I’ll tell him, Mia decided. He and Jesse will make for good advice foils.
Before she could, Sebastian opened a spiral notebook on the table and turned it toward her. She saw a collection of lists and scribbles and dark strikethroughs in it.
“I wrote it out so I could keep it straight.” Sebastian put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, close enough to Mia that she could see insomnia in his eyes. This was why he wanted to get coffee, she realized. “Bear with me, please.” Then he launched into a tale about Tripoli, and what he thought had happened there, and why, his words darting about like bats in the dark. He spoke low, hushed, and kept itching at the stubble around his chin. Ancestors from World War I and the cythrax vaccine were mentioned. Mia let him ramble, choosing to keep silent.
“Look.” He pointed into the notebook. Mia saw the word GERMANY circled with a line connecting to TRIPOLI and another to EMPIRE CITY. The phrase “Volunteers, Stateside” had a variety of scribbles beneath it she couldn’t decipher. “It all connects.”
Mia sipped her water and clasped her hands in front of her. The morning’s revelation of the Council’s plotting had upset and frightened her. This was the opposite. She found Sebastian’s paranoid conspiracy sad, even repellent. Tripoli? Why did he care so much about Tripoli?
Mia no longer felt compelled to share her discussion with the general.
“For what end?” she asked.
“For… it’s like Occam’s razor. From philosophy class? For this end. For super-soldiers.”
“Why go through the big charade? If ‘they’ ”—Mia couldn’t help herself, she paused to put air quotes around the word—“wanted to do something like that, why not do it in secret? In an underground bunker? An empty desert out west?”
Sebastian rubbed under his sunglasses. He believed what he was saying, she thought. There was no doubt about it. “Listen, I know how this sounds. But you know me, Mia. I’m no nutter. I like America. I like being American.
“I don’t know what the truth is. We haven’t been told it, though. I’m asking—I’m asking for your help. You know people, in finance, on the Council of Victors. You work for a retired general. What really happened to us?”
Mia took that in, considering both the vagueness and specificity of what Sebastian was suggesting. She moved her hands from the table to the top of her stomach and tapped at it. There was no response this time, but there had been the morning before. Life grew within Mia, and grew more so with every new day.
Could the nation she’d sworn to defend be capable of this thing Sebastian was suggesting? She’d given her youth to America. She’d given her leg for America. She’d almost given much more. So of course. Of course America was capable of such a thing. Capability was one of the things about her country she admired the most.
“I swallowed my pride for the mission,” General Collins had said. Mia knew now she needed to do the same. The alternative sat across from her, wildly lost. A regular citizen, not a warfighter, doing his best, trying his best, but overcome by the forces of order. Mia was one of those forces of order. She always had been.
“You know, See-Bee,” she said, clearing her throat. “My baby began kicking last week.”
“What?” His voice was scratchy, irritated. He corrected himself. “That’s great. Really.”
“It is.” She knew she was going to come across harsher than she wanted, but they were too old for this type of talk. Sebastian was a friend, yes. But whether he knew it or not, he was also a threat. “I’m going to be a mother. I’m going to be a wife. I’m going to be an aide for the next commander in chief.”
“I—”
“You’re going to let me finish. General Collins likes to remind the staff that it’s not about yesterday. It’s about tomorrow. Our aim is not small. It’s to transform the country. To ensure my child knows an America like we grew up in. Something hopeful. Something safe.”
Sebastian stared back at her, openmouthed. He looked more crestfallen than angry. Maybe a bit surprised, too.
“War changes us,” Mia continued. “I get that. We went overseas for different reasons, I think, but we had this in common: we wanted to prove that we could. It changed you, See-Bee, and that’s okay. It changed me, too. But don’t let it define you. Don’t let one month of your life shape everything that remains. Please. As someone who knew you when you were just a goofy college kid without a care in the world: tomorrow. Tomorrow is what matters.”
Sebastian sighed, opening his mouth to say something but then stopping himself. He chewed his bottom lip a couple of times before trying again.
“You sound like Pete,” he said. “He thinks like that, too.”
And then he was done, closing his notebook and packing up his things. He slid over a five-dollar bill for his latte and scone. It wasn’t enough but Mia didn’t object. She’d cover the rest. She almost asked him to stay to smooth things over but instead she patted his forearm and told him to text if he needed anything.
Tough love, she thought. We all need it, sometimes.
Jesse called later that afternoon. She told him she was feeling better about things and not to worry. He’s busy enough, she decided. He’s focused on bettering tomorrow. So am I.
* * *
“Welcome to The Proving Ground. I’m your host, Jamie Gellhorn. We begin with an exclusive investigation into the background of retired major general Jackie ‘Jackpot’ Collins, a presidential candidate who’s gone from a virtual unknown to serious political player in a few short months.
“Our investigative team has obtained documents from General Collins’s time at homeland intelligence that suggest, at best, a fuzzy regard for the rule of law. The documents are redacted of top-secret material but still reveal the general oversaw implementation of underground interrogation centers in ally nations such as Malta—a loophole meant to work around current military law. She also helped lay the groundwork for a covert military court system that has, at times, declared American citizens suspected of ties to fanatic groups as enemy combatants.
“Empire News has uploaded all supporting material to our website. We invite viewers to scrutinize the documents themselves. They may serve as keyholes into the ethics and decision making of a contender for the highest office in the land.”
CHAPTER 21
THE AUTUMN WIND carried a mean, frosty air to it that hinted of more. Hands deep in his jacket and chin tucked, Jean-Jacques walked through Kissinger Square, the tusked arch clashing against the dark of sky. Old bullet holes from the Vietnam arrests slabbed the base of the arch, and Jean-Jacques paused to run his fingers through them. The smaller dents meant rubber slugs, he figured, but the deep cavities meant lethal rounds. Bolt action, looked like, .30 caliber.
Dirt farmers in the Mediterranean carried better weapons than that. The riot here had marked the peak of the antiwar movement and been put down by Home Guard. Poor bastards, Jean-Jacques thought. Enemy was one thing. Citizen mobs were something else altogether.
Mayday, Mayday.
He met the agents in a neon diner a block north of the square. It was just the two younger ones, Dorsett and Stein, alone at a table in the rear. They could not have looked more cop if they’d tried, all rigid backs and jolty energy, wearing department store sweaters. Jean-Jacques took a seat across from them, facing the kitchen.