President Elect. Jack Mars

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СКАЧАТЬ In fact, he had almost forgotten they existed.

      A long pause passed between them.

      “Luke,” Susan said. “I lost the election.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      8:03 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

      The Oval Office

      The White House, Washington DC

      “That evil bastard,” someone in the room said. “He stole it, plain and simple.”

      Susan Hopkins stood in the middle of the office and stared at the large flat-panel TV on the wall. She was still numb, almost in shock. Although she watched intently, she was having trouble forming clear thoughts. It was too much to process.

      She was very aware of the suit she wore. It was dark blue with a white dress shirt. There was something uncomfortable about it. Once upon a time, it had fit well – in fact, had been tailored to fit her perfectly – but it was clear today that her body was changing. Now the suit hung wrong. The shoulders of the jacket were too loose, the slacks were too tight. Her bra straps pinched the flesh of her back.

      Too much late-night food. Too little sleep. Too little exercise.

      She sighed heavily. The job was killing her anyway.

      Yesterday at this same time, just after the polls opened, she was among the first people in the United States to cast her vote. She had come out of the booth with a big smile on her face and a fist in the air – an image that had been caught by the TV cameras and photographers, and had gone viral all day long. She had ridden a wave of optimism into Election Day, and the polls yesterday morning pegged her support at more than sixty percent of likely voters – a possible landslide in the making.

      Now this.

      As she watched, her opponent, Jefferson Monroe, took the podium at his headquarters in Wheeling, West Virginia. Although it was eight in the morning, a crowd of campaign workers and supporters were still there. Everywhere the cameras panned in the crowd were tall, red, white, and blue, Abraham Lincoln–style hats – they had somehow become the emblem of Monroe’s campaign. That, and the aggressive signs that had become his campaign’s war cry: AMERICA IS OURS!

      Ours? What did that mean? As opposed to who? Who else would it belong to?

      It seemed clear: minorities, non-Christians, gay people… you name it. In particular, it was clear it meant Chinese immigrants to America, as well as Chinese-Americans. Just weeks before, the Chinese had threatened to call in their debt and potentially bankrupt the US. This, indeed, had allowed Monroe to ride a wave of Chinese fear in the final days of his election. Monroe thrived on fear – Chinese fear in particular. According to Monroe, these people were acting as a secret cat’s paw for the imperialist ambitions of the government in Beijing, and the Chinese oligarchs who were buying up vast swaths of American real estate and business interests. According to Monroe, if we didn’t get tough, the Chinese would take over America.

      His people ate it up.

      Jefferson Monroe’s archenemies, and the enemies of his supporters, were the Chinese. The Chinese were America’s great nemesis, and the airhead former fashion model in the White House either didn’t have the eyes to see it, or was a bought and sold Chinese collaborator.

      Monroe himself stared out at the crowd with his deep-set, steely eyes. He was seventy-four years old, white-haired, with a lined and weathered face – a face that seemed much older than its years. Judging by his face alone, he could have been a hundred years old, or a thousand. But he was tall, and stood erect. By all accounts he slept three or four hours a night, and that was all he needed.

      He wore a freshly starched white dress shirt open at the throat with no tie – another signature of his. He was a billionaire, or close to it, but he was a man of the people, by God! A man who had come from nothing. Dirt poor, from the mountains of West Virginia. A man who, despite his newfound wealth, despised the rich all his life. A man who, more than anything, despised the liberals, especially Northeasterners, and New Yorkers in particular. No fancy pants, Washington, DC insider suit and power tie for him. He somehow managed to conveniently overlook that he himself was the ultimate Washington insider, that he had spent twenty-four years in the United States Senate.

      Susan supposed there was some modicum of truth to his affect. He’d had a hardscrabble upbringing in Appalachia – that was common knowledge. And he had clawed his way up and out from there. But he was no friend of the common man, or woman. To orchestrate his climb, he had always, from his earliest days – aligned himself with the most backward elements in American society. He had been a Pinkerton thug as a young man, attacking striking coal miners with clubs and ax handles. He had spent his entire career in the back pocket of the major coal interests, always fighting for less regulation, less workplace safety, and fewer workers’ rights. And he had been rewarded handsomely for his efforts.

      “I told you,” he said into the microphone.

      The crowd erupted into raucous cheers.

      Monroe tamped it down with a hand. “I told you we were going to take America back.” The cheering started again. “You and me!” Monroe shouted. “We did it!”

      Now the cheering changed, gradually morphing into a chant, one with which Susan was all too familiar. It had a funny awkward sort of cadence, this chant, like a waltz, or some kind of call-and-response.

      “AMERICA! IS OURS! AMERICA! IS OURS! AMERICA! IS OURS!”

      It went on and on. The sound of it made Susan sick to her stomach. At least they hadn’t started in on the “Kick Her Out!” chants that had become popular for a while. The first time she had heard it, it nearly brought her to tears. She knew a lot of the people involved were probably just showboating. But at least some of these lunatics really did want to hang her, supposedly because she was a traitor in league with the Chinese. The thought of it left a hollow place inside of her.

      “No more empty factories!” Monroe shouted. Now it was his turn to raise a triumphant fist in the air. “No more crime-ridden cities! No more human filth! No more Chinese betrayals!”

      “NO MORE!” the crowd answered in unison, another of their favorite chants. “NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!”

      Kurt Kimball, crisp, alert, big and strong as always, with a perfectly bald head, stepped in front of the TV and used the remote control to mute the sound.

      It was as if a spell had been broken. Suddenly Susan was completely aware of her surroundings again. She was here in the sitting area of the Oval Office with Kurt, his close aide Amy, Kat Lopez, Secretary of Defense Haley Lawrence, and a few others. These were some of Susan’s most trusted advisors.

      On a closed-circuit video monitor, Susan’s Vice President, Marybeth Horning, was attending. After the Mount Weather disaster, security protocols had changed. Marybeth and Susan were never supposed to be in the same place at the same time. And that was a shame.

      Marybeth was a hero of Susan’s. She was the ultra-liberal former senator from Rhode Island who had lectured at Brown University for more than two decades. She seemed mousy and frail, with a bob of gray hair and round-rimmed granny glasses.

      But looks, in this case, were deceiving. She was also a thunderous firebrand for workers’ rights, women’s rights, the rights of gay people, and the environment. She was the mastermind of the successful healthcare initiative Susan’s administration had launched. Marybeth was at СКАЧАТЬ