[b]Selmer, Tennessee
8:24 PM[/b]

“The events of the last month are just the latest in a long line of events that are all too familiar to us.”

Isaiah Wolde, the man more and more people simply called the Ethiopian, stood in the pulpit of the local AME church. A sea of black, sweating faces looked out at him as he spoke. The church was filled to capacity and then some. The vestibule door opened up and countless more people listened from outside. The mass of people crowded together in this little church on this hot summer night turned the interior temperature from hot to nigh unbearable. But for all of that, Wolde did not seem phased by the heat save for a few drops of sweat near his hairline. 
Wolde’s speaking tour through Tennessee and North Carolina. The demonstrations and protests in Mississippi had been violent and bloody, but they’d gotten the attention of the country. White journalist covered the marches with aplomb, filling papers and radio programs and the evening news with updates on the brutal violence going on down in the heart of Dixie.

Just thinking about that made James Calhoun’s jaw hurt. He touched it on reflex. The wire was gone, but the memory was fresh. A white cop in his own hometown broke it when the man laid hands on his daughter. When it came to Sarah, James did not care about repercussions if someone touched her in a harmful way. That act of violence put him in Wolde’s circle of trusted advisors… but it also put him on some bad people’s radars.

“My adopted homeland of Ethiopia is the latest target of imperialist aggression,” Wolde said to a chorus of nods and amens from the crowd. “It’s a story as old as time. White aggressors invade Africa, looking for spoils. Spain says Ethiopia has become a threat because of communism. An ism is behind their fighting, but it is not communism. Racism is their motivating factor, my brothers and sister. The white man cannot stand the fact that a nation of proud, black men and women are among the world’s best. Long ago Africa was a land ruled by black kings and queens, a land of art and beauty before the European bootheel kicked our ancestors into the squalor and wrapped them in chains. An Italian ‘discovered’ America for Spain. The problem was, there were already people living here. The problem was, nobody asked those people if they wanted to be discovered. Like nobody asked our people if they wanted to come to America. The power, money, and culture coming from Africa became a problem for Spain. White Europeans saw a problem and they are solving it the only way they know how: violently.”

Wolde took a break and sipped a glass of water. The crowd broke out into applause. James scanned the assembly and stopped cold at the sight near the back. A white, middle-aged woman with dark red hair stared straight at him. James felt his stomach go cold. He turned away from her and wiped sweat from his face as he looked back at Wolde. Jessica Hyatt, FCB agent shadowing the Wolde camp. She was more than that to James. She held James and Sarah’s fate in her hands. If he pissed her off, they would both go to a Mississippi work farm and spend years on a chain gang. James could handle it, but he doubted Sarah could. She was so young and so hopeful and so beautiful. Hard time would crush her, so he cut a deal. Wolde knew the FCB was following him on the tour and that they were probably tapping his phone lines, but he had no idea a member of his inner circle was an FCB informant.

“Like our brothers and sisters in Africa, we find ourselves in a struggle. Ours is not one of life or death, but it is just as important. While they fight for survival, they fight for equality. While they fight Spain, we fight Jim Crow. While their cities burn, our people are drug into the streets and beaten. Their enemy is a foreign invader. Our enemies are the people sworn to protect our citizens and uphold our laws. Our struggles and their struggles are very different, but very much the same. What the white man fears it hates and oppresses. We are linked by a common oppressive enemy that seeks to destroy what it cannot control. This is why our upcoming march on Nashville will be both a protest for our rights, and a show of support for our brothers and sisters in Ethiopia. Our cause is their cause, their fight is our fight, and we must show the white people of this country that fact.”

 

[b]Washington DC 
11:35 PM[/b]

A secret service agent quietly led Secretary of State Lillian Mather into the Oval Office through a side entrance. President Norman was already waiting for her on the couch in front of the desk. The Secretary of State was taken aback by two things she noticed right away. The first was the president’s attire. He wore a pair of khaki slacks and a white button-down short sleeve shirt tucked into his pants. Despite knowing Michael Norman for over twenty years, she had never seen the president in casual clothes. He was either in military dress or a suit and tie. In his new outfit, he looked less like a war hero and commander-in-chief and more like a mid-level office worker.

The second thing that caught her off guard was that they were alone. She knew the president had a select group of people he spoke to alone. Lillian was not among those people. Every meeting with the president so far had involved at least three or four other high-level officials and bureaucrats. She didn’t see White House Chief of Staff Jeff Brewer chainsmoking butts near an open window. Vice President Reed wasn’t skulking in a darkened corner like a southern gothic vampire. For the first time since he asked her to serve as Secretary of State, Lillian was alone with the president.

Norman stood and offered her his hand. “I know it’s late, Lillian. I’m sorry about that.”

She shook his hand and nodded with a smile. “The president calls and you come running, no matter the time of night.”

Norman shrugged a bit sheepishly and  pointed her to the couch while he walked towards his desk. He sat down behind the thick wooden desk that Lillian recognized. It floated through the White House over the years, placed in various rooms by the different presidents and their first ladies. It was made from the timbers of a British ship, HMS [i]Resolute[/i]. Rutherford B. Hayes was president when Queen Victoria sent the desk to the White House as a gift. Now Norman used it as his own work desk.

“CIA intelligence coming from Africa arrived on my desk this afternoon. Have you heard of Djibouti?”

“It’s somewhere on the Horn of Africa, right?”

“It was,” said Norman. “The briefing I received had conflicting reports, but most agree that it was destroyed by fire. There was a battle sometime yesterday; the Spanish attempted an amphibious assault. Sources aren’t sure about the numbers, and the fighting is still going on, but it seems that the Spanish won a Pyrrhic victory at best.”

The news surprised Lillian. Ever since Suez the talk was that it would be a matter of time until the war was over. The Africans had heart, but heart was no match for gunships and fighter jets.

“It’s their home,” she said. “And a very important city on top of it. They’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it, or see that the Spaniards don’t get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Africans set the city on fire themselves.”

Norman nodded and stared down as he spoke. 

“Probably. Take what they can, burn the rest to keep the Spaniards hands off it, and retreat into desert to equal the playing field. It’s what I’d do.”

“Is that why you called me into a meeting at midnight, sir? To listen to you play armchair general.”
The president looked up and gave Lillian a wry smirk. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin.

“About one hundred and sixty years ago, one of our predecessors who served as Secretary of State and then president said about the United States, ’She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.’ John Quincy Adams’ words, a supplement to George Washington’s talk of avoiding foreign entanglement, has defined US foreign policy for two hundred years.”

“We almost violated that once,” said Lillian. “1917, with Wilson.”

“That was Wilson’s fault. He said the right things and did the right things, but congress… just would not back him. He couldn’t get the votes or twist the arms, so congress said no… and the Great War went on a lot longer than it should have by all rights.”

“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” Lillian asked. “The possibility of—“

“Don’t say it,” Norman said quickly. “I don’t want to say that word in this office. It is something I’ve thought about more and more the past few days. I see on the television that they’re burning Spanish flags in New York City, people are wearing pins with the colors of the Ethiopian imperial flag. The country by and large is still pissed from Spain sticking their nose into the last war with Canada. On the flip side, I have letters arriving here every day saying we should side with Spain and bomb those dirty commie savages back to the stone age. On top of all that, in two days the House is going to introduce a spending appropriations bill for foreign relief aid to Ethiopia when they come back from summer recess.”

Lillian leaned forward on the couch and looked at the president.

“You hired me to tell you like it is, sir, and I will say this: this show of support is your doing. In a joint session of congress you called out the war as naked imperial aggression. You’re president, but yet you’re surprised that people actually listen to you? If you called me here to tell you the best course, I can only offer one solution: let things play out. You’ve started that you can’t just stop now. Sic Vice President Reed on congress if you want that appropriations bill to fail. If you want it to pass, have it pass and go from there. You and President Fernandez both have been preparing us for conflict if it happens again. Keep it up. We may need it.”