3 DAYS LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 2 PM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025.
Lyndon Phat’s face
was bent down into the chessboard to make it hard to read his lips,
and he barely murmured, “So no more than a month at most. I’ll miss
these chess games.”
“I’m hoping to come
with you.”
“If we both make it
out, we’ll both be busy. Neither history nor Heather will let us
sit on the sidelines.” Phat sighed. “Yes, the answer to your
question is yes. Find a way, and I’ll go along, and I’ll run for
the office. I don’t see how I can possibly be the popular guy that
you say I am, out there. Not considering how I screwed the pooch
when I had the chance. But if I am, I’ll run, and if I win, I’ll do
my damnedest.” He finally moved his rook, still staring down at the
board. “The minute you said Graham wasn’t fit to be president
because he didn’t agree with us, I should have stuck to my oath
like glue and said, like hell, he’s the only lawful
successor.”
“That was
my mistake. You just went along with
it.”
“And Norm’s mistake
too—he should’ve kept his job and made you do the right thing, not
gone off to jail with Weisbrod. The only person whose mistake it
wasn’t was Grayson. He doesn’t have
either the brains or the balls to make a real
mistake.”
“He did all right up
in the Yough.”
“Grayson’ll do all
right most of the time. Hell, nearly every time, he’ll do fine.
He’s got talent, charisma, energy, and medium-good humility about
his own limitations. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he’ll do a
good-to-exceptional job. He knows that the best way to succeed is
to help others succeed and he has the smarts to see how to help
them. Many people who have served with him adore the
man.”
“I hear a big hanging
but waiting to crash
down.”
Phat shrugged. “It’s
the thing that there’s bad blood about, between us. It was a long
time ago. I found out, back when we were both absolute nobodies,
that Grayson’s only got two problems. One, his definition of
‘success’ is much too close to his definition of ‘what Grayson
wants,’ regardless of whether it’s what it would be good for him to
have. Two, although he knows what the best way to succeed is, and usually does it that
way—which is why there are so many people who’ve had a good
experience with him—well, he knows what
the best way to succeed is, but if he can’t succeed the best way,
he’s willing to succeed in ways that are . . . not the best. Which
is why there’s also some human wreckage, here and there, near his
trail.”
“You don’t want to
tell me what it was, I guess.”
“I promised people I
respected that I would not talk about it. I shouldn’t have. But not
talking about it got to be a habit. I guess if I start to think he
might make it to president, I’ll have
to talk about it, because there’s a level where you can’t have a
man with a . . .” His hand waved as if seeking the word in the air
in front of his face. “Moral crack? Defect of the soul? Can you
call it a character flaw if it only comes out a few times in
decades, under the worst kind of pressure?” Giving up on the
question, he said, “Well, whatever you call it, an officer
shouldn’t have it and a president can’t. There’s a Buddhist proverb
I like—or at least the guy I heard it from, when I was little, was
Buddhist. ‘If you want something bad for you in the worst way,
that’s exactly how you’ll get it.’”
“So . . . uh, if
we’re talking flaws here, why should two guys like us, who already
made huge mistakes—”
“A mistake is not
what I’m talking about. Mistakes happen to everybody. And there’s
no reason it shouldn’t be us; Graham has made about as many
mistakes, about as big. The voters can decide which mistakes they
like better. But Grayson has a rotten core to him, and the one
thing a big job always finds is the core. And what he does when
that happens won’t be a mistake; he’ll mean to do it, no matter
what it does to everyone else, or even to himself. So here’s to
honest blundering.” He raised his wineglass; Cam tapped his against
it. “By the way, you’re in check.”