While Justice Sleeps(24)
The president stopped beside a low blue brocade sofa with an end table. He opened a ceramic bowl, a gift from the Ghanaian prime minister, and popped a square of licorice into his mouth. The bitter tang matched his mood. He stopped in front of his old friend and consigliere. “Wynn put the law clerk in play as the first bishop. We need to figure out who the second bishop is. Wynn anticipated that we’d try to stop him, and he has set up a separate path to victory. They may not even know they both exist.”
“We’ll figure it out, sir.”
The president said nothing. He counted Vance as one of his few friends, a term he used very carefully these days. Stokes had been surrounded by fair-weather allies during his first year in office as President Warren Cadres’s young and vigorous vice president. They’d heralded Stokes as a military hero turned political rock star. A Purple Heart and Bronze Star had boosted his campaign for the U.S. Senate, which he’d launched after his last tour of duty. He raised record-breaking sums of money and trounced his opponents. Appointed to serve on the Armed Services Committee, he became the telegenic attack dog who destroyed a shaky Democratic president. They’d tapped him in committee hearings to disembowel the hapless Navy secretary whose wife had divested millions in stock in an insider trading scandal. Two years later, he got elected as President Cadres’s chief lieutenant at the age of forty-eight. In a landslide campaign, he’d been the toast of the Republican Party and the model for all politicians, of any political stripe, seemingly more popular than the president himself. Heir apparent to the throne.
And helpmate to a doddering old man too incompetent to be an effective president. As vice president, he had assumed the mantle of leadership, calling upon his years in military service to calm the nerves of a nation in the grips of buyer’s remorse. It had been he, not President Cadres, who had traveled to meet foreign dignitaries and address the United Nations. He was the one who had negotiated treaties and run the government. He who’d summoned his boot camp bunkmate Will Vance, who’d created a brilliant plan that would dwarf the Manhattan Project.
Two years into his term, President Cadres stumbled onto their work, a discovery solved by a precipitate heart attack that vaulted Vice President Brandon Stokes into the presidency; his reputation soared. He’d been expected to cruise to reelection, but that was before a plummeting stock market, an ill-fated rescue mission into Antananarivo, and a private conversation caught by a hot mike.
Worse, on the eve of his resurgence, the nation of India—his unwitting partner in their great act of patriotism—decided to grow a backbone and deny his signature trade deal. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
The very next week, he’d had to sign an order stopping a merger that would destroy him. The financials on GenWorks would show clandestine U.S. funding for a covert military project. American tolerance for such behavior had eroded during Vietnam and ended altogether after Iran-Contra.
And that was without knowing what the Tigris Project could do.
So he’d issued the order, let Nigel Cooper’s investors yell bloody murder, and watched, stunned, as Silicon Valley took out hate ads across the country.
His once-glowing poll numbers now lingered inches above electoral death. All because he and Vance had tried to protect the nation they revered. “I don’t have to remind you how critical this operation is. What we’ve done is something those lightweights in Congress will never understand.”
“Tigris was imperative, Mr. President. We had no choice.”
“How will you deal with the law clerk?”
“She seems as baffled as anyone about Justice Wynn’s intentions. I have her under surveillance, and I will know what she knows.”
“Why not bring her in for questioning?”
“The chief justice has warned me that we have no grounds.” Anticipating the protest, he held up a hand. “Yet.”
“Can we check Justice Wynn’s computer now that he’s down?”
“The Court is a fortress. The justices will not accept Secret Service security, and they run on a network that is impenetrable from the outside. I have not found a vulnerability we can effectively exploit. Until I know more about the clerk, we have to move cautiously.”
Lifting one of the ergonomic stress balls he kept on his desk, Stokes completed the thought: “Can’t we get a friendly judge to replace the clerk with Celeste Wynn? She’s still his wife.”
“Possibly. I’ve reviewed Keene’s NCTC file and am having one compiled on her mother and roommate. We’ll know why he chose her by this afternoon, and I’ll try to put this to rest.”
“See that you do.” Stokes motioned to Vance to join him at the French doors overlooking the lawn. “I appreciate your loyalty and your efficiency, Will.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“To maintain the peace, I cater to the Far Right and cavil to the farther Right and pretend to have patience with the weak-willed Left. I’ve denounced what I know to be true, all in the name of patriotism and bipartisanship.”
“You’ve made tough choices, sir.”
“I made the only choices I could, given the threats we face. Tigris could stop terrorism in its tracks.” He faced Vance. “We are patriots, Vance. Men committed to the common good. A common good that will have dire consequences if the Advar and GenWorks merger is allowed to proceed. The world won’t understand the knowledge we’ve gained. You know what’s been done—and what must be done.”