novelnext Chapter 120 Welcome to Rome
Chapter 120 Welcome to Rome
Chapter 120 Welcome to Rome (Bonus Chapter for 15000 Monthly Tickets)
The rain was still falling outside the car window.
Leo Wallace hung up the phone.
The light from the phone screen went out, and the carriage fell into darkness again, with only the occasional streetlights casting dappled shadows on his face.
Sanders gave his bottom line and his list.
That was a "safe" list.
Deputy Minister, Assistant Minister, Policy Advisor.
These people may sympathize with Pittsburgh, or they may agree with progressive ideas, but they are all within the rules.
With this group of people, it would take at least a month to go through that damned administrative review process.
Leo doesn't have a month; he only has twelve days.
He has to take a shortcut.
He had to find the one who could make the final decision, the one who could disregard the rules and tear a hole in this massive bureaucratic machine.
"Mr. President."
Leo broke the silence in his mind.
"I've seen Sanders' list. Those guys can't save Pittsburgh; they can't handle urgent matters."
Leo's gaze drifted to the pitch-black night outside the window.
"Who are we supposed to see after we get to Washington?"
Leo's voice carried a sense of expected complacency.
In his mind, Franklin Roosevelt was omniscient and omnipotent.
This ghost ruled that city for twelve years; he knew every brick, the direction of every sewer, and even the secrets hidden in the crevices of the White House walls.
"You must have your own goals, right?"
Leo pressed on with his questions.
"Is it the current White House Chief of Staff? Or some shadow advisor who wields real power in the Department of Transportation? Or someone hiding in K..."
A super lobbyist in an office building on the street, whom even Sanders wouldn't dare to mess with?
"Give me a name. No matter who he is, no matter what the cost, I will knock on his door."
Leo awaits that name.
He waited for Roosevelt, as usual, to deliver a precise coordinate in that commanding tone, and then tell him how to breach the fortress.
However, he was met with silence.
The silence lasted for a long time, with only the sound of wheels rolling echoing in my ears.
"Mr. President?" Leo frowned.
Finally, that familiar voice rang out.
But this time, that confidence of being in control of everything was gone.
The voice was very calm, even somewhat hollow.
"I have no idea."
Leo was stunned.
He thought he had misheard, or that his mind was foggy, causing some kind of noise at the level of consciousness.
"What?"
Leo asked himself the same question, his tone filled with astonishment.
"What did you say?"
I said, "I don't know."
Roosevelt repeated it.
These words struck Leo's mind clearly, shattering his previous unwavering expectation.
Leo felt his heart suddenly clench.
Are you kidding me?
Leo's voice became urgent.
"You sent me to Washington, you sent me to wade into that alligator pit, you made me stake the fate of Pittsburgh on this trip. And now, we're on our way to the airport, and you're telling me you don't know who we're supposed to see?"
Panic began to spread in Leo's mind.
"You are Roosevelt! You are the man who laid the foundation for the modern American government! How could you not know?"
"Leo".
Roosevelt interrupted him and took Leo into the consciousness space.
"Look at me."
In Leo's consciousness space, the giant sitting in the wheelchair raised his head.
"I am a ghost from 1945."
"When I die, this country doesn't have intercontinental highways, the internet, or that damn YouTube."
At that time, Washington, D.C., had only two million inhabitants, and everyone lived in Georgetown, drinking together in the same club every night.
"I knew everyone back then. I knew General Marshall liked to ride horses in the morning, I knew Director Hoover's dirty little secrets, I knew which senator had gambling debts, and which judge had a mistress."
That was my era.
Roosevelt paused for a moment.
"But now it's the 21st century, Leo, that city has changed."
"The rooms we used to plot in secret are now transparent glass conference rooms. The regional party leaders who once controlled the votes are now data companies that control algorithms. Deals that used to be settled with just a few phone calls now require dozens of lawyers sitting there reviewing thousands of pages of contracts."
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"That old map of power is long outdated."
"I don't know who sits in the White House Chief of Staff position now, I don't know who the Secretary of Transportation's grandfather is, and I don't know which lobbying firm is in charge on K Street now."
"I am not an omniscient and omnipotent god, Leo. I am just an outdated old politician."
Leo slumped into the back seat of the car.
The rain outside the car window seemed to be getting heavier, with dense raindrops pounding against the glass, completely isolating the outside world into a chaotic mess.
He felt an unprecedented anxiety.
He had always believed that he had an all-knowing GPS.
No matter what difficulties you encounter, just ask "Mr. President," and you will get the answer.
But now, the GPS malfunctions.
The screen displays "Unknown area".
"So what are we going to do?"
There was a hint of despair in Leo's voice.
"We were like two blind men who had wandered into a minefield. We didn't even know where the mines were buried or who had the detonator."
"Are we going to our deaths?"
"No."
Roosevelt dismissed Leo's pessimism, and his tone remained reassuring.
"The political landscape has changed, the rules have changed, and even the players have changed several times."
"But there is one thing that will never change."
"What?" Leo asked instinctively.
"human nature."
"Greed, fear, vanity, ambition. These underlying logics that drive human behavior have never changed from the ancient Roman Senate to the present day."
"I may not know their names, and I may not know their current titles."
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"but."
Roosevelt's voice lowered.
"I know the taste of power."
"Power has a smell, child."
"This feeling is the same whether it's the White House in 1945 or Capitol Hill in the 21st century."
"It gathers in specific places and flows to specific people."
"Only when I got there, only when I truly stepped into that swamp, smelled the air there, saw the eyes of those people, and heard the tone of their voices."
Only then can I tell you who the pretentious fool is and who the one truly wields the knife.
"Only then can I, through intuition, help you find the way out of that maze."
Roosevelt looked at Leo.
"Politics is never a journey that follows a map."
"If anyone can win with a map, then what's the point of having a leader?"
"True politics is navigating through the fog."
"You can't see the reefs in front of you, you can't see the lighthouse in the distance. You can only rely on the sound of the wind, the smell of the sea, and the intuition honed on the edge of life and death to gamble on a direction."
"This is the destiny of a leader."
"You have to forge a path where there is none."
Roosevelt stretched out his hand and pointed forward.
"Now, the problem is back to you, Leo."
"I have no list, no phone numbers, and no foolproof winning strategy."
"All I have are these eyes that have seen through people's hearts and this brain that has fought in the arena of power struggles all my life."
"Would you dare to make a bet with me?"
"Do you dare take me, an old politician almost a century out of date, into the world's most dangerous maze?"
Leo sat in the dark carriage.
He listened to these words, to this once-powerful giant admitting his limitations.
Strangely, that feeling of despair disappeared.
This is the real thing.
No one is a god.
Roosevelt was not, and neither was he.
They were both groping in the dark, but Roosevelt's senses were a bit sharper.
This is not a game with cheat codes.
This is a real adventure.
Leo looked at Ethan, who was driving in the front seat.
Ethan's profile was tense; the prolonged silence in the back seat clearly made him uneasy.
"Ethan."
Leo spoke.
"Boss?" Ethan responded immediately, his voice trembling with anxiety. "What are your instructions? Should I contact Washington now to arrange airport pickup? Or should I book a hotel first?"
"Drive faster, I can't wait!"
"Leo said."
Twenty minutes later.
A black Lincoln sedan was parked on the departure level of Pittsburgh International Airport.
Leo opened the car door and stepped into the cold, rainy night.
He was carrying a briefcase containing the shelved bond issuance plan.
He strode into the terminal and through the bustling crowd.
All around were travelers rushing about to make a living; some were on the phone, some were eating fast food, and some were dozing off in their chairs.
No one knew what the young mayor was about to do.
No one knew that he was about to embark on a high-stakes gamble that would put the fate of the city on the line.
After passing through security, I boarded the plane.
Leo sat in the cramped economy class seat.
The plane began to taxi, the roar of the engines gradually increased, and the vibrations spread throughout the body via the seat.
With a strong push, the plane lifted its nose and plunged into the dark night sky.
The lights on the ground quickly receded, turning into scattered diamonds on the black velvet.
That's Pittsburgh.
It is his city, his battlefield, and his Achilles' heel.
Now, he has left all of that behind.
Ahead lay darkness at an altitude of ten thousand meters, and unknown clouds.
"Go, child."
Roosevelt's voice rang in my ears, sounding exceptionally vast amidst the roar of airplane engines.
Go and meet your fate.
Initially, this place was infested with malaria, mosquitoes, and a stinking swamp that reeked of decay.
The Potomac River meanders through here, leaving behind large amounts of silt and shallows that are difficult to navigate.
This land was never created for trade.
It lacks the natural deep-water harbor of the Hudson River estuary in New York, capable of accommodating giant ships, and the solid granite foundation of Manhattan Island to support the ambitions of its skyscrapers.
Merchants disliked the muddy conditions here, fearing they would slow down the flow of gold coins; captains hated the shallows, which would cause their cargo to run aground.
This land was not created for faith.
It lacks the Puritan-like rigor forged in the biting cold of Boston, and the lofty height of Beacon Hill, which attempts to touch God amidst the ice and snow.
Here, there is only damp heat, miasma, and sweltering heat that makes one drowsy. This climate is conducive to the growth of mold, fever, and intrigue, but it is not conducive to the nurturing of reverence for God.
It was born out of compromise.
Thomas Jefferson wanted an idyllic capital; he distrusted the bankers and industrial giants of the North, and he wanted the nation’s power center to forever retain the earthy scent of the plantations.
Alexander Hamilton wanted a strong federal heart, a centralized machine that could control the nation’s financial lifeline like a pump pumping blood.
So they made a deal over drinks at the dinner.
They drew a circle on the banks of the Potomac River, a place uninhabited only by wild ducks and alligators.
They surrendered this quagmire to power.
This is a city entirely constructed by human will.
Its street layout imitated the radial avenues of Paris, designed to facilitate cavalry charges to suppress riots; its architectural style imitated Greek and Roman temples, aiming to create a sense of sacredness that did not originally exist by piling up stones.
But at the beginning, it was just a muddy village.
Members of Congress lived in leaky log cabins, pigs and chickens roamed freely on Pennsylvania Avenue, and diplomats complained that the dampness made them suffer from rheumatism.
Until the British set fire.
In 1814, British troops stormed the area and burned down the Parliament House and the Presidential Palace.
The fire consumed the wooden structure, but unexpectedly hardened the bones of the city.
On the ruins, stone replaced wood, and the will for revenge replaced the complacency of living in seclusion.
The subsequent Civil War emboldened it to become completely inflated.
Its roots were nourished by the blood of millions of people.
In order to win the war and maintain the unity of the federation, power began to concentrate here at an unprecedented rate.
Railways, telegraph, military, taxation.
All resources converge along the Potomac River.
The city began to devour the surrounding land like cancer cells, transforming from an administrative village with only a few dilapidated houses into a white marble monster ready to devour everything at any moment.
But it was in 1933 that it was truly given a soul, or rather, that it was given "divinity".
Before that, Washington was simply the capital of the United States of America, an administrative center for handling domestic affairs.
After that, Washington became the Rome of the world.
The person in the wheelchair arrived here.
Faced with the abyss of the Great Depression, he did not choose to back down, nor did he choose to follow the old laissez-faire dogma; he chose to take a gamble.
He greatly expanded the boundaries of the federal government.
Organizations composed of countless letter abbreviations—WPA, CCC, NRA, SEC—sprang up like mushrooms after rain in this swamp.
He turned the machine, which he called the "Federal Government," up to its maximum power.
The originally loose federal system was forcibly welded into a solid iron plate.
Washington was no longer just a place to make laws; it became a place to distribute bread and to soothe people's hearts with radio waves.
He created a Leviathan.
This Leviathan's tentacles have reached into every corner of American life, from the price of milk on the dinner table to the interest rate on bank deposits, from minimum wage in factories to retirement pensions for the elderly.
It became omnipotent and also incredibly vast.
And now, this Leviathan lies quietly in the embrace of the Potomac River, radiating a suffocating pressure in the night.
At an altitude of 10,000 meters, the engines of the Boeing passenger plane emitted a monotonous and dull roar.
The cabin lights were dimmed, and most passengers had already drifted off to sleep.
Leo Wallace sat by the window, not sleepy.
He turned his head, pressing his forehead against the cold porthole glass, his gaze piercing through the thin clouds and falling upon the dazzling sea of light below.
The plane is descending.
The night view of Washington, D.C. is completely different from the lights of Pittsburgh, which are full of life and have an industrial feel.
The lighting here is neat, solemn, and possesses a cold, austere beauty.
This is an epic written in stone, and a labyrinth built with power.
Leo watched all of this.
He was just a young mayor from Pittsburgh, carrying a briefcase full of letters pleading for help.
Standing before this colossal creature, he felt like a sheep trying to intrude into the territory of a pride of lions.
Small and fragile.
"Look, Leo."
Franklin Roosevelt's voice carried an extremely complex emotion.
This emotion was mixed with pride, but also with an unspeakable sadness.
"This is my work."
Roosevelt seemed to be looking down at the city he had ruled for twelve years through Leo's eyes.
"When I first arrived, this place was still filled with the pedantry of the old days. Those old-fashioned gentlemen sat in the club drinking brandy and believed that the only function of the government was to collect taxes and deliver mail."
"I changed it."
"I filled the swamp here with the bricks and stones of the new government. I forged the skeleton here with the fires of war."
"I turned it into a sophisticated war machine, a great machine that could crush fascism, save the world economy, and send mankind to the moon."
"At that time, the machine was alive."
"It is full of power and efficiency. Every turn of its gears is to snatch life back from the clutches of death on this planet."
Roosevelt's voice lowered.
"But now—"
"Take a look at it."
Following Roosevelt's direction, Leo looked down at the brightly lit cluster of buildings.
"It's too big."
"It's expanded too much."
"Those temporary institutions that were once set up to deal with crises have now become permanent bureaucratic strongholds. The power that was once concentrated for efficiency has now become a breeding ground for corruption."
"This machine is rusty, Leo."
"It is wrapped in millions of regulations, ordinances, hearings, and lobbying groups, and every joint of it is filled with the grit of quid pro quo."
"When I left, it was a sharp sword."
"Now, it looks like a bloated tomb."
"A white mausoleum that buries ideals and is driven only by inertia."
As Leo listened to Roosevelt's lament, a strange chill ran through him.
What he was going to challenge was precisely this kind of tomb.
He wanted to cut a gash in this lifeless behemoth and let his meager hope flow out.
"Can we win?"
Leo asked himself.
This question was not only directed at Roosevelt, but also at himself.
In Pittsburgh, he faced Moretti and Cartwright, who, though troublesome, were right before him, flesh-and-blood enemies.
But here.
In Washington.
He wasn't facing just one person.
Rather, it's a system, an inertia, a massive force that has been operating for over a century, powerful enough to devour any challenger. Whether or not you win doesn't depend on how big this machine is.
Roosevelt's voice hardened again.
"It depends on the person operating the machine."
"Machines are inanimate, but people are alive."
"Even if it's a tomb, living people still live inside. As long as they are living, they have desires, weaknesses, and fears."
"Although this machine is rusty, its power source is still working."
"As long as we can find the person with the strongest desire, as long as we can put the fuel in his hands."
"The machine will then start running again."
"Whether it's crushing the enemy or crushing ourselves."
An announcement came over the loudspeaker, reminding passengers to stow their tray tables and straighten their seatbacks.
Leo straightened his collar.
He looked down at the runway lights getting closer and closer, and at the city that lay dormant like a giant beast in the night.
He had no way out.
The $500 million in Pittsburgh, Frank's trust, Murphy's political future, and his own fate.
Everything hinges on this landing.
"Welcome to Rome, Leo."
Roosevelt said softly.
"Remember the taste of this place."
"This smells of the swamp, and it smells of power."
"Don't let it drown you."
The plane crashed heavily onto the runway, its tires screeching as they rubbed against the ground.
The immense force of the thrust slammed Leo into his seat.
This is Rome.
This is the center of the world.
This is the ultimate arena where rules are set, benefits are distributed, and life and death are decided.
The cabin lights came on, and the flight attendant's voice came over the intercom, welcoming everyone to Washington, D.C.
The surrounding passengers got up, grabbed their luggage, and made phone calls.
Only Leo remained seated, pausing for two seconds.
"Are you ready?" Roosevelt's voice rang out. "To shed blood, or to be crowned."
Leo unbuckled his seatbelt, and the metal buckle made a crisp "click".
He stood up, picked up his briefcase, and strode toward the cabin door.
he came.
Armed with a dagger from the Ironbelt, he stormed into the most dangerous arena in the world.
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