“None of us expected the events of that evening. I was
276
badly shaken by them, as were many. In my case, as you know, well, so many of the friends with whom I’d worked for years were just snuffed out by that brutal and cowardly act. But I never actually resigned my office.” Kealty looked down for a moment, biting his lip before going on. “Barry, I would have been content even with that. I gave my word to President Durling, and I had every intention of keeping it.
“But I can’t. I just can’t,” Kealty went on. “Let me explain.
“I’ve known Jack Ryan for ten years. He’s a fine man, a courageous man, and he’s served our country honorably, but he is, unfortunately, not the man to heal our country. What he said last night, trying to speak to the American people, proves it. How can we possibly expect our government to work under these circumstances without experienced, capable people to fill the offices left vacant?”
“But he is the President–isn’t he?” Barry asked, scarcely believing what he was doing and what he was hearing.
“Barry, he doesn’t even know how to do a proper investigation. Look at what he said last night about the plane crash. Hardly a week has passed and already he says he knows what happened. Can anyone believe that?” Kealty asked plaintively. “Can anyone really believe that? Who has oversight over this investigation? Who’s actually running it? To whom are they reporting? And to have conclusions in a week? How can the American people have confidence in that? When President Kennedy was assassinated, it took months. The investigation was run by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Why? Because we had to be sure, that’s why.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Vice President, but that really doesn’t answer my question.”
“Barry, Ryan was never Vice President, because I never resigned. The post was never vacant, and the Constitution allows only one Vice President. He never even took the oath associated with the office.”
“But–”
“You think I want to do this? I don’t have a choice. How can we rebuild the Congress and the executive
277
branch with amateurs? Last night Mr. Ryan told the governors of the states to send him people with no experience in government. How can laws be drafted by people who don’t know how?
“Barry, I’ve never committed public suicide before. It’s like being one of the people, one of the senators at the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. I’m looking down into my open political grave, but I have to place the country first. I have to.” The camera zoomed in on his face, and the anguish there was manifest. One could almost see tears in his eyes as his voice proclaimed his selfless patriotism.
“He always was good on TV,” van Damm noted.
“I do have trouble believing all this,” Ryan said after a moment.
“Believe it,” Arnie told him. “Mr. Martin? We could use some legal guidance.”
“First of all, get someone over to State and check the Secretary’s office out.”
“FBI?” van Damm asked.
“Yes.” Martin nodded. “You won’t find anything, but that’s how it has to start. Next, check phone logs and notes. Next, we start interviewing people. That’s going to be a problem. Secretary Hanson’s dead, along with his wife, and President and Mrs. Durling, of course. Those are the people most likely to have knowledge on the facts of the issue. I would expect that we will develop very little hard evidence, and not very much useful circumstantial evidence.”
“Roger told me that–” Martin cut him off.
“Hearsay. You’re telling me that someone said to you what he was told by somebody else–not much use in any court of law.”
“Go on,” Arnie said.
“Sir, there really is no constitutional or statutory law on this question.”
“And there’s no Supreme Court to rule on the issue,” Ryan pointed out. To that pregnant pause, he added: “What if he’s telling the truth?”
“Mr. President, whether or not he’s telling the truth is really beside the point,” Martin replied. “Unless we can prove that he’s lying, which is unlikely, then he has a case
278
of sorts. By the way, on the issue of the Supreme Court, assuming that you get a new Senate and make your nominations, all of the new Justices would ordinarily have to recuse themselves because you selected them. That probably leaves no legal solution possible.”
“But if there’s no law on this issue?” the President–was he?–asked.
“Exactly. This is a beauty,” Martin said quietly, trying to think. “Okay, a President or Vice President stops holding office when he or she resigns. Resignation happens when the office holder conveys the instrument of resignation–a letter suffices–to the proper official. But the man who accepted the instrument is dead, and we will doubtless find that the instrument is missing. Secretary Hanson probably called the President to inform him of the resignation–”
“He did,” van Damm confirmed.
“But President Durling is also dead. His testimony would have had evidentiary value, but that isn’t going to happen, either. That puts us back to square one.” Martin didn’t like what he was doing, and he was having enough trouble trying to talk and think about the law at the same time. This was like a chessboard with no squares, just the pieces arrayed at random.
“But–”
“The phone logs will show there was a call, fine. Secretary Hanson might have said that the letter was poorly worded and would be fixed the following day. This is politics, not law. So long as Durling was President, Kealty had to leave, because–”
“Of the sexual harassment investigation.” Arnie was getting it now.
“You got it. His TV statement even covered that, and he did a nice job of neutralizing the issue, didn’t he?”
“We’re back to where we started,” Ryan observed.
“Yes, Mr. President.” That elicited a wry smile.
“Nice to know that somebody believes.”
INSPECTOR O’DAY AND three other agents from Headquarters Division left their car right in front of the build-
279
ing. When a uniformed guard came over to object, O’Day just flashed his ID and kept on going. He stopped at the main security desk and did the same.
“I want your chief to meet me on the seventh floor in one minute,” he told the guard. “I don’t care what he’s doing. Tell him to come up right now.” Then he and his team walked to the elevator bank.
“Uh, Pat, what the hell–”
The other three had been picked more or less at random from the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility. That was the FBI’s own internal-affairs department. All experienced investigators with supervisory rank, their job was to keep the Bureau clean. One of them had even investigated a former Director. OPR’s charter was to respect nothing but the law, and the surprising thing was that, unlike similar organizations in city police forces, it retained, for the most part, the respect of the street agents.
The lobby guard had called ahead to the guard post on the top floor. It was George Armitage this morning, working a different shift from the previous week.
“FBI,” O’Day announced as the elevator door opened. “Where’s the Secretary’s office?”
“This way, sir.” Armitage led them down the corridor.
“Who’s been using the office?” the inspector asked.
“We’re getting ready to move Mr. Adler in. We’ve just about got Mr. Harison’s things out and–”
“So people have been going in and out?”
“Yes, sir.”
O’Day hadn’t expected that it would be much use bringing in the forensics team, but that would be done anyway. If there had ever been an investigation that had to go strictly by the book, this was the one.
“Okay, we need to talk to everyone who’s been in or out of the office since the moment Secretary Hanson left it. Every single one, secretaries, janitors, everybody.”
“The secretarial staff won’t be in for another half hour or so.”
“Okay. You want to unlock the door?”
Armitage did so, letting them into the secretaries’ room, and then through the next set of doors into the office itself. The FBI agents stopped cold there, the four of them
280
just looking at first. Then one of them took post at the door to the main corridor.
“Thank you, Mr. Armitage,” O’Day said, reading the name tag. “Okay, for the moment, we’re treating this as a crime scene. Nobody in or out without our permission. We need a room where we can interview people. I’d like you to make a written list of everyone you know to have been in here, with date and time if that’s possible.”
“Their secretaries will have that.”
“We want yours, too.” O’Day looked up the corridor and was annoyed. “We asked for your department chief to join us. Where do you suppose he is?”
“He usually doesn’t get in until eight or so.”
“Could you call him, please? We need to talk to him right now.”