Mia wasn’t one for rash decisions. But something gave way within her as she remembered the ballroom, because of their recklessness, because of their self-regard. These people didn’t deserve her. As Mia returned to the set in full, furious strides, she was still putting order and structure to her thoughts. Her intent felt plain as light, though. She was going to quit the campaign.
“General Collins. A word, please.” Mia stripped her words of any question or deference.
The older woman heard that edge. She stood and sent away the campaign aides.
“Go ahead, Mia.”
“I have it on good authority that the Mayday extremists were let into the ballroom the night of the inaugural.” Mia didn’t hesitate or falter. “By your friend, Bernard Gault.”
The general didn’t object; she didn’t dispute. She didn’t even blink. She just took Mia by the elbow and told her to walk with her.
“We’re winning, Mia.” Her voice was low, wary. “We’re winning.”
“I’m sorry?” Mia didn’t understand what that had to do with anything.
“It’ll be public tomorrow morning. New Harris/Tugwell poll has us up two percentage points. One poll, but: we’re not a dark horse anymore.”
“That’s…” It was great news, amazing news, but Mia could not reason with it right now. “Did you hear me, ma’am? I said Bernard Gault aided the militants who took us hostage. The ones who shot Governor Harrah. The ones who killed him.”
“Lima Charlie.” Military-speak for loud and clear. “I hear you Lima Charlie, Mia.” The general squeezed Mia’s elbow, hard. They stopped walking and faced one another, the view of the Finance District on their periphery. General Collins’s slight stoop tipped her shoulders forward, and Mia looked up at the other woman, finding a taut aggression she’d never seen directed her way before. “Now I need you to hear me.”
Mia pursed her lips but nodded.
“As a pilot up there in the sky, you didn’t see all the work on the ground that goes into successful counterinsurgency. Not that the Mediterranean’s offered many successes, of course. But there have been some. Crete. New Beirut. Those victories didn’t happen by accident. They didn’t happen through nice intentions, either. Deals were struck. Bargains made. I broke bread once with a cleric in Syria married to his own twelve-year-old cousin. He raped that girl. He hit that girl. He took whatever he wanted from his tribespeople, because he could. A little tyrant of dirt. Everything about him disgusted me, ran in violation of my beliefs. We awarded him a road paving contract over chai. I swallowed my pride for the mission. For peace.”
“That’s over there.”
“That’s over here, too. I thought you knew that already. You think America is so different than those places? Than anywhere else? America, it’s made up of people. And people will always disappoint, Mia. They lie to their spouses. They cheat on their taxes. They con their neighbors. Why do you think we need to bring united service to them, instead of them clamoring for it?”
Mia attempted to speak but the general held up a finger.
“Citizens are like soldiers: they’re only as good as their leadership. And good leadership, real leadership, sometimes means grabbing your biggest, dumbest grunt by the scruff of his neck and ordering him to post guard. Because someone has to.”
General Collins pulled out a cigarette and put it between her lips, letting it dangle there as she finished.
“Come down from the sky, pilot. Come get your hands dirty. Victory requires it.”
Mia exhaled through her nose, keeping her lips pursed and her back straight. The only response she could form in her head—“Wrong is wrong”—felt childish and paltry. Layers of gray were one thing, but people had died in that ballroom. Lives altered, forever altered, American lives, because of Machiavellian scheming.
“Did you know?” she finally managed. “Before.”
The general shook her head no.
“You’re smart enough to know that’s by design,” she said. “But as I understand, it wasn’t supposed to be like that, at all. It was supposed to be small, contained. Nonviolent. The governor was a good man. He’d have made a fine president.” She shook her head again. “Like war, though. Adapt and overcome. Or be overrun by the horde.”
Mia felt an overwhelming need to fly into the deep of sky but didn’t dare move an inch now. She held to the precious quiet yet again.
“Take off a couple days, think things through,” General Collins said between long, contemplative drags. “The parade next week, though—from there, it’s all systems go. No time for doubts. No space for regret.”
Her eyes fell upon Mia’s stomach.
“You and I want the same thing: a new America. For your beautiful child. For all our children. They deserve hope. They deserve a promising nation, a rising one, like we knew. Tomorrow—tomorrow is what matters.”
General Collins took a final drag, then flicked the half-smoked cigarette to the ground. Mia wrapped her arms around her stomach and kept them there for many minutes, trying to make sense of everything that’d been said, and everything not, watching the cinder of the half cigarette blink out.
* * *
Acceptable harbor light arrived just after noon. General Collins and River Phoenix finished their scene twenty minutes later. The general, Tran, and a group of Sheepdogs headed to the train station—an evening talk at the McNamara Institute in Federal City awaited. Defying the general’s order, Mia headed uptown and into the office for a couple of hours. She needed to work to calm herself. After verifying the order for American Service banners and signboards to hand out at the upcoming V-V Day Parade and a conference call with campaign deputies in the western states, she texted Jesse.
“Horrible day. Home for dinner tonight?”
She didn’t know yet if she wanted advice or a sounding board, but either way, she needed to talk things through with her fiancé. That he was also a special agent for the Bureau—well, they’d figure it out, together.
Her phone buzzed thirty seconds later. She grabbed it with alacrity.
“Need to see you ASAP!” It was a text from Sebastian Rios. “Free this afternoon?”
Mia rolled her lips. I suppose I am, she thought.
They met at a coffee shop in Old Harlem. Amid a scattershot of antifascist arrows, someone had spray painted “Die Boho Scum” on the building’s side. Sebastian had already arrived, sitting at a corner table, wearing a long-sleeve pajama top and faded jeans. His face was pallid and drawn, his hair holding a greasy tint to it. He got up and pulled out Mia’s seat for her.
She ordered ice water and a panini, Sebastian a vanilla latte and scone. He pointed to her stomach and asked how she was feeling.
“Oh, fine,” she said. Did he actually want to know? She figured not. Sebastian didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d given much thought to the rigors of pregnancy. “Small complaints, of course. But worth it.”
The urge, the desire, the craving to share—Mia rarely felt it, but she did now. The morning conversation with General Collins had spooked her. It already felt like a mad daydream, but it had happened and she needed help working her way through it. Had she been threatened there at the end? It’d felt that way in the moment, even if the words hadn’t matched. An old friend like Sebastian might be able to remind her of who she’d been long ago, when she’d been certain about the world and her role in it.