by Anna Dove
“Soon I won’t exactly be in the First Lady’s good favor. I don’t know what she will try to do to me. It’s better if you are not seen right now as someone in corroboration with me.”
She could see him look behind them at the entrance and then peer into the darkness over her shoulder. He took a small step closer to her.
“McCraiben is running against her,” he said in a low tone. “He is convinced that the First Lady is somehow responsible for the attack. We were down in the bunker with them--and he began to notice little things about her--the way she acted around Reed, the little glances and whisperings. When she announced, he felt even more strongly that it was her. He wants you to be his aide, to work with him. You don’t have to say yes—you wouldn’t be in the public eye until much later—for now he just wants to talk to you, and use you to help him figure out a way to expose her. All in secret of course, and then if he becomes President you will work with him in public then, once you have the safety of guards. He’s asked myself as well. It’s pathetic how small the group of people is that anyone can trust right now—so far, it’s only us.”
Haley felt a sudden rush of relief. The Senator was alive! And not only alive, but ready to believe the truth. She could tell him—they could join ranks. Then, a flash of doubt.
“Why do you trust me? And how did you find me?”
“I trust you because the Senator trusts you. And I wasn’t looking for you—I just saw you in the crowd. The Senator told me to keep an eye out in case I ever saw you. Couldn’t believe my luck. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“And that’s enough for you? You trust me because of him?”
“Yes. I was there, Haley, with him, for the last few months while it all happened. He’s the only one I trust, but he trusts you too, and so I have to.”
“And how can I trust you?”
“Because the Senator does.”
Haley paused, and looked at the outline of his face against the dim light entering from outside.
“I want to talk to him; if I can see him, I can tell you both the whole story.”
Landon took another breath and held it for a moment before exhaling. “Of course,” he said quietly, nodding. “Come to McCraiben’s house. Come tomorrow.”
“I will.”
With no further comment, Landon turned and stepped into the sunlight, and then disappeared around the corner towards the chanting throng.
22. The Senator’s House
“Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.”
- Leo Tolstoy
The Senator’s house was in NE D.C., stretching tall between two other ornate row houses. Their bricks dated back to 1922, and although the plumbing and wiring had been replaced on multiple occasions, many of the original fixtures were the same, including the sprawling claw footed bathtub, several small chandeliers, ornate oak furniture and a great wooden chest.
Haley arrived at four in the afternoon. She raised her hand, paused, and then knocked softly.
She heard faint footsteps approaching, then a pause, and then the bolt slid from within and the brass doorknob turned. The door swung slowly open and she found herself facing James Landon.
She now saw him clearly in full light. He looked a little leaner, a little older. He could not be more than thirty five, but his face seemed to bear more lines, and to be more reserved, since their interactions at the gala. He nodded his head politely.
“Welcome,” he said, and motioned her inside.
They entered the foyer, with exposed brick wall and an iron radiator to the left. Their feet sank deep into the oriental rug that ran the length of the room. Candles were lit on a side table, lending a soft light to the space. Several paintings from the Victorian era graced the walls, the faces peering with gravity from the oil colors.
The foyer led to the dining room, which adjoined the living room with two pillars between the two. Windows allowed natural light to enter, and there in a red armchair in the living room sat the Senator.
He sat with his large forehead propped against his hand, absorbed in reading a book. The lines on his face had deepened and the gray streaks in his hair seemed to have multiplied, Haley noticed, as she passed through the dining room towards him. His beard was grown out, and his eyebrows furrowed down like great gray caterpillars. Her heart panged with a strange sadness. He looked so old.
She followed Landon into the room, and the Senator looked up. His face lit up with pleasure as he saw Haley, and standing up, he shook her hand vigorously, and then overcome with emotion, he wrapped her in his arms, as if she were something very precious. Tears welled to her eyes as she felt the heartbeat through his chest. He pulled back and placed his hands on her shoulders, his eyes misting.
“Haley! I can’t express how happy I am to see you. So relieved. Welcome, welcome to my humble home! I am so pleased that you are here! I was so worried! It seems that so—so many—so many—well, I am happy,” he finished, and Haley was touched to see the relief in his eyes. “Come in, come in. Sit down! Would you like some water? We have so much to discuss tonight. Sit down, I’ll bring it to you.”
He strode from the room, his tall frame vanishing through the doorway, and Haley and Landon sat down on the red couch adjacent to his chair.
“Is anyone else joining us?” asked Haley.
“No, not that I’m aware.”
“How did you manage in the last few months?” She turned towards him curiously.
“I was in Chimaugua Bunker with the Senator. Awful place. So chilling.”
Haley took a deep breath. “What about his family?”
“His car was a key started engine, his old Ford. One of the only remaining non electric cars on the road. Probably illegal. His wife and children—if you want to call them children, they’re not much younger than we are—they all drove to West Virginia and stayed with her parents.”
The Senator entered with a bottle of water and three glasses. He set them down on the little coffee table.
“Our story?” He questioned, and Landon nodded.
“The Capitol Police force invaded the Senate and House buildings perhaps thirty seconds after the attack. Landon had just walked into my office,” continued the Senator. “They escorted us out, not the staffers just the members of Congress. About one third of us in all were there at the end—everyone else, I don’t know. They took us to the basement of a hotel—a nondescript chain hotel—and we took the steps down to the basement. In the basement, this giant door swung open from the inside and we entered a tunnel. Most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. No one was speaking really, we all just moved forward, watching what was going on. We knew something had happened—had no idea what—and I knew it was the attack but I still thought it had happened in New York and the media just hadn’t picked it up yet. We got on a train, and rode it for about two hours maybe until we got to the bunker entrance. On the train we talked a little, but not much. Wasn’t much to say. When we arrived at the bunker entrance we rode down a long elevator shaft, hundreds of feet. Hundreds. One man vomited all over the space. We were all thinking about our families, and that feeling of being so helpless—well, it’s something I never want to experience again.
“We got to the bottom, and boy, is that place a piece of work. It’s like the heart and soul were sucked out of the air and replaced with fear and steel. Walls, floors, ceilings, feet thick in steel. We had power down there, because you know it’s literally a metal box, impervious to the effects of the attack, and so the generators functioned normally. There were dormitories they had split into men’s and women’s, there was a massive meeting room with central speaking podium and tables and chairs around the walls, there were storage rooms for food and water. Each room, each hall, was steel. The overhead lights lit the spaces grimly—I’ve never seen bright light be so grim. It illuminated every corner, no softness.
“Eventually they briefed us on what happened. The President was there, the First Lady, a few members of his cabinet, but
the Vice President noticeably absent. Just over two hundred members of Congress, both chambers combined. One Supreme Court Justice. Many upper level Department of Defense members. Not many others. The police had a prioritized list, but as their communications were cut off, it was a real hit or miss.”
“How awful,” said Haley, as the Senator paused to sip his water.
“We found within the first ten minutes that our allies, mostly in Europe, had found out and had pledged to protect us against foreign invasion. That was welcome news, but did not assuage our fears for our families, our friends, our infrastructure, hell, we hadn’t even thought much about foreign invasion, we’d been so distracted by the idea that our entire nation just collapsed internally.
“Then, various individuals convinced the president that it would be wisest to do nothing for a week, because—well, it’s so awful, but because people would start to kill each other off, or die, and that needed to happen before we could actually address the infrastructure issues, since the issues would take months to fix. This hit me hard. I knew my wife and children would probably end up going somewhere safe—they’re smart people. Resourceful people. I was still worried sick but I trusted them. But the idea that food and water were now not a guarantee, and the mental images of what that would do to people—that was just cruel, sick—so awful to think about. This revealed to me who was involved. It was truly a team that Reed seemed to be commanding--they would all in unison advise the president so that he had no choice but to listen to them.”
The Senator paused and sighed, and leaned his weight forward.
“We spent the next two months or so down there. We came up three weeks ago. We were all instituted again in our positions and we have been trying to manage since then. It felt unfair, too,” the Senator suddenly added. “Unfair that I was protected like a precious trophy, while my wife and my children, hell while so many other vulnerable people, had to make a go of it on their own. I understand if course but that just ate me alive, it felt so wrong.”
He looked at Haley absently and shook his head, and then raised his eyebrows.
“How did you manage?” The Senator asked. “I want to know how you survived.”
Haley recounted the occurrences of the weeks following the attack, and the others listened with rapt attention, occasionally nodding in approval. She described the journey to Annapolis, the sailing, the farmhouse, in vivid terms, and it was as if the places and people appeared before the group as she told the story. As she finished, the Senator nodded.
“You are a brave woman,” he said.
“I did what I had to do to survive. I’m just heartbroken because so many did not make it.”
“They were unprepared,” said Landon, “and deluded into the belief that the United States was invulnerable to attack.”
“Yet they didn’t deserve to die because of foolish behavior.”
“No, of course not,” said Landon. “It just could have been prevented.”
“They didn’t deserve to die,” replied the Senator. “They unfortunately existed in a state of deluded confidence. I am sure that the Romans believed very much in the Roman Empire, and now, look what remains. Tourists go and take pictures of the Roman Forum, the epicenter of where all of these mighty Roman leaders ruled a vast expanse of land, and now what is left? Three pillars here, three pillars there, some engraved stones. In their time, I am sure that they thought themselves very important, and rather invincible. But then the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Franks, the Burgundians, Saxons, Angles, Jutes--and Rome fell. Not to mention internal economic problems, an overextended military, government corruption and political instability...I knew that the United States was at a point of extreme vulnerability, due to our internal unrest, our disengaged and distracted citizenry, our bloated sense of self-worth and our belief that we would never fall. It is always at the point when one is least expecting it, that the unexpected occurs. Or perhaps, considering history, the point at which one is most expecting it.”
The room was quiet for a moment, and the light slanted through the window, falling on the patterned rug.
“You believe that she did it, too?” said the Senator suddenly, and looked at Haley with intensity. She knew to whom he was referring.
“I know that she did.”
“How?”
“The gala that you sent me to, for the Council of Economic Advisors--remember? Well, when Elizabeth overheard that conversation there, my friend Carlos heard the other end of the conversation. Reed was talking to the First Lady. We didn’t know who it was, and we thought it was the president himself, until Carlos told us.”
“How would he have heard that?”
“He was--sleeping with her--she had gone into another room to talk but he overheard.”
The Senator seemed to be thinking; his hand massaged his brow. His hand reached to the top of his head and strayed through his graying hair.
“So it’s true,” he said musingly, almost as if to himself. “I knew.”
“Sir,” broke in Landon, “the question seems to me not the question of if, but the question now of how. How are we to expose this, when we don’t know who we can trust?”
“Trust no one beyond our circle!” barked the Senator, suddenly coming quite alive. “I’ll be damned if I trust a single soul besides you. You must not, you must not, breathe a single word to anyone. This is our lives at stake here. If she is willing to stage an attack of this scale on innocent civilians, you must not labor under the delusion that she would think twice about killing anyone who she perceives as a threat. No. The only way for us to go forward--I must run against her, publicly. That way, she cannot kill me, else she lose the trust of the people. She knows the game. There is no other way.”
23. The Challenger
“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for staying ashore.”
― Vincent Van Gogh
One week after the meeting in the Senator’s house, the Senator announced his candidacy for president. Hosting press, officials and donors, he rented the Ballroom at McLean Gardens in which to host the event. News of his intentions had circulated through the town and into neighboring states already, and many were eager to hear his announcement and to see the reaction of his political opponent.
The ballroom was full by eight pm, swarmed by journalists, armed to the teeth in pens and notebooks and film cameras, intermingled with many of the remaining senators and congressmen, as well as judges, business executives, lawyers, and most conspicuously, one of the chief aides to Adela Gilman’s campaign, who was a shrimpy fellow with jet black hair and a crisp black suit and a rather protruding jaw. The atmosphere was abuzz with chatter, with expectation so thick one could practically cut it with a knife.
At quarter past eight, the Senator entered, and a hush fell over the crowd, some of whom had seated themselves in the rows of chairs under the ornate ceiling and some of whom stood towards the back of the room. Four pillars, spaced evenly in the room, reached from the ceiling to the floor, and sconces with long white tapering candles burned bright from the walls while candle lit chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
The Senator wore a crisp blue suit with a red tie, and looked very handsome as he stood in front of the crowd. Haley, Elizabeth and Carlos sat in the front row, and Adela Gilman’s aide sat at the row’s end to their left, with four or five others in between.
“The aide--he’s intimidating,” said Elizabeth quietly to Carlos, motioning her head towards the end of the row. Carlos looked, and the aide turned to meet his glance. Carlos averted his gaze to the front, where the Senator was standing.
“Yep,” he said, under his breath. “I recognize him--he worked in the Eisenhower.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“I don’t know,” Carlos replied tersely, and Elizabeth could sense his sudden apprehension.
The Senator cleared his throat, and all eyes snapped to the front. He stood be
hind a podium erected for this occasion, and his hands grasped its sides. He looked down for a moment, closed his eyes, and then opening them, raised his face to the room.
“I am announcing today my candidacy for the office of President of the United States,” he began, and his strong, deep voice carried to the very corners of the walls, to the folds in the great gold draping curtains, to the golden crevices of the wall sconces and the crystal droplets of the chandeliers above. “I run because I am convinced that this country has encountered its most perilous time, and I have such strong feelings about what must be done, that I am necessarily obliged to offer my services towards its restitution. I run in order to stop the bloodshed that has occurred and continues to occur following the attack on our soil. I run to repair the torn fabric of our society. I run not as a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor of any other party, but rather as a man who refuses to see his country die. I run so that the United States of America can stand in hope, and defeat despair. I run for the reconciliation of people, for the unification of the country.
“We are at war, and we know not with whom. We are now at our weakest point, weaker than we have ever been. The faceless despots and the wicked both internally and abroad will seek to plunge their knives into our exposed bellies, to gut us and send us backwards into a pit from which we might never recover. They stand ready like an army, poised to strike. Will we take the course of defense and restitution? Upon the course that you, this country’s citizens, decide, depends the fate of our nation. Upon you depends this civilization. Upon you depends this country. Upon you depends the future. And if we fail, if we are unable to win this war against the yet unknown enemy, then we will be lost in the abyss of a true sinister darkness, against which the absence of electric power is only dusk rather than the blackest midnight.
“Which one of you has not lost a father? A mother? A sister or brother? A friend? Which one of you has not felt the crippling agony of despair as you watch the last breath depart the lungs of someone for whom you would yourself die? Which one of you has not felt your heart feel faint with grief as your child cries because their flesh is wasting away in starvation and you can do nothing to stop it? Which one of you has sought for a sacred place to bury your dead, and found none? How will we go forward? Our hearts are stricken with grief, and the air has been robbed of our lungs, and our enemy crouches at the door like a lion, waiting to devour.