His people ate it up.
Jefferson Monroe’s archenemies, and the enemies of his supporters, were the Chinese. The Chinese were America’s great nemesis, and the airhead former fashion model in the White House either didn’t have the eyes to see it, or was a bought and sold Chinese collaborator.
Monroe himself stared out at the crowd with his deep-set, steely eyes. He was seventy-four years old, white-haired, with a lined and weathered face – a face that seemed much older than its years. Judging by his face alone, he could have been a hundred years old, or a thousand. But he was tall, and stood erect. By all accounts he slept three or four hours a night, and that was all he needed.
He wore a freshly starched white dress shirt open at the throat with no tie – another signature of his. He was a billionaire, or close to it, but he was a man of the people, by God! A man who had come from nothing. Dirt poor, from the mountains of West Virginia. A man who, despite his newfound wealth, despised the rich all his life. A man who, more than anything, despised the liberals, especially Northeasterners, and New Yorkers in particular. No fancy pants, Washington, DC insider suit and power tie for him. He somehow managed to conveniently overlook that he himself was the ultimate Washington insider, that he had spent twenty-four years in the United States Senate.
Susan supposed there was some modicum of truth to his affect. He’d had a hardscrabble upbringing in Appalachia – that was common knowledge. And he had clawed his way up and out from there. But he was no friend of the common man, or woman. To orchestrate his climb, he had always, from his earliest days – aligned himself with the most backward elements in American society. He had been a Pinkerton thug as a young man, attacking striking coal miners with clubs and ax handles. He had spent his entire career in the back pocket of the major coal interests, always fighting for less regulation, less workplace safety, and fewer workers’ rights. And he had been rewarded handsomely for his efforts.
“I told you,” he said into the microphone.
The crowd erupted into raucous cheers.
Monroe tamped it down with a hand. “I told you we were going to take America back.” The cheering started again. “You and me!” Monroe shouted. “We did it!”
Now the cheering changed, gradually morphing into a chant, one with which Susan was all too familiar. It had a funny awkward sort of cadence, this chant, like a waltz, or some kind of call-and-response.
“AMERICA! IS OURS! AMERICA! IS OURS! AMERICA! IS OURS!”
It went on and on. The sound of it made Susan sick to her stomach. At least they hadn’t started in on the “Kick Her Out!” chants that had become popular for a while. The first time she had heard it, it nearly brought her to tears. She knew a lot of the people involved were probably just showboating. But at least some of these lunatics really did want to hang her, supposedly because she was a traitor in league with the Chinese. The thought of it left a hollow place inside of her.
“No more empty factories!” Monroe shouted. Now it was his turn to raise a triumphant fist in the air. “No more crime-ridden cities! No more human filth! No more Chinese betrayals!”
“NO MORE!” the crowd answered in unison, another of their favorite chants. “NO MORE! NO MORE! NO MORE!”
Kurt Kimball, crisp, alert, big and strong as always, with a perfectly bald head, stepped in front of the TV and used the remote control to mute the sound.
It was as if a spell had been broken. Suddenly Susan was completely aware of her surroundings again. She was here in the sitting area of the Oval Office with Kurt, his close aide Amy, Kat Lopez, Secretary of Defense Haley Lawrence, and a few others. These were some of Susan’s most trusted advisors.
On a closed-circuit video monitor, Susan’s Vice President, Marybeth Horning, was attending. After the Mount Weather disaster, security protocols had changed. Marybeth and Susan were never supposed to be in the same place at the same time. And that was a shame.
Marybeth was a hero of Susan’s. She was the ultra-liberal former senator from Rhode Island who had lectured at Brown University for more than two decades. She seemed mousy and frail, with a bob of gray hair and round-rimmed granny glasses.
But looks, in this case, were deceiving. She was also a thunderous firebrand for workers’ rights, women’s rights, the rights of gay people, and the environment. She was the mastermind of the successful healthcare initiative Susan’s administration had launched. Marybeth was at once an unassuming genius, a student of history, and a vicious political infighter with sharp elbows.
Another sad thing: Marybeth lived in Susan’s old house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory. The house was one of Susan’s favorite places on Earth. It would be nice to go there once in a while.
“This is a problem,” Kurt Kimball said, gesturing at the silent TV.
Susan nearly laughed. “Kurt, I’ve always admired your gift for understatement.”
Jefferson Monroe had made a campaign promise – a promise! – that he would go to Congress and seek a Declaration of War against China on his first official day in office. In fact, and most people had trouble taking this seriously, he had implied that the American military’s first move would be tactical nuclear strikes against China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea. He had also promised that he would erect security walls around Chinatowns in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He said he would demand the Canadians do the same in Vancouver and Calgary.
The Canadians, quite naturally, had balked at the idea.
“The country has gone insane,” Kurt said. “And Monroe is expected to call for your concession speech again, Susan.”
Kat Lopez shook her head. As Susan’s chief-of-staff, Kat had matured and come into her own these past couple of years. She had also aged about ten years. When she came in, she had been a surreally beautiful and youthful thirty-seven – now she looked every minute of thirty-nine, and then some. Lines had appeared on her face, gray was invading the jet black of her hair.
“I advise you not to do that, Susan,” she said. “We have evidence of widespread minority voter suppression in five Southern states. We have the suspicion of outright polling machine fraud in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The counts are still too close to call in many places – just because the TV stations have called these states for him, doesn’t mean we have to. We can make this thing drag out for weeks, if not months.”
“And cause a presidential succession crisis,” Kurt said.
“We can weather it,” Kat said. “We’ve seen worse. The inauguration isn’t until January twentieth. If it takes that long, so be it. It buys us time. If there was fraud, our analysts will discover it. If there was voter suppression like we think, there will be lawsuits. In the meantime, we’re still governing.”
“I’m with Kat on this,” Marybeth chimed in through the monitor. “I say we fight until we drop.”
Susan looked at Haley Lawrence. He was tall and heavyset, with unkempt blond hair. His suit was so wrinkled it was almost as if he had passed out in it. He looked like he had just awoken ten minutes ago from a fitful sleep full of nightmares. Except for their shared height, he and Kurt Kimball were near opposites in appearance.
“Haley, you’re the only Republican in this room,” Susan said. “Monroe’s in your party. I want your thoughts on this before I decide anything.”
Lawrence took a long moment before answering. “I don’t think that Jefferson Monroe is really a Republican. His ideas are far more radical than conservative. He surrounds himself with gangs of young thugs. He spent the past year appealing to the most backward and basest notions of angry and resentful people. He is a danger to world