Shadow Knight's Mate by Jay Brandon Page B

it is the dawn of the age of American peace. Of America taking care of itself. This will be the golden age. My fellow Americans, I ask you to join me in asking God to bless our great nation as we step forward into a bright new day. Thank you.”
    There seemed to be a long moment’s silence across the entire country. It was broken, at least in the Circle’s Colorado compound, by Gladys Leaphorn, who exclaimed, “The Age of American Selfishness. He has proclaimed it!”
    â€œAnd America wants it,” Jack said quietly. “That’s why Witt got elected.”
    â€œThis is what he’s wanted to announce all along,” Arden said, then her eyes shot around the room. “You don’t think—”
    â€œNo.” Jack shook his head, and he wasn’t the only one. “He wouldn’t do it like this. Even Witt isn’t that stupid. If anything, these attacks probably slowed down his plans. But you know—”
    â€œYes,” the Chair said wearily. There was much more to this than the President’s public announcement. There always was. Within a few hours they should know more. “Let’s wait until the others get here,” Gladys added, and she rolled away for a morning nap. She was back in her wheelchair, and moving very slowly. Jack and Arden exchanged a glance, and Arden jumped up to help her grandmother to bed.
    â€œBut Witt is our man!” exclaimed a senior member of the Circle. “We helped get him elected. We have all kinds of—”
    â€œWe helped him because we knew his election was inevitable anyway,” Alicia Mortenson said, and her husband nodded. They were now wearing outlandish flowered shirts and touristy shorts. No one asked if they’d been vacationing when they’d gotten thecall to assemble. Maybe this was just the way they dressed around the house.
    â€œBut my point,” insisted the first man, “is that we exert all kinds of influence over him. So many vectors intersect at him—”
    â€œPerhaps we’re not so influential as we think,” interrupted Janice Gentry, the Yale history professor. “Someone certainly seems to have dominated him in the first reaction to this crisis.”
    There weren’t as many members gathered as there had been at the last meeting, only a dozen or so, in the bunker at the base of the Rocky Mountains that was the group’s only fallback position, or at least the only one Jack knew about. But these dozen represented all wings of the group’s power and influence: academia, diplomatic, the scientific and entertainment industries, and one junior editorial writer from the
Denver Post.
    The one who had proclaimed the group’s influence was Professor Clifford Warner, currently on sabbatical at the Sorbonne, who had happened to be at an academic conference in Chicago and had rushed here when the attacks began. Warner was a tall, thin man, with long arms and legs that sometimes distracted his students from what he was saying. Today he couldn’t sit still. He paced and fretted, making everyone tired. “That National Security Advisor,” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. “The one none of us knows. He must be behind this.”
    Jack wanted to say, “Duh,” but he was much too junior in this group. Besides, icy politeness was more this group’s style than outright insult. Professor Gentry applied the style as she said, “Excellent thinking, Clifford. I believe you’re right. But we must stop this now. Withdrawal of our forces from around the world will be like the ocean receding, exposing things we wish to remain hidden.”
    Craig Mortenson said quietly, “I have one source privy to the President’s plan. It’s worse than he announced. Withdrawing troops is only phase one. He even wants to close our embassies. Leave no American presence in the world at all. He believes this will take away any incentive to attack