The President's Doctor

by David Shobin

  “A moot point, now,” said the vice president.

  Stung, Forbes’ eyes blazed. His nostrils flared, and the muscles worked in his cheeks. Bursting with anger, he took a menacing step toward Amanda.

  Saunders’ arm swung up steady as a metronome. When it reached the horizontal, a muted “pffft” came from the Beretta. Forbes’ head snapped back, and he collapsed in a lifeless heap. Droplets of blood splattered the president.

  Shocked though he was, Meredith struggled to appear unruffled. With jerky movements, he nonchalantly wiped at the crimson spots that dotted his cheek. Despite his neurological symptoms, he looked resolute. “My memory’s not what it used to be,” he said. “And my moods might have changed. But I’m still pretty good at figuring things out. And I have to tell you, Tony, without what Dr. Townsend told me, I never would’ve guessed.”

  “You’re not supposed to guess. You’re supposed to die. We’ve been trying to do you in for months now.”

  “The pipe tobacco?”

  “That was one way,” Doria said with apparent disinterest. “And you should have died at the Israeli state dinner, if things had worked out right. Your wife was supposed to die too, except the assholes O’Brien hired couldn’t get the job done. What a bunch of fuck-ups. Too bad about Sean, though.”

  “Who was this Sean O’Brien?”

  “Sean was an Irish kid who got in way over his head in Boston. After I saved his ass, he’d do anything for me. Townsend was right. O’Brien set up the Southern Cross. It was all misdirection. Why not use the fucking Palestinians? Everyone else does.”

  “So, it was about me, all along?” said the president. “The Southern Cross, the Palestinians—they were just to throw people off the scent?”

  “And to make it easier to get rid of you,” said Doria. “But since we can’t wait for the mercury to kill you, we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.’

  As he lay on the floor, Jon could feel the outline of O’Brien’s small automatic in his pants pocket.

  “What’s going to be your explanation for killing me?”

  “That’s just it—we’re not the ones who are going to kill you. Dr. Townsend here is going to kill you. The poor man just couldn’t take the resentment that built up over thirty years. He drove all the way up here to give you a personal New Year’s greeting. First, he killed the guard at the main gate—”

  God in heaven, thought Jon.

  “—and then he caved in Agent Lewis’ face on his way up to get you.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe that.”

  “When all three of us say the same thing?” Doria continued. “That when we went out for a walk, we saw Townsend shoot the cabin guard? That poor Agent Saunders rushed back a fraction late to save you? Come on, they’ll believe it just fine.”

  Jon needed an opening. Lying there, beneath a man holding a submachine gun, he knew he didn’t stand a chance. But since they planned to kill him anyway, he was going to seize the slightest opportunity.

  “I had no idea how much you hated my guts, Tony.”

  “I don’t hate you, Mr. President. I hate what you’re doing to this country. Your stupid softness on abortion. Your bullshit economic globalization. Your troops in the Middle East, gimme a break. The country deserves better.”

  “Put down the gun, Mr. Saunders!”

  Out of the comer of his eye, Jon saw a blur of movement. A secret service agent appeared in the doorway, blood streaming down his face from a head wound. If Saunders was surprised, he didn’t show it. He whirled and crouched at the same time, firing two quick shots before the weakened agent could return fire.

  Jon needed no prompting. He quickly rolled onto his back and reached into his pocket. The president also reacted swiftly, lunging toward Saunders. The fingertips of his outstretched arms nearly reached the agent’s neck when Saunders pivoted back again. Before his aim was thrown off, his silenced Beretta fired one more time.

  The bullet tore through Meredith’s shoulder and spun him around. Momentarily thrown off stride, Saunders was undeterred. He carefully took aim at the center of the president’s torso. But before he could deliver the kill shot, Jon freed the automatic and quickly fired upward, without aiming. The bullets ripped upwards through Saunders’ neck, into his brain. Jon pulled the trigger over and over, but the gun was now empty.

  Agent Saunders toppled backward. He struck the floor with a crash, and the Beretta slid from his hand, skittering across the floor toward Vice President Doria’s feet.

  By now, Meredith had sunk to one knee. Grimacing in pain, he clutched his shoulder with his other hand. Blood flowed freely through his fingertips.

  “Tony! Amanda cried. “The gun!”

  Jon rolled to his knees, head pounding. With the president to his left and the Dorias to his right, he was distracted by the events on either side of him. The president clearly needed medical assistance, but the Dorias were an immediate threat. He tossed away the empty pistol and reached for the H&K.

  Tony Doria stared numbly at the Beretta. He seemed incapable of action, frozen in place. Beside him, his wife gaped at him in disbelief. As Jon glanced their way, the truth about who was ultimately behind the conspiracy became abundantly clear. For all the vice president’s political acumen, his wife was the consummate controller.

  “God, you’re unbelievable,” she snapped at her husband, rolling her eyes. “I can’t depend on you for a damn thing.” She bent over and reached for the Beretta.

  Through his pain, the president watched the drama unfold. Looking at his doctor, he saw Townsend’s hand grasp the submachine gun. But then, as the H&K’s silencer rose toward the threat, it hesitated. The president was incredulous.

  “Shoot her!” he cried. “For Christ sake, shoot her!”

  From the distant reaches of his memory, Jon recalled a similar order once issued by his commander. A blur of thoughts raced through his mind, not the least of which was that his adversary was a woman. Despite having to defend himself repeatedly that day, at heart he was a healer, not a killer. Yet the foremost thing on his mind, as he knelt there in a rustic cabin on a frigid New Year’s Eve, was of holding an M-16 thirty years before, half a world away, on the hillside of a warm but frightening forest. He’d been unable to act, then; and that inability had haunted him for the rest of his life.

  Amanda’s hand closed around the Beretta. She lifted it toward the president.

  Jon pulled the trigger.

  EPILOGUE

  The Potomac River

  As the presidential yacht cruised up the Potomac, returning to its base at Quantico, the afternoon June sun spread its warming rays across the river, anointing each choppy wave with a golden crest. Motoring lazily northwest in mid-channel, the yacht was ferrying its five passengers back to their starting point after an all-day voyage. Basking in the sun, Tommie and Roxanne sat on the bridge in identical wheelchairs, flanked by Jon, Mireille, and the president. Meredith was fully recovered from his gunshot wound. It had been six months since Tommie had been treated by her father, and nearly as long for the first lady. Both patients had done remarkably well since their stem cell treatments.

  “They call this ‘the nation’s river’,” Meredith said to Jon. “Sometimes the history’s so thick you can feel it. George Washington was born right over there, at Wakefield,” he said, pointing with a finger that no longer shook from mercury poisoning.

  “I thought he was born at Mount Vernon.”

  “No, Mount Vernon came later in his life. James Monroe was born nearby, too. Folks from Captain John Smith to Robert E. Lee sailed these waters. The Potomac’s always been at the center of our country’s past.”

  Listening to the president speak, Jon had to marvel at the man’s articulation of national pride. This was the Bob Meredith he’d always known and respected, free of memory loss, shakes, and irritability. Shortly after the incident at Camp David, the president began taking chelating agents, compounds that physically bound to substances like metallic mercury,
removing them from the body. By all estimates, the drugs had been extremely effective.

  “You sound more like a historian than a politician.”

  “Politics and history are bedfellows, Jon. History’s alive, and every politician should learn from it. Someone once said a page of history’s worth a volume of logic, and I firmly believe that now. In my case, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention when I should’ve been.”

  “Come on, Mr. President, you were a victim. What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s baloney. I should’ve seen it coming. I didn’t because I got too distracted from what’s most important to me,” he said, gesturing toward Roxanne. “But no more.”

  Looking over at the first lady’s sun-softened face, Jon understood. Though she still faced a lengthy rehabilitation, Mrs. Meredith was now alert, active, and speaking. Tommie, similarly, had made dramatic progress and was on the verge of walking.

  “So, you’ve ruled out another term?”

  “Yes, I have. Best leave it to someone a little more dedicated than I am. But you and I are lucky men, Jon. We went through some bad times, but in the end, we wound up with what’s most precious to us, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jon simply nodded. And maybe, he thought, learned a little more about ourselves in the process.