“We don’t have time for that,” snapped the secretary of defense. “And those people don’t respect anything but force, anyway.”
“I disagree,” said state. “Our U.N. ambassador tells me that they are willing to allow the United Nations to arbitrate our differences.”
“The United Nations,” the president muttered.
“As an honest broker–”
“Yeah, and we’ll be the honest brokee,” one of the admirals wisecracked. Everyone around the table laughed.
Then the president said, “Our U.N. ambassador is a well-known weak sister. Why do you think I put him there in New York, Carlos, instead of giving him your portfolio?”
The secretary of state was not deterred. “Invading a sovereign nation is a serious decision. American soldiers and aircrew will be killed.”
The president glared at him. “All right, Carlos, you’ve made your point. Now let’s get on with it.”
One of the admirals said, “We’re ready with the nuclear option, if and when it’s needed.”
“Good,” snapped the president.
And on it went, for more than an hour. The fundamentalist regime of Iran was going to be toppled by American military power. Its infiltration of other Moslem nations would end, its support of international terrorism would be wiped out.
Terrorism, Apara growled silently. They speak of using nuclear weapons and they call the Iranians terrorists.
And what am I? she asked herself. What is the Cabal and the Cause we fight for? What other weapons do we have except terror? How can we straggle for a just world, a world free of domination, unless we use terror? We have no armies, no fleets of ships or planes. Despite the lies their media publish, we have no nuclear weapons and we would not use them if we did.
Apara felt sure of that. The guiding precept of the Cause was to strike at the leaders of oppression and aggression. Why kill harmless women and children? Why strike the innocent? Or even the soldiers who merely carry out the orders of their leaders?
Strike the leaders! Put terror in their hearts. That was the strategy of the Cabal, the goal of the Cause.
Brave talk, Apara thought. Tonight we will see if it works. Apara glided along the wall until she was standing behind the president. She looked down at the woman’s auburn hair, so perfectly curled and tinted. The president’s fingernails were perfect, too: shaped and colored beautifully. She’s never chipped a nail by doing hard work, Apara thought.
I could kill her now and it would look to them as if she had been struck down by god.
But her orders were otherwise. Apara waited.
The meeting broke up at last with the president firmly deciding to launch the attack within twenty-four hours.
“Tell me the instant everything’s ready to go,” she said to the chairman of the joint chiefs.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll need your positive order at that point.”
“You’ll get it.”
She rose from her chair and they all got to their feet. Like a ghost, Apara followed the president through the door into a little sitting room, where two more uniformed security guards snapped to attention.
They accompanied her down the corridor to the main section of the mansion and left her at the elevator that went up to the living quarters on the top floor. Apara climbed the stairs; the elevator was too small. She feared the president would sense her presence in its cramped confines.
Unseen, unsensed, Apara tiptoed through the broad upstairs hallway with its golden carpet and spacious windows at either end. There were surveillance cameras discreetly placed up by the ceiling, but otherwise no obvious security up at this level — except the electronic sensors on the windows, of course.
The president lived alone here, except for her personal servants. Her husband had died years earlier, during her election campaign, in an airplane crash that won her a huge sympathy vote.
Apara loitered in the hallway, not daring to rest on one of the plush couches lining the walls, until a servant bearing a tray with a silver carafe and bottles of pills entered the president’s bedroom. Apara slipped in behind her.
The black woman turned her head, frowning slightly, as if she heard a movement behind her or felt a breath on the back of her neck. Apara froze for a moment, then edged away as the woman reached for the door and closed it.