Ramez Naam - Apex

His ranch in Pennsylvania, Pryce recalled.

“Where were you last night, Barnes?”

Barnes answered immediately. “Here, Mr President. The house monitors will show that. So will my phone. So will my car.”

“Any witnesses?” Stockton asked.

“Just me,” Barnes said. “I worked late. Alone. Though presumably Dr Holtzman will be a witness to his own wellbeing.”

“Holtzman’s dead, Barnes.”

“Dead?” Barnes’s voice dropped lower. “How? When?”

Stockton looked up at Pryce. She shook her head.

“What can you tell me about the PLF, Barnes?”

Barnes paused for a moment. “Did we create them, you mean? God, I hope not. If we did, I don’t know anything about it. But what I’ve been asking myself is this, Mr President: Who benefits most from spreading that idea? I’d say they do. Wreak havoc. Blame it on their enemies. Get a capitulator like Stan Kim into office. Overturn the Chandler Act. Pull out of Copenhagen. They couldn’t have timed it better.”

She watched the President close his eyes. Watched emotions play across them. What was he thinking right now? Did he know Barnes’s reputation as a fixer? Did he know the rumors about him?

Had he been at all suspicious when Warren Becker had died so suddenly, so conveniently?

Why didn’t I look into it then? Pryce asked herself. Why did I just accept ‘natural causes’?

“Barnes,” Stockton said, “I believe you. This isn’t what we do.” He took a breath. “But I need you to stay exactly where you are. Don’t leave your home. This is going to get… complicated. I’m going to send some Secret Service your way.”

Barnes stayed cool as ice. “I understand, sir. There’ll need to be an investigation, of course. And the elections. Just tell me what you need from me.”

Pryce watched as the President nodded. “Good man, Max. Sit tight. Don’t talk to anyone, unless they’re from my office. I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, sir.”

Stockton ended the call, looked up, met Pryce’s eyes.

The President looked down at the desk, drummed his fingers on it, looked back up at Pryce. “I need something from you,” he told her.

“I’m not the right person for this, Mr President,” she replied.

Stockton worked his jaw. “How long have we known each other, Carolyn? You saw how Greg responded. He just wants to make this go away. You care. You’re suspicious . You think it’s possible .”

Pryce interlaced her long dark fingers, and looked him in the eye. “Mr President, I’m your National Security Advisor. Foreign security threats are my remit. This isn’t . This should be someone from FBI. Or Justice. The Attorney General maybe. Or an independent investigator the AG appoints.”

“Carolyn, you’re the one I trust . That’s what matters here.”

“You told Barnes you believed him,” Pryce said.

“I do,” Stockton replied. “I have to trust the people who work for me. But I have to verify. Trust but verify. That’s how it works. And if you dig, and you verify, and you come up satisfied that there’s nothing to this story, then I’m gonna sleep just fine at night.”

“Mr President, I don’t have the authority.”

“Then I’ll give you the authority,” Stockton said. “Carte blanche. Besides, they’re all terrified of you…”

That brought a small smile to her face.

“… that’s your real authority.”

The panel on the President’s desk buzzed. Pryce knew his secretary would only interrupt him if it was important. Stockton pressed to answer it.

“Yes?”

“Mr President, your daughter and grandson are here.”

She saw his face light up. There had been a few terrifying hours when he’d thought Julie and one year-old Liam had died inside Westwood Baptist, before Julie had gotten through to him, told him that her plans had changed, that she’d been on the other side of Houston.

Pryce remembered the look on his face this morning. That mix of devastation and rage.

Family. That mattered to John Stockton. God help anyone who Stockton saw as a threat to those he loved.

There had been hope of a family of her own once.

Once.

“Thirty seconds, Liz,” the President said into the phone. “Then send them in.” He clicked off.

“So that’s a ‘yes’, then,” he said to Pryce.

Pryce looked at him for a moment. “I want to talk to President Jameson.”

Stockton frowned. “Miles is old, Carolyn. He’s tired. He had a second stroke.”

“Miles Jameson was President during the dates those memos mention,” Pryce said. “His name is on them. I only take the job if I can talk to him.”

Stockton frowned and shook his head. “Fine. Just go easy on the old man.”

Pryce nodded. “Then that’s yes, Mr President. Carte blanche. With those terms, I’ll do it.”

“Good,” Stockton said. “Go get to the bottom of this. Come back and tell me it’s all a pack of lies. Or tell me what the hell’s been going on.”

“And if it’s all true?” she asked him. “If we created the PLF? If Barnes killed Holtzman? And Becker? If he staged that assassination attempt on you?”

If he won you this election, she didn’t add.

Stockton smiled at his National Security Advisor. “Then I’ll fix it. But mark my words, Carolyn: I’m going to win this election. I’m going to be the next President of the United States. And however we got here, I’m not going to bend to anyone over this – not terrorists, not ‘posthumans’, not someone trying to screw up the election with two days left to go.”

Then the door opened, and Stockton was rising to his feet, and his daughter Julie and her son Liam, his first and only grandchild, were rushing into his arms for a giant hug. Pryce watched as his giant, football-hero arms engulfed his family, saw the fervent mix of emotions race across his face, and the thought went through her mind again.

Woe unto anyone who threatened those John Stockton loved.

7

Final Testament

Saturday 2040.11.03

Maximilian Barnes stood on the back porch of the sprawling country house he’d inherited. The fierce rain pounded hard on the wooden awning above him. The wind snapped at him, sprayed him with a hard shrapnel of icy rain, blew through his thick black hair. Out there, down the long lawn, the Susquehanna River was running high and fast, almost at flood stage, testing its boundaries. White tops crashed on the riled up river surface. Even here, a hundred and sixty kilometers north of DC, what remained of hurricane Zoe was making herself known, thrashing the countryside with her ire.

Barnes’s face was as furious as the storm, his brows knit, his jaw clenched, his dark eyes flicking to-and-fro, as if searching for something upon which to take out his anger.

“Goddammit!” He brought his fist down hard on the wooden rail, felt something splinter below his hand.

After all he’d done for this country.

He’d been so stupid. Holtzman wasn’t like Becker. Wasn’t like the others. Wasn’t a patriot. And Becker… How could Becker have left that data behind? Why hadn’t the virus taken care of it? How had Holtzman gotten hold of it?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the mission. Keep America safe. Keep America vigilant against the threats he understood so well.

Barnes closed his eyes, and it all came back to him. The indoctrination. The beatings. The constant striving to be perfect, knowing it would never be good enough. The crazy rants about the master race, about perfecting humanity, about starting over. He’d left that house at fifteen, changed his name from Bauer to Barnes at eighteen, and still found himself unable to ever do anything but push and push and push, still found himself looking at every enhancement that came on the market, legal or no, to see if it would give him that edge, turn him into something closer to what the father that he hated and hadn’t spoken to in years had wanted.