Neal Stephenson - Interface

Instead he found something even better: a GODS truck. Just like the one he'd glimpsed under the stage at McCormick Place - except this one was practically right across the street from the Capitol. Vishniak began to walk across the park, and even as he did, the door in the back opened and a man climbed out of it.

Something about the man with the close-cropped hair and the neatly trimmed beard seemed vaguely familiar to Cy Ogle. He fit the profile for a Secret Service agent. But this man did not behave like Secret Service. He was not scanning the crowd. He was looking straight at Cy Ogle.

Ogle had already reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his engraved invitation. The man in the trench coat was reaching into his breast pocket too. But he hadn't pulled anything out yet.

"Hey," the man said.

"Morning," Ogle said, "excuse me, but I got a party to attend."

"Hold on a sec," the man said, "I recognize you from that article they did about you in The New York Times Magazine in 1991. And also from the little article in Time magazine last year. They both ran photos of you."

"That's nice," Ogle said. By now he had realized that the man could not possibly be Secret Service.

"Don't you recognize me?" the man asked. "You should. I'm a very important person in your life."

Ogle took a good look at the man's face.

At the face of Floyd Wayne Vishniak.

His lips parted and he felt stunned and weak in the legs, as if he had been struck on the head.

Vishniak grinned and turned sideways to Ogle. He moved his hand inside his trench coat and Ogle could see the barrel of the gun pressing on the fabric from the inside. "I'm covering you with the same gun I used before," he said, "and if you say anything, I'll pull the trigger."

"What do you want?" Ogle said.

"I want your truck," Vishniak said, nodding towards the park. "You know us farmboys. We're just crazy about big ol' trucks."

Ogle turned his back on the Capitol and started walking back across Taft Park. Every few paces he would look back behind himself hoping that Vishniak would have disappeared. But he was always right there. Almost as bad, he never shut up. "I figured you had to have some kind of secret transmitter to control Cozzano's brain. Because when I busted up your control room at the shopping mall over there, it didn't make any difference at all. Let's go on over there and take a look around."

Ogle crossed Louisiana, climbed up the temporary steps behind the truck, and opened the door to the Eye of Cy. He was thinking of trying to slam it in Vishniak's face, but Vishniak shoved him through and closed the door behind him.

The security men and the lawyer were climbing to their feet.

Ogle saw a white light flashing in the corner of his eye and felt, did not hear, a quick series of explosions pounding him on the side of his head. The three men in front of him jerked, crumbled, and collapsed to the floor; behind them, blood was showering all over the equipment.

Ogle couldn't hear anything except a pure tone in his ear. He sagged against a wall and closed his eyes, feeling faint.

Vishniak cuffed Ogle's hands behind his back, stepped over the corpses, and proceeded to the Eye of Cy. Ogle could see his lips moving as he commented upon it, but couldn't hear what he was saying.

Vishniak looked around the trailer. His eyes landed on a fire extinguisher mounted to a wall. Vishniak holstered his gun, picked up the fire extinguisher, and then used it as a blunt object to smash all of the screens in the Eye of Cy. At first he worked slowly and methodically, but after a few minutes he really got into it and began to pound away at them in a frenzy. Finally he threw the extinguisher on the floor, battered and scraped.

He turned to Ogle with a triumphant look on his face and said something else. Then he approach. He reached into Ogle's pocket and pulled out the personal invitation. He shoved it into his own pocket. Then Floyd Wayne Vishniak walked out of Cy Ogle's life.

William A. Cozzano took the oath of office at twelve noon. Holding the Bible was Mary Catherine. Administering the oath was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. After a very intense quarter of an hour running and subwaying across D.C., the Cozzanos had reached the Rotunda in plenty of time and been able to hit the bathrooms and freshen up a little. They looked great and showed little trace of the earlier excitement; television viewers who had heard rumors of wild goings-on up and down the length of Pennsylvania Avenue were comforted to see the Cozzanos looking calm, relaxed, and happy.

Only one detail seemed out of place: as Cozzano had emerged from the West Front of the Capitol and walked through the passageway in the center of the stands, he had moved slowly and with a limp. He moved like an old man, not the spry athlete who had become so famous during the campaign. And then he raised his hand and recited the oath of office, his voice sounded different: deeper, slower, not as distinct. He tripped over a few words, something he had never done during the campaign.

But it didn't matter. He looked great. He smiled confidently through the oath, presenting a strong profile for the cameras, towering over the Chief Justice. His daughter was facing directly into the cameras and her face was suffused with joy and pride. She wasn't bothered by her father's gait, or his voice; why should America be?

It was over. President Cozzano shook hands with the Chief Justice and bent down to kiss Mary Catherine on the cheek.

Then he stepped up to the Presidential lectern, still moving slowly and carefully. Before him, the Mall was covered with people, all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, and all of them were applauding. The applause from the invited guests on the platform, and from the lucky few just below, around the Capitol Reflecting Pool, was distinct. Beyond that it merged into a generalized hissing roar, coming from the horizon.

President Cozzano reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a few typewritten sheets folded in half down the middle and flattened them out on the lectern. He waited for a few moments, smiling to the crowd, as the applause died down.

"Thank you," he said, "thank you." That brought the applause to a close. Then he began to read from the notes on the lectern, calmly, pronouncing the words with conspicuous precision, like a drunken man who is trying not to sound drunk.

"My first act as President is to declare martial law in the District of Columbia and to suspend the following constituted bodies: the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Park Police, and the Capitol Police. The CIA is reminded that their activities begin at the water's edge. Any violation of martial law may be penalized by summary execution. In their place, to maintain order among executive branch and the government, I federalize the police force of the District of Columbia for a period of one week and place it at the disposal of the Department of Justice."

At this moment, half of the men on and around the platform stood up and stripped off their jackets and dress shirts to reveal black T-shirts emblazoned with white stars on the front and "Dept. of JUSTICE" across the back. As Cozzano continued his address, these men converged on all of the uniformed Capitol police officers in the area, and on anyone who looked like a Secret Service agent.

The men in the black T-shirts - the Justice Posse - looked as though they were ready for a fight, and they were. Some of them actually got into fights. But most of them didn't. The President's words could not have been any clearer.

The Posse men were not very discriminating. They went after anyone in a uniform and anyone who looked like Secret Service: that, is, men with earplugs. Unfortunately that included one or two journalists. The journalists put up a scuffle. The scuffles ended pretty quickly.