Empire (37 page)

By the time
24
went back on the air, people would no doubt have calmed down about Friday the Thirteenth. The show would still be a hit.
American Idol
would still find hordes of people waiting to humiliate themselves for a chance to be on television. The World Series
would still be more important to a lot of Americans than the presidential election. One of the great things about democracy was that you were also free to ignore government if you wanted to.

The house was locked. Undisturbed. She had arranged for her mail to be forwarded to her office in Gettysburg and she had paid all the bills—the air-conditioning was running and the water was still connected.

No, not undisturbed after all. The bedroom had been entered by someone who—no, she knew why the closet and several drawers were open. Cole told her that the Secret Service agents had sent people here and to Cole's apartment to get uniforms and underwear and toiletries for him and Reuben that last night of Reuben's life. The Secret Service agents who had been willing to die to protect her husband, and who nearly had—both severely injured in the fighting, but both now out of the hospital and, presumably, back on the job, at a desk no doubt until their recovery was complete. She had visited them in the hospital once and thanked them for trying to save her husband, and for saving Cole, but she could see that they were still ashamed of having been caught flat-footed by DeeNee and her .22.

Cecily pulled down the covers of the bed, took off her shoes, and crawled between the sheets. She had heard that sometimes the scent of a loved one would linger in their sheets, their clothing, but either time had erased any smells or they were simply too normal for her to recognize them. She had a good cry over that. But she would have had a good long cry if the smells had still lingered there, too. It was about time she cried, she told herself even as she wept.

And then she was done with weeping, for the moment, anyway. She got up and went downstairs to the kitchen and began cleaning out the dead food in the fridge. Here there was no shortage of odors, and she got the garbage bags out of the house and into the big plastic cans behind the garage. She expected the cans to be full of reeking garbage, too, but some neighbor must have taken them to the curb on garbage day and brought them back. She hesitated to
put these bags in the cans because she had no intention of being here on garbage day—but maybe the neighbor would check. Or maybe not. Better to leave the garbage here than stinking up the kitchen.

Hadn't the children's bikes been out on the lawn? No, she made them put them away in the garage before they left. Didn't she? She checked, and they were there, so she must have—the neighbors didn't have keys to get in and put things away. It wasn't that kind of neighborhood. Cecily had been one of the few mothers who was home during the day.

I want to be home with my children again, she thought. And then whispered it. “I want to be home again.”

But not yet. Not until she had finished with the work she was doing. There was still more evidence to gather. More pieces to fit into the mosaic.

Which made her think of the “office”—a room in the finished half of the basement where they kept their financial records and all of Reuben's books and papers from school. Nothing classified or secret, not in print and not on the family computers. The laptop in the office was more hers than his. It's where she kept track of the family finances and paid bills online.

She walked into the room and switched on the light. Someone had been in here, too. The laptop was gone.

Well, that was hardly a surprise. They wouldn't have pursued Cole so relentlessly for the PDA without also looking for any other place where Reuben might have kept his data. But she had to commend the thieves for their tidiness. If they had gone through the rest of the papers or searched through the whole house, they had put everything back neatly enough that she couldn't tell.

And maybe it was the Secret Service that took the computer. Maybe they had it and would give it back to her so she could update her financials.

She opened the file cabinet that contained Reuben's papers. Not many in recent years—everything was so secret there was no chance he'd keep things at home. But his student work was all here.
The papers he had written for classes. His dissertation, of course. And all his notes from all his classes, written in Farsi and neatly filed.

His notes had always looked both beautiful and forbidding. Because Farsi used the Arabic alphabet, it was written from right to left, with words that looked virtually the same—it was a script-only language, so each letter flowed into the next one, and many important distinctions consisted entirely of the dots and marks surrounding the letters. To someone who didn't know the alphabet, it looked more like art than language. But now Cecily had learned the Arabic alphabet and knew many words of Farsi on sight.

Enough, in fact, that she could identify which class each folder of notes was from. They were headed by subject and teacher name. The teachers' names were often written in roman letters, but sometimes not. She quickly realized that those written in Farsi were the names that were also words that could be translated. No doubt Reuben got a kick out of thinking of professors by the Farsi translations of their names.

“Torrent” was a word. Which of these was Torrent's class? She had no way of knowing—the word “torrent” wouldn't have come up much in Reuben's records on his PDA. She didn't actually speak Farsi. What she had mastered was more like a graduate student's version of a foreign language—exactly what was needed to read a particular set of documents and not a speck more.

But she wanted to know what Reuben had written about Torrent's class. And when the boys got back from Chinnereth and Genesseret, they could help her by translating it.

If they got back.

She couldn't think that way. They were soldiers like Reuben had been. They were careful, highly trained, and very hard to beat. They could only be killed by treachery, the way Reuben had been.

“Treachery.” A strange word, she thought. What is a treacher? How do you treach? Of course the real words were “traitor” and “betray,” but what an odd word, that looked like it ought to function like “teacher.” Those who teach are committing teachery, she
thought. While those who commit treachery are treachers. Do they go to college to get their treaching certificate? Do they belong to the treaching profession? She chuckled at her own humor, then realized that with Reuben gone there was no one to tell it to. He would have laughed and probably would have reversed the joke, dropping the
r
in
treason
words to refer to teaching. “Our kids have got some mighty fine taitors in school this year. They'll be carrying out their teason in our children's classrooms. They plan to betay our kids.”

It would have become a family joke word. “What did they betay you in school today?” “None of my teachers would be convicted of teason, Dad. Lack of evidence.” And on and on for years.

But not now.

Her eyes again filled with tears, she pulled out all the folders that didn't have the professors' names written in roman letters and took them with her out to the car. She'd find out what Reuben learned from Torrent. And, knowing Reuben, he would have written his opinions of his professor as well.

Only as she drove back out toward the Leesburg bridge did the connection of treachery with Torrent emerge to the level of consciousness.

At first she dismissed it. And then she didn't.

Wasn't it because of Torrent that Reuben was first recruited to work on his clandestine projects with Phillips? Torrent was already well connected in Washington, even then. She remembered Reuben talking to her about how the guys recruiting him were probably the ones Torrent had hinted about. But she distinctly remembered the “probably” in what Reuben said. Nobody had actually identified themselves as coming from him. Reuben talked about that because Torrent had told him that they
would
mention his name. He even said that he meant to check with Torrent to see if these guys were the ones he had been talking about.

Did he? Or did he decide not to bother the Great Man? Or did he try, but Torrent didn't bother to answer?

Even if Reuben's contact with Phillips originated with Torrent,
that didn't mean that Torrent had anything to do with their activities. Somebody might have said, we're looking for a good man who can be trusted to do this and this and this, and Torrent simply recommended Reuben.

Treachery, though. Treachery was on her mind. DeeNee was on her mind. Working with Reuben for years, knowing his secrets, helping him keep his clandestine work secret. How far did this conspiracy reach?

The information on the PDA had been part of the data that Torrent used when he deduced where Aldo Verus's secret garrison had to be. But what if it wasn't mere deduction. What if Torrent was part of it all along?

How could he be? He had been sending the jeesh out on missions that involved taking out guys on hovercycles and taking down mechs and trying to find EMP weapons. Working against the rebels.

Or was that part of Torrent's game plan? Make it plain that he's definitely on the side of the Constitution, so that he can get exactly where he is—Vice-President-to-be, with a strong possibility of being nominated for President?

No, no. That's too twisted and deep a game. Torrent showed them the reasoning that led him to those lakes in Washington.

Showed it to them. Demonstrated it. Made the trail clear. He knew where it was all along, but couldn't tell them until they had gathered enough information that he could
show
them a rational path leading to the conclusion.

No proof. Probably not true.
Probably
.

But if it
was
true, then what mission were Cole and Load and Benny and Mingo and all the rest on, what were they really doing? Was it a wild goose chase? If Torrent was honest and he really had deduced the location the way he showed them, then in all likelihood it was simply wrong and they'd find nothing there.

If it
was
real, though, and Aldo Verus—or somebody—had an arsenal and a garrison underground in those mountains, then was he sending the jeesh into a trap? Had he used them for his purposes and now no longer needed them? Was he planning to have them
killed and the incident made public to discredit President Nielson and swing more of the country toward the Progressive Restoration?

No, it couldn't be that. Because Torrent had just thrown in his lot with President Nielson. Not that he'd become a Republican, necessarily—he was still noncommittal about that—but he had declared for the Constitution and against the rebels. Plus, if the mission to Chinnereth led to a public relations disaster, it would be a disaster for Torrent, too. His fingerprints were all over the mission.

Her mind leapt to another connection. Was it possible that both Torrent and General Alton were agents provocateurs, secretly part of the rebel conspiracy, with a mission to destroy the constitutional government by embarrassing it and providing justification for the Progressive Restoration?

It put everything in a new light. Or perhaps into a new darkness. It was too convoluted. So many things could go wrong with such a plan. You don't pin your revolution on the actions of people who are, essentially, actors.

Not actors. Moles. Espionage services do it all the time.

Still, she could not believe Torrent was some sacrificial lamb playing a part. As Cole told about it, General Alton had been so obvious that he was almost certainly putting on an act—that's what they all assumed now. His mission was to try to get LaMonte to commit the folly of imposing martial law, without the support of the Army but thinking that he had that support. Was Torrent also putting on an act?

Was he so self-sacrificing that he would bring himself into a position to play for the presidency
exactly
at the time that he was launching the incident that would bring this government to disaster?

Well . . . yes, maybe. Who knew? Being the newly appointed Vice President would make his sponsorship of the provocative incident in Washington all the more damaging to President Nielson and to the Constitutionalists in general.

Her hands were trembling on the wheel. I don't know any of this, she thought. It's not true. It's absurd. Torrent is brilliant. He's also
very full of his own views and opinions, and has the books to prove it. He is simply unbelievable as the self-sacrifice of somebody else's ambition.

Unless he's a true believer in the cause. DeeNee certainly never gave a clue of her deep hatred of all things military and/or conservative. Then again, DeeNee kept it a secret by never talking about herself or her views on anything. Torrent talks all the time. Has it
all
been a lie? Starting when?

Not possible.

Okay, possible, but hard to believe.

And it's not as though she could go and ask him. By the way, are you a treacher? Are you going to treach my husband's loyal friends, these fine soldiers?

If he was part of the conspiracy, then he had performed brilliantly. He had fooled everybody. If he was part of the rebel movement, then part of his act had been to send out missions that led to the deaths of many of the rebel soldiers and the thwarting of many of their plans.

She might as well imagine that Cole and the others were part of the conspiracy too, and didn't really kill anybody, but rather faked the battles and planted the evidence and . . .

That way lies madness. She knew better. She knew these guys, and how Reuben had met them, and there was no double-dealing there.

And Torrent was no doubt exactly what he seemed to be—a brilliant professor of history who had been entrusted with the chance to help shape history during a time of national crisis that he had nothing to do with causing.

But as she drove northward toward Gettysburg, she began to lay out her own plan. She wouldn't wait—she'd get a Farsi speaker in Gettysburg to identify the notes from Torrent's classes and translate them for her right away. Maybe she'd learn something from Reuben's notes that would either set her mind at ease or give her leads to follow up, the way his PDA records had.