While Justice Sleeps(23)
The president’s head jerked up. “Who?”
“Lask Bauer. Maybe one name or two surnames. That was also in the message we picked up. I haven’t had a chance to run the IDs through NCTC yet.”
“Are you certain that’s what he said?”
“Yes.”
President Stokes leaned forward, slowly shaking his head. Then he gave a brief laugh. “Son of a bitch.”
“Do you know them? Lask or Bauer?”
“I never had the pleasure,” President Stokes said. “Justice Wynn didn’t either. He’s referring to a chess strategy known as the Lasker-Bauer sacrifice. In 1889, Emanuel Lasker defeated Johann Bauer at a tournament in Amsterdam. Lasker used his bishops on the board to lure Bauer into taking them. But in the process, Bauer left his queen vulnerable, and Lasker used that failure to win the match. Damn, that crafty bastard is still playing a game, even in a coma.”
“I am not a chess player, Mr. President.”
“I keep forgetting. Seems right up your alley.” The president turned to stare at his own chessboard that sat atop a credenza. The pieces had been hand-carved by an artisan in Nepal. “The bishops are interesting pieces. They stand next to the king and queen—the third most important pieces on the board. One might call them the guardians.”
“So Avery Keene is one of the bishops.” Vance folded his hands behind himself.
The president nodded. “Wynn is using her as bait to force us to make a careless move.
“If he’s being literal, we need to identify the second bishop in play.” He lifted the two pieces and set them side by side. “Whoever it is led Wynn to India. The project was so secure, not even their government knew about it until we had to shut it down.”
“Tigris was buried until Srinivasan tried to take GenWorks. It might be her,” Vance said.
President Stokes shook his head. “Nigel Cooper is more likely. He’s already convinced Wall Street that I’m the second coming of Herbert Hoover. I let this merger happen, and Cooper becomes a billionaire, while I get marched off to prison.” The president recognized the greedy reach that propelled the man, an avarice that should have been useful to him. But the ultraliberal entrepreneur despised him, and he hated Cooper right back. “We find out who tipped off Wynn, we find the second bishop.”
“I’ve pored over the intel. Justice Wynn served on an international commission on the rule of law with Arun Mohan, the High Court chief justice for Karnataka. Mohan’s wife sits on an NGO board tasked with securing foreign aid for medical research. Apparently, at a dinner party, Mrs. Mohan chattered to her husband and his American colleague about a biogenetics company called Hygeia that has collapsed. Banal dinner conversation, except that Justice Wynn had already begun his research into possible cures for Boursin’s.”
“When?”
“The encounter was right before the start of term last October. By then, Advar had dismantled and absorbed Hygeia. The Tigris Project and the tech were buried, but Mohan gave Justice Wynn a place to start.”
“And he thought he had sufficient reason to keep digging.” President Stokes pushed away from the desk and circled around to the shelves lined with tchotchkes collected over nearly two centuries by his predecessors. “A dinner conversation leads him to Tigris.”
“A dinner conversation and the research capacity of the U.S. Supreme Court, sir,” Vance corrected. “Knowing about Hygeia did not lead him to Tigris. Someone else did. However, we’re tying off the ends, Mr. President, and this will be one of them.”
“Faster, Will. I’m too close. Do you remember what happened in Darra Adam Khel?”
“You don’t need to ask me about Pakistan.”
Vance’s reaction was almost undetectable, but Stokes had known him too long not to see. Vance revealed too little to allow any expression to go unnoticed. Satisfied, the president said, “I have not gone a day without remembering. Not in more than a decade. We’ve masterminded a solution for the greatest threat facing America in the twenty-first century.”
He clenched a miniaturized ceremonial mace from the Philippines and turned to Vance. “Nigel Cooper and those West Coast snobs mock me for believing in God. For believing in freedom and patriotism. We will not be brought down by him or a comatose judicial tyrant.”
“No, sir,” Vance replied.
That night in Pakistan, though years past, had bonded Vance with the man who’d become president and given him his life’s mission. Tigris was more than a stealth military project. It was a revolution, one he’d help birth. “Our contact assures me that their end is taken care of, and you’ve stopped the merger between Advar and GenWorks. Justice Wynn is lying in a coma instead of leading the efforts on a faulty judicial opinion. All the intelligence we’ve gathered says the Court is otherwise split. Wynn is the swing vote, and for all practical purposes, he is dead to the world.”
Not placated, Stokes countered: “Bullshit. Being in a coma does not take him off the Court. And now some girl with a law degree is in charge.”
“Sir, we have no reason to believe the Court won’t deadlock with Justice Wynn incapacitated and near death. Justice Wynn can’t sign a majority opinion from a coma, nor can he empower his clerk to vote for him. I have already asked White House counsel to provide a detailed memo on the options. As you’ve rightly pointed out, he stays on the Court until he resigns or dies. A guardian may be able to proffer his resignation, but this situation is unprecedented, Mr. President.”