Removal (48 page)

‘Captain Manning, may I speak to you for a moment?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

Manning walked back to join Kelly and Jeff, and stood facing them with his back to the White House lawn, where the curious marine guards stood at attention, keeping the small party in their gaze.

‘I’d like to ask you a question,’ Kelly said. ‘Are you aware of any, shall we say, rumors that may have been circulating among your Marines recently?’

She saw Manning swallow hard, turning his head slightly to each side in turn, as if expecting someone to creep up on him.

‘I don’t know what rumors you mean, Ma’am.’

‘Oh, I think you do. I mean rumors about what will happen once this crisis ends.’

‘About what will happen?’

‘To officers such as yourself. Once President Trevathan has ended the crisis.’

Manning looked away.

‘Obviously, any officer would have to be worried about the consequences of decisions he may have taken, any questionable orders he may have obeyed.’

Manning seemed uncertain. He was shifting his weight uneasily from foot to foot. Kelly wondered whether he had been sleeping well recently, or whether he had been lying awake at night wondering what lay in store for him. She had given him a chance, but she could not make him take it. There was not much time, but she must not rush it. She waited, allowing him to find his balance.

‘Ma’am, are we…?’

‘We’re completely off the record. I give you my word.’

Manning nodded.

‘Off the record, Ma’am, there has been a rumor among the officers and men here, that Pres… that is, Miss Trevathan has offered an amnesty to officers below a certain rank, in the event that she does become President. I don’t know where it came from.’

He hesitated. ‘Is it true? Do you know?’

Kelly felt Jeff’s eyes on her. She took a deep breath.

‘Captain Manning, Ellen Trevathan is already the President of the United States,’ she replied. ‘Whether or not any amnesty is to be granted is up to the President. It’s not something I can officially confirm.’

‘I understand that,’ Manning said. ‘But …’

‘Let me finish,’ Kelly interrupted. ‘What I’m saying is, I can’t confirm or deny anything officially. But there is one thing I can tell you. Ellen Trevathan is a woman of her word. You can take that to the bank. Do we understand each other?’

Slowly, Manning raised his eyes to meet Kelly’s and nodded.

‘Yes, Ma’am, we do. Thank you.’

‘Good,’ Kelly said. ‘I’ll remember. And I will leave it to your discretion whether or not you pass on our conversation to anyone else.’

Manning seemed poised to ask another question, but he had no time. Linda Samuels and Gary Mills were making their way to the entrance from inside the building. On seeing them, Manning saluted again and returned to his duties on the lawn

* * *

For several long moments, Kelly and Linda stood and looked at one another. Then, without a word, they walked into each other’s arms and embraced. Kelly held Linda for some time. When she released her, she noticed that tears had formed in her friend’s eyes. Hurriedly, Linda wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She stepped across to Jeff and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should do the introductions. Kelly Smith, Jeff Morris, my colleague, Gary Mills.’

With silent nods, Kelly and Jeff shook hands with Gary.

‘Why don’t we sit down?’ Linda said, leading the way into a spacious conference room which had been furnished with coffee and water.

‘This is awkward,’ Linda began, once they were seated around the mahogany conference table. ‘I don’t know how to…’

‘First,’ Kelly said, ‘we’re not recording this. Are you?’

‘No,’ Linda said. ‘This is off the record.’

‘Good,’ Kelly said. ‘I asked for this meeting, Linda, so why don’t you let me make a start, and everyone else can join in as they need to. Is that OK?’

‘Sure. That’s fine.’

‘Jeff and I are here in our capacity as federal agents,’ Kelly said. ‘But we’re also here at the request of President Trevathan, to see if we can’t find some way out of this impasse. I need to make it clear that, while we have authority to negotiate, we would have to get the President’s agreement to whatever might be proposed.’

‘So would we,’ Gary said. ‘We would have to get the President’s agreement.’

Kelly was about to respond sharply, when she felt Jeff’s hand on her arm. He laughed pleasantly.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look, it’s obvious that we take different positions here as to who the President is, and I don’t see anyone backing off right now. So why don’t we agree to call them ‘Trevathan’ and ‘Wade’, or ‘Ellen’ and ‘Steve’, for now? We all understand no one’s conceding anything. It might make things run smoother.’

‘Fine with me,’ Gary said. Kelly and Linda nodded, Kelly with some reluctance.

‘All right,’ Kelly said. ‘I have two things to say to begin with. First, I understand that Wade was a very popular President, and I understand that he thinks the Senate has treated him unfairly. Maybe they have. But the thing is, Linda, we have to be ruled by the Constitution and, according to the Constitution, Wade is gone. That’s black-letter law. Once the Senate votes, Wade is gone.’

‘What’s the second thing?’ Linda asked.

‘Trevathan controls the military.’

‘Some of the military,’ Gary Mills corrected. ‘Not including the nukes.’

‘The nukes are irrelevant,’ Kelly responded quickly. ‘No American serviceman is going to use nuclear weapons against his own country.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Gary said. Something in the tone of his voice made Kelly’s blood run cold.

‘We’re quite sure of that,’ she said, with a little hesitation.

‘I wouldn’t be, if I were you,’ Gary replied coolly. ‘Guess where some of those weapons are pointed, as of this afternoon?’

There was a long silence. ‘I don’t believe it,’ Jeff said firmly.

‘Is that true, Linda?’ Kelly asked.

‘I believe so,’ Linda replied. ‘That’s what I’m told.’

Her face had become very pale.

‘It’s a bluff,’ Jeff said. ‘Wade would never do that. What hope would he have of being President if he did that? It’s bullshit.’

‘You’re not listening to us,’ Gary said.

‘Damn right, I’m not listening to that,’ Jeff replied.

Gary exhaled heavily. ‘No, you’re not hearing what we’re saying.’

‘What Gary means,’ Linda jumped in, ‘is that you assumed we were saying that Wade pointed the nukes at the United States, and that any decision to use them would be taken solely by Steve Wade. We didn’t say that.’

Kelly and Jeff looked at each other in horror. For some time they could not reply.

‘It’s Hessler, isn’t it?’ Kelly asked eventually.

‘Yes.’

Jeff snorted, shaking his head.

‘I don’t get this. Wade is claiming to be the President of the United States. My understanding is that the President has sole control of the nuclear codes. How could Hessler…?’

‘It’s not that simple, Jeff,’ Gary interrupted. ‘Wade has very few options here. At the beginning, it seemed that the Joint Chiefs would all support the Williamsburg Doctrine… well, all except Gutierrez anyway. But Terrell wouldn’t play ball, and then McGarry dropped out. That left Hessler as Wade’s only senior military adviser. Obviously, Wade has been taking his advice, and he has given Hessler a lot of leeway on strategy.’

There was another long silence. Kelly could hear her heart beat against the silence of the room.

‘In any case,’ Linda said, ‘you couldn’t retake the White House without destroying the building, and considerable loss of life. We know that Trevathan is not about to do that. She doesn’t like guns.’

Kelly leaned forward in her chair.

‘Linda, if Wade and Hessler believe that, they are making a serious miscalculation.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘The Institution is more important than the building, Linda. Trevathan will take it back, or take the ground it stands on back, whatever the cost. And she’ll do it tomorrow. You have her word on it.’

‘What were you saying about the Senate?’ Linda asked, after she and Gary had remained silent for some time.

‘I said that after the Senate vote, Wade was gone as President.’

‘What if the Senate took another vote, and came up with a different result?’

‘You mean, under duress, with Hessler’s Marines and that mob of white supremacist yahoos holding guns on them? You think that qualifies as a vote?’

‘Trevathan could question it in the courts,’ Gary Mills observed, with a careless shrug. ‘But Wade would remain President.’

‘I don’t see that,’ Jeff said. ‘He’s not President now. The only vote so far has been to remove him. The Constitution doesn’t say the Senate can put him back into office again.’

Before Gary could reply, Linda leaned forward, and put her hand on his arm.

‘Kelly, what do you mean ‘white supremacist yahoos’?’ she asked.

Kelly looked at her closely. ‘Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know who they are.’

‘As far as I know, they’re citizens,’ Linda said.

‘Well, yes, they are citizens, unfortunately,’ Kelly replied. ‘They’re also white supremacist yahoos, organized by the Sons of the Flag. Remember them?’

‘Bullshit,’ Linda shouted angrily. ‘Why can’t you people deal with the fact that Wade is a popular President, and the people have turned out to support him. It’s the people who will be taking back the Senate, Kelly, not any white supremacists.’

Jeff moved forward in his chair, but Kelly shook her head.

‘Linda, you remember when we had dinner that time? You wanted to tell me how uneasy you were about some of the things that were going on here in the White House, and I was telling you how crazy things were at the Bureau because we were tracking all those protests?’

‘I remember.’

‘Well, what we were actually tracking were car loads, van loads, truck loads of people coming to Washington from out West. It was a highly organized operation. We didn’t see it coming until it was too late, because there were so many vehicles involved, vehicles that are now parked all around Washington. If you’d been out of this place recently, you would have seen them. That whole thing was orchestrated by the Sons of the Flag. And those were also the people Hamid Marfrela was working with. So suddenly, here we have Wade getting impeached, and the Sons of the Flag showing up in force to try to help him out. Do you see where I’m going with this?’

‘So, you’re saying Wade set all this up?’ Linda asked eventually. ‘You’re saying there never was any mass movement of the people at all?’

‘Well, what did you think, Linda?’ Kelly countered. ‘Don’t tell me you bought the story that you and Gary are part of some glorious stand on behalf of the American people? That Wade is some icon the people have to protect against political assassination by the Senate? God in Heaven, Linda, after all the years I’ve known you, you’re not going to tell me you fell for a load of crap like that?’

Linda stood, her face set, her hands clenched furiously. ‘It is not a load of crap,’ she shouted. ‘How dare you…?’

‘Take it easy, Linda,’ Gary said.

He leaned forward across the table.

‘How sure are you of this?’ he asked.

‘The Bureau has been monitoring the Sons of the Flag for several years,’ Kelly replied. ‘We have a lot of intelligence on them. We even had an agent inside their organization for a while, but they found out about him. We lost him, Gary, and he was a good man. But, as a result, we were ready for them to make a move of some kind. When the impeachment started, we saw a convoy of vehicles leaving their compound in Oregon. We watched them every step of the way to Washington. Other convoys joined them. Unfortunately, they got wind that we were on to them and broke up, so we had to try to watch each vehicle. Even with satellite coverage, we lost track of some of them. Until they got to Washington. But we have agents in place, and these agents have positively identified George Carlson and Dan Rogers, who are known to be the commanders of the Sons of the Flag. They are on the steps of the Capitol as we speak. Now, OK, maybe Wade didn’t orchestrate this himself. Maybe someone else did. But the fact remains, the Senate is being held hostage by a bunch of thugs.’

‘The Senate is being guarded by the Marines,’ Gary Mills said, but his voice lacked conviction.

‘Guarded?’ Kelly asked. ‘Or intimidated?’

There was a long silence.

‘This isn’t getting anywhere,’ Linda said eventually.

‘It has to get somewhere,’ Kelly said. ‘And it has to get somewhere fast.’ She looked at Jeff, who nodded slightly. ‘Wade’s organization is falling apart, Linda.’

‘It doesn’t look that way to me. You’ve been out there in the grounds. You’ve seen the pictures on television. I don’t see anything falling apart.’

‘That’s because you’re not hearing what those Marines out there in the grounds of the White House are saying.’

‘What do you mean?’

Kelly leaned forward in her chair.

‘It seems that there have been rumors circulating. They’re saying that Trevathan is prepared to grant an amnesty to junior officers and enlisted men if they give her their support. They’re thinking about it. They’re having second thoughts about carrying out some of the orders they’ve been given. Clearly the law is on Trevathan’s side, so I don’t think it’s going to take them very long to figure out what to do, do you?’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘No, it’s not. I’ve heard the rumor myself.’

‘If so, Trevathan planted it. It’s just bullshit.’

‘Whoever planted it, it’s working. And Trevathan would have every reason to be grateful to anyone who defends the Constitution, even if that wasn’t their original decision. Including you, Linda. Including you, Gary.’

Gary Mills sneered. ‘You think you can turn us around? Is that why you came here?’

‘I came here to talk,’ Kelly replied. ‘But, since we’re on the subject, I wouldn’t want to see the two of you go down with the ship. You’re both very loyal people, but your loyalty has been used, betrayed. If you stay with Wade, the story is not going to have a happy ending.’

Gary shook his head. Linda was looking down at the table. Both seemed suddenly subdued.