Capitol Threat bk-15

by William Bernhardt

  He paused, then looked squarely into the television camera. “Ladies and gentlemen. When you have the chance to go with a hero, why settle for anything less?”

  Despite their previous conversation, Ben was still surprised when Keyes’s fickle finger of fate turned next toward him. “The Chair recognizes the junior senator from the State of Oklahoma.” He smiled thinly. “You have five minutes, sir.”

  There was an audible stir in the chamber, including the gallery. Ben wasn’t the only one who was surprised.

  “Then I’d best get started.” Ben stood beside his desk and turned so he could see the entire assemblage. He’d never spoken to such a large group in his entire life, certainly not if you considered the countless people who must be watching on television. He felt his knees wobble a bit just thinking about it. So, he reasoned, it was best not to think about it. Concentrate on what he was doing. Even if this wasn’t a courtroom, the primary rule of closing argument for the defense was the same: bring it back to the person.

  “This has been a very long process,” Ben began, trying to slow the pace of the rhetoric a bit. “At least, it seems like a long time to me. It seems like an eternity to me.” Mild chuckles from the gallery. “But imagine how it must feel for Thaddeus Roush. Imagine how it must feel to have your name dragged through the public dirt, to have your secrets revealed, your previously unblemished reputation tarnished, and for what? Because the President chose you for the Supreme Court.”

  He turned, wondered briefly if his better profile was to the camera, then got on with his speech. “Thaddeus Roush never asked to be on the Supreme Court, never expected to be asked. Sure, he didn’t turn it down when it arrived—what sane jurist would?—but he never asked for it. The President came to him. And where is that President now? Well, as we all know, the President has silently withdrawn his support from his own candidate. What can you say about a President who commits his people but then does not support them? And what is the basis for the President’s withdrawal of support, and the vast majority of the abuse that has been heaped upon Judge Roush since his nomination? The fact that he refused to hide in somebody else’s closet. He resolved that if he was going to present himself to the American public, he was going to present himself as the person he truly was. He wouldn’t try to fly under the radar. He wouldn’t try to be bland and innocuous so he could slippery-slide through confirmation, even if what he did was controversial, even if it might destroy his chances of confirmation. Why would anyone do such a thing? Because, for some people, honesty is more important than popularity. Integrity is more important than success.”

  Ben paused, hoping some of this would soak in. “Isn’t that the kind of man we want on the Supreme Court?”

  He turned again, facing a different part of the floor. He didn’t have as much room to maneuver here as he might in a courtroom, but he would have to make do.

  “I know some of you are disturbed because, when Judge Roush was a very young man, he assisted a woman in obtaining an abortion, a fact which, I would remind you for the record, he has never attempted to deny or excuse. The fact is, Thaddeus Roush regrets it more than anyone. He considers it the greatest mistake of his life. But which of us did not make some mistake when we were young, hmm? I’d like to see that person cast the first stone. We all make mistakes when we’re young because, frankly, we’re so stupid. And I’m not sure I’m that much smarter now. But I know this: a good man should not be rejected because of a mistake he made twenty-some years ago and has regretted ever since. If youthful transgressions, even serious ones, were a prohibition to public service…” He smiled a little. “…this chamber might well be empty.”

  He paused. Was this getting through to anyone? Was he persuading the undecideds? Were there any undecideds to persuade? There was no way of knowing.

  Less than two minutes on the clock. He had to plow ahead.

  “I listened with great interest to the remarks made by Senator Bening, but I must respectfully disagree with his conclusion. It is not appropriate to reject one candidate because we think we have inside information about the President’s mind and prefer another choice to this one. You don’t reject your meat and potatoes because you think there might be dessert. And it seems particularly inappropriate when the dessert has been stage-managing events from behind the scenes, promulgating negative information about the current nominee, actively campaigning for the job in contravention of the history of judicial practice in the United States.”

  The stir in the chamber wasn’t loud enough to drown out the clattering of the gavel or the outrage of the senator from Colorado. “Will the speaker yield?”

  “I will not,” Ben replied.

  “Mister Chairman, I move that the speaker’s remaining time be revoked!”

  “Senator…”

  “I will not stand here and allow this partisan advocate to tarnish the reputation of a great Coloradan, a bona fide hero. I ask him again to yield.”

  “And I say again that I will not.” Ben glanced up at Chairman Keyes. “And I’d like the time consumed by the senator from Colorado’s interruptions added back to my remaining time.”

  “It will be,” Keyes answered. “You have a minute and a half remaining, Senator. Speaking for us all—this had better be good. Congressional immunity won’t save you if you’re making accusations without proof.”

  “In my world, Mister Chairman, we don’t say boo without proof. Wish that were the case here in Washington.” He turned back toward the chamber. “Many people have remarked upon the coincidence that the dirty secrets of Thaddeus Roush’s past were only revealed after he was approved by the committee. Almost as if someone was holding them in reserve, only using them if it became necessary. There was a great deal of inquiry directed toward determining whether the information was correct. But I’ve heard very little inquiry about where that information came from. There’s a reason, of course. Ultimately, the information was revealed by a reporter for the Post, and there is a tradition of journalists not revealing their sources even when ordered to do so by the courts. There was a widespread feeling that even if the reporter in question were brought before the courts or the Congress, she would remain silent. She had committed no crime and did not appear to have abetted one. There was no reason for her to talk.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “So I didn’t bother asking. I sent her a Congressional subpoena for the original documents that were leaked by her anonymous source. And then I had them fingerprinted.”

  Creased brows crisscrossed the gallery. Everyone seemed to be practically leaning out of their desks. He had their attention now.

  “Good thing all law students preparing to take the bar exam are required to be fingerprinted. Guess who touched the documents?” He paused a beat. “Judge Haskins.”

  The murmuring in the chamber rose to a full buzz. Ben raised his voice; he couldn’t afford to let the tumult consume his remaining time.

  “I don’t imagine for a minute that Judge Haskins did the investigating. The documents were provided to him…” He glanced up at the gallery, where Richard Trevor sat behind Judge Haskins. “…by some other interested source, who in turn received them from an agent of the woman who obtained the abortion in question. But Judge Haskins leaked them when he saw his chance. It was all part of his campaign for the job, perhaps the most clever campaign imaginable—a campaign based upon appearing to refuse to campaign. It worked. He became the heir apparent. Even before the previous nominee had been rejected.”

  “Point of order!” Senator Bening practically screamed. “I will not continue to listen to this defamation of Judge Haskins. The man is a national hero!”

  “I think it mitigates against your status as a hero,” Ben said quietly, “when you’re the one who set the fire.”

  This time, the chamber exploded. Both the Vice President and Senator Keyes were pounding their gavels, to no avail. Everyone talked at once, some fascinated, some outraged. Judge Haskins had a stricken expression on his face; he shook
his head vigorously from side to side. His wife clutched his arm apprehensively. Judge Roush looked at both of them, his expression still blank, but his eyes scrutinizing them carefully.

  “Point of order!” Senator Bening continued shouting. “I demand an apology. I demand an explanation!”

  Chairman Keyes pounded his gavel a few more times. “I’m afraid Senator Kincaid’s time has expired.”

  “I respectfully request a five-minute extension,” Ben replied.

  “Absolutely not!” Senator Bening exclaimed. “I oppose!”

  “Well,” Ben said, “he did demand an explanation. How can I do that if I can’t talk?”

  Maybe it was Ben’s wishful thinking, but Chairman Keyes appeared to be suppressing a grin. “I’ll give you another three,” he said, “with an option for two more if you’re saying anything of interest.”

  “Thanks,” Ben replied. “I will be.” He turned back toward the gallery. “I don’t have time to go into the details, but all the supporting documents will be made available to the press by my Chief of Staff—” He nodded toward Christina. “—as soon as we recess. My investigator has been working the past month to uncover much of this information. He was trying to learn the identity of the woman who was killed at the Roush press conference, an investigation that led him into the world of art theft because, as it turns out, the murdered woman was a longtime thief. A thief available to anyone who needed a dirty job done.”

  Ben lifted an envelope from his desk and removed several documents encased in plastic. “But to make a long story short, since I’m already talking on borrowed time, the investigation of that woman’s past led to the discovery of another crime. An arson-for-hire job at the downtown Denver Hilton. She was paid ten thousand dollars, which might not seem like much to you, but was the score of a lifetime for her, especially since she owed money to an extremely dangerous trafficker in stolen art.”

  He took a breath and continued. “My office manager is very clever with computers. Always has been. Even before I could afford one.” In the back of the room, he saw Jones beaming. “He was able to go online and find all of Judge Haskins’s bank accounts. Even the secret one in the Cayman Islands.” The buzz began to build again. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure that this squared with the federal privacy laws, but I figured we had a good reason. Because, as this printout shows, there’s a ten-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal just before the date of the fire. Of course, there could possibly be some other explanation…” He tilted his head to one side. “But I doubt it.”

  Ben glanced up into the gallery. “No wonder you reacted so much more quickly and heroically than anyone else, Judge Haskins. You knew the explosions were coming. You knew exactly where they were and how dangerous they would be. Because you planned the whole thing.”

  Up in the gallery, Haskins rose to his feet, his knees trembling. “It’s…it’s not true! It’s…”

  Ben tossed a stack of paper down on his desk. “The documents speak for themselves. You probably arranged for the doors to be stuck, too, didn’t you? To create a crisis situation that only you would be prepared to resolve.”

  Senators and spectators rose from their seats, whispering and shouting, waving their arms in the air. Ben clasped his hand over the microphone, causing a skull-shattering feedback. In the aftermath, the room fell quiet.

  “Well, that worked nicely,” Ben said. “You might consider that as an alternative to the gavel, Mister Chairman.”

  Keyes gave him a small salute.

  “One last thing,” Ben added. “I can’t prove Judge Haskins killed that woman at Thaddeus Roush’s home during the press conference. But I can prove he was there. And I know he was willing to put hundreds of lives in danger as part of his quest to get himself a higher profile, and we know he was willing to deal with the devil to smear Tad Roush. Is it really so difficult to imagine that he would kill one woman to insure there was a vacancy he could fill? I’ve contacted Lieutenant Albertson of the Washington PD and suggested that they get a subpoena for the Haskins local residence. I think they might just find something that will eliminate all doubt about what really happened.”

  The room was almost completely out of control, but Ben insisted on finishing. “Just one last thing,” he said, shouting above the fray. “Now that the dessert is out of the way, why don’t we confirm the meat and potatoes? Thaddeus Roush is a good man and you all know it, a good man who’s been subjected to a frame and a smear campaign and a lot of other trouble he never asked for. He is enormously qualified and he deserves to sit with the other Supremes. So for once, let’s do the right thing.”

  Ben turned toward the front of the room. “Mister Chairman, this is a democracy. So I move that we put this thing to an immediate vote.”

  Keyes was about to speak, when at the front of the room, he saw Senator Matera rise slowly to her feet.

  The chamber became quiet once more and everyone strained to hear her voice. “I’d like to say one thing. This is the last time I will be present in the Senate chamber, and the last vote I’m going to cast. I’m going to vote for Thaddeus Roush to be confirmed in his appointment to the Supreme Court. I’d be obliged if the rest of you would do the same.”

  All at once, Ben heard someone clapping, then another, and another, and then it grew until it became a groundswell of thunderous applause. The senator to Ben’s right rose, still clapping, then the other Democrats did the same, and before long, more than half the Senate was on its feet.

  Ben raised his hand upward toward Judge Roush. Roush stood and returned the salute. Their eyes met. And that was enough.

  59

  Chairman Keyes let a few more people speak after Ben so everyone could have a clip for their local news, but less than an hour later, he called for the vote.

  “The matter presently before the chamber is the nomination of Judge Thaddeus Roush to the Supreme Court of the United States. The question before us is this: Does the Senate advise and consent to this nomination by right of exercising its powers granted by Article 2 of the United States Constitution? I will direct the clerk to call the roll.”

  “Senator Armstrong.”

  “No.”

  “Senator Bernard.”

  “No.”

  “Senator Byers.”

  “Yes.”

  And so it began. Ben sat at his desk, elbow to elbow with his fellow senators, and watched the votes trickle down. Most of the senators were voting along what passed for party lines in this convoluted mess—Republicans voting against the nominee of their President, Democrats voting for a die-hard Republican. Ben was pleased to see that at least his party was falling into line; there was considerable doubt about whether Roush could even muster that vote after the abortion revelation. So far, though, they hadn’t gotten anything from the Republican contingent. And they couldn’t win without it.

  Five minutes later, the clerk was approaching the middle of the alphabet.

  “Senator Matera.”

  The prior rhythm was altered as the clerk paused to allow Matera to rise to her feet again. It wasn’t required, but Matera wanted to do it, and no one was going to stop her.

  “I vote yes.” Her voice crackled a bit, and as she said it, she peered down at a number of her colleagues. Ben knew who she had singled out. She wasn’t glaring at random. She was staring down the handful of Republicans who were considered moderates. The precious few who might conceivably change their vote given the proper motivation.

  The first moderate to vote was Senator McHenry. He voted no. Ben saw Matera give him the evil eye, but no words were spoken.

  The second moderate to vote was Senator Norwood. She also voted no.

  But Senator Palmetto voted yes. The second Republican to do so.

  “Senator Quince.”

  Ben could feel the man’s eyes burning down on him as he spoke. “I know this isn’t the time for speeches,” Quince said quietly, “but I just wanted to explain that, although I still have some reservations ab
out this nominee, I am moved by the words of the senator from Oklahoma. This chamber should be focusing on the qualifications of the nominee for the job to which he has been nominated. When we focus on anything else, we encourage people to create scandal, which appears to me to be exactly what has happened in this unfortunate case. We must stop this before it robs the process—and the Constitution—of its dignity.” He took a deep breath. “Accordingly, I vote yes.”

  Ben’s heart almost leaped out of his chest. For the first time, he allowed himself to believe confirmation was just marginally possible.

  The murmur in the chamber was audible, but the clerk continued calling names as if he did not hear it. In the course of the next five minutes, five Republican senators voted yes. No one had abstained. The vote was almost even, the nays only slightly ahead.

  “Senator Wellington.”

  “Yes.”

  “Senator Wyatt.”

  “Yes.”

  The chamber and gallery alike held their breath. The vote was fifty yeses, forty-nine nos.

  “Senator Yarmouth.”

  There was an understandable pause. He appeared to be staring at the tote board as he spoke.

  “Well, under the circumstances…I vote yes.”

  Ben’s eyes widened with stunned surprise. A loud hue and cry ballooned up from the gallery, but the Vice President banged his gavel, cutting it off.

  “Accordingly,” the Vice President announced, “the yeses number fifty-one, while the nos are forty-nine. The Senate therefore does advise and consent to the nomination of Judge Thaddeus Roush to the Supreme Court. We are out of session.”

  He banged the gavel again, and this time there was no stopping the whooping and laughing and crying, the ecstatic outcries and disgruntled grumbling. One hundred senators and six hundred spectators spoke at once, all of them amazed at the historic event they had just witnessed.

  Senator Hammond pushed his way down the aisle to Ben. He grabbed his hand and began shaking it with great force. Tears were in his eyes. “Damn it,” he said, smiling, “I knew you were the right man for this job. I knew it!”