And yet.
Ryan closed his eyes, remembering the moment, a loaded Browning pistol in his grip, his blood boiling in his veins but his hands like ice, the exquisite moment at which he could have ended the life of the man who had so wanted to end his own–and Cathy’s, and Sally’s, and Little Jack, yet unborn. Looking in his eyes, and finally seeing the fear at last, breaking through the shell of inhumanity . . . but how many times had he thanked a merciful God that he’d neglected to cock the hammer on his pistol? He would have done it. He’d wanted to do it more than anything in his life, and he could remember pulling the trigger, only to be surprised when it hadn’t moved–and then the moment had passed away. Jack could remember killing. The terrorist in London. The one in the boat at the base of his cliff. The cook on the submarine. Surely he’d killed others–that horrible night in Colombia which had given him nightmares for years after. But Sean Miller was different. It hadn’t been necessity for Miller. For him it had been justice of a sort, and he’d been there, and he’d been the Law,
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and, God, how he’d wanted to take that worthless life! But he hadn’t. The Law that had ended the life of that terrorist and his colleagues had been well considered, cold and detached … as it had to be–and for that reason he had to select the best possible people to repopulate the Court, because the decisions they would make were not about one enraged man trying at the same time to protect and avenge his family. They would say what the law was for everyone, and that wasn’t about personal desires. This thing people called civilization was about something more than one man’s passion. It had to be. And it was his duty to make sure that it was, by picking the right people.
“Yeah,” Martin said, reading the President’s face. “Big deal, isn’t it?”
“Wait a minute.” Jack rose and walked out the door to the secretaries’ room. “Which one of you smokes?” he asked there.
“It’s me,” said Ellen Sumter. She was of Jack’s age, and probably trying to quit, as all smokers of that age at least claimed. Without another question, she handed her President a Virginia Slim–the same as the crewwoman on his airplane, Jack realized–and a butane lighter. The President nodded his thanks and walked back into his office, lighting it. Before he could close the door, Mrs. Sumter raced to follow him with an ashtray taken from her desk drawer.
Sitting down, Ryan took a long drag, eyes on the carpet, which was of the Great Seal of the President of the United States, covered though it was with furniture.
“How the hell,” Jack asked quietly, “did anybody ever decide that one man could have this much power? I mean, what I’m doing here–”
“Yes, sir. Kind of like being James Madison, isn’t it? You pick the people who decide what the Constitution really means. They’re all in their late forties or fifties, and so they’ll be there for a while,” Martin told him. “Cheer up. At least it’s not a game for you. At least you’re doing it the right way. You’re not picking women because they’re women, or blacks because they’re black. I gave you a good mix, color, bathrooms, and everything, but all the names have been redacted out–and you won’t be able to
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tell who’s who unless you follow cases, which you probably don’t. I give you my word, sir, they’re all good ones. I spent a lot of time assembling the list for you. Your guidelines helped, and they were good guidelines. For what it’s worth, they’re all people who think the way you do. People who like power scare me,” the attorney said. “Good ones reflect a lot on what they’re doing before they do it. Picking real judges who’ve made some hard calls– well, read their decisions. You’ll see how hard they worked at what they did.”
Another puff. He tapped the folders. “I don’t know the law well enough to understand all the points in there. I don’t know crap about the law, except you’re not supposed to break it.”
Martin grinned at that one: “Not a bad place to start when you think about it.” He didn’t have to go any further. Not every occupant of this office had thought of things quite that way. Both men knew it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing one said to the sitting President.
“I know the things I don’t like. I know the things I’d like to see changed, but, God damn it”–Ryan looked up, eyes wide now–“do I have the right to make that sort of call?”
“Yes, Mr. President, you do, because the Senate has to look over your shoulder, remember? Maybe they’ll disagree on one or two. All these judges have been checked out by the FBI. They’re all honest. They’re all smart. None of them ever wanted or expected to make it to the Supreme Court except through a certiori grant. If you can’t come up with nine you like, we’ll search some more–better then if you have somebody else do it. The head of the Civil Rights Division is also a pretty good man–he’s off to my left some, but he’s another thinker.”
Civil rights, Jack thought. Did he have to make government policy on that, too? How was he supposed to know what might be the right way to treat people who might or might not be a little different from everybody else? Sooner or later you lost the ability to be objective, and then your beliefs took over–and were you then making policy based on personal prejudice? How were you supposed to know what was right? Jesus.
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Ryan took a last puff and stubbed the cigarette out, rewarded as always by a dizzying buzz from the renewed vice. “Well, I guess I have a lot of reading to do.”
“I’d offer you some help, but probably better that you try to do it yourself. That way, nobody pollutes the process–more than I’ve already done, that is. You want to keep that in mind. I might not be the best guy for this, but you asked me, and that’s the best I have.”
“I suppose that’s all any of us can do, eh?” Ryan observed, staring at the pile of folders.
THE CHIEF OF the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice was a political appointee dating back to President Fowler. Formerly a corporate lawyer and lobbyist–it paid far better than the academic post he’d held before his first political appointment–he’d been politically active since before his admission to law school, and as with so many occupants of official offices he had become, if not his post, then his vision of it. He had a constituency, even though he’d never been elected to anything, and even though his government service had been intermittent, a series of increasingly high posts made possible by his proximity to the power that rested in this city, the power lunches, the parties, the office visits made while representing people he might or might not really care about, because a lawyer had an obligation to serve the interests of his clients–and the clients chose him, not the reverse. One often needed the fees of the few to serve the needs of the many –which was, in fact, his own philosophy of government. Thus he’d unknowingly come to live Ben Jonson’s dictum about “speaking to mere contraries, yet all be law.” But he’d never lost his passion for civil rights, and he’d never lobbied for anything contrary to that core belief–of course, nobody since the 1960s had lobbied against civil rights per se, but he told himself that was important. A white man with stock originating well before the Revolutionary War, he spoke at all the right forums, and from that he’d earned the admiration of people whose political views were the same as his. From that admiration came power, and it was hard to say which as-
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pect of his life influenced the other more. Because of his early work in the Justice Department he’d won the attention of political figures. Because he’d done that work with skill, he’d also earned the attention of a powerful Washington law firm. Leaving the government to enter that firm, he’d used his political contacts to practice his profession more effectively, and from that effectiveness he’d generated additional credibility in the political world, one hand constantly washing the other until he couldn’t really discern which hand was which. Along the way the cases he argued had become his identity in a process so gradual and seemingly so logical that he hardly knew what had taken place. He was what he’d argued for over the years.
And that was the problem right now. He knew and admired Patrick Martin as a lesser legal talent who’d advanced at Justice by working exclusively in the courts–never even a proper United States Attorney (those were political appointments, mainly selected by senators for their home states), but rather one of the apolitical professional worker bees who did the real casework while their appointed boss worked on speeches, caseload management, and political ambition. And the fact of the matter was that Martin was a gifted legal tactician, forty-one and one in his formal trials, better yet as a legal administrator guiding young prosecutors. But he didn’t know much about politics, the Civil Rights chief thought, and for that reason he was the wrong man to advise President Ryan.