A Better World (16 page)

“Upstairs. Eva is trying to convince them that it’s nap time.”

Ranjeet didn’t offer them a seat, just put his hands in his pockets and waited. The four of them stood uncertainly in front of him. It was as cold inside the house as out, their breath fogging.

Ethan caught Jack looking at him, shrugged.
This was your idea, man.

“Your place is really nice,” Jack said, a bit awkwardly. “Sharp.”

“Thanks. What’s up?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard the news lately, with the power—”

“We’ve got a radio and batteries.”

“So you know that the government is asking all of us to pitch in. There’s a tip line to report anything.”

“Like what?”

“You know.” Jack shrugged. “About the Children of Darwin.”

Ranjeet made a sound that wasn’t a laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

Jack spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “We’re not saying anything like that. We just wondered if maybe you’d—”

“Hung out with terrorists?”

“No, just . . . had any friends that were acting strange.”

“Yeah,” Ranjeet said, looking at Ethan. “You four.”

“Listen, I know how this sounds,” Jack said, trying for a conciliatory smile. “I’m sorry to ask, but we’re all worried. Things are getting bad.”

“Really, genius? What tipped you off?”

“Now I don’t mean any offense—”

“You don’t mean any offense? You come to my house with a posse and ask if I know terrorists, but you don’t mean offense?”

“Ranjeet—” Ethan started, but his friend interrupted him.

“No, it’s okay. You got me. I’m a criminal mastermind. My cover story is that I design corporate logos, but really I spend my evenings hijacking trucks. It’s easier for me, you know, the dark skin. I’m half invisible at night.”

“Let’s stay cool,” Ethan said. Ranjeet seemed oblivious to how tense everyone else was, how tired and scared. It was one thing to put on a brave face when the supermarket shelves were empty, but when there was still no food a week later, and the power was out, and the army had quarantined the city, and the weather was growing colder, and Thanksgiving dinner would be canned beans, that was something different. The social contract was straining at the seams, and righteous as Ranjeet’s anger might be, it was the wrong response right now. “No one is making any accusations. We’re all—”

“Why do you have this?”

Lou had gone to the coffee table and picked up the book Ethan had noticed earlier. He held it up so they could all see the cover.
I Am John Smith.

Ah, shit.

“Excuse me?”

“Why do you have this?”

“You want to borrow it?”

“Last time I’m asking. Why do you have this?”

Ranjeet gave a thin smile. “I told you. I’m a terrorist.”

“Lou, it’s a free country,” Jack said. “It’s just a book.”

“Yeah, a book by a murderer.”

“He was framed,” Ranjeet said. “If you caught the news every now and then, you’d know that. The government has dropped all charges against him.”

Lou started reading where Ranjeet had left off. “ ‘Here is a simple but ugly truth. Our politicians see us as little more than a medium to maintain their power. We are gasoline for an engine of corruption and selfishness. The men steering the nation care no more for us than you care for the gasoline you put in your car—gasoline which is consumed without a thought, so long as it gets the driver where he wants to be.’ ” He shut the book. “That sound American to you?”

“Yeah,” Ranjeet said. “It sounds right on the nose.”

Lou shook his head in disgust. “I was a marine. My father was a marine. He fought in Vietnam to keep this kind of crap out of our country.”

Ranjeet laughed. “Is that why you think we were in Vietnam?”

“What are you saying?” Lou stepped forward.

“Guys.” Ethan looked at Jack. His neighbor didn’t move. “This is ridiculous—”

“You saying I’m stupid? That my father was stupid?” The man was squaring up, his gaze hard and chest out. He was four inches shorter than the abnorm but sported the barrel chest and thick arms of a weightlifter. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Ranjeet’s eyes darted, but he stood his ground. “Enough. It’s time for you to leave.”

“You people.” Lou sucked air through his teeth. “You all think you’re so goddamn smart. So much better than us.”

Ethan stepped forward. “Come on, man.” He put a hand on Lou’s shoulder. The man shrugged it off.

“Which people?” Ranjeet asked, fire coming into his own voice. “Brilliants? Indian-Americans? Graphic designers?”

“Such a smart-ass.” Lou held the book in one hand and tapped it against the abnorm’s chest. “So tough.” He tapped it again.

“I mean it. Get out of my house.”

“Or what?” Another swing of the book.

Jack said, “Lou—”

Ranjeet slapped the book out of his hand. “I said, get out of my
house.
” He stepped forward, put his hands against Lou’s chest, and shoved.

Surprised, Lou staggered back. His foot came down on a toy truck and his leg flew up in front of him and his body canted, arms pinwheeling, and then he was falling. Ethan watched, his body frozen as his mind drew a line between Lou and the floor that went straight through the glass coffee table, and he thought that he should try to stop the fall, but thinking it was as far as he got.

The man hit the table backward, his weight smashing through, fragments of glass exploding outward as his body crashed through the top and then the shelf before hitting the shag carpet with a thud.

Ranjeet stepped forward, said, “Oh shit, I’m sorry—”

Lou gasped. He coughed, then rolled to one side. Glass crunching underneath him as he reached into the back of his waistband—

And came out with a gun.

The pistol was big, chrome, and the hand that held it was speckled with blood swelling from a dozen cuts. The barrel trembled, but it was aimed at Ranjeet’s chest. The world had become a strange and terrible tableau that Ethan could see complete: Kurt with his mouth hanging open, Jack with hands on the sides of his head, Ranjeet frozen with one arm out, and Lou on the floor, curled up like he was doing crunches, the pistol in his right hand.

“You son of a bitch,” Lou said.

As often happened, Ethan found himself watching with the eyes of an academic, noting the classic battle for tribal dominance as it escalated from threat to violence. One of the things that was beautiful about evolution was that it was at once messy and neat—messy in that it depended upon the randomness of mutation, a million false starts and blind alleys unguided by an architect’s hand; neat because the rules were applied with inviolate certainty
and brutal simplicity, genes and species tested against each other not on God’s chalkboard but on the bloody battlefield that was life, in situations just like this one—

All of a sudden he realized that Lou’s finger was tightening on the trigger. He was going to shoot a man over a disagreement and a flare of temper, shoot him dead in his own living room with his little girls upstairs.

Without giving himself time to think about it, Ethan stepped in front of Ranjeet.

Physically, he’d only moved three feet. But the shift in perspective was massive. Ethan found himself staring down the barrel of the gun. A view he’d seen in movie posters and the covers of mystery novels, but reality was very different.

Lou stared at him, his eyes narrow and nostrils flaring. “Get out of the way.”

He wanted to, he really did, but all he did was shake his head. Afraid that any move too sudden or forceful might shatter the situation, might cause this hothead to do something truly stupid.

“Daddy!”

The cry came from the hallway. A pretty child in polka-dot pants and a sweater with a dolphin on it stared at them, something breaking in her wide, scared eyes.

“Baby, go upstairs,” Ranjeet said. “Everything’s okay. We were just talking, and Mr. Lou tripped.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yes, sweetheart. Everything is fine.”

Ethan stared at the dark perfect circle of the gun barrel, and beyond it, at the man’s face, angry and scared and in pain and ashamed all at once.

Lou lowered the gun. Jack and Kurt hurried over, bent to help him up. He moved gingerly and groaned. Shards of glass tinkled against the carpet.

Ethan opened his mouth to apologize, to say the whole thing was a mess, an accident, but his friend spoke first.

“Get out of my house.” Ranjeet cut his eyes from one of them to the other, landed on Ethan. If he was grateful, it didn’t show in his eyes. “All of you. And don’t come back. Ever.”

The liberals and the intelligentsia and the media believe they’ve won. Together they brought down a president. And in order to do it, all they had to do was play a video. Well, bravo.

Do I deny that I authorized the attack at the Monocle? No. But defending a nation of three hundred million people requires tough decisions.

The murder of those people was morally reprehensible . . . and I would order it again. I stand before you as an American, as a patriot, as a president, and I tell you that the actions of that night saved lives.

I have committed sins. I have done terrible things, and I have ordered others to do them in my name. I have spilled blood, some of it innocent.

But when I stand before God Almighty, I know that he will look upon my actions and judge them righteous. For every life it was necessary to take, thousands were saved.

Protecting America is not a job for the squeamish.

I have done wrong, and I would do it again. For you and your children.

God bless you all. And God bless the United States of America.

—
F
ORMER
P
RESIDENT
H
ENRY
W
ALKER
,
TO THE
F
RIENDS OF THE
NRA B
ANQUET

CHAPTER 15

“You look good,” Cooper said. “This government agent thing doesn’t work out, I think you’ve got a future as a rent-a-cop.”

“Screw you.” Quinn adjusted the blazer they’d boosted from the university security office half an hour before. “A polyester tie? Really?”

“That reflective strip down the side of the pants really brings the ensemble together.”

“And once again, screw you.”

The elevator stopped with a jolt, and the doors rattled open. They stepped into a concrete antechamber. A flyer taped to the wall had a profile shot of John Smith, chin up and staring into the future, the colors posterized into iconography, an illustrated style that made him look part politician, part rock star. The text read, “GWU
WELCOMES ACTIVIST AND WRITER
J
OHN
S
MITH, AUTHOR OF THE
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
BESTSELLING
I A
M
J
OHN
S
MITH
.”

Cooper and Quinn exchanged a smile, and then the two of them stepped into the underground parking garage. The deck was full, packed with economy cars sporting rusty side panels and bumper stickers for bands he’d never heard of. A few Volvos and Buicks bore faculty tags. They started up the ramp. Quinn pulled a black box from his pocket and took out two earpieces. Cooper tucked the tiny plastic in his ear. Two beeps sounded as the device synced. “Ladies?”

“Got you, boss,” Valerie West said in his ear.

“Clear as a cock in the face,” said Luisa Abrahams.

Quinn snorted a laugh. “As ever, you’re a delicate flower.” His voice was in stereo, the real man and the one in Cooper’s ear.

“Hey, you want delicate, I’m sure some of these coeds could help out.”

“I’ll pass. Anything unusual?”

“I’m monitoring all activity from his team,” Valerie said. “All SOP on their end.”

“Good,” Cooper said. He and Quinn parted ways as they rounded the corner, his partner walking up the center lane as Cooper moved to the front of the parked cars. It felt right to be back in action, relying on people he could trust with his life. The four of them had once been the top team in Equitable Services. Luisa was field ops, a five-foot-nothing who had faced off against men twice her size and possessed the most poetically filthy mouth he’d ever encountered. Valerie was a data rat who manipulated the stream of code that made up modern life. With Equitable Services on hiatus, they’d been reassigned to separate posts inside DAR, but both were too senior and too accomplished to be micromanaged; a short off-the-books gig should go unnoticed.

“Thanks again for the help,” Cooper said.

“Anytime, boss. None of us ever doubted you, no matter what they said about the stock exchange.”

Warmth bloomed in his chest. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

“Hey, it’s nice to have the band back together,” Luisa said. “I’m going quiet; sing out if you need anything.”

“Roger.”

Cooper stepped up on a narrow curb and crouched low, sliding past the cars. Fifty yards ahead of them a black SUV was double-parked facing the exit. The engine was running, exhaust fogging in the cold. The windows were tinted, but they’d watched Smith arrive, seen his second security guard get out with him. It would be just the driver in the car. Armed, no doubt, and probably very good.

Cooper almost felt sorry for the guy.

Quinn strolled up the ramp with the bored ease of a campus security guard. Cooper moved in step with him but six cars back, staying down. Stealth wasn’t his great strength, but the guard would be focused on Quinn.
Too bad you couldn’t ask Shannon to help; she could sneak into Fort Knox.

The thought sent a pang through him, and a memory of her body, naked and lithe, framed against the light of his refrigerator last night as she twisted the top off a beer and drank deep. As usual, she’d shown up without warning, and after the sex—he seemed only to get more hungry for her every time they touched, a kind of intoxication he thought had vanished with his teenage years—they’d talked. She had been circumspect with her language, but Cooper could tell that she’d been in action. It had stung a bit to realize she had no intention of telling him what she had been doing.