“Do you think if you were hooked up you could find out the answer?”
“Sure,” Dillon responded.
“Get it hooked up, I’ll pay for it,” the admiral said. “It’s the least I can do. Could you do the same thing to do research for my case?”
“Sure, a lot of military stuff is on there too.”
“Done,” the admiral said. “Get an account today.”
Dillon was pleased. “This should be interesting,” he said. He glanced at Molly. “Are you all right with this?”
“Sure. You do what you want. I’m here to help Admiral Billings.”
“How long will it take you?” Billings asked Dillon.
“I don’t know. Could take one day, could take a week or two.”
“We don’t have two weeks, these guys are going to be moving. Let Molly do the initial stuff on the military. You start your research. I want a progress report by tomorrow morning at breakfast.”
“You’re a hard master,” Dillon said with a sparkle in his eye.
“You can quit anytime you want, Mr. Dillon,” Billings said directly, a challenge in his voice. “So can you do it by tomorrow morning?”
“I’ll give it a run, see where it’s leading,” Dillon uttered, suddenly overwhelmed by all the things he had to do.
“Excellent.”
* * *
Lieutenant Dan Hughes walked into his office carrying a copy of Guns & Ammo. He had gone out for lunch and stopped at the Exchange to get a magazine. He always felt awkward carrying a magazine back into his office. It made him look lazy, or too casual. But he liked to read about the latest firearms and pass the periodicals around. He set the magazine on his desk. Lieutenant Junior Grade Michaels gave him that annoying penetrating look. “CO and Ops O want to see us ASAP.”
“What’s up?” Hughes asked, trying to read Michaels’ face.
“Wouldn’t say.”
“Why didn’t you page me?”
“They just called.”
“Let’s go,” Hughes said, turning and heading toward the CO’s office immediately. He and the Ops O were waiting impatiently.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Hughes said.
“Come in,” said Hard-Ass.
As soon as Hughes and Michaels entered, the operations officer closed the door behind them. Hughes’ eyes went from him to the CO. Hard-Ass spoke. “Your platoon’s going into isolation.”
Hughes understood. “When?”
“Right now.”
“Aye aye, sir. Where’re we going to do the isolation?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just have your men out in front of the building in thirty minutes.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Dillon reached behind the desk and tried to unplug his laptop in the dark. His hand slid up and down the wall searching for the outlet. He finally found the plug and pulled it out with two fingers. He glanced at Molly, who was asleep. He should have moved the computer into his room earlier instead of leaving it in the den. As he crept by her bed and headed toward the living room, she stirred.
“Sorry,” Dillon whispered.
Sleepily, Molly sat up on one elbow. “What are you doing?” she asked. She squinted at the clock.
“I gotta do some research,” Dillon said, setting the computer down on the desk again. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“That’s okay,” she said, lying back down.
The room was barely light enough for Dillon to make out the outline of her bed. He crossed over and sat on the edge. He stroked her cheek and pushed her hair back slightly from her face. Leaning down, he kissed her forehead gently.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to go back to sleep.”
“Sure, no problem,” Dillon said, kissing her nose lightly, and then her lips. “I sure am glad you came out here. I love being with you.”
“I love being with you too,” she said, “but I’m not ready.”
He understood and kissed her on the lips again.
“I’m in your way.”
“No—” he protested.
“I think tomorrow I’m going to ask Mrs. Billings if I can stay with her so you can have your den back. This isn’t fair to you.”
“I don’t want my den back.”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” she said, rolling over on her side toward the wall.
Dillon got up, retrieved the computer from the desk, and walked out of the den.
He dragged two dining room chairs onto the concrete balcony and plugged the computer’s power and phone cables into the wall in the dining room just inside the sliding door. He sat in the dining room chair with his computer on his lap as it booted up. Putting his feet on the seat of the other chair, he began to relax and enjoy the evening breeze. The ocean pounded the beach below him. He faced out to the black sea with Waikiki to his left and its beautiful ring of lights leading all the way to Diamond Head.
The blue screen glowed and awaited his instructions. He deftly manipulated the keyboard in response to the familiar cues as he logged onto Lexis. His source of information. The place where he had found the Letter of Reprisal and the law to support his position. Ten times faster than going through some musty library. Much better to sit on the balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean and type. Let the Lexis computer leaf through the papers.
He started his search with the United States Constitution. He scrolled down the document on the screen, the document created over two hundred years before on parchment that now existed on Lexis as zeros and ones that through some complicated software commands, themselves a series of zeros and ones, was displayed on his screen in Hawaii as the same words written by the Founding Fathers. He stopped at Article I, Section 8, where Congress’s war powers were listed, where Congress was given the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, the authority Congress had used to go around the President’s unwillingness to respond to the attack on the Pacific Flyer. Dillon was still amazed he had found that power, and had thought to look into it. It had been like a vision. He hadn’t known why he had focused on it at all. Like all the other attorneys he had talked to since, he hadn’t known what it had meant at all. If asked directly, he would have had to admit that he didn’t even know that power was in the Constitution until he stumbled on it.
But now he was looking at the next clause. In all the discussions of the Letter of Reprisal he hadn’t heard one person even mention it. His eyes roamed across the clause right after the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Just a comma away. And nobody would have any idea what it meant.
He searched the Supreme Court cases to see if there were any that would block the interpretation he had in mind. Then he examined several federal appellate court cases, other federal district court cases, various state court cases, and finally statutes and law reviews. The farther he went, the drier his mouth became. He had long since stopped hearing the surf below him and had forgotten about the twinkling lights on the world’s prettiest beach. His mind was back in history. The drafting of the Constitution, the ratification of the Constitution, its early use—so many parts of the document had lain dormant for so long. He put his hands behind his head. It might work. If Congress authorizes it, Admiral Blazer can go get them, without a Letter of Reprisal, and without a declaration of war. Dillon saved his research at Lexis, ended the session, and closed the Lexis window on his crystal clear LCD screen. He brought up his e-mail window and typed “Rbillings” and the rest of the e-mail address the admiral had given him at lunch. “It can be done. More later.”
Dillon hit the send key. He didn’t want to tell him how it could be done. He didn’t know who might be monitoring the Internet, or Admiral Billings.
Dillon turned off his laptop and the blue screen instantly went dark as if a shade had been pulled at the speed of light. He closed the screen and placed the laptop beside him on the balcony. The sounds and smells of the beach returned to him as he breathed in quickly, to make up for the long stre
tches of research when he had been holding his breath. He closed his eyes. They’re not going to believe this.
Chapter Eighteen
David Pendleton sat at the head of the long table surrounded by twelve of the brightest minds in Washington, all intent on bringing down the President. None of them would admit that, of course. But if they were honest with themselves, each had the scent of the fox and the hunt was on. The same thrill Woodward and Bernstein must have felt—power out of proportion to their positions.
David Pendleton had always been a private lawyer, a partner in a large firm in San Diego, the Speaker’s hometown. He had never had a government position other than his recent representation of Congress against the President’s suit over the Letter of Reprisal. But even that was on behalf of his law firm and they had been handsomely paid. He had sworn never to be a government lawyer. They were second tier—beneath his lofty position. And the last thing he wanted to be known as was second tier. His new position didn’t break that promise to himself, but it came awfully close. As a manager on behalf of the House, he would be acting as the prosecutor of the President in the impeachment. But he was being hired on an hourly basis to do it, not as an employee. It was the best of both worlds—a client who could tax the public to pay him, and the biggest case of his life.
The other attorneys with Pendleton were passing the silver coffeepots around and picking at the various muffins that sat before them on paper plates. It was the same group Dillon had walked out on. Nothing had changed except that Dillon was absent.
“Time is growing short,” Pendleton said. “The Senate is clearing its calendar and we expect to convene this little trial quickly. There are some final issues that I want looked at. I want answers. Jill,” he said, directing his attention across the table to one of the associates he had brought over with him from his firm. “I want you to finish your work on whether the President can be compelled to testify, and if so plead the Fifth.”
“I’ve looked—”
“I know you’ve looked,” Pendleton interrupted, putting up his hand. “I want you to look more. Harder, deeper. If there isn’t an answer, so be it. But I want to know whatever it is we can find out.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Ken, you’ve got to finish your work on evidence, rules, and Senate votes on procedural issues. I’ve read what you’ve done, and I’ve also read the Senate manual on impeachment. I don’t think it’s really as clear as it ought to be. I want us to have a proposal for every conceivable turn of this trial. I want to have a brief on every issue that we can imagine, whether or not it actually comes up. Are you getting the brief bank together for those issues?”
“Yes, sir, I’m about two thirds of the way,” Ken Krause said. “If anybody else has any evidentiary questions or things that we want to brief, let me know and I’ll add them,” he said.
“That’s exactly right,” Pendleton said to the group. “Any areas you think need to be covered, tell Ken. Lastly,” he said, addressing Grazio, “Frank, you’re getting the witnesses lined up, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Grazio said.
“Have you found everybody?”
“We’re still looking for a few of them.”
“Do you have the President’s mother?”
Grazio’s lips pursed in disapproval. “She wasn’t very excited about the prospect of testifying against her son.”
“This isn’t a question of being happy. It’s a question of whether he’s fit to do the job. If he’s not, he needs to be encouraged to find another position.”
There were chuckles and smiles from the group in response to Pendleton’s remark.
“What about the Sunday school teacher?” Pendleton asked.
“Yes, sir, we found her in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She couldn’t imagine what we wanted from her.”
“Does she remember him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent,” Pendleton said. “What about his advisor, or mentor, at Goshen College?”
“Political science major. His advisor was a Dr. Joseph Howard. He’s sort of feeble and not as with it as he probably was ten years ago.”
“Can he describe the President’s college days?”
“Sort of.”
“Keep at it. Find anybody else that you think might be helpful. Do you have the others out there looking for more witnesses?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay.”
Grazio tried to keep himself from speaking but finally couldn’t. “Mr. Pendleton, can I ask you something?” Pendleton was irritated by the interruption.
“What?”
“Don’t you think there’s a problem here going after somebody because of his religion? Is this some kind of religious discrimination thing?”
“What?”
“Well, yeah, if his pacifism is based on his religion, are we saying no Mennonites can ever be President?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Pendleton said.
Jill picked up Grazio’s point. “Would it be okay if somebody who was a Mennonite or a pacifist ran on the platform of being a pacifist? Told everybody in the country that they were a pacifist and that they didn’t believe in using armed forces, ever? Couldn’t they run on that platform?”
“That’s an interesting question,” Pendleton said. “It’s not what we have here. We have here a stealth pacifist, somebody who ran as a Democrat, implying that he was prepared to fill the position as those before him had, including being Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. Now it turns out that he may in fact not be prepared to use his armed forces under any circumstances. That seems to me to be deceitful. If in fact he’s a pacifist, I think he’s not qualified to serve as President. I think the Speaker’s right.”
“But if he had said ahead of time that he was a pacifist, are you saying he could never serve as President, that a Mennonite could never be President?” Jill pressed it.
Pendleton scanned the faces of his staff. “What do you guys think?” he asked. “How can you serve as Commander in Chief and never be prepared to issue the order to go to war? How can you hold the button to the nuclear defense of the country and not be prepared to use it? May as well send the whole military home.”
“But that is a kind of religious discrimination, isn’t it?” Jill asked. “Wouldn’t we be saying that you can be President, unless you’re a Mennonite?”
“No,” Pendleton said. “We’re saying you can be President unless you’re unwilling to be Commander in Chief. If your religion calls for that, then that’s your problem. We’re not excluding a religion, we’re excluding pacifists. This is not a difficult concept. If you’re unwilling to do the job to which you’ve been elected, then you shouldn’t serve in that job. Can you disagree with that?”
Grazio intervened. “Do we really need his first high school girlfriend?”
“Do you guys not get what we’re doing here?” Pendleton asked. “Do you not understand that in order to prove someone’s a pacifist—who’s unwilling to admit it or deny it—you have to prove it?” He turned back to Grazio. “She’s going to say he was a pacifist, isn’t she? That he was against war because it was wrong per se?”
“She wouldn’t say,” Grazio said.
“Bring her,” Pendleton said.
* * *
Admiral Blazer was startled by the sharp rap on his door. He wiped the remaining shaving cream from his face and released the water in the stainless steel sink. The clock on the bulkhead of his cabin showed 0300. “Come in!” he called. The door opened and Beth Louwsma stepped inside. Blazer suddenly felt exposed, standing in his boxer shorts. “Well,” he said, “I certainly didn’t expect to see you at three in the morning.” He looked around for something to put on. He examined her, taking in her tightly braided hair and crisp uniform. “And why do you look so together at this hour?”
“I know you’re usually up by now. I wanted to talk to you about an e-mail Admiral Billings sent you.”
B
lazer squinted slightly. “When?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” she answered.
“Has he been copying you on all the e-mails he’s sending me?”
“How would I know that, sir?”
“I guess you wouldn’t,” he said. “Have you got any others?”
“A couple,” she said.
Blazer put on his T-shirt and picked up his shoes. He couldn’t decide how to put them on in front of her without looking ridiculous. “I’ve got to confess, Beth, I’ve never had a woman on my staff before. It makes me feel a bit awkward, having you knock on my stateroom door and come in at three in the morning and see me standing here in my underwear. I was gonna get dressed. I don’t use a bathrobe ’cause I hate the damned things. Makes me feel like a sissy. Sorry,” he said.
“For what?” she asked.
“For saying ‘sissy.’ ”
“Didn’t bother me.”
“So, if I look a bit out of sorts, that’s my excuse. So now, where were we?” he said, grabbing his freshly pressed uniform trousers out of the steel-doored closet.
“Did you see what Admiral Billings has requested?”
“No, I haven’t looked.”
“That ellipse we’ve identified, I take it he knows about it.”
“Yes, I told him,” Blazer acknowledged.
“I see,” she said. “He was relieved from his position—”
“Yeah, but he’s not dead and he’s still got his clearance and he was in charge of this battle group. And these are the assholes that killed those Americans on the Pacific Flyer, I might remind you.”
“I remember quite well, Admiral, that was not my point—”
“I know what your point was, I’m not stupid. Anyway, yes, I did tell him. So what?”
“He asked that we submit a request to reposition satellite imagery coverage for the islands inside the ellipse as soon as possible. He said that if we got good imagery, we’d be prepared to go after these guys.”
“We’ve already done that. And how does he expect us to go after them? Another Letter of Reprisal? So I can get court-martialed too?” Blazer laughed. “Not bloody likely.”
The Price Of Power Page 21
