Epilogue
Washington D.C.
Bishop crossed the room and grabbed the television remote from the coffee table. He thumbed up the volume and then sat on the edge of the sofa, blinking in astonishment at the news anchor as she reported on a breaking story.
“The senate minority leader, Chuck Reynolds, was found dead inside his jail cell this morning. Senator Reynolds was recently arrested on charges of insider trading and murder-for-hire. He was denied bail because the prosecutor insisted he was a flight risk. Authorities are saying the cause of Senator Reynolds’s death is a suspected heart attack, but they will know more once they have the coroner’s report.”
“Convenient he’s dead,” the president said from beside him and he lowered the television’s volume.
The president. What a strange idea.
He had known Sandra J. Stevens since she was eighteen years old and went by the name Sandy Waterhouse. It was incongruous to think she was the leader of the free world, the most powerful person on the planet. Especially because he knew she cried at Hallmark movies and ate entire sleeves of Oreo cookies dunked in milk when she got overstressed.
The president.
It was a position that should have been his. But the world had been turned on its ear since his younger days in politics. Men like him, men who preferred the status-quo, who liked the idea of an America run by powerful men and populated by nuclear families, had fallen out of fashion.
Now the voters wanted politicians who looked like them. They wanted their leaders to reflect the actual populace of the country which meant all three branches were chock-full of women, people of color, and those who wanted to raise the minimum wage until the person flipping hamburgers full-time could actually make a reasonable living.
The woke mob, he thought with derision. They’re taking this country to hell in a handbasket.
By god, he wasn’t going down without a fight. It wasn’t possible to turn back time, but history repeated itself.
That’s what he was after.
A repeat of history.
The Roman republic fell when Julius Caesar’s adopted son, Augustus, became ruler of Rome. Augustus shifted power away from a representative democracy and claimed imperial authority for himself. And what happened after that?
The fucking Roman empire, that’s what. Nearly 500 years of global authority and dominance.
That’s what Bishop was after. Power. Dominance. An American ruler who would crush all progressive thought regarding workers’ rights, racial justice, and equality between the sexes. A like-minded autocrat who would make the country what it was always meant to be.
All-powerful. Ferocious. FEARED.
“Convenient in that it means we will all be spared the spectacle of his trial,” he said now, waving away the water bottle the president offered him. “But inconvenient in that he got away scot-free.”
“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
He snorted. “Please. You and I both know Chuck was as dirty as day-old dishwater. He killed John McClean and the others on that committee even if he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger. Not to mention he’s been using his position to enrich himself for decades.”
“Like so many others,” the president countered with a troubled frown.
“Yeah. But others use their positions to enrich themselves the legal way. Chuck got greedy. And besides, we all know those other rumors about him are true.”
“We don’t know.We just suspect.”
He laughed. “Good ol’ Sandy, always giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
She made a face and then checked her watch. “Damnit. I’m late for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs.”
“Good luck with that,” he called to her back and then increased the volume on the television after she’d closed the door behind her.
The reporter, a dark-eyed woman with a voice made for radio, continued, “In related news, congress has voted to award Senator John McClean the Congressional Gold Medal for?—”
Bishop turned off the television. He didn’t care what posthumous awards McClean would be given. He only cared that one more thorn in his side had been removed.
No, two more, he reminded himself. Chuck Reynolds is gone too.
He’d considered having the senate minority leader killed in prison—it’s not like he hadn’t done it before—but he’d ultimately decided against the plan.
Despite Reynolds having denied hiring Peter Sullivan, hacking Sullivan’s Facebook, and wiring money to the account in the Cayman’s as well, all the evidence Bishop had planted had been iron-clad. So Reynolds had posed no real threat to him.
Still, it’s good he’s dead,he decided. Now, it’s all tied up in a neat bow.
Which meant, after a brief period of laying low, Bishop could start planning the ultimate coup de gr?ce.