Interface

There was nothing more Ogle could do today. In the breast pocket of his suit was a personal invitation, and a pass that would get him a seat on the inaugural platform - the hottest ticket in town. He had been dreading the idea of spending all day sitting in the Eye of Cy. Now he had an excuse to go out there and sit a few chairs away from the Cozzanos and bask in their glory. He grabbed his coat, said goodbye to the guards and to the twenty-four-hour on-site lawyer, and headed into Taft Park, aimed at the West Front of the White House.

It did not take a genius to figure out that the entire Inauguration had been set up for the benefit of a tiny minority of rich people. Floyd Wayne Vishniak had arrived well ahead of time and made one complete circuit of the Capitol grounds, strolling down the west bank of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, east on Independence, north on First Street between the Capitol and the Library of Congress, and now westward again on Constitution.

Up to certain point, an ordinary citizen could walk anywhere he felt like walking, especially if he got all gussied up in nice fancy-looking clothes as Vishniak had. If you wanted to watch the Inauguration from two miles away at the far end of the Mall, that was no problem at all. But if you wanted to actually stand close enough to make out the figure of the new President with the naked eye, you had to enter special zones that were cordoned off and patrolled by cops.

Vishniak had traveled to many parts of the United States, seen many different types of police officers, and even been arrested by a few of them. But he had never seen anything like the variety of cops that were ru

It did not look like there was any way to get within a quarter mile of the inaugural platform without shooting a whole lot of those different cops. This was bound to attract attention, bring in even more cops, and scare away his intended victims. So Vishniak had himself something of a conundrum here. The closest he could get to the platform was on the north side, in a little park north of Constitution. He spent a while reco

Instead he found something even better: a GODS truck. Just like the one he'd glimpsed under the stage at McCormick Place - except this one was practically right across the street from the Capitol. Vishniak began to walk across the park, and even as he did, the door in the back opened and a man climbed out of it.

Something about the man with the close-cropped hair and the neatly trimmed beard seemed vaguely familiar to Cy Ogle. He fit the profile for a Secret Service agent. But this man did not behave like Secret Service. He was not sca

Ogle had already reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his engraved invitation. The man in the trench coat was reaching into his breast pocket too. But he hadn't pulled anything out yet.

"Hey," the man said.

"Morning," Ogle said, "excuse me, but I got a party to attend."

"Hold on a sec," the man said, "I recognize you from that article they did about you in The New York Times Magazine in 1991. And also from the little article in Time magazine last year. They both ran photos of you."

"That's nice," Ogle said. By now he had realized that the man could not possibly be Secret Service.

"Don't you recognize me?" the man asked. "You should. I'm a very important person in your life."

Ogle took a good look at the man's face.

At the face of Floyd Wayne Vishniak.

His lips parted and he felt stu

Vishniak gri

"What do you want?" Ogle said.

"I want your truck," Vishniak said, nodding towards the park. "You know us farmboys. We're just crazy about big ol' trucks."

Ogle turned his back on the Capitol and started walking back across Taft Park. Every few paces he would look back behind himself hoping that Vishniak would have disappeared. But he was always right there. Almost as bad, he never shut up. "I figured you had to have some kind of secret transmitter to control Cozzano's brain. Because when I busted up your control room at the shopping mall over there, it didn't make any difference at all. Let's go on over there and take a look around."

Ogle crossed Louisiana, climbed up the temporary steps behind the truck, and opened the door to the Eye of Cy. He was thinking of trying to slam it in Vishniak's face, but Vishniak shoved him through and closed the door behind him.

The security men and the lawyer were climbing to their feet.

Ogle saw a white light flashing in the corner of his eye and felt, did not hear, a quick series of explosions pounding him on the side of his head. The three men in front of him jerked, crumbled, and collapsed to the floor; behind them, blood was showering all over the equipment.

Ogle couldn't hear anything except a pure tone in his ear. He sagged against a wall and closed his eyes, feeling faint.

Vishniak cuffed Ogle's hands behind his back, stepped over the corpses, and proceeded to the Eye of Cy. Ogle could see his lips moving as he commented upon it, but couldn't hear what he was saying.

Vishniak looked around the trailer. His eyes landed on a fire extinguisher mounted to a wall. Vishniak holstered his gun, picked up the fire extinguisher, and then used it as a blunt object to smash all of the screens in the Eye of Cy. At first he worked slowly and methodically, but after a few minutes he really got into it and began to pound away at them in a frenzy. Finally he threw the extinguisher on the floor, battered and scraped.

He turned to Ogle with a triumphant look on his face and said something else. Then he approach. He reached into Ogle's pocket and pulled out the personal invitation. He shoved it into his own pocket. Then Floyd Wayne Vishniak walked out of Cy Ogle's life.

61

William A. Cozzano took the oath of office at twelve noon. Holding the Bible was Mary Catherine. Administering the oath was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. After a very intense quarter of an hour ru

Only one detail seemed out of place: as Cozzano had emerged from the West Front of the Capitol and walked through the passageway in the center of the stands, he had moved slowly and with a limp. He moved like an old man, not the spry athlete who had become so famous during the campaign. And then he raised his hand and recited the oath of office, his voice sounded different: deeper, slower, not as distinct. He tripped over a few words, something he had never done during the campaign.

But it didn't matter. He looked great. He smiled confidently through the oath, presenting a strong profile for the cameras, towering over the Chief Justice. His daughter was facing directly into the cameras and her face was suffused with joy and pride. She wasn't bothered by her father's gait, or his voice; why should America be?