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"The Baskay looks beautiful in the Munlight."

The President turned slightly toward his wife. The ocean stretched out before them, waves lapping quietly against the sand below. The air was cool, still. His wife said nothing. She didn’t need to. She could see it in him.

He leaned against the railing, his hand tightening along the wood. It trembled, just slightly.

"I do enjoy this," he said after a moment. "The quiet. For all the things I don’t do anymore... I enjoy my free time."
It wasn’t convincing.
For decades, the Basilic presidency had been ceremonial -- banquets, speeches, smiling for cameras. A role for men who had already done their work.

Eliasz Sumiński had never been that kind of man.
Twelve years in the army. Years clawing his way through the Senate. He was a man of cold solutions, he had spent his life in the dirt and grime, he knew what it took for change. When the Liberal Democratic Basilic Coalition named him their candidate, most assumed it was a mistake.
Then he won.

He checked his watch.
Thirty minutes.
He looked back out at the ocean, jaw tightening. He couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t breathe right. The beach, the breeze, the quiet; he felt out of touch, his heart raced with the possibilities of tomorrow.

Too far removed. Too far from the capital.

He had been here two weeks, building his alibi. Every night, black SUVs arrived without headlights and left before sunrise. Informants filtered in and out. Fragments of updates. Movements in the Senate. He wrote checks and made calls, talking of ham sandwiches and bottles of wine.

He exhaled slowly, wiping a thin layer of reflecting sweat from his brow. His wife glanced at him again, just briefly, then turned back to the horizon. She understood enough not to ask.

He thought back to Joachim. That conversation, the one that set all of this in motion. Eliasz let out a faint breath of a laugh, almost inaudible.

The old man had been right.

Eight months of ceremonies, speeches, handshakes. Playing the role. Smiling through it. Letting them believe he had settled into comfort -- into irrelevance. He would go back to basic training before doing this again.
The world seemed to still. The wind dropped. The ocean flattened. For a moment, everything held its breath.
Tick.
Tick.
He stared at the horizon.
He almost let himself imagine it -- the calamity, the concussion, to be there in the Capital as it happened.
He stopped, clearing his mind.

He checked his watch again.
He thought about what the new Senate building would look like after this.

He felt the chill of a cold wind against his sweat.