blunt’s presidency. Second anniversary of the inauguration. Now, if you’ve read the Twenty-Second amendment, the wording is pretty specific—if you become the president in the second half of your predecessor’s mandate, you can run in the next two elections. Ten-year mandate. Isn’t the timing of it just a bit convenient?”

🗽

Back in the streets, on their way to the Metro station, Carter wasn’t sure what he disliked most—the omnipresent threat of being caught, the bold plan for American fascism that they’d been shown, or the idea that Jury had been working directly with the Kean team to facilitate Blunt’s assassination.

That was so obvious it was a wonder it hadn’t occurred to them before.

From Saskia’s eyes, he knew he wasn’t the only one scared witless.

As Carter’s mind threatened to take the lid off the big box of speculations, a buzzing from his phone interrupted his train of thought.

G-laughing-emoji: You’ve been made. That E Street business last week. Teams rushing toward you. EVAC NOW.

Saskia looked at him. She knew mid-mission comms were never good news.

“We’ve been made.”

That was all it took. She softly but clearly broke away, as per protocol. They were fifty metres away from the escalators leading down to the metro station, and still no black vans. Could they make it? The metro was a high-risk, high-reward gambit. Win, and you’re on your way home faster than they can organize against you. Lose, and a world of pain begins in a black van.

But then he remembered his old SAS service motto: Who dares wins.

Saskia had apparently come to the same conclusion—Belying her aged disguise, she drew away sharply from Carter and elbowed her way into the escalators decisively. 

Carter swept the surroundings calmly and saw it approach from the south—a white van, big enough for plenty of burly goons in the back.

He pushed forward into the escalators, also forgoing age-related demeanour in a rush to get down as quickly as pedestrian traffic allowed. He was careful not to jostle anyone—that would draw a target on his back. He was also conscious about the key fob in his pocket. The smartest thing would be to throw it into the nearest rubbish bin, except that anyone looking even casually would find it weird that someone would throw his keys in the trash—and the people tailing him were not looking casually. Why hadn’t he hidden it in an empty bag of crisps?

He saw Saskia in front of him as he walked the round corridor on her way to the station itself. He was maybe fifty metres back and wasn’t looking to catch up. Best-case scenario, they would slip in the first available train, different cars, and regroup later. 

But from the commotion up and behind him, he suspected that there was not going to be a best-case scenario. Loud low shouting, higher screaming—exactly the sound of a goon squad bulldozing their way through a mass of people.

“MAKE WAY! FBI!” he heard.

Keep cool, Carter. You don’t know how they’ve made you.

In the heat of a ground op, there’s a world of difference between knowing that a target is there and getting eyes on the prey. He was in a casual overcoat fit for a tourist and he had a beard—not much, but just enough to create a moment of doubt that he could use to escape.

He moved with the crowd, not in a hurry. The last thing he wanted to do was to draw visual attention o himself as being faster than the people around him. 

Walk, don’t run. Keep calm.

Saskia had made it past the turnstile, and so did he. He looked at the boards and saw that a train was incoming. There were still goon noises behind him, but it sounded as if they were looking at everyone.

As he walked down the last flight of stairs, he started to hope. The train was just stopping at the station, people were stepping in, commuters were all moving faster to catch an open door, an influx of civilians heading upstairs was making the pursuit harder. As he entered the station platform with the waffle-like ceiling, he felt himself escaping the trap.

He saw Saskia enter the first available car. Good for her. Only a few seconds before the doors closed. He was getting there, only a few metres to go-

Then a hand jerked him back.

Another ripped off his beard.

“WE’VE GOT HIM!” shouted the goon next to him.

Carter’s hand shot out of his jacket pocket, and he had just enough space to do an underhand throw of the key fob in his hand. His aim was true, and his timing was miraculous—the key shot past the threshold and hit Saskia a fraction of a moment before the doors shut close.

“STOP MOVING!” shouted a goon, before giving him the first of many, many punches.

Carter tried to absorb the hits stoically, but everyone had their limits and the goons were not playing nice. They knew where to hit—the head, the stomach, the shins. Within moments, he was on the ground, “FBI OFFICIAL BUSINESS!” they shouted while beating him up. The crowd gave them space. Carter suspected that he was being filmed by about three different people and hoped that it wouldn’t make the news.

Then the blows stopped, and he was harshly lifted by the shoulders. A plastic tie-wrap was tightened against his hands even as he tried forcing them apart.

Black van, here I come, he thought fuzzily.

The trip back up the two elevators felt interminable, which suited him just fine. Head lolling, muscles slack, he wasn’t going to give them an excuse to damage him even further. Let them think he was out.

As he was manhandled, hands went through his coat and pants in the usual places, patting for shoulder or ankle holsters, going through his pockets for anything suspicious or identification. They were disappointed—Carter wasn’t a rank amateur enough to carry a piece in the streets of the capital, and his identification was somewhere else.

They threw him roughly on the floor of a white van’s back compartment. Two goons went in the front to drive, while two more kept him company at the back. He curled into a ball to protect himself, and to ensure that his hands could reach his belt.

This was really not good. Secondary locations were where you were brought to die.

Carter was not stranger to pain, or to being manhandled by enemy agents. It came with the job. Now that the physical surprise of being roughened up was past, he felt more comfortable. Blood was trickling down his face and the bruises would be ferocious, but moment by moment, he was refocusing.

He had to do something soon. Every spare minute they had with him was a minute during which they could rough him up a little bit more. Every minute took him away from downtown and toward a black-bag site. Because he certainly wasn’t going to the interim FBI headquarters, that was for sure. Not with those guys.

He started laughing. That got him a kick in the ribs, new flashes of pain but also, as he’d expected, a verbal reaction.

“What’s so funny, you piece of trash?”

The van stopped at a traffic light. Carter’s fingers found what he was looking for.

“You guys,” haltingly said Carter between spikes of pain, “are the worst FBI agents ever.”

As the van got underway again, one of the goons couldn’t help himself and responded.

“Feh. We’re not feds.”

“And that’s bad news for you,” said the other goon.

“I’m not so… sure about that,” said Carter, struggling with his fingers.

“Big talk for someone about to die.”

Carter felt the tie-wrap snap under the pressure of the small blade he’d been working against it, and didn’t waste a moment—he shot up and punched one goon in the throat, making sure to use the hand that was holding the blade.

The goon brought his hands to his bleeding throat and abandoned any idea of hitting back Carter. Self-preservation.

Following that same train of thought, Carter’s hand swept to the other side of the van and slashed the other goon’s cheek with the blade, deep enough to rattle on teeth. That other goon also brought a hand to his face.

Carter knew that speed was of the essence—he hit with his other hand, not to wound but to push back. If everything was happening as expected—

—yes, the goon in the passenger seat was drawing his gun.

Carter reached out with his arm, slashed the goon’s hand with the blade, and the gun dropped. 

It never touched the floor of the van because Carter took it and shot one goon in the face, staining the inside of the van. The second goon was now fighting for his life, and managed to hit Carter hard on the head. As the agent staggered, the goon drew his hand down to the taser unit at his belt.

This could get ugly, thought Carter-in between flashes in his vision and sharp spikes of pain. He wouldn’t last a long time after being tasered.

But Washington, DC, traffic saved Carter, in the form of the van braking hard to avoid smashing into the cars in front of it. Barely clinging to consciousness, Carter raised his gun and shot the second goon, making another red splatter on the van’s walls.

The driver was shouting something at the passenger, but Carter didn’t care. As long as there were bullets in that gun, he wasn’t going to let them interrupt anything.

After taking a moment to blink and clear his vision, he fired at the passenger, the bullet making a conspicuous starburst pattern in the windshield. He hesitated a moment and didn’t shoot the last goon—The driver still had some usefulness, especially as the van accelerated and cleared the intersection.

“I want you to stop!” said Carter more out of professional courtesy.

Goons, by definition, are not smart. They’re hired guns. This one seemed dumber than most, since rather than to do the sensible thing, like opening the door and jumping out, he reached for a weapon at his belt.

If Carter had had the time to sigh, he would have—this gave him two equally unappealing choices:  Shoot the goon and suffer the inevitable crash that would follow, or not shoot and take his chances with someone blindly firing a gun in the van’s back compartment.

What pushed his decision was the certainty that if he survived the wild shootout, he would still have to kill the driver. 

So, he shot the driver first and steeled himself against what was to come.

It took only two seconds for the van to veer sharply to the right and flip on its side. Carter was hit again by the goons, although this time it was more a matter of physics and gravity in a small enclosed space rather than a conscious action by the dead men. The van didn’t flip further, but quickly stopped in a catastrophic noise of metal grinding against the ground.

Carter found himself at the bottom of the flipped van, tangled in the dead goons. Ignoring his body’s overwhelming pain, he made his way to the front compartment, grabbed the bag of things they’d taken from him (his phone, essentially) then stepped on what remained of the passenger’s head to push open the driver’s door against gravity. 

He laboriously made his way on top of the van, then let himself fall onto the ground.

He looked around. The van had barely made it south of Constitution Avenue, meaning that it had flipped over in parkland rather than next to a building. He was next to a small baseball field, and looking south, he could see the outline of the Washington monument through the empty branches.

Not that he could afford more time for sightseeing—traffic had ground to a stop after the spectacular crash, and people were heading in his direction.

“Kidnapping attempt!” he shouted truthfully.

Then he ran. 

Not very well, but still fast enough to discourage any civilian from taking an interest in him. His beard had been ripped off, and his gray wig was gone, and that gave him the impression of being himself once more. 

Seeing the Lincoln Memorial gave him hope and direction—not out of any meaningless historical inspiration, but because it clearly told him where he was, and what to do next.

He stowed his trusty pocket knife in one of the pockets of his jacket. R hadn’t given him any useful gadgets this time around, so Carter had improvised and gotten his own when visiting hardware stores on the first day. A few small pocket knives, cleverly hidden in his clothes, could really change one fellow’s entire outlook on life—starting with cutting open tie wraps.

Hands shaking as he ran, he still managed to open his phone, find the contact he was looking for and text:  911 Arlington. Then he put the phone back in its pouch.

Already out of breath from the goons’ roughening up, he somehow managed to find another reservoir of energy. Predictably, sirens rang behind him as helpful citizens called their own 911 to report the day’s excitement in the capital. In a minute or two, the van would be overrun by emergency responders. 

Carter was sure that they would not find any survivors. But they would find weapons, unmarked goons and evidence of considerable violence. Too bad he couldn’t take the corpses with him—he might have been able to stage a few fake deaths for him and his team. Everyone can be helpful, even in death.

Too slowly for his own liking, he crossed the roundabout and made his way past the back of the Lincoln Memorial monument. He was trying to cut across to get as quickly as he could to the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which led from Washington to Virginia. Far to his right, he could even see the skyscrapers of downtown Arlington.

I need five more minutes; he thought in between sharp breaths and indescribable pain. Five. More. Damn. Minutes.

He got them. Slowly, he noticed that the traffic on the bridge grew lighter, and by mid-point could see that access to the bridge had been blocked on the Virginia side by police cars, their flashing lights clearly discouraging anyone from crossing.

Looking back, he saw that the same was true of the DC side. Except that another car was making its way past the impromptu blockage toward him.

The Virginians weren’t much slower, as a car and an armoured truck rushed the distance between him.

Out of breath, almost out of options, he stopped. This would not be fun. Worse, yet—another physical effort was required in order to suffer even more physical pain.

Groaning, he hoisted himself up the four-foot railing of the bridge. 

Breathing hard, he looked both ways—the cars still coming toward him, heavy SWAT trucks following. No, staying here wasn’t an option.

Reluctantly, he let himself fall into the Potomac.

The fall has only ten metres down, but took long enough for him to second-guess himself. Maybe the police wouldn’t have been so terrible. Maybe a multi-year stint in prison under a fascist administration while waiting for a prisoner exchange with the United Kingdom wouldn’t have been so bad. Or at least better than throwing oneself in the frigid water of a river at the beginning of February.

He still had enough wit to himself to keep his body completely upright, take a deep breath and hit the water feet first with his knees loose. It was still like hitting a brick wall—it knocked his breath out, and going underwater at the near-freezing temperature of the river only made things worse. What did get better, at least for a few instants, was the pain he felt from the beating—his body rebelled so thoroughly against the all-enveloping cold that it temporarily forgot about muscle plain.

Kicking his legs to get back to the surface as quickly as possible, he emerged underneath the bridge—the flow of the river had already carried him far enough to be out of sight from anyone peering at where he’d gone down.

Not that Carter was in any way out of trouble—he was badly hurt, out of breath, in the middle of a glacial, free-flowing body of water and unable to reach any kind of surface for a long time. He had jumped near the middle of a span in order not to hit anything in his way down, and wasn’t a strong enough swimmer to reach the pillars.

So, he floated, and felt himself growing weaker. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to hold—already, the bridge was receding, and the shore was far, far away. 

So far away…

He let himself float, occasionally getting his head out of the water to gasp for air. A droning sound grew louder, but that didn’t seem important.

Then he felt hands at his shoulders—a rope tied under his arm, and then was lifted out of the water.

He landed in the bottom of a boat with a thud.

“Oh, mon ami, let us get you in a better shape, right?” said a familiar voice.

His sodden jacket was removed, and a warm dry blanket wrapped around him.

Blinking to clear his vision, he came back to the world.

Aubert?

“I received your message right on time. I was expecting you at the Roosevelt Bridge, not this one. Fortunately, I saw you take that dive on my way in, so I did not have to look too long for you.”

He felt himself put against the front windshield of the small boat.

Things were getting better for Carter, if by “better” one meant uncontrollable shivers rather than the body welcoming hypothermia with open arms. The full-body shakes made his teeth rattle, but at least he wasn’t alone, and he was getting imperceptibly drier at every moment.

Aubert got the boat underway, driving them away from the bridge. 

Carter could see the flashing lights of the police vehicles, and several people looking in their direction. No one was taking any shots yet, which counted as another improvement.

The reason for this lack of action became clear a minute later, as they both heard helicopters. They were approaching the next major bridge on their way south, not too far away from the Pentagon.

Carter was getting his breath back and his shivering was working at raising his body temperature, but he wasn’t in fighting mode yet. He looked around and saw three helicopters converging toward them from different directions—one with clear FBI markings, another with Coast Guard livery and another smaller helicopter without markings.

“Oh, this will not do,” remarked Aubert. “Let’s go hide under the bridge.”

“The unmarked… helicopter… is the one… that worries me,” added Carter through chattering teeth.

The Coast Guard was probably just reacting to reports of a man going overboard on the bridge. The FBI copter was probably investigating the weirdness around the crashed van. But the unmarked helicopter? Carter feared that they were buddies with the not-so-dearly departed van goons, and in a vengeful mood.

Carter made a point of waving to the Coast Guard chopper, a mid-sized Dolphin variant, giving them a big grin and the best thumbs-up he could manage under the circumstances.

The two federal helicopters hung low over the Potomac, as the third helicopter stayed a short distance away. They slipped under the first bridge, giving them some distance. The Potomac, at this point, was crossed by no less than five bridges within a five-hundred-yard span—Two major two-lane highways, one smaller road bridge, a metro crossing and a railroad—plenty of space for a small craft to hide under the spans and around the pillars, and a complicated environment for the helicopters to work in.

Slowing the boat under the twin four-lane spans, Aubert observed the situation. Only the foolhardiest pilots would dare fly under the low bridge, but that didn’t mean they were harmless. Other than taking shots at them, their most likely irritant would be to keep their craft stuck under the bridge long enough for official boats to encircle them.

The Coast Guard and FBI helicopters seemed to have a small jurisdictional row because both helicopters were hovering next to each other, nose pointed in their direction, not moving and not telling them anything through the bullhorns either. Carter dimly recalled that the Coast Guard wasn’t only about maritime search and rescue—they had an antiterrorist role (as did any federal organization these days), and were probably hashing out who had dibs on them.

After a few moments, the FBI won and the Coast Guard copter moved away—but not too far, just in case they would be needed. Otherwise, the standoff continued.

“Hey, where’s the unmarked copter?” asked Carter.

It wasn’t hovering where it had been, near the DC shore on the same side of the bridge as the other choppers.

“Watch out!” said Aubert as he hit the boat’s throttle and sharply turned.

Carter had the time to turn his head and see the other helicopter approaching from the other side of the bridge… and two men firing at them from the open door of the helicopter.

Thanks to Aubert, the bullets missed them—but the chopper pilot was either crazy or insanely confident because he was clearly aiming to cross under the bridge’s ten-yard-high span

Aubert gunned their craft toward the FBI helicopter—at least, Carter thought, they weren’t shooting at them.

This whole business of shooting through the open side door reeked of the kinds of paramilitary goons that James had dispatched in the van.

“They’re not here to arrest us,” said Carter.

“I get that feeling too. Let’s see if they feel brazen enough to cross the FBI.”

Considering that the pilot was crossing underneath a major highway bridge sideways, Carter did not have a good feeling about it.

Aubert maneuvered them right under the FBI helicopter, which had at least started bellowing, “Stop! FBI!” through their bullhorn.

They eventually realized they had a bigger problem than the two agents. “Hey, there! Stop shooting! FBI!”

To his horror, Carter saw the nose of a rocket-propelled grenade make its way out of the helicopter side door, a split second before the rocket was fired.

“Rocket!”

They were not the target: the FBI helicopter was. The grenade hit the front canopy of the police chopper and exploded. It wasn’t particularly high above the Potomac to begin with—almost more quickly than Aubert could react, the entire copter fell and hit the water right next to them.

Aubert gave a nudge to the throttle, and not a moment too soon—as the FBI helicopter hit the water, it fell on its side, and the blade broke apart on the water, debris narrowly missing them.

“Back to the bridge!” hollered Aubert above the noise.

The Coast Guard Dolphin moved in, shooting in turn at the private helicopter. Another rocket was launched from the good’s helicopter, but the Coast Guard pilot was better prepared than the FBI one, and jerked course—the rocket narrowly missing the red-and-white vehicle. 

This, unfortunately, drove the unmarked chopper under the bridge, hot on the trail of their watercraft. They hadn’t forgotten that their primary mission was to kill Carter, and once again bullets flew through the air.

Aubert maneuvered their craft around a pillar, buying them a few seconds.

“Can you take the wheel?” said Aubert.

Carter didn’t think it was a good idea, but his fingers were (barely) capable of grabbing the controls, and Aubert wouldn’t ask unless he had a good idea in mind. Carter took control and, out of better ideas, kept circling the pillar.

The enemy helicopter was following them—perhaps a bit warily given the armed Dolphin not too far away. Focusing on the controls through his nearly frozen fingers, Carter only had a fuzzy idea that the French agent was taking something from the large canvas bag at the bottom of the craft.

Then he saw Aubert pull up a missile launcher.

“You brought back some very nice gifts from that farm, Carter,” said the Frenchman while holstering the weapon. “Now do me a favour and still the boat for a moment.”

Carter drew back on the throttle and straightened the wheel. Moments later, the black unmarked helicopter reappeared from behind the pillar, and Aubert was ready—he fired the weapon, and the missile flew right into the upper section of the helicopter—hitting the base of the main rotor.

It wasn’t a big rocket, but its explosion was enough to shear the blades from the body of the helicopter, making it fall into the river right underneath the bridge.

“We’ve got an opportunity!” said Aubert while throwing the rocket launcher in the water. “Gun it, Carter!”

Carter pushed on the throttle, almost sending them both falling to the back of the craft. Far downriver, he could see dark-gray boats rushing toward them.

“More problems,” he said as Aubert took the wheel again.

“Only if we stay slow, which I do not intent to do,” replied the Frenchman, gunning for the DC shore next to them.

Carter looked and saw that the Coast Guard copter had chosen to go rescue the FBI agents emerging from the wreckage of their aircraft.

“We’re going to have to move fast once we hit the shore,” said Aubert, and Carter did his part by shrugging off the blanket still draped around his shoulders, making sure he was ready to run, and closing the open canvas bag that probably had enough in it to send them straight to jail for weapons trafficking.

Aubert had not meant a euphemism when he had said “hit the shore”—he didn’t slow down as their craft hit the rocky area and tore through a metal railing keeping joggers on the shore trail away from the water. Even having anticipated the hit, he had trouble keeping himself upright.

“Come on!” said Aubert as he hefted the canvas bag on his shoulders.

He followed. Running on the lawn next to the river, he looked ahead and despaired when he saw the spry and not beaten-up Frenchman hop over a black waist-high chain-link fence. Ugh, another bit of acrobatics with a body that wanted nothing more than lie down for a few days.

Still, he did it. After all, this was still easier than SAS training.

A large SUV rushed from the nearby parking lot to meet them, and as it stopped next to them, Carter was happy to recognize the face—Thorne.

“Come on, we’ve gotta go!”

Carter threw himself at the back of the SUV, and buckled himself immediately.

As is happened, though, they didn’t need to—Thorne clearly knew where he was going, even at the expense of a few dodgy maneuvers through the Washington traffic. Two minutes and one blown red light later, they were on the I-395 heading north-east.

“We’ve got one vehicle change coming up,” warned Thorne, “but it’s looking good so far.”

He was right—no helicopters, no obvious pursuit vehicles. Their cover was getting increasingly thin—Carter was probably blown for any operational purpose—but for now, it looked as if they’d somehow slipped away.

“You’re not going to believe what we’ve heard,” finally said Carter. “A big piece of the puzzle just fell into place.”

“Ooh, did you find out who put the knives in Blunt?” said Aubert.

“Well—”

“Hey, hey, while we’re all here between us guys, there’s something I have to admit,” said Thorne.

“What now? He’s about to tell us secrets!” said Aubert.

“I have secrets too!”

“Then what are you waiting for? Talk!”

“All right, all right. I can’t say who stabbed him with the first or the third knife, but…”

“You used the buck knife, of course,” said Carter.

“Was it that obvious?”

“In retrospect, yes.”

“So how about those secrets?” insisted the Frenchman. “We are in intelligence, after all.”

“Well, it’s probably just as obvious…”

Chapter 9 — Perchance to Kill

McGuire was becoming a connoisseur of detachment. An appreciator of the different degrees and subtleties of it.

This morning’s visit to the presidential bunker, for instance, had been an exercise in one type of detachment—the bad kind, in which he was a small child stuck inside his own body, not quite believing what was happening to him, hoping he could get away. The increasing familiarity of his visits down here was not helping—what had been awe-inspiring the first time around was now getting annoying, or would become annoying if he had any more capacity to feel. This time, the extensive security checks were becoming routine, and he got the impression that the armed guards were getting annoyed at the constant flow of people in and out of the bunker. What good was an ultra-secret facility if even the speechwriter was getting in twice a day?

This afternoon was a different kind of detachment. It should have been much worse. Considering what he’d done over the lunch break—playing spy, spilling secrets to foreign agents and actively plotting to (gasp) kill the President of the United States—an unexpected call to Kean’s side in the bunker was hardly good news. Were they going to show him full-4K surveillance footage of him? Were they going to throw DLP logs of his file-copying into his face? Were they bringing him in a small execution room to put a bullet in his head as a traitor? Maybe.

But the good kind of detachment he was feeling had the I’m-about-to-quit kind of energy that gave delusions of invulnerability. This time, he was in full control of his body. He enjoyed every breath he took. He had put one over the mighty White House and the all-powerful puppetmasters behind the scenes. Whatever happened next, he had the clean conscience of a true patriot—not the grotesque caricature of the maggats, but the ones who put national interest above party politics, job security or even personal safety. He had already won.

Considering this, he was (behind his steel mask of impassivity) feeling quite good about himself when he sat next to Kean and the Communication Director. Even the threat of summary execution was receding, almost gone: Every step he’s taken since being summoned from his cubicle had been as usual, brought to the President as usual, greeted as usual.

“McGuire, we’re nearly there. Forty-eight hours to go. Can you feel it? I can feel it. This is going to be the rebirth of the republic, and I will be there to guide it. Like a shepherd. Historical times, and I’m the right person at the right time.”

If McGuire could get used to Blunt’s childish babbling, he could also get used to Kean’s erupting megalomania. 

“What I’d like from you before tomorrow morning is a little touch-up on the expansion of surveillance powers to prevent terrorism. With the riots across the nation, we have to—”

The worst thing is that as far as his clients ever went, Kean was easy to work with. Sure, he often kept fiddling with the speech, but he took the process seriously, he knew what he wanted, and he always gave McGuire good material to work with. Kean’s oratory skills were good, and he could handle even moderately challenging material. 

Too bad about the demented ideals he was pursuing.

Kean was wrapping up his latest suggestions when one of the anonymous advisors who had been missing from the octagonal office walked into the room and started talking as if McGuire wasn’t there.

“President Kean, we have to speed up the vice-presidential selection process. I’ve got Jacobson and Moore begging for consideration, and a pick sooner than later would be essential—”

“I’m not picking anyone for months,” said Kean. “No one is going to undercut my first hundred days as president, and anyone who wants to be Vice-President is going to have to beg for it. In fact, let’s start making conditions. Whoever wants to be Vice-President has to suck me off.”

The advisor’s head jerked back.

“This is not a metaphor. I’m talking about them, on their knees, in front of me, mouth open. This isn’t about sex. It’s about power and trust and submission. I am the President. I need to me absolutely sure that they understand that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t want to talk about this for the next few weeks, and when we do—knee protectors and breath mints will have to be included in the discussion.”

Dismissing the advisor, Kean turned toward McGuire and the Communication Director.

“That’s how you deal with matters when you’re President. Now let’s wrap up that speech.”

🗽

“I don’t see a way though this,” said Saskia after a moment of silence.

The six of them were inside the GGF inner conference room, staring at the wall-covering ultra-high-resolution screen where Emily had put up the information they had received from McGuire.

Considering the speechwriter’s lack of professional qualifications in intelligence gathering, the man had done well in assembling a logistics dossier on the event: he’d been able to bundle up event-planning documents, precise instructions on how to set up the area, and—more importantly- the White House-approved security plans. Including the military units to be deployed.

“This thing is evil,” said Thorne while looking at a diagram of the Boltgun drones.

Everyone nodded.

The Hackwell XDS-1, recently put in service, was essentially a bulbous cigar with large straight wings and a V-shaped tail. The front of the drone was distinguished by a protuberance at the bottom that allowed a full 180-degree panoramic sweep for the weapon around which the drone was built—a railgun capable of throwing slugs of titanium at near-hypersonic speeds. Not quite a laser weapon, but deadlier than a sniper rifle.

Carter had read unconfirmed rumours of the drone’s existence, but the summary of their capabilities included in the security briefing was worse than anything suspected by MI6:  three-hour flying time, two-thousand-yard range, ten second reload time and semi-autonomous targeting. The AI capabilities built in the machine allowed for an operator to designate targets, and then the machine aimed and fired when it calculated it had a good chance of success. The operator could designate a cluster of up to six targets, and the machine would lodge a slug into each one of them without further directives, even if they ran.

“There’s no way we can go against this,” said Thorne.

He was right—with those demons hovering above, nearly out of sight, any attempt was suicide.

“What about shooting from under cover?”

“We’ve been over this. What cover? The closest buildings to the Ellipse are all federal.”

It spoke volumes that the building with the clearest sight-lines to the Ellipse was the White House to the North. East was the Department of Commerce; West was the Constitutional Hall; south, far away, was the very public Jefferson Memorial. 

Trees were lined around the Ellipse from all directions, and even with February’s lack of foliage, the branches made it a gamble to get a clear shot. What certainly didn’t help were the height restrictions within the District, meaning that there were no good perches from anywhere within miles. Even the skyscrapers in Arlington were too far away.

“Moving vehicle?” said Thorne.

“Again; no sight-lines, and insanity in Washington traffic. Don’t get cocky because you got lucky twice with your getaways.”

They all fell silent.

“How about from the top of the Washington monument?” suggested Thorne.

“NO.” they all said at once.

“I don’t think it’s that bad of an idea…”

There was a long silence.

“What if…” said Emily while looking at the screen, “we use their own guns?”

“What do you mean—Oooh,” said Nadia.

“You can’t be serious,” said Carter.

“What?” said Thorne.

“The boltguns,” said Emily. “What if we took control of them?”

“That’s even less plausible than shooting from the top of the Washington Monument,” said Thorne. “You would need to get the encrypted communication codes, figure out the controls, take the shot, and somehow… hmmm.”

“It does simplify many problems,” said Aubert.

“Except for the part where we try to crack open a control code designed by the NSA, probably implemented through hardware encryption components, and tightly linked to military communication channels.”

“Maybe I can help with that,” said an old woman’s voice from the back of the room.

They all turned, surprised. They’d been so focused on the screen that they had missed the entrance of a middle-aged Latina cleaning lady pushing a cart.

“Woah, who are you, lady?” said Thorne.

“Well, I may not be a lady,” she said before pulling up a very convincing mask…

…revealing a heavily Botoxed face and a winning smile. 

“Nathan Lundt, at your service. I heard this was now a rogue mission, which is exactly my kind of operation.”

“Umm….”

“I’m from the UOC.”

“Oooh, the UOC. What does that stand for, already?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay, all right, it’s the Unlikely Operations Council.”

“Is that a real thing?”

“Sure, don’t believe it; it’ll make us happy.”

“Look, Nathan,” said Carter, “we’re not describing a walk in the park here. You would have to infiltrate the NSA headquarters, make your way into the National Registry of Encryption Keys, steal the Krypton transmitters, make your way outside the base, possibly escape pursuit, and somehow make it back here without attracting attention and compromising this operation.”

“There may be top-secret computer rooms,” said Aubert, “thrilling car chases, convincing impersonations, motorcycle jousting, fights atop a train and climbing very tall buildings freehand.”

“It’s an impossible mission,” concluded Saskia.

“Say no more!” said Lundt before running out of the room.

“Hmmm,” they all said.

“Maybe we should work on contingency plans,” said Emily.

“Maybe I can help with that,” said another voice from the other back corner of the room.

A man advanced toward them from where he had been listening. Again, the agents had been so focused on the screen and then on Nathan that they had not noticed the other man.

Carter looked at him and understood why he’d escaped their notice. Gordon Laffer—who else could it be?—was plain to the point of being featureless. He looked like thousands of other anonymous middle-aged men, fading from memory the moment they went out of sight.

“Just how many other people are hiding in this room?” asked Thorne.

They looked, but did not find anyone else.

Laffer sat and waited patiently for them to finish.

“I can get you undetectable access to many encrypted channels,” he said calmly. “That doesn’t take care of the encryption between control and the drones themselves, but it gets you at the door, and then I’m sure you can try a few things to get inside. My purview doesn’t extend to military secrets, unfortunately, but I may be able to get you an operator’s manual.”

“This is all very interesting, Mister G-laughing-emoji,” said Carter, “and we will gladly accept your help, but I have many questions about matters other than the drones.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Laffer.

The man was trying to give Carter a run for his money in matter of unflappability.

“Let’s talk about Mick Jury. Friend of yours?”

“Absolutely not. I’m career CIA. He’s a parapolitical goon.”

Carter nodded. From McGuire’s hint, MI6 had pierced together Jury’s career—ex US special forces, turned paramilitary for hire, increasingly chummy with billionaires anxious to protect their lives and properties after a few populist assassinations and uprisings. The link with Kean had been found too late to be helpful.

“So, the organization he was talking about…?”

“A flight of fantasy designed to comfort you, as far as I’ve been able to determine. But I still had to check because the US intelligence community is vast and not wholly perceptible.”

“So, our wrecking crew of foreign agents—’

“You were co-opted into executing exactly what the Vice-President wanted you to do. Ten years reign, and that’s staying strictly within the confines of the Constitution and so-called elections. Kean is still a young man.”

“But Blunt died of a heart attack.”

“Was it a natural heart attack, Agent Carter? After all, weren’t you there, ready to strike with Thiosulfate Dioxide? A suggestion you made to Jury himself?”

Carter’s eyes narrowed, recalling the scene. 

“I found him dead, well before the three knives. In bed, peaceful. No signs of struggle. Either he was injected without his knowledge, which I find hard to believe, or he ingested it unknowingly—Ah, the burger!”

Blunt pulled up his phone to look at the picture he’d taken. Yes, yes—there had been the remnants of a meal right there.

“Bloody hell.”

“Um, care to explain?” asked Aubert.

“Blunt was poisoned. Thiosulfate Dioxide in his late-night lunch. A big juicy burger, dripping with salt and fat, exactly what you needed to speed up the ingestion of Thiosulfate Dioxide.”

“Planted there by the staff?”

“Maybe even Jury himself. And then, to blur the cards, I show up with a syringe to provide an enemy to be condemned either now or later.”

“But then three knives pop into the body,” said Laffer, “discouraging scrutiny of the night’s exact events. You really owe a few thanks to those three mysterious stabbers.”

Carter had to restrain himself from looking at Nadia and Thorne. Not to mention whoever slipped in that first knife.

“That certainly clear up a few things,” said Carter. “If we take out Kean, that’s almost like avenging Blunt.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Thorne. “Still glad he’s gone.”

“This was a coup.”

“Still is,” said Laffer. “The inauguration will only confirm it. I’m here for a reason.”

“We have to find a way.”

“I believe you’re on the right track with the boltguns.”

“Is the electronic shield you promised us still up?”

“Tattered, but still operational. Most of you still don’t exist to the authorities, but I can’t say the same for Agent Diestel or you, Agent Carter. Jury’s group of goons managed to pierce the shield by having their own surveillance network, and linking you to the killing of Naoise on E Street. Deplorable bit of business, that, although it must have been quite satisfying. Now, of course, you’re at the top of their list due to that stunt this afternoon.”

The only reason why Carter wasn’t in bed at the moment was an outrageous cocktail of painkillers he had chugged down upon his return. Still, he nearly grimaced as he shrugged.

“Since their systems tap into DC’s surveillance system, consider yourself fried in the District. The FBI, local police and the military still don’t know who you are, but don’t step near the Federal Triangle unless you’re prepared to exterminate Jury’s entire force.”

“I just might.”

“Of course, you would have to get there. Estimates suggest that there’s going to be up to a million people flooding into the district in two days. A hundred thousand for the inauguration, and the rest to protest. Things could turn ugly.”

“Then you’re suggesting that we hold off?” asked Emily, confused.

“No, I’m suggesting the exact opposite. Here’s why.”

He took out a coin and flipped it.

As Laffer explained, Carter saw the inevitability of having to strike on that day, and at that specific moment.

There was really no other choice.

Chapter 10 — You Only Shoot Thrice

Carter was inordinately pleased that the presidential event was only taking place the following day. He had spent most of the 24 hours following his dip in the Potomac in bed, every single muscle sore even under powerful painkillers. He was getting better, but for now he was hurting in places he didn’t even know existed.

Considering what Laffer had said about his electronic shield being damaged, being essentially under house arrest was just fine with him for now—more time to recuperate. Most of the work now belonged to others, anyway. From time to time, he’d leave the dormitory on the third floor of the GGF building and hobble down like an old man to the conference room where he’d see Emily furiously concentrating on computer code.

By midday, her attention had switched from code to a chat window.

“You brought other people in this?” he asked when she looked up.

“Good people. I got to know them in tough circumstances—they can be trusted.”

He shrugged. She knew what she was doing, and from the number of energy-drink cans next to her, he suspected she hadn’t slept much since identifying the boltguns as their best chance. Now she had to deliver.

During that day, Carter slept, got up and took another dose of the painkiller cocktail (it turned out that most of the other operatives had their own version of the recipe, slightly different), and went to get updates. He was worried no matter whether he slept or was awake—his paranoid dreams featured black vans stopping in front of the GGF headquarters and pumping rockets into the building, and none of this was helped by the unyielding deadline they were facing. It would have been different had he been in the field—there, at least, he had some control. Here, he was stuck waiting for the boffins to complete their work.

Later during the day, as Carter’s muscles began ever-so-slightly to unknot, he ambled downstairs and saw Laffer talking to Emily. Asking about it, he learned that Laffer was going to be sitting with them for at least the next day.

“I told the office I’d be watching the inauguration,” he said, “which in a way I will.”

“In the meantime, he’s helping me understand the structure of the command-and-control network.”

“Emily is being characteristically modest—she’s doing most of the work along with her friends. I’m just the one they explain it to.”

“So, where are we?” asked Carter.

Emily exhaled.

“Far in, and yet far from out. First, we have to find a way into military communication channels that won’t get us detected, and then—“

As she described the twelve other steps required before they could click on a mouse button and get a boltgun hit on a target, Carter understood that there were two big pieces—cracking the code, and then figuring out the controls—and that it was all frightfully complicated. 

His attention was momentarily brought back by one of Emily’s explanations.

“I’ve got a team helping with most of it, but as with all secure systems, there are other opposing teams sniffing around.”

“Jury’s men?”

“Hard to tell, but probably not—they’re using probes and scripts that we’ve seen from the Chinese, the Russians and even some of the expatriate Ukrainians. Maybe the North Koreans.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, the problem with opening the gate is that a lot of people want in.”

As she explained the… buffer overflow? … techniques they were trying out, Carter’s attention wandered to a point where he wasn’t even able to fake interest.

Fortunately, he was rescued by an unexpected source—Nathan Lundt, strolling into the room with a package. The package was slightly burnt on the edges, still giving off a few wisps of smoke.

Lundt himself had a face streaked with mud, possibly some blood. His clothes were ripped and his hair mussed. But he was still smiling.

“Turns out there was a lion and a flamethrower toward the end, but I still got it.”

Emily quickly unwrapped the package and found a pristine Krypton communication module, which she audibly gushed over. Forgetting that there were other people in the room, she started plugging things into it, and the men left her at her enthusiastic nerdery.

Laffer excused himself soon after to go check on the latest news regarding the counter-protests planned for the following day, which meant that Carter was stuck with Nathan for a while. And he wasn’t shutting up about how great he was.

“…and then I ripped off the mask, because I always have a mask, right? I rip off the mask and he’s like—wow, you’re not who I thought you were and who are you then? So, I say…”

But as enthusiastic as Nathan would be in talking about himself, he was also the kind of person to grow maudlin without prompting.

“…and then she dies and that sucks because almost all of my girlfriends die at one point or another during or after the crazy capers I get up to. At some point, this guy who really hated my guts threatened to kill one of my ex-girlfriends, but I didn’t even know who he was talking about because I go for the same type of brunettes and the picture that he sent was so grainy that it could have been any of three or four of them…”

Carter probably could have said something at this point, but there was nothing that would not make him feel hypocritical.

“…and sure, they tell us that we can choose not to accept our missions, but when does that actually happen? If they’re asking me, then everyone’s in trouble, and since I’m the best, then it’s not useful to ask anyone else to take on the mission and can you imagine the pressure? ‘Hey, no, thanks for the self-destructing tape, but I choose not to accept it, so better luck next time?’  That’s just not a way to answer your director, right? Have you ever said no to a new mission?”

Carter was startled—Nathan has actually asked him a question in the middle of his rambling.

“Uh, no.”

“Exactly! It’s just not done! The same thing with the team—I can pick anyone in the UOC, but in practice I end up with the same team most of the time, and then only because I can’t really run everything by myself even though I’m usually the one-man show. Who else does these crazy stunts? No one! It’s like—can you share some of the load? Or maybe I’m just such a control freak that I can’t let go? My therapist says…“

Aubert and Thorne wandered in the command centre, and Carter implored them with his stare to come rescue him. Nathan without a mission was getting progressively more restless.

After a few moments, they got it.

“Well, as it stands,” said Thorne, “there’s one thing you could work on.”

“But we cannot, Thorne!” said Aubert. “It is suicide, it is impensable!”

“Well, for starter, you would have to steal the Declaration of Independence—”

They then got into a ridiculous volley of suggestions so fast-paced that Carter only followed segments of the exchange.

“-rightfully bring it back to the oval office as a symbol—”

“-hijack Gold Force One, probably from the outside during flight—”

“-somehow disable the friend-or-foe signals of the District’s anti-air missile batteries—”

“-send it in a near-vertical dive—”

“—and parachute out.”

“Impossible!”

Nathan’s eyes narrowed, now that he was once more with purpose.

“No mission is impossible. Not on my watch.”

And then he was off, almost running through the door on his way out.

“What have you done?” said Carter.

“Kept him busy.”

🗽

Security in the presidential bunker had slacked a notch—no more passwords, no more pat-downs, no more people vouching for them. The guards kept their weapons down and looked bored. Swipe the card, get waved in through the big door. McGuire had heard that the advisors had demanded changes—they were in and out of the bunker a few times a day in-between trips to the Blunt Tower where the oligarchs were staying, and their inconvenience directly led to security policy downgrades. 

By this time, he was dreading these meetings with Kean. It wasn’t just that the President was getting increasingly unhinged by the day—his days in the bunker weren’t doing him any favours—it’s that he blindly assumed that McGuire was absolutely on his side, and McGuire wasn’t doing anything to distance himself.

At least the speech was getting done, as crazy as it was. And McGuire knew that Kean would not change a comma. Unlike great orators like Obama, who would politely thank the speechwriters for their work and then personally tinker with it until its delivery, Kean wasn’t sure of himself enough to take that kind of chance. 

To think that his speech was going to get delivered as-is, for the first time in two years, left him queasy considering its content.

But too late for that—and he was getting ushered into the octagonal office. Only two advisors this time.

“McGuire!” said Kean, “this is it—the night before the big show. I don’t have much to change this time around. Maybe tweak a few words to strengthen the meaning—I’ve left you a few notes. Otherwise, stellar job—you could not have done any better, and I could not have made it without you.”

“Glad to be helpful, sir.”

“You and I, we’re going places. I hope your calendar’s free for the next decade, because we’re going to change the world—not just Washington, not just the country—the world. Pax Americana at last.”

“Glad to be on-board.”

An advisor’s phone buzzed, and he picked up.

“That’s the spirit. You’ll see—“

The advisor spoke up.

“Thursk is getting concerned about the counter-protests planned on the mall. There’s a potential for conflict—“

“No, there isn’t!” snapped Kean. “Let them try. Let them try! Bring it on! Make sure the National Guard is standing at the Washington Monument Lodge. They will take care of anyone breaching the protest zone. Anyone disrupting the ceremony is not American—they’re cockroaches, and we stamp out cockroaches.”

Kean paused.

“And if we need to make a few useful examples, we will make them!”

One of the most frightening things about Kean, McGuire had learned, was the extreme compartmentalization he demonstrated in switching between contexts. He did it again, just now—as he turned his head from the nodding advisor back to McGuire, he also completely changed his expression—from spittle-throwing anger to buddy-buddy contentment.

“Here are my notes, McGuire. Nothing major, but I really just wanted to thank you. I won’t have time to see you again before the ceremony. You’ll be there, right?”

“Yes, sir, I got my tickets today.”

No choice about it—nearly the entirety of the White House staff had been summoned in forceful terms. They were deep in the outer circle of attendees, but they had a section by themselves.

“Great. We’ll talk again afterwards.”

Dismissed, McGuire went back up the bunker exit all the way to the West Wing basement, and then his small cubicle. In a daze, he completed the changes, punching up a few words to near-megalomaniac extremes, then filed the corrections to the speech.

The White House was a buzz of activity tonight, but that was it for him—speech delivered, presidential thanks obtained, he had played his role and could go to sleep.

The routine way back home went by a flash—to the point when he found himself at his front door without too much memory of having made the trip.

Once inside, he sent a quick note through the secure hidden application: “Kean unhinged, ready and willing to fire on protesters.”

Then he called up Sofia, hoping that she would pick up. She was his anchor—they hadn’t seen each other since the morning after Blunt’s death, but they had managed to sneak a few calls every other night. Work in the Capitol was crazy, but manageably so—McGuire understood that the initiative was all Kean’s; the lawmakers were waiting to see how they would respond.

She answered.

After their heartfelt affirmations of love and how they missed each other, McGuire went to the essential.

“Promise me you won’t approach the Ellipse tomorrow.”

“Hah, no chance—the caucus has decided that the entire party is staying close to the Capitol, except for that brain-damaged moron from Pennsylvania. Wait… what have you heard?”

He paused. He’d already spilled the beans. But to her? Maybe he could save lives.

“Kean is trigger-happy. Keep the counter-protestors close to the Capitol.”

There was a pause.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll pass the word. But we’re expecting a million people—they won’t all stay close. There’s not even enough space to stay close.”

“I’m worried, that’s all. Worried about a lot of things. Worried about you, especially.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be standing next to Taylor all the time. As safe as can be.”

🗽

Late night before major ops were the worst, though Carter. Especially in this case, when there may or may not be an operation.

It was late, and Emily’s relentlessness at her workstation was starting to worry him. She had power-napped during the afternoon, during a period where her friends were particularly active with no input from them. But she was back, furiously typing at a keyboard—she insisted on using the noisy kind—and there was still no end in sight to her efforts.

Nearly everyone in their team was now sitting in the operations room, watching footage from cable news on the screen. The counter-protests were as big of a story as the events on the Ellipse—already, there had been incidents of vandalism, of fistfights between Blunt supporters and counter-protestors.

Carter himself was feeling slightly better. The painkillers and muscle relaxants had done their jobs, and he was feeling marginally human again—not that it would matter, since all of the action tomorrow was supposed to be mediated through computer screens, leaving nothing to do for old workhorses like him. Maybe.

The big question, as far as they were concerned, was whether there would be an operation tomorrow. They kept quiet as so not to disturb Emily in her work, but they discussed options in hallway conversations—was hijacking a Blackhawk from the nearest Marine base their only recourse?

“I still think it’s a good idea,” said Thorne.

“We know,” said Saskia.

Carter knew that there would be a time, mid-morning, where they would turn to Emily and ask whether it was done. If it wasn’t, they would probably go on a suicide mission.

Even Laffer was with them tonight, which Carter did not expect. 

“I don’t understand why you’re here, Laffer,” he eventually said.

“What do you mean? I wouldn’t miss this.”

“No, I mean, why are you with us? Helping us? We are trying to assassinate your president for the second time in as many weeks.”

Laffer took a deep breath.

“I’ll spare you the usual justifications — My oath is to defend the constitutions against enemies foreign and domestic, no matter at which level they are.”

“You believe that?”

“I do. Considering my CIA training, I can recognize, in this American Government, in its repression, meanness and corruption, exactly the kind of chaotic regimes we were tasked with deposing. Make no mistake, Agent Carter, this—“

He gestured around the room.

“-is an attempt to keep civilization from collapsing.”

“Wow,” said Thorne dubiously.

“Our national government has been taken over by oligarchs that are intent on destroying it. You can be as cynical about government corruption as you want, but there’s never been such a successful capture of the state by the rich intent on perverting its purpose. Government is meant to serve the broadest number of people, but what we have been seeing for the past two years is a transformation into a wealth-extracting mechanism funnelling every single dollar to the ultra-rich. You know what’s the outcome of this, right? Feudalism. And it’s not going to be contained to this country. Miss Nadia here, no second name given, is far more keenly aware of this than the rest of you. If they cannot capture wealth, they will destroy it and scoop up the remnants for cheap. Shock capitalism—or should I say, trauma oligarchy.”

“You think we can stop it?”

“As I’ve explained about tomorrow’s timing, we may not get a second chance.”

🗽

McGuire had grabbed a late breakfast that doubled as early lunch, before leaving with the rest of the White House staff to their assigned spots at the Ellipse. 

The weather wasn’t bad, all things considered. The day was supposed to be unusually springlike, meaning that a mere windbreaker was enough to be comfortable outside.

Teams had worked overtime in putting up a stage, chairs and bleachers for the occasion—a conspicuously raised platform for Blunt’s coffin, behind which the speeches would be given. Sitting right in front was the family and members of the inner circle: Kean, the widow-in-chief, the children, and the Supreme Court Justice that would deliver the Oath of Office. Behind them, a court of three hundred seats for the honoured guests—a nominally bipartisan crowd of legislators (although the opposing party was only represented by the two or three rebellious black sheep, something that already had pundits talking), with the oligarchs and their entourage taking over any empty seats.

Behind them, the staff—the congressional aides and employees of the administration. Many of the other seats on the bleachers had been paid for—lobbyists, advisors and donors. As the crowd settled, McGuire noticed that some of the seats were still empty.

In the background, he could faintly hear sirens and the rumble of a big, big crowd—the million people that were on the mall, attending a protest that was becoming all about the current administration. McGuire shuffled through the news on his phone until he saw what he was looking for—the Speaker of the House waiting to deliver her speech, and Sofia not too far away from him.

Someone began tapping on the microphone. It was about to begin.

🗽

By early morning, Emily had to admit, if not defeat, then a severe setback. Thanks to the Krypton module, she and her crew had managed to crack the encryption code to get access to the military communication networks used to control the boltguns. But the controls of the boltguns themselves were still uncracked.

As Carter watched, Emily did the unthinkable.

“I’m going to post the codes on the cracking forums,” she said. “Transform this into a zero-day exploit.”

“What?”

“I’m opening up the doors to the entire world. Everyone who reads the exploit will know how to get to the boltguns.”

“Anyone?”

“Anyone paying attention, and there are a lot of bad people on that forum.”

“Sound irresponsible.”

“It is. But this way I’m gaining twelve, maybe twenty groups who are going to poke around the system in addition to me. And I’m keeping two cards in reserve.”

“Which is to say?”

“For one thing, I have admin rights to the channel, which means that I allow or lock out anyone I want, at least for a few hours. For another, I have snooping privileges, which means that the moment anyone figures out part of the communication protocol, I will know about it.”

“So, there’s a chance we’re going to crack this after all?”

“It’s the best bet we’ve got.”

Two hours later, she seemed to have been proven right: As the groups sniffed around the encrypted channel, their discoveries were logged and compiled by what Emily called her blue team. Visual targeting was the first significant breakthrough—they could now see through the boltguns’ cameras. Movement was cracked shortly after, and then AI-assisted target-and-forget aiming took an hour more.

“What’s left?”

“Firing.”

“Whoever cracks it first gets to shoot the president?”

“Or whoever they like.”

But time was running short—the funeral was well underway, with the pastor giving the benediction, and the kids talking about their father. Now the first widow was approaching the dais—dressed in black and face obscured behind a veil. She paused in front of the open casket.

“As you mourn today, few of you knew my husband. Because if you did, you would not mourn him.”

She spat into the casket and removed her veil, revealing a visibly bruised face.

“The night he died, he hit me in the face! A few hours later, I grabbed a knife—“

Agents were rushing the stage, but she stayed up defiantly.

“-and I stabbed him in his sleep!”

Before she could add anything more, agents forcefully ushered off the stage as the audience audibly wondered what was going on.

Well, that clears up who planted the first knife, thought Carter.

🗽

McGuire was just as confused as the rest of the crowd. With a sense of panic, the senior pastor running the ceremony was brought in and rushed to the next item in the ceremony.

From where he was sitting, McGuire could see Kean’s face and the President’s hardened glance confirmed what he anticipated—he was angry. From his conversations during the past few days, McGuire knew that Kean was seeing the day as being all about him—the dead guy didn’t matter, only that, at the end of it, everyone would bow down to his rightful authority. Anyone taking the spotlight off of him, as the first widow just had, was an enemy.

McGuire could only marvel at how transparent Kean’s expression was—didn’t he know that his face was being monitored by dozens of cameras?

🗽

“That is not a happy camper,” said Thorne after seeing the president’s obvious disgust in high definition.

They had two sets of angles to work with -one from news channels, and another from the boltguns trained on him. 

“Ack, the military is fighting us now,” said Emily. “We’ve let in a couple of junior hackers who don’t know that you don’t play with the toys until you control them all.”

“Are we closer to pulling the trigger?” asked Thorne.

“We’ve got some of the world’s smartest, most devious minds working on it. Give us a moment.”

🗽

At long last, Kean went onstage—the event had been carefully scripted to be all about the former president, and all would be about him the moment he would start speaking.

There had been a few distractions. As the Pastor had called for a moment of silence, everyone had heard fireworks and a faint chorus of thousands of voices singing, “Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” in unison.

But this was serious business now—Kean, looking presidential, rose and walked on the stage where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was waiting.

Having flashbacks to the White House ceremony, McKean heard the same Oath of Office repeated, and Kean once again becoming the president of the United States. The first time had been for real, but this time wasn’t necessarily for show, as Kean was very much aware of the power of public perception.

The stage cleared out—Kean left alone, with no one else to distract.

He approached the casket and McGuire, despite himself, wanted to hear the speech. His words were about to have the biggest stage ever put together for a presidential inauguration. People across the United States and across the world were watching live. Dozens, maybe hundreds of millions.

A faint “oooooo” sound began to be heard.

Kean cleared his throat and started to speak. McGuire could almost mouth the speech along with him: The state of the union is in danger… Our nation stands at a precipice… Decision action is needed to complete Blunt’s agenda… America will embrace its manifest destiny… we will unleash the nation to achieve its goals… abolish the weight of unearned social programs like Social Security… America will go at it alone, freed from the weight of its undeserving leeches…

A rustle went over the crowd. As McGuire could have told them, the agenda outlined by McGuire went far beyond even the excesses of the Blunt administration—anyone hoping for a return to normalcy was getting a cold dose of reality.

Then there was the “oooooo” sound growing larger, as McGuire realized where it was coming from—thousands of protesters moving from the mall to the Ellipse. They were booing. More than a few people turned back to their left to hear the sound—and see the protesters who were now walking on the Ellipse and approaching the gated security perimeter.

McGuire’s head jerked up when Kean began to go off-script in reaction to the mounting boos.

“Our nation must stand united, with me, against its enemies—both external and internal!”

He pointed at the protesters and approached the coffin. A switch had been flicked in Kean’s head, and McGuire recognized the spittle-spewing megalomaniac that he had seen in the bunker.

“These are the scum rotting our nation from within! If not stopped, they will overrun us. They will hold a knife to our throats! Well, I say—enough!”

He touched the coffin.

“On our beloved former president’s body, I say—I will stop them. Shoot them! Shoot them down!”

🗽

As Carter and the rest of the crew watched the screen intently, there was a loud beep, and Emily reacted instantly by typing a few commands.

She stopped and held her finger over the Enter key.

“The trans send their regards,” she said to herself.

Then pressed the key.

🗽

As McGuire watched, he heard a quick and loud CRACK

—then saw Kean’s chest burst outward.

—then saw him fall inert atop the casket.

—then saw his body jerk twice as two more CRACKs were heard. 

As the crowd started screaming, Kean remained lifeless on the casket, arms extended as if to embrace Blunt one last time.

🗽

An independent commission, months later, never formally identified who had targeted Kean with the boltguns. Logs of the command system revealed a multiplicity of actors jostling for control of the weapon. IP numbers connected to other hacker actions suggested that groups connected with the Chinese, Russian and North Korean states had been active. They also showed five other distinct groups less easily identified, including what was thought to be a group of expatriate Ukrainians publicly claiming vengeance for the Blunt-brokered accord that had handed over control of a substantial part of the country of the Russian invaders. 

One group had abruptly removed the restrictions in place that had prevented unauthorized firings of the boltgun UAVs, and then several groups had taken their shots. The Commission concluded that it would be impossible to identify any of the shooters. This statement was disputed by IT Security forensic analysts, who used leaked data to prove that the first of the shots had been taken by a disgruntled Alabama-based group of American Blunt loyalists who despised Kean as a usurper. Evidence of their tampering was so strong that the group was the only one arrested, tried and convicted of cyber-attacks for the events—the FBI never releasing the specific accusations under the antiterrorism laws in place.

However, in describing the first shots of what has then already popularly known as the Second Civil War, the commission released details that had been kept from the public. Three boltgun shots were fired into Kean, all of them aimed at the centre of mass. All had, due to the angle, also hit the body of President Blunt—One had hit him in the head, the other in the heart, and a third had narrowly missed the groin.

Days after the events that followed, what remained of Blunt was buried at sea without ceremony. Not much was left after the coffin had been set aflame and desecrated. 

The Commission declined to identify the exact burial site, but stated that it was somewhere off the Eastern coast. In international waters—the only president not buried in American soil.

Section 3 — The Eight-Hour Civil War

Chapter 11 — Chaos is Not Enough

The presidency, like the monarchy, travels instantaneously. 

American political theory abhors a vacuum of leadership, especially when it would mean that 3,748 nuclear warheads would be temporarily left without launch authority. Hence the physics-defying theoretical assumption behind the instantaneous transfer of office in case of a sudden presidential death—The successor immediately assumes the powers of the presidency, no matter where they are in the universe.

The Presidential Succession Act is quite specific about the order of succession. 

But laws have a way of being tested, especially in times of crisis.

🗽

Before he knew it, McGuire was running. Not much of this was of his own volition—as soon as everyone realized that Kean was undeniably and irrevocably dead, and that the shot had come from somewhere above, people had started running away from the site.

In the outer bleachers, the White House staff had an advantage over those stuck in the middle of the event—they didn’t have to run into other people to leave—as soon as they were off the bleachers, they could run the hundred yards separating them from the White House. A burly uniformed Secret Service agent that McGuire had often seen at the West Wing guard post was egging them on, even as he was brandishing an ineffectual handgun and making a show of looking up for threats.

Everyone reacts to trauma differently, thought McGuire, and that snapped him out of the herd mentality. He slowed down, stopped and tried to stay out of the way of the other people fanning away from the Ellipse.

He wasn’t the target. There’s no way anyone would make him a target. The president was dead, again, and his speechwriter wasn’t going to be struck down by some divine bolt.

It wasn’t just that, at that moment, McGuire thanked God for being an atheist—it’s that he was perhaps the only person within a square mile to have a good idea of what had just happened. Boltguns. His warnings to the cousins-

Heartbeat revved up to the maximum, feet on the E street curb, he put his hands on his knees and, in between trying to catch his breath, he laughed.

He had done it! He had, somehow, passed just enough information to the right people to accomplish his wildest dream—exposing Kean for the menace he was, and even getting rid of him.

No, that was not enough. He was a writer. Words were important. No euphemisms.

He had gotten the President killed.

Not him, not directly. But he had played a small role in it, he was sure.

And with that, he was free—as panicked citizens and politicians passed him ( looking ridiculous in their haste to run in serious business suits), he was, at last, free. Cars passed him by as people fled the scene, and he stood still. He would not run like a headless chicken. He would go back to his apartment, text Sofia and get passed-out drunk. Then, in the morning, he’d make his bags, go back to Pennsylvania and never, ever again set foot in the White House or get involved in national politics.

A black Suburban SUV—the Secret Service Special—braked behind him. The door opened.

“There he is,” he heard from the back.

“Come on, McGuire, get in,” said Kean’s Communication Director. “We need someone good with words.”

McGuire opened his mouth to send them all to hell.

“Come on, the clock’s ticking!”

Then he nodded and entered the SUV.

🗽

Carter, during his years as an MI6 agent, had pretty much seen everything. But even to him, the images of the utter bedlam on the Ellipse that were broadcast by the news channels were unprecedented.

On the lawn of the Ellipse, people generally fell in three groups—most of them ran without a plan, simply to be away from Kean’s corpse. Many cowered into place, making themselves small in between the rows of white chairs or huddled underneath the bleachers. Some, the professionals, rushed toward the coffin, brandishing guns and waving them around dangerously in a parody of doing something even when there was nothing to be done.

After a few moments when the agents clearly saw that there was nothing else to be done, the presidential limousine rushed next to the stage, smashing a few chairs on its way. The Beast, as it was popularly known, was really an all-terrain truck in limousine disguise and could easily go off-road when it needed to. Right now, it would most likely spend its last trip as a glorified hearse, driving what remained of Kean’s body to Walter Reed, where he would be declared dead on arrival. The Secret Service Agent’s dark suits absorbed most of the corpse’s blood, but their white and blue shirts got noticeably stained on the way from the coffin to The Beast.

The cameras recorded everything with calm 4K precision.

Carter saw Emily watch the screen with a slight smile on her face. A few moments ago, she had shut off what she said was the pathway inside the Krypton channels for controlling the boltguns. No one else would be able to use them, which both protected civilians from being hit by sky-borne slugs and helped minimize the team’s exposure to detection.

“Can you open it up later?”

“Carter, please,” she said, not really answering the question.

The on-screen chaos wasn’t exactly fun, but it was a price to pay for what they had unleashed. As the cable TV talking heads kept repeating the unprecedented events they’d just seen, they could not relax. Not yet.

If Laffer was right, this chaos was a crucial moment—the thrown coin could land on Heads and they could declare a comfortable victory. Or it could land on Tails and a few hours of hurt would begin.

But it landed on Tails, and—as they had anticipated—it clearly had some help in doing so.

🗽

“We need speaking points,” said the man sitting in the third row of the armoured Suburban as the vehicle headed east.

McGuire looked up and recognized him. How could he not? Raymond Thursk had been one of the most visible figures in Washington throughout Blunt’s second term. The world’s first trillionaire. An unelected official given the freedom to rip through any federal agency having oversight over his activities. The unusually outspoken power behind the throne of the presidency. Most billionaires were happy buying their anonymity—but Thursk ripped the mask from the face of oligarchy, daring anyone to do anything about it now that they had taken over the American government.

“Yes,” said McGuire while taking the offered tablet. “Speaking points. About what?”

“Presidential succession.”

“Well, it’s clear that—”

“No, it’s clear that the Secretary of State has just become the new president,’ insisted Thursk in a tone that left no place for disagreement.

“Well,” said McGuire through the familiar feeling of growing smaller inside his head, “it’s clear that the will of the voters in democratically electing this administration would not be followed should—”

“Very good. Start writing. In the tablet.”

McGuire looked at the device. It was open to a shared document, along with over three hundred people. He didn’t need to know their names. This was now standard war-room procedure in Twenty-first Century Washington: Write the speaking points in a document shared with pundits, influencers and congressional aides and within seconds, everyone would be singing the same anthem.

He wrote.

🗽

The shift was sudden across all four of the news channels they were watching.

“This is really an incredible turn of events,” said the constitutional scholar that the channel had reached at a few minutes’ notice, “in that this is the first shift of power from one party to another through the order of succession—the new president is now Speaker Taylor, and we should hear from her—”

“But that’s wrong,” said the talking head speaking on behalf of the Kean administration, “in that the new president is clearly Secretary of State Coughlin. The American electorate’s wishes in electing this administration must be respected, and Coughlin is the highest-ranking cabinet member.”

’But, but, no, that’s just not—the Presidential Succession Act clearly states—“

“That act was written in 1947, before —“

“-it was last revised in 2006—“

“-before advances in communication networks, modern medicine and mass media, before Hawaii joined the union. There are several doubts that the Speaker is constitutionally eligible—”

And so on—across all channels.

Laffer had been right—the Tails scenario was unfolding, and pretty soon it would be up to them… again.

🗽

McGuire had written maybe four hundred words, but those had been enough—the American public had practically no attention span, and adding more would have diluted the message. Pretty soon, the document was taken over by other like-minded researchers, who expanded on McGuire’s talking points by providing often-fictious examples, sources, analogies and slogans.

The SUV they were in had taken some time to get to its destination. Roads were blocked by panicked protesters, nervous-looking police and midday gridlock. By the time he had completed his initial assignment on the tablet, the Suburban SUV had just managed to cover the half-mile to the Blunt Tower. 

Surprised, he noted that the car turned to enter the Tower’s vast underground parking lot. His puzzlement must have been obvious because the Director of Communications spoke up.

“What, you were expecting the West Wing?”

Actually, yes, he was: where else could they go? This wasn’t the right place—Blunt Tower was a gaudy eyesore, a tourist trap and a symbol of everything that had been wrong with the ex-president, but it wasn’t a serious place to meet during a crisis.

But keeping his mouth shut, McGuire followed his handlers as they stepped through the underground parking lot and the keycard-activated elevator to the penthouse floor.

By the time the door opened at the top of the elevator, McGuire was in for a shock.

Then penthouse floor of the Blunt Tower was as blackly efficient as the rest of it was a golden embarrassment. It looked more like a hedge fund office, with stacks of high-definition screens, high-powered workstations, meeting rooms to the sides and nooks for quiet discussions.

Stairs led upstairs and downstairs. The communication director nudged him.

“There’s a really nice terrace on the roof of the building. Downstairs, luxury apartments for Kean’s friends when they are in town. Not at all decorated according to Blunt’s sense of taste.

The Communications Director led him to one of the nooks, where he and McGuire could sit down and talk without feeling as if they were in the way of the oligarchs. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Thursk and two others lock themselves in a conference room—and then the conference room windows turned privacy-gray.

“This wasn’t Blunt’s favourite place. He didn’t like the décor or the feeling that he meant nothing here. But it was a concession to the powers behind the throne—the ones that swung the election for him. They wanted a place of their own in Washington, a place that actively irritated Blunt because he couldn’t use the space for more hotel rooms – the floor below is kept for the trillionaires, no reservations.”

“Kean must have liked it, though.”

“Of course he did. Meeting his oligarch handlers here. Away from his White House crew, away from the media. This is where White House policy got written down, ready to be signed as executive orders.”

“Businesslike.”

“All the trillionaires agree that the Business of America is Business. As for the parties, that took place upstairs on the terrace. Higher than the rest of Washington, so that meant no one else could see what was happening here.”

The Communication Director was clearly enjoying being In The Know.

“I guess I’ll head back over to The West Wing.”

“Are you crazy? No. Come, take a look.”

The Communication Director led him to the front of the building, where the large plate windows, tinted gold on the outside to disguise the fact that they were windows, gave an incredible view of the Federal Triangle and, beyond, the National Mall and the rest of South Washington.

Scattered plumes of smoke rose from the city. Something burning. Periodically, flashes attracted McGuire’s attention. If he listened carefully, he could hear horns, crowds roaring, maybe gunshots. Worse than usual for Washington.

“This is not a safe city right now. Stay here for a while. The riot police are at work. When it’s time, they’ll put you in a Suburban and drive you where you want to go.”

McGuire nodded out of habit. 

But down below, he could see the protesters massing around Blunt Tower like peasants waving pitchforks. The torches would come after dark.

🗽

The call came in a few minutes later than Carter expected, but it came.

Not every government was as quick on the trigger. Ever the quietly efficient Canadian, Nadia discreetly left the command centre first. Then Emily had to tear herself away from the screen on which she was tracking the manipulation of social media sentiment and the grounding of the Boltgun fleet. Thorne got called away next. Then it was Carter’s turn.

“I was waiting for you to call in, D.”

“My own briefing took some time, agent Double-A G.”

“So, whom am I targeting next?”

“You’ll be glad to learn that we’re not asking for another specific assassination, this time. Different mission. You’re to help protect someone.”

Carter winced. Bodyguard missions were almost always a losing proposition: unlike assassination missions, where you almost always could split away and try later, you only had to make one mistake and the client was dead, no do-overs.

“Who am I expected to catch a bullet for?”

“The Speaker of the House, Taylor, is a long-time intelligence committee chair. She knows people across the Four-Eyes, and she’s now asking for protection. Says she trusts us more than the Secret Service at the moment.”

“And for how long am I protecting this foreign dignitary?”

“She’s holed up in a friendly senator’s office in the Hart Building, north-east of the Capitol. The mission is to get her to the White House. Alive. Bring some of your new friends for help.”

“What’s the threat profile?”

“Obviously, we expect riots in the streets of Washington, DC. Why are you still asking questions, agent Double-A G? You should be on your way.”

🗽

Minutes later, he found himself in a big black Chevrolet Tahoe, racing through the streets of Washington, DC.

He wasn’t driving—that was Thorne’s job. The Yank had proudly volunteered another Tahoe that he’d parked three days earlier in the lot of the GGF building, “just in case” they’d needed it.

“This is my kind of truck!” said the American-turned Australian while blowing through another red light, as ineffectual klaxons protested his approach. “Full-sized, full V-8 engine! Four hundred and twenty horsepower! I’m driving an entire cavalry!”

Carter looked at Saskia, who shared both the back row of sets and the same slightly worried expression. Neither had tried to commandeer the passenger’s seat, both to leave Thorne do his thing as a driver without obscuring his sight-lines, and because they remembered Laffer’s opinion that they were most likely burnt when it came to facial recognition. The tinted back windows of the SUV offered them some protection. As for the rest—they were headed for the warzone in the middle of the city: camera recognition on the ground would be the least of their worries.

At least he was in the clothes he liked best—a smart dark suit to blend with the Secret Service agents they were supposed to work with.

Aubert and Nadia were in another vehicle—they’d gotten the brief to go and protect the President of the Senate from harm. Senator Miller was, unusually enough, a somewhat young and active Senate leader—but he too had requested some foreign protection and, unlike Taylor, he wasn’t expected to leave the Hart senate office block. Still, if something happened to Taylor, Miller was the next in line.

After that, had reminded Laffer, the line of succession went back to Coughlin.

Meanwhile, Emily was manning the command post. Each one of them had an earpiece through which she could give them updates – although they wouldn’t be able to talk back to her without phoning in.

Carter counted her lucky not to be aboard the SUV: Thorne’s approach to DC traffic was to let no opportunity pass him by, even if that meant jerking the car briefly into the opposing lane, driving over a curb (a surprisingly mild experience due to the vehicle’s exceptional suspension), swerving to cut corners and even doing a little bit of drifting on the more aggressive turns. Pedestrians and smaller vehicles got out of the way with practised nonchalance: Thorne had been clever in picking the exact same vehicle and colour favoured by DC’s multiple police forces. Despite the near-death experiences, the Yank knew how to drive.

Still, Carter hod no choice but to grab on to the Tahoe’s handles with white knuckles—they were being shaken left and right by Thorne’s aggressive driving, abrupt changes in direction and the narrow misses. Although Carter didn’t mind bumping shoulders with Saskia.

They were getting there in record time, but were they getting there fast enough?

🗽

America was such a funny country, thought Aubert.

Incredibly flawed and yet so convinced of its own greatness. Nothing like France, obviously. And now, it the footsteps of Lafayette, a Frenchman was being called in to save les Amerloques again.

As Nadia drove their sensible, unremarkable Toyota Corolla (the most popular car rental in America, she’d noted), the green lights opened before them thanks to Emily. She drove slightly over the speed limit, but not outrageously so. Signals when needed, yielding rather than make a scene; no hard brakes, no sudden accelerations.

Senator Miller was expecting them—They’d be there with minutes to spare.

🗽

Another muffled THUD was heard through the penthouse floor. Another tear gas grenade launcher fired near the tower. There had been a few over the past few minutes.

“Relax,” said the Communication Director to McGuire, “this floor is built like a tank. Inches-thick windows, reinforced structure and concrete floors. No one can come in; no one can damage it. They knew what they were doing when they designed it.”

“All right.”

McGuire’s attention returned to the big-screen TVs, where he could see his words used nearly verbatim in newscast chyrons — “Scholars question electoral integrity of possible regime change” was a popular one. “Maintaining continuity of government through SecState succession” made him wince, though. Coughlan was a pompous moron who’d thought of himself as appointed by God and had once smacked a White House intern across the face for dropping a briefing book. If the continuity of government was the goal, they couldn’t have picked a better man to carry the personal flaws of both Blunt and Kean.

Suddenly, the door to the conference where Thursk had been discussing the matter drew open, and two aides cowed out. Thursk’s voice boomed out of the room.

“I don’t care about the consequences of it!” shouted Thursk. “Kill Taylor and Miller, and it falls to Coughlin. They take out one of ours; we take out two of theirs!”

A tall, bald black man with an eyepatch and a trenchcoat walked out of the office, head high and face set in stone.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

Chapter 12 — The Living Presidents

The streets changed the closer they got to the Capitol campus, noted Carter. The civilian vehicles were going the other way, and the only ones rushing toward downtown were police cars, armoured trucks and dark SUVs like theirs. Turning on Second Street, their destination, they could see the boxy shapes of Stryker infantry carriers heading to the National Mall.

Thorne wasn’t crazy enough to try sweeping through the heavy steel barriers that blocked the way to the Hart building, but he visibly thought about it—and half-slid the Tahoe against the bollards ringing the building.

They were off and out of the doors the moment the vehicle stopped. 

“Enter the building through the East entrance,” guided Emily. “Show the badges, tell them you’re on your way to Senator Hartfield.”

They did as they were told, and were, if not exactly whisked inside, then on their way to their destination with a minimum of fuss. The Hart, being the newest of the three office buildings reserved for senators, was airier and much brighter than Carter expected—the décor was largely modernist with a touch of the specific neo-Roman US federal style—marble, glass, steel, omnipresent flags—, but the corridors were wide and the very large central atrium let a lot of natural light in—although it was now fading along with the sunlight.

“You must be the Cousins,” said a middle-aged woman once they were past the security station. Short, pretty and darker-skinned. “I’m Sofia Ruiz, assistant to our friend.”

“Right,” said James, “let’s go.”

She pressed on, taking them through the Atrium. A gigantic dark steel sculpture dominated the space, going up several storeys. As she led them to the elevators, Carter tut-tutted.

“Let’s take the stairs, please.”

“It’s three floors,” she said.

“We’ll manage.”

He didn’t need the exercise, and he wasn’t seriously expecting villains to cut the cable of the elevator, but he wanted first-hand knowledge of the quickest way down if they needed it.

“How is the situation outside?” she asked as she hopped on the first set of stairs.

“We had a quiet drive,” said Thorne.

“Well, you’re lucky because things are getting chaotic on the National Mall, and it’s spilling on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Which you want us to take.”

“It’s the quickest, more direct way to the White House. And the most symbolic.”

“I’ve seen some of your inaugurations.”

“Exactly.”

“How much do you trust your assigned agents?”

“Very much so, but not completely.”

“Any directives for us before we meet them?”

“Speaker Taylor is the President of the United States. Let’s try to keep her alive.”

🗽

Aubert let Nadia talk her way into the building. They had credentials, they had someone waiting for them, but her English was better than his—and his sounded British rather than American. He was aware that his accent was not only perceptible, but his less-than-perfect English often made him sound like a buffoon. This was not always a disadvantage—better to let them underestimate him—but right now they did not need any added scrutiny.

An aide met them at the security station and ushered them up to the Senator’s office.

“We’re riveted to the TV. There’s a big standoff between the National Guard and the protesters, and it’s anyone’s guess as to where this is going to go.”

“What is the extent of the security detail?”

“Two Secret Agents assigned to her protection, another one outside the door.”

“Trustworthy?”

“Maybe.”

“I have one request…”

🗽

“You want us to reveal Speaker Taylor’s location?” said Ruiz. “We came here exactly because she shouldn’t be here!”

This, Carter realized, may not have been the best way to get acquainted with the Speaker and her immediate staff.

“We want to flush them out, set an ambush and get rid of the problem now rather than having them pop out of nowhere. You are already broadcasting, why continue to hide?”

“You’re still user her as bait. Deliberately drawing them here.”

🗽

“No, that would be stupid,” said Nadia. Let’s send them to another office on this floor and hope that the Capitol police will catch them.”

“But they won’t.”

“They may even welcome them in.”

“That’s where you hope to make a difference? There are only two of you.”

“We have the advantage of surprise.”

“And how, exactly, do you want to broadcast his presence?”

“Something you were about to do anyway.”

🗽

It only took minutes to arrange. The Speaker already had made an allocution from a safely anonymous location, but now was the time to show a real location. They hastily arranged for a shoot from the upper floor of the Hart Building’s southern side, with a symbolic view of the Supreme Court and the Capitol building. Five more minutes, and they’d be live streaming.

“Where is Chief Justice Gabford?” heard Carter.

Ruiz was speaking into a phone, and not liking what she was hearing. “I don’t care which safe location he was whisked to; it’s his duty to come administer the Oath of Allegiance.”

The reply made her screw up her face and snap off the communication. Noticing Carter’s interest, she explained.

“Taylor was sworn in ten minutes after Kean was declared dead—we had a federal judge from the Court building, and we broadcast it live on video. But now the maggats are insisting that only the Chief Justice can administer the Oath—which is nonsense—and Chief Justice Gabford is waffling hard enough that he won’t speak to us.”

Carter’s eyes narrowed. This was part of Laffer’s coin-flip scenario.

“What is he waiting for?”

“Hopefully not for the Supreme Court to decide.”

🗽

“…and so, fellow Americans, we must rally around our Constitution, around President Taylor. Despite the events of this terrible day, we must stay strong. Thank you, and may God bless America.”

Senator Miller stopped speaking. The lights dimmed. The camera was decoupled from its tripod.

“Let’s see now,” said Nadia, who was waiting in the outer corridor.

🗽

On the trillionaires’ floor of Blunt Casino, McGuire was being left alone, and he wasn’t mad about it.

He has just a writer, after all. Not someone important.

But as he scrolled through the newsfeed, where the claims and counter-claims about the legitimacy of the two presidents were being debated using words he’d written, he realized with a sinking feeling his role in this growing debacle. He knew the order of succession—it went to the Speaker of the House, no question about it. But he wasn’t innocent in the ongoing disinformation campaign going on, wasn’t he? He had given ammunition to the wrong side, for no good reason.

The situation around the Federal Triangle was threatening to combust at any moment. Dignitaries had been whisked off to parts unknown. Masses of protesters were clustering on the National Mall. Blunt supporters were still concentrated around the Ellipse’s south side. A buffer made of National Guardsmen had been deployed, but they were largely tasked to protect the federal buildings from break-ins. The protesters were shouting, “TAY-LOR, TAY-LOR,” the Blunt loyalists were countering with “COUGH-LIN, COUGH-LIN.”  There had been a few scuffles violent enough to require ambulances at the edge of the Ellipse and the Mall, but now people were waiting. And arriving en masse. At least the protesters around Blunt Tower had thinned quite a bit – probably grouping with others on the National Mall.

While the initial movement earlier in the afternoon had been away from the mall and the ellipse, now people were pouring in from the metro, from buses, even from walking. Social media was telling everyone—come here, this is where this will be decided. Memories of previous popular uprisings at critical junctions were still fresh—South Korea, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Not to mention the unpleasantness in Washington two presidential certifications ago. Was this what the United States was reduced to?

A hubbub accompanied a new entrance in the lobby, and McGuire looked up.

Secretary of State Coughlin walked in, head high and walking forward as if he expected people to get out of the way. Which they did. He went straight to the room in the middle of the floor that was set up as a studio.

Moments later, he saw the notifications on his feeds—President Coughlin LIVE from Washington. Almost despite himself, he opened the link to see what was being said not even fifty feet from him.

“President Coughlin,” said the deferential news anchor, “there is still considerable controversy around your appointment—”

“The only controversy is coming from people who do not understand and do not respect the Constitution of this country and the will of the electors. Many feel helpless and confused at times of crises like we experienced earlier today, but order is coming back. My message to anyone in Washington tonight who intends to further defy lawful authority is this—go home now, or you will suffer the consequences. We will make an example out of those intent on defying the laws of the land.”

🗽

“And so, fellow Americans, no matter who you voted for, whom you cheer for, whom you care for, now is the time to uphold our Constitution. As an elected official, representing the will of the people at the latest elections, I will be a president for all Americans. I will heal our divisions; I will strengthen the Consecution and I will serve this country. Join me as we lead this country to a brighter day.”

Speaker Taylor smiled sadly and nodded once more at the camera.

“I know how you feel. My staff and I are hearing your phone calls, reading your messages and listening to your demands for a strong vision. I offer compassionate leadership. America has seen dark days, and this is one of them. But we will go forward as a stronger nation. Thank you, and God bless America.”

That wasn’t half-bad, thought Carter as he put away his cell phone. Taylor wasn’t just presenting herself as the legal and constitutional inevitability, but the choice that Americans would make for themselves. This was no time for electioneering, but that was what Laffer had anticipated – a short, sharp electoral campaign to supplement the constitutional claim.

This so-called “live streaming” had been delayed by five minutes—just enough for Taylor to leave the office with the picturesque view and for Carter and company to lie in ambush. Would it work?

He hoped it would.

He waited and waited some more. Thorne and Saskia were within eyesight, both of them tense and listening for any suspicious sound. Would it come as gunfire coming from the first floor as the goons would overpower the building’s security? Or would it come as footsteps on the carpet, as the opposition met only friends on their way in?

Or maybe it wouldn’t come at all, increasingly feared Carter. The trap was too obvious, the building too secure—they would wait and strike out in the open where defence was harder. 

They were up against a clock—Ruiz had told them that it was crucial for The President to be at the White House as soon as possible. They had ten, fifteen minutes and Carter felt them dwindle away moment by moment.

“Agent Carter,” said Ruiz in a low voice, as so not to startle him, “we have to go.”

“Fine, but we don’t go outside until strictly necessary.”

“No problem, we were planning on taking the subway.”

“What?”

“There’s an underground electric subway line running from this building to the Capitol. Either that, or you can walk.”

“Subway sounds fine.”

“I’ll alert the Speaker. A few friends are coming along for the walk.”

Great, more targets.

Moments later, Speaker Taylor came out of the office, flanked by two senators that even Carter had no trouble recognizing—the infamous left-wing Vermont independent, and the least objectionable right-winger senior representative from Texas. Interesting trio—Taylor was clearly flanking herself with approval from the span of the Senate.

Ruiz took the lead, closely flanked by Saskia. Thorne gestured that he’d take the rear, while Carter was left to accompany the middle gaggle, with the other Secret Agents and top aides clustering around the three lawmakers.

Smartly, Ruiz took the stairs—not something obvious with three older and powerful representatives: she must have had a convincing talk with them. They laboriously went down, Carter’s ears trying to pick up any unusual sound.

In the end, they almost made it out without incident. Thirty seconds more and they would have rolled away—but the faint popping noises started just as they were reaching the basement subway station.

Thorne and Carter looked at each other and recognized the sound of assault rifles. So did the Secret Service Agents, who clustered to protect their charges. Carter and Thorne fanned out—aware that the Agents were watching them, but also watching the Agents for any suspicious movement. There wasn’t a lot of trust yet.

The noises grew louder, and Carter spared a thought for the Capitol Police, who were most likely being mowed down by the attackers. 

Would they rush upstairs, leaving them to slip away through the basement undetected? 

No—whether through seeing the last trailing members of their small group, security cameras or extracting a confession from the guards, the assailants clearly headed in their direction.

Saskia, the politicians, the top aides and half the Secret Service agents jumped on the small unmanned train—it had three cars and twelve seats per car, so there was enough space for everyone despite their mounting panic.

The other half of the agents, along with Thorne and Carter, took defensive positions in the small station while waiting for the train to leave. The subway’s two lines took up two thirds of the wide corridor leading to the Dirksen Building and then the Capitol. If they could deal with the attackers now, they could always run the distance.

They heard bullet strikes coming closer, shouting and heavy footsteps.

The doors of the three cars closed and the subway departed with an unusual noise—a high-pitched whoosh. Carter had his attention elsewhere: the entrance to the station, where the noise of gunfire was growing ever louder. He didn’t feel all that confident with all of them being armed with service pistols, while their attackers most likely had assault rifles, but at least they were already in defensive positions.

As he expected, the attackers slowed down before turning the corner to the station and rolled a flash-bang grenade. Carter, from behind a large planter, already had a hand near his left ear, so he covered it, closed his eyes and raised his gun-holding arm’s shoulder to cover his other ear.

It wasn’t perfect, but it made the blast tolerable. Not losing a moment, he popped up and saw a goon walk inside the station and took care of him. Pop-pop—double tap to the head. None of that centre-mass insurance right now. Not full auto either—he’d need the bullets later.

The goon went down, and so did two others. Carter’s confidence in the Secret Service agents grew sizeably.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. The attackers weren’t able to press forward, but they knew they were up against the protection force. If they wanted to pursue the Speaker, they had to come through them, or lose track by going above ground.

Then he heard the sound of the next train approaching them.

🗽

McGuire had to get out of there. He clearly didn’t belong on that floor, and he felt his soul being further stained every minute he was spending in this place. 

The problem was—how to get out of here? There was a very big burly guy next to the elevator, and he wasn’t in a mood to joke around. When McGuire had tried going for the elevator a few minutes earlier, the big brute had merely said, “Mr. Thursk would like everyone to stay until further notice” and that was it. It was, to McGuire’s knowledge, the only way out—there was probably something else, but he wasn’t going to go around and snoop.

He was apparently the only one who was miserable here. Thursk, Coughlin and trillionaire friends were busy backslapping each other in good cheer. They were also clearly waiting for something to happen, considering the number of times they were looking at the TV screens—even if the same footage of protesters clashing at the Ellipse was the only thing in between talking heads.

Pretty soon, they would have to find new footage—dusk was falling on Washington, and the daytime footage soon wouldn’t match the mood around the capital.

McGuire knew, like any other American now used to city-wide riots, that matters would worsen at night. Innocent daytime protests would turn ugly under cover of darkness—the hooligans would be out in force, the police wouldn’t be so eager to get involved, and even upstanding citizens could turn destructive when the sun went down.

McGuire apparently wasn’t the only thinking about this because the news channels finally had something new and interesting to show—the arrival not only of armoured troop carriers in the capital, but honest-to-goodness M1 Abrams tanks at the south-west corner of the Mall. In Washington, DC. McGuire still remembered the fuss the military brass had made when Blunt had wanted a military parade—the tanks would tear up the low-quality street pavement. So, apparently, this wasn’t as much of a concern. But why bring in tanks?

McGuire got his answer when Thursk and associates cheered at the sight—the tanks were there to demonstrate force, not for being effective. 

All right—how could he get out of here?

🗽

Bullets rang out in the small corridor as the Secret Service Agents and the invaders exchanged short bursts of gunfire. When the empty train stopped and the glass doors opened, all moved toward the train, except for Carter and Thorne.

What is he waiting for? Thought Carter. Upstaging me?

As the Secret Service agents boarded the train, he dared advance across the station. Firing a few shots to keep the invaders away, he dropped to his knees and slid to the body of the first goon they’d shot in the face. The poor guy wasn’t in the best of shape, being dead and such, but he had one really interesting possession—an assault rifle.

He took the weapon from the man’s cooling dead hands, and retreated.

As the sound of the departing train began, he jumped over the railing and on to the very small platform at the back of the departing train, jostling for space with Thorne, who was already there. Using a hand to grip the side of the departing wagon, Carter let loose a small spray of bullets as more invaders entered the station. One more goon down.

“I can’t believe you went back for the rifle!” hissed Thorne.

“Yeah, but now I have a bit more firepower.”

A few more goons entered the station. Carter shot another one.

Behind him, on the other side of the window, a few Secret Service Agents whooped and hollered.

The subway accelerated. It would never be mistaken for a high-speed train, but it did reach about thirty-five kilometres, which was more than enough to put some distance between them and the goons. Carter shot one last burst, then saved his ammunition. Would they follow?

Apparently, they did—running through the closed-off corridor as if no one waited for them.

The train stopped at the Dirksen building—the only stop on the way to the Capitol. This was not to their advantage—they would have to wait sixty seconds before the train would automatically continue to the Capitol.

Carter jumped off the exposed platform and tried to find some cover—next to him, Thorne did the same. They could hear the footsteps of the hired guns coming closer. 

Carter gestured at the Yank—let them come closer. He tapped his rifle as justification.

Thorne didn’t need to be told twice—he, too, wanted a rifle and some ammo.

The other advantage was accuracy. The Secret Service Agents in the train, equipped with pistols, also knew it—and they had the advantage of a bulletproof booth.

They waited, waited—the goons weren’t slowing down. Did they think their body armour was going to protect them?

Thorne waited until the first one of them was next to him and fired—in the head, no chance for a second change.

Carter and the Secret Service agents popping out of the wagon were on the rest of them: Quick controlled shots, no mercy. Carter was on single-shot and the agents only had pistols, but some many shots were fired that it sounded like an assault rifle on full automatic.

The train rang its departure, and the agents headed inside. Carter and Throne did not hop back on the platform. They were on looting duty, taking rifles and body armour from the goons. They were quick about it, though, and twenty seconds later they had what they wanted. The only thing let to do was to run after the subway to the Capitol, which they did.

Unfortunately, there weren’t done yet—farther away in the corridor, a second group of goons were coming and there wasn’t anywhere to hide.

🗽

The killers came for Senator Miller carefully.

Emily had been feeding them the latest from Carter’s crew, so Aubert and Nadia knew that the building had been breached. Having so much action elsewhere in the building acted as diversion, so both of them were even more alert.

They had clearly hired the A-team for the Senator—la finesse over pure brawn: there were three of them and they moved efficiently, checking their sixes and sweeping the area carefully. The loud building-wide alarm hid any sounds they made.

But it also hid any sounds Aubert and Nadia would make as well. They had scoped the area, they had their cover, they each took one of the goons out, and both ended up shooting the third at the same time. Without a fuss.

Were there any more?

🗽

Carter and Thorne sprayed a few shots as they retreated, but mostly they kept running.

The second group of goons was far better equipped than the first—they weren’t as fast, but Carter could see them with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. The only thing that kept them from shooting at Carter was how close they were. The tunnel from Dirksen from the Capitol was only a few hundred metres, but that didn’t leave a lot of time or opportunity for defensive cover.

Carter kept glancing at his back as he ran. Maybe fifty metres were left when he saw the goons draw back and duck.

“Rocket!” he shouted to Thorne.

Thorne immediately drove to the ground, his rifle clattering in front of him. 

Carter jumped over the railing separating the walkway from the railway, and made himself as flat as possible on the ground next to the rails, doing the best he could to protect his ears even as the missile whooshed overhead.

He still had the wind knocked out of him by the explosion. Debris from the concrete walls scattered around him. He counted to three, then turned back as he got up.

As he expected, a few goons had been sent to see if the missile had hit its target. He answered them definitively.

Any concerns he might have had for Thorne were answered when the Yank started shooting a few goons down on his own. 

There were still a few live ones, but they were too far away to hit effectively. Quickly covering the last few metres until the end of the subway line, Carter and Thorne were about to start their climb out of the Capitol basement when they heard a familiar voice behind them.

“Is that you, Carter? How about you, Thorne?”

Jury.

They stopped. It wouldn’t do to leave him—or his men—running around to make trouble later.

“How does it feel to be a traitor, Jury?”

“As long as the checks clear, everything’s negotiable, Carter. Considering those who sign those checks, you’d be amazed at what I can get away with!”

He was getting closer and almost certainly trying to distract from the other members of his team.

Time to use something they’d picked off the dead goons over at Dirksen station. Looking at Thorne, who understood and drew back, Carter took the pin out of a flash-bang grenade and lobbed it in the Subway terminal. Having covered his ears, he was ready once the smoke cleared—he rushed into the station and took out a few of the prostrated goons.

Receding footsteps told him that someone had been smart enough to run away. He looked in the distance and saw Jury’s trenchcoat.

He was sorely tempted to follow, but Emily’s voice rang in his earpiece.

“Carter, if you’re still alive, the Speaker of the House is asking for maximum coverage.”

Right.

Another time, Jury.

“How are we doing, Carter?” asked Thorne as they climbed up the stairs.

“Living the good life, killing the bad people.”

“You got that right. About time we’ve been unleashed.”

They got rid of a few extra weapons before going any further—they were nearly empty anyway, and there was no sense risking being mistaken by goons and shot as they approached Taylor. They each kept two or three handguns in their jacket pockets—within reach, but not an immediate danger to any trigger-happy Secret Service Agents.

The agents that had gone ahead were waiting for them, and escorted them into the Rotunda. After the subway firefight, Carter and Thorne had new buddies. 

Taylor and the two senators had been joined by a gaggle of other people, and Carter could recognize many of them—congresspeople and senators. Taylor was clearly betting on the safety of crowds—and bipartisan crowds too.

He spotted Saskia, who gestured to join her. He got a few glances—his suit wasn’t in the best of shape after the gunfight.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“I think we can trust that specific Secret Service detail. What’s the plan?

’You’re not going to like this.”

“Just say it.”

“They’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. All of them.”

“I suppose it’s too late to object?”

“You and the entire US Secret Service.”

Nonetheless, Carter could see the logic. It fit Laffer’s coin-flip scenario. Make a show of force—bipartisan unity, and re-enacting the traditional trek from the Capitol to the White House after the administration of the Oath.

Of course, it was insane—there were mobs of near-rioters outside, armoured infantry carriers, even tanks and there were probably quite a few Blunt/Kean loyalists in those vehicles. Not to mention Blunt Tower in the middle of the way.

On the other hand, with the number of people and cameras here, they had a mob of their own.

🗽

“Get to the White House, you macaroni-brained moron!” screamed Thursk to Coughlin as the news channels showed Taylor walking down the steps of the Capitol. The chyrons told the rest of the story — Bipartisan Showing of Unity for Taylor—JOIN US Says Taylor to Washingtonians—Taylor Survives an Assassination Attempt—Polls, Scholars and Social Media Rally Behind Taylor.

There wasn’t much of a doubt as to who called the shots here on the trillionaires’ floor—Coughlin cowed and nodded even as his humiliation was seen by all.

“You will not let that bitch get there first!” spat the trillionaire. “Take an armoured car, take E Street, mow down anyone who stands in your way. I want you in the damned Oval Office in fifteen minutes, and on TV in twenty! Take someone from the West Wing to clear the way—you, speechwriter!”

McGuire nodded and followed. One last meek acceptance, but it was his way out of there.

Chapter 13 — The Spies who Escorted VIPs

Night had fallen on Washington, but you wouldn’t know it from the middle of the hurricane that was revolving around President Taylor.

Not only was Pennsylvania Avenue fully lit up, it seemed as if everyone carried a phone, a torch (electric and not) or a camera with a lighting kit. It got brighter as you got closer to the gaggle of journalists, aides and influencers immediately around Taylor. This did not please Carter—any sniper would only need to look in the middle of the pack to have a good shot—but, on the other hand, it was an audacious gambit: Here I am, I do not fear you, I do not need to hide, I am inevitable.

Thorne was off to sweep the area, but Carter and Saskia were still within earshot of the new president, and he begrudgingly started to admire the woman. From the moment they climbed down the back stairs of the Capitol, Taylor had conducted an endless succession of short interviews with journalists, inspirational messages to influencer channels, soundbites for whoever was pointing a microphone in her direction, and quick huddles with the advisors. She was endlessly on point, repeating the same message with small but targeted audiences.

As with many top politicians, Taylor seemed to have an endless memory: In her message to journalists, she addressed them by their names. In the clips for the video channels, she made comments that sounded like inside jokes, and she managed to deftly go from one context to another as the moment demanded.

“If you’re anywhere close to Pennsylvania Avenue, join us!” went one such clip. “We are taking our government back, and we are closing this chapter of American history. But I can’t do it alone—please, come and help us. See how many of us there are already?”

This was the cue for the camera to circle and show the crowd of people all marching on to the White House.

They left the Capitol ground and entered Pennsylvania Avenue itself, first through the parking lot next to the reflecting pool, then on the street typically used for traffic. Not that there were any cars at the moment—the crowd of people blocked any circulation. Carter thought of Nadia when he saw the Canadian Embassy to his right. 

Some of the lights went out when Taylor signalled that she was going to take a small break—but the walk would be long enough that everyone would get a chance to get footage. The journalists disengaged, helped along with an efficient cadre of aides redirecting the media toward the other walking politicians.

Carter nodded—she might as well take a breath, because it would be at least an hour to get there at the speed they were going. 

He truly wasn’t expecting her to head directly to him.

“I asked for a moment so that I could chat with you three. I’m told that you don’t particularly appreciate the spotlight.”

“Er, yes ma’am.”

She probably thought they were Secret Service agents.

“I know who you are, Agent Carter. Agent Diestel. I was briefed on that incident in… East Ukraine two years ago. You saved a lot of lives that day. And also saved this country some embarrassment. When I talked to our common acquaintance for help, she specifically mentioned you, Carter.”

“I’m honoured.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, let’s see how this is going to go. It’s a long way to the White House, and there are many enemies on our way. Feel free to fan out to take care of any threats on the way, but when I get to the White House, please stick close. I may have something to ask of you two. And anyone helping you.”

“Understood.”

“The coin has flipped, Agent Carter,” she said with a smile, “and it’s still in the air.”

🗽

“I have a nice little surprise for you all,” said Emily through Aubert’s headpiece.

Aubert looked to Nadia, who was also waiting in the outer office of Senator Miller.

“Someone talked to someone who talked to someone, and it turns out that Blunt wired the trillionaires’ penthouse of his tower with an always-on surveillance system. He also cheapened out on security. Thanks to a few people you’ll never hear about, we can now hear what Thursk and all are thinking. If you can call that thinking.”

🗽

The first attack took place as they went past Seventh Street. The crowd grew even larger, with a constant stream of new arrivals thanks to the Archives metro station and other people walking in. And within that crowd came a few less-savoury elements.

Saskia and Carter had spread out to the outer edge of the mass—the Secret Service was doing its job in the middle of the pack next to Taylor, and any threat would come from the outside.

Still, they weren’t looking in the right direction when three men in paramilitary garb started lobbing tear gas grenades into the crowd. Given their laughter as they did so, it was less an official response than the kind of stochastic terrorism that Coughlin and Thursk were openly fanning. The three men were clearly intent on causing trouble: They were wearing gas masks, had weapons slung on their shoulders, and behaved more like pranking frat boys than serious police or military.

The hiss of the escaping gas is what attracted Carter’s attention first—and then the people running away when they saw the white gas billowing from the grenades. The acrid pepper smell of the gas was next—and soon would come the tears and the burning sensations. The only ones not reacting were the grenade throwers, decked in gas masks and apparently finding all of this funny—the crowd immediately grew sparser around them.

Carter and Saskia didn’t need to consult each other when they both started sprinting for the attackers, having the advantage of approaching from the rear. As sorely tempted as Carter was to draw his handgun and shoot the grenade throwers in the neck, there were too many people around to make this a reasonable course of action.

Instead, he jammed his left sleeve up against his nose and mouth to avoid the worst of the tear gas, then ran to the attackers. It really helped with his motivation that the grenade throwers were apparently finding all of this to be an amusing jape—all the way to the immense satisfaction that Carter found in punching the first of them in the ear.

His bell rung, the man fell to the ground.

Carter deftly ripped the gas mark off the hooligan’s face, and hastily put it on his own. This wasn’t the first time he wore a gas mask in an emergency, and before anyone else could react, he was already hitting a second hooligan in the neck with a hard chop.

Then he removed that second hooligan’s mask to see how they liked a taste of their own medicine.

Only then, satisfied that his two targets were blubbering on the ground, did he look at Saskia.

True to form, she had stabbed the third hooligan in the leg, and was now wearing a gas mask of her own.

🗽

Traffic in Washington was usually terrible, but McGuire had never seen anything quite like this.

For one thing, their SUV hadn’t moved in ten minutes. While it had emerged on E Street from the Blunt Tower’s underground parking without too much trouble, the car had been unable to move more than two blocks. They still had four blocks to go until the White House’s East Wing. The problem wasn’t other cars—it was people, steadily moving toward Pennsylvania Avenue.

The other thing is that this was, for lack of a better word, happy traffic. People were smiling, cheering, waving American flags and moving with purpose. Not your everyday Washington crowd – this had the feeling of a popular uprising, the kind of thing you saw in other countries after military coups.

All of this way making Coughlin furious—or deathly scared. There were four of them in the vehicle — the Secretary of State, his bodyguard, McGuire, and the driver—but Coughlin’s audible fury was taking up all of the space in the large SUV.

“MOVE!” he shouted to the driver. “Bump them out of the way!”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not going to do that.”

Coughlin’s rage grew a notch, and McGuire seriously thought he’d blow a fuse. Then, apparently disgusted by his own decision but terrified to stay put, he opened the door of the SUV.

“To hell with it, we’re walking.”

🗽

Two more would-be assassins showed up to take care of Miller, but Aubert and Nadia were still standing guard – they quietly nabbed the goons in the neck, and stacked their bodies back with their comrades so that the Capitol Police cleanup would be easier. 

Already, order was getting back in the Hart building: the last goons had been dispatched, and now the wounded officers were being attended to by paramedics. There would be less and less to do for the two agents as the situation evolved.

🗽

The tear gas situation was under control by the time Carter and Saskia went back to the President’s inner circle.

They had left the would-be troublemakers stacked and hogtied with their own zip ties, and stripped of anything they could use to make trouble. They were visible enough that it wouldn’t take a long time for the police or anyone else to free them up—although Carter had taken a certain pleasure in opening one last tear gas grenade underneath them, since they were already being avoided by the crowd. Let them cry a few manly fratboy tears for a while.

The disruption to the march had been minimal. By this time in Blunt’s administration, the American public had grown so used to urban riots that the essential commandments of tear gas were known by most—protect your face, breathe through something, keep walking away. Once diluted to harmless levels, the smell even added an invigorating spiciness to the march.

Not everyone made it through unscathed, but the aides walking with Taylor has planned something like this—facemasks and water bottles were well distributed, and people were attending to those who had taken too big a whiff of the gas.

When Carter arrived, some of the crowd had stopped moving, and he eventually saw why—Taylor was stopped on the sidewalk, comforting an older man who had clearly been overwhelmed by the gas.

“That’s all right,” she said, “you’ll be fine. Just rest for a few minutes. Thank you for being here. Any one of us can rest when everyone else goes on.”

Taylor herself had clearly gotten her share of tear gas—she kept sniffing, and her cheeks showed traces of running tears. But that only made the image more mesmerizing—and the cameras around them captured it all.

“Thank you, ma’am President,” said the man. “Now go to the White House and give’em hell.”

🗽

There was no tear gas in Senator Miller’s office, but a few people still sniffed.

“Campaign… advertisement… right there,” commented one of the aides struggling to keep his voice together.

“Eight more years,” quipped another.

🗽

Eventually, the eye of hurricane Taylor passed by the most visible symbol of the thing it was fighting against—Blunt Tower, in its gaudy ostentatiousness. Carter first heard the growing chorus of boos, and then, nearly as one, the crowd giving a spontaneous greeting as they walked in front of the tower—one arm outstretched, a middle finger well in evidence. Often, both arms outstretched in a double-barrelled salute.

Almost instinctively, the arms rose at one end of the building and were kept up until the other end. The boom crested once in front of the big BLUNT sign above the entrance. Some bricks were thrown, but the building had already been boarded up.

Then the hurricane passed, not even bothering to stick around.

🗽

Thursk: When this blows over, we’re going to use recordings to scan every face in the crowd and charge them for treason!

Unnamed assistant 1: Sir, this may not be-

Thursk: I don’t care! There are consequences in defying order. We’ll make an example out of them. Of course, why wait? Where’s Coughlin?

Unnamed assistant 2: He left his vehicle and is approaching the White House on foot.

Thursk: By walking? What an imbecile! Oh well; if he doesn’t make it, there’s always Warner. At least he doesn’t want to make me drive a screwdriver into my brain every time I speak to him. 

Unnamed assistant 1: Yes, sir.

Thursk: Never mind Coughlin. Where’s Jury?

Unnamed assistant 2: He says he survived a firefight and is on his way here.

Thursk: And he didn’t achieve anything I asked of him. Round up the remaining security guys. I want them on the street in five minutes, and I want them to mow down the crowd with bullets.

Unnamed Assistant 1: Sir!

Thursk: I want consequences to this little uprising so that they think twice the next time. And I want a stampede that will crush Taylor underfoot. Call the National Guard from the Mall onto Pennsylvania avenue to block Taylor. And send the goons on the street. MOW. THEM. DOWN.

🗽

“Aubert, Nadia, we need you to make a run for Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Emily.

The Canadian and him didn’t need to be told twice. They briskly took their leave from Senator Miller’s office, quickly ran down the stairs and flashed their access passes to the Capitol police guarding the exit. Ambulances and police vehicles with flashing lights were just outside, mopping up the bodies of the slain goons. Word near the security station was that most of the Capitol Police had made mince work of the goons once the surprise attack had passed. There had still been far too many casualties.

“Hurry up,” said Emily. “We’ve got first-hand recordings of Thursk sending armed thugs in the street to fire into the crowd and create a stampede. We’re not sure where the shooters are coming from but we’re watching all the exits. I hope you get there on time—I think you have maybe five minutes.”

🗽

“Why isn’t the National Guard just shooting the lot down?” grumbled Coughlin.

That was a pretty good question, thought McGuire despite his antipathy for the man. There was a heavy police force, but they seemed content to just stay visible and stay close to the entrances of the federal buildings. Guarding and monitoring for now. No doubt there were intense debates higher up—but sense had prevailed for now, and the military kept a strictly neutral stance.

Even after leaving the SUV on the street (chauffeur still inside) and taking only his bodyguard and McGuire along, Coughlin was finding out that the way to the White House wasn’t necessarily any better on foot.

For one thing, they were headed west to the White House while everyone else was going south to Pennsylvania Avenue. Moving at cross-section with the flow required additional effort—especially when they encountered a side street flowing with human traffic. 

For another, Coughlin seemed… afraid. Yes. For all of his haughty demeanour in a studio or in a meeting room, Coughlin was a creature from inside the beltway—unprepared for the chaos of an ebullient street. He was out of his element, and if he was thinking even a minute ahead, he probably saw his future as a Thursk puppet. His head was curiously low, although this was also justified by the elementary disguise of wearing a cap taken from the chauffeur—thankfully, not a red one.

McGuire stayed a few steps away from Coughlin and his bodyguard—just close enough to catch a few muttered invectives against the crowd but not so much to be immediately lumped with them. With the sounds of the megaphones, the TAY-LOR, TAY-LOR chants and hasty placards saying TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK, this was not a maggat crowd. With his high public profile and the cruel foreign policy of the Blunt administration, Coughlin was not a crowd favourite.

What had to happen did happen, right before fourteenth street. They were just north of Freedom Plaza, and the crowd was almost standing still—everyone looking south, waiting for Taylor’s imminent arrival. People were milling about now that they had reached their destination, and that wasn’t good news—since they weren’t going somewhere, they had more time to look around… and spot a would-be president and his wholly inadequate escorts.

“Hey, is that Coughlin?” said a big bearded man.

“I don’t know; is it?” said his friend.

“Stay close,” hissed Coughlin to McGuire, “you writing weasel.”

It wasn’t the worst insult McGuire had received throughout the Blunt administration, but it was the last. Suddenly, an immense bubble of frustration popped, and he knew it was time to act. He had made Coughlin; he would unmake him just as thoroughly.

He ripped the cap from the head of the presumptive president.

“Yeah, that’s Coughlin!” said McGuire while stepping back. “The Secretary of State himself! The one who sent a hundred soldiers to die in Panama! The one who stood by while Blunt pissed all over our allies! The one who buddied up with Russia!”

“A buddy of mine died in Panama!” said the big bearded man.

“You’re just as worse as everyone else!” said a woman.

“We all felt powerless for the past two years!” said McGuire to the crowd as he donned the cap and stepped away further. “They laughed at our pain! They enjoyed their cruelty! Now we’ve got one of them within our reach! What are we going to do about it?”

Coughlin’s bodyguard raised his pistol, but he was too late and outnumbered—someone hit him on the back of the head and he went down without having accomplished a single thing to protect Coughlin.

Then the crowd turned its attention to the Secretary of State, the presumptive president. He was surrounded, and McGuire easily retreated.

“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?” he shouted one last time.

The last thing McGuire ever saw of Coughlin while he was alive was a betrayed look, probably similar to Caesar asking, “what the hell?” to Brutus.

Then he disappeared behind the growling crowd, and McGuire slipped away.

🗽

Roughly two kilometres separated the Hart building from Blunt Tower—it would take them at least ten minutes to run on foot, and they wouldn’t be particularly useful by the time they were there.

Flagging a car? It wasn’t even worth thinking about—Constitution Avenue was empty, and the only traffic was pedestrian.

Still, that wasn’t an excuse for Nadia to start running in the opposite direction.

“What are you doing?” said Aubert while following her.

“Thirty seconds’ worth of investment can save us minutes,” she said unhelpfully.

Aubert was about to say something, but then he saw her reach the corner of Second Street and understood. Right there, on the corner, was a small fleet of bright-lime scooters and bicycles—ugly, but all available through a modest credit card swipe.

Ten seconds later, they were pedalling east toward Pennsylvania Avenue—all dressed in professional clothes, with a rifle slung on their backs. He hoped the surveillance footage would never be broadcast at large, because the boys at the office would never let him hear the end of it.

🗽

“Carter, we’re going to need your help now,” said Emily.

Carter perked up. He was on the periphery of the crowd, slightly past Pershing Park. More and more, organizers were redirecting foot traffic toward The Ellipse or Lafayette Park—more out of convenience than any real desire, considering that the White House grounds were fenced off and the people had to go somewhere. 

The Ellipse, in front of the White House, was the least awful compromise even despite the rafters and bloodstains of two former presidents still on the ground. The earlier fights that had sent nearly a hundred people to nearby hospitals had died down when the maggats had departed at dusk, fearing for their lives.

“We’re hearing reports of a rogue National Guard division headed Taylor’s way—”

Okay, so far not bad…

“-with tanks.”

Oh.

“They’re coming north on Fifteenth street.”

Carter pivoted and headed south, the illuminated beacon of the Washington Monument acting as guide.

“I’m not sure what you can do, and we’re looking at options, but do your best.”

Now that he was paying attention, Carter could see something up ahead—people moving out of the way of an M-1 Abrams tearing up the street. The first of a few, judging by the lights. To the left was the brick face of the Hoover building (the president, not the FBI mob boss), and to the right were the trees flanking the Ellipse.

He knew that the M-1 Abrams was able to reach a top speed of 45 miles an hour, but this one was crawling along—perhaps watching for the civilians, perhaps wanting to intimidate through sheer bulk—they were twice the size of an average car (meaning one-and-a-half times the size of an average Washington SUV) and the growl of their turbines, mixed with the crunch of their threads on the pavement, was distinctive. As happy as Carter had been to see them in Ukraine, this was not the same kind of sensation.

More and more people got out of the tank’s way. The floodlights on the front of the lead tank grew bigger. Behind him, Carter knew that Taylor was just making her way into Pershing Square.   If they broke through, the tanks could mow down the entire crowd, either by rolling over everyone, or by firing a few rounds. The stampede alone would be deadly.

He didn’t have much of a plan to stop them. He certainly didn’t have the equipment—while there was a way to disable an Abrams with a rifle and a hand grenade (an insane, ludicrous way that was taught to MI6 agents in order to avoid doing it), he had neither, and the tank crews would simply batter down all of the hatches the moment they felt threatened.

Fifty yards from the machines, he stopped. He spread his arms and legs in the rough shape of an X in order to make himself as visible as possible. Around him, people were still fleeing the tanks.

“Hold the line!” he tried.

A few looked in his direction, but no one stopped. 

“HOLD THE LINE!” he repeated in what he hoped was a mid-Atlantic accent.

 “HE SAID HOLD THE LINE!” said a familiar voice behind him.

He looked right, and Thorne stopped next to him, also taking the X position.

The tank was slowing down, but still advancing.

“This isn’t your best plan, Limey,” said Thorne.

“Hey Thorne, got anything better? Where you’ve been?”

“Stopping the new president from being killed. Disarmed a psycho with a knife. Not loitering in the middle of the road like you. HEY HOLD THE LINE!” he boomed.

An older black woman, God bless her, joined them. The tank was thirty yards away, not slowing down.

Then two young men, looking more like thrill seekers than anything else.

Then a gray-haired man with a veteran’s vest.

Then a middle-aged Asian man, leaving the rest of his family on the sidewalk to join them.

They all took the X position, being as noticeable as possible.

“HOLD THE LINE!” Thorne said.

“HOLD THE LINE!” they repeated.

Twenty yards. Now they were going to be tested.

The two young men almost left, but then three giggling young women joined them. Then five more people, most of them behind Carter and Thorne.

Ten yards, but the tank was definitely slowing down.

Ten more people joined, but stayed on the periphery away from where the tank would roll.

Five, three, two…

The tank stopped. The muzzle brake of the main cannon hung just over Carter’s head.

“MOVE OUT OF THE WAY,” boomed the tank’s loudspeaker.

“HOLD THE LINE! HOLD THE LINE! HOLD THE LINE!” answered the crowd.

And it was a crowd now—people were joining them from all around, curious and thrilled to stop a line of tanks from going any further.

The driver tested them by pivoting the tank toward the Ellipse—the crowd moved to ensure there was still a wall of people blocking their way.

“Yeah, you boys ain’t going anywhere but BACK!” shouted the older black woman.

🗽

Aubert saw that most of the crowd had moved north-west with Taylor, but Pennsylvania Avenue near Blunt tower still held a respectable multitude. Stragglers, hangers-on, people following the crowd but not wanting to get too close.

Still, Aubert and Nadia were able to cycle their way to Blunt Tower in near-record time, and at a fraction of the sweat it would have taken them had they run.

“The goons are getting out of the Blunt Tower side’s garage exit on Ninth street.” Said Emily in their earpieces. “They’re all walking toward Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Just in time, then. Aubert briefly debated getting off the bike and setting up a defensive position—from the corner of his eye, he saw Nadia slow down, presumably to do just that. But riding a green-lime public bicycle had given him near-delusions of invulnerability, or at least self-confidence.

They would never see it coming because they would all see him coming.

Taking a calculated risk, he turned right on Ninth street and scanned the scene quickly, finding the three things he had been hoping for.

One; a near-empty street.

Two; nearly a dozen goons walking south, all wearing a dark tactical balaclava for ease of identification.

Three; plenty of concrete planters where he could easily crash his bike.

Oh-ho-ho! He hadn’t had this much fun since that little caper back in Maputo!

He saw the men look at him, and relax at the sight of his bright-green rented bike.

Reaching inside his jacket, he whipped out his pistol and let the bicycle dictate his aim.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

He was close enough that the shots counted as point-blank, and they all happened before they knew what hit them. By the time they brought up their rifles, he was past them.

The next part could be harder and more painful. 

He knew that if he stayed on the bike, they could easily shoot him down.

Hence the crash—a controlled interruption of velocity, as he’d call it later in his after-action debriefing.

He wasn’t going that fast when he face-planted over the concrete planter—maybe twenty kilometres an hour. Fast enough to buy him a moment of surprise, slow enough to control his fall over the bike.

He took the half-second of air to tuck hands and head toward his torso, then rolled on the ground as the bike landed on top of him. As planned, there was now a solid concrete planter between him and the goons, shielding him from the gunfire.

Still, it hurt like un fils de pute.

But as the volley of rifle bullets passed overhead, he was alive and under cover.

Faint screams from a receding crowd reminded him of what was at stake here. Other rifle sounds and grunts nearby suggested that Nadia was doing her part, not only in providing cover and distraction, but actually hitting a few of them as well.

Tiens, tiens, les amis—you weren’t expecting to go against trained killers, weren’t you?

He wasn’t done yet. Taking his pistol to the side of the planter, he found a target and fired, hitting one of the goons on the neck. Then he made his way to the other side of the planter and shot two more of them as they looked very confused—thanks to Nadia finding cover on one side and him kamikazeing his way to the other, the goons were in a cross-fire and thoroughly disappointed to be unable to mow down civilians like fish in a barrel. 

Trying to recall how many bullets he had left and how many goons were left, he let go of the pistol and took the rifle that was still slung over his back—fortunately, it fired true at another goon.

He stopped and listened. Nadia, who probably had a much better view of the situation than he did, did not fire. Sobs of pain coming from the street suggested that not all of their shots had found their true target. 

Still from behind the planter, he glanced at the sound of one of the sobs, and put the poor man out of his misery.

« Hé, la Canadienne ! » he shouted, « Il en reste combien ? »

One more shot.

« Zéro ! »

He got up and saw for himself. Twelve men, down in what must have been thirty seconds but felt more like five minutes. Nadia got up from behind the parked van she’d been using as cover. She walked toward him, surveying the damage inflicted through a professional’s dispassionate but appreciative glance.

“Francophones. We get the job done.”

Fist bump.

🗽

At least, their long walk was almost over—Carter and Thorne had gotten back closer to Taylor as the hurricane was reaching the end of their journey—the fences enclosing the Treasury Building, less than a block away from the East Wing’s entrance. The tanks were still idling on Fifteenth Street, and much of the crowd had headed to the Ellipse rather than risk being crushed so close to the White House perimeter fence.

Ruiz gestured for him and Thorne to approach. Near her, he could see Saskia.

“The President would like to have a word,” said Ruiz.

As if by magic, a two-meter perimeter sprang from nowhere, as everyone gave distance to the new president and the three agents. The cameras were all pointing elsewhere, saw Carter—presidential magic. 

“Thank you so much for everything you’ve done,” said Taylor. “But the rest of the journey must be completed by Americans.”

“I understand.”

“I have one last favour to ask of you three today.”

“Yes.”

She came close to his ear, covered her mouth to ensure cameras wouldn’t see and whispered.

“Will no one rid me of these turbulent trillionaires?”

He looked at her. She looked at him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Need anything?”

He thought fast.

“Yes. Three things. One of them on the ground, two of them up in the air.”

Chapter 14 — Goonbreaker

McGuire was feeling unusually giddy for someone who had just killed a man with the power of his words.

Following the crowd clustered around President Taylor, he had walked up to the Treasury gate entrance. He still had his White House pass, and Sofia just may be there.

While a crowd was still massed near the fence, McGuire had no trouble getting closer. In fact, it seemed as if regular members of the crowd knew that it wouldn’t be possible to get any closer—it was mostly politicians, aides, secret service and journalists.

“Jonas!” said the most wonderful voice in the world.

Sofia rushed him and they spared a few seconds for a kiss.

“Amazing night so far.”

“Yeah, except for the snag at the guard post.”

“What?”

“Sentry on duty says we’re all unauthorized by White House staff.”

“May this will help.”

He flashed his access card. 

She smiled but raised an eyebrow.

“Stupid problems require stupid solutions.”

She ushered him closer to the sentry post, while McGuire tried to remember the protocol for visits. How many visitors could he bring in? How about a hundred of the country’s most influential people?

As McGuire half-expected, the sentry was a middle-aged marine sergeant—close-cropped gray hair, wrinkled face and bulldog expression. All that was missing was the red hat.

“What now?” said the man.

“I’m going to the White House,” said McGuire while showing his pass.

“Uh, sure.”

“…and a few friends.”

The Marine looked at him.

“Doesn’t work like that, Son.”

“Of course it does. Protocol is that visitors must be escorted. Well, I’m the escort.”

“This is all irregular.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I could get in trouble if I let people in.”

“But think of the trouble if you don’t let people in.”

Not breaking eye contact, McGuire approached the sergeant close. Closer.

“You may not agree with any of this, but half of Washington is on the Ellipse, just waiting for Taylor to wave at them from the White House balcony. Can you imagine how mad they would be if she wasn’t able to do that? Mad enough to break through the fence, you think? Mad enough to storm the White House? It would be a shame if it happened on your watch.”

The Marine sighed.

“Limited number of people, only.”

McGuire thought about the maximum occupancy in the Oval Office. Say, for an oath of presidency photo-opportunity.

“How about twenty-five for now?”

🗽

Carter sent his message to G-laughing-face-emoji: I need a perimeter set up around Blunt Tower. At least half a block.

It took an unusually long time—thirty seconds—before they got an answer back: You have friends in very high places, now. Consider it done, but give us five minutes.

Five minutes would be just perfect for what Carter had in mind.

“What’s the plan, Carter?” asked Saskia as they left most of the crowd behind by walking back to fifteenth street.

“For that matter, what’s the goal, Carter?” asked Thorne.

“President Taylor wants us to take out the trillionaires.”

“Oooh,” said both of them.

Throne was actually rubbing his hands together.

“Getting to the root of the matter, isn’t she?” said Saskia.

“Tear gas only slaps at the problem, but nerve gas solves it,” quoted Thorne.

“I had something else in mind,” said Carter as he took out his phone.

🗽

Aubert and Nadia’s professional satisfaction had been short-lived—moments after surveying their handiwork and retreating to the other side of the street to start putting some distance between them and the bodies, six more goons had emerged from the Blunt Tower.

They looked at Nadia and Aubert, then at their fallen comrades, then again up at Nadia and Aubert.

Slowly, reluctantly, they added the pieces in their minds.

By that time, Aubert raised his pistol and fired.

Alas, as he had half-anticipated, the trigger clicked on empty—in the excitement of the night’s shootouts, he had forgotten to reload… and his backup rifle had been left on the ground, nearer to the goons than to him.

Uh-oh.

Nadia managed to fire twice, only hitting one of them on the shoulder.

Then it was time to duck and run.

They didn’t have many options. Rounds of full-automatic rifle fire passed over their heads, shattering the plate-glass windows of the bank next to them, and chipping the concrete of the planter behind which they were hiding. It was clear that they were severely outgunned and that not much else mattered. Every single weapon near them was in the goon’s line of fire. Stupid!

“Only three blocks to the Canadian Embassy,” she said.

“They will shoot us down before we get half a block away.”

“If we run, yes, but if we roll…”

She nodded to the bicycle she’d abandoned on the corner.

“That is the worst getaway vehicle I can imagine,” he said.

“Still faster than running, and faster than them.”

“It is not a two-seat bicycle.”

“It does have two handles and two pedals. Like two big scooters welded together.”

She threw up a nearby piece of trash, and another round of rifle fire affirmed the pickle they were in.

“I’m left, you’re right. I steer.”

“Fine, fine.”

He threw up another piece of litter, and got a few shots for his trouble. Then they crawled away to the corner and, after a few metres, made a dash for it.

I’m left she’s right, or wait, was it the other way around? 

He picked up the bike, put a foot on the right pedal, put his hands on the handlebar and used the other foot to push. She did the same on her side and before long, improbably, they were sort of getting away at more than a running speed.

Then they narrowly missed being thrown to the ground.

“I steer!” she said.

“Fine!”

If nothing else, their dumbest getaway plan had confounded the goons enough that they had made their escape. One more volley of rifle fire rang out, but left them untouched.

“Huh,” he said at how it had somehow worked.

But the remaining goons were tenacious, and they had noticed the bank of bicycles on the corner. Before long, five burly guys were on orange bikes huffing and puffing in their pursuit.

One of them tried to fire, but the recoil made the rifle fall off.

They zoomed past the first intersection—car traffic was still staying away from Pennsylvania Avenue.

The goons weren’t giving up, though—another goon tried firing at them and knocked himself down on the ground.

“Those last goons aren’t the brightest ones,” he said.

They made it past the second intersection.

One goon squeezed off one burst of rifle fire, and that one came uncomfortably close.

It was about time that they reached the embassy—they half-stopped, half-threw themselves on the stairs leading to the embassy’s plaza.

The Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, was a striking example of good modern architecture dropped in between the Capitol and the White House. What could have been a bland boxy office building had been hollowed out with a central open atrium and, most remarkably, a vast plaza on the ground floor. Climbing the stairs, they saw the large Haida sculpture that was the centrepiece of the open space.

But before they could get any further, the goons were upon them. Having apparently abandoned the cheap and easy plan of shooting them, they had settled for a more brutish plan to beat them up.

Thrown to the floor, Aubert took a few punches on the back before wiggling himself to a couching position and striking back. His first few punches were fast and effective, taking out one opponent with a few blows to the side of the head.

But there were three more of them—and they were being swarmed.

One of the goons screamed, a knife planted in his eye by the ever-surprising Nadia.

In his peripheral vision, Aubert could see the embassy’s RCMP detail get up and approach the glass windows, concerned by the fight but not yet willing to intervene. 

He took a few steps toward the doors, but another goon kicked him in the knees, and he went down. The goon jumped over him, punching him in the chest. Aubert gritted his teeth and tried a combination of kicking and punching, to little effect—the man was on top of him and weighed at least a few dozen kilos more. Still, Aubert wasn’t defenceless: Unable to punch the guy in the face, he settled for a pretty good hit on the stomach, enough to make him keel over.

With three of the goons incapacitated, he liked the two-on-two odds a little better.

Alas, his opponent was now the biggest and tallest of the goon squad. And that guy apparently had better martial arts training, because in three blows Aubert was down on the cold concrete of the embassy’s open court. He rolled toward the entrance and activated the automated sensors of the embassy’s doors, which whooshed open.

Under the RCMP officers’ incredulous eyes, the vicious fistfight carried over into the embassy. Aubert took a few blows, then twisted and managed to land a few of his own. Apparently unaware that he was now on protected diplomatic ground, the goon didn’t let go.

But neither did Aubert—the exchange of blows had now degenerated into wrestling holds, and there Aubert had a bit of an advantage—a little savate in his past, and close-enough combat that his size disadvantage was largely nullified. At some point, he managed a nice little punch to the throat that left his opponent gagging on the ground. Rising, he saw that right outside the door, Nadia had managed to leave her own assailant flat on the concrete, next to the other immobile ones. 

He slammed his foot into the fallen goon’s crotch, then dragged him by the neck and belt and shoved him back outside.

« Dehors, espèce d’ordure! »

Nadia came in, waving her Canadian Passport at the RCMP officers.

They were quite a sight—clothes torn, bleeding from dozens of cuts and scrapes, panting, dishevelled, probably looking a bit manic on a high of pure adrenaline.

“I’m CSIS,” she said. “I’d like to request asylum for me and my good friend, please.”

🗽

“I’m going to need you to clear out, ma’am,” said Carter.

It was the same elderly black woman that had promised to stay in front of the tank.

“Where are you going with this?”

He told her, along with the rest of the crowd.

“Aw, hell yes!” she said. “Can I come along?”

As the crowd all cleared the way, Carter tapped on the tank’s observation port.

“Get out,” he said.

“No way!” said a thin reedy voice from inside the tank.

“Your choice. You can either get out now or—“

The tank’s radio chirped.

“-or you’ll be told by your superiors right now.”

The tank driver apparently took the call because ten seconds later, during which even Carter could hear the tone of the interlocutor, he was out of the tank along with the three other crewmembers.

“Who are you?” said the driver, barely a twentysomething.

“I’m well connected.”

He entered the tank, followed by Saskia and Thorne.

The space inside was tight. As they’d planned, Thorne slid into the laid-back driver’s seat, Saskia took the gunner’s position and Carter sat in the commander’s seat. Fortunately, this was the latest-generation M1A2 Abrams—with the latest digital technology to make it possible even for beginners to use the vehicle effectively.

“All right, Thorne, time to learn fast.”

Carter had some experience—maybe a day or two of joint training exercises—with the M1 Abrams—enough that he could command one in a pinch, especially if no one was shooting at them. Saskia had been co-trained in Germany on one of them and could take up the loader’s role if they weren’t planning on shooting more than once a minute or so. Thorne was completely new to tanks, which meant that he got the easiest job—driving the thing.

Which apparently suited him just fine: “All right, let’s get this thing moving!”

He stepped on the gas, and the tank jumped forward.

“Careful now, those things can roll.”

“You tell me.”

Carter activated the tank’s warning sirens, meaning to scare off the civilians. Thorne was a gifted driver no matter the vehicle, but safety came first.

All right. Onward to Pennsylvania Avenue.

🗽

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

McGuire was losing track of how many presidential Oath of Office he had personally witnessed in a week. He supposed there was no harm in Taylor redoing hers as many times as she’d like—she didn’t seem to be the type to forget what it meant. Even Obama had redone both of his twice.

The President shook hands with Chief Justice Gabford, but merely politely—the man had practically been dragged into the Oval Office to administer the oath.

Then she went behind the Resolute Desk and faced the cameras. 

“My fellow Americans. Today has been a day for the history books. But I believe that we will end it as a better nation than when it began. The last few years have been dark, and the next few will not be easy. But under my leadership, the government will once more serve all Americans. Not merely those who took it over for their own personal gain or glory. Not merely a tiny fraction of malcontents and bigots.”

She took a deep businesslike breath.

“To this end, I will nominate a Vice-Presidential for confirmation by the House and the Senate as early as tomorrow. I will immediately issue executive orders to undo the excesses of the previous administration. I will nominate an entirely new Cabinet. I will launch an independent review of government contracts awarded during the previous administration for evidence of corruption.”

She stared hard at the camera.

“Some will call these actions excessive. I find them necessary, and yet insufficient. To this end, I will also form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to shine a light on the past few years so that we learn from our darkest hours.”

He looked at the Resolute desk, where an unusual artifact took over most of the tabletop. She took the large glass frame and raised it so that its content would be visible to the audience at home.

“When we entered the Oval Office a few minutes ago, I was surprised to find that the Declaration of Independence had been left on the Resolute desk. If it’s a message, I will pass it to you. I’ve always been fond of this specific passage.”

She took a deep breath and recited, more from memory than the near-illegible scratches on the document.

“’Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’”

She stared at the camera.

“Most of you will understand how and why these principles will shape my administration. Some of you will not. But it doesn’t matter. I will be a president for all Americans. Good night, and may God bless America.”

🗽

(Sounds of thrown objects hitting various surfaces. Glass breaks, thuds, feet stomping)

CNN News anchor: To repeat—in the latest stunning turn of events today, Secretary of State Coughlin, earlier proposed as successor to President Kean, was found dead-

Thursk: AAAAAAHHH!

(Repeated thuds, thought of having been a baseball bat hitting a wall)

Thursk: AAAAAAHHH!

(Squeaky toy noise)

Unnamed Assistant 1: Sir, Mick Jury is here-

Jury: Out of my way, toad! Thursk, we’ve got problems-

Thursk: We’ve got problems? WE’VE GOT PROBLEMS? I’ll let you know, you miserable little ni—

(slap, followed by a gasp from Thursk)

Jury: That better have been “nincompoop,” you nincompoop.

Thursk: How dare you? I paid for you and your men-

Jury: These men are DEAD or in the hospital. I began with a hundred and twenty-five of them, all ex-military or mercenaries. Thanks to that wrecking crew of foreign killers and your dumbest decisions, they’re all GONE.

Thursk: I’ll track you down-

Jury: Oh yeah, how are you even going to get out of here? There’s a police perimeter being set up a block away from here in all directions. Taylor has essentially said that she wants your blood, and with the full immunity that Blunt put in place for himself, there’s no limit to what she can do!

Thursk: I’ll bring her down.

Jury: You. Don’t. GET. IT! 

Thursk: You’re spitting on me!

Jury: You’ve gambled everything and you’ve lost. If I was you, I’d be looking at non-extradition countries.

Thursk: You came back for a reason, though.

Jury: One hundred million dollars.

Thursk: For what?

Jury: I’ve got contacts over at Anacostia. Marine One is stationed over there right now. I go get the chopper, I pick you and your friends up from this rooftop. Then you tell me where to go. You could be drinking pina coladas in Bermuda before midnight.

Thursk: Do it within the hour and you’ll get a hundred and fifty. 

🗽

The M-1 Abrams roared past Eleventh Street and set its sights on its destination—Blunt Tower.

“Carter,” broke in Emily, “we’ve got another problem—Jury is leaving the Blunt Tower parking in a black Suburban and heading south to Anacostia. He’s off to get a chopper to evaluate the oligarchs.”

“Thorne, let’s go—”

A black Suburban SUV roared down Ninth street and turned east on Pennsylvania with a loud, loud screech of tires.

“There he is—probably going to go on Seventh. Turn right, now!”

As the Abrams tore past the budding police blockage being set up on Ninth Street, Carter tried to picture the paths taken by both vehicles. Jury was predictable—he was looking for the fastest way out, and there were only limited options if you wanted to go south through the Mall.

Jury was holding the pedal to the metal, but so was Thorne—racing south, the tank quickly met and went over its forty-two-miles-an-hour speed and went past it slightly. Still, this was a losing race.

“Reload gun!” said Carter. “Thorne, at next light, veer left and cut through the park.”

Carter was thinking fast, as was the job of the tank commander—Thorne could see well enough to drive, but Carter had the map of this section of Washington in his head and hoped he remembered enough of it to make it worthwhile. He looked at the IR scope and saw an SUV rushing south on Seventh, as he had expected. Their shortcut had gained them a bit of time, but not much.

“Now, Thorne!”

Thorne audibly cackled as he cut diagonally through the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden—a park with a small pond-turned-ice-rink in the middle. The tank shrugged off the small fence, waist-high shrubs and small concrete curbs in the park. This was no time to be subtle if they hoped to catch Jury. Fortunately, the place was empty at this time of night. 

“Gun ready!” said Saskia as they made their way through the park and then on to the now-empty lawn of the National Mall itself. 

They were losing ground—Jury was getting ahead of them, blowing red lights and there would be no catching him if he waited any longer. Already, Jury was almost past the mall.

“Target SUV and FIRE.”

The tank’s main gun roared once, and all three were pushed forward as the tank slowed due to the recoil.

In the zoomed camera view of his command station, Carter saw the round strike the pavement of Seventh Street just to the right of the SUV. The explosion threw the vehicle up in the air, flipping once, twice and then landing on its side in a large concrete planter, fortunately missing the fully grown trees.

“Good shot!” said Carter.

Thorne slowed as he got closer, avoided the hole left by the explosion and stopped the tank next to the smoking SUV.

“I’m on him,” said Carter.

Quickly, he opened the hatch and slipped outside. Taking out his pistol, he approached the SUV warily—Jury was near-indestructible so far, and any presumption would be fatal.

He glanced thought the windshield and saw an empty driver’s seat. Scanning around him, he briefly caught a shadow slipping away through his peripheral vision. Acting on instinct, he ran toward the shape, alongside a boxy building that seemed familiar.

Yes—yes, there was the unmistakable flapping of the trenchcoat billowing after Jury. Too far away for a good shot, Carter ran to catch Jury. The man had just been nearly blown up, flipped twice and crashed into the ground—surely, he couldn’t be that sprightly?

The figure ran toward the arch that marked the building’s entrance.

“Jury, stop!”

Jury didn’t hear, or didn’t listen. Carter ran and saw that the figure was trying to enter through the main doors of the building, but those were locked. Taking his chance, Carter fired.

He missed and made a bigger problem for himself when the bullet shattered the glass next to the doors, allowing Jury to slip inside the building.

Carter glanced up at the marquee before entering the building himself: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

The entrance hall of the museum was an insane demonstration of the United States’s past achievements—jammed in a single space were the first plane to break the sound barrier, the first plane to cross the Atlantic, two early spaceships, a lunar landing module that they built as an extra but never sent to the moon, and other marvels.

But Carter wasn’t in the mood to play tourist—stepping through the space assigned to the lunar module, he saw Jury race down the corridor. He followed, then slowed down when he couldn’t see Jury. Cautiously, he stayed close to the wall.

He was in the main hallway of the museum—not only a space for tens of thousands of daily tourists to move about the building, but also an imposing exposition hall by itself. Even he recognized a scale model of the Enterprise. The place was eerie when empty—almost as if it wasn’t built to be devoid of human presence.

“You’ve ever been here, Carter?” taunted Jury. “Because I have, many times—what do I know about this place that you don’t?”

Gun drawn and stepping silently, Carter advanced cautiously toward the voice. It came from a secondary hall farther away. A large sign announced the exhibit—AMERICA BY AIR.

The hall was also filled with artifacts, some of them on the ground, some of them hanging in formation from the ceiling. A biplane. Ancient silver passenger planes. Jet engines. The front section of a 747 jetliner poking from a wall. 

He heard a bang, and a bullet whizzed close to him. He snapped off a shot and moved next to the sign.

“Got distracted for a moment, didn’t you? That was a warning shot, Carter! A bit of fun for myself!”

Where could he be? Despite the museum’s generous space, sight-lines were not ideal on the ground. Maybe he was hiding behind a plane, an engine, or an information panel. 

Then he heard a misstep from slightly above. Jury wasn’t invulnerable—he’d slipped while climbing the stairs leading to the second floor.

Carter pressed this momentary advantage and sprinted toward the stairs. He shot at a moving shape, but Jury was already on the first of the stairs’ two curving landings. He followed—he knew where Jury was, and Jury knew where he was. He kept his head and his gun up as he climbed, hoping to see Jury’s bald dome pop up at some point.

But it didn’t. Carter reached the first landing, then slowly started climbing the stairs toward the second landing.

“Why did you do it, Jury?” rattled Carter, “Why sign up for team evil?”

“Money? Power? The freedom of acting like an asshole? All good answers, Carter!”

Then Carter did see Jury’s bald dome up above, near the top of the stairs. He snapped a shot, but it was slightly too late.

“Oooh, that was a close one, Carter! Might as well enjoy that while you can.”

Carter jerked left, and another bullet missed him. Jury was a showboat—that could be exploited.

“How do you feel being all that’s wrong about America, Jury?”

He climbed a few more steps, then heard Jury’s footsteps up on the second floor of the museum.

“Wrong about what, Carter? Do you think this is all going to go away, that your side’s going to write the history books? The average American is an idiot who wants to be told what to think!”

Carter slid on the second-story floor, not at all happy to see that while the heavy glass panels offered some cover, they did not work as concealment. 

“Give us two years,” continued Jury, “and we’ll be back with a supermajority. Pardons for everyone, with enough misinformation to convince the base that no one did anything wrong. Everything you did today, for nothing!”

Jury fired a shot, and the glass next to Carter splintered in a starburst pattern.

But Carter had heard where the voice came from, and he fired into the dark next to the DESTINATION MOON exhibit entrance sign.

There was a grunt, then footsteps going away. Carter ran toward the wall, no longer so exposed in the middle of the second-floor hallway. Hearing nothing, he entered the exhibit.

No blood on the floor—Jury must be wearing a bulletproof vest, of course.

The specific gallery was dedicated to America’s short-lived moon presence. Under the dim nighttime lights, he could see a lunar rover along the back wall. Walking further in, hugging the wall as much as possible, he passed next to a damaged rocket engine recovered from the ocean.

“Feast your eyes on what this nation can do in its moments of glory, you pathetic Brit!”

Emerging in the central area of the gallery was like stepping into a cathedral made of rocket engines—the massive Saturn-5 rocket engine exhausts were suspended above, altering the acoustics of the area.

That was why he heard it—a faint sound coming from above, in front of him. Passing next to the Apollo 11 moon suit, he saw the logic of Jury’s climb to the elevated gallery of the Moon exhibit—there were two staircases leading up, and Jury could either shoot with a great bird’s-eye view of the first floor, or surprise Carter in the back.

“My grandpa went to Jamaica to stop a terrorist from shooting down Apollo 11,” said Carter.

Carter could play that game too—Right after taunting Jury, he doubled back and climbed the other set of stairs as quietly as possible.

“Only the weak care for the weak! True power only comes from caring about itself!”

Trying not to pant, Carter made it to the second landing, then up again another flight of stairs to the upper gallery. A vast diorama of the moon was on his left, but what was important is that the exhibits at this point weren’t completely open—he could sneak up on Jury.

“You’re going against the world’s first trillionaires, Carter! You’re a fly just waiting to be swatted! The faster you swear your oath of fealty, the easier it’s going to be!”

Carter made it to the central area of the upper gallery and pointed his gun at Jury.

“Sic semper tyrannis” he said. 

Jury turned toward him, but didn’t have a chance to fire—Carter hit him with his last three bullets, a tight grouping in the lower neck, right above any bulletproof vest he could have been wearing.

The bald man jerked back and, in going so, went over the railing—the trenchcoat following along.

Carter went down the stairs, reloading along the way. 

But it was a futile gesture at this point—Jury had fallen down hard; no one with a head at that angle could still be alive. The trench coast was draped over the rest of his body like a shroud.

Carter kicked him to be sure.

The henchman was flat and immobile in front of the Columbia Space capsule that had brought the first men on the Moon, next to a full-sized portrait of Neil Armstrong on the moon. 

Carter shook his head. 

“You would have been better off as an astronaut, Jury.”

Chapter 15 — You Only Live Nice

At least three hundred yards separated the White House’s Truman Balcony from the crowd that was blocking E Street in the hope of seeing the new president, and it didn’t make any difference when Taylor went outside to wave. Their roar of approval could be heard from the Yellow Hall where McGuire and Sofia were standing. 

“What a day,” she said.

“That’s right.”

They weren’t alone — there were another dozen people milling about the room while Taylor basked in the approval of the crowd—but they were isolated enough to have a semi-private chat.

“Ready to go to sleep?” she said, wagging her eyebrows in exaggerated fashion.

Oof, there it was – the moment McGuire dreaded.

He’d come to a very unpleasant conclusion in the past few minutes. Well, farther back than that, really, but he had just started to accept it. It was only the first step in assuming the consequences of his actions.

“Ah, yeah, but I’ll do that alone.”

She frowned.

“Well, the next few days are going to be busy-“

“I’m leaving Washington, Sofia. And I have to break up with you.”

“Why?” she asked, genuinely distressed.

“Because you’re going to kick me to the curb sooner or later, whenever you find out what I’ve done.”

“I know what you’ve done. You were in Blunt’s communication team.”

“Sofia, I leaked information to journalists. I provided information to the Brits. I wrote the speaking points in favour of Coughlin’s succession. I hated doing it, but I did it.”

She stayed silent, taking all of this in. 

But man, did it feel good to say it out loud.

“Everybody leaks to the journalists.”

“That’s not the point. I’m done in Washington. Burnt. No one’s going to hire me after this, and no one’s going to keep employing me once today’s story gets around town. There’s no place for me in Taylor’s White House.”

“Um, well, that’s right.”

“There you go. And you’re going to hate me-“

“-not necessarily—“

“-sooner or later. You’re the best, Sofia, I want to be with you but I have to leave. Back to Philadelphia, probably. Out of politics. This town can’t stand me, and the feeling’s mutual.”

They hugged one last time and he left to pick up his belongings before leaving the White House forever.

But had he tried to leave by the balcony, he would have floated freely to the ground.

🗽

Moments later, Carter was back in the Abrams tank with Saskia and Thorne, roaring back toward Blunt Tower. There was no time to waste—not when their targets were all in the same building, waiting for a helicopter rescue that wouldn’t come.

Given the amount of property destruction they had wreaked over the past few minutes, it was surprising that there wasn’t more of a police presence in the streets of Washington, DC—but this was a very unusual day by any measure—maybe they were simply too busy keeping up with the crowd at the Ellipse.

Midway on their way back to Pennsylvania Avenue, Emily brought them some good news.

“Carter? I’m not sure who you asked, but the Boltguns are back online, and they’re keyed to our control.”

Everything was falling into place. If they could just get there in time…

Thorne turned on Pennsylvania, passed by the police perimeter and they could once again see their target—Blunt Tower.

“You sure you want to do this?” asked Saskia.

“I do,” answered Thorne from the driver’s seat.

With a barely perceptible thump, the tank climbed up the stairs in front of the building. It made a lot more noise when it slammed through the front windows, sent glass flying everywhere and made a trail of destruction through the empty lobby.

“Thank you, but we’re not checking in,” said Carter.

The tank, ignoring the 18+ sign, further smashed through the casino entrance and roared over the rows of slot machines—coins bursting from the one-armed bandits, showering the carpet with a metallic rain. Thorne allowed himself a spin or two around the room, personally enjoying the destruction wreaked upon the place.

“Please target one of the support pillars,” asked Carter to Saskia.

She had been preparing for this—the main gun round was locked and ready to fire.

“Ready.”

“FIRE!” said both men at once.

The tank shuddered as it fired a round point-blank into one of the support pillars of the building.

🗽

(A muffled thundering sound is heard throughout the penthouse floor. Objects fall to the floor.)

Thursk: What the hell? WHAT THE HELL?

🗽

Carter had a plan—Blunt Tower had gone up in near-record time, and one of the reasons why it was so fast is that the building had cut a lot of corners in its construction and settled for the simplest structure imaginable. Behind the golden facade, it was nothing more than a big box, gaudily decorated and held up by dirt-standard reinforced concrete pillars. Videos from the construction showed that most of the inner structure rested on four central pillars, easily seen in the open space of the Casino. Pillars that would, left to their own devices, still stand for a few decades.

But not when fired upon with a 120 mm round.

As the building continued to reverberate, Saskia efficiently oversaw the feeding of another round into the main gun.

“Target!”

“Ready!”

“FIRE!”

She fired. The building rang again, quite audibly even within the armoured vehicle.

🗽

(Screams, both male and female)

Unidentified man: We have to evacuate!

Thursk (agitated): Don’t go down! Go to the roof! Jury’s going to pick us up!

🗽

“FIRE!”

A third round went off, a third column blasted apart in an explosion of concrete and rebar.

“All right, one last round,” said Carter.

“Coming up,” said Saskia.

She loaded, locked and targeted the fourth round.

“Ready!”

“I get that one,” said Thorne. “FIRE!”

The tank recoiled slightly once again. 

When the initial noise passed, even they could hear the laboured groaning of the building above them and the structure of the building was put under stress that it wasn’t designed to handle.

“I’ll do the rest,” said Carter as he opened the hatch to leave the tank. “Get out of here and don’t stop until you’re at least half a block away.”

“This is suicide, Carter.”

“Not the way I planned it.”

He extricated himself from the hatch and dropped to the casino floor. Walking away from the tank, he checked his phone and saw that the delivery was about ten minutes out—as planned.

Then he heard a noise and turned, automatically drawing his pistol.

Saskia smiled at him as the tank drove out in a new cacophony of broken glass and metal.

“What are you doing here?” asked Carter. This wasn’t part of the plan.

She kissed him, and he answered in kind.

“You’re going to leave me after this mission?” she teased. “Even after last night? Even after the farmhouse?”

“Well, I am older and wiser than I was two years ago.”

“I’ll accept that as an answer for now. Where to?”

Carter showed the way to the back of the Casino.

“Penthouse elevator. Emily sent me the codes thirty minutes ago.”

They crossed the casino floor nervously, every new crack and groan of the building making them wonder if it was going to fall on them. It wouldn’t, knew Carter—rows of undamaged pillars on the outer perimeter of the building would hold it up even if the building was structurally unsound. It was damaged enough that it would need to be torn down, he knew, but in the next few months rather than the next few minutes.

If nothing else happened.

They made their way to the elevator. An empty casino felt unnatural, as if unfit for purpose.

Electricity was still working, Carter noted approvingly. He entered the penthouse codes, and the elevator doors closed. A bulletproof, impregnable penthouse – except for the codes required by the maintenance staff taking care of the oligarch’s whims. There was always a way in.

As the soft-jazz muzak played on, Saskia drew her pistol.

“So is the plan to get in there and shoot everyone?”

The doors opened. The penthouse floor was empty—but the sound of panicked human voices could be heard from the large showy staircase that led to the roof.

“Not at all,” said Carter.

He started climbing the staircase.

“In fact, I was thinking that we should be gracious guests—“

He held his handgun between his thumb and index and extended his arm as far as it could go before reaching the top of the staircase.

“-and make sure that our host sees that we’re unarmed.”

He opened the door to the roof, pistol dangling harmlessly from his fingers.

“You only have five minutes, Carter,” said Emily in his ear.

The rooftop of Blunt Tower was, despite the gaudy decoration, a rather nice place. Higher than the rest of Washington’s buildings, it offered an unrestricted view of the city for miles around. The night was clear and warm by February’s standards. The rooftop had been cleverly designed so that the machinery was hidden, and the furniture designed for cocktail parties did not interrupt too many sight-lines. The floor sagged in the middle—visible proof of Carter’s interior remodeling.

Their entrance was noticed. Immediately, a large bodyguard snatched their weapons away from them, and patted them down thoroughly.

Carter readjusted his tie and straightened his jacket sleeves as Thursk came to them.

“Beech?” said the billionaire incredulously.

“Carter. Harry Carter.”

“I’m Lady Beech,” helpfully threw in Saskia.

“Does it matter who you are?” asked Thursk.

“Beech is an idiot businessman. I’m an agent for MI6.”

Thursk laughed incredulously.

“So what? You’re here to arrest me? What for?”

“Interference in elections. Usurping Congress’ spending authority. Treason. Mostly for being an absolute tosser.”

“Again, so what? You think you can even touch me?”

“Well, I suppose that I can warn you. Give away enough of your worldly possessions in the next thirty seconds so that you’re no longer a billionaire, or you will die on this rooftop.”

Thursk laughed again.

“Oh, wow, a retard commie comedian.”

A bodyguard raised a pistol toward Carter. Saskia nabbed him in the shoulder with a throwing knife. The gun clattered to the floor, and no one made any further move on them.

“If anyone among you is worth less than a hundred million dollars, you can leave now.” Said Carter with a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone. 

He turned to the bodyguard who had frisked him. “That especially goes for you, big guy. You can keep the guns.”

There must have been something in Carter’s dead-serious glare to convince the man. Smarter than all of his dead or wounded colleagues, the goon turned and went back down the staircase without a word.

Four more assistants and bodyguards followed—leaving only those that Carter recognized as the nouveau riche tech-bro trillionaires of America. The complete set—probably here to triumph over their boy Kean’s ascension to the presidency and then sorely disappointed at the way the rest of the day had gone.

“Thanks for clearing off the riff-raff,” said Thursk. “More space on the copter for the rest of us.”

“The helicopter isn’t coming. Jury is dead.”

“Jury’s invulnerable.”

“He’s now an exhibit on the second floor of the Smithsonian.”

“And you think you’re going to do what now?”

“Let’s just beat him up,” said a trillionaire that Carter recognized as an early social media mogul. His company had failed at everything else it had tried—omniverse augmented reality, social credit cryptocurrency and vapourwave AI assistant devices—and for the past two years the robotic-looking man had restyled himself in a cross between a roided-out rapper and a gold-wearing Roman emperor.

Carter extended his hand in the shape of a gun and fired at the trillionaire with his finger.

Emily, don’t fail me now.

There was a loud CRACK and the trillionaire fell down instantly, part of his body a gory mess on the hardwood floor.

Carter air-fired his finger gun a few more times, pointing at a different oligarch every time.

Bald IT mogul—CRACK, gone.

Megalomaniac database company founder—CRACK, gone.

President and main shareholder of a search-driven advertisement empire—CRACK, gone.

Right-wing multimedia news channel owner—CRACK, gone.

Owner of a rapacious chain of megamarts known for undercutting local shops and closing unionizing stores—CRACK, gone.

CEO of a health insurance company known for increasing its profit margins by denying coverage—CRACK, gone.

Which only left Carter, Saskia and Thursk on the rooftop. Thursk was not looking so arrogant now.

“America is sick, Thursk. It needed an intervention. Sometimes, only your friends can stage a rescue.”

“Why me? I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“You are the disease. You should have been nicer.”

“I’ll pay you!” he said, his pants staining darker.

“I’m a public servant. You can’t bribe your way out of this.”

He pointed both hands at Thursk and fired.

The twin boltgun CRACKs left Thursk’s body in an unrecognizable shape.

In the distance, Carter could hear the two sounds he was expecting—the whine of a drone close by, and a much lower, much louder sound coming from high above.

“You have maybe sixty seconds, Carter. Make’em count!” said Emily.

Carter turned and saw a friendly delivery drone slow down and drop a package as it recognized the Bluetooth signature of his phone. Carter threw a glance at the bald IT mogul’s corpse.

“Thanks for the just-in-time delivery,” he said.

The box was sealed, but Saskia had—as usual—a knife handy.

Carter looked in the box. Blessedly, nothing had been back-ordered.

“Strap on the harness,” he said.

“Oooh,” she said.

As for him, he took the grappling hook gun and the rope.

Ignoring the growing noise above them, he calmly walked to the edge of the building on Pennsylvania Avenue, tied the rope to the edge and fired the barbed hook to the ground on the other side of the street.

The line grew taut.

Saskia looked up, intrigued by the growing noise, and was suddenly terrified when she realized what was coming down.

“Is that…?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, attaching her harness carabiners to the rope.

They threw themselves down the line, with Carter hanging on to her.

Above them, the noise grew even louder.

The equipment worked perfectly, as intended—Carter had ordered familiar, dependable devices and they rappelled down the ten stories of the building to the ground with no trouble at all.

“This is the hottest thing I’ve ever done,” whispered Saskia in his ear.

They slowed down as they approached the ground, then unhooked the harness and jogged away from Blunt Tower. 

The jet engine noise above was getting even louder.

Carter saw Thorne sitting on the M-1 Abrams half a block away. Another half a block farther on, a line of police cars was holding the crowd outside the perimeter. Carter could just about see the bodyguard who had taken his gun reach the police line along with the four other non-oligarchs who had left the rooftop.

A few yards away from the tank, Carter stopped, took Saskia in his arms, dipped her and kissed her.

Behind them, Gold Force One crashed into Blunt Tower, creating an enormous explosion that completed the demolition work that the Wrecking Crew had begun. The building started imploding on itself as soon as the force of the crash, directed downward, blew the windows off the building and limited most damage to Blunt Tower itself.

Not that Carter cared much—Saskia was his entire world now, and cool guys didn’t look at explosions anyway.

The dip wasn’t entirely romantic—it protected Saskia from the force of the downblast. He felt the wind of the air displaced by the explosion, the heat coming from inside the collapsing building and the burning smell.

He heard the gigantic BLUNT sign crash down on the street with a hiss of sparks and debris.

After a long while, they both came up for air.

“I am so shagging you rotten for the next few weeks,” she said.

“I’ll be there. Afterwards too.”

“Really?”

“After everything we’ve gone through? Of course.”

They were about to kiss again when another figure landed next to them in a parachute.

Nathan Lundt.

“Have you SEEN THIS?” said the ever-smiling agent.

He gestured toward the former Blunt Tower, now a collapsing, burning wreck.

“I DID THIS! Hijacked Gold Force One from the outside, flew it back here, and aimed it right in! The! Middle! Of! The! Building!”

Carter sighed.

Thorne clapped.

Epilogue — Give and Let Live

Philadelphia, PA – Four Weeks later

McGuire hung his coat near the door of his condo and went into his living room, then turned on the TV to take in the latest from the Taylor administration. It felt intensely weird to watch the news as a civilian, knowledgeably guessing all that went behind the scenes but not knowing for sure what was happening.

For the first time in years, the news wasn’t a horror show. The Taylor administration had to get off to a roaring start, and in the first week had issued no less than five hundred executive orders—most of them countermanding the near-endless stream of inane executive orders (many of them illegal) that had come from the Blunt administration. Many of them had been about cancelling trade tariffs, rejoining international organizations and removing the most obvious irritants.

Other executive orders aimed to reverse the fascist nature of Blunt’s presidency and its targeted harassment of US citizens. The non-government personnel that had been installed in federal departments were summarily dismissed, and past regulations hastily re-enacted. This was far from being enough, and so President Taylor had addressed a joint session of Congress to highlight the need for lawmakers to play their role as checks and balances over the presidency—writing laws that would curtail the power of the executive, enshrine personal rights and ensure the good nonpartisan functioning of government. The speech had been a good one, but what was more encouraging was the barrage of laws that seemed headed for bipartisan approval. There was even a growing groundswell for comprehensive single-payer healthcare.

McGuire reheated leftovers in the microwave and went back to the living room. His low-rent condo was a clear step down from his upwardly mobile professional’s Washington apartment, but it was enough. The new job was clearly an upgrade – teaching high schoolers was easier than dealing with Blunt’s temper tantrums.

The Blunt cabinet had been fired en masse, and the new nominees, selected from career professionals (many of them fired by Blunt), were sailing through Senate approval with near-unanimous bipartisan approval. At least Taylor wasn’t making the mistake of Blunt’s predecessor in assuming that the norms were simply going to reassert themselves: proposed measures being anticipated included anti-corruption measures, an expanded role for the FCC to oversee news media factual accuracy, vigorous legal prosecution of unlawful acts and limits to campaign financing. The most striking thing being that both parties seemed to agree on all of this—now that the spell of Blunt’s presence was gone, anyone supporting his policies was being wiped out in the polls, and anyone opposing his legacy was surging… and that was what determined winners and losers in Washington.

Leaving Washington hadn’t been as difficult as he had feared. Within forty-eight hours, he had packed everything in a U-Haul and came back to Philadelphia. Whatever nest egg he had went into securing a condo. He’d gotten lucky in applying for a substitute teacher’s position – his old certificate had been enough and timing had done the rest. He was in the same city as his sister – close enough to go eat supper once a week, anyway.

Everything he saw on the news suggested a country on the mend. In pop-psychology terms, the United States’s bipolar psyche was clearly shifting from a destructive to constructive focus and, in doing so, was going into overdrive in making amends for its past behaviour. 

Not that the country was alone in this – McGuire himself was loving the extra hours, surly teenagers and uncertain schedule. It was a way to start to atone for what he’d done. 

But he still thought about Sofia about a dozen times a day.

Mulling over his reheated supper and news of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee holding its first meeting, he sighed.

Then the doorbell rang.

He buzzed the door open. His sister had said she’d drop by tomorrow, but maybe the kids had changed her schedule.

He opened the door, and there she was.

“Sofia?”

“I was in the area.”

“You’re still in Washington!”

“Yes, but this is Easter weekend, I have the time off and I’m feeling lonely. Do you feel lonely?”

“Every single day for the past four weeks.”

🗽

National Mall, Washington, DC

Calm had returned to the capital much sooner than expected. 

Carter and Saskia were still in Washington, DC. Both of their services had asked them to stick around “just in case”—and their personal connection with President Taylor certainly had something to do with this request. 

Anyone making trouble for the new president would be dealt with. But the call hadn’t come. 

Both of them were familiar with extended rest periods after missions—a few weeks to mend, to rest, to take care of whatever indignities they had put their bodies under while operating in unfriendly circumstances. At least this time there weren’t any broken bones—just the usual cuts, scrapes and bruises. 

Carter had expressed his misgivings at being asked to remain in what had until then been hostile territory, but D had explained that thanks to a few well-connected people, their records had essentially been expunged and scraped away in a digital bin: “Highly irregular, not exactly legal—but this time, the disregard for the rule of law worked in our favour.”  The trillionaire goon squad was disbanded, their computers seized, their members either dead or in the hospital—and soon in prison. 

So, the rent on the Georgetown condo had been extended, which meant that Carter and Saskia had to face their toughest mission yet: figuring out whether they could live with each other.

A month later, things were looking very, very good. Granted, the honeymoon-like nature of their paid assignment to stay in one place do nothing had a dreamlike quality—they sometimes spent the entire day in bed, passed the rest of their time taking in the considerable number of museums in the area (including, once it had re-opened, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum where Saskia had breathed hard at his blow-by-blow explanation of what had happened between Jury and him). After the worst of their bruises had faded away, they had resumed their normal training regiment at a local gym, ate well and learned the quirks of living together. They had even successfully gone grocery shopping.

On that day in late March, they were among the many, many tourists to enjoy the early blossoming of the cherry trees in the Tidal Basic—Washington suddenly taking on hues of white and pink as Spring made its way to the capital. The cherry trees had bloomed early this year thanks to the unseasonably warm temperatures.

Warmth was also seen elsewhere, in the deliberate thawing of temporarily chilled relationships between the United States and its traditional allies. In conversations with Carter, D. relayed considerable satisfaction at the way things were turning out behind the scenes now that competent people were once again at the head of the US government. As anticipated, the removal of a destructive president had proven justified—which was going to revolutionize international politics for a while. Once America was stabilized, Carter had been warned that Whitehall’s attention was going to turn toward other irritants once thought untouchable.

But that was in the future, and maybe not even Carter’s future.

“I am within a few years of retirement,” said Carter to Saskia as they ambled on the basin. The advantage of having no fixed schedule was that they could walk among the cherry trees during the week, without the weekend crowds. Lately, these walks had turned to how to solidify their future together.

“Until then, we just need to find ways not to be on missions against each other.”

“Sounds to me like London and Berlin are going to be working together more often than not from now on.”

“Maybe we can both get a paid holiday to Moscow next. Or Beijing. Hopefully not Pyongyang.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, except for the killing.”

They walked a few more minutes together, just enjoying each other’s company. 

Then an unremarkable middle-aged man walked next to them.

“Enjoying the weather, Agent Carter, Agent Diestel?”

Carter looked at the man and frowned, not quite placing him. Not an assassin… otherwise they’d already be dead.

“Oh, Laffer.  I hope you’re not here to ask us for another favour.”

“Not at all. I’m on my way to Ottawa for a few days talking business with our counterparts, and I just wanted to check in with you one last time. After all, you may be back home by the time I come back.”

“Do you know more than we do? Of course you do.”

“I know nothing about your specific assignments, but the news every single day reassures me that we won’t need any of your services here any time soon. The country is healing, Agent Carter, can you believe it?”

“I remain hopeful but wary.”

“As we all should be. Well, if nothing else, I wanted to renew my thanks for your intervention in this whole business. It’s not often that you have a civil war with fewer than two dozen people dead.”

Indeed, the events of Taylor’s ascension had been remarkably bloodless—Other than the trillionaires and their goons, the publicly acknowledged casualties for the day had been minor: Other than the Capitol Police in the Hard building, all hailed as heroes, there had been a few heart attacks, a few violent altercations and, of course, the regrettable death of Secretary of State Coughlin for which no one had been arrested and no one every would — “beaten to death by America” seemed to be the coroner’s official report—each small individual blow accumulating into a fatal result.

“If you want real change in action, Agent Carter, pay attention to the wealth transfer that you single-handedly initiated.”

“Well, I used both of my hands, but close enough.”

Removing half a dozen of the world’s richest men was already having quite an impact. As inheritances and succession plans were discussed, their companies were once again making safe, broadly acceptable choices. Business experts were calling for the break-up of those too-big-to-fail companies. Lobbying efforts against US health-care reforms were disorganized at a crucial moment. Algorithms were tweaked to better reflect popular tastes than oligarch propaganda. The choking grip of regulatory subservience that the trillionaires had assumed over federal departments was loosening. Popular sentiment was that their estates should be largely nationalized to finance massive infrastructure programs and a few lawmakers were looking into that. There was, as far as anyone could determine, no downside to their deaths – and plenty of economics papers to prove it.

Which was enough to encourage the next ones on the World’s Richest list to make plans to divest themselves of their fortunes.

“I do have one question for you, though, Laffer.”

“Ask away, but you know better than to expect an answer.”

“Just how well do you know President Taylor?”

Laffer chuckled, which was not a pleasant sound.

“As you figured out, Agent Carter, Washington is a small town, and both Senator Taylor and I have been here a long time. I suppose we may have bumped into each other a few times.”

“Odds being a fifty-fifty percent coin flip, I suppose?”

“Exactly.”

As Laffer paid them a few last greetings and walked away, Carter turned to Saskia.

“I suppose that this is as good of a signal that we’re about to be called back home,” said Carter.

“I don’t want this to end.”

“Neither do I. How do you feel about a temporary long-distance relationship, as long as we keep seeing each other regularly and plan ahead for more?”

“That’s fine, but what’s the long-term goal?”

“I was thinking about a small house in a neutral country.”

“France?”

They laughed.

“How about Canada? Away from Europe, but not in the US.”

“Canada sounds lovely.”

“And we’ve got friends there.”

“We’ve got friends everywhere now.”

“I wonder if we can get them all to attend our wedding?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Carter will return.
So will Saskia Diestel and the rest of The Wrecking Crew.