by John Barnes
Graham sat still for a long, long moment. “I think it’s what Roger would prefer, if he can be coaxed into it. But we’ve both got to be clear about what the deal is. So, here’s what I think we’re agreeing to: Pendano can never function again as President—but he has the power to eliminate Acting President Shaunsen, and the country needs that. If Will Norcross commits to being a national-unity president for all the country, and leave his religious views to his re-election campaign if he has one, then he’s the best man for the job. Therefore, we are doing this because the country needs a functioning, full-time, national-unity president, right now. Have I forgotten anything?”
“Not a thing,” Cameron said. “Ditto, as some of my colleagues on the right used to say.” He extended a hand and the two men shook. “And I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Ditto,” Graham said. “All right, well, nothing will be improved by delay. I’m going to grab Heather O’Grainne and head over to the White House.”
“Excellent. I don’t think we can count on Shaunsen to give up without a fight, when push comes to shove, and I mean that pretty literally. Bringing a big man, especially military or security, into the White House would look suspicious; Heather’s a good, inoffensive alternative.”
“You know, that may be the first time she’s ever been called that.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. WASHINGTON. DC. 10:00 A.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 6.
“All right,” Chris said, opening the morning meeting, “what do we have for prospects for tomorrow’s paper? What’s everyone working on?”
“Got a roundup,” Hayley said. “Hunger riots all up and down the East Coast.”
George Parwin looked up, and added, “Bad news in all the major cities—roundup or bunch of shorties, no details on any of them. According to a ham in New Hampshire, thousands of people died of exposure after walking out of the Boston metro area looking for food, when a freezing rainstorm caught them. Confirmed for sure, two days ago half of Chicago burned because there was no way to put it out—must’ve gone not long after St. Paul, actually. My DoD-intel source let me look at aerial photos of street barricades and armed men splitting the black and white neighborhoods in St. Louis.”
Brown said, “Food story—satellite pictures show that early blizzard might’ve killed a quarter of the cattle in Montana.”
“Okay,” Chris said. “And of course, metro and local, Shaunsen is pledging good government jobs for everybody, and plans to sue to get results thrown out in some states where he lost, because of the ‘unfair advantage’ Norcross—”
“Hey!” The shout was from Don Parmenter, up in the cupola, where they tried to maintain a watch with binoculars. “Troops moving out of Fort McNair and Fort Myer.”
“Where are they going?”
“This way. Too soon to tell otherwise, but they’re definitely not heading out of town.”
“Right,” Chris said. “Okay, everyone, the story ideas sound fine; George, write them up as separate shorties, we can always stick them all back together if we need the space for anything else. Brown, yeah, go with that, on the Montana story. And I better run, because odds are those troops mean something’s going on.” He shouted. “Hey, Don, want to come and see if we can get caught in a battle?”
“You know that’s why I took the job,” Parmenter said, hurrying down the stairs. “Let’s not miss it.”
ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. THE WHITE HOUSE. WASHINGTON. DC. 11:00 A.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 6.
The Secret Service ERT at the plywood barrier in front of the White House entrance had his machine pistol wrapped in a plastic garbage bag. He looked exhausted, but smiled when he saw who it was.
“Hey, Dr. Weisbrod. Gonna make the future better?”
“Doing what I can. They only deliver it one day at a time. Heather, Karl; Karl, Heather.”
Heather asked, “Isn’t that garbage bag going to rot like all the other plastic?”
“That’s the idea. When it starts to, I know the gun oil and the bullets are suspect, and I turn it in to the armorer; he tears it down, degreases it, sterilizes all the surfaces, reloads with ammo from sealed boxes, and puts it in another bag. It will work till we run out of sealed boxes, I guess.”
“How soon is that?” Heather asked.
“Everyone I know is scared to ask. Don’t tell me if you find out.” Karl looked the bagged weapon over, apparently seeing no signs of slime, fuzz, melting, or rupture. “Can’t believe how heavy these all-metal-and-wood things are—makes me respect the old-timers from when I first joined.” He turned and waved a distinctive signal to the man inside the doorway. “Just letting him know you don’t have me at gunpoint. Go on through.”
They were passed from guard to guard up to the third floor. The Secret Service smiled at them; the NUG-thugs didn’t.
To Heather, Roger Pendano looked like he’d aged twenty years, developed anorexia, and taken a bad beating that morning, but at least the president’s eyes had a little light and fire in them.
They sat down in the cluster of leather armchairs surrounding a low table, and Pendano launched at once into a rambling monolog about college days that made Heather’s heart sink, especially since he seemed to be drawing on a pad, until he flipped the pad over and showed them:
Been flushing my pills per G’s sugg’n. Depr’n worse ↓↓↓ / feel like self↑↑↑. Playing dead 4 doc. Hate life, want 2 die, BUT und’st’d ↑↑↑. Heard Shaunsen tell doc keep me dosed no matter what, 2 imp’t 2 USA. Who won elec’n?
Heather withdrew a jelly jar from her bag and put on rubber gloves from a sealed bag; she unscrewed the top of the jar and took out a BugSweepR, turned it on, and took a tour of the room while Pendano and Weisbrod talked about how good the tollhouse cookies used to be across the street from campus. Following the “warmer/colder” indicator and the point indicator, she discovered two bugs (under the table and behind the headboard of the bed), a TV remote (behind a bookcase), and an old digital watch (under one couch).
The remote or the watch, of course, could also be a disguised bug, so she put them all in a screw-top metal can half-full of nanospawn crystals, shook them vigorously, and tied the can to the faucet in the bathroom with bare copper wire. A scan with the BugSweepR revealed no signal coming from any of them. She emerged from the bathroom and nodded at the men.
Graham began to explain. “Mr. President, Norcross won; the country is starving, freezing, and burning; and Shaunsen seems to be groping his way into some kind of bass-ackwards coup. The number of impeachable offenses he’s committed this week alone is beyond counting.”
“I’ve been painfully aware about those,” Pendano said. “Scott Jevons, one of the Secret Service men, has been smuggling me the Washington Advertiser-Gazette, but he wasn’t on duty this morning, so I hadn’t seen the election results. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
Heather tilted chairs against the doorknobs of both entrances to the main room, then dragged a couch around to provide some cover between the men and the doors. Best improvisation I’ve got. She crouched behind the couch. Come on, Graham, get to—
“Roger.” Graham’s voice was soft, gentle—and as intense as Heather had ever heard. “Roger, I wish I didn’t have to ask, but we’ve got to get rid of Shaunsen, and—”
“I thought that might be what you were here for. Amendment Twenty-five, Section Three; I figured Randolph was too much of a wuss and too old to do anything.” Pendano groaned, shaking his head as if he’d been punched. “I don’t know what will happen if I try to resume my office. I… I’m not the man I was a couple weeks ago. I’m not sure at all who I am, now.”
“It would only have to be a for a few days,” Graham said. He explained quickly.
Heather said, “We probably have five minutes before they react to the bugs being dead,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”
“So we put Norcross in early and he’s promised to act presidential?” Pendano stood. “That solves the problem, all right. But you get me out of office fast
; I’m ashamed enough of what I’ve become without having it paraded in public.” Pendano moved to his private correspondence desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and scrawled:
November 6, 2024
To Speaker Kowalski and the President Pro Tem—
“Who did Shaunsen put in as Pres Pro Tem at the Senate?”
“He refused to do that, and he hasn’t resigned his seat, either, even though the Twenty-fifth Amendment says he has to,” Weisbrod explained.
“Great. Crap, Graham, I’m sorry I cracked up on you all. All right, then.” Anger seemed to straighten and steady him, and he bent to write, quickly and in a surprisingly firm hand:
November 6, 2024
Dear Speaker Kowalski and President Pro Tem Shaunsen or his successor,
In accordance with Sect. 3 / 25th Amendment / US Constitution, this is my written declaration that I am now able to resume the discharge of the Constitutional powers and duties of the office of the President of the United States. With the transmittal of this letter, I am resuming those powers and duties effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Roger L. Pendano
cc: Chief Justice Lopez, SCOTUS
All Cabinet Secretaries
Mr. Cameron Nguyen-Peters, NCCC
“That last one is giving Cam the power to straighten this mess out if necessary,” Pendano explained. “He may be a crazed right-wing nut and the coldest man in Washington, but if Shaunsen does any more damage to the Constitution, it will be over Cam’s dead body, and I don’t think that’ll be easy to achieve. One of my best appointments, I think.”
“Absolutely,” Weisbrod said.
“The lawyer in me says we’d better have both of you witness it,” Pendano said, extending the pen. Graham signed, WITNESSED NOVEMBER 6, 2024 and his name; below that Heather signed, her eyes never leaving the doors.
Weisbrod said, “Heather, just in case, I’d feel better to have you carrying this.”
She folded it and placed it carefully, thinking, Not everybody gets to have the fate of the nation stuffed into her bra. “Now I’ll just put the dead bugs back and—”
Pendano shook his head. “We’d better just run for it.” Unselfconsciously, Pendano shucked off his robe, turned to his closet, and pulled out an old white shirt and a pair of jeans. “Please forgive the lounging-around clothes, they’re all I have right now.”
“I don’t quite follow—” Graham said.
“I do.” Heather felt sick. “This letter has to be officially received by Kowalski and Shaunsen, and they have to admit they got it, or receive it in front of witnesses. If President Pendano were to die before it’s delivered—”
“Shaunsen would succeed in his own right,” Pendano said, “and then you’d be good and well shit up the crick, as one of my favorite voters used to say. And there’d be a lot of stories they could tell to explain my death—I’m in poor health, I’m insane and died struggling against restraints, I could be found with a big load of sedatives in my belly—given the moral character of our Attorney General, I could be found with an ax in my head, and he’d rule it suicide. I need to put myself out of their reach, now, or make them damn well get my blood on their hands in public.”
He had dressed while he was talking, and now he slipped his feet into loafers. “Secret Service outside—black man, shaved head, short and solid, mustache?”
“Right.”
“Good, that’s Scott Jevons. Ask him to come in.”
Pendano explained the situation in a few swift, brutal sentences, not hesitating to say that Shaunsen was in the process of a coup and would murder him if he could. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you to make the decision.”
Jevons shrugged. “The President and a Cabinet Secretary have just told me that the President is healthy and taking back over. The President looks good to me. My job is to protect the President. That’s how my outfit will see it.” He pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket, untied the condom in which it was bagged, and dialed. “Big Fox, this is Bravo. President Pendano has just signed a letter, witnessed by the Secretary of the Future and the Assistant Secretary for… uh…”
“Future Threats.”
“…Future Threats. The letter says he’s well again, and he looks like it to me. He believes some people here in the White House may pose a threat to his safety. In the, um, present circumstances I recommend we move him to DRET at St. Elizabeth’s, with a stop at the Capitol to present the letter to Speaker Kowalski. Standing by for—”
The door crashed open; Jevons shot first, hitting the NUG in the head. Heather got the one who came in after him. Gunshots rang in the hallways below; Heather and Scott Jevons moved to cover the elevator and stairs.
Scott had been shouting into the phone; he looked up from it, his face streaked with tears. “Mr. President, the Secret Service are being killed, the NUGs jumped us—”
Graham clapped Heather on the shoulder. “Can you climb down from the balcony behind us?”
“I probably—”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes, or whatever else—”
“Deliver that letter to Kowalski. Now. It’s effective as long as neither of you knows that Roger is dead—so go before you see anything.”
Heather dropped hand over hand down a fire access ladder and plunged down a folding fire escape onto the South Lawn. Gunfire was rising to a crescendo inside; Shaunsen’s forces were probably rushing the last few Secret Service holdouts and getting ready to storm the Third Floor. When I last saw Roger Pendano, she reminded herself, preparing to be a good witness, he was alive and totally sane.
As Heather burst through the open, unguarded gate, she still heard a few gunshots behind her, but she put all her effort into the race along the Mall toward the Capitol. On morning runs, she’d sometimes gone this way. This would be one great time for a personal best. She ran.
ABOUT TEN MINUTES LATER. THE WHITE HOUSE. WASHINGTON. DC. 11:26 A.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 6.
The only sound was Pendano’s labored breathing, and Graham Weisbrod saying, “Easy, easy, easy,” as he sat on the floor, cross-legged, holding his old student’s head in his hands. Scott Jevons cut Pendano’s shirt and pants away, finding the small wound in the front and the big one in the back, trying to find a way to stop the terrible flow of blood.
“Prof?”
“Yes, Roger.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“You’re hurt. We’re taking care of you.”
“It hurts.” Pendano’s body went limp.
The old professor and the young Secret Service agent were still sitting silently with the dead man when a voice from downstairs proclaimed, “This is Major Block, commanding the National Unity Guard. Surrender the former president or—”
“He’s dead,” Graham said loudly. “One of those rounds you were firing up through the floor got him. We won’t shoot if you come up.”
The National Unity Guard did not look military or even at all professional, to Graham’s eye, but there were certainly a lot of them; probably Shaunsen had promised them all good pay and fast promotions. Probably hired more of them from the crowd they swept up during the riots—that would be Shaunsen, all over.
After a while, Shaunsen came in, squeezing through his guards, with several young aides in tow. The Acting President looked hard, once, at the body.
Then he told the NUG behind him, “Get the Chief Justice over here, right now. And Kowalski, too. And a doctor to confirm the death.”
Weisbrod said, “Sir, this is a crime scene. We don’t even know officially who fired the shot, or on whose orders, or—”
“That’ll be enough, Weisbrod. I’m going to fire you right after the swearing-in. Meanwhile, you might as well come along and be in your last Cabinet picture. Make any trouble, though, and you’re going straight to jail.”
They hauled Weisbrod to his feet. His shoes, socks, and trouser legs were soaked with the dead president’s blood, and he could still feel the warmth of Roger
Pendano’s head where he had cradled it on his thigh.
Shaunsen was bellowing orders to go get the Chief Justice, go get the Speaker, wasn’t there a lawyer in the house who could swear him in, or did it have to be a judge? No matter, get him a damn judge this minute.
Weisbrod let them cuff him and hustle him awkwardly down the stairs and into a chair in the Secret Service break room, with a dozen or so captured Secret Service. They weren’t allowed to talk. He lost himself in trying to trace the patterns in the carpet.
He heard a great deal of running and whispering in the corridors, and occasional shouting, but he didn’t bother to sort out any words. Eventually six NUGs came in and let the Secret Service and Weisbrod have some water, and uncuffed each in turn long enough to go to the bathroom; the light from the windows suggested it was late afternoon, and his growling stomach agreed. This is probably not the time to ask for a sandwich, all the same. Weisbrod thought about how many reasons Shaunsen might have to keep him alive and came up with zero. Probably they’ll wait till dark, but maybe not even that long.
ABOUT THREE HOURS LATER. THE WHITE HOUSE. WASHINGTON. DC. 4:47 P.M. EST. WEDNESDAY. NOVEMBER 6.
Weisbrod started awake. He had no idea how he had fallen asleep. The NUG who had kicked his leg to wake him also gave him a drink and uncuffed him to piss, then recuffed him and led him down the hall and into the Oval Office. The Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury were bunched together in the corner, all looking embarrassed. The Attorney General stood apart from the others not meeting anyone’s eye. Chief Justice Lopez was quarreling loudly with three presidential aides, and it wasn’t clear whether she was a guest or a prisoner, but it was very clear that she thought she had been tricked into being there. There were more National Unity Guards than he could easily count.
