Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2 Read online

  It had come as something of a surprise that she hadn’t received a termination notice.

  The humanoid at the lobby desk made a phone call. Whether it went to Judd was another question. Putting the phone down, the unsmiling creature told Ellie, “You may enter the building to pick up the personal effects you left behind.”

  So she had been fired.

  Judd, being an old school guy, had probably sent the pink slip by postal mail. Media rate. Ought to be in her mailbox any week now.

  Keeping her tone civil, Ellie asked, “Will Mr. Judd see me?”

  “If he’s interested, you’ll see him.”

  Great. This android probably communicated with another just like it that screened Judd’s unwanted calls. Ellie asked herself if she’d left anything in her office she really cared to retrieve. Thought of the voodoo doll featuring the face of a late president of Haiti she’d picked up on a visit to the island. That was too cool to leave behind. She could always paste a photo image of her current least favorite person on the doll’s face.

  Stick it a few good ones when the mood took her.

  Ethan Judd might be a place to start.

  The security guy was big enough to play lineman for the Redskins, but he at least was human. Had the decency to smile at her and say, “Will you please come with me, Miss?”

  Guy didn’t have a gun or look like he’d ever need one.

  Ellie resisted an impulse to take his hand like she was some waif he’d found on the street.

  She nodded and followed along a half-step behind him. They took the elevator to the tenth floor and stepped out into a room that should have been familiar, but wasn’t. The walls had been painted. The carpet had been replaced. The furniture was new. Even the air smelled better.

  Sure, Judd wouldn’t tolerate any big on-camera egos flouting the no-smoking laws.

  The only two familiar faces Ellie saw belonged to video archivists.

  You wanted a clip of any moving image, in-house or outside, starting from the days Louis Lumiere first shot movie film, they’d find it for you and fast. Ellie had always valued their skills. Now, they repaid her with smiles of acknowledgment, not giving a damn if it was the politically incorrect thing to do.

  Almost made her feel warm and fuzzy.

  She and the security guy came to her office and he told her, “You can have five minutes, Miss. I’ll wait right out here. Please leave the door open.”

  Ellie nodded and stepped inside. Her old office had been redecorated, too. She liked it. Businesslike but relaxed. She thought she might do good work in the space, once the new carpet smell faded.

  All of her possessions had been put in boxes and set on a trolley. She looked inside. Each box had been neatly filled. Fragile items had been covered with bubble-wrap. The voodoo doll even had a stick-on note: Neat!

  So they were putting her on the street but weren’t being jerks about it.

  Only thing left to do was push the trolley down to her car.

  Then she heard a gruff baritone voice say, “We’ll be out in a few minutes, Bill.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ethan Judd entered the office and closed the door behind him. He extended his hand to Ellie and introduced himself. Didn’t waste time with any attempt at empty chitchat.

  “You were a close call, Ms. Booker. Highly competent but closely linked with the old power structure. I was leaning toward keeping you, but Hugh Collier said it would be better to let you go. He told me I could keep you but doing so would make it harder for Sir Edbert to keep his promise not to interfere with my operation.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Ellie said.

  “Hugh, Sir Edbert or me?” Judd asked.

  Ellie laughed. She knew about Judd, had read about him often enough, but this was their first meeting. She kind of liked the first impression he made.

  “I’ll get around to judging you,” she told Judd. “The jury’s already in on the other two.”

  Judd smiled. “I heard you speak your mind. Was there anything other than asking to keep your job that you wanted to see me about?”

  Ellie opened the courier bag she carried. It’d had to go through a metal detector so Judd didn’t look worried about what she might have inside. She handed him an envelope.

  Without opening it, he asked, “What’s this?”

  “A copy of an unsigned publishing contract. Well, I didn’t sign it, but Sir Edbert Bickford did. Hugh Collier gave it to me. It would pay me a million dollars for basically doing nothing.”

  Judd gave her a look. He gestured her to a guest chair and sat behind the desk that in other circumstances might have been hers. The new managing editor of WorldWide News read the contract.

  He looked up at Ellie and said, “Easy money, and the reason you haven’t signed the contract?”

  “The way I read it, the only thing I have to do is shut up about Sir Edbert. It’s a bribe.”

  Judd said, “Might be interpreted that way.”

  “Sir Edbert is being investigated by the Department of Justice. He seemed quite agitated about it when Hugh and I visited him on his yacht.”

  That got a flicker of reaction from Judd.

  Ellie went on, “He seemed particularly sensitive when Hugh brought up the subject of paying bribes to officials in other countries and how that might be viewed under the lens of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.”

  “And here you have documentary evidence of what might be considered a bribe.”

  Judd tossed the contract on the desk.

  “I thought I’d let a U.S. attorney make that decision,” Ellie said.

  “You brought it to me for a second opinion?”

  “I heard you play the news straight, and damn the consequences.”

  Judd finally smiled. “You’ve roped me into your game. I ignore this, you can tell the world I’m just another of Sir Edbert’s lackies. Nicely done, Ms. Booker. Has it occurred to you that —”

  “The contract is a ploy Hugh has devised? Sure. I’ll leave it up to you to work that out. He’s your colleague now.”

  Judd shook his head in admiration.

  “You know I could never hire you now. That would look like I was trying to buy you off. But this has been the most enjoyable job interview I’ve ever conducted. We’ll have to work together sometime in the future.”

  Ellie left the copy of the contract on the desk. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  She got up, shook Judd’s hand, opened the door and pushed the trolley toward the elevator.

  She’d know if she would ever want to work with Judd based on one thing.

  What he did with the story she’d just handed him.

  SAC Crogher’s Office — the White House

  Celsus Crogher was at his desk at 3:00 a.m. when Elspeth Kendry knocked at his door. There was nothing unusual about that. He made sure that he was on hand for at least part of the three shifts that worked the presidential security detail each day. He took primary responsibility for only one shift per day, delegating the other two to senior special agents. If anybody needed him, though, he was never far away for long.

  Rather than spend the night in bed, Crogher had taught himself to sleep in short stretches through the times he didn’t have primary responsibility. He called in every two hours to make sure all was well. Crogher had heard that McGill had once said he plugged himself into an electrical recharger for a couple hours in the dead of the night. He wished.

  That would’ve been the way he wanted it.

  Especially, if he could have recharged with his eyes open.

  When he wasn’t catching catnaps, he’d do paperwork during off hours. Scan reports that evaluated the threats made against Holly G, ranging from crackpot to red alert. He also evaluated every person who worked for him. When your job was to keep the president alive, well and functioning at top form, you could not abide screw-ups.

  Hard as it was for him to acknowledge, there had been Secret Service personnel who’d disgraced their brothers-and-siste
rs-in-arms with unprofessional behavior. That had happened before his time, and it was a damn good thing it had. He got steamed just thinking about it.

  When Crogher was a kid, his old man had told him and his brother, Cormac, “Don’t make me angry. If I ever hit you, you’ll die bouncing.” That from a man who taught high school Latin. The brothers took his warning seriously, though. Following the rules, all the rules, was seen as the surest way to avoid grief in life.

  SAC Crogher would have been more inclined to warn his subordinates, “You’ll die looking like Swiss cheese,” had they failed to observe all the rules laid down to protect the president. Such an exhortation from a man who carried an Uzi wouldn’t be taken lightly. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be tolerated by his superiors.

  So Crogher had to work subliminally, giving the impression that any breach of the president’s safety would be considered a capital offense. His visage, his demeanor, his body language all carried a threat of great bodily harm. Woe betide anyone who crossed the SAC.

  Anyone except Holmes.

  McGill was a force unlike any other.

  He was smart, charming and knew when and how to fight.

  He also had the president backstopping him every step of the way.

  The sonofabitch.

  Then there was Holly G herself. He’d have been happier safeguarding a male president. Women were unpredictable. Coming up with that idea he take dance lessons. He’d loved that it would give him the chance to put McGill’s nose out of joint. He’d thrown himself into the lessons as hard as he’d ever done anything, but as he actually started getting good on the dance floor he found it was softening him.

  Not physically or mentally. It was just taking the … not the edge off his attitude exactly, but maybe the corners off his thinking. He didn’t see everything in straight lines and right angles anymore. You sure as hell couldn’t dance that way. You’d look like a damn fool, if you tried.

  He’d tried, so he knew.

  When his dance instructor, who had the patience of a saint and the body of a goddess, and had told him explicitly she was partial to other women, finally got him to loosen up, to flow with the music, God, it was like a whole new world had opened up before his eyes. Not only did he move better, he started thinking differently.

  He saw subtlety, nuance, intuition.

  He understood how all those qualities could help him to do his job better. Thing was, he kept getting the feeling he was ready for something new. Finish out Holly G’s first term, dance with her at an inaugural ball, smirk at McGill and move on.

  When Elspeth Kendry knocked at his door early that morning, SAC Crogher was in a state of mind that no one would ever have thought him capable of: He was mellowed out.

  He even refused to get tense when he saw Kendry had the only kind of news anyone ever got at three in the morning: bad.

  He simply asked, “Is someone down?”

  Kendry shook her head.

  “Good. What is it then?”

  “Somebody tossed a rock through the living room window of Holmes’ house in Evanston, Illinois.”

  “You got the word from the local cops?”

  Kendry said, “Yes, sir. They said they arrived less than three minutes after the alarm on the window went off. They didn’t make an arrest or even a stop. Said by the time they started a grid search, they didn’t find a single person on the street within a radius of a mile.”

  “The locals responded to Mrs. Enquist’s residence, too?”

  “Per the plan we agreed on with them. Holmes’ daughter, Caitie, was safely tucked in bed. The former Mrs. McGill and her husband Mr. Enquist were also safe. I doubt they’ll get much sleep the rest of the night, though.”

  Crogher shrugged, something he never used to do.

  “No one was picked up lurking near the Enquist home?” he asked.

  “No, sir. Again, the police report seeing nobody on the street for several blocks.”

  “Peaceful town. Our people are working the crime scene?”

  “Yes, sir. The Evanston PD did a visual scan to see if anyone was inside the house and then secured it. Our people went in armored but found no one inside. They did find the rock that went through the window. It had a decal of a red, white and blue elephant on it.”

  Crogher thought about that. He said, “You could hit Holmes’ house with a rock from the sidewalk; the president’s house in Winnetka, behind that big wall and on the far side of an acre of lawn, you’d need a catapult. Could be a peeved conservative going for the easy target or it could be Damon Todd trying to get cute. What do you think, Kendry?”

  “Todd. We know about him. Some pissed off political partisan is just a shadow. There’s no point chasing that.”

  “I think you’re right. Holmes’ neighbors had to see all the commotion outside his house; some of them probably put in on video. But the cops have kept the stone with the elephant quiet, haven’t they?”

  Elspeth nodded. “Should we let Holly G and Holmes know what happened?”

  “Now? No.”

  Crogher didn’t have a date to go dancing with Carolyn Enquist. Causing her a few sleepless hours was her tough luck. But no way was he going to blow his big moment with Holly G.

  “The president’s an early riser,” Crogher said. “I’ll have our people in the residence let me know as soon as she’s awake.”

  Elspeth had expected SAC Crogher to respond with a much greater sense of urgency. At the very least, she’d thought he’d enjoy the opportunity to roust Holmes from his bed. Crogher had said he agreed with her that Damon Todd was probably behind the vandalism, but he was acting like it had been nothing but a boneheaded act of vandalism.

  “Are you all right, sir?” Elspeth asked.

  “Fine, why?”

  He knew why: He wasn’t acting like his old self.

  But he wanted to hear what Kendry had to say.

  She surprised Crogher and gave him a straight answer: “Seems to me like someone hijacked all your piss and vinegar.”

  Crogher did something no one had ever seen him do in the White House before.

  He laughed.

  The Oval Office

  The president invited Senate Majority Leader John Wexford and Assistant Majority Leader Richard Bergen to the Oval Office to discuss filling the vacancies on the Supreme Court. Galia Mindel was present to be a second set of eyes for the president. Overt political discussions weren’t allowed on government property, but matters of substance such as the nomination of two justices were permissible, even though the process would inevitably involve political considerations.

  Once the two top Democrats in the Senate had been comfortably seated and each had accepted a glass of water to sip, the president got down to business.

  “I’m going to nominate a new chief justice and a new associate justice simultaneously. I’d like them to be considered seamlessly. If possible, I’d like to have the hearings for the chief justice to be in the morning and the hearings for the associate justice to be in the afternoon on as few consecutive days as the Senate can manage, before bringing the nominations to a vote. Will that be doable?”

  Wexford and Bergen looked at each other.

  Nothing of the sort had ever been done or even contemplated.

  The Senate was the home of governmental sclerosis.

  The lifeblood of democracy flowed slowly there, if at all.

  Then, again, this president seemed to be a precedent setter by nature. If the Democrats in Congress were going to work with her and be successful, they’d have to learn a new trick or two. Sprint just to keep up with her.

  “We can certainly try,” Wexford said. Turning to his assistant, he asked, “Can’t we, Dick?”

  Senator Bergen had a gleam in his eye; he had more of a natural political affinity with the president.

  He said to her, “You’ll want us to employ some mechanism for cutting off Republican filibusters, won’t you, Madam President?”

  “Chief of Staff Mindel, will you
please tell the senators what my thinking is?”

  Galia said, “If the Republicans or Senator Hurlbert of True South should choose to stall the nominations, the president would like you to use the nuclear option, most recently threatened by Senator Bill Frist.”

  “Madam President,” Senator Wexford said, “the so-called nuclear option is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate.”

  Patti had done her homework. “No, it’s not, but the possibility of using such a measure was endorsed in a parliamentary opinion by Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957 and by the Senate itself in a series of votes in 1975. Gentlemen, the Republicans were prepared to use this option without apology when they thought it necessary. We can do no less. There’s no place left for timidity in Washington — wouldn’t you agree?”

  Wexford had to think about that; Bergen didn’t.

  “I agree,” he said. “The rationale for using the nuclear option is the same now as it was then. The Constitution requires that the will of the majority be effective on specific Senate duties and procedures. The option allows a simple majority to override the rules of the Senate and end a filibuster or other delaying tactic.”

  Wexford gave his number two a cutting glance, but he wasn’t going to chide him for speaking out of turn in front of the president and her chief of staff. For one thing, Dick was going to run for reelection and he was going to retire. For another he didn’t want it getting back to their caucus that he had been the timid guy in the room.

  “I concur, Madam President,” Wexford said. “The Democrats in the Senate will expedite whatever nominations you send to us. If any members of our caucus are hesitant about your choices, I’m sure Dick will whip them into line.”

  Bergen nodded, accepting both the reproof and the burden.

  Wexford asked, “Are you ready at this time to tell us whom you’ll nominate?”

  “I am, if you gentlemen promise to keep both names confidential.”