The Federation

Five minutes later—twelve o’clock midnight precisely—the President’s car pulled up in front of the White House. Finn heard the door open, and then a gaggle of unfamiliar voices. President Tyler Mason was laughing with the First Lady—nothing at all seemed amiss. They did very well, Finn mused. They didn’t have to use violence at all.

The door opened, and four people walked in—Mason, the First Lady, and two secret service agents. Someone flicked on a light, illuminating the entire room.

For a moment, Mason and the First Lady stood frozen. The secret service agents acted as if nothing was amiss. Their vacant stares and bleeding elbows gave them away. Before anyone could do anything, Finn—paid to be a quick thinker—said, softly, “Hold them.”

The two agents who had come in with the President and First Lady stepped forward, grabbing them by the arms and holding them tight. The First Lady screamed, both began to struggle. Mason shouted, “Davis! Bergstrom! What is the meaning of this?”

“No need for alarm, Mr. President,” Finn said smoothly, standing up. He walked over to the First Lady, whose eyes widened in terror. He extracted the syringe from his coat pocket. She began thrashing harder than ever.

“Who are you? What are you doing to my wife?” Mason screamed.

“Stop it! Thieves!” The First Lady was hysterical.

“Now, now, I’m just giving her something for…” Finn paused for a moment, then laughed softly. “Well, something for the nerves.” He took the First Lady’s arm and tied a tourniquet just above her elbow joint. Then he plunged the syringe into her median cephalic vein and injected the serum.

The First Lady stopped struggling almost immediately. As the serum took effect, her arms dropped, her face smoothed, and her expression became detached, almost bored. She stood there quietly, both arms pinned behind her back by the agent holding her.

“Why don’t you take the First Lady to her chambers?” Finn asked the agent holding her. He turned his cold green eyes to Mason, still struggling in the arms of his captor. “I imagine she’s tired after her husband’s big night. And in the meantime, I need to have a little talk with the President.”

The agent and first lady walked calmly out of the room. Mason began to kick and thrash with a violent fervor. “Let me go! Somebody, help!” he screamed.

“Now, now, Mr. President,” Finn said reassuringly. “Let me assure you, you are perfectly safe with me. It’s just that… well, my employer has a mission, you see.”

Mason’s struggles faded. “Your employer?” he asked slowly.

“Yes,” Finn said rather condescendingly. “My employer has certain… ah… ideas on how this country should be run, and he is quite certain that you will not comply to these ideas.”

“Your employer… how this country should…” Mason was quiet for a moment. “You work for Brown?”

Finn laughed out loud. John Brown had been Mason’s ill fated opponent. “Of course not,” he chuckled. “My employer represents a private party. But back to the point, Mr. President, my employer does think very highly of you. He believes that you can, in fact, implement his ideas, given the right… persuasion.”

“And this is your idea of persuasion?!” Mason shouted, fighting his captor as if in demonstration of the futility of Finn’s persuasion techniques.

“Oh no, sir,” said Finn with a delicate smile. “This is.” He extracted another syringe and tourniquet from his pocket. Mason, recognizing the serum, began to scream and fight so vehemently that be was momentarily lifted off the ground in his struggles.

“Oh, do be reasonable, Mr. President,” Finn said chidingly. He yanked the President’s arm out and tied the tourniquet tightly just above his right elbow. Mason tried to fight, but the sixty-five year old politician hadn’t a chance against the thirty year old professional hit man. Finn stuck Mason with the needle and released the serum, and he, like the First Lady, stopped struggling immediately.

“That’s better. Now, you will go to bed. You will forget this ever happened. You will act entirely normal. Oh, and you have an appointment tomorrow with one Mr. Malcolm Morgan,” Finn added. “Good night.”

He nodded at the secret service agent, who let Mason go. The President of the United States walked meekly out of the room, and Finn exited through the front door, leaving the other agents alone in the White House.

He stepped out onto the threshold of the White House. First, he pulled out his walkie-talkie for the last time that night. “Mission accomplished,” he said, his voice thick with satisfaction, to everyone on the other lines. “Everybody out.” Then he opened his cell phone and called the only number stored in it. “The President is yours, Mr. Morgan,” he said, his voice thick with satisfaction. He waited for Mr. Morgan to hang up before he stowed the phone back in his pocket and began to walk back to his car, hidden several blocks away from the White House.

He checked his watch. It was ten minutes into January 21st, 2016. Not counting the meticulous planning and immense preparation involved in the coup, capturing and gaining control of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States had only taken twenty-five minutes.