Distraction - Bruce Sterling [152]
The President considered this. He was buying the story. It wasn’t making him happy. “Tell me something, young man. What have you gotten me into? Why did it take a French submarine and three hundred Cajun guerrillas to kidnap you and some neurologist?”
“Governor Huguelet wanted to see us. He wants this facility, Mr. President. He has a great deal of irregular manpower. He has more manpower than he can properly control.”
“Well, he can’t have that facility.”
“No sir?”
“No, he can’t have it—and neither can you. Because it belongs to the country, dammit! What the hell are you up to? You can’t hire Moderator militia and overpower a federal lab! That is not in your job description! You are a campaign organizer who has a patronage job. You are not Davy Crockett!”
“Mr. President, I completely concur. But we had no other realistic option. Green Huey is a clear and present danger. He’s in league with a foreign power. He completely dominates his own state, and now he’s launching paramilitary adventures over state borders. What else could I do? My security staffer informed your national security office as soon as he could. In the meantime, I took what steps I could.”
“What is your party affiliation?” the President said.
“I’m a Federal Democrat, sir.”
The President pondered this. The President’s party was the Social Patriotic Movement, the “Soc-Pats.” The Soc-Pats were the leading faction in the Left Tradition Bloc, which also included the Social Democrats, the Communist Party, Power to the People, Working America, and the ancient and shriveled Democratic Party. The Left Tradition Bloc had been suffering less ideological disarray than usual, lately. They had been able—barely—to seize the American Presidency.
“That would mean Senator Bambakias of Massachusetts?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you ever see in him?”
“I liked him. He has imagination and he’s not corrupt.”
“Well,” the President said, “I am not a mentally ill Senator. I happen to be your President. I am your newly sworn-in President, and I have naive, new-hire staffers who are easily fooled by fast-talking hustlers with family links to white-supremacist gangsters. Now, thanks to you, I am also a President who has had the misfortune to kill and wound several dozen people. Some of them were foreign spies. But most of them were our fellow citizens.” Despite his expressed regret, the President looked quite ready to kill again.
“Mr. Valparaiso, I want you to listen to me carefully. I have about four more weeks—maybe three weeks—of political capital to expend. Then the honeymoon is over, and my office will be broken on the rack. I will have to face all the lawsuits, constitutional challenges, palace revolutions, outings, banking scandals, and Emergency machinations that have screwed every American President in the past twenty years. I want to survive all that. But I have no money, because the country is broke. I can’t trust the Congress. I certainly can’t trust the Emergency committees. I can’t trust my own party apparatus. I’m the nation’s Commander in Chief, but I can’t even trust the armed forces. That leaves me with one source of direct Presidential power. My spooks.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“My spooks are gung ho! They just shot up a bunch of people in the dark of night, but at least they’re not politicians, so at least they do what they’re told. And since they’re spooks, they don’t officially exist. So the things they do don’t officially happen. So if all the relevant parties keep their mouths shut, I might not have to account for this bloody debacle last night on the Louisiana border. Are you following me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to resign your Senate post, first thing tomorrow. You cannot pull a stunt like the one you just pulled and call yourself a congressional staffer. Forget the Senate, and forget your poor friend the Senator. You are a pirate. The only way you can survive this situation is if you join my National Security staff. So, that’s what you’ll have to do. From now on, you