CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Valen and Ari sat at a corner table of the restaurant, watching the drama on the big-screen TV, checking news feeds on their smartphones, listening to the people all around them talk about it.
When it started, the building had rattled, but that was all. Valen knew that sometime soon the staff and patrons would talk about how lucky they were. They’d tell all their friends about what a miracle it was that that whole block, and a few blocks on either side of the restaurant, were virtually unscathed, while everywhere else seemed to get the full brunt. Fires were already raging out of control because the firefighters were unable to fight through streets choked with debris, crashed cars, or rioting people. All that happened to the restaurant was a single jagged crack in one corner of the plate-glass window. Only that.
It was a different world there than what was on TV, like watching a big-budget disaster film.
The patrons began asking questions and buzzing with theories. Was this an earthquake? Was it a bomb? Did someone drop a nuke? It wasn’t until the news crawl declared that it was an earthquake that everyone accepted it, though with some reluctance. Earthquakes were rare on the East Coast of America, but in an age of global terrorism, bombs were not. As the chatter shifted, the self-appointed experts who manage to be in any given crowd began holding court. It was an earthquake, they pronounced, and when the majority of the crowd began to nod in agreement, the experts started throwing numbers around—5.4, 6.1, 7.6. They mostly got it wrong, Valen noted, citing the Richter scale, which nobody used anymore. Then one black man with a grizzled white goatee and a Shakespearean brow took it upon himself to correct the error.
“It’s the moment magnitude scale,” he said, pitching his voice to be heard over the car alarms outside. There was such authority in his voice that others turned to listen. “That’s what they’re using now.”
The black man actually launched into a lecture on the subject. Valen listened for a few moments and found himself mildly impressed, even nodding when terms like “body-wave magnitude, logarithmic scale,” and “shear modulus” floated to the top. But soon he tuned it out and cut a look at Ari, who was trying hard not to grin. The little Greek was actually biting his lip so hard his eyes were watering. If anyone else noticed, though, they probably thought the man was fighting tears of shock or horror.
As if.
The crowd watched dumbstruck as video footage from a few minutes ago was played back to show the collapsing dome, the cracking White House walls, and other kinds of structural devastation, but also the wild fighting in the streets. The anchors and reporters were chattering and interrupting each other and throwing around wild theories. Valen stared at the struggling figures and at the bodies lying dead or dying in the street.
Valen’s cell vibrated in his pocket and he tapped Ari on the arm, showed him the phone, and walked into the empty men’s room to take the call.
“You promised me this would be, at very least, a six point five,” said Gadyuka without preamble.
“I assure you, Gadyuka, it—”
“It’s a seven point eight,” she interrupted, then laughed as sweetly as a songbird. “I am very, very happy with you, lapochka,” she said. “When I see you I’ll show you exactly how happy.”
A shiver swept through Valen. There was no “love” in their lovemaking. It was all about need and greed and control, and he always lost to her. Every single time. To have sex after this was appalling.
“Can’t… wait,” he lied.
She caught it, though, quick as she always was. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Something, I think.”
He leaned his head against the cool stone wall. “I just wonder if there was another way.…”
It was out before he could stop the words.
“Ah, my dear,” said Gadyuka, “we’ve been over this and over this. Stalin did much worse to his own people. Our own people. We are at war, but we are not cutting throats with clumsy bayonets. We have delicate scalpels in our hands. We are the surgeons who are removing the cancers so the world can grow healthy again.”
“I know the rhetoric,” he said wearily, “but now’s not the time. I’m not like you, Gadyuka. I’m not a monster.”
She actually laughed at that. “Oh, my dear, you underestimate yourself. In my entire career I have ordered the deaths of not quite two dozen people and personally executed another eleven. I consider myself a monster for doing that. A monster, but a patriotic one. However, you, sweet Valen, have killed a hundred for every one of mine. And soon you will be responsible for killing more people than any one person ever has. More than Stalin or Hitler or the leaders of the Mongol conquests. More than in World War One and Two combined. You are indeed a monster.”
“Jesus Christ, what are you doing to me?” he begged. “You’re killing me.…”
Gadyuka laughed again, though not as sweetly. “Shhh, listen. There is nothing wrong, and everything right in being a monster, my sweet. Nations require us to be more than ordinary men. Three thousand years ago they would have called you a demigod, like Prometheus. He was a Titan who stole the heavenly fire for humanity, enabling the progress of civilization. If we read between the lines and strip away the primitive theology, what that means is that a man, a visionary, defied terrible odds to bring truth to the people so that they may have agency over their own lives. Karl Marx was such a man. Lenin was such a man. Stalin, for all his flaws, was such a man. They were all monsters, too, because they spilled rivers of blood. Without their actions, without their willingness to become monsters, America would have swept us out of history after the Second World War. They would have dropped the next atomic bombs on us, and you know I’m telling the truth.”
“Please,” he begged.
“Listen to me, Valen. Hear me. You are a brave and glorious monster. A hero. A Titan. And history will remember you as the man who saved the world.”
“How?” he demanded. “By cracking it open?”
“Yes,” she said in a voice filled with love. “By exposing the cancer to the scalpel.”
The first of the aftershocks rumbled beneath his feet. Much smaller than the big strike. He prayed it wouldn’t do more damage, but knew that it would.
“They’ll never recover from this,” he murmured, forgetting in the moment that he was still on a call.
“America is hurt, yes,” she said fiercely. “It is shocked, yes. But this is not the blow that will drive it to its knees, and you know it. They can rebuild this. They can rise from this. And we simply cannot allow that.
“Do you know how to win a knife fight, Valen?” she asked, and now there was a cold pragmatism in her voice that crusted his breaking heart with ice. “You don’t deliver a bad cut and then step back and hope your enemy loses heart and gives up, or limps from the field. No. If you do that you find that they can eat their own pain and they can — what’s the American expression? Man up? If you let them catch their breath and regain their footing, then they are stronger in those broken places. Nietzsche was right about that. No, lapochka, when you have inflicted an injury on your opponent, when his blood is on your knife and you can smell it in the air, then that’s the time to cut again, and cut deeper. Cut all the way to the bone. Cut all the way to the heart.”
“God…,” he whispered.
“It’s time to deliver the killing cut, Valen,” said Gadyuka. “It’s time for America as a nation, as a power, as a concept, to end. This is a war. Go be a soldier. Be a hero. Save us all.”