Presidential Donor

by Bill Clem

  As he sat alone and collected his thoughts, Jonah took off his coat and placed it over the body. He didn't know what else to do. He felt guilty for taking another man's life, but he had acted on instinct when he thought Jack's life was in danger. He took one last look then stood. He needed to get to Eva's in a hurry. Finding new resolve, he jumped in the car and sped off, hoping someone had not beaten him to her.

  * * *

  Frank Bahr's plan was simple. He and Jack would sneak into Brighton through the back entrance. Once inside, they would find a stretcher, put Jack on it, and take him to the designated area. By that time, Bahr would have the FBI waiting to brief Ron Fletcher, the acting President, after Ritter and the other conspirators were arrested. Bahr knew President Lloyd would never stand for someone's murder, even if it were to save his own life. Besides, a contingency had allowed for another donor to be delivered--point of origin--unknown.

  Viktor Chemonovik had seen to that.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Ron Fletcher was already waiting for Frank Bahr when he arrived at Brighton Heart Center. He had arranged to meet in a private room on the basement floor. Fletcher had accompanied the FBI to Zurich due to the tone of the fax they received. If it were true, he would be needed to make high-level decisions in the absence of other cabinet members.

  "Speaker Fletcher, I'm Frank Bahr."

  "Yes, I know who you are. I think we need to discuss this immediately," Fletcher said. He pulled the wrinkled fax from his breast pocket.

  "There's more to it than that, I'm afraid."

  Fletcher looked at him as if Bahr had just backhanded him.

  "Well," Fletcher said. "Just let me get the Vice Pres--"

  "No!" Bahr said. "He's involved."

  "What on earth are you talking about?"

  Bahr explained everything to Fletcher, as well as showed him the memo Jonah had found in Bradley's office.

  Fletcher sat in numb silence, but when Bahr played the tape he had secretly taken of Cogswell and Ritter discussing their plan, his numbness turned to anger. He knew Cogswell was bad news, but for Ritter, it was unfathomable that he would want Lloyd dead. Still, the evidence was irrefutable. Fletcher would invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution.

  It provided a logical order of succession for an acting President should the President become incapacitated. Shortly, Ritter would be extricated from his role as Vice President. Fletcher was next in line and needed no approval from the other members of the cabinet to invoke the amendment. Especially in this case. Some of them were the reason to invoke it in the first place.

  Fletcher summoned the FBI agents to accompany him.

  The game was over.

  * * *

  The nurse had her back to President Lloyd's telemetry monitor preparing a new IV bag when she heard the alarm. When she turned around, the monitor was a mess of wavy lines that indicated his heart was in deadly ventricular fibrillation. He was blue and the ventilator alarm screamed out a drop in respiratory pressure. The nurse scrambled to the door and called to the nurse at the desk.

  "Call a code. Now!"

  The desk nurse picked up the phone and pushed the intercom.

  "Code Blue ICU room three. Code Blue ICU room three. Code Blue ICU room three."

  The other nurses in the ICU dropped what they were doing and bolted to Lloyd's room. His bed was already in the CPR position and the first nurse in the room grabbed the ambu bag off the wall and disconnected the ventilator.

  She connected the bag to his breathing tube while the other nurse bent over him and began chest compressions. "One and two and three and four and five and--"

  * * *

  The call Roy Gregg took was almost cryptic. The man spoke in a thick Russian accent, in not much more than a whisper. "I have your heart for Thomas Lloyd."

  "Who is this?" Gregg asked.

  "It doesn't matter. Check with EOPN in Bern. They will verify. It will arrive in Zurich in two hours aboard a Russian military transport. Have your liaison meet it at gate 12. Thank you."

  Gregg was dumfounded. He thought it might it be a hoax, but he contacted Bern, and they indeed verified the match. It was unbelievable. He had never received a donor from Eastern Europe. In fact, Bern didn't even handle donors outside of their jurisdiction. Still, it had been approved by EOPN.

  Someone had pulled some strings. He rushed out of the doctors' lounge just in time to hear the code alarm.

  * * *

  Gregg burst into Lloyd's room a minute later with two other cardiologists in tow.

  "What do we have?" he asked. More for everybody else's benefit than his.

  He had expected this scenario at some point.

  "V-fib," the nurse said.

  "Let's push some dig. Fifty milligrams," said Gregg, referring to Digoxin a powerful heart stimulant.

  "Okay," nurse number three, who had just come in the room said.

  Other personnel arrived from every part of the hospital, creating a nightmare for the Secret Service who monitored the situation.

  "Dig is in," nurse three said.

  "Open that Lidocaine up and give me 20 milligrams of Calcium," Gregg ordered.

  "We have V-tach with PVC's," nurse two said, reading the monitor as Gregg looked at Lloyd.

  "Let's give him 25 of Adenocard. See if we can't slow him down a bit," Gregg said.

  Nurse three grabbed the bottle of Adenocard out of the crash cart and pushed the syringe into the rubber stopper and drew out two ccs of medication, the equivalent of 25 milligrams. She quickly injected it into Lloyd's nearest IV port. After ten seconds, almost magically, his heart rate began to slow down.

  "Good," Gregg said, a minute later. We've got sinus rhythm with a few PVC's. A little more Lidocaine should take care of that.

  Nurse three increased the Lidocaine drip slightly, and the PVC's disappeared from the monitor. Gregg put his stethoscope over Lloyd's chest to verify what he saw on the screen.

  "Okay guys, good job. We've got him back." He looked at the monitor and took a deep breath. "We need to get that donor soon. He can't take much more of this."

  * * *

  A thousand miles away and thirty thousand feet above, a Russian Mig 20, tore through the clouds at six hundred miles an hour. It carried no weapons and had no hostile intent. The pilot checked his coordinates in the automatic navigation system and pushed the throttle to full power. He was already cleared to land at Zurich International Airport where he would meet a representative from Brighton Heart Center. There, he would deliver his only payload.

  One Coleman cooler. Contents--one human heart.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  It is said that the human face is capable of seven thousand expressions. If that is true, then Warren Ritter went through every one of them when Frank Bahr walked into his makeshift office.

  "Agent Bahr, I was just about to call you. What's the status of our friend McDermott? And where is Cogswell? He was supposed to be here an hour ago."

  Two FBI agents along with two Secret Service agents walked in as the last sentence came out of Ritter's mouth, which now hung open.

  "What is this?" Ritter asked as if he had been insulted.

  "Warren Ritter, I'm agent Charles Trevor, FBI. Under the authority of acting President Ronald Fletcher, I'm placing you under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder."

  "What? You can't arrest me. I'm the acting President for chrissake."

  "You were the acting President," Fletcher said, as he strolled in while Ritter was being handcuffed. "Agent Bahr told us all about you and Cogswell's scheme. And I know about the other plan of Mazur and Lathbury too. Only you thought you'd out smart them as well, but you didn't, Warren. You're going down with them. President Lloyd is going to have his surgery, and with a little luck he'll live to see you go to prison for a long time. And I doubt very much if you can count on a Presidential pardon."

  Ritter turned as he was led away. "I did it for the country."

  "No," Fletcher said. "Yo
u did it for you."

  Ritter continued to ramble about the Russian oil deal as he was taken away.

  Fletcher turned to Bahr. "Now I need to know about Cogswell."

  "Give me a few minutes."

  * * *

  Secret Service and FBI agents led Jack into a briefing room, where he recanted his story. The agent's expressions gave Jack no indication of their thoughts, but he knew they must have been pissing in their pants with all he had told them. After he finished, they gave him a list of what to and what not to say.

  For all practical purposes, anything about his ordeal was off limits to the press or anyone else. Of course when the time for it came to break, it would be his story in more ways than one. He was about to go out the door when the CNN broadcast on the small TV caught his eye.

  "CNN has just learned that Vice President Warren Ritter and Chief of Staff Larry Mazur have been taken into custody by FBI agents in Zurich, Switzerland. Details are sketchy at present, but we will keep you updated as more information becomes available. Repeating now, Vice Presi--"

  Jack walked out of the briefing room and was headed down the hall to the pressroom, when someone stopped him. "Mr. McDermott, there's a call for you."

  Jack stepped into the pressroom among familiar faces, people he had worked with in the past at various times. For the first time in nearly a week he felt at home. The room was filled with stunned conversation about what had happened in this very hospital. Some reporters scrambled, closing up their laptops and running toward the door in an attempt to interview anyone with information about the arrest of Warren Ritter.

  Jack had to laugh to himself. If these info mongers knew that he was the key to the whole story, they'd never believe it. It didn't matter; eventually he would write the correct story minus whatever he had to leave out for national security reasons. He picked up the receiver from the wall phone and pushed the flashing button. "Hello."

  "Jack, where the hell have you been? Are you all right?"

  "It's a long story, Larry. I'm all right, but I'll have to call you back." Jack hung up.

  "Can you believe this?" one of the reporters asked as he ran out the door.

  They've arrested the Vice President and the Chief of Staff, now they say more arrests are imminent."

  "Oh I believe it all right," Jack said.

  * * *

  Viktor Chermonovik was on his third vodka of the morning when his red phone rang. He looked across the desk at Sergai, then picked up the phone.

  "Da," he said.

  Chermonovik placed his hand over the mouthpiece. He mouthed, "Nikita," to Sergai. Then, "Good, I see. Then that is it. All right. I understand. Good-bye." Chemonovik hung up the phone. "That was Nikita. He has accomplished his mission. Now he says he is finished for good."

  "Can we let him do that?"

  "Yes. He has been an excellent asset. He deserves a good retirement. He can be trusted."

  * * *

  On the other end of that conversation, after he put the phone down, agent Frank Bahr, aka: Nikita placed a call to his wife. In the twenty years since he had gone to work for what he told her was "a security agency," he had never once called her while he was on assignment. It went along with what he told her about the rest of his work, which was essentially nothing. He only told her he did security work, though he did complain to her about his boss frequently.

  "Celia, are you there? It's me."

  "Frank, what's wrong, are you hurt?"

  "No, honey I'm fine. I just wanted to tell you I love you."

  "I love you too. I'm just shocked to hear from you."

  "I know, but after this assignment I'm coming home for good."

  "You mean you're quitting?"

  "That's exactly what I mean."

  "How does your boss feel about that?"

  "I don't think he'll be a problem."

  "Are you sure?" Her voice was soft.

  "Absolutely. I finish up here in a few days, then that's it."

  "I'm still shocked... and delighted. I know the kids will be happy about it.

  You know how they miss you."

  "I know. That's another reason I'm quitting. I want to be a family that's together, not just in name. Well, I won't hold you up, honey. I'll see you in a few days. I love you."

  Bahr hung up and walked back to the briefing room where Fletcher was waiting for him.

  "I'm ready to talk now, Mr. Fletcher."

  "Okay, Bahr, let's start at the beginning of this ordeal."

  * * *

  Viktor Chermonovik swung his leather recliner around and Sergai looked at him.

  "What do you think made him quit?" he asked Chermonovik.

  Chermonovik was reminded of how naive he was in such matters.

  After all, Sergai came along after the Cold War was over, so he didn't understand the mentality of an intelligence officer. Let alone a double agent like Bahr-Nikita. "He just got tired. Twenty years in intelligence is a long time. It wears on you. Having to put up with Cogswell made it even harder."

  "Cogswell," Sergai said. "I'm surprised he never got suspicious."

  "You give him too much credit my young comrade. He was not as smart as he thought. He was intimidating enough, but he was too consumed with hate to realize what was good for his own country."

  "How could one hate so much?"

  "Philosophy, ideology, call it what you may. A man like that is better left to his own devices. You see where it got him."

  "Yes, comrade, I surely do."

  Chermonovik swung his chair back around to answer the knock at the door. "Come," he said.

  He was surprised to see his defense minister, who had kept his distance since he'd returned from Zurich.

  "I think you better turn the television to CNN," he said. "You'll be interested in this."

  Chermonovik reached across the desk and grabbed the remote control, then turned the set on. Across the room, the screen lit up and everyone turned to face it. A reporter stood in front of Brighton Heart Center. Behind her, Warren Ritter was being led away by FBI agents. His head was bent down toward his chest in an effort to hide his face. Behind him was Paul Mazur, arms in front of him.

  Chermonovik keyed up the volume on the set:

  "Details remain sketchy," the reporter said. "But we know that Warren Ritter has been taken into custody as well as Paul Mazur, and possibly two other cabinet members, in what can only be called an unprecedented political catastrophe. It is also being reported, although we've been unable to verify it, that a CIA agent was found assassinated in a chalet just outside Zurich. There is still no update on President Lloyd's condition. At this time we are told, he remains critical."

  Sergai looked at Chermonovik. "Viktor, what does this mean? Is Thomas Lloyd going to make it?"

  "I have been assured by Nikita that he will." Chermonovik smiled for the first time in several days. "Sergai, you know, this is wonderful. To see Ritter taken away. Cogswell is dead. Could you imagine a Ritter-Cogswell ticket?"

  "No, not at all, Viktor."

  They both laughed.

  Chermonovik pulled out his half empty bottle of vodka, reached into the bottom drawer, brought out two glasses, set them on the desk, then filled each one full. "Let us drink to the Ritter-Cogswell ticket," he said, as he handed one of the glasses to Sergai. "One in jail, the other one dead."

  They emptied their glass in one big gulp, looked at each other, and roared with laughter. "Ritter-Cogswell," Sergai said, "not at all."

  They roared with laughter again.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  While Ritter was being taken away, Dr. Gregg spent an hour with Gwen Lloyd and explained how her husband's surgery would proceed. The donor was in route and the OR team was prepared. He used a plastic model of the heart, and showed her in simple terms what they would do. He told her what to expect post-operatively, and reassured her that recovery would be fairly quick. He did emphasize though that no surgery is without risk. He could see the fatigue in her face as
she listened and once again he encouraged her to get some rest, it was going to be a long surgery. She promised she would try.

  Gregg excused himself, promised her frequent updates; and then headed for the operating room.

  The OR staff were standing by, and all the final checks were completed on the equipment. Heart bypass, anesthesia, and all the surgical instruments stood in readiness for the history making surgery. The heart was scheduled to arrive in twenty minutes according to Gregg's cryptic phone call he'd received. It came just in time; without this donor, Lloyd was doomed. His time had all but run out.

  Lloyd was draped, prepped, chest cut open, and placed on the heart by-pass machine while Gregg's assistants examined his new heart. They were surprised by how well trimmed the vessels were, which made Gregg's job easier. Less trimming meant less time, which meant less risk for Lloyd.

  The only difference between this surgery and hundreds of others Gregg had done was that; well, for one thing, he had never operated on a President before. A couple of senators, perhaps. Second, he had to perform the smaller operation on the aorta to make the heart fit right. It was not a difficult procedure, but the timing was crucial. The new heart only had a shelf life of six hours, and four of those had already been used up on transport. If Gregg ran into any problems with the smaller procedure, the whole transplant could be in jeopardy. Also tricky, was the fact that the aortic procedure had to be done with the bypass machine hooked up to the aorta. Even so, with all the possible glitches, if it could be done, Gregg was the one who could do it.

  Hundreds of people were walking around with new hearts thanks to him.

  Outside Brighton Heart Center, security was extraordinary. A light snow was falling and reporters from all over the world clamored about the front grounds trying to get the latest from anyone with valid information.

  One reporter, a female from CNN, was having a final coat of make-up applied before going on camera. The wet snow had caused her mascara to run giving her a clown-like appearance. Others set up equipment and lights to prepare for what would be the biggest story of the year. Between Ritter and others being arrested and Lloyd's transplant, the media was in heaven.