Lecker smiled big, revealing his excessively white dentist’s teeth. “And then he can help me toss you from the balcony!”

“Save that for after I get your money,” said Donny.

“Yes, right.” Lecker laughed. “But no, nothing would be worse than if the urban legends came true and he reappeared. To my surprise, an ungoverned country suits me quite well. Suits the country quite well.”

“How’s that?” said Donny.

“We can do what we want,” said Lecker.

Donny nodded. He had a pretty good idea who the “we” was. And it made him wonder if the restoration wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

15

Donny met with his most-hated client just once before the sentencing hearing, at the offices of the lead lawyers on the case, Weitz, Weldon & Hogan.

It was early in the year before, late winter, less than a year after the uprising. Donny remembered how cold it was that morning as he walked to the meeting, trying to make a Texas-weight trench coat keep the mid-Atlantic winds of February at bay.

The President was a prisoner of the new government. Prisoner number one. But the new government wasn’t much of a government. The situation in Washington was kind of like Donny imagined it had been when the General was in power and the students would take over a college campus. Some of the faculty and staff were still there, and everybody was secretly waiting for the National Guard to show up and restore the old order. So the deposed chief executive, who hadn’t been replaced yet and never would be if the radical wing of the rebellion had their way, lived under house arrest in a brownstone at Logan Square, guarded by English troops detailed to the peacekeeping coalition that was responsible for keeping the Americans from killing one another—and keeping their nuclear arsenal secure until the decommissioning was complete.

Donny’s responsibility that day was to keep his fellow Americans from killing just this one American. One he wouldn’t mind killing himself, if he weren’t so sick of killing.

Donny had watched the trial that determined his guilt. Everybody did. It was on all the channels.

Donny’s old colleague Percy, who had gone on to become an A-league plaintiff’s lawyer and then a member of Congress, was on the prosecution team. Percy had a personal stake in the case, and the scars and mementoes of dead friends to prove it.