Triggers

Marine One—the president’s helicopter—landed on LT’s rooftop helipad. Seth was strapped to a gurney and loaded on board for the flight to Camp David. He was accompanied by Dr. Alyssa Snow and Secret Service agent Susan Dawson, and was met by a Marine honor guard upon landing.

Mrs. Jerrison was already at Camp David. Seth insisted on being taken to Aspen Lodge—the presidential residence—rather than the infirmary, and was gently transferred to the king-sized four-poster bed there. A roaring fire was already going in the bedroom’s fireplace. The large window had its curtains drawn back, giving a magnificent view of the countryside, even if most of the trees—poplars and birches and maples—had long since lost their leaves.

Seth lay in the bed, his head propped up enough that he could stare into the flames, thinking about the speech he was going to give later today.

One must learn from history, Seth had often told his students—and sometimes not even from American history. In 1963, a terrorist group called the Front de Libération du Québec planted bombs in several Canadian military facilities and in an English-language neighborhood of Montreal. Later FLQ attacks included bombings at McGill University, the Montreal Stock Exchange, and the home of Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau. Then, in October 1970, the FLQ kidnapped the British trade commissioner, James Cross, and the Québec minister of labor, Pierre Laporte.

Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s charismatic prime minister—who had been a thorn in the side of Johnson and Nixon—had finally had enough. When asked how far he’d go to put down the terrorists, he said, “Just watch me.” And the world did, as he invoked Canada’s War Measures Act, rolled out tanks and troops, suspended civil liberties, and arrested 465 people without charge or trial.

Laporte was ultimately found dead: the FLQ had slashed his wrists, put a bullet through his skull, and strangled him—in the first political assassination in Canada since 1868. But it never happened again: in all the decades since, there’d never been another significant terrorist event on Canadian soil. Lone crazed gunmen, yes, but organized acts by terrorists cells, no.

Just watch me.

Seth continued to stare into the flames.

Jack was back at his station, back at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The place’s name was the one thing that bothered him about it: you usually think of vets as soldiers who survived a battle, but the 58,272 names engraved here were the Americans who had died in that swampy nation, fighting a pointless war.

Jack was grateful for the nice new ski mittens that pretty woman had given him, and he was wearing them now. He didn’t know why she had his memories, but he was glad she did. The dead soldiers named here understood, and so did those who’d survived, and, he imagined, many of those who’d been to Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya understood, too—but it was so hard to share what it had been like with those who had never seen combat, those who had never tasted war. At least that woman, Janis, understood now, too.

There were always people on the Mall, but Jack imagined fewer would stop at the Vietnam Memorial today. Instead, just as he himself had earlier, they’d hang around the places that had been in the news lately: the Lincoln Memorial and the charred rubble that had been the White House.

The main part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial consisted of two polished black stone walls that joined at an oblique angle. The west wall pointed to the Lincoln Memorial and the east one to the Washington Monument. The walls were only eight inches high at their ends but rose along their 250-foot lengths to be over ten feet tall where they met.

Someone was approaching now. Jack always waited to see what each person needed. Some people knew how the wall worked—the soldiers were listed chronologically by date of death—and could find their loved one’s name incised in the stone. Others needed help, and if they seemed lost, he’d show them how to use the index books that told you which of the 144 panels had a particular name on it. Others still needed someone to listen, or someone to talk to. Whatever they needed, Jack tried to provide it. And for those who didn’t know, who didn’t understand, he told stories.

The approaching man was black and about Jack’s age—maybe a vet himself or maybe the brother of one. Jack watched as the man found the name he was looking for—it was about shoulder-high on the wall. Not many people left flowers in the winter, but this fellow did, a small bouquet of roses. Jack waited a minute then walked over to speak to him.

“Someone special?” Jack asked.

And, of course, the answer was “yes.” It was always “yes”—everyone listed here was special.

“My best friend,” the man said. “Tyrone. His number came up, and he had to go. I was lucky; mine never did.”

“Tell me about him,” Jack said.

The man lifted his shoulders a bit as if daunted by the task. “I don’t know where to begin.”