and conservative political kingmaker heavily funded by the same coal companies he once worked for. And now… President-elect of the United States. A lifetime of striving, long decades of climbing up from the bottom, clawing his way, and suddenly, quite by surprise (an outcome no one expected, not even him), he was the most powerful man on Earth.
He was here to force the sitting President to leave the White House early, and allow him to enter. It was as audacious as anything he had ever attempted. Past the crowds and across the wide thoroughfare, he could see the White House in the distance, rising on a green knoll. Could she see him from there? Was she watching?
God, he hoped so.
He turned away from the crowd, just for a moment. Behind him on the stage was a crowd of people. O’Brien was there, the mastermind of this campaign, the dark lord of the white supremacists, a man at least as driven as Monroe was himself. Even now, he was barking something into a cell phone.
“I want that bird,” Gerry the Shark seemed to be saying. But how could that be right? I want that bird? What a strange thing to say! At a moment like this?
“I want it, okay? I want it to land just like we talked about. Tell me you can do that. Okay? Good. When?”
Monroe shrugged it off. Dealing with Gerry was more than just a wild ride – it was a lesson in surrealism. The President-elect decided to ignore his closest advisor for the time being. Instead, he spoke to the other people on stage.
“Are you seeing this?” he said, as he covered the microphone with his hand and indicated the massive crowd. “Are you seeing this?”
“It is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” a young aide said.
Behind him, clapping began in the crowd – not random, but rhythmic, thousands of hands clapping at once – CLAP, CLAP, CLAP, CLAP…
A chant was about to go up. This is how it started, with clapping, and in some cases stomping. And here it came, the voices rising.
“U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”
It was a good one, a good one to start on.
Monroe took his hand from the microphone and gripped the stand instead. He raised a hand, quieting the chant within seconds. It was like he simply turned down the sound on a machine – a TV, or a radio. But it wasn’t a machine, it was thousands and thousands of people, and he controlled them, effortlessly, with a gesture. Not for the first time, he marveled at that power, a power that he had. Like a superhero.
Or a god.
“How’s that global warming treating you?” he said, his voice echoing over the multitudes. Laughter and cheers rippled through the crowd. Personally, Monroe knew from climate scientists employed by his companies that global warming was a fact of life, and would be a serious issue a century from now, or sooner, perhaps even a threat to civilization itself. As President, he might quietly look for ways to implement policies that lessened the threat somewhat, without harming industry profits. In the meantime, his companies were gradually increasing investment in the renewable energy fields – the solar, wind, and geothermal technologies that were the future.
But his people didn’t want to hear any of that. They wanted to hear that global warming was a hoax, perpetrated in large part by the Chinese. So that’s what Monroe would tell them. Give the people what they want. And anyway, it was cold out today, an unseasonably cold day in early November, and that was evidence enough – there couldn’t be any such thing as global warming.
“Today is our day, did you know that?”
The crowd greeted that idea with a roar of approval.
“We came from nothing, you and I did. Okay? And we came from nowhere. We didn’t grow up in fancy upscale Manhattan or San Francisco or Boston penthouses. We didn’t go to special private schools for special people. We don’t sip lattes and read the New York Times. We don’t know that world. We don’t want to know that world. You and I, we’ve worked hard all our lives, and we’ve earned everything we have, and everything we will ever have. And today is our day.”
Their cheering was an eruption – an earthquake – of sound. It seemed like some great beast was beneath the surface of the Earth, sleeping dormant for centuries, and now it would rend the ground and burst forth in a frenzy of violence.
“Today is the day we are going to remove one of the most corrupt administrations in American history. Yes, I know, I know. She said she’s not leaving, but I tell you what. It’s not going to last. She’s leaving, all right, and a lot sooner than anyone thinks. It’s going to happen a lot sooner than she thinks, that’s for sure.”
The cheering went on and on. He waited for the crowd to die down. Monroe’s people hated Susan Hopkins. They hated her, and everything she stood for. She was rich, she was beautiful, she was spoiled – she had never lacked for anything in her life. She was a woman in a job always done by men.
She was a friend to immigrants, and to the Chinese, whose cheap labor practices had destroyed the American way of life. She was a hedonist, a former jet-setter, and she seemed to confirm everything heartland people suspected about the celebrity class. Her husband was gay, for the love of God! He had been born in France. Could there be anything more un-American than a gay Frenchman?
Susan Hopkins was a monster to these people. In the far reaches of internet conspiracy websites, there were even those who claimed that she and her husband were murderers, and worse than murderers. They were devil worshippers. They belonged to a Satanic cult of the mega-wealthy who stole and sacrificed children.
Well, today Monroe would give his people the murderer part. He wished he could be there inside the Oval Office and see her face when this news broke.
The crowd had quieted again. They were waiting for him now.
“I want you to listen to me for a minute,” he said. “Because what I’m about to tell you is a little bit complicated, and it’s not easy on the ears. But I’m going to tell it because you have to know it. You, the American people, the true patriots, deserve to know. It’s very important. Our future is at stake.”
He had them. They were ready now. Here it came. The Hail Mary pass. The bomb. Jefferson Monroe geared himself up and launched it.
“Five days before election day, a man turned up dead near the Tidal Basin right here in Washington, DC.”
His people had gone silent. A dead man? This was something new. It was not the typical Jefferson Monroe rally topic. It seemed that thousands of pairs of eyes were riveted to him. In fact, that was indeed the case. Give us something, those big hollow eyes seemed to say. Give us the meat.
“At first glance, it seemed like the man had committed suicide. He was shot in the head, the gun was found near his body, and his fingerprints were on the gun. It didn’t make much impact in the news at the time – people die every day, and often enough, they take their own lives. But I knew, okay, folks? I knew that this man didn’t kill himself.”
The eyes watched him. Thousands and thousands of eyes.
“How did I know that?”
No one said a word. Jefferson Monroe had never seen such a large group of people so quiet in his entire life. They sensed something big was coming, and that he was the one bringing it.
“I knew he didn’t commit suicide because I knew this man personally. I’d almost say he was a friend of mine. His name was Patrick Norman.”
Jefferson was no stranger to telling big lies. Even so, and unlike many politicians, he felt a certain twinge when he did it. It wasn’t guilt. It was the sense that somewhere out there, someone knew the truth, and that person would work tirelessly to bring the truth to light. In fact, it wasn’t even somewhere out there – at least three people standing behind him on the stage knew the facts. There were probably a dozen others in the organization. They knew that Jeff Monroe had never once spoken to Patrick Norman.
He pressed on.
“Patrick Norman was not suicidal – far from it. On the contrary, he was one of the best and most successful private investigators