No one notices anything is wrong until they've been at work for a while, at their desks in the Federal Building in Santa Fe. They work for a division of the Secret Service, a pet project of the Vice President Alex Abel (elected two years prior). Eventually, Gavin figures out what has happened and flips out while talking to Damien (the director of the division) trying to understand it. Everyone else takes it better. What they put together is this:
They performed the Big Masonic Ritual a few days before, and Alex was filled with vast accumulated power. He said that he couldn't contain it, but he could see what to do... and the universe changed. Now they are and always have been working for the government in a super-secret black-bag unit. They get Damien to remember as well, and decide that they really need to get ahold of Alex and tell him about it. There's a lot of confusion about why Alex didn't ascend - wasn't that the whole point?
"We did the ritual, gave him all the power, and he accidentally used it to take over the country." "Well, what was he supposed to be doing with it?"
The Vice President makes time for them and comes for a meeting, guarded by Eponymous looking even more dangerous in a standard government suit. They badger Alex a bit and he remembers what happened. There is some discussion about why Alex didn't ascend and what is going on, and some attempts at mystical analysis which are inconclusive. Perhaps Alex must become president, which requires an assassination? No one is really comfortable with that. They decide to try to get in touch with the Diplomat from Magonia - Alex as VP ought to be able to do that.
Eventually the Comte does turn up, looking extremely old and tired, hair completely white and gait stooped. He has a startlingly frank and friendly discussion with them. He believes that Alex isn't at the top until he's president. He pledges that he'll put in a word for the team at the end of the world. He also says about Alex not using the power to make himself president that it takes a lot of power to make Abel VP, but to make a black man President at the turn of the twenty-first century would have taken even more. Everyone sees the reason in that.
So they're back to plotting assassination. They think about just going to do it, or Angelina taking the fall pretending to be working for the mob. They evaluate various kidnapping strategies.
"We could just do it with the frickin' monkeys!" - Esteban
But that plan founders as well on the idea of cameras in the White House. They think about having the president really want Alex Abel to be president and resigning. Esteban could do it, given a major charge, he thinks. They fine tune that plan a bit, but are still without the charge.
"That's very subtle, no monkeys or nothin'" - Angelina
Esteban excuses himself and calls Violet and tries to make a date with her, clumsily. She mostly rejects him until he tells her he'll pay a million dollars or so. This warms her plutomantic heart (and somehow she doesn't understand that he's mostly trying to get her a charge). He comes back in and informs the team. They're startled that this seems to have worked, and brief Damien on the plan.
"I thought you were smooth." - Violet
Esteban meets Violet for dinner in Washington D.C. with a big cashier's check. She finds this intensely erotic, but eventually lets Damien, as her boss, know that she has a major charge. Damien sends Alexandra there and they do the transference ritual. Alexandra finds herself knowing the cost and value of everything, and finds it disturbing. Thielo, especially, could be sold for huge piles of money - much more than the price of most people. She gets to Esteban quickly and transfers it to him. Esteban also finds the pricing thing distracting, but as he assimilates the charge he finds it turns the entire world into "Indecent Proposal".
The team has arranged to be at big dinner for the NOW that the President will be speaking at (and they even arrange for the Secretary of State to be there too - since she's a she). While there, Esteban is introduced to the President as a big donor type, and he does his mojo on the poor man. "I have the thing you wanted", says Esteban, and gives the President both a prepared resignation letter and a major jones to resign.
The President gets up and gives an impassioned speech about how it is time to heal the wounds in the country, old wounds of racism and division and so forth. Because of that, and because there is no way the country would ever elect a black president on its own, he is resigning so that Alex Abel will become president.
Needless to say, the press and the crowd goes berserk, as do the presidential advisors. He has to be escorted out.
Over the next few days Washington is the proverbial cyclone. Unfortunately for the President's handlers, what Esteban did to him doesn't wear off, and he keeps insisting that he has thought about it a lot and wants to do what is right for the country and so on. Those who want Abel not to be president have the problem that either they can say that the President should be ignored because he's being incompetent or that he is competent in which case how can they ignore him?
Three days later Alex Abel is sworn in as the President of the United States of America. As the ceremony closes, the team notices the face of the Comte in the crowd as the Diplomat from Magonia. Can this be a good sign? It is not. As Alex is sworn in he ascends in silver light, as does the Comte, and mere breaths later the entire world dissolves into slow-motion special-effects and sparkles.