Chapter 44

With an arm around Cathy, Mike watched the water cascading over the waterfall. It was the last day of their honeymoon and they had decided that they couldn’t leave the area without seeing the falls.

Cathy said, “I wonder how many newlyweds have spent their honeymoon at Niagara Falls and left without seeing the falls.”

“I have no idea, but I’m sure that we aren’t the only ones who stopped on their way out of town so that they could say they saw Niagara Falls,” Mike said giving Cathy a sidelong look. She didn’t look embarrassed about the fact that they had never left their hotel room.

“I understand that the view is better from the Canadian side,” Cathy said repeating what the clerk at the hotel had said when they had checked into their room.

Mike nodded his head and said, “I’ve heard the same thing. Too bad we can’t go there.”

“Yeah,” Cathy said.

One of the problems with having their clearances was the travel restrictions. They couldn’t leave the country without first informing a half a dozen government agencies. Odds were pretty good that they wouldn’t have been able to leave without bodyguards.

“This was a great trip,” Mike said giving her a hug. They hadn’t done anything except eat, sleep, and have sex. All in all, it fit Mike’s idea of an ideal honeymoon.

“Yes, it was,” Cathy said in total agreement.

“Well, we can say that we saw Niagara Falls,” Mike said watching the water as it roared over the falls. The sheer volume of water flowing past was nearly impossible to grasp. There was no doubt in his mind that it was a natural wonder of the world.

“We’ve been here a week without taking a single picture. Do you think we should take one before we leave so that we can prove that we came here?” Cathy asked.

“Sure,” Mike said. He looked around and found an elderly couple walking past. With a gesture, he stopped them and asked, “Would you mind taking our picture in front of the falls?”

Taking the camera from Mike, the man answered, “No problem.”

As Mike and Cathy went over to pose in front of the falls, the wife asked, “Are you here on your honeymoon?”

Cathy answered, “Yes. We’ve been here all week. We were just leaving for home when we decided to stop here.”

The elderly woman said, “We honeymooned here forty years ago. Back in those days, a lot of young couples came to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. I think that most young couples go to Las Vegas now rather than come here.”

Cathy asked, “Did you manage to see the falls on your honeymoon?”

“Yes we did. We even rode the boat tour to the base of the falls,” the woman answered with a laugh.

When they returned from their honeymoon a lot of people had asked that question. It was strange to hear it asked again after forty years of marriage.

Mike and Cathy shared a look that spoke volumes about their attitude towards sightseeing. The elderly man chose that moment to capture their image. It was a very representative picture of their trip.

Chuckling, he handed back the camera saying, “I take it that you almost left without seeing it.”

“That’s right,” Mike answered.

To say that the bedroom had been fixed up in Mike’s absence would be an understatement. Kim had gone all out. After painting the walls a nice pastel color, she had replaced all of the bedding and décor with items that were much more feminine than Mike had used. The bed cover was a floral print with matching pillow accents. The pictures on the wall had been replaced with large watercolors of flowers. It was definitely a woman’s room.

Used to how it had been, Cathy walked into the bedroom and looked around. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of the effort that had gone into making it their room rather than just his.

She looked at Mike and asked, “Was this your idea?”

“I wish I could say yes, but I had no idea that Kim was going to do this,” Mike answered.

Cathy ran out of the room to thank Kim. It was the most amazing welcome that she could have imagined. Mike stood there thinking that he had long ago quit caring how the bedroom looked. Seeing the effect that a little change had on Cathy gave him a moment of pause. He looked out the bedroom door at the rest of the house and realized that there was a new lady of the house. It was time he let her know that.

Cathy returned to the bedroom wiping the tears from her eyes. Mike turned to her and said, “We’ll only be here for another two months. During that time, you should make this house your home. Make whatever changes you think would help you feel at home.”

“I like it as it is,” Cathy said finding it hard to breathe.

She had never dreamed that he would make that kind of suggestion. The reality that they were going be sharing their lives from that day on came crashing down on her. She found that she rather liked the idea.

Hoping that she would let him keep his chair, Mike hugged her and said, “I’m sure that you do like it as it is, but by the time you’re done decorating ... Well, you’ll love it.”

“Yes, dear,” Cathy said melting into his arms.

It was only two months and there were only a few changes she could make in that time. Soon she would have a whole new house to arrange and decorate.

Echoing her thoughts, Mike nodded his head and said, “Just think. In just a few months you’ll have a brand new house to decorate.”

Sunday afternoon, Mike stopped by the Internet Café to view the results of his intelligence collection requests. It took him ten minutes to bring up the results, but the information was unstructured. After pouring through it for an hour, he realized that he needed a better way to view the data.

Mike started trying to generate drawings from the telephone, internet, and surveillance data. He wanted to see who was talking to whom. A rough picture emerged, but there was a lot of data that he couldn’t add to the figure since the various data sources didn’t correlate on individual identity.

What he could tell was that a guy at the top talked to an aide. The aide talked to a group of messengers. The messengers talked to each other and the results were passed up to the aide and then to the guy at the top. The lowest level was a rat’s nest of connections among hundreds of people. Mike was pretty sure that the messengers didn’t even know what the information they passed along meant.

After an hour, he was able to show a single link between two of the names on his list of possible leaders. It wasn’t enough to act upon and at the rate he was able to tie together people he would be at it for years before the full upper level became clear. He needed to be able to automate it.

Mike grabbed a pencil and wrote out a very quick description for a program that he felt would allow him to better analyze the information. Sitting back he reviewed what he was requesting the technical types to do. He could visualize it working in his mind, but that didn’t mean that he had conveyed what he wanted done. If it worked, he’d be able to untangle the upper level that was the real power behind the Jihad.

He wrote a note and dropped the specification on Cathy’s desk. He’d tell her about it before leaving on his trip to the Middle East with the President. He definitely wasn’t looking forward to that trip.

The plane landed outside of the area that had once been Tehran. They had flown around the pile of rubble twice while Mike handed out satellite pictures of the once great city. After the plane, along with its escorts filled with troops, had landed, Mike went to the door and turned to face the occupants of the plane. The leadership of both parties and all of the candidates running for the office of President were aboard the plane. They looked out the windows bored and more than a little irritated at being taken off the campaign trail.

After clearing his throat, Mike said, “Welcome to Tehran, Ladies and Gentlemen. For eight millennia this area has been occupied by human beings. If you look out the window, you will see that today it’s a ruin. No one lives here.

“Before we landed, I passed out some pictures. Look at them. Those pictures were taken of this city, less than six months ago. You’ll see that it was home to millions of people. It was home to men, women, and children who thought that this city would live beyond their lifetimes. It didn’t. Maybe I should be a little more accurate and say that their city died along with them.”

Mike patted the wall of the jet as he said, “There were two possible futures the day that jets were used as weapons against the United States. The sight you see outside the windows is the future that came true. The future that didn’t come true was the one in which Washington DC would be nothing more than a pile of rubble. It was inevitable after September 11, 2001 that we would have to choose in which future we would have to live.”

Mike looked out a window of the jet and said, “We chose this one. Splendid, isn’t it?”

He straightened up and faced his audience. He wasn’t smiling.

He said, “This situation was not inevitable. Sixty years ago we could have made different choices and this would not have come to pass. Americans would never have been killed by suicide bombers. Tehran would still be a bustling city. But we didn’t make those choices and now we have to reap what has been sown.

“I am not here to place the blame on the Republicans or the Democrats for this situation. If you were to ask me, I’d tell you that they are both at fault. However, they are not alone in being responsible for what has happened. The whole world participated in bringing this situation to fruition. America is a superpower, but it was not the only voice on the world stage.

“It’s easy for Liberals to place the blame on Conservatives and vice versa. Socialists can blame Capitalists. The Capitalists can blame the Socialists. God knows that everyone is to blame,” Mike said. He turned and shouted, “Everyone is to blame!”

After glaring at everyone on the plane, he said, “As problems across the entire world festered, we argued. We went decades without making any real attempt to solve the underlying causes. We threw bandages at the symptoms, but never prescribed the proper medicine.

“Why? Perhaps it was because the medicine was a bitter pill to swallow, and no one wanted to be blamed for the unpleasantness. I don’t know. Maybe we weren’t wise enough to identify the proper solutions. All that I know is that the solution that we were forced to accept destroyed a city that had existed since the dawn of time.”

Mike paused and looked at the faces of the men and women in the plane. The expressions on their faces reflected their unease at his words and the view outside the plane.

Taking a deep breath, he said, “In a moment I will open the door of this plane. I ask that each of you step outside and look around at what was once a great city. After you have seen all of the sights of Tehran, come back aboard this plane and we shall talk about the future that you, as leaders of your political parties, can help shape.”

Mike opened the door and the odor of the city seeped into the cabin. The stairs to exit the plane had already been brought up to the door. Mike stepped out of the plane and made his way to the ground. He made it ten steps from the foot of the stairs before throwing up.

Wiping his mouth, he said, “I guess I should have warned them about the smell.”

He looked up in time to see President Archer step out of the plane. The man’s face was ashen. Mike swore that the President’s hair turned gray on seeing the devastation and smelling the air. He didn’t quite make it to Mike before losing his lunch. No amount of mental preparation could adequately prepare him for the smell.

The other members of the tour came out of the plane one at a time. Some didn’t even manage to make it out the door before they were sick to their stomach. Mike stood and watched their reactions. President Archer made his way to Mike after being sick.

In a tired voice, he said, “You should have warned them.”

He looked over at President Archer and said, “I’m pretty sure they’ll figure out what is making them sick to their stomach. There’s nothing like the odor of rotting human flesh.”

President Archer said, “They will never forget this smell. It will live with them until the day they die.”

“It’s better this way,” Mike said watching one of the candidates getting sick by the tire of the jet, “They have to understand what it is they are inheriting.”

President Archer watched the head of the Republican Party crying, as he sat by pile of rubble.

He said, “You have done all that I have asked of you. I will take over from here.”

Thirty minutes later the plane was in the air on its way to an American base in Iraq. The tour of Baghdad had been canceled. President Archer had decided that it wasn’t necessary. Instead, they were going to visit the oilfields.