by Steve Berry
“Not in the least. He was not a man who cared about credit, only results. He wanted to leave the world a safer place than he found it, and that’s exactly what he did. I saw him for the last time in 1992, at his presidential library. We met alone, and he thanked me again for all that I did. He was an extraordinary man, and history will record that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.”
“You did good,” Danny said to her. “Real good. You have to be proud as hell at what you accomplished.”
It meant a lot to hear his praise. He was not a man who doled out compliments lightly. The essence of the intelligence business dictated that recognition almost never came. Getting the job done had to suffice, though sometimes it could be a poor substitute. She was proud. More than she could ever say. She’d been there when Eastern Europe barred the one-party system, tossed aside a planned economy, and chose freedom and the rule of law. She’d helped the two most powerful men in the world bring about the total destruction of an evil empire.
Much had happened since, but nothing like that.
“It was a remarkable time,” she said. “But like now, the incoming Bush administration decided they had no further need for me. That’s when I moved to Justice.”
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere.”
She was impressed. “Churchill’s speech. Delivered in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, after he lost his own reelection bid for prime minister. I never realized you were a Cold War student.”
He pointed a finger at her. “What you meant was you never realized I could remember things. You’re going to discover a lot about me you didn’t know.”
Of that she was sure.
“Truman was there in the audience when Churchill spoke,” he said. “He said afterward that he agreed with every word, especially the phrase coined that day. Iron Curtain. Churchill was right about Stalin and the Russians.”
“And it took us another forty-five years to win that Cold War.”
“But win it we did. Total and complete victory.”
“How’d you find out?” she asked. “Only a handful of people knew about Forward Pass.”
“Osin told me yesterday.”
“And you never said a word?”
“I can keep a secret.”
She smiled. He could be quite adorable, when he wanted to be.
“Zorin, like you, is a Cold Warrior,” he said. “But unlike you, he hasn’t moved on. He’s one of our problems, but the split inside the Kremlin is a whole different matter. Osin, to his credit, is trying to do the right thing. But there are more nuts inside the Russian government than Osins. Not the zealot, Lenin, Karl Marx kind. No, these are pure criminals, out for nothing more than themselves. The good thing is that they’re not the world-dominating type. But five nuclear weapons hidden here? That’s something that might come in handy to them. A good hammer to keep us under control.”
He pointed to the other folder on the nearly empty desk. “That one I had Edwin assimilate.”
She started to reach for it, but he gently clasped her hand, stopping her. An unfamiliar chill swept through her.
The phone on the desk buzzed, breaking the moment.
He pushed the lit button and activated the speaker.
“There’s been a problem in Canada,” Edwin said.
They both listened to what the police on Prince Edward Island had found. Four bodies at a man named Jamie Kelly’s residence, just outside Charlottetown. No identification on any of them.
“Any word from Cotton?” she asked.
“Nothing. But at least we know he’s been busy.”
That they did.
“He’ll call when he needs to,” she said to Edwin. “Can you tell the Canadians to stay out of the way?”
“Already done.”
“Keep me posted,” Danny said, ending the call.
She saw the concern in his eyes.
“What were you going to show me?” she asked.
“Cotton reported that the archivist, Belchenko, mentioned two things before he died. Fool’s Mate and zero amendment. The first term Osin has promised to work on. The second, though, we can handle.” He pointed at the other folder. “It’s all in there.”
She stared down at the folder.
“In there are copies of documents Edwin found in an old classified CIA file. The words zero amendment led us straight there. Seems we have things digitally indexed at Langley now, which is a good thing. People over there tell me they haven’t heard those two words associated with the Soviet Union since the 1980s. Take the folder upstairs and read. Then get some sleep. Pick any bedroom you want.”
“Including yours?”
He grinned. “Like you say, not until I’m a free man.”
She reached for the file. Some sleep would be great. But she was damn curious as to what was going on.
“Let’s talk about this more at breakfast,” he said.
She headed for the door.
“The Soviets called it the zero amendment,” he said to her. “We call it the 20th Amendment to the Constitution.”
* * *
Cassiopeia kept the binoculars to her eyes, the grayish images of the road ahead easy to see. Night-vision technology had come a long way from the everything-is-green scenario. In fact, the view through the eyepieces was clear as dusk on a summer’s day. She’d been tracking their route on her smartphone, noting that they were running out of Canadian real estate, the border with Maine less than eighty kilometers away.
“Is he going to cross over into the United States?” she asked.
“Kelly could easily. Edwin told me that he’s a U.S. citizen with a passport. But Zorin? No way. He dropped in on a parachute. Unless he brought some fake ID, he’d need a visa to come in legally on a Russian passport. I doubt he even has a passport. But that’s not going to stop him.”
They’d stayed way back, sometimes too far, but luckily the car ahead had not made any turns.
“There’s a town, Digdeguash, coming up,” she said, checking the map on her phone.
Cotton had done a solid job of using the few cars they’d encountered as cover. She checked her watch. Nearly 3:00 A.M.
“He’s not going to drive across the border,” Cotton said.
She agreed, so she used her finger to shift the map on her phone, moving the image north and south, then east and west. “We’re due north of Maine, just across the Passamaquoddy Bay, maybe thirty kilometers between us.”
“That’s how he’s going to do it,” Cotton said. “On the water.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Zorin had not pressed Kelly on what the man had discovered. Any detonation spot was meaningless unless the weapons themselves had survived.
So first things first.
They’d ridden in silence for a while, passing the city of St. John and keeping south on the four-laned highway until it shrank to two lanes, paralleling the coastline. His driver seemed to know exactly where he was headed.
They entered a quiet community down for the night. Kelly stopped at an intersection, then turned south on another black highway.
“There’s a lovely little village just ahead called St. Andrews by the Sea,” Kelly said. “I’ve visited many times. Only a couple thousand people live there, and Maine is just across the St. Croix River. I like sailing and they have boats for rent. We can steal one at this hour and be long gone before anyone realizes. We’ll avoid the river and head across the bay to Eastport, in Maine. It’s not far, fifty kilometers or so. There we can easily slip into the United States.”
Zorin had to trust that this man knew what he was doing.
“I was here back in the summer. Whale-watching is big business in St. Andrews. I like the town.
It was founded by British loyalists who fled the colonies after the Revolutionary War with no love for the new America. It’ll be a cold sail in this brisk air, but it’s the smart way to go.”
“Why go out onto the bay and not just cross the river? You said the border was less than three kilometers that way.”
“It’s patrolled, night and day. The easiest way to get into America is across the bay, through the front door. I planned this contingency long ago, though I never believed I’d use it.”
A sign announced that they were entering St. Andrews. More signs directed people to an aquarium and a nature center.
“The Algonquin Hotel is lovely,” Kelly said. “Old World style. It sits off in that direction, up on a hill, but the marinas are this way.”
They cruised through a tiny downtown populated with colorful clapboard buildings. Mainly shops, cafés, and art galleries. A lit Canadian flag flew high above one of them. Kelly parked at the waterfront and they quickly fled the car, each carrying his bag. The night air held a bite, the freezing moisture face tightening like back in Siberia. No one was around, all quiet, except for the gentle slap of water onto the nearby shore.
They walked along a pier that extended out into the bay, boats tied to either side. Kelly seemed to be deciding, finally settling on a single-mast about six meters long and hopping down to the boat’s deck.
“Untie it from the mooring cleats. We’ll float out past the dock, then raise the sail. Are you much of a sailor?”
“Not in the least,” he said.
“Then lucky for you that I am.”
He freed the lines, then jumped into the boat. If the truth be told he was not a fan of water at all, but he recognized the wisdom in what Kelly had proposed. The boat immediately began to drift away from the dock, the tide slipping them out toward the bay. Kelly was busy releasing the main sail from the boom and preparing to catch a steady north breeze. The narrow inlet ahead seemed a couple of kilometers long, wooded on both sides to the water’s edge.
What had Kelly said? Fifty kilometers across?
He could handle that.
He checked his watch.
Nearly 4:00 A.M.
36 hours left.
* * *
Malone witnessed the theft of a single-mast sailboat, Zorin and Kelly now floating away from shore. They’d cruised into town a few minutes behind the Russians and stopped short of the waterfront, using darkness as cover. He lowered the night-vision binoculars and handed them to Cassiopeia. They were a quarter mile from the waterfront amid the few buildings that formed the main street.
“We can’t follow,” she said, studying what was happening out on the black water through the lens. “There’re no other boats out there anywhere in this cold.”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
She handed over the unit and he redialed the White House, the same number used earlier to make a partial report, and Edwin Davis answered. He told the chief of staff what was happening then said, “I’m assuming we have drone capability up here?”
“Hold on and I’ll find out.”
Two minutes later the line went alive again and Edwin said, “Absolutely. The Canadians don’t necessarily like it, but we have it. I’ve ordered one in the air. It should be over your location in less than thirty minutes.”
He glanced at Cassiopeia, who could hear the other side of the conversation even though it was not on speaker.
She nodded and said, “We can keep a visual that long, but not much longer. He’s headed southeast, toward Maine.”
“You get that?” he asked Edwin.
“We’ll watch them all the way. What are you going to do?”
“Wait for your call telling me you’ve got ’em. Then we’ll swing around by car and come down southward on the Maine side of the border. That way we can be close to wherever they come ashore. Let’s make sure nobody bothers them. No border officers.”
“I’m told things are loose there. It’s the honor system coming into the country,” Davis said.
“So much for secure borders.”
“If the public only knew. At least we do patrol with the drones.”
“Just don’t lose him. We’ve come this far.”
“We won’t.”
He ended the call.
Cassiopeia kept studying the far-off bay.
He stood beside her in the cold. “Lucky for us those two have been out of touch awhile. No drones with high-res cameras in their day.”
She lowered the glasses. “What do you think the endgame is here?”
He truly did not know.
“Let’s just hope Stephanie is figuring that out for us.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The issue of succession for the United States presidency has been a thorny subject since the drafting of the Constitution in 1787. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that to be eligible to serve as president, a person must be a natural-born citizen, at least thirty-five years old, and a resident within the United States for at least 14 years. In cases of removal, death, resignation, or inability to discharge the duties of president, Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 names the vice president first in the line of succession.
Seven American presidents have died in office and, each time, the vice president took the oath and served out that president’s unexpired term. Whether that vice president actually became president, or merely acting president, has long been a matter of constitutional debate. No one knows for sure. The issue was finally resolved with the 1967 ratification of the 25th Amendment, which clarified Article II, Section 1, Clause 6, designating the vice president the actual president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office. That amendment also required any vice-presidential vacancies to be filled by the president and confirmed by Congress. Previously, when a vice president had succeeded to the presidency (or otherwise left the office empty) the vice presidency remained vacant until the next presidential election. In 1974, Gerald Ford was the first to become vice president and ultimately president through the 25th Amendment. This is all well-settled American law, and most of the confusion that once existed around a vice president’s ascension to the presidency is gone.
But what about others succeeding to the presidency when there is no vice president available?
It is the 20th Amendment that deals with this contingency. That amendment also addresses issues of succession that occur before a president and vice president are sworn into office.
Here is the relevant language:
The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died, the Vice-President-elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice-President-elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
First, it is clear from this constitutional amendment that the term of a president ends precisely at noon on January 20 so, by implication, the term of the next president would begin simultaneously. Second, if the president-elect dies before the term begins, the vice-president-elect becomes president on January 20 and serves the full term to which the president-elect had been elected. Third, if on January 20 a president has not been chosen, or the president-elect does not qualify for the office, the vice-president-elect acts as president until a president is chosen or the president-elect qualifies. Finally, Congress can provide by law for cases in which neither a president-elect nor a vice-president-elect is eligible or available to serve.
This last contingency was expounded on by Congress in the
1947 Presidential Succession Act, which lays out the line of succession in cases where there is no president or vice president, either before or after being sworn in. First in line comes the Speaker of the House of Representatives, then the president pro tempore of the Senate. After are various cabinet officers in a set order beginning with the secretary of state, then treasury, defense, the attorney general, and on down ending with the secretary of veterans affairs being the 16th in the line of succession.
To be eligible to succeed the cabinet officer must meet the constitutional requirements of being president and must have been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Having taken the oath, the statute provides that the officer is automatically removed from his or her cabinet post, becoming president for the remaining term or until a person higher in the line of succession is available to serve. This law has never been called into action, but unanswered legal questions exist as to its constitutionality.
First, consider the exact language of the statute itself. Section (a)(1) provides:
If by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is neither a President nor Vice President to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President, then the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as Representative in Congress, act as President.
Initially it has to be asked, can a member of Congress even be placed in the line of succession? Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution specifies that only an “officer” of the United States can be designated as a presidential successor. Nearly every legal scholar who has considered this issue, including one of the American founders, James Madison, has concluded that such a term excludes members of Congress. This is buttressed by Article I, Section 6, Clause 2 (the Incompatibility Clause), which states:
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
