Despite its catastrophic government, this remained a great country. Even now, especially now, he felt a rush of patriotic pride when he saw the great dome of the Capitol building.

He wondered what Evan would think, knowing what he was about to do. In the breast pocket of his jacket, Wilmot carried the letter he hoped would explain his actions to his son. If not tomorrow, then someday, Wilmot hoped Evan would understand.

Wilmot recalled the first time he had looked down at Evan lying burned and broken in Walter Reed, his face slick with antibiotic ointment. He found himself wondering: if God himself offered to make his boy whole again in exchange for Wilmot aborting the mission he and Collier had planned, would he take the offer?

As he took in the majestic view, he decided that he wouldn’t.

Fate had dealt him this hand precisely because of who he was: the only man capable of taking the harsh but necessary action of punishing those most responsible for ruining the state of the union.

“All set,” Collier said as he joined Wilmot on the balcony. “Christ, it’s cold out here.”

“I didn’t even notice,” Wilmot said.

“Are you hungry?”

“I am,” Wilmot said, not looking at the young man. He wished Evan were here. The truth was that whatever anger he had once felt toward his son had faded long ago. The young man had made a choice, a courageous choice, certainly not one that many people in his shoes would have made.

“Should I order room service?” Collier asked.

Wilmot realized that the last person he wanted to share his last meal with was Collier.

“If you don’t mind, John, I think I’ll dine alone,” Wilmot said.

“Sure. Yeah. Okay.” Collier’s voice was etched with disappointment, but Wilmot didn’t care a tinker’s damn how John Collier felt. He was now, as he’d always been, an ugly, stunted person—angry, vicious, and weak.

Wilmot went down to the Lafayette Room. It was full of people he’d seen on television, even a few he’d met in person. But nobody approached him, nobody asked him how he was doing. Which was just as well. At the moment Wilmot preferred his own company.

Normally, he was a beer man, but tonight he was in the mood to celebrate. He called over the sommelier.

“Suppose this was your last meal,” he said. “What would you drink?”

The sommelier didn’t miss a beat, and suggested a Château d’Yquem ’61.

“No. Something American.”

“I see,” the sommelier smiled conspiratorially. “Because of the State of the Union tomorrow. I have just the thing.”

The sommelier brois aelier brought out a big cabernet bottled in 1983 by a Napa Valley winery Wilmot had never heard of. He almost sent it back when he was told that it cost nearly six hundred dollars. But then he thought, what’s the point of being rich if you were too cheap to blow a few hundred bucks on a bottle of wine on the most important day of your life?

Wilmot ate a steak, a bone-in filet, very rare, with a baked potato drenched in sour cream and butter, and declined the salad. Only a squirrel would eat a pile of leaves for a last meal. He smiled to himself. He had never enjoyed a meal so much in all his life.

The sommelier refilled his glass until the bottle was empty. He didn’t feel drunk, but he noticed he had trouble holding his fork steady. He ate a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert, but the magic seemed to have drained out of the moment. He asked the waiter to scare him up an Opus X cigar, then paid his bill with a generous tip, and went for a walk along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Low, ragged clouds covered the moon as he walked past the White House and lit the Opus. Normally it was his favorite cigar, but today it tasted harsh and sour. Looking at the Capitol in the distance he felt suddenly impatient. He wanted to get the show on the road. He tossed the cigar onto the street, where it skittered across the asphalt with a shower of sparks. A pencil-necked geek in a Prius cursed at him as he slowed for a red light.

He felt the low flame of anger kindling inside him. When he was a young man he would have run up and given the little shithead a beat-down. Something in Wilmot’s smile must have scared the driver, though, because he peeled out of there as soon as the light turned green.

Wilmot started back to the hotel, feeling ready. It was time to teach a lesson to the people who had taken everything from him. It was time to change the country. It was time to make history.

When he entered the lobby, he withdrew the letter he’d written to Evan, and reread the last paragraph.

As horrible as the events of this day have been, they were also necessary. The corrupt and cynical gang of thieves and madmen who call themselves our government have grown like a cancer that will kill its host unless it is removed. Today we, the people of the United States of America, have finally been given a chance to remove this cancer and to reclaim this great nation as our own. I hope that, in time, you will come to understand why I have done what I have done, and that you will be as proud of me as I have been of you.

With love,

Your father

He put the letter back in the envelope and addressed it to Evan. Then he handed it to the clerk.

“Would you mail this for me in the morning?” he asked.

“Certainly, sir.”

“And I’ll need a five AM wake-up call.”

“Of course.”

Then Dale Wilmot went upstairs to bed.

34

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

Dr. Nathan Klotz slept soundly in the king-size bed next to his two daughters. With their mother working double shifts providing security for the State of the Union address, the girls insisted on a sleepover. He had not objected because it was easier to have them in the bed than to wake up every two hours when they called out for Mommy. He missed his wife, too, but the pride he took in her job made him miss her a little less.

Downstairs, the remains of the meal they had defrosted and cooked were still on the table. Dr. Klotz had been too tired to clean up after bathing and reading to the children, so he left the dishes and planned to deal with them in the morning. There was very little left over anyway; his wife was an excellent cook. Even the girls had polished off their plates.

Had he been awake and clicked on the real-time surveillance monitor his wife had installed on their desktop computer, he might have seen the old Honda that had passed before his house three times before finally stopping.

35

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

Tillman knew he’d have to make a decision sooner than later.

Until now, he had smiled and nodded at Verhoven’s crazed political observations and had followed his orders without questioning them. But if he went much further, he’d be committing crimes that could get him sent to prison for the rest of his life.

Verhoven drove by the house slowly in the old Honda. It was like a dozen other houses on the same street in Tysons Corner: two-car garage, two stories, dormer windows, wood siding painted in one of the three colors of beige approved by the neighborhood association. They planned to invade it and hold its occupants hostage. Tillman’s heart was thumping uncomfortably as he weighed whether to go through with the operation or turn his gun on Verhoven and Lorene.

The problem was that he had still not learned enough about how the principal attack would go down, and the part they were supposed to play in it. Would the plot fail or be aborted if Verhoven didn’t execute his part of the plan? Or would the plan just have to be adjusted in some minor way? Could Tillman stop the killing of hundreds of people if he preempted whatever was about to go down in the home of Dr. Nathan Klotz?

“One more pass,” Tillman said as Verhoven slowed the car. He was stalling for time.

“Why?”

“This is a normal-looking neighborhood, but the house has four pan-and-scan video surveillance cameras on the eaves. My guess is they’re mounted on motion-activated servos. Whoever lives here is not some normal suburban Joe.”