The Arm of Nationalism: a Vignette

[spanishspy]

Preface: This story was originally posted on Alternatehistory.com on July 13th, 2014, as a response to a writing challenge posed by Fenwick.

THE ARM OF NATIONALISM
BY SPANISHSPY

"In the 1936 Olympics, Hitler became the first to exploit sports as an arm of nationalism." - James A. Michener, Sports in America.

“Thank you for choosing United, and welcome to Geneva,” said the feminine voice onboard the airliner as it touched down on the landing pad in Geneva International Airport. Julia DeSanto scoffed at the insinuation that she had chosen to be here; it was Washington that wanted her here, Secretary of Defense Norwood that wanted her here, not her herself that wanted to be here. She left the plane, dreading what she would have to do. Its slow descent towards the ground, completely vertical with no horizontal component, was standard of modern planes, and it was more comfortable than those that needed stupidly long landing areas. But she still didn’t like it.

They said the man she was going to meet was wearing a badge with the International Olympic Committee insignia on it, and it would be conspicuous. She was certain this wouldn’t be the case; what the Department of Defense says is conspicuous isn’t usually what the common person says is conspicuous.

She left the long walkway from the platform that the plane landed on and entered the airport. Above the terminal marking was a Swiss flag, dangling limp due to the lack of wind. Entering the airport, she was more than a little stunned by the mural on the wall facing the entryway.

On it was the portrait of the face and shoulders of a man who she recognized from the Internet news as Barthelemy Travere, the President of Switzerland. His hair cropped beneath an officer’s cap, his shoulders with golden epaulets and badges visible on his left breast, eyes piercing the soul of whoever looked at him, it was clear that he was somebody to be feared and respected. To his sides were resplendent cornucopias filled with what appeared to be the bounty of Swiss agriculture, and around those the arms of the various cantons. Below, in the four languages of the Confederation, was a single slogan. She had taken French in high school and could tell what it said in that language:

“The Beloved Leader is Always Right”

She chuckled grimly. These Swiss were almost to the level of the North Koreans before the war that put an end to that regime several decades ago.

She turned her head, looking for this man. Her attention was captivated, mostly out of boredom, by a television hanging from the ceiling. It was narrated by a fast-talking, long-winded man in French showing a military parade in Bern. Infantry columns, tanks, airplane flyovers, the whole package were present, in apparent celebration of the newly inaugurated Swiss Orbital Defense network, independent of both NATO and Warsaw Pact funding and logistics. The Swiss were proud of their neutrality in the tense conflict that had marked world history for the past century and a half, and they would not let the world forget that.

The whole spectacle was mesmerizing. She saw Travere among the crowds, shaking hands with an elated populace; one adolescent girl moved to tears that he would even acknowledge her existence. He kissed babies, he shook many hands, and he accepted a myriad of gifts and floral bouquets that his guards had to take due to the sheer volume of them.

“Excuse me, Miss, but are you Ms. DeSanto?” asked a voice behind her, startling her. She had fallen prey to the image that Travere wanted to propagate. She turned around and was greeted by a dark-yet-graying haired man in a grey suit, and a badge with the Olympic rings on it.
“Yes, that is me. Are you the man the Department of Defense wanted me to meet?”

“My name is Maurits Aaldenberg, from the IOC. If you’re wondering, I’m from Groningen, and former AIVD before choosing something more peaceful. I was told by my superiors that an American fighter would be arriving here and now, and that her name was Julia DeSanto. That is, apparently, you,” he said, trying to appear welcoming.

“You are right, then,” replied Julia. He spoke English; this was relieving. She only spoke English, a little French, some Spanish, and some Russian. German, Italian, and Romansch were all foreign to her, and it would be the first two and final languages that would help her here. “Have other fighters arrived?” she asked as they went to baggage claim.

“Yes, from both the United States and the Soviet Union,” he responded.
“Olympic officials like me are attending to all of them. I was assigned to arrange accommodations for you. I have your hotel booked and your training area reserved.”

They left the airport in idle chatter and boarded a bus for their hotel. On the bus was the image, again, of Travere, glaring steely-eyed at passerby, like a more fascistic Mona Lisa, with not a seductive smile but a determined scowl that dared one to defy him.

“Look up there,” said Aaldenberg. “You can see the Peace Dome in the distance.”

The Peace Dome was a massive stadium built for matches like the ones Julia would be competing in within the next few days. “How ironic that such violence and such death would take place in a venue named for peace.”

“And would you rather the alternative?” snapped Aaldenberg. “What the IOC has been doing for the past eighty years has resulted in the end of war! Now, when the people on Mars or in the asteroid belt get into a territorial dispute, nations aren’t sent into flurries of nationalism to send generations off to the slaughter, they send fighters like you to these stadiums. The survivor is the one whose nation gets a favorable settlement, not the nation that causes the most wanton destruction.” He paused, realizing that he had become quite angry and quite loud. People were looking at him. “I’m sorry. Julia, you’re doing a noble service to humanity.”

“It’s a service I didn’t choose,” she said bluntly. “I was conscripted. I was forced into this whole system. When I was in middle school doing track and field, one of their agents took me and trained me for this. My family let them.” She sighed dejectedly. “But there really isn’t much that I can do, considering how important Congress says it is.” She sighed again. “This system destroys innocent lives. It’s like that in the Soviet Union and it’s like that in the US. Why do we let this happen?” she asked angrily. “Why did this ever happen in the first place?” She was almost shrieking.

“Have you ever heard of MAD?” asked Aaldenberg, calmly.

“Yes, I learned about it in history class.”

“Mutually Assured Destruction.” The words rolled off of his lips quite precisely. “If we did not have this form of conflict resolution, the nuclear weaponry stockpiled by both the United States and the Soviet Union would destroy human civilization as we know it. You may not like it; hell, I don’t like it. This form of organized murder is barbaric. But it is absolutely civilized in comparison to nuclear omnicide. Think about that.”

The bus trip passed in silence. The streets were filled with both Swiss and foreigners: Americans, Russians, British, Germans, Polish, Chinese, and many others that wanted to watch such an important fight. This one was over a Martian mining claim and an insulted Soviet diplomat. These tournaments were attended in the levels of the Olympics, so popular they were. Millions were expected for this bloodbath.

Also along the streets was more propaganda, on screens and as art. Trevere’s presence was felt everywhere. His regime was felt everywhere. Granted, he wasn’t the first of these President-Dictators, but he had the cult of personality that all of them had cultivated, intentional or otherwise. It was a gradual evolution, with the President gaining more power from the Federal Council over the years, and the neutrality that the nation loved turned to isolationism and then to chauvinism and elitism in the face of ideological extremism from the first and second worlds.

The bus stopped at her opulent and ornately decorated hotel; the IOC had not neglected comfort. “Ms. DeSanto, when you enter, give your name at the reception desk. They know you are coming and have a room for you. I will see you at the opening ceremonies tomorrow at noon.” She got off, bid him farewell, and entered, seeing his expectant glare from the bus.

She approached the receptionist, a dark-haired woman on a computer typing away, and said, “I’m Julia DeSanto, and I have a reservation.” The receptionist nodded, understanding her English. She called over, in French, a young man to attend to her.

Dressed in the livery of an attendant, he took her bags and put them on a cart, and entered the elevator with her. As she was lost in thought, she heard him scoff. She looked back at him, and was met with a scowl and a glare, his eyebrows sharp as a knife.

“Excuse me?” asked Julia.

He sighed. “Excusez-moi?” she asked, this time in French.

He looked surprised. “I would never have expected an ignorant American like you to bother learning another language,” he said in his native language.

“Ignorant? What makes you think I’m ignorant?”

“Americans, British, Polish, Chinese, Russian, all the same,” he replied. “What separates us the Swiss from the rest of the world is that we are free from the violent impulses that plague other lesser nations. We remained out of the World Wars and out of so many other conflicts. We did not continue the cycle of violence that resulted in the construction of the Peace Dome and the other domes in the world, so that your nations could temper themselves. We the Swiss never needed that. We get along. The Beloved Leader Travere has made sure of that.”

“The Soviet Union and the United States are so different. Conflict is natural,” replied Julia, wanting to end this conversation.

“A man from Graubünden is different from a man from Neuchatel, and both of them are different from a man from Thurgau. Your point is meaningless.”
They arrived at her room. She entered without saying another word. However, he did not let her leave without more of his own words.

“When your corrupt nations destroy one another, know that the Swiss will inherit the Earth.” He left.

The room was a well-equipped one for an apartment in the early 22nd century. Everything she expected, except for, above the mirror, another picture of President Travere, this time simultaneously orating and shaking hands with several youth. More propaganda, she thought. She was certain that not all Swiss were like that man, but in history’s experience effective control of the media can brainwash people quite effectively.

She fell asleep fairly quickly, partly jet lag, partly needing to be rested for the ceremony.

The next day she went to the Peace Dome on the bus, received her combat uniform from the authorities, and changed into them, without weapons, for the opening ceremony. She met with the other members of the team; some she had met before, some she hadn’t. She had fought in other competitions for the rights over things in space, or the occasional diplomatic spat. She’d killed several people in fights, and she hated every minute of it. So many lives wasted.

She got in line with her fellow competitors. Some of them were talking with their supervisors. She waited for Aaldenberg to come and walk by her side out to the field.

He arrived. “Ms. DeSanto,” he stated, “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied dejectedly.

She thought the institution of having supervisors that she barely knew unnecessary. The whole practice was due to some early game being sabotaged by an assassin. Also neutrality, and anti-drugging, and whatnot. IOC rules.

She heard proclamations in three languages outside: French, English, and Russian. “Welcome to the Henri Guisan Peace Dome, Geneva, Switzerland!” called out the voice in English, and presumably the same thing in French and Russian. “Today, we see a competition between honorable opponents for the cause of world peace, and to decide which great nation gains control of the Lyot Crater on Mars.” He orated for some time.

“You’re up for one of the first individual rounds,” said Aaldenberg. “You might just make the final team.”

The tournament was set up such that there were several brackets between American and Soviet fighters, and the winners of each of these brackets would eventually take their place on the team match, the winning team’s nation being the one who got the favorable settlement. It was a complicated system to prevent both a duel between two fighters of the same country and to ensure both teams at the end were equal.

“Please welcome the team from the United States of America!” proclaimed the announcer, in English, then in French, than in Russian. The yellow metallic gate rose above them, and out of the corridor they went, escorted by their supervisors. From the rafters, an American military band struck up a tune, Gladiator by John Philip Sousa, which had become the de facto official march of the United States Olympic Warriors. The irony did not escape her.

They were greeted by the thunderous cheers of the Americans in the crowd, flying the Stars and Stripes, faces painted in the colors of their banner. The roar of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” was deafening, like that at the actual Olympics, or at the World Cup, when Americans could muster up enough willpower to care about soccer. The fighters stood in their patriotically-colored uniforms, starry shoulders, stripes going down their sides, in a straight line, the sponsors behind them in the Olympic uniform.

Then came the Soviet fighters, uniforms a deep red with a prominent yellow star on the chest. Backed by their own supervisors, the Soviet band in the rafters started playing Polyushka Polye, a song from their Great Patriotic War that captivated the spirit of the Soviet state and people, or so that was what General Secretary Utkin said in the speech leading up to this. Both Utkin and his American counterpart, President Campbell, were present and were sitting together near the announcer’s station. With them was the head of the IOC, Reinhard Muhlenberg, and President Travere. The Swiss leader was flanked by honor guards armed with the best weaponry money could buy, and the Swiss, with their banks, had a good deal of money. He was dressed in full military uniform, badges on his left chest.

The ceremony dragged on and on, and Julia just hated it. It was partisan glurge, not deserving of any time, and she could tell Utkin and Campbell were trying to milk this holy cow for all it was worth. Campbell had the 2128 election to deal with; Utkin was simply trying to keep the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics together at all costs, as it was teetering, like it had been for a century, at a perilous point, ready for the whole rotten edifice it was established upon to collapse.

And so it ended. She practiced firearms training and melee combat, and then returned to her hotel, and rested once more; the day after, she would be fighting against one of the Soviet fighters, a young man by the name of Dmitri Kaminski. The profile on the internet about him proclaimed him to be “a proud son of Stalingrad” and “a fighter for international peace and goodwill.” The irony was apparent; either he would die, or she would, for the sake of saving millions more, and for whichever power could hold some barren chunk of Mars.

The night passed. She talked with Aaldenberg in her own locker room, where she kept her things; her mobile phone, her tablet, changes of clothes, medication, and so many other knickknacks that it surprised the inspector. “Back in my days in the AIVD I would think you were hiding something. But I left that job so I could have some faith in people.”

“AIVD?” she asked.

“Dutch secret service,” he replied bluntly.

“I’m guessing that being laconic, and if not that, preachy, was part of the job description?” she retorted.

“When things are clandestine, you don’t give away much information. It’s why I only reluctantly took this job; the Swiss now know about me and I don’t like that at all.”

“Why?” she asked. “It’s not like they have death camps in the Alps.”

"Perhaps not, but their intelligence service is top notch. I know they've bugged my room at my own hotel, and I can't do anything about it without letting them know. But I was able to find that out." He looked quite sure of himself.

“For someone who claims to have left the secret service out of distaste for it, you are certainly proud of your abilities.”

“It comes in handy,” he replied. She took a mental note of his behavior; he had a skill that he didn’t show off much but wanted to. It was a weakness. Weaknesses you had to find to beat the opponent were an integral part of these fights.

“See that compartment up there?” he asked, pointed to a little box atop the locker with its own separate door and lock, lying open.. “That’s an interesting little thing to take note. Perfect for somebody to put something in while you’re gone and close it. If it was open before and now it’s closed, barring some sort of thing of nature, like the wind or whatnot, you can tell someone has been in there if it’s closed.”

She chuckled to herself. Here he was, displaying his own braggadocio to someone he thought cared. A younger woman, no less; he had no wedding ring. Desperate for attention and screwed over by the government, she thought. All too common. The two of them left together, paying little attention to the open compartment.

Morning training passed. The time came. To a cascade of cheers from Americans hoping for a great patriotic show of their nation’s strength, to defeat the representative of Godless Communism, she exited her compartment and into the battlespace. It was a sandy area, with cover made out of the imitations of ruined buildings reminiscent of Berlin in 1945 or Pyongyang in 2084; the latter was most likely intentional, given that conflict was the impetus for the creation of these games. Such destruction, whether it be the nuclear fire over Anchorage and Vladivostok or the urban slaughter in Korea and Germany and parts of China, was the reason that the leaders of the nations of the world vowed that never again would they subject humanity to hell. And they chose the International Olympic Committee to manage their new peace.

Out of the other side of the arena came the fighter from the Soviet Union, that Kaminski fellow. He looked … surprisingly calm. Not calm, serene. No.

Not serene.

Sedated.

He was slower to come out, slower to take his gun and his blades, and slower to approach her. She didn’t underestimate him; she had a friend who had died doing that against a fighter from Poland, and another one fighting a fighter from East Germany. But she did search for weaknesses and saw sluggishness and apathy. He could be outmaneuvered or have his morale crippled. She could do this.

Duels were just as psychological as they were physical. So few people understood that. She had been interviewed by the press on occasion, the last was in Stockholm, about the physical training regimens she went through. None asked about the psychological part. So much the better; the other fighters couldn’t pick up on it.

When the announcer yelled “And the fight is on! For Peace!” (the hypocrisy notwithstanding), she darted behind a wall. The crowd gasped. The flags held by the crowds, previously waving in frenzy, were still. Then the crowds quieted.

She took her rifle, armed with military-grade laser technology, and aimed it through a hole in the wall. There wasn’t enough room for her scope, so she closed one of her eyes to peer through it.

Kaminski was slow. Too slow.

Again, sedated, she thought. He ran behind another barricade and armed his rifle to fire. He did so, but his aim was haphazard and it pelted the wall. She ducked to prevent the bursts of energy from hitting her. A section of the wall collapsed, covering her in dust and other residue. She coughed, trying not to exhale the dirt that sometimes caused suffocation.

She leaped out and ran towards him, jumping over obstacles. He stood there, doing nothing. He was there in a daze.

He was trying to trick her, goad her into letting her guard down. She leaped over the obstacles with a grace that showed hundreds if not thousands of hours spent in training for this, and that she was chosen by the Department of Defense to do this. Again, selected by an agent during middle school track. It helped in this case.

She was ready for the kill. It was so easy it seemed like cheating. All regret, all misgiving, just vanished. She felt the thrill of the hunt, the lust for blood, the desire to win. The desire to be renowned as an individual and not as a part of a national team.

And then came the siren from the ceiling.

“Cease all combat!” yelled the announcer, in English and Russian. “It appears that the Soviet fighter has been drugged! An investigation is forthcoming and all supervisors are being sent to inspect the living and training quarters of the athletes. Such foolery will not be tolerated by the international community.”

Julia had a rush of mixed, contradictory emotions. She was glad she did not have to waste a life (as her more logical thoughts prevailed) yet disappointed that she would not be able to prove her dominance on the battlefield, not able to show her prowess to an assemblage of world leaders and other important individuals. She wanted the glory and the power, denied to her by the cruel people who dared make this match easy. And yet she was appalled by the American band striking up The Stars and Stripes Forever, disgusted as American fans ripped apart a Soviet flag while singing a part of the tune:

Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation,
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of freedom’s nation!

She turned to the crowd, letting them see her anger. They didn’t care; it was all a part of the high that such an event created. The Superbowl did it for Americans and the World Cup did it for everyone else. It was the same thing, except with the most visible blood.

Meanwhile, Maurits Aaldenberg hurried to Julia’s locker room. He was ordered to do so, a stern older man by the name of Giacomo Franchi, of Ticino, and he was given authority to do so by the members of the IOC personally. When Franchi said, Aaldenberg did, without question. He was a favorite of his boss; his experience in the Dutch secret service was a great help to him in the working world.

He didn’t like being in her quarters. He didn’t like being in a woman’s quarters. He was raised to respect women; even in this age of near-complete gender equality there were still those holdouts of the conservatism that were apparent now and then. It was odd; he had spied on women during his time in the AIVD, but doing it as part of a civilian job was harrowing, to say the least. He left the AIVD to have some sort of normal life, and now he couldn’t. He was middle aged now; he was supposed to be respectable!

He rummaged through bags, and doors, and other things. And then he saw that small compartment that had been empty and open.

It was closed.

He opened it, and pulled out of it a syringe, pockmarked with the remnants of some neon-colored fluid. Something within the last few years; he had never seen it during his tours of duty in Indonesia or in Poland, or anywhere else for that matter. But it was definitely something. It was unmarked except for lines denoting millimeters and centimeters. The needle had a little red on it; it was recently used. Somehow, someone drugged that Kaminski fellow with this thing.

And framed Julia DeSanto for it.

He observed it intently, and found no more hints. Didn’t stop him from looking at it, peering at it with his eyes mere centimeters from it. He was intent on finding something, anything that would help him find it.

“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind him. Aaldenberg paused, briefly panicking. He turned around, quickly but not joltingly as to not surprise a potential authority but to surprise a potential attacker, and saw himself greeted by a member of the security detail assigned to the Peace Dome, in full body armor and military-grade rifle. These rifles were much more powerful than afforded to the fighters; these were ones that would be used if war were ever to break out again. “What is that you are holding?”

“I found it in that compartment up there,” he pointed. “Somebody put it there, and was trying to frame the American fighter for the drugging of the Soviet fighter.”

The guard walked up to him and yanked the syringe out of his hand. “This is what they call “Molasses” in America – and in the Netherlands. It’s popular in both countries, as I’m certain you understand.” He mangled ‘certain’ into a slur. Considering how she is American and you are Dutch, it strikes me as a little suspicious.”

“I’m afraid I am not familiar, Mr… what is your name?”

“Reinemeyer,” he said bluntly. “In a case such as this I am ordered, with a direct line to President Travere himself, to arrest you and take you to interrogation.”

Before Aaldenberg could react, he was pummeled to the ground and put in handcuffs. He felt ashamed; certainly someone who was part of the AIVD and trained like this for so long was capable of deflecting such a blow! But he had grown soft. He had spent decades of his life spoiling plots and harebrained schemes, but here he was being framed and possibly being a part of one.

Reinemeyer presented him to a series of guards, one visibly the commander of the whole operation. “Found him,” he said to them.

“This is good, very good,” said the commander. “Send him to prison, where we put the rest of the undesirables. Travere would approve.”

“What do you mean undesirables?” sputtered Aaldenberg, kicking at Reinemeyer to no avail. “And why do you get to punish me? Isn’t this IOC jurisdiction? Or maybe even United Nations jurisdiction?”

“Written in the law books,” said the commander, whose accent was noticeably from Bern. “Travere decreed it and so it is.”

The Federal Council was a joke, Aaldenberg thought to himself. Growing up, he saw the transition of the Swiss government from guardian of rights to totalitarian dictatorship, first under Gerardi, then Giroux, then LaFontaine, then Junghans, and then many more. The pundits in Amsterdam, in London, and in Washington all speculated that there was a good deal of internal politicking between them, but the Swiss were experts at disseminating the outward appearance of unity in an increasingly divided world. They affiliated themselves with Yugoslavia and India and other nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, they joined the United Nations, and occasionally gave supplies to poor nations in Africa or Asia.

But it was, make no mistake, a repressive regime. He had seen the closings of the newspapers and websites, the breaking of the protests in Jura with violent force on the Dutch national news, and it appalled him.
For that grand façade they built this stadium for the Americans and Russians to use as they pleased for conflict resolution, as they decried the violence of the Third World War and welcomed the new form of peacemaking. Their dictators would address the cheering crowds in it, have parades in front of it, but let it be used by the other powers to distract them from, ironically, what lay right under their noses. The Swiss state based itself around being a master manipulator, but that master status was earned and easily apparent.

In the arena, Julia DeSanto was scared. The American fans were cheering, the Soviet fans were incensed, and it appeared things were going to get very violent very quickly. Some fans on the border between the two partitions, one marked with a blue field of white stars, the other with the Hammer and Sickle, were beginning to fight. She heard gunshots. The American band had finished with The Stars and Stripes Forever and had moved on to other tunes, such as The Invincible Eagle and Columbia’s Pride.

“Attention, competitor DeSanto!” yelled the announcer in English. “Place your hands up and do not move.” Out of the entrances to the underground of the stadium came several armed guards of the Swiss army, fully armed and ready to fight if necessary. Their weapons were poised at her, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. She dropped her own competition weapon (which would do nothing to their reinforced body armor anyway) and extended her hands.

“You are under arrest for rigging this competition. You have damaged the cause of peace and will be charged as a war criminal of the highest order.”

The crowd gasped collectively. American fans began screaming in rage. The President was shocked, as was the Premier. Travere looked off into the distance without emotion.

She was taken by the guards and handcuffed, and taken away. In the insides of the stadium, she was pushed around, shoved like an animal. She screamed for help, but there was none. “Little cheating whore, be quiet!” said one of them in French.

“I understand what you are saying!” she complained.

She went unconscious shortly thereafter.

She woke up in a dingy prison cell and she had no idea where it could possibly. It was cold and made of stone, with iron bars up front. There was a rickety bed made of what had to be used cloth, and a small toilet next to it. There was no window at all, only cold wall. On one wall was a picture of Travere, smiling lovingly at what was assumed to be a loving admirer; all he had now was a captive audience, whose love was not reciprocated. She, in her anger, punched it, shattering the glass frame and cutting into her hand. She winced profusely and tried to tend to the wound. The portrait fell to the ground, the paper ripped but still discernible as the dictator’s glare.

She wept for a long time. She was innocent, and she would hold that to her dying day. She did not want to die a criminal in a foreign prison.

She raged against the Department of Defense for forcing her into this career. She hated Agent Conroy, the man who saw her at her middle school back in her home city of Columbus, Ohio, and subsequently saw her as a prime candidate to fight for the administration’s own needs. She hated the people who approved her, and she hated every fight she had been in for whatever petty reason that Congress wanted her in.

And yet she found peace. She tried to sleep, and so she slept.

Aaldenberg found himself coming to a semblance of consciousness in his own cell, with the barest of accoutrements. He remembered his training; his first thought was not “why am I here?” but “how do I get out of here?” Looking around, there was the familiar face of Travere the dictator, a bed, a toilet, and a cell wall with a computerized lock. He pounded on the walls and the doors; they were thick and would not be able to be toppled or bored through easily. So he would wait and see what would happen. It would be time to think, to relax some, and to contemplate. And then to think about escaping some more. Being in the AIVD taught him to be devious.

Would they come for him? He doubted it. It would be too obvious. It would let him escape, let him get out of their confines and probably tell the world of this hoax. He noted there was a little slot where they would give him food. Solitary confinement. Wonderful. He wouldn’t see anyone, he would not be able to get anyone to come here, if only to beat them and make his way out. And so he sat there, in deep thought, trying to think of some way to get out. Any way.

He could cause some trouble.

That would work. That would be sufficiently devious, he thought to himself. Let’s see what we could do to cause havoc, he thought, coming to a realization.

He looked at the ceiling. Sure enough, there was a security camera, watching his every movement. Good, good. One way to rouse them.

He climbed up onto the toilet and positioned himself such that the camera, a small dark brown, translucent hemisphere was within easy view. With a stunning lack of subtlety, tact, or thought, he curled his hand into a fist and smashed the casing, and then ripped out the interior wiring, making sure not to touch metal. He flushed it down the toilet, and slammed down the lid.

He took the blanket off the bed and spun it into a long cordlike shape, perfect for suffocating somebody. He hid in a corner, right next to the door. They had to be coming; he heard footsteps through the ventilation.

The door burst open, revealing a single heavily armed guard, bearing a high-caliber rifle and body armor. Without saying a word, Aaldenberg kicked his feet, sending him to the ground, and kicked the gun out of his hand. He wrapped the guard’s neck in the blanket and suffocated him to death, or at least what looked like death. Aaldenberg assumed that he was still alive and would make the attempt to leave as quickly as possible. He removed the body armor from the guard and put it on; it was flexible, as was standard since the middle of the 21st century, as well as light. He was trained in using this, and made off into the corridor, bearing the guard’s weapon, now captured.

Alarms were blaring. He hugged the wall, keeping as quiet as he could to avoid any undue attention. Guards in formation ran around the metal halls, and none noticed the man, the high-security escapee, who was watching them.

He darted through the base (which was in a location he simply could not figure out), avoiding or destroying cameras, strangling or knocking out the occasional guard. He had no idea where he was going; he was just looking for an exit.

He found one room filled with large cylinders positioned on gigantic metal racks, uncertain of what they were or what their purpose was. There was a console atop a platform. He jumped up to it; there was nobody inside. He heard voices. He ducked behind a filing cabinet to the left of the console. From an entrance to his right he saw two men, both in the uniforms of a officers of the current Swiss regime, walk in. “The missiles are safe. Are the charges?”

“Reports say yes, General Fiorini,” replied the other, in French.

“Very well then, lieutenant. The plan will go as the dear leader intended.”

“Do we know if Campbell and Utkin are at the talks at the Palace of Nations yet?” asked the General.

“Yes, I have talked with General Knopf and he says that they are to start within the next twelve hours. Within a few hours the first missile shall be launched. The interceptors are ready as well.”

“Good, good,” said Fiorini, gesturing to the cylinders. “These missiles are proof of the dear leader’s foresight: the Swiss shall inherit the Earth.”
Aaldenberg shuddered. It was rigged, and there was a plan. Something sinister undoubtedly.

“When do we fire the actual missile? As in the one that will kill them?”

“According to General Knopf, when the President gives the signal. He refuses to tell me when, but he leaves for the Palace in a few hours. Then, when the signal is given, the missile will fly, and then the Soviet missiles will fly, and then the American missiles will fly, and then the entire world, except for the Swiss and some other neutral nations will be bathed in fire, leading to a truly noble race of people to become this planet’s rulers. Travere is a genius.”

Aaldenberg inhaled, and then exhaled. Travere was planning to destroy human civilization and then take it over for himself. Wonderful. Just what a dictator of his likes would do if they had the resources. Unlike the North Koreans, this man did have the resources.
And it was horrifying.

He darted out of the launch room and into the halls, where the alarm was still ringing. He tried to find an exit, but found very little.

As he turned into a corner, he collided into somebody, and braced to be assailed with knives and guns. He grabbed his own and prepared for combat.

But it was a woman in rags. It took him a minute to recognize her. It was Julia DeSanto.

“Julia!” he exclaimed. “What a surprise to see you here!”

“The same to you, Mr. Aaldenberg,” she said, exhaustedly. “There was something of a prison riot in some neighboring cells, and somehow my cell was opened in the chaos. What happened?”

“I broke a camera, and the whole complex went to hell.”

“Your time in the AIVD must have made you quite good at that.” He sighed. She laughed.

“This is no laughing matter, Julia. Do you have any idea what Travere and his generals are planning? I just overheard,” he said with exasperation.

“What would this be? Another triumphant parade? Doesn’t look like they do much else,” she quipped.

“They’re planning to start a nuclear war,” said the former secret agent, bluntly.

Julia’s eyes widened. There was a silence that lasted for a good five seconds.

“Oh.”

“Travere has machinations far more grandiose than what he would let you believe. What he wants is for the US and USSR to do is to obliterate each other and their allies, while keeping Switzerland safe with a shield of interceptors, and using a missile to kill Campbell and Utkin at their negotiations in the Palace of Nations. I saw some of these interceptors in another part of this facility.”

“Sounds like a self-absorbed dictator to put a prison and a missile launch array in the same complex,” said Julia dryly.

“I honestly wonder how you remain so unstressed in times like this,” asked Aaldenberg, honestly curious.

“I go through enough government bullshit back at home. Congress and the President go on about ‘patriotic duty to serve’ and whatnot. The truth is that they forced me into this, and I’m certain the Soviet Union does the same.”

That Aaldenberg could not deny. It was true; both sides and other nations like Britain and China used that method to get their fighters. The reasoning, a British Prime Minister had explained, was to ensure that a nation’s highest talent would not go to waste for petty political or other reasons.

“Anyway, back to business,” said Aaldenberg, subconsciously trying to appear confident and correct, “the Generals have planned to destroy the Palace of Nations, where President Campbell and Premier Utkin are meeting, with a missile, which will be launched when Travere gives some sort of signal. I don’t know what this signal is, but I know that’s what they’re doing.”

Julia sighed. “Now here we are, waiting for the world to end, unless you have something planned?”

Aaldenberg himself inhaled. “I suppose we could work out something,” he said tiredly.

Inspiration struck. “Can you drive?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” she replied.

“Some competitors I’ve been an assistant to have not, due to the intensity of their training taking up so much time for them. I was worried you may be one of them.”

See? She thought to herself. More abuses of the system. “Don’t worry, I can.” She paused in confusion. “Why do you ask?”

“I have a stupidly convoluted plan which just may work.”

“I’m guessing the AIVD taught you how to make those too.”

“Judging by what they said, Travere is in this facility or has just recently left. Hijack his vehicle, or one of the vehicles if there are many, as there often are, and somehow delay them. I don’t know how.”

“And what will you be doing while I’m performing a scene out of an action flick?”

“I will head to Geneva and attempt to kidnap Utkin and Campbell. If the missile does hit, we’ll still be safe.”

“If it doesn’t hit, you’ll be a criminal and so will I!” she exclaimed, skeptical.

“Which would you rather have, being in prison and humanity saved, or being alive and a fugitive in a totalitarian state who had successfully destroyed most of human civilization?” He glared at her, directly into her eyes.

She sighed once more. Aaldenberg noticed she did that frequently. “Fine. But one question; where the hell are we?”

That was a good question, Aaldenberg thought to himself. “I have no idea.”

“Well then how the hell are we supposed to get to Geneva if we have no idea where we are?”

“Find an exit. Preferably a vehicle bay.”

With only minor chatter, they rushed around the base, dodging guards frantically searching and knocking out at least one, they came across a large garage with trucks and tanks in it. They saw several armored trucks leaving the base, each armed with machine guns, and tanks leading and backing the convoy. “That must be Travere’s escort. He’s in one of those trucks.”

They waited for the convoy to pull out of the vehicle bay, and then found another armored truck being inspected by a technician of some sort.

“Who are you?” said the technician, speaking French with an Italian accent.

“None of your concern,” said Aaldenberg as he knocked the technician unconscious. He dropped to the ground along with the technician’s comatose body, and searched it for vehicle keys. He found them. The two of them got in the truck and zoomed off in spite of a losing door. They scraped a little of it off, and broke some glass.

“Odd how little security there was there,” remarked Julia.

“Dictatorships like this are often cocky. Travere’s Switzerland is no exception.”

They zoomed across the highway, passing Travere’s convoy as they did. “What is your destination, truck number 493?” asked a voice through the radio when they were near the convoy.

Aaldenberg silently panicked, and looked at Julia. Her face was one of puzzlement. She shrugged her shoulders.

“We are headed for Geneva. Urgent supplies needed by the garrison at the Peace Dome,” said Aaldenberg, trying to sound as Swiss as possible.

“Ah, good. Whatever they need down there will be most useful to us once we launch the missile.”

“Indeed,” replied Aaldenberg.

“Go on ahead, truck 493. We’re stopping in Chavornay shortly. Do make sure to refuel if necessary, maybe in Yverdon-les-Bains? The mountains here will do a number on your car battery.”

“Thank you, sir; I’m headed that way now.” He turned off the microphone. “Okay, I know where we are now. We’re in the Jura Mountains northeast of Geneva. Yverdon-les-Bains is a famous city for its baths. I say if we speed on through to there, I can make it onto Geneva on time. I’ll drop you off at Chavornay, another town in this area, and you can do something to impede them.”

“No, drop me off in Yverdon-les-Bains,” Julia said. “They’re probably giving the signal in Chavornay.” She paused. “Tell you what, you leave me with the truck and you find a way to Geneva on your own.”

“How in hell would I do that?” snapped Aaldenberg. “You think I can get to Geneva panhandling on the streets?”

“You think that Travere hasn’t, in his infinite wisdom (sarcasm drooping from that word), connected Yverdon-les-Bains to Geneva via rail?”

“You think that it’ll be enough?” he responded. “My plan was to leave you at Chavornay while they’re stopping, and then you can come up with something to stop them. I was going to head along to Geneva, ram into the Palace of Nations, and kidnap Campbell and Utkin, bringing them to safety in case the missile fires. If not, so much the better.”

Julia’s eyebrows hardened. “And here you are taking the helm of this whole thing. Remember I’m no AIVD agent like you are; I can’t simply jump onto a truck using only my bare hands and derail an entire convoy like you can.”

“Listen to me, Julia,” replied Aaldenberg, “I know better than you of your capabilities. You are young, unlike me, and you are deluded by your own insecurities compounded with the nigh-ascetic life you have had to live to train for the cause of world peace. Trust me and we can save this planet.”

The fact that he said this while his eyes were locked firmly on the mountain roads scared Julia to no end. They were going much faster than the posted speed limit, which she could only barely discern, only seeing vague numbers and signs saying “Yverdon-les-Bains” or “Chavornay” or some other town nearby. Aaldenberg was a man who knew what he was doing. Had she not met him in the circumstances that she did, she would have guessed he had done some government job.

“And yet why do I need to listen to you?” she asked defiantly. “I’ve been forcefed the crap the US government says all my life, and obeyed them at the threat of death! Why can’t I save this godforsaken planet on my own terms?”

“Because if you don’t listen, you die and the world ends in nuclear omnicide.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard you use that phrase, ‘nuclear omnicide.’ It seems like a way to shut me up. And if I die and everyone else does as well, so what? I’ll be gone from this hellish system, and I won’t be remembered for it.” She sighed and laughed in an odd combination of the noises that came from her mouth simultaneously.
“Turns out I’m like many of the other fighters. Nihilistic. Cynical. Disillusioned.”

“I can tell you like fame, Ms. DeSanto,” said Aaldenberg. “I could see it in your face, in your gestures in the Peace Dome.” He was quiet, as if he wanted Julia to respond, but no response came. “I can read you like a book.”

“How can you do that, Mr. Super-Secret-Agent?” she quipped.

“Training from the AIVD. Reading people’s intentions. You like glory. You want to be appreciated individually and as not another cog in the machine.”

“What relevance does this have to anything? You’re just being a pedant and a moralizer now.”

“If you don’t do what I say, there is the possibility of a limited nuclear engagement happening, which you would survive. Once the news and the Internet finds out about you, they will have a field day exploiting your negligence. Do you want to be remembered as the next Gavrilo Princip? The next Hitler, even? Do you want your legacy to be one of death and suffering?”

She was silent for several minutes, likely due to Aaldenberg’s ability to deliver that short speech in a piercing monotone. “I guess you’re right,” she said with little emotion; what little there was present was resignation.

“If you’re really so worried, I’ll drop you off at Chavornay. Yverdon-les-Bains is simply too close.” They continued in silence among the almost deserted highway for what seemed to be a day, but was likely only a few hours. They were going blatantly over the speed limit; they saw police helicopters watching them but not paying any attention; the fact that it was a military truck certainly helped that.

They drove through Yverdon-les-Bains, and were among the constant propaganda that their government gave them. One was a massive mural, proclaiming his nobleness in the annexation of Liechtenstein, which, in the words of the mural said, “freed them of the loneliness that such a small independent nation must face.” Another picture extolled the Swiss Guards, the “defenders of a leader of billions.” Everywhere, the eyes of the dictator were peering down at whoever passed. They saw the public giving devotion to his image, praying in some cases. Aaldenberg honestly wondered how the stern traditionalist nation of the 20th and early 21st century had morphed into the nation it was now.

Isolation, he concluded. They ignored other nations, other perspectives, at their own peril, and their neutrality had transformed into narcissism. That is how this regime seeped into power (there was no coup, only a series of elections) and brainwashed the country to follow it.

They pulled out of the town with little trouble and headed back onto the highway to Chavornay. The exit had a massive sign with a picture of Travere embracing a woman’s child, the mother standing next to him beaming in utter glee. In French, next to it, was “Travere: Father of the Nation.” Julia winced. Aaldenberg shook his head resignedly.

They continued in silence to Chavornay, only about an hour or so away given the sheer speed at which they were travelling. Aaldenberg was sweating; he was afraid of simply being too late.

When they arrived at Chavornay, he stopped the truck at the nearest sidewalk after the entry to the town, by a convenience store, again plastered with the same nonsense from the government, this time making heroes of the victors of the Sonderbund War. “Julia,” he directed, “get out of the truck and wait for them. When they stop, find some way to make a scene, a diversion.” He tossed her a rifle. “You can use this if need be.”
She caught it. “Okay then, here goes nothing.” She clambered out of the car, with her rifle, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. She turned and looked at him. “Good luck out in Geneva.”

“Here’s hoping that you can stall them here. But for safety’s sake, I’m going to assume you will fail, for maximum safety.” Her eyebrows hardened. “Nothing against your abilities, just taking precautions.”

She nodded, and gave him a wry smile. “Go ahead.”

Aaldenberg nodded, closed the door to the armored truck, and zoomed off into Chavornay towards Geneva.

Julia wandered the sidewalks of Chavornay, waiting for the convoy to arrive. She was cold; she was wearing emergency winter gear from the back of the truck to help insulate herself, but it still pained her to walk. She waited, the time becoming a form of excruciating pain. And she waited nonetheless, knowing the necessity of her plan coming to fruition.

And after some time a tank came rolling into Chavornay, followed by several heavily armed, armored trucks, and backed by another tank. This was them; they matched the profile. They came rumbling into the city, their electrical engines still emitting a monstrous noise not due to exhaust but due to the sheer amount of electricity they had to produce to move so many tons.

She let them pass her, and then walked the route that they went, hiding her gun inside her coat. She passed through small crowds of people going about their business, none paying attention to the military convoy passing through their town. It shocked her how normal this was for them; even in the United States, commonly held to be one of the most militarized countries of the First World, such convoys were rare. Maybe they just didn’t have anything to do in Columbus. She didn’t know. But she did know these people were exposed to this to such an extent that they were desensitized to it; they did not panic, they did not even take note.

She followed them; they moved slowly in the town, and it allowed her to keep up with them at a brisk walking pace. She slid through the crowds gracefully and with skill; a product of fighting technique education in finding hiding spots.

They stopped in a lot outside the town; she had hidden behind the occasional tree or shrub to maintain stealth. They parked in a grassy area after going off the road, and troops disembarked from the trucks and assumed a defensive stance. “They are preparing for launch,” she whispered to herself. She analyzed their movements, thought about how she could intimidate them or confuse them. Again, the psychological part of the fight.

She would have to concoct a method to distract them. She observed the terrain: grass, mostly, with a few trees here and there.
She took her rifle and fired a bolt of energy at a patch of grass on the other side of the encampment; the distance prevented the noise from being heard loudly enough for them to realize she was there. Thankfully, these new weapons were much less noisy than the powder weapons of the last century. The grass burst into flames, a small plume but noticeable. Some of the guards went over there and investigated. She was thankful that the crews of the tanks had left the body of those vehicles and were eating or smoking and talking to each other in what she thought was German.

But not enough guards moved. She sighed but remained quiet. One of the trucks was parked in the center, with a Swiss flag flying over the cockpit.

That’s where Travere had to be. That was her target.

The guards that had investigated the flame were getting suspicious, and began moving in her direction. She ducked, peering at them while she lay on her stomach. She held the gun like a sniper, a tactic she learned while learning to fight these competitive fights. The rifle was heavier, though; military grade rifles were heavier than military grade rifles.

They came dangerously close, perilously close. One of them came quite close to her. She flinched.

He stepped on her rifle. Her head jolted up, and saw him looking her in the eye. Without saying anything, she forced the rifle up, causing him to fall. She took her rifle butt and rammed it into his face and his chest. His body armor protected him in both cases. She took the rifle and shot him in the part of the face exposed by the helmet. It left her no choice.

Two other soldiers were now actively looking for their comrade. She darted away, remaining close to the ground. She sniped at both of them, and they both fell.

Noise began to be heard from the small encampment. They must have seen the defenders of the Swiss state fall before them, and were scared. Psychological fighting in action. More men came from the encampment, perhaps twenty in total. Julia ran towards the encampment, and then dropped to the ground in the fastest crawl she could muster. She felt a stinging pain in her back. One of their laser bolts must have hit her. She smelled the grass around her burning as she blitzed for the assembly of vehicles.

She, without prior warning, was kicked by a guard, who then shot her in the stomach. She winced at the pain; she did not have the armor that they did only a jacket and prison wear. She kicked his leg; he did not fall but did stumble momentarily. Momentarily was all she needed, and she moved into the encampment again.

The pain was almost insufferable, but she went on to the central vehicle. She stepped towards it, but was yanked back by a guard by her hair, and was plunged down to the ground, covering her head and hair with dirt and mud. She punched his leg, but that did little. Her rifle was too far from her to use it. She stood up, and in that motion kicked him in the groin and then punched him in the chest. She darted for her weapon and shot at the door, causing it to unlock itself after destroying the computer that kept it locked.

She entered. There were two officers at computers, and a man she recognized as the dictator sitting at a seat in full regalia. She shot him as his contentment turned to shock and caused his head to erupt. She spared the officers as they cowered. They did nothing to her.

She left the truck, satisfied. She fought the other guards for what felt like an eternity. She suffered several shots, and was exhausted of almost all her energy.

She was near death. The physical abuse and being in the way of bolts of energy was not kind to her.

She was at one last guard, who was just as tired as her, as per her panting (the voice made it clear this one was a woman; Travere was an equal-opportunity oppressor, but still most of his army was male). This guard leaped at her.

She shot her unceremoniously like that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the Arab fighter being killed by the hero with a pistol in a display of American know-how.

She could rest. She fell to her knees and relaxed. She decided she was going to be at ease. If that meant she died, so be it; if that meant she would later wake up in a prison, so be it. All she knew now was that she needed sleep, and a psychological escape from all this madness.

As she closed her eyes as she looked towards the sky, one sight made her eyes spring open.

A missile was heading southwest.

She fell unconscious.

Maurits Aaldenberg was haphazardly driving through the streets of Geneva, dodging stoplights and in full pursuit by the police. He was making his way to the Palace of Nations, which he was familiar with the location due to serving quite extensively in Geneva beforehand. They were having the meeting between Campbell and Utkin right now regarding the cheating in the games; radio broadcasts had told him that. He would have to get into the palace somehow, and that would require force.

He heard a whirr above him. VTOL craft, the successor of the niche of the helicopter of several decades ago, were now in pursuit of him. Perhaps he should not have been speeding. Perhaps he should not have impaled that police car. Perhaps he should not have run over that barricade.

He didn’t care; he was a man on a mission, he thought to himself. Law means only so much in the context of preventing nuclear omnicide. He noticed that was the third time he used that phrase.

It was a very apt descriptor of what he was trying to prevent, however.

He rammed through another police barricade. He knew the death he was causing. Years in the AIVD led him to be desensitized to death. Another casualty of the Cold War, he thought to himself.

The Palace of Nations was in view, surrounded by anti-vehicle spikes in the ground designed to prevent exactly what he was trying to do. Also, there were soldiers with anti-vehicular weaponry. He couldn’t go through there, obviously.

He took one of the roads going around the building, and made his way to the back of the building, without the splendid courtyard, and with the entryway for dignitaries. He saw American and Soviet vehicles and aircraft as well as Swiss military infrastructure.

He was being watched, and shot at. Luckily, this truck was heavily armored; it was designed to carry gold bullion and other expensive material. The Swiss were great engineers (encouraged by the Gerardi presidency to rival the Germans, the Americans, and the Soviets), and this truck was an example of that. Mr. Gerardi had never anticipated that his trucks would be used against his successor, and Travere had not either.

He rammed through the barricades to the palace, glass shattering and metal being ripped away, but the truck was still intact. He wondered whether it still would be intact when he rocketed into the building.
He did and was covered in dust and plaster and chipped bits of stone. He found himself in a conference room as he braked and maneuvered the truck into the centuries-old building; modern armor did that to something built in the 1920s and 1930s.

He forced himself to a stop and looked out of the partially shattered window on the door. He was in a conference room, with a large table with several dignitaries sitting shocked around it, including Campbell and Utkin. He grabbed his gun and kicked open the door. “Campbell, Utkin, and anyone else, who can fit, get into the truck now. No time to explain!”

Campbell looked at him skeptically, Utkin with utter shock. A ferocious pounding came from the doors and engine noises from the hole he had bored into the wall. He scoffed to himself and dashed towards Utkin and grabbed the Premier’s shoulders. He resisted, but Aaldenberg’s superior strength allowed him to throw the Soviet leader into the truck. He did the same to the American President.

“Everyone, if you do not want to die, get in the truck!”

The pounding on the doors became even louder, and the dignitaries clambered into the truck. The doors burst, and he was shot at. He fired back as he moved back into the truck and slammed the door and floored the pedal, causing even more damage to the old structure.

He sped down another street, being chased by the aircraft and tanks and other vehicles that sincerely wanted him dead.

He heard a thunderous explosion behind him, and assumed the truck had been destroyed. He peered out the window on the door to the mirror, and saw the entire building in flames.

The missile had hit, he had realized.

Campbell and Utkin and the rest of the dignitaries were slackjawed in fear.

Epilogue, several weeks later.

Maurits Aaldenberg awoke in the cell he was being held in in some prison in the South of France. The door opened, and a French warden came up to him. “You are expected to see the Warden.”

He walked there, accompanied by the guard, and entered the office. This was a special prison that the French, to great protestation by many factions, had opened to imprison those awaiting conviction would be held. He was not an official, just a ‘civilian’ and thus had to be imprisoned. The warden’s office was heavily secured, with multiple security cameras. He saw the warden, an older man by the name of Semprebon. However, there were two people he was shocked to see.

Julia was in one corner. In another was an older woman, with white hair.The latter extended her hand. “Good afternoon, Mr. Aaldenberg. My name is Louisa Rooijakkers, the Dutch ambassador to the United Nations.”

He shook her hand. “Julia,” he said to the former, “I was afraid you were dead.”

“Somehow, they rescued me and imprisoned me, for murder of an international leader– Travere.”

“He’s dead? You killed him?”

“Yes, he is dead,” said Rooijakkers. “The Swiss state just fell apart when they found out their leader was not some sort of God, and a provisional government is now operating out of Bern. Military and civilian figures have been arrested and are being tried.”

“But what about me?” asked Aaldenberg. “What about Julia, more importantly?”

“The interruption of the games was found to be done by the Swiss. The two of you may walk free. Don’t exactly expect everyone to be happy with it, but you are free citizens of your home countries.”

Aaldenberg looked at Julia. “What are you going to do after this?”

“Campaign against these horrible games. I’m certain the media has plastered our faces everywhere. You?”

“I don’t know; the IOC probably loves me or hates me right now. But I need to get away from politics. I’ve learned it’s too barbarous for my tastes.” “Thank you for choosing United, and welcome to Geneva,” said the feminine voice onboard the airliner as it touched down on the landing pad in Geneva International Airport. Julia DeSanto scoffed at the insinuation that she had chosen to be here; it was Washington that wanted her here, Secretary of Defense Norwood that wanted her here, not her herself that wanted to be here. She left the plane, dreading what she would have to do. Its slow descent towards the ground, completely vertical with no horizontal component, was standard of modern planes, and it was more comfortable than those that needed stupidly long landing areas. But she still didn’t like it.

They said the man she was going to meet was wearing a badge with the International Olympic Committee insignia on it, and it would be conspicuous. She was certain this wouldn’t be the case; what the Department of Defense says is conspicuous isn’t usually what the common person says is conspicuous.

She left the long walkway from the platform that the plane landed on and entered the airport. Above the terminal marking was a Swiss flag, dangling limp due to the lack of wind. Entering the airport, she was more than a little stunned by the mural on the wall facing the entryway.

On it was the portrait of the face and shoulders of a man who she recognized from the Internet news as Barthelemy Travere, the President of Switzerland. His hair cropped beneath an officer’s cap, his shoulders with golden epaulets and badges visible on his left breast, eyes piercing the soul of whoever looked at him, it was clear that he was somebody to be feared and respected. To his sides were resplendent cornucopias filled with what appeared to be the bounty of Swiss agriculture, and around those the arms of the various cantons. Below, in the four languages of the Confederation, was a single slogan. She had taken French in high school and could tell what it said in that language:

“The Beloved Leader is Always Right”

She chuckled grimly. These Swiss were almost to the level of the North Koreans before the war that put an end to that regime several decades ago.

She turned her head, looking for this man. Her attention was captivated, mostly out of boredom, by a television hanging from the ceiling. It was narrated by a fast-talking, long-winded man in French showing a military parade in Bern. Infantry columns, tanks, airplane flyovers, the whole package were present, in apparent celebration of the newly inaugurated Swiss Orbital Defense network, independent of both NATO and Warsaw Pact funding and logistics. The Swiss were proud of their neutrality in the tense conflict that had marked world history for the past century and a half, and they would not let the world forget that.

The whole spectacle was mesmerizing. She saw Travere among the crowds, shaking hands with an elated populace; one adolescent girl moved to tears that he would even acknowledge her existence. He kissed babies, he shook many hands, and he accepted a myriad of gifts and floral bouquets that his guards had to take due to the sheer volume of them.

“Excuse me, Miss, but are you Ms. DeSanto?” asked a voice behind her, startling her. She had fallen prey to the image that Travere wanted to propagate. She turned around and was greeted by a dark-yet-graying haired man in a grey suit, and a badge with the Olympic rings on it.
“Yes, that is me. Are you the man the Department of Defense wanted me to meet?”

“My name is Maurits Aaldenberg, from the IOC. If you’re wondering, I’m from Groningen, and former AIVD before choosing something more peaceful. I was told by my superiors that an American fighter would be arriving here and now, and that her name was Julia DeSanto. That is, apparently, you,” he said, trying to appear welcoming.

“You are right, then,” replied Julia. He spoke English; this was relieving. She only spoke English, a little French, some Spanish, and some Russian. German, Italian, and Romansch were all foreign to her, and it would be the first two and final languages that would help her here. “Have other fighters arrived?” she asked as they went to baggage claim.

“Yes, from both the United States and the Soviet Union,” he responded.

“Olympic officials like me are attending to all of them. I was assigned to arrange accommodations for you. I have your hotel booked and your training area reserved.”

They left the airport in idle chatter and boarded a bus for their hotel. On the bus was the image, again, of Travere, glaring steely-eyed at passerby, like a more fascistic Mona Lisa, with not a seductive smile but a determined scowl that dared one to defy him.

“Look up there,” said Aaldenberg. “You can see the Peace Dome in the distance.”

The Peace Dome was a massive stadium built for matches like the ones Julia would be competing in within the next few days. “How ironic that such violence and such death would take place in a venue named for peace.”

“And would you rather the alternative?” snapped Aaldenberg. “What the IOC has been doing for the past eighty years has resulted in the end of war! Now, when the people on Mars or in the asteroid belt get into a territorial dispute, nations aren’t sent into flurries of nationalism to send generations off to the slaughter, they send fighters like you to these stadiums. The survivor is the one whose nation gets a favorable settlement, not the nation that causes the most wanton destruction.” He paused, realizing that he had become quite angry and quite loud. People were looking at him. “I’m sorry. Julia, you’re doing a noble service to humanity.”

“It’s a service I didn’t choose,” she said bluntly. “I was conscripted. I was forced into this whole system. When I was in middle school doing track and field, one of their agents took me and trained me for this. My family let them.” She sighed dejectedly. “But there really isn’t much that I can do, considering how important Congress says it is.” She sighed again. “This system destroys innocent lives. It’s like that in the Soviet Union and it’s like that in the US. Why do we let this happen?” she asked angrily. “Why did this ever happen in the first place?” She was almost shrieking.

“Have you ever heard of MAD?” asked Aaldenberg, calmly.

“Yes, I learned about it in history class.”

“Mutually Assured Destruction.” The words rolled off of his lips quite precisely. “If we did not have this form of conflict resolution, the nuclear weaponry stockpiled by both the United States and the Soviet Union would destroy human civilization as we know it. You may not like it; hell, I don’t like it. This form of organized murder is barbaric. But it is absolutely civilized in comparison to nuclear omnicide. Think about that.”

The bus trip passed in silence. The streets were filled with both Swiss and foreigners: Americans, Russians, British, Germans, Polish, Chinese, and many others that wanted to watch such an important fight. This one was over a Martian mining claim and an insulted Soviet diplomat. These tournaments were attended in the levels of the Olympics, so popular they were. Millions were expected for this bloodbath.

Also along the streets was more propaganda, on screens and as art. Trevere’s presence was felt everywhere. His regime was felt everywhere. Granted, he wasn’t the first of these President-Dictators, but he had the cult of personality that all of them had cultivated, intentional or otherwise. It was a gradual evolution, with the President gaining more power from the Federal Council over the years, and the neutrality that the nation loved turned to isolationism and then to chauvinism and elitism in the face of ideological extremism from the first and second worlds.

The bus stopped at her opulent and ornately decorated hotel; the IOC had not neglected comfort. “Ms. DeSanto, when you enter, give your name at the reception desk. They know you are coming and have a room for you. I will see you at the opening ceremonies tomorrow at noon.” She got off, bid him farewell, and entered, seeing his expectant glare from the bus.

She approached the receptionist, a dark-haired woman on a computer typing away, and said, “I’m Julia DeSanto, and I have a reservation.” The receptionist nodded, understanding her English. She called over, in French, a young man to attend to her.

Dressed in the livery of an attendant, he took her bags and put them on a cart, and entered the elevator with her. As she was lost in thought, she heard him scoff. She looked back at him, and was met with a scowl and a glare, his eyebrows sharp as a knife.

“Excuse me?” asked Julia.

He sighed. “Excusez-moi?” she asked, this time in French.

He looked surprised. “I would never have expected an ignorant American like you to bother learning another language,” he said in his native language.

“Ignorant? What makes you think I’m ignorant?”

“Americans, British, Polish, Chinese, Russian, all the same,” he replied. “What separates us the Swiss from the rest of the world is that we are free from the violent impulses that plague other lesser nations. We remained out of the World Wars and out of so many other conflicts. We did not continue the cycle of violence that resulted in the construction of the Peace Dome and the other domes in the world, so that your nations could temper themselves. We the Swiss never needed that. We get along. The Beloved Leader Travere has made sure of that.”

“The Soviet Union and the United States are so different. Conflict is natural,” replied Julia, wanting to end this conversation.

“A man from Graubünden is different from a man from Neuchatel, and both of them are different from a man from Thurgau. Your point is meaningless.”
They arrived at her room. She entered without saying another word. However, he did not let her leave without more of his own words.

“When your corrupt nations destroy one another, know that the Swiss will inherit the Earth.” He left.

The room was a well-equipped one for an apartment in the early 22nd century. Everything she expected, except for, above the mirror, another picture of President Travere, this time simultaneously orating and shaking hands with several youth. More propaganda, she thought. She was certain that not all Swiss were like that man, but in history’s experience effective control of the media can brainwash people quite effectively.

She fell asleep fairly quickly, partly jet lag, partly needing to be rested for the ceremony.

The next day she went to the Peace Dome on the bus, received her combat uniform from the authorities, and changed into them, without weapons, for the opening ceremony. She met with the other members of the team; some she had met before, some she hadn’t. She had fought in other competitions for the rights over things in space, or the occasional diplomatic spat. She’d killed several people in fights, and she hated every minute of it. So many lives wasted.

She got in line with her fellow competitors. Some of them were talking with their supervisors. She waited for Aaldenberg to come and walk by her side out to the field.

He arrived. “Ms. DeSanto,” he stated, “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied dejectedly.

She thought the institution of having supervisors that she barely knew unnecessary. The whole practice was due to some early game being sabotaged by an assassin. Also neutrality, and anti-drugging, and whatnot. IOC rules.

She heard proclamations in three languages outside: French, English, and Russian. “Welcome to the Henri Guisan Peace Dome, Geneva, Switzerland!” called out the voice in English, and presumably the same thing in French and Russian. “Today, we see a competition between honorable opponents for the cause of world peace, and to decide which great nation gains control of the Lyot Crater on Mars.” He orated for some time.

“You’re up for one of the first individual rounds,” said Aaldenberg. “You might just make the final team.”

The tournament was set up such that there were several brackets between American and Soviet fighters, and the winners of each of these brackets would eventually take their place on the team match, the winning team’s nation being the one who got the favorable settlement. It was a complicated system to prevent both a duel between two fighters of the same country and to ensure both teams at the end were equal.

“Please welcome the team from the United States of America!” proclaimed the announcer, in English, then in French, than in Russian. The yellow metallic gate rose above them, and out of the corridor they went, escorted by their supervisors. From the rafters, an American military band struck up a tune, Gladiator by John Philip Sousa, which had become the de facto official march of the United States Olympic Warriors. The irony did not escape her.

They were greeted by the thunderous cheers of the Americans in the crowd, flying the Stars and Stripes, faces painted in the colors of their banner. The roar of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” was deafening, like that at the actual Olympics, or at the World Cup, when Americans could muster up enough willpower to care about soccer. The fighters stood in their patriotically-colored uniforms, starry shoulders, stripes going down their sides, in a straight line, the sponsors behind them in the Olympic uniform.

Then came the Soviet fighters, uniforms a deep red with a prominent yellow star on the chest. Backed by their own supervisors, the Soviet band in the rafters started playing Polyushka Polye, a song from their Great Patriotic War that captivated the spirit of the Soviet state and people, or so that was what General Secretary Utkin said in the speech leading up to this. Both Utkin and his American counterpart, President Campbell, were present and were sitting together near the announcer’s station. With them was the head of the IOC, Reinhard Muhlenberg, and President Travere. The Swiss leader was flanked by honor guards armed with the best weaponry money could buy, and the Swiss, with their banks, had a good deal of money. He was dressed in full military uniform, badges on his left chest.

The ceremony dragged on and on, and Julia just hated it. It was partisan glurge, not deserving of any time, and she could tell Utkin and Campbell were trying to milk this holy cow for all it was worth. Campbell had the 2128 election to deal with; Utkin was simply trying to keep the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics together at all costs, as it was teetering, like it had been for a century, at a perilous point, ready for the whole rotten edifice it was established upon to collapse.

And so it ended. She practiced firearms training and melee combat, and then returned to her hotel, and rested once more; the day after, she would be fighting against one of the Soviet fighters, a young man by the name of Dmitri Kaminski. The profile on the internet about him proclaimed him to be “a proud son of Stalingrad” and “a fighter for international peace and goodwill.” The irony was apparent; either he would die, or she would, for the sake of saving millions more, and for whichever power could hold some barren chunk of Mars.

The night passed. She talked with Aaldenberg in her own locker room, where she kept her things; her mobile phone, her tablet, changes of clothes, medication, and so many other knickknacks that it surprised the inspector. “Back in my days in the AIVD I would think you were hiding something. But I left that job so I could have some faith in people.”

“AIVD?” she asked.

“Dutch secret service,” he replied bluntly.

“I’m guessing that being laconic, and if not that, preachy, was part of the job description?” she retorted.

“When things are clandestine, you don’t give away much information. It’s why I only reluctantly took this job; the Swiss now know about me and I don’t like that at all.”

“Why?” she asked. “It’s not like they have death camps in the Alps.”

"Perhaps not, but their intelligence service is top notch. I know they've bugged my room at my own hotel, and I can't do anything about it without letting them know. But I was able to find that out." He looked quite sure of himself.

“For someone who claims to have left the secret service out of distaste for it, you are certainly proud of your abilities.”

“It comes in handy,” he replied. She took a mental note of his behavior; he had a skill that he didn’t show off much but wanted to. It was a weakness. Weaknesses you had to find to beat the opponent were an integral part of these fights.

“See that compartment up there?” he asked, pointed to a little box atop the locker with its own separate door and lock, lying open.. “That’s an interesting little thing to take note. Perfect for somebody to put something in while you’re gone and close it. If it was open before and now it’s closed, barring some sort of thing of nature, like the wind or whatnot, you can tell someone has been in there if it’s closed.”

She chuckled to herself. Here he was, displaying his own braggadocio to someone he thought cared. A younger woman, no less; he had no wedding ring. Desperate for attention and screwed over by the government, she thought. All too common. The two of them left together, paying little attention to the open compartment.

Morning training passed. The time came. To a cascade of cheers from Americans hoping for a great patriotic show of their nation’s strength, to defeat the representative of Godless Communism, she exited her compartment and into the battlespace. It was a sandy area, with cover made out of the imitations of ruined buildings reminiscent of Berlin in 1945 or Pyongyang in 2084; the latter was most likely intentional, given that conflict was the impetus for the creation of these games. Such destruction, whether it be the nuclear fire over Anchorage and Vladivostok or the urban slaughter in Korea and Germany and parts of China, was the reason that the leaders of the nations of the world vowed that never again would they subject humanity to hell. And they chose the International Olympic Committee to manage their new peace.

Out of the other side of the arena came the fighter from the Soviet Union, that Kaminski fellow. He looked … surprisingly calm. Not calm, serene. No.

Not serene.

Sedated.

He was slower to come out, slower to take his gun and his blades, and slower to approach her. She didn’t underestimate him; she had a friend who had died doing that against a fighter from Poland, and another one fighting a fighter from East Germany. But she did search for weaknesses and saw sluggishness and apathy. He could be outmaneuvered or have his morale crippled. She could do this.

Duels were just as psychological as they were physical. So few people understood that. She had been interviewed by the press on occasion, the last was in Stockholm, about the physical training regimens she went through. None asked about the psychological part. So much the better; the other fighters couldn’t pick up on it.

When the announcer yelled “And the fight is on! For Peace!” (the hypocrisy notwithstanding), she darted behind a wall. The crowd gasped. The flags held by the crowds, previously waving in frenzy, were still. Then the crowds quieted.

She took her rifle, armed with military-grade laser technology, and aimed it through a hole in the wall. There wasn’t enough room for her scope, so she closed one of her eyes to peer through it.

Kaminski was slow. Too slow.

Again, sedated, she thought. He ran behind another barricade and armed his rifle to fire. He did so, but his aim was haphazard and it pelted the wall. She ducked to prevent the bursts of energy from hitting her. A section of the wall collapsed, covering her in dust and other residue. She coughed, trying not to exhale the dirt that sometimes caused suffocation.
She leaped out and ran towards him, jumping over obstacles. He stood there, doing nothing. He was there in a daze.

He was trying to trick her, goad her into letting her guard down.
She leaped over the obstacles with a grace that showed hundreds if not thousands of hours spent in training for this, and that she was chosen by the Department of Defense to do this. Again, selected by an agent during middle school track. It helped in this case.

She was ready for the kill. It was so easy it seemed like cheating. All regret, all misgiving, just vanished. She felt the thrill of the hunt, the lust for blood, the desire to win. The desire to be renowned as an individual and not as a part of a national team.

And then came the siren from the ceiling.

“Cease all combat!” yelled the announcer, in English and Russian. “It appears that the Soviet fighter has been drugged! An investigation is forthcoming and all supervisors are being sent to inspect the living and training quarters of the athletes. Such foolery will not be tolerated by the international community.”

Julia had a rush of mixed, contradictory emotions. She was glad she did not have to waste a life (as her more logical thoughts prevailed) yet disappointed that she would not be able to prove her dominance on the battlefield, not able to show her prowess to an assemblage of world leaders and other important individuals. She wanted the glory and the power, denied to her by the cruel people who dared make this match easy. And yet she was appalled by the American band striking up The Stars and Stripes Forever, disgusted as American fans ripped apart a Soviet flag while singing a part of the tune:

Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation,
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of freedom’s nation!

She turned to the crowd, letting them see her anger. They didn’t care; it was all a part of the high that such an event created. The Superbowl did it for Americans and the World Cup did it for everyone else. It was the same thing, except with the most visible blood.

Meanwhile, Maurits Aaldenberg hurried to Julia’s locker room. He was ordered to do so, a stern older man by the name of Giacomo Franchi, of Ticino, and he was given authority to do so by the members of the IOC personally. When Franchi said, Aaldenberg did, without question. He was a favorite of his boss; his experience in the Dutch secret service was a great help to him in the working world.

He didn’t like being in her quarters. He didn’t like being in a woman’s quarters. He was raised to respect women; even in this age of near-complete gender equality there were still those holdouts of the conservatism that were apparent now and then. It was odd; he had spied on women during his time in the AIVD, but doing it as part of a civilian job was harrowing, to say the least. He left the AIVD to have some sort of normal life, and now he couldn’t. He was middle aged now; he was supposed to be respectable!

He rummaged through bags, and doors, and other things. And then he saw that small compartment that had been empty and open.

It was closed.

He opened it, and pulled out of it a syringe, pockmarked with the remnants of some neon-colored fluid. Something within the last few years; he had never seen it during his tours of duty in Indonesia or in Poland, or anywhere else for that matter. But it was definitely something. It was unmarked except for lines denoting millimeters and centimeters. The needle had a little red on it; it was recently used. Somehow, someone drugged that Kaminski fellow with this thing.

And framed Julia DeSanto for it.

He observed it intently, and found no more hints. Didn’t stop him from looking at it, peering at it with his eyes mere centimeters from it. He was intent on finding something, anything that would help him find it.

“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind him. Aaldenberg paused, briefly panicking. He turned around, quickly but not joltingly as to not surprise a potential authority but to surprise a potential attacker, and saw himself greeted by a member of the security detail assigned to the Peace Dome, in full body armor and military-grade rifle. These rifles were much more powerful than afforded to the fighters; these were ones that would be used if war were ever to break out again. “What is that you are holding?”

“I found it in that compartment up there,” he pointed. “Somebody put it there, and was trying to frame the American fighter for the drugging of the Soviet fighter.”

The guard walked up to him and yanked the syringe out of his hand. “This is what they call “Molasses” in America – and in the Netherlands. It’s popular in both countries, as I’m certain you understand.” He mangled ‘certain’ into a slur. Considering how she is American and you are Dutch, it strikes me as a little suspicious.”

“I’m afraid I am not familiar, Mr… what is your name?”

“Reinemeyer,” he said bluntly. “In a case such as this I am ordered, with a direct line to President Travere himself, to arrest you and take you to interrogation.”

Before Aaldenberg could react, he was pummeled to the ground and put in handcuffs. He felt ashamed; certainly someone who was part of the AIVD and trained like this for so long was capable of deflecting such a blow! But he had grown soft. He had spent decades of his life spoiling plots and harebrained schemes, but here he was being framed and possibly being a part of one.

Reinemeyer presented him to a series of guards, one visibly the commander of the whole operation. “Found him,” he said to them.

“This is good, very good,” said the commander. “Send him to prison, where we put the rest of the undesirables. Travere would approve.”

“What do you mean undesirables?” sputtered Aaldenberg, kicking at Reinemeyer to no avail. “And why do you get to punish me? Isn’t this IOC jurisdiction? Or maybe even United Nations jurisdiction?”

“Written in the law books,” said the commander, whose accent was noticeably from Bern. “Travere decreed it and so it is.”

The Federal Council was a joke, Aaldenberg thought to himself. Growing up, he saw the transition of the Swiss government from guardian of rights to totalitarian dictatorship, first under Gerardi, then Giroux, then LaFontaine, then Junghans, and then many more. The pundits in Amsterdam, in London, and in Washington all speculated that there was a good deal of internal politicking between them, but the Swiss were experts at disseminating the outward appearance of unity in an increasingly divided world. They affiliated themselves with Yugoslavia and India and other nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, they joined the United Nations, and occasionally gave supplies to poor nations in Africa or Asia.

But it was, make no mistake, a repressive regime. He had seen the closings of the newspapers and websites, the breaking of the protests in Jura with violent force on the Dutch national news, and it appalled him.
For that grand façade they built this stadium for the Americans and Russians to use as they pleased for conflict resolution, as they decried the violence of the Third World War and welcomed the new form of peacemaking. Their dictators would address the cheering crowds in it, have parades in front of it, but let it be used by the other powers to distract them from, ironically, what lay right under their noses. The Swiss state based itself around being a master manipulator, but that master status was earned and easily apparent.

In the arena, Julia DeSanto was scared. The American fans were cheering, the Soviet fans were incensed, and it appeared things were going to get very violent very quickly. Some fans on the border between the two partitions, one marked with a blue field of white stars, the other with the Hammer and Sickle, were beginning to fight. She heard gunshots. The American band had finished with The Stars and Stripes Forever and had moved on to other tunes, such as The Invincible Eagle and Columbia’s Pride.

“Attention, competitor DeSanto!” yelled the announcer in English. “Place your hands up and do not move.” Out of the entrances to the underground of the stadium came several armed guards of the Swiss army, fully armed and ready to fight if necessary. Their weapons were poised at her, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. She dropped her own competition weapon (which would do nothing to their reinforced body armor anyway) and extended her hands.

“You are under arrest for rigging this competition. You have damaged the cause of peace and will be charged as a war criminal of the highest order.”

The crowd gasped collectively. American fans began screaming in rage. The President was shocked, as was the Premier. Travere looked off into the distance without emotion.

She was taken by the guards and handcuffed, and taken away. In the insides of the stadium, she was pushed around, shoved like an animal. She screamed for help, but there was none. “Little cheating whore, be quiet!” said one of them in French.

“I understand what you are saying!” she complained.

She went unconscious shortly thereafter.

She woke up in a dingy prison cell and she had no idea where it could possibly. It was cold and made of stone, with iron bars up front. There was a rickety bed made of what had to be used cloth, and a small toilet next to it. There was no window at all, only cold wall. On one wall was a picture of Travere, smiling lovingly at what was assumed to be a loving admirer; all he had now was a captive audience, whose love was not reciprocated. She, in her anger, punched it, shattering the glass frame and cutting into her hand. She winced profusely and tried to tend to the wound. The portrait fell to the ground, the paper ripped but still discernible as the dictator’s glare.

She wept for a long time. She was innocent, and she would hold that to her dying day. She did not want to die a criminal in a foreign prison.

She raged against the Department of Defense for forcing her into this career. She hated Agent Conroy, the man who saw her at her middle school back in her home city of Columbus, Ohio, and subsequently saw her as a prime candidate to fight for the administration’s own needs. She hated the people who approved her, and she hated every fight she had been in for whatever petty reason that Congress wanted her in.

And yet she found peace. She tried to sleep, and so she slept.

Aaldenberg found himself coming to a semblance of consciousness in his own cell, with the barest of accoutrements. He remembered his training; his first thought was not “why am I here?” but “how do I get out of here?” Looking around, there was the familiar face of Travere the dictator, a bed, a toilet, and a cell wall with a computerized lock. He pounded on the walls and the doors; they were thick and would not be able to be toppled or bored through easily. So he would wait and see what would happen. It would be time to think, to relax some, and to contemplate. And then to think about escaping some more. Being in the AIVD taught him to be devious.

Would they come for him? He doubted it. It would be too obvious. It would let him escape, let him get out of their confines and probably tell the world of this hoax. He noted there was a little slot where they would give him food. Solitary confinement. Wonderful. He wouldn’t see anyone, he would not be able to get anyone to come here, if only to beat them and make his way out. And so he sat there, in deep thought, trying to think of some way to get out. Any way.

He could cause some trouble.

That would work. That would be sufficiently devious, he thought to himself. Let’s see what we could do to cause havoc, he thought, coming to a realization.

He looked at the ceiling. Sure enough, there was a security camera, watching his every movement. Good, good. One way to rouse them.

He climbed up onto the toilet and positioned himself such that the camera, a small dark brown, translucent hemisphere was within easy view. With a stunning lack of subtlety, tact, or thought, he curled his hand into a fist and smashed the casing, and then ripped out the interior wiring, making sure not to touch metal. He flushed it down the toilet, and slammed down the lid.

He took the blanket off the bed and spun it into a long cordlike shape, perfect for suffocating somebody. He hid in a corner, right next to the door. They had to be coming; he heard footsteps through the ventilation.

The door burst open, revealing a single heavily armed guard, bearing a high-caliber rifle and body armor. Without saying a word, Aaldenberg kicked his feet, sending him to the ground, and kicked the gun out of his hand. He wrapped the guard’s neck in the blanket and suffocated him to death, or at least what looked like death. Aaldenberg assumed that he was still alive and would make the attempt to leave as quickly as possible.
He removed the body armor from the guard and put it on; it was flexible, as was standard since the middle of the 21st century, as well as light. He was trained in using this, and made off into the corridor, bearing the guard’s weapon, now captured.

Alarms were blaring. He hugged the wall, keeping as quiet as he could to avoid any undue attention. Guards in formation ran around the metal halls, and none noticed the man, the high-security escapee, who was watching them.

He darted through the base (which was in a location he simply could not figure out), avoiding or destroying cameras, strangling or knocking out the occasional guard. He had no idea where he was going; he was just looking for an exit.

He found one room filled with large cylinders positioned on gigantic metal racks, uncertain of what they were or what their purpose was. There was a console atop a platform. He jumped up to it; there was nobody inside.
He heard voices. He ducked behind a filing cabinet to the left of the console. From an entrance to his right he saw two men, both in the uniforms of a officers of the current Swiss regime, walk in. “The missiles are safe. Are the charges?”

“Reports say yes, General Fiorini,” replied the other, in French.

“Very well then, lieutenant. The plan will go as the dear leader intended.”

“Do we know if Campbell and Utkin are at the talks at the Palace of Nations yet?” asked the General.

“Yes, I have talked with General Knopf and he says that they are to start within the next twelve hours. Within a few hours the first missile shall be launched. The interceptors are ready as well.”

“Good, good,” said Fiorini, gesturing to the cylinders. “These missiles are proof of the dear leader’s foresight: the Swiss shall inherit the Earth.”
Aaldenberg shuddered. It was rigged, and there was a plan. Something sinister undoubtedly.

“When do we fire the actual missile? As in the one that will kill them?”
“According to General Knopf, when the President gives the signal. He refuses to tell me when, but he leaves for the Palace in a few hours. Then, when the signal is given, the missile will fly, and then the Soviet missiles will fly, and then the American missiles will fly, and then the entire world, except for the Swiss and some other neutral nations will be bathed in fire, leading to a truly noble race of people to become this planet’s rulers. Travere is a genius.”

Aaldenberg inhaled, and then exhaled. Travere was planning to destroy human civilization and then take it over for himself. Wonderful. Just what a dictator of his likes would do if they had the resources. Unlike the North Koreans, this man did have the resources.
And it was horrifying.

He darted out of the launch room and into the halls, where the alarm was still ringing. He tried to find an exit, but found very little.

As he turned into a corner, he collided into somebody, and braced to be
assailed with knives and guns. He grabbed his own and prepared for combat.

But it was a woman in rags. It took him a minute to recognize her. It was Julia DeSanto.

“Julia!” he exclaimed. “What a surprise to see you here!”

“The same to you, Mr. Aaldenberg,” she said, exhaustedly. “There was something of a prison riot in some neighboring cells, and somehow my cell was opened in the chaos. What happened?”

“I broke a camera, and the whole complex went to hell.”

“Your time in the AIVD must have made you quite good at that.”
He sighed. She laughed.

“This is no laughing matter, Julia. Do you have any idea what Travere and his generals are planning? I just overheard,” he said with exasperation.

“What would this be? Another triumphant parade? Doesn’t look like they do much else,” she quipped.

“They’re planning to start a nuclear war,” said the former secret agent, bluntly.

Julia’s eyes widened. There was a silence that lasted for a good five seconds.

“Oh.”

“Travere has machinations far more grandiose than what he would let you believe. What he wants is for the US and USSR to do is to obliterate each other and their allies, while keeping Switzerland safe with a shield of interceptors, and using a missile to kill Campbell and Utkin at their negotiations in the Palace of Nations. I saw some of these interceptors in another part of this facility.”

“Sounds like a self-absorbed dictator to put a prison and a missile launch array in the same complex,” said Julia dryly.

“I honestly wonder how you remain so unstressed in times like this,” asked Aaldenberg, honestly curious.

“I go through enough government bullshit back at home. Congress and the President go on about ‘patriotic duty to serve’ and whatnot. The truth is that they forced me into this, and I’m certain the Soviet Union does the same.”

That Aaldenberg could not deny. It was true; both sides and other nations like Britain and China used that method to get their fighters. The reasoning, a British Prime Minister had explained, was to ensure that a nation’s highest talent would not go to waste for petty political or other reasons.

“Anyway, back to business,” said Aaldenberg, subconsciously trying to appear confident and correct, “the Generals have planned to destroy the Palace of Nations, where President Campbell and Premier Utkin are meeting, with a missile, which will be launched when Travere gives some sort of signal. I don’t know what this signal is, but I know that’s what they’re doing.”

Julia sighed. “Now here we are, waiting for the world to end, unless you have something planned?”

Aaldenberg himself inhaled. “I suppose we could work out something,” he said tiredly.

Inspiration struck. “Can you drive?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be able to?” she replied.

“Some competitors I’ve been an assistant to have not, due to the intensity of their training taking up so much time for them. I was worried you may be one of them.”

See? She thought to herself. More abuses of the system. “Don’t worry, I can.” She paused in confusion. “Why do you ask?”

“I have a stupidly convoluted plan which just may work.”

“I’m guessing the AIVD taught you how to make those too.”

“Judging by what they said, Travere is in this facility or has just recently left. Hijack his vehicle, or one of the vehicles if there are many, as there often are, and somehow delay them. I don’t know how.”

“And what will you be doing while I’m performing a scene out of an action flick?”

“I will head to Geneva and attempt to kidnap Utkin and Campbell. If the missile does hit, we’ll still be safe.”

“If it doesn’t hit, you’ll be a criminal and so will I!” she exclaimed, skeptical.

“Which would you rather have, being in prison and humanity saved, or being alive and a fugitive in a totalitarian state who had successfully destroyed most of human civilization?” He glared at her, directly into her eyes.

She sighed once more. Aaldenberg noticed she did that frequently. “Fine. But one question; where the hell are we?”

That was a good question, Aaldenberg thought to himself. “I have no idea.”

“Well then how the hell are we supposed to get to Geneva if we have no idea where we are?”

“Find an exit. Preferably a vehicle bay.”

With only minor chatter, they rushed around the base, dodging guards frantically searching and knocking out at least one, they came across a large garage with trucks and tanks in it. They saw several armored trucks leaving the base, each armed with machine guns, and tanks leading and backing the convoy. “That must be Travere’s escort. He’s in one of those trucks.”

They waited for the convoy to pull out of the vehicle bay, and then found another armored truck being inspected by a technician of some sort.

“Who are you?” said the technician, speaking French with an Italian accent.

“None of your concern,” said Aaldenberg as he knocked the technician unconscious. He dropped to the ground along with the technician’s comatose body, and searched it for vehicle keys. He found them. The two of them got in the truck and zoomed off in spite of a losing door. They scraped a little of it off, and broke some glass.

“Odd how little security there was there,” remarked Julia.

“Dictatorships like this are often cocky. Travere’s Switzerland is no exception.”


They zoomed across the highway, passing Travere’s convoy as they did.
“What is your destination, truck number 493?” asked a voice through the radio when they were near the convoy.

Aaldenberg silently panicked, and looked at Julia. Her face was one of puzzlement. She shrugged her shoulders.

“We are headed for Geneva. Urgent supplies needed by the garrison at the Peace Dome,” said Aaldenberg, trying to sound as Swiss as possible.

“Ah, good. Whatever they need down there will be most useful to us once we launch the missile.”

“Indeed,” replied Aaldenberg.

“Go on ahead, truck 493. We’re stopping in Chavornay shortly. Do make sure to refuel if necessary, maybe in Yverdon-les-Bains? The mountains here will do a number on your car battery.”

“Thank you, sir; I’m headed that way now.” He turned off the microphone. “Okay, I know where we are now. We’re in the Jura Mountains northeast of Geneva. Yverdon-les-Bains is a famous city for its baths. I say if we speed on through to there, I can make it onto Geneva on time. I’ll drop you off at Chavornay, another town in this area, and you can do something to impede them.”

“No, drop me off in Yverdon-les-Bains,” Julia said. “They’re probably giving the signal in Chavornay.” She paused. “Tell you what, you leave me with the truck and you find a way to Geneva on your own.”

“How in hell would I do that?” snapped Aaldenberg. “You think I can get to Geneva panhandling on the streets?”

“You think that Travere hasn’t, in his infinite wisdom (sarcasm drooping from that word), connected Yverdon-les-Bains to Geneva via rail?”

“You think that it’ll be enough?” he responded. “My plan was to leave you at Chavornay while they’re stopping, and then you can come up with something to stop them. I was going to head along to Geneva, ram into the Palace of Nations, and kidnap Campbell and Utkin, bringing them to safety in case the missile fires. If not, so much the better.”

Julia’s eyebrows hardened. “And here you are taking the helm of this whole thing. Remember I’m no AIVD agent like you are; I can’t simply jump onto a truck using only my bare hands and derail an entire convoy like you can.”

“Listen to me, Julia,” replied Aaldenberg, “I know better than you of your capabilities. You are young, unlike me, and you are deluded by your own insecurities compounded with the nigh-ascetic life you have had to live to train for the cause of world peace. Trust me and we can save this planet.”

The fact that he said this while his eyes were locked firmly on the mountain roads scared Julia to no end. They were going much faster than the posted speed limit, which she could only barely discern, only seeing vague numbers and signs saying “Yverdon-les-Bains” or “Chavornay” or some other town nearby. Aaldenberg was a man who knew what he was doing. Had she not met him in the circumstances that she did, she would have guessed he had done some government job.

“And yet why do I need to listen to you?” she asked defiantly. “I’ve been forcefed the crap the US government says all my life, and obeyed them at the threat of death! Why can’t I save this godforsaken planet on my own terms?”

“Because if you don’t listen, you die and the world ends in nuclear omnicide.”

“That’s the second time I’ve heard you use that phrase, ‘nuclear omnicide.’ It seems like a way to shut me up. And if I die and everyone else does as well, so what? I’ll be gone from this hellish system, and I won’t be remembered for it.” She sighed and laughed in an odd combination of the noises that came from her mouth simultaneously.
“Turns out I’m like many of the other fighters. Nihilistic. Cynical. Disillusioned.”

“I can tell you like fame, Ms. DeSanto,” said Aaldenberg. “I could see it in your face, in your gestures in the Peace Dome.” He was quiet, as if he wanted Julia to respond, but no response came. “I can read you like a book.”

“How can you do that, Mr. Super-Secret-Agent?” she quipped.

“Training from the AIVD. Reading people’s intentions. You like glory. You want to be appreciated individually and as not another cog in the machine.”

“What relevance does this have to anything? You’re just being a pedant and a moralizer now.”

“If you don’t do what I say, there is the possibility of a limited nuclear engagement happening, which you would survive. Once the news and the Internet finds out about you, they will have a field day exploiting your negligence. Do you want to be remembered as the next Gavrilo Princip? The next Hitler, even? Do you want your legacy to be one of death and suffering?”

She was silent for several minutes, likely due to Aaldenberg’s ability to deliver that short speech in a piercing monotone. “I guess you’re right,” she said with little emotion; what little there was present was resignation.

“If you’re really so worried, I’ll drop you off at Chavornay. Yverdon-les-Bains is simply too close.” They continued in silence among the almost deserted highway for what seemed to be a day, but was likely only a few hours. They were going blatantly over the speed limit; they saw police helicopters watching them but not paying any attention; the fact that it was a military truck certainly helped that.

They drove through Yverdon-les-Bains, and were among the constant propaganda that their government gave them. One was a massive mural, proclaiming his nobleness in the annexation of Liechtenstein, which, in the words of the mural said, “freed them of the loneliness that such a small independent nation must face.” Another picture extolled the Swiss Guards, the “defenders of a leader of billions.” Everywhere, the eyes of the dictator were peering down at whoever passed. They saw the public giving devotion to his image, praying in some cases. Aaldenberg honestly wondered how the stern traditionalist nation of the 20th and early 21st century had morphed into the nation it was now.

Isolation, he concluded. They ignored other nations, other perspectives, at their own peril, and their neutrality had transformed into narcissism. That is how this regime seeped into power (there was no coup, only a series of elections) and brainwashed the country to follow it.

They pulled out of the town with little trouble and headed back onto the highway to Chavornay. The exit had a massive sign with a picture of Travere embracing a woman’s child, the mother standing next to him beaming in utter glee. In French, next to it, was “Travere: Father of the Nation.” Julia winced. Aaldenberg shook his head resignedly.

They continued in silence to Chavornay, only about an hour or so away given the sheer speed at which they were travelling. Aaldenberg was sweating; he was afraid of simply being too late.

When they arrived at Chavornay, he stopped the truck at the nearest sidewalk after the entry to the town, by a convenience store, again plastered with the same nonsense from the government, this time making heroes of the victors of the Sonderbund War. “Julia,” he directed, “get out of the truck and wait for them. When they stop, find some way to make a scene, a diversion.” He tossed her a rifle. “You can use this if need be.”
She caught it. “Okay then, here goes nothing.” She clambered out of the car, with her rifle, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. She turned and looked at him. “Good luck out in Geneva.”

“Here’s hoping that you can stall them here. But for safety’s sake, I’m going to assume you will fail, for maximum safety.” Her eyebrows hardened. “Nothing against your abilities, just taking precautions.”

She nodded, and gave him a wry smile. “Go ahead.”

Aaldenberg nodded, closed the door to the armored truck, and zoomed off into Chavornay towards Geneva.

Julia wandered the sidewalks of Chavornay, waiting for the convoy to arrive. She was cold; she was wearing emergency winter gear from the back of the truck to help insulate herself, but it still pained her to walk. She waited, the time becoming a form of excruciating pain. And she waited nonetheless, knowing the necessity of her plan coming to fruition.
And after some time a tank came rolling into Chavornay, followed by several heavily armed, armored trucks, and backed by another tank. This was them; they matched the profile. They came rumbling into the city, their electrical engines still emitting a monstrous noise not due to exhaust but due to the sheer amount of electricity they had to produce to move so many tons.

She let them pass her, and then walked the route that they went, hiding her gun inside her coat. She passed through small crowds of people going about their business, none paying attention to the military convoy passing through their town. It shocked her how normal this was for them; even in the United States, commonly held to be one of the most militarized countries of the First World, such convoys were rare. Maybe they just didn’t have anything to do in Columbus. She didn’t know. But she did know these people were exposed to this to such an extent that they were
desensitized to it; they did not panic, they did not even take note.
She followed them; they moved slowly in the town, and it allowed her to keep up with them at a brisk walking pace. She slid through the crowds gracefully and with skill; a product of fighting technique education in finding hiding spots.

They stopped in a lot outside the town; she had hidden behind the occasional tree or shrub to maintain stealth. They parked in a grassy area after going off the road, and troops disembarked from the trucks and assumed a defensive stance. “They are preparing for launch,” she whispered to herself. She analyzed their movements, thought about how she could intimidate them or confuse them. Again, the psychological part of the fight.

She would have to concoct a method to distract them. She observed the terrain: grass, mostly, with a few trees here and there.
She took her rifle and fired a bolt of energy at a patch of grass on the other side of the encampment; the distance prevented the noise from being heard loudly enough for them to realize she was there. Thankfully, these new weapons were much less noisy than the powder weapons of the last century. The grass burst into flames, a small plume but noticeable. Some of the guards went over there and investigated. She was thankful that the crews of the tanks had left the body of those vehicles and were eating or smoking and talking to each other in what she thought was German.

But not enough guards moved. She sighed but remained quiet. One of the trucks was parked in the center, with a Swiss flag flying over the cockpit.

That’s where Travere had to be. That was her target.

The guards that had investigated the flame were getting suspicious, and began moving in her direction. She ducked, peering at them while she lay on her stomach. She held the gun like a sniper, a tactic she learned while learning to fight these competitive fights. The rifle was heavier, though; military grade rifles were heavier than military grade rifles.

They came dangerously close, perilously close. One of them came quite close to her. She flinched.

He stepped on her rifle. Her head jolted up, and saw him looking her in the eye. Without saying anything, she forced the rifle up, causing him to fall. She took her rifle butt and rammed it into his face and his chest. His body armor protected him in both cases. She took the rifle and shot him in the part of the face exposed by the helmet. It left her no choice.

Two other soldiers were now actively looking for their comrade. She darted away, remaining close to the ground. She sniped at both of them, and they both fell.

Noise began to be heard from the small encampment. They must have seen the defenders of the Swiss state fall before them, and were scared. Psychological fighting in action. More men came from the encampment, perhaps twenty in total. Julia ran towards the encampment, and then dropped to the ground in the fastest crawl she could muster.
She felt a stinging pain in her back. One of their laser bolts must have hit her. She smelled the grass around her burning as she blitzed for the assembly of vehicles.

She, without prior warning, was kicked by a guard, who then shot her in the stomach. She winced at the pain; she did not have the armor that they did only a jacket and prison wear. She kicked his leg; he did not fall but did stumble momentarily. Momentarily was all she needed, and she moved into the encampment again.

The pain was almost insufferable, but she went on to the central vehicle. She stepped towards it, but was yanked back by a guard by her hair, and was plunged down to the ground, covering her head and hair with dirt and mud. She punched his leg, but that did little. Her rifle was too far from her to use it. She stood up, and in that motion kicked him in the groin and then punched him in the chest. She darted for her weapon and shot at the door, causing it to unlock itself after destroying the computer that kept it locked.

She entered. There were two officers at computers, and a man she recognized as the dictator sitting at a seat in full regalia. She shot him as his contentment turned to shock and caused his head to erupt. She spared the officers as they cowered. They did nothing to her.

She left the truck, satisfied. She fought the other guards for what felt like an eternity. She suffered several shots, and was exhausted of almost all her energy.

She was near death. The physical abuse and being in the way of bolts of energy was not kind to her.

She was at one last guard, who was just as tired as her, as per her panting (the voice made it clear this one was a woman; Travere was an equal-opportunity oppressor, but still most of his army was male). This guard leaped at her.

She shot her unceremoniously like that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie with the Arab fighter being killed by the hero with a pistol in a display of American know-how.

She could rest. She fell to her knees and relaxed. She decided she was going to be at ease. If that meant she died, so be it; if that meant she would later wake up in a prison, so be it. All she knew now was that she needed sleep, and a psychological escape from all this madness.

As she closed her eyes as she looked towards the sky, one sight made her eyes spring open.

A missile was heading southwest.

She fell unconscious.

Maurits Aaldenberg was haphazardly driving through the streets of Geneva, dodging stoplights and in full pursuit by the police. He was making his way to the Palace of Nations, which he was familiar with the location due to serving quite extensively in Geneva beforehand. They were having the meeting between Campbell and Utkin right now regarding the cheating in the games; radio broadcasts had told him that. He would have to get into the palace somehow, and that would require force.

He heard a whirr above him. VTOL craft, the successor of the niche of the helicopter of several decades ago, were now in pursuit of him. Perhaps he should not have been speeding. Perhaps he should not have impaled that police car. Perhaps he should not have run over that barricade.

He didn’t care; he was a man on a mission, he thought to himself. Law means only so much in the context of preventing nuclear omnicide. He noticed that was the third time he used that phrase.

It was a very apt descriptor of what he was trying to prevent, however.

He rammed through another police barricade. He knew the death he was causing. Years in the AIVD led him to be desensitized to death. Another casualty of the Cold War, he thought to himself.

The Palace of Nations was in view, surrounded by anti-vehicle spikes in the ground designed to prevent exactly what he was trying to do. Also, there were soldiers with anti-vehicular weaponry. He couldn’t go through there, obviously.

He took one of the roads going around the building, and made his way to the back of the building, without the splendid courtyard, and with the entryway for dignitaries. He saw American and Soviet vehicles and aircraft as well as Swiss military infrastructure.

He was being watched, and shot at. Luckily, this truck was heavily armored; it was designed to carry gold bullion and other expensive material. The Swiss were great engineers (encouraged by the Gerardi presidency to rival the Germans, the Americans, and the Soviets), and this truck was an example of that. Mr. Gerardi had never anticipated that his trucks would be used against his successor, and Travere had not either.

He rammed through the barricades to the palace, glass shattering and metal being ripped away, but the truck was still intact. He wondered whether it still would be intact when he rocketed into the building.
He did and was covered in dust and plaster and chipped bits of stone. He found himself in a conference room as he braked and maneuvered the truck into the centuries-old building; modern armor did that to something built in the 1920s and 1930s.

He forced himself to a stop and looked out of the partially shattered window on the door. He was in a conference room, with a large table with several dignitaries sitting shocked around it, including Campbell and Utkin.
He grabbed his gun and kicked open the door. “Campbell, Utkin, and anyone else, who can fit, get into the truck now. No time to explain!”

Campbell looked at him skeptically, Utkin with utter shock. A ferocious pounding came from the doors and engine noises from the hole he had bored into the wall. He scoffed to himself and dashed towards Utkin and grabbed the Premier’s shoulders. He resisted, but Aaldenberg’s superior strength allowed him to throw the Soviet leader into the truck. He did the same to the American President.

“Everyone, if you do not want to die, get in the truck!”

The pounding on the doors became even louder, and the dignitaries clambered into the truck. The doors burst, and he was shot at. He fired back as he moved back into the truck and slammed the door and floored the pedal, causing even more damage to the old structure.

He sped down another street, being chased by the aircraft and tanks and other vehicles that sincerely wanted him dead.

He heard a thunderous explosion behind him, and assumed the truck had been destroyed. He peered out the window on the door to the mirror, and saw the entire building in flames.

The missile had hit, he had realized.

Campbell and Utkin and the rest of the dignitaries were slackjawed in fear.

Epilogue, several weeks later.

Maurits Aaldenberg awoke in the cell he was being held in in some prison in the South of France. The door opened, and a French warden came up to him. “You are expected to see the Warden.”

He walked there, accompanied by the guard, and entered the office. This was a special prison that the French, to great protestation by many factions, had opened to imprison those awaiting conviction would be held. He was not an official, just a ‘civilian’ and thus had to be imprisoned.
The warden’s office was heavily secured, with multiple security cameras. He saw the warden, an older man by the name of Semprebon. However, there were two people he was shocked to see.

Julia was in one corner. In another was an older woman, with white hair.
The latter extended her hand. “Good afternoon, Mr. Aaldenberg. My name is Louisa Rooijakkers, the Dutch ambassador to the United Nations.”

He shook her hand. “Julia,” he said to the former, “I was afraid you were dead.”

“Somehow, they rescued me and imprisoned me, for murder of an international leader– Travere.”

“He’s dead? You killed him?”

“Yes, he is dead,” said Rooijakkers. “The Swiss state just fell apart when they found out their leader was not some sort of God, and a provisional government is now operating out of Bern. Military and civilian figures have been arrested and are being tried.”

“But what about me?” asked Aaldenberg. “What about Julia, more importantly?”

“The interruption of the games was found to be done by the Swiss. The two of you may walk free. Don’t exactly expect everyone to be happy with it, but you are free citizens of your home countries.”

Aaldenberg looked at Julia. “What are you going to do after this?”

“Campaign against these horrible games. I’m certain the media has plastered our faces everywhere. You?”

“I don’t know; the IOC probably loves me or hates me right now. But I need to get away from politics. I’ve learned it’s too barbarous for my tastes.”