The Price Of Power

by James W. Huston

  “Fine, opposition is due Wednesday, reply by Thursday close of business, and we’ll meet again on Friday.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Babb left the courtroom with his usual stoic expression, disguising the concern he felt.

  Molly scanned the street in front of her Arlington town house as she waited for Dillon. Two tightly packed bags stood next to her on the sidewalk. She saw Dillon’s BMW turn into the block. He pulled over to the curb in front of her condo, got out, and picked up her suitcases. Opening the trunk of the M3, he put her bags on top of his.

  She looked at the ski rack on the roof and Dillon’s skis. As she walked toward her side of the car, she said, “Don’t you feel stupid driving around a city that has no snow with skis on the roof of your car?”

  “No.” Dillon smiled. “Why would I feel stupid?”

  “I don’t know, just looks … ridiculous.”

  “I think it looks cool,” Dillon said, opening the door and climbing in. She got in next to him. He started the BMW and moved into the traffic.

  “It’s like wearing a raincoat when it’s sunny.”

  Dillon’s eyes shifted to her quickly, then refocused on the road. “What is?” he asked, perplexed.

  “Having a ski rack on your car.”

  “I don’t drive around with a ski rack all the time. Plus, it’s a Yakima rack—you can convert it into a mountain bike rack, or a kayak rack, or a ski rack.”

  “It’s like driving with your headlights on in the daytime.”

  “Get off it!”

  “I didn’t tell them where I was going.” Molly smiled.

  “Who?”

  “The White House. They don’t know where I went. I just said I needed a day off.”

  “Very smart,” Dillon answered. “As hostile as Van den Bosch is, he’d probably implant a homing device under your ear one night when you were passed out on your desk from overwork.”

  “Yeah, I should probably check,” Molly said, her head resting on the headrest with her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the road as they turned south onto Route 29 toward Charlottesville.

  “We oughta stop in Charlottesville and walk around the Grounds,” Molly said.

  “No time,” Dillon answered.

  “Why not?”

  “We need to get to Wintergreen and check in.”

  “How long is it going to take to get us there?”

  “I don’t know, two and a half hours or so. Three max.”

  “It’s seven now. We could stop for a half hour in Charlottesville.”

  “Maybe on the way back, in the daylight.”

  “You ever miss Charlottesville?”

  “Sure. It’s a great town.”

  “Things seemed so different then. We were so naive.”

  “Maybe you were.”

  “Right, you weren’t?” she said.

  “Why do you say we were naive?”

  “I don’t know, just about use of law. The whole power game. Politics.”

  “Maybe I don’t feel naive anymore, so I rewrite history to make myself believe I never was.”

  Molly drifted off to sleep as the fatigue that would have caused her to put her head down on her desk caused her instead to trust Dillon on a highway at night.

  As they turned onto the 250 bypass around Charlottesville to stay on 29, Molly reawakened. “Why are we going to Wintergreen?” she asked sleepily.

  “To go skiing,” Dillon answered, stating the obvious.

  “Any other agenda?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Did you bring me up here to tell me something?”

  “No.”

  “No other agenda?”

  “Sure. My agenda is to sleep, get up early, ski, go to bed, get up early, do it again, and drive back to Washington. That’s my agenda. Now, if you want me to come up with some other kind of agenda, I can do it. I guess I need to get away from D.C., if that counts.”

  She smiled in the dark car. “Sounds good to me. I was hoping it was something like that.”

  “Excellent,” Dillon said, encouraged.

  It was a small mountain, or what passed for a mountain on Oahu. It rose straight up out of a pineapple field surrounded by foliage and beauty. The RSOC, Regional SIGINT Op Center, was virtually unnoticeable.

  CT1 Hernandez stared at the oscilloscope and listened intently to his headphones. He was working with his friends at the NSA in a friendly competition to break the signal from Indonesia. Everybody in the SIGINT community wanted the signal broken now. They all knew what it meant. They all knew who it came from. They all knew it might save the life of an American being held hostage. And they all knew they could do it, given enough time.

  Lieutenant Commander Reed came up behind Hernandez. He was an odd-looking officer who was very uncomfortable in his Navy uniform. Part of the discomfort was from the fact that it fit him thirty pounds ago, and part was that he simply didn’t know how to look like an officer. He was much more interested in electronics than appearance.

  “How’s it coming?”

  Hernandez pointed to the electronic signal displayed in front of him. “See that?”

  Reed indicated that he did.

  Hernandez hated to admit it but finally he said, “I’m stumped. I’ve never seen this before.”

  “It’s American equipment. We should be able to get this.”

  Hernandez sat silently.

  “Check in with NSA, see if they’re making any progress.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get them on line. In fact, get the carrier on line, the cryppies who intercepted this. Let’s all look at the signal together. Maybe we can make some sense of it.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Chapter Nine

  Dillon stood up as Molly walked into the restaurant for breakfast. He waved at her. She saw him and crossed over past the circular fireplace in which a small fire was burning. She kissed him quickly on the lips and sat down for breakfast.

  “How was your room?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “I never sleep well the first night in a new place.”

  “Me neither.”

  “How’s the snow?” she asked, glancing out the window at the slopes.

  “Looks pretty good. I talked to some people who skied yesterday and they said it got icy late in the afternoon, but the morning was great.”

  “Good.”

  “Coffee?” the waiter asked.

  “Sure,” they both said.

  “Are you ready to order?” he inquired.

  “Plain yogurt and a bagel for me,” Molly said.

  “French toast,” Dillon said.

  The waiter brought their coffee and Molly sipped hers. “Thanks for asking me to come.”

  “I feel like this is the first time we’ve had together where we’re not being squeezed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All the Washington stuff. Politics. The Letter of Reprisal.”

  Molly didn’t say anything.

  Dillon could tell Molly had something on her mind. “What’s bugging you?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, you seem distracted.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “I guess I still feel like we’re on opposite sides of the fence. I want to be on the same side.”

  “That’s what I’m talking—”

  Suddenly the beeper on her belt went off. She looked at the number. “Speak of the devil,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I gotta make the call.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The White House. Probably Van den Bosch.”

  “He’s paging you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ignore it!” he said, irritated.

  “I can’t, I’ve got to call him.”

  Dillon sighed and leaned back in his chair. Molly reached into her purse and pulled out her cel
lular phone. She stood up.

  “What? You can’t call him from the table?”

  “It might be confidential,” she said as she headed past the fireplace and out the door of the restaurant.

  It was just a phone call. Yet the intrusion went deeper than he would have expected.

  The waiter brought their food and Dillon stared at it. He wanted to wait for her to come back, but he was hungry. His eyes went toward the lobby, but there was no sign of her. He waited, his anger growing. As his food started to get cold he picked up his fork and began eating, his eyes checking the lobby frequently. Maybe she’d get the point. When he was halfway done, Molly returned. She sat down, picked up her spoon, and began eating her yogurt without comment.

  “What did he want?”

  “How much did you say the lift tickets were?”

  “They’re twenty-eight bucks apiece. What did he want?”

  “I’m thinking about trying snowboarding today. I feel like a change.”

  Dillon tried to read her face. “What kind of change are you thinking about?”

  “All kinds of changes.”

  “Anything other than snowboarding?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Dillon waited.

  “He wanted me to come back to Washington right now.”

  “Why?”

  “To work on a project.”

  “What project?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “He wouldn’t say?”

  “No. He said the telephone line wasn’t secure and he couldn’t talk about it over the phone.”

  Dillon chuckled to himself. “You buy that?”

  Molly took another spoonful of yogurt. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “We only left yesterday afternoon. I knew everything that was in the works. There was no crisis, other than the impeachment thing, which is being handled.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “He asked where I was and who I was with.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did he tell you about the emergency confidential assignment before or after you told him you were with me?”

  She understood what he meant. “After.”

  “He doesn’t want you to be with me.”

  “I think that’s part of it.”

  “But why did he page you at all if he didn’t already know you were with me?”

  “He must have known. He was just confirming it.”

  “I’m getting kind of tired of him making me out to be the bad guy.”

  “So am I, so am I.”

  “When did he say he wanted you?”

  “Right away.”

  Dillon picked up the check the waiter had left and examined it. “We could still beat most of the people to the slopes if we get out there now.”

  “I’m going to try snowboarding. No time like the present.”

  Dillon smiled. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to snowboard. Maybe I’ll learn with you.”

  David Pendleton stood in front of the room full of attorneys. He waited for their conversations to die down and for their undivided attention. He looked intense and distinguished, as always. Although he had mostly gray hair and had just turned sixty, he had the vigor of a much younger man. He wore an expensive dark blue pin-striped suit and a fine white shirt with French cuffs. His silk foulard tie cost more than the suits of some of those in front of him. They finally realized he was waiting for them and terminated their conversations with varying degrees of embarrassment. “Good afternoon,” he said quietly. “I don’t know some of you. My name is David Pendleton.

  “The Speaker has asked me to put together the team of people that I want to work on the impeachment. Although we are to help Bradley Barrett’s Judiciary Committee, what the Speaker really has in mind for us is to be ready for the trial. The Speaker is very confident the President will be impeached by the House, isn’t that right, Mr. Dillon?”

  “I think he is very confident,” Dillon said.

  “If and when the impeachment is voted on, the House will appoint the managers. I am to be one of the managers. Until then, we are simply to get ready. Are you with me?” They indicated they were not only with him, but behind him. They were excited and enthusiastic.

  Pendleton continued. “I would personally appreciate it if the things that we say in this room do not show up in the press. I’m not going to threaten you,” he said softly. “I’m not going to tell you your obligations and responsibilities. I’m just going to tell you that if something that is said in this room ends up in the press, I will be unhappy.”

  Everyone seemed to be in agreement.

  Pendleton surveyed the room to find the person who was paying the least amount of attention. “You,” he said, pointing at her.

  She focused on him. “Me?”

  “Yes, what’s your name?”

  “April Hewett,” she answered with some concern.

  “Okay. Now, has any Supreme Court Justice ever been impeached, Ms. Hewett?” he asked.

  She looked at the ceiling. “Yes. Justice Chase.”

  “Excellent, and what was the result?”

  “Acquitted.”

  “And what was the result for President Johnson?”

  “Acquitted in the Senate by one vote.”

  “Clinton?”

  “Acquitted.”

  “Exactly. And what is our job?”

  “To make sure that President Manchester is convicted in the Senate.”

  He made sure everyone got that very basic and important point. They were there to win, not to be objective. He stood motionless in front of them and spoke with exaggerated slowness. “If the House votes for impeachment and we take it to trial before the Senate, we will not have an acquittal. Does everyone understand that?”

  They nodded. Pendleton’s eyes moved around the room again, seeking another unwilling victim. “Mr. Dillon,” he said. Dillon’s heart jumped.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re something of a constitutional scholar?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Dillon said, returning his hard gaze.

  “Well, you are the one who discovered the Letters of Marque and Reprisal in the Constitution which has gotten us to the place where we are now. Right?”

  Dillon hesitated. “Yes,” he said, agreeing.

  “And you’re the one who took the Letter of Reprisal down to Admiral Billings, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re the one who was there during the discussions with Admiral Billings in which he decided to obey the Letter of Reprisal and ignore the direct order of the President of the United States, who told him not to go forward, correct?”

  “Yes,” Dillon said, feeling he was being patronized.

  “Well then, let’s see how much you know about impeachment. What was the charge against President Johnson by the House?”

  Dillon tried to remember. “Johnson refused to get the approval of the Congress to dismiss some Cabinet appointee. They charged him with violating a new statute which required him to.”

  “Amazing,” Pendleton said. “Exactly. The Tenure of Office Act. Passed just to set him up so if he fired the one they wanted in the Cabinet they could impeach him. It was an issue of conflict of powers, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dillon replied.

  “What was the charge against Justice Chase?”

  “It was basically political,” he said, groping for the facts deep in his memory. “I think Jefferson was out to get him. Maybe, to get John Marshall next. Anyway, Chase criticized Jefferson in some other procedure—”

  “A grand jury charge. Baltimore,” Pendleton interjected, “and two previous trials, he conducted—”

  Dillon went on as if he knew. “—and Jefferson encouraged Congress to impeach him.”

  Pendleton nodded gently. “A conflict of powers again. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Clinton?”

&
nbsp; “Well, obviously very different. Not really about power—”

  “It was about stupidity and arrogance,” Pendleton said. Not much about it that’s very instructive to us here, he thought. “And what is it we have before us here? What’s the charge against President Manchester going to be?”

  “Unfitness for the position and dereliction of duty,” Dillon replied.

  “Exactly, and that is not a conflict of powers issue, is it?”

  “Depends how you look at it,” Dillon responded.

  Pendleton squinted at Dillon and evaluated him more closely. “You would agree that it is not over Congress telling the President to do something and the President not doing it.”

  “Not directly,” Dillon said, agreeing with Pendleton.

  “And you would agree that it is not over the President telling Congress to do something and them not doing it.”

  “Sort of. But it’s over Congress telling the Navy to do something and them doing it, and the President telling the Navy to do something and them not doing it. It is a conflict of power over a third party.”

  “That’s not direct, is it?” Pendleton asked.

  “What exactly is the point here?” Dillon asked, not clear about where this was going.

  Pendleton looked as if he had been insulted. “The point, Mr. Dillon, is that this is unlike any other proceeding in the history of this country.”

  “We know that,” Dillon said testily.

  “I’m here, Mr. Dillon, to determine whether or not everyone in this room is dedicated to our goal, to make sure we have a common objective, and a common understanding. Is there something wrong with that?”

  Dillon couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood up and headed for the door. “I’m on board, Mr. Pendleton. The Speaker asked me to do this, and I’m happy to do it. But I think you’ve got enough attorneys here. My time may be better spent elsewhere.”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Dillon,” Pendleton said curtly. Dillon stopped, his hand already on the door handle, and turned reluctantly toward Pendleton.

  “I don’t want any poisonous attitudes on this team. This could be the biggest thing any of us has ever done, and I don’t want anybody screwing it up. If you have something to say, say it.”

  Dillon faced Pendleton. All eyes in the room were on him. “I watched you argue the Letter of Reprisal before the Supreme Court. You did a marvelous job, of course. You convinced the Supreme Court, they gave the Justice Department the back of their collective hand, and you walked out of there a hero to the Speaker of the House and most of the people in the country. But maybe you have forgotten that I talked to you afterward.”