The President Is Missing(68)

She opens her hands. “Do tell.”

A wide smile crosses his face, then disappears.

“It’s something President Duncan would never do,” he says. “But President Brandt, in her infinite wisdom, might.”





Chapter

55



There’s going to be a vacancy on the Court,” says Lester.

“Oh?” She hadn’t heard that. You never know with these justices, most of whom stay in their seats until they’re well into their eighties. “Who?”

He turns and looks at her, his eyes narrowing, a poker face. Deciding, she thinks. Deciding whether to tell me.

“Whitman got some very bad news from his doctor a week ago,” he says.

“Justice Whitman is…”

“It was bad news,” he says. “Voluntarily or otherwise, he won’t make it through this presidential term. He’s being urged to step down right now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says.

“Are you?” A wry smile creeps across his face. “Anyway, do you know what hasn’t happened in a long time? There’s been no midwesterner on the Supreme Court since John Paul Stevens. Nobody from a federal court like…oh, like the Seventh Circuit. The heartland.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. If memory serves her, that court covers federal cases from Illinois, Wisconsin…

…and Indiana, Lester’s home state.

Of course.

“Who, Lester?”

“The former attorney general of Indiana,” he says. “Female. Moderate. Well respected. Got nearly unanimous approval from the Senate four years ago for the appeals court, including your vote. Good and young—forty-three years old—so that’s good legacy building. She could sit on the court for thirty years. She’s from my side of the aisle, but she’ll vote your way on the issues your people seem to care about.”

The vice president’s mouth drops open. She leans into him.

“Jesus, Lester,” she says. “You want me to put your daughter on the Supreme Court?”

She tries to remember what she knows about Lester’s daughter. Married with a few kids. Harvard undergrad, Harvard law. She worked in Washington, moved back home to Indiana, and ran for attorney general as a moderate counterweight to her father’s fire-and-brimstone politics. Everyone assumed the next step was the governorship, but then she went wonky and took an appointment to the federal appeals court.

And yes, then Senator Katherine Brandt voted yes on her nomination to the appeals court. The report on her was that she was nothing like her father—if anything she veered in the other direction, party affiliation notwithstanding. Smart and sensible.

Lester frames a newspaper headline with his hands. “Bipartisan, bipartisan, bipartisan,” he says. “A new day after the gridlock of the Duncan administration. She’ll be confirmed easily. I can guarantee the senators on my side, and your side will be happy. She’s pro-choice, Kathy, which seems to be all your people care about.”

It…might not be so crazy.

“You’ll start your presidency with a big win. Hell, you play this right, Kathy, you could serve nearly ten years in office.”

The vice president looks out the window. She remembers that rush when she first announced, when she was the favorite, when she could see it, feel it, taste it.

“Otherwise,” says Lester, “you won’t serve one day. I’ll keep Duncan in office, he’ll get crushed in the reelection, and you’ll be at a dead end.”

He’s probably right about the next election. She wouldn’t be at a dead end, as he’s saying, but it would be an uphill battle to run four years later as a former vice president who lost a reelection bid.

“And you’re okay,” she says, “with my serving two and a half terms as president?”

The Speaker of the House slides toward the door, reaches for the handle. “What the hell do I care who the president is?”

She shakes her head, bemused but not particularly surprised.

“You gotta get those twelve votes in the Senate, though,” he says, wagging a finger.

“And I suppose you have an idea how I would do that.”

Speaker Rhodes moves his hand off the door handle. “As a matter of fact, Madam Vice President, I do.”





Chapter

56



The assembled dignitaries eat a light breakfast of bagels and fruit and coffee in the eat-in kitchen overlooking the backyard and woods as I update them on where we are so far. I’ve just received an update on Los Angeles, where Homeland Security and FEMA, under DHS’s umbrella, are working with the city and the state of California on the delivery of clean water. There have always been contingency plans for the suspension or failure of water-purification plants, so in the short term, while there will be a sense of urgency to get the plant up and running again, with any luck it will never bloom into a full-scale crisis. I won’t send my Imminent Threat Response Team out there, but we’re sending everyone else we have.

I may be wrong about LA. It may not be a decoy. It might be ground zero for whatever is coming. If that’s true, I’ve made an enormous mistake. But without more to go on, I am not letting go of my team. They’re currently in the basement with Augie and the cybersecurity experts from Israel and Germany, working in concert with the rest of our team, stationed at the Pentagon.