Mia considered the question, and why this man would be asking it. They’d discussed the rehabilitation colonies a lot, of course. How could they not after what had happened in the ballroom? It seemed an opportunity to lead, to separate General Collins from the pack. But the national party had advised caution. Vets’ issues didn’t play with voters.
“We’re seeking out a few subject-matter experts,” Mia said. “Internal reform seems necessary. But what those reforms look like, we’re figuring out.”
The man in rags stared at her. And stared at her. And stared at her. He didn’t respond but Mia seemed to have disappointed him. She asked if he needed money. He didn’t respond to that, either, so she walked into the building.
She rode the elevator by herself. The golden retrievers and drunken Santas were already gone for the day. Their floor was humming: news of the general’s success at Knights Stadium had already reached cable sports. It’d make the news channels by hour’s end. She high-fived a couple of volunteers and assured them that yes, it had been even more impressive in person.
Mia pushed close her office door, the din falling away with it. She’d been with the campaign for just over a month, and still found the tempo unsettling. Finance moved as a river, a constant force that could swallow up the careless and excitable alike. Politics seemed more like traveling with family. A lot of sound, a lot of fury, bursts of weary idleness in between.
At her desk Mia took off her flats, rubbing the sole of her left foot. She wasn’t quite showing yet, but one of her favorite blouses hadn’t fit that morning, something she knew shouldn’t have frustrated her but still had. Her skin kept breaking out, too. It wasn’t all bad, though. The prenatal vitamins had turned her fingernails into wonders. They were long and thick and while she’d never been a nail woman, it seemed a waste not to be now.
Her phone rumbled on the desk: a voice mail from Linda. Her stepmother kept calling, wanting to pregnant-talk. Mia did not share in that desire, at all. How would her real mom be handling it? She wasn’t sure. Leaving her alone, at least. Her mom had been different, always marching to the beat of her own drum. Not many scions of Old Greenwich had spent five months in a peacemonger camp, refusing her family’s legal connections out of principle. If ovarian cancer hadn’t taken her when Mia was six, her only daughter joining the military might have.
She’d had courage, Mia knew. A lot of it. That’s where her own came from. It had little to do with the Tucker blood. It was pure Roosevelt.
Mia pulled out her to-do list, the additions outpacing the strikethroughs. Purchase the train tickets to Babylon—done. Confirm the rally venue there—not done. Register the radiation detectors with the homeland marshals—done. Look over the press release about drug companies’ testimony to Congress on maven treatments—not done. Red-pen the speechwriters’ latest attempt at the Service-for-All platform—not done. They hated the “New America” line and were trying to quash it. They weren’t wrong, Mia thought, but it didn’t matter. The general liked it.
Mia had joined the campaign as a fund-raising coordinator. By the end of her first week, she was running the finance team. By the end of week three, she’d been made a deputy campaign manager. Turnover had proven a constant; General Collins demanded a lot from her staff. Small as it was, Mia had remained in the same office throughout the staff shakeups. It had everything she needed (a door, four walls, a little window that provided slivers of gray light) and none of what she didn’t (a whiteboard for feedback loops, word clouds and doodles from feedback loops, people who used terms like “feedback loop”).
A knock came, then a voice, then the sound of the door opening and closing: Mia looked up to find Roger Tran stepping into her office.
“You’re here,” he said. Tran wore his customary navy slacks and power Windsor. “Superb.”
“Just got in,” Mia said. “Was at the first pitch.”
“She’s a genius.”
Mia nodded. It had struck her as cynical, at first, but she’d warmed to the idea over time. “We could unveil a new Marshall Plan for the entire Near East and get a tenth of media play this will. Crazy world.”
“Three kids. I think that every day.” Roger Tran’s voice never rose and it never fell. He carried the vague title of senior strategist, which meant he was involved in everything. The staff called him “Mr. Fix-It” behind his back. Sometimes as a compliment. Sometimes not.
Mia’s predecessor had left partly because of Tran. He was as demanding as the general, but twice as meticulous, and uninterested in the rah-rah talk frequented on the trail. This wasn’t another job for him. It was the only one.
“Wanted to follow up with you.” Tran shook off Mia’s gesture to take a seat. “Yesterday’s meeting.”
“Which part?”
“The security plan. You disagree.”
“I do, but it’s not my call.” Mia smiled while keeping her lips pressed together. She had no interest in suggesting she wasn’t still bothered. “That’s your lane.”
The morning after the inaugural, the security team had been fired in entirety. The question of who to replace them with became an issue. An upstart senatorial campaign didn’t have the coffers for elite contractors. Tran’s solution was fiscally sound, if nothing else: the Sheepdogs would do it. They were cheap, they were loyal, ex-military and retired police who had lived American Service themselves. No ragtag vets from the outlands would get through them.
There was one problem, though. The Sheepdogs were ragtag themselves, and being even loosely affiliated with fringe ultra politics made zero sense for a new party with centrist ideals and ambitions. Mia and some of the junior staff had pushed back on the proposal. The general heard their concerns, she said, but still, they’d be going forward with the Sheepdogs. There was just no getting around the money it’d save.
“No one’s going to care who’s providing security.”
Mia wasn’t so sure about that and had said so in the meeting. But rather than repeat herself she said, “They’ll need background checks. And look the part. Shaved, in suits. Polished shoes.”
“Of course, Ms. Tucker. No scrubs in the ranks.” Tran rubbed at his chin. His fingers were long and sleek, like darts, his face a map of wrinkles and sunspots. A career in the infantry that could be traced from mark to mark, each one a distinct story and trial. Just as effective as reading a soldier’s ribbons from their uniform while twice as true.
“They consider themselves devotees to the Bill of Rights,” Tran continued. “That’s all. I’m sure you had soldiers like them. Even the Legion had some. And we weren’t citizens yet.”
“I did.” Mia filled her voice with false cheer. “Why do you think I’m worried?”
“Spill blood for America,” Tran said, wistfully. The International Legion’s motto.
His lips eased out into a smile. He did have a sense of humor, albeit a very dry one. He’d shared his journey once, at a staff gathering over drinks. How a reticent boy from Saigon had grown up to lead a Legionnaire battalion in combat. How a son of a bar girl raised by his grandparents now owned a house in the suburbs. Two floors, in a cul-de-sac. How America, for all her failures, for all her hypocrisies, had made such a life possible. How it was his duty now to pay it forward.