In the presidential election, no one did stand in his way. Mark Beaulieu won every state and took every vote in the electoral college. Candidates he had endorsed won a solid majority in both the House and the Senate. His hand-picked people would soon be selected Speaker of the House, majority leader, and whip of both houses of Congress. For that matter, his chosen representatives were also selected as the minority leader of the Senate and minority leader of the House. For all practical purposes, Mark Beaulieu had taken absolute control of the government of the United States of America.

Beaulieu controlled the money, the budget, the FBI, and the prosecution of criminals. An independent judiciary might be able to block elements of his program, but it soon became clear that with absolute control of Congress, he could pack the Supreme Court and then take from the courts as much appellate jurisdiction as he pleased. After all, if the courts were denied jurisdiction over certain classes of cases, then they could hardly rule against the president in sensitive matters.

Although the United States Constitution made it clear that the president was commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mark Beaulieu scrupulously avoided confronting the military at this time. He had plans for the military, but not for now. He had given the popular secretary of defense a relatively free hand to muster forces and maintain U.S. military readiness. And so it would remain— until the time came to rein him in.

IN DECEMBER, A GREAT GATHERING of the nations was held in Rome. The principal issue to be discussed was a proposal for international adoption of the charter of the Union for Peace. Agreement was unanimous. The ruling heads of every nation on earth marched to the platform and signed the document. Then, a voice-vote was taken to proclaim the American president, Mark Beaulieu, president of the Union for Peace and Tauriq Haddad the general secretary. Again, the vote was unanimous with no abstentions and not so much as a quibble to the contrary.

Immediately following the vote, the delegates approved the assessment of $25 billion in suitable proportions from the nations of the world for the purpose of constructing the headquarters of their new organization at the site of ancient Babylon. They had already approved the offer by their new president of temporary quarters in one of the buildings of the U.S. government in Washington, D.C., but they seemed elated at the prospect of a world headquarters in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where civilization itself had begun.

IN JANUARY, MARK BEAULIEU and Tauriq Haddad turned their attention to domestic issues. Since his radical days, Mark Beaulieu’s life goal had been to destroy Western civilization. He believed it was his destiny to crush the powers of greed and corruption that dominated in the West. Now, he believed, the path to the fulfillment of that destiny—the destiny assigned to him by Shiva—lay straight ahead of him.