American War(80)

“You’re a good friend,” she said. Once more he glanced at the door.

They heard Prince Wendell coming back from the kitchen. Marcus paid him and walked out without saying another word. Sarat waited a half-hour after he left, nursing her coffee and listening to Prince Wendell reminisce about the time George came through in ’57 and took the entire eastern edge of the city with it.

Then she left for the docks. To the east she saw the Blue customs ships waiting, and she knew her friend would be there for another two days before returning to the base at Halfway Branch. She thought about that last time she saw him at Patience, about watching him walk that thin concrete tightrope to the alien country. And she begrudged him not a single one of the choices he’d made since.





Excerpted from:

ARCHIVES OF THE SPECIAL SENATE COMMITTEE ON INSURRECTIONIST AND SECESSIONIST ACTIVITY—TESTIMONY OF WAR OFFICE DIRECTOR JOSEPH WEILAND JR.


Perhaps the best way to explain it, Madam Chairwoman, is with a simple analogy.

In this country, we have elections. Our elections have strict rules, of which I’m sure every member of this committee is familiar. But, under special circumstances, we also have special elections. When President Daniel Ki was murdered, for example, we had a special election that was in fact not an election at all. It was an emergency measure taken in response to extreme and unique events. In other words, we set aside the normal guidelines because the circumstances themselves were far from normal.

And I think it’s fair to say, Madam Chairwoman, that no reasonable person genuinely believed that by temporarily setting aside normal protocol and installing a President until the following election, we had somehow forever dismantled the foundations of American democracy.

Now, to return to your question. You asked about the methods we use to extract information from insurrectionist detainees, and I am happy to answer.

Since I assumed directorship of the War Office, insurrectionist terror attacks across the so-called Tennessee line—attacks similar to the one that cost my father his life—have plummeted. Certainly the primary credit for this goes to the brave men and women of our Armed Forces. But I believe that the dramatic reduction of secessionist violence is also a direct result of our strategic initiative to capture and interrogate known and suspected insurrectionist leaders in those regions where attacks have been most rampant.

Let’s be clear, Madam Chairwoman: the people we target are no angels. We have focused our efforts intently on rebel recruiters—the cowardly men and women who have for years brainwashed young Southerners into violent, suicidal acts to further the cause of treason.

Now these recruiters, in most cases, never had the courage to take up arms themselves. So we were faced with a choice, Madam Chairwoman: either spend years trying to prosecute them for crimes that, while very much real, are nonetheless extremely difficult to prove—especially to the standards of a peacetime court in a wartime setting—or extract from them as much information as we could. I speak of information, Madam Chairwoman, that has subsequently saved American lives.

We do not act as monsters, Madam Chairwoman, even though we are often pitted against them. As is the case in any war, we use the tools available to us under the constraints of time and urgency to which we are subject. And in cases where information from insurrectionist recruiters has subsequently proven false or unreliable, we have responded accordingly. The mission of the War Office, above all else, is to protect our nation.

And I believe we have done so, Madam Chairwoman. I believe in the coming months the insurrectionist terrorists will abandon their doomed efforts at disunion, and this war will come to an end. And I certainly believe that, just as we have returned to the normal rules of Presidential elections, we will also return to the normalcy of peacetime. I’m sure all the members of this committee echo my desire that we reach that normalcy as quickly as possible.

I believe we are closer now to peace, Madam Chairwoman, than ever before.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


Sarat walked through the ruins of Lake Sinclair. She stayed close to the remains of Milledgeville Road. It was wrecked in places with craters ten feet deep, and in others with fallen trees and power lines and charred fencing.

As she neared the lake, Sarat veered from the main road to the smaller paths that led past an old bank branch and a dry jut in the lake bed. Here the fallen trees were densest, interspersed with the boathouses and the crumbling docks. Occasionally, rodents rustled through the undergrowth, but otherwise it was quiet. Sarat walked slowly to the site of the meeting.

The firebombing of Lake Sinclair happened early in the war, before it was known that the Blues had lost control of their airborne assassins. At dawn there came a buzzing sound, like a fly trapped in an upturned glass. All over the South, people had gotten used to the sight of the Birds, but no one had ever seen a flock before. They circled, a dozen or more with their wings outstretched, their shadows like fading bruises on the water.

Nobody in the South knew why the Birds had chosen to obliterate this place. Some said one of the Union pilots must have entered the coordinates wrong. Or perhaps the generals and politicians who decided which places to burn and which lives to end had been given faulty intelligence.

Nobody could settle on an explanation. But it was better to believe something, anything, than to accept that it had happened without reason—that the wandering Birds had simply congregated over this particular place on this particular hour and rained hellfire in accordance with no greater order than that of blind chance.