A Better World by Marcus Sakey Page B

was turning around and walking back to the CRV where his wife and daughter waited. He opened the door and got in.
    “Any luck?” Amy looked over at him, read his expression, and he could see it mirroring on her face. “What? What happened?”
    “Nothing,” he said, and started the SUV. “We’re going home.”

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    Here’s the thing about freedom: Freedom is not a couch.
    It’s not a television, or a car, or a house.
    It’s not an item you can possess. You cannot put freedom on layaway; you cannot refinance freedom.
    Freedom is something you need to fight for, not once, but every single day. The nature of freedom is that it is fluid; like water in a leaking bucket, the tendency is for it to drain away.
    Left untended, the holes through which freedom escapes widen. When politicians restrict our rights in order to “protect us,” freedom is lost. When the military refuses to disclose basic facts, freedom is lost. Worst of all, when fear becomes a part of our lives, we willingly surrender freedom for a promise of safety, as if freedom weren’t the very basis of safety.
    There’s a famous poem written about the complacency of the German people under Nazi rule; today, it might read:
    First they came for the revolutionaries,
    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a revolutionary.
    Then they came for the intellectuals,
    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t an intellectual.
    Then they came for the tier ones,
    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a tier one.
    Then they came for the brilliants,
    and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a brilliant.
    Then they came for me,
    and there was no one left to speak for me.
    —From the introduction to
I Am John Smith
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CHAPTER 12
    It didn’t look like much from the outside. But in Shannon’s experience, the truly scary places never did.
    The first thing she saw was a low granite wall bearing the words D EPARTMENT OF A NALYSIS AND R ESPONSE . Beyond that, a dense line of trees screened the compound from view. She signaled, waited for an opening in traffic, and then steered the sedan up to a security gatehouse. It was a bright fall day, and the two men in black body armor looked alien against the cloudless blue. They moved well, one of them splitting off to circle the car while the other approached the driver’s side. Both had submachine guns slung across their bodies.
    Shannon rolled down the window and reached in her purse. The ID, scuffed and faded, identified her as a senior analyst; the picture looked like it was a few years old. “Afternoon,” she said, polite and bored at once.
    “Good afternoon, ma’am.” The guard took the ID, his eyes flicking between it and her face. He swiped it against a device on his belt, which beeped. He handed it back to her. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
    “One of the last,” she said. “S’posed to be colder next week.” She didn’t look behind her, didn’t check the mirror for the armed man examining the back of her car.
    The guard glanced over the car roof at his partner, then nodded at her. “Have a good day.”
    “You too.” She put the ID in her purse. The metal gate parted, and she drove through.
    And into the lion’s cage we go.
    No, that wasn’t really it. This was more like walking into the lion’s cage, strutting up to the beast, and jamming her head between its jaws.
    The thought sent a shiver of adrenaline. She smiled, drove steadily.
    The DAR grounds were nice enough, in a lethal sort of way. The road meandered in curves that seemed senseless, but would keep a car bomber from gaining speed. Every fifty yards or so she felt her tires hum over retracted spike strips. The landscape was green lawns and carefully pruned trees, but tall towers were dotted amidst them. No doubt snipers were tracking her progress.
    The building itself was bland and sprawling, looking more like a Fortune 100 office than the nation’s largest spy agency. At the west end, a construction crew worked on a