"I'd be honored, Mr. President."

As it turned out, the two men's efforts proved to be unnecessary.

"This thing really handles great, Ray," Henry yelled over his shoulder. "I'm glad you got it. Is Bill pissed?"

"Haven't seen him for a while. He was living down valley with some aerobics instructor, but I think she got tired of him running up her charge cards. I don't know where he is now." Ray stepped up between the two pilot's seats. "How you doing up here?" he asked Cindy.

"He's letting me fly it," she answered. "Is that okay?"

"Sure," Ray said, his heart rate and blood pressure climbing slightly with this bit of new information. Hard to believe this girl is such a skilled assassin he thought for perhaps the tenth time. Like most men, he was quite taken with Cindy Caswell.

"I bet girls love this plane. You ever get laid while you were in it?" she asked with a grin. "I'm too old for that," Ray said with a laugh. Not.

"Don't believe it, Cindy. His pilot told me they have to put it in the shop at Sardy twice a year just to get all the come stains out of the carpet."

"Henry is an incurable optimist, Miss Caswell."

"Listen, I know a couple girls at the club, Kimmy and Olivia? You get them in here, you'll need new carpeting. Bring this to St. Louis, and I'll set it up, when this is all over."

"Yeah, when it's over. Sounds good." When it's over he thought. That might be a while, Cindy. "Stop getting Ray horny and pull your power back for a descent. We're coming up on Washington."

"Come in, Mr. President," Harrison Potter said as he opened his office door. The Chief Executive looked exhausted, which was very unusual. Potter scowled quickly as the President headed for a leather armchair. He followed a few steps behind the President and sat down on a couch across from the younger man.

"I damn near bit off Alex Neumann's head yesterday," the President said without preamble, "and all the man was doing was telling me the latest facts. I ought to be ashamed of myself." The President sighed. "Harry, do you know the story about President Truman, when that music critic wrote the bad review about his daughter's singing, and Truman blasted him in print?"

"Of course, sir."

"You know the facts behind it?"

"Tell me," Potter answered. He knew what the President was going to say, but also realized the President needed to say it out loud.

"Harry Truman's Press Secretary was a boyhood friend that Truman had always respected, man named Charles Ross. Whenever something really made Truman mad and offended him personally, he'd dictate a letter. Charles Ross, I'm told, never made any attempt to reason with the President, to talk him out of doing something that was beneath him. He'd take down verbatim whatever the President said, and have the letter typed up without changing one word. Except he never handed it back to the President for his signature until twenty-four hours later. And the President always tore it up.

"Charles Ross never took a vacation while Truman was in office, and he probably didn't think Truman would fire him without warning, so he never told anyone about the procedure he used when the President got hot under the collar about something personal."

"And then Charles Ross had a massive heart attack and died while Harry Truman was still in office," Potter said.

"Right. And the new man didn't know the drill, and when that music critic said Margaret sang like a mockingbird in heat, the new Press Secretary had Truman sign the angry letter on the spot, and he sent it off in the morning mail. You know the story."

"I like hearing it again."

"I don't have a daughter, and if I did, I don't think I'd feel compelled to defend her in print against music critics. But I sure as hell think every President should have a Charlie Ross to talk to. And in my case, you're it." The retired Chief Justice nodded in acceptance and gave the President his asymmetric smile.

"Harry, this Wilson Blair mess has made everyone absolutely crazy. I just had a meeting with Alex Neumann. Seven ATF agents murdered in the last twenty-four hours. That makes fifty-two total, not counting the thirteen that are missing, with another dozen or so wounded. That also doesn't include family members that in some cases have been executed at the same time. On top of that, two EPA officials have been murdered, one outside Kansas City, and-"

"What?" Potter interrupted, which was something he did very rarely.

"The EPA's Regional Director was shot in the head on his way to work two days ago. It probably didn't make the papers here, what with all the others. Out in California, an EPA field agent was shot in the back this morning as he got out of his car. In his own driveway, Harry. Neumann says it's two different killers. There are no specific suspects; I have been told that the FBI is looking at small business owners who have had large fines levied on them by the Agency, things like that. The list of people with possible grudges in the Kansas and Missouri area is apparently quite large-several hundred names. In California it's ten times that many. Privately, Alex Neumann doesn't expect an arrest on either murder any time soon. At about the time of the second shooting, a message appeared on the computer network that all EPA agents that carry guns were now fair game."

"How many is that, Mr. President?" Potter asked. "What EPA agents carry guns?"

"Funny you should say that, Harry. I asked the same question. You were in the hospital for a while a few years back, so you may be forgiven your ignorance, but I don't have an excuse.

"For several years now, Mr. Neumann informs me, employees of the EPA have been armed while on duty, and with full government sanction. And they are not alone. Neumann sent me a copy of an FAA memorandum to its Aviation Security Divisions. Those are the folks that operate the metal detectors in the airports. Would you be interested to know which federal employees these Security Divisions are supposed to wave through without checking?"

"Yes, I would." This was news to the retired Chief Justice.

"Let's see here," the President said, pulling a folded sheet of copy paper from the pocket of his suit coat. "In addition to the FBI, Secret Service, and DBA, which you probably already knew about, employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are now authorized to carry guns. As are employees of the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Immigration, Labor, Energy, and Commerce. To that, add the Bureau of Land Management, the FAA, the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the State Department. And, of course, the IRS," the President added. "People from those agencies may be armed anywhere in the country.

Including, as I said, while they are traveling on commercial airlines. Surprised?"

"'Horrified' would be more accurate."

"My thoughts exactly. I was made aware of this startling fact less than an hour ago. Apparently it has been common knowledge among members of the gun culture since the late 1980's." He shook his head in disbelief. "I won't say this to anyone else, but it's no wonder these people are so angry." He scowled.

"Where was I? Oh yes, dead federal employees, and how their numbers increase daily. Concurrent with the murders, over a hundred ATF agents have resigned. About half of them in the last seventy-two hours." The President smiled without pleasure. "Of course we haven't yet exhausted the supply of applicants to replace them, but that pool is shrinking also.

"On the other side of the ledger, Treasury agents did kill a man yesterday in Minneapolis who walked into the local ATF office and started spraying bullets. There were a similar case in another city this past week. Atlanta, I think."

"I read about those."

"Right. That took care of the murderers of four agents. For all the rest of the killings I just mentioned, we have a total of fourteen suspects in custody . Two of them know each other, and those are the only two that are talking. They are apparently responsible for killing an agent in Florida. Alex Neumann tells me that if the other twelve suspects in other killings continue to keep their mouths shut, at least ten of them will be released within the week." The President paused to let his words sink in.

"Harry, part of me wants to invoke martial law and send the Marines in to shoot anyone even suspected of killing federal employees." He smiled sadly. "But that feeling usually lasts about five seconds." The President took a deep breath, and Harrison Potter knew what his old friend was going through.

"Alex Neumann wants to try to get Blair, or whoever he is, to contact me. No plan that suits me, yet. A full page ad on the back of the Wall Street Journal might work, but would kill me in the polls, I'm afraid." The President shook his head. "I'd prefer to give the FBI a little more time, see if they can find him first."

"Sounds reasonable."

"What the hell am I going to do here?" the President asked rhetorically. Potter inferred that his friend was not through thinking out loud, so he held his tongue. "My predecessors would probably have called for more federal authority. Burn the midnight oil and draft another sweeping 'anti-terrorism' bill, all dressed up like a Thanksgiving turkey."

"You don't want to do that?"

"Sometimes, as I said, I want to do a lot more than that. And then I'm ashamed of myself. So no-I don't want to see more legislation. But there's another reason, the one I'll have to use on the people in Congress who don't have any of those moral reservations." The President stared at Potter, and the older man realized he was expected to answer.

"Laws like that don't work."

"Exactly. You know, Harry, I never would have thought when I took this office that I'd have to become a virtual expert on terrorist groups."

"But you have," Potter said with a smile as he glanced involuntarily at the engraved plaque on his office wall. It said Those Who Refuse to Remember History Are Destined to Repeat It.

"I have," the President agreed, "and I have learned things I had no idea were true. I won't confess my ignorance in public, but no sense keeping it from you. When that Brit told us there were only two hundred active IRA members in all of Ireland, it was all I could do to keep my jaw from hitting the floor."

"The others were less adept at concealing their own astonishment, Mr. President."

"Yes, well, I called Major Hume-Douglas in for a little private chat later in the day, and got an even bigger earful. Then I tapped some researchers from three different universities, and got them to bring me up to speed on the philosophies and practices of terrorist groups around the world. The Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof in particular, in Italy and Germany. Do you realize that both those organizations do things to force the government to be more authoritarian? That that's one of their goals?" Potter nodded.

"Common strategy. Make the government crack down on more people, and you'll get more converts to your cause, or so goes the theory. Doesn't work too well when the revolutionaries are viewed as a handful of crackpot kids, whining about how big industry controls the government. Socialist youths in Italy haven't proven to be any more effective at turning the public against the government than American college kids here in the late 'sixties, bombing ROTC buildings.

"And as for Germany..." Potter gave a shrug, and laughed softly. "Using that strategy on the Teutonic mentality strikes me about like plotting to throw Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch."

"The Germans' supposed natural affinity for authority?" the President asked with a cocked eyebrow. It was the same theory the University researchers had offered. Potter nodded gently.

"Laugh if you want to, Mr. President, but some people actually like rigid organization and being told what to do. Remember back in '86, when Kurt Waldheim was elected President of Austria, and some U.S. journalist found out he'd been in the SS during the war? The big hue and cry was all in this country, not Austria. I half-expected to see a full-page ad in USA Today from the Austrian Chamber of Commerce saying 'Hey, Americans, get it through your thick heads: WE DON'T CARE!'" The President smiled ruefully at this and shook his head.

"I'm in a bind, Harry."

"I know that, sir," the older man said, becoming completely serious once more.

"Congress is pressuring me to declare martial law." Potter looked at the President sharply when he heard this. "My feelings exactly," the President said when he saw Potter's reaction. "Several other presidents have been accused of suspending the Constitution. I don't want to be the one who makes it official."

"Don't blame you." The former Chief Justice closed his eyes. "You know, I've always felt the American president who faced the single most difficult challenge as leader of this country was Abraham Lincoln. And your current problem, while similar in many ways, does not yet compare to the one that confronted him."

"Go on," the President said, resisting the urge to comment on the modifier Potter had used for the word 'compare'.

"The Civil War might have been averted if Lincoln had realized two fundamental facts. First, the South had a different culture from the North, and placed a high value on preventing that culture from being destroyed by federal edict and government troops. Second, slavery as an institution was already being pulled into a deep grave by its own economic weight. All it needed was a little free-market push, and it would have been dead and buried."

"Explain that, Harry." The older man took a deep breath.

"A slave was a huge capital investment. In 1850, an eighteen-year-old buck would bring upwards of a thousand dollars at auction. On top of that, the owner had to keep him fed, clothed, sheltered, and relatively healthy. That wasn't free. He also had to keep him working and prevent him from running away, which meant hiring an overseer. And then, the slave had an incentive to do just enough work to avoid a beating. So slave labor was not very cost-effective, and became less and less so the more rigorous the work. The railroads showed that."

"Enlighten me."

"Immigrant labor built the railroads, not slaves. Slaves were too valuable to risk. Railroad companies worked their men 'til they dropped at twenty-five cents a day. Man lost an eye from flying metal chips, or a foot from a dropped rail, that was his problem. Drag him off the line and call in another. Company wasn't out a nickel, let alone a thousand dollars."

"I hadn't realized that."

"Sure. Lots of workers died building the railroads. The old saying was that the railroad lines had 'an Irishman under every tie.' Out in California, it was Chinese." Potter shook his head. "Owning a machine made sense. Owning a human who could get sick, die, run away, or choose to work as slowly as possible didn't make any economic sense at all. Which was why only a tiny fraction of southerners still owned slaves as of 1860. The issue was ultimately a cultural one, and it was central to the whole secession movement. Southerners who would never have been able to afford even one slave didn't want the government telling them how they had to live. Lincoln could have easily solved the problem in the marketplace, but he chose the battlefield."

"How so?"

"By having the government buy all existing slaves from their owners. The number of slaves was finite; slave importation had ended a half-century earlier in 1809, as proscribed in the Constitution." Potter laughed mirthlessly as he thought of something.

"Now, that in itself is an amazing thing, when you think about it. The men who ran slave ships didn't get a nickel of government money, yet they agreed that in twenty years they would go out of business entirely. Forget forcing companies out of business-can you imagine the reaction today if you just proposed a bill that would abolish government subsidies completely in twenty years and force all industries to cope with a free market?" Potter shook his head, as if to clear it of the heretical thought.

"Anyway, with slave importation in 1860 having been dead for over half a century, the only new supply was slave women giving birth. Buy all slaves their freedom, and the slavery issue vanishes without a shot being fired. Not to mention avoiding that pesky issue of seizing property without compensation." "Would've been expensive."

"Dirt cheap compared to fighting a war," Harrison Potter said as he leaned back in his chair. "Not to mention the huge cost in lives. This mess we've got now is also a cultural issue. A month ago, I hadn't realized how true that was. Whoever wrote that piece in the Journal hit it right on the head-these people don't think they're doing anything wrong, and we've taught them they have nothing left to lose."

"And unlike slavery, the government can't take the moral high ground on this one," the President said quietly. He looked around Potter's extensive library. "Do you have a book on Lincoln you could recommend?" he asked his friend. "Right now I could use some inspiration."

June 26 "You shouldn't even be talking about this, Ray."

"We have to, Henry. Ultimately, negotiation is going to happen. We might as well open up the discussions now." He's more upset than I've ever seen him Ray thought. Much worse than when I insisted on getting involved with this.

"No."

"But we can't go on indefinitely like this without letting them see that there's a way out for everyone."

"If you go in the White House to talk to the President about what we've been doing, you will never come out alive. And you will die the worst death you can possibly imagine. I am absolutely certain of that." "That won't happen." It can't. Not in this country he added silently.