by Joseph Flynn
The attorney general put the phone down.
“We’ll let Ricker and the Welks wonder what’s happening for the time being; nobody tells them anything. Let their consciences conjure what they will. In the meantime, I’ll be leaving for Hazelton, West Virginia within a matter of hours to speak with Mrs. Godfrey.”
“You, personally?” Galia asked.
“Me,” Jaworsky said.
Galia had no desire to complicate matters by raising the subject of an independent counsel, but she wondered if the direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official might look like the administration was greasing the rails for Burke Godfrey.
“Madam President?” Galia asked.
“Do it, Michael,” she said. “Let’s see how sincere Mrs. Godfrey is.”
“We’ll also need to have FBI agents keep track of Burke Godfrey’s movements, and we’ll need to search his offices and homes to make sure no documentary evidence suddenly goes missing. I’ll need to take care of that quickly, too.”
“Use Galia’s office as soon as we’re done.”
“It will look better if I use my own office,” the AG said.
“You’re right, of course.” Patti shook her head at her misjudgment.
“Don’t be hard on yourself, Madam President. I can’t begin to imagine the heartache all this has rekindled in you. You handled yourself very well in your conversation with Erna Godfrey. Nothing you said could in any way be viewed as either coercive or vengeful. That’s very important.”
Patti only nodded. Small comfort, but she’d take what she could get.
The attorney general said, “What we have to do is get any and all evidence we can to buttress Erna Godfrey’s statement that her husband was involved in this crime. Documentary evidence will be important; corroborating testimony from at least two of Mrs. Godfrey’s co-defendants will be essential. We get those things and we’ll be able to build not just a strong case but one that will convince a majority of the American people.”
Galia was pleased the attorney general understood the politics involved, and intended to win the minds of a far greater number of people than just the members of the jury.
Getting better than half the voting public was what Galia wanted.
Now, all they needed to move forward was —
The president said, “Don’t let us keep you, Michael. Make this work.”
With that the prosecution of the Reverend Burke Godfrey was set in motion.
Galia started to make her plans accordingly.
Washington, D.C., National Portrait Gallery
The Merriman brothers, Robert and Anson, were idly glancing at the paintings hung in the Twentieth-Century Americans exhibit. The theme of the paintings was the never-ending struggle to attain the American goal of justice for all. Images of those who had struggled to that end included reformers from Teddy Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Neither of the Merrimans kidded himself about possessing a similarly noble character; their interest wasn’t art — it was conversing in a place where their words were unlikely to be recorded and where their adversaries would be easy to spot. Appropriate to the setting, though, they kept their voices down.
“So, you’re out now, right?” Anson asked his older brother. “Roger Michaelson comes back to the Senate after the August recess, and he’s got a new chief of staff.”
“I’m available for the occasional phone call,” Bob said. “On the cuff.”
Anson repressed a chuckle. “You charged Mom for doing the dishes. Don’t tell me you’re giving freebies to Michaelson.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“So who are you hiring to run your campaign?”
Robert Merriman would soon announce his campaign to run as a Democrat for the Senate seat from Oregon that his former boss, Roger Michaelson, would be leaving to run for president.
“Haven’t decided yet,” Bob said.
“Bullshit. You know who you want. If you’re not telling me, it’s because you’re still negotiating money and authority.”
Robert Merriman stopped in front of a portrait of John F. Kennedy.
His brother stood next to him. They looked at the image of the assassinated president.
Kennedy had died younger than either of them was now.
“You think he had any idea what was going to happen to him?” Anson asked.
“You mean a premonition?” Bob shook his head. “No. If he had, he would have sent Lyndon Johnson to Dallas alone.”
“Bobby Kennedy would have liked that.”
“Better than what happened, that’s for sure.”
“If Johnson had taken the bullet, Bobby might’ve pushed himself for VP.”
Robert Merriman looked at his brother and grinned.
“You saying the Kennedys were closer than we are?”
“I’m not the one keeping secrets,” Anson said.
“Chickenshit stuff. You want to hear something big, I’ll tell you — under pain of death for talking, of course.”
Anson nodded. “Death, sure. What’s the secret?”
“I’m working on getting Patti Grant’s endorsement for my Senate run.”
Anson smiled. “Nice parlay: getting a Republican president to endorse a Democratic candidate for the Senate, thinking you can not only do it, but you can make it work to your advantage. That takes imagination.”
Then Bob told Anson exactly how he would make everything work.
The younger Merriman’s eyes went wide in wonder.
“Jesus, wouldn’t that be something?”
“Yes, it would.”
“That’s worth a tidbit in return. One of the guys in my shop is an in-law to Gerald Mishkin. You know who he is, of course.”
Robert Merriman had never married. He thought a wife would be a vulnerability, children a distraction. He dated single women no younger than ten years his junior. What he and the ladies did was strictly their business and they kept the curtains drawn as they went about that business. Voters said they preferred married candidates, but the way things had gone with straying political spouses the past twenty years, Merriman was betting people would find his approach refreshing.
Nonetheless, he knew Gerald Mishkin was the capital’s top divorce lawyer.
“Who’s untying the knot?” he asked.
Anson told him, “That would be Mrs. Speaker of the House, Harlo Geiger.”
Robert Merriman chuckled gleefully. “Strike three, he’s out.”
The White House, South Portico Gate
Leo Levy drove McGill and Deke up to the South Portico entrance to the White House. The back door, as McGill thought of it. Leo stopped right where he was supposed to and waved at the uniformed Secret Service officers. Every man and woman in the uniformed service, a number approaching five hundred, knew McGill and his car, knew Leo and Deke.
Once the uniforms got to know that McGill was a regular guy who just happened to be married to the president, they would respond in a friendly manner when he chatted with them. Some had even joked with him. Dan Cuyler, an Irish-American with a dry sense of humor, approaching McGill’s car at that moment, had even started a running gag of doing a sign-countersign bit with the president’s husband, like the two of them were spies.
It started one day when Cuyler had looked at McGill with a straight face and said, “The wind is in the willows.”
To which McGill had replied, without missing a beat, “And there’s dandruff on the pillows.”
Leo and Deke rolled their eyes at the routine, but the uniforms appreciated it.
Cuyler always concluded the act with, “Pass, friend.”
But today Cuyler’s appearance was serious. In fact, the uniformed officer stood to attention opposite McGill and snapped off a perfect salute. Uneasy now, McGill returned the gesture from the back of the car.
“Everything okay, Dan?” he asked.
“May I speak personally, sir?”
“That’s the way I like it,�
�� McGill said.
“We’ve heard about Kenny.”
McGill shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. There were over three thousand people who worked full time at the White House. Part-timers and volunteers added hundreds more. But the guys on the gate already knew about Kenny.
“He’s getting the best of care,” McGill said.
“Yes, sir. But we understand he might need a bone marrow donor. I hope you don’t mind, sir, but we’ve started compiling a list of potential volunteer donors, in the event no one in your family is a good match.”
McGill was stunned. He’d heard from Carolyn less than an hour ago about going down to the hospital to give a blood sample … and the Secret Service was already thinking about helping his son. Their kindness brought a lump to his throat.
“Thank you, Dan. You’re talking about your uniformed colleagues?”
“Us and the presidential detail and the vice presidential detail. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Marines got in on the act. Probably the Navy guys in the Mess, too. And the National Park people.”
McGill had to blink away tears.
“Thank you.” He extended his hand to Dan Cuyler. The officer shook it and saluted once more.
As Leo drove onto the White House grounds, McGill asked Deke, “You have anything to do with this?”
Deke’s voice was impassive. “Might have.”
Leo told McGill, “Count me in, too, boss.”
McGill nodded. “Thank you, both of you.”
Then a thought of the purest irony struck McGill: What if the one person who could save his son turned out to be Celsus Crogher?
GWU Hospital
Kenny McGill sat alone in a space that somebody had tried to make look like a living room in a really nice house. There was a sofa and two arm chairs. There were shelves filled with all sorts of books and magazines. There was a flat-screen television. There were Wii and PlayStation consoles.
A nurse had even given him an iPad and showed him how to use it.
Thing was, he didn’t want to do any of that stuff. He couldn’t stop thinking about what was happening to him. He was sick and getting sicker. Nobody came right out and said so, but they didn’t have to. He’d had physicals before — you had to, to play sports at school —but they hadn’t been anything like what he’d just gone through. It had been like getting tackled by a football team of doctors and nurses, and some of those doctors and most of those nurses were women. If he’d had the time to think, he’d have turned red all over.
Good thing he hadn’t done that; they’d probably have thought he was sicker than he was. Which had to be bad enough, because when they’d finished taking his blood, his pee, his spit and even — yeesh — some of his poop, and had stopped looking at him every which way except inside out, he’d asked to see his family.
He could have used a hug right about then. But he’d been told everyone was busy. With what, he’d wanted to know. When they told him the truth, they were all giving blood samples to see if they might help him out, he was sorry he asked.
Jeez, were they going to put someone else’s blood in him? He’d heard about transfusions, of course, but the way he’d been gone over, he didn’t think it would be as simple as just topping off his tank.
If he had to take in anyone’s blood, though, he wanted it to be his dad’s blood. In fact, it’d be kind of cool having Dad’s blood in him. Maybe it’d give him an edge over other guys. Look at what his dad did for a living. Look at who he was married to.
Even Lars’ blood would be okay. He was a good guy. He made Mom happy. His stores had to be making money because they had a nice house and got new cars every other year. Except for the old Volvo Lars had been given by his grandfather. Lars loved working on that car, kept it looking great and it never failed to start no matter how cold the weather got.
Dad or Lars, that was whose blood he wanted, if he needed any. He loved his mother and his sisters, but —
An old guy walked into the room, stopped short when he saw Kenny.
Like he was surprised to see someone else there.
Kenny said, “I’m not in the wrong place, am I? Is this your room?”
The guy smiled, and Kenny was glad to see it. Otherwise, he would have been kind of scary. He was huge, had wide shoulders and the biggest hands Kenny had ever seen. He looked like he might have been even bigger once, but then he must’ve got kind of skinny because his clothes hung loose on him. What was left of his hair was white, but neatly combed. His eyes were light blue with lots of red veins.
Kenny had heard that guys who drank too much got eyes like that, but he didn’t smell any alcohol on the old man. He actually smelled kind of good, like that aftershave Dad used when he was going somewhere fancy.
The old man told Kenny, “No, this isn’t my room, but they do reserve it for certain people.”
The guy had a cool voice. Deep but friendly. Like somebody on the radio or TV. Somebody whose voice was a big part of his job, somebody who got paid because other people wanted to hear him talk. He sat in an easy chair opposite Kenny, and the boy was glad when the old man didn’t pick up a book or a magazine.
“What kind of certain people?” Kenny asked.
“Sick people,” the old man said with a shrug.
A trill of fear rippled through Kenny, but then he realized the old man was talking about himself. He immediately wanted to know —
“I’m pretty bad off,” the old man said.
“I’m sorry,” Kenny told him.
The old man shrugged again. “I really don’t have room to complain, being two hundred years old.”
For just a second, Kenny bought the line.
Then the old guy smiled once more and there was a twinkle in his eye.
“You are not,” Kenny said.
“No, I’m not. I just feel like it.”
“Can’t they do anything for you?”
“Well, I am here for my meds. After I take them, why I feel a hundred years younger.”
Kenny knew he was being kidded again, but he didn’t mind.
He stuck out his hand. “I’m Kenny McGill.”
The old man took Kenny’s hand, engulfing it. Taking it easy. Being gentle.
“My friends call me Zack,” the old man told the boy.
The Oval Office
Edwina Byington, the president’s personal secretary, age seventy-something, told McGill to add her name to the list of potential donors. She even tried not to act annoyed as McGill paced back and forth in front of her desk. She asked if he’d like some White House ice tea, one of his favorite treats.
When McGill said no, she knew how worried he was.
Edwina then made an executive decision.
“The president is with her chief of staff, but the attorney general left some time ago, so maybe it wouldn’t be too serious a breach if I buzz her to see how long she’ll be busy.”
McGill was about to tell her not to bother, but Edwina had already acted.
“Madam President, Mr. McGill is here. Shall I —”
“Send him in, please,” the president said. “I’ll need some time alone with my husband, Edwina.”
“As you wish, Madam President.” Edwina told McGill, “She’ll see you now.”
McGill nodded and entered the Oval Office. Galia was just getting to her feet.
Patti came around her desk to greet her husband. She took his hands and kissed him on both cheeks. A gesture of affection the two of them had acquired during their vacation last year in Paris.
Galia asked, “Does Dr. Nicolaides need help with anything at the hospital?”
McGill shook his head. “Not that I know.”
The chief of staff turned to the president. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll send one of my people to the hospital to report hourly to me on Kenneth’s condition. If there’s any significant development, I’ll let you know.”
McGill knew that Galia was doing more than being kind. She was trying to keep the president f
rom being distracted from matters that would not wait. That was just the way things worked.
Even so, he said, “Thank you, Galia.”
She nodded and left.
The door had no sooner closed behind her than the First Couple embraced and drew comfort and strength from one another. They broke the hug with a kiss and sat next to each other on one of the sofas placed in front of the president’s desk.
“Things aren’t critical with Kenny, are they?” the president asked.
“I haven’t heard that they are. I’m going over to the hospital soon to see what’s what, but I wanted to talk with you first. So I barged in on Edwina, hoping you weren’t in the middle of something big.”
Patti took McGill’s hand. “We just finished something big.”
“With the attorney general.”
“Yes.” Patti told McGill about Erna Godfrey’s video confession and promise to testify against Burke Godfrey. She also informed her husband how the government would start to build its case against the reverend. McGill, however, focused on the part of Patti’s narrative that struck him hardest.
“She said she saw Andy, and he was at peace?” McGill asked.
Patti’s eyes filled and she nodded.
She understood that Jim not only felt happy for her; he felt relief for himself. He held himself to blame, at least in part, for Andy’s death. More than that, though, with Kenny’s life in jeopardy, the hope for salvation and eternal life in the company of the Lord was one devoutly to be cherished.
Devotion, of necessity, had to yield to practical considerations.
“You’ll be buying yourself a world of confrontation,” McGill told Patti.
“I know, but I came to understand something today that made me feel peaceful.”
McGill asked, “What’s that?”
“That I won’t mind being a one-and-done president as long as I can complete my term the way I want. You don’t have any trouble with that, do you?”
“The sooner I can get you away from the circus the better.”