Interface (99 page)

"That's nice," Ogle said. By now he had realized that the man
could not possibly be Secret Service.

"Don't you recognize me?" the man asked. "You should. I'm a
very important person in your life."

Ogle took a good look at the man's face.

At the face of Floyd Wayne Vishniak.

His lips parted and he felt stunned and weak in the legs, as if he
had been struck on the head.

Vishniak grinned and turned sideways to Ogle. He moved his
hand inside his trench coat and Ogle could see the barrel of the gun
pressing on the fabric from the inside. "I'm covering you with the
same gun I used before," he said, "and if you say anything, I'll pull
the trigger."

"What do you want?" Ogle said.

"I want your truck," Vishniak said, nodding towards the park.
"You know us farmboys. We're just crazy about big ol' trucks."

Ogle turned his back on the Capitol and started walking back
across Taft Park. Every few paces he would look back behind
himself hoping that Vishniak would have disappeared. But he was always right there. Almost as bad, he never shut up. "I figured you
had to have some kind of secret transmitter to control Cozzano's
brain. Because when I busted up your control room at the shopping
mall over there, it didn't make any difference at all. Let's go on over
there and take a look around."

Ogle crossed Louisiana, climbed up the temporary steps behind
the truck, and opened the door to the Eye of Cy. He was thinking
of trying to slam it in Vishniak's face, but Vishniak shoved him
through and closed the door behind him.

The security men and the lawyer were climbing to their feet.

Ogle saw a white light flashing in the corner of his eye and felt,
did not hear, a quick series of explosions pounding him on the side
of his head. The three men in front of him jerked, crumbled, and
collapsed to the floor; behind them, blood was showering all over
the equipment.

Ogle couldn't hear anything except a pure tone in his ear. He
sagged against a wall and closed his eyes, feeling faint.

Vishniak cuffed Ogle's hands behind his back, stepped over the
corpses, and proceeded to the Eye of Cy. Ogle could see his lips
moving as he commented upon it, but couldn't hear what he was
saying.

Vishniak looked around the trailer. His eyes landed on a fire
extinguisher mounted to a wall. Vishniak holstered his gun, picked up the fire extinguisher, and then used it as a blunt object to smash
all of the screens in the Eye of Cy. At first he worked slowly and
methodically, but after a few minutes he really got into it and began
to pound away at them in a frenzy. Finally he threw the
extinguisher on the floor, battered and scraped.

He turned to Ogle with a triumphant look on his face and said something else. Then he approach. He reached into Ogle's pocket and pulled out the personal invitation. He shoved it into his own
pocket. Then Floyd Wayne Vishniak walked out of Cy Ogle's life.

61

William
A.
Cozzano took the oath of office at twelve noon.
Holding the Bible was Mary Catherine. Administering the oath was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. After a very intense quarter
of an hour running and subwaying across D.C., the Cozzanos had
reached the Rotunda in plenty of time and been able to hit the
bathrooms and freshen up a little. They looked great and showed little trace of the earlier excitement; television viewers who had
heard rumors of wild goings-on up and down the length of
Pennsylvania Avenue were comforted to see the Cozzanos looking
calm, relaxed, and happy.

Only one detail seemed out of place: as Cozzano had emerged
from the West Front of the Capitol and walked through the
passageway in the center of the stands, he had moved slowly and
with a limp. He moved like an old man, not the spry athlete who
had become so famous during the campaign. And then he raised his
hand and recited the oath of office, his voice sounded different:
deeper, slower, not as distinct. He tripped over a few words, something he had never done during the campaign.

But it didn't matter. He looked great. He smiled confidently
through the oath, presenting a strong profile for the cameras,
towering over the Chief Justice. His daughter was facing directly
into the cameras and her face was suffused with joy and pride. She
wasn't bothered by her father's gait, or his voice; why should
America be?

It was over. President Cozzano shook hands with the Chief
Justice and bent down to kiss Mary Catherine on the cheek.

Then he stepped up to the Presidential lectern, still moving
slowly and carefully. Before him, the Mall was covered with
people, all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, and all of them were applauding. The applause from the invited guests on the platform,
and from the lucky few just below, around the Capitol Reflecting
Pool, was distinct. Beyond that it merged into a generalized hissing
roar, coming from the horizon.

President Cozzano reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a
few typewritten sheets folded in half down the middle and flattened
them out on the lectern. He waited for a few moments, smiling to
the crowd, as the applause died down.

"Thank you," he said, "thank you." That brought the applause
to a close. Then he began to read from the notes on the lectern,
calmly, pronouncing the words with conspicuous precision, like a
drunken man who is trying not to sound drunk.

"My first act as President is to declare martial law in the District
of Columbia and to suspend the following constituted bodies: the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Park Police, and the Capitol Police. The CIA is reminded that their
activities begin at the water's edge. Any violation of martial law
may be penalized by summary execution. In their place, to
maintain order among executive branch and the government, I
federalize the police force of the District of Columbia for a period
of one week and place it at the disposal of the Department of
Justice."

At this moment, half of the men on and around the platform
stood up and stripped off their jackets and dress shirts to reveal black
T-shirts emblazoned with white stars on the front and "Dept. of
JUSTICE" across the back. As Cozzano continued his address,
these men converged on all of the uniformed Capitol police officers
in the area, and on anyone who looked like a Secret Service agent.

The men in the black T-shirts - the Justice Posse - looked as though they were ready for a fight, and they were. Some of them actually got into fights. But most of them didn't. The President's words could not have been any clearer.

The Posse men were not very discriminating. They went after
anyone in a uniform and anyone who looked like Secret Service:
that, is, men with earplugs. Unfortunately that included one or two
journalists. The journalists put up a scuffle. The scuffles ended
pretty quickly.

All of these movements took place against a backdrop of dead
silence. Everyone else, within a quarter-mile radius of President
Cozzano, was utterly motionless and perfectly silent. Everyone was
in shock. Beyond that, out on the Mall, it was possible to hear
murmuring from the crowd, and even a few screams. But most of
the people in the vicinity of the President were directly, personally,
massively affected by the words coming out of his mouth. They
didn't want to miss anything. Especially since a misinterpretation
could lead to summary execution.

Cozzano continued without pause. "The FBI, one of the few
federal agencies to live up to its oath to protect, defend, and uphold
the Constitution and laws of the United States, will coordinate all
security arrangements at all levels during the period of martial law.
I hereby designate Melvin Israel Meyer the acting Attorney General
and place the FBI and the D.C. Police under his direct authority.
In my capacity as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, I
hereby suspend the authority of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a period
of one week and place all military forces under my direct
command. I order the Air Force and all other military aircraft in the
continental U.S. grounded immediately and until further notice. I
order the Federal Aviation Administration to ban all air traffic over
the District of Columbia, effective immediately, and to close
National Airport until further notice. This air traffic moratorium is
to be enforced by the new Attorney General."

Men had already begun to appear on the roof of the Capitol and
atop other buildings around the Mall, carrying long, bulky equip
ment cases. They nipped the cases open and pulled out four-foot-
long, tubular objects with flat, slotted antennas that unfolded on
their tops: Stinger missile launchers.

"I assure our allies and promise our adversaries around the world that this is a purely domestic affair and that the global balance of
military power will not be affected."

"I declare a one-week holiday on all banks and stock exchanges. I call upon our financial leaders to cooperate with me so that calm can be restored to the markets as soon as possible."

"Finally, I ask the indulgence of the American people in this time
of crisis. While the steps I have just taken are unprecedented and
severe, I can assure you all that the peak of the crisis has passed, and
that within hours, or at the most days, the government will be returned to an even keel."

"A complete explanation of what has happened to me, my
family, and the electoral process of this country would fill a lengthy
book. I cannot give you a full account here. But the people deserve
an explanation, and so, at this moment, a summary of these events is being transmitted over all wire services worldwide. The same
information is being provided to all governmental offices and major
military bases. Videotape cassettes are arriving at all major networks
and television stations."

Cozzano finally paused for a moment, to draw a breath and to
shuffle his notes around. Finally, the silence broke, and a murmur
began to sweep through the crowd.

People began to move. The in-crowd on the inaugural platform
included a number of high-ranking military officers; several of
them got to their feet and strode to the passageway leading back
into the Capitol. As soon as they thought they were out of sight of the TV cameras, they broke into a run. A number of nonuniformed
officials did the same thing.

Members of the Justice Posse now entered the front row of chairs
and converged on four men: the secretaries-designate of Defense,
State, Commerce, and Treasury. Each of the four men was strongly
encouraged to rise to his feet and then hustled out. Their family members were not allowed to come along; some of them were too
stunned to move, some burst into tears, and some tried to get
physical. An initial tremor of panic propagated down the Mall.

Floyd Wayne Vishniak was watching Cozzano from the crowd
below. Ogle's special invitation had gotten him through several
layers of security. But he had not actually climbed up on to the
inaugural platform itself. His invite supposedly would have gotten
him through the final cordon. But he had watched a few of the
bigwigs and seen that the final layer of security was especially
stringent. He didn't want to take a chance on that, and it wasn't
even necessary. From down below, he had a clear view of the entire platform.

He could have picked off any of the bigwigs sitting up there. Any
of the people who were controlling Cozzano's mind. It would have been easy. But it would have been pointless. Vishniak had come to
an astonishing realization as he had listened to Cozzano's speech: he
was too late. Cozzano was lost.

Vishniak had personally demolished the computer control room
where Ogle and the other media manipulators were controlling
Cozzano's mind. He had set Cozzano free. But Cozzano had
started his term as President by declaring martial law and threaten
ing to execute people in the streets. Cozzano was staging a coup d'etat. He was turning America's great democratic system into a dictatorship. Right before Vishniak's eyes.