Balance of Power: A Novel (13 page)

“R
OBIN
!” S
TANBRIDGE CALLED AS HE STRODE
through the outer doorway to his office. “Who’s here so far?”

“I think Mr. Dillon and Mr. Grazio are here, as well as a few others,” she said.

“Get ’em all here.”

“Sir.” She hesitated. “It’s almost midnight. Most of the staff has gone home.”

He stopped in front of her desk and looked at her for the first time in a week. “Why haven’t you?”

“Because you asked me not to,” she replied.

Stanbridge hung up his coat and said to the wall, “I did?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry about that, but some things can’t be helped.” He looked at his watch, thought for a minute, then turned to her again. “All of ’em, Robin. I want everyone here in thirty minutes. If they’re home asleep, wake their asses up. Order pizza—enough for everyone.” He looked at his office without seeing it and spoke to Robin behind him without turning his head. “This one’s got hair all over it,” he said as he closed his door.

Most did arrive within half an hour, none happy to be there. They milled around, looking for coffee that no one had made, angry at whoever hadn’t made it. Rhonda had assumed they would be up all night. She had gotten
dressed in a dark suit. Her soaking-wet hair clung to her back, leaving a large dark spot on the back of her suit coat. Others had assumed it would be a short meeting and had gotten dressed quickly in jeans and sweatshirts. They slumped in their chairs in the seventh-grade posture that went with casual dress outside of business hours. The conversations were mostly muffled complaints about being called in. There wasn’t any news of a big development in the crisis, nothing that couldn’t have waited until morning.

Stanbridge stood beside his desk and looked them over. “Sorry I had to ask you to come back in. I know what a pain that is. But I wanted to tell you about my conversation with the President.”

They looked at each other. Great, they thought. Another chance to hear from the Speaker how witty and clever he is, how he can defeat anyone in an argument.

“We all heard the President say he wasn’t going to do anything about the attack on the
Pacific Flyer
. Frankly, he caught me by surprise. I assumed we were going to have to make sure he complied with the War Powers Act. I didn’t think there would be any problem with that—we would have supported him—but I was going to make sure he complied….” The staff members looked at each other discreetly. Yeah, right.

“But now, everything is different. He isn’t going to come to the defense of Americans who were attacked. It’s…I don’t know”—he rubbed his eyes—“unusual, it’s…spooky.”

He looked at them. “I think the President is a pacifist. Not just a dove, politically, but a genuine pacifist.” He waited for his comment to sink in. The staffers looked at each other, then skeptically at him.

“I asked him straight out if he was, and he wouldn’t give me an answer.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Rhonda said, “but what difference does that make?”

“What difference does it make?” Stanbridge looked at her as if she had a growth on her forehead. “Rhonda, you
ever hear that saying that there’s no such thing as a stupid question?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That is one of the stupidest questions I’ve ever heard. You don’t think it would matter if the President was a pacifist? The Commander in Chief of the largest armed forces in the world, unwilling
ever
to use them, to order them to do what they’re trained to do? You don’t see a problem there?”

Rhonda nodded slowly, yearning for his attention to be directed somewhere else.

“Well, I wanted you to be here,” he said in a low voice, “because I need ideas on what we can do about this. The President refuses to act. So is that it? End of story? Are all American ships now subject to attack and murder and sinking? Is that the message we’re going to send? We need an alternative.
Fast
. I don’t want this thing to get stale—”

Dillon stood up suddenly and walked toward the Speaker. Dillon’s approach was so unexpected and inappropriate that the Speaker stopped talking and stared.

“I think I have the answer, Mr. Speaker,” Dillon said quietly.

“What?”

“The alternative. What we can do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you went over to see the President, I started looking, like you asked me to. Since the President is always the one who acts, we all assume he’s the only one who
can
act. But if he isn’t going to do anything about it, the question is, can anyone else do anything about it?” Dillon put his hands in his pockets and turned to face the rest of the staff, who were looking at one another in amazement at Dillon’s nerve.

“Well,” the Speaker said, folding his arms defensively. “Then by all means, share this insight with us.”

“Since the President won’t act, then we should act without him.”

The Speaker studied his face for humor, but saw none. “What are you talking about? Get to the
point
.”

Dillon nodded understandingly. “Why not issue a Letter of Marque and Reprisal?”

The Speaker frowned. The rest of the staff looked puzzled.

Dillon continued, “Article one, Section eight of the Constitution, Mr. Speaker. It’s in the exclusive powers of Congress. The power to declare war, and grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal…It’s the power to issue a letter, a commission—to an armed merchant ship to attack an enemy’s ships. It’s legalized piracy.” His blue eyes burned. “It’s nothing less than the power of Congress to conduct private limited war.”

The Speaker stared at Dillon uncomprehendingly, then with stunned appreciation. Stanbridge began in a low intense tone, “Did you do any research to find out if it’s still possible?”

Dillon nodded slowly. “I didn’t finish, but nothing so far that says you couldn’t do it.”

The Speaker put his hand on the top of his head, as if to hold it on. He paused, then spoke quickly. “I want you to do the best research job you can on this clause. Every case that’s cited it, every article that’s mentioned it, every history book that’s mentioned it, the Constitutional Convention’s discussion of it,
everything
. Rhonda,” he said, looking at her, “I want all the history you can find about Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” He was energized. He began pacing. “You need to become
the
expert in twelve hours. Split up the research—get everybody here working on it. Within twelve hours, I want to know everything there is to know about it.” He paused and looked at their faces. Some were eager and understood the implications; others were still stupid from sleep. “If things are as I suspect, I’m going to keep the House in session all night tomorrow night.” He looked at his watch. “Actually, tonight.” It was 1:00
A.M.
“Let’s get going.”

The staff started to stand. Grazio was frowning. “If I
might ask the second stupid question of the night, Mr. Speaker, where the hell are we going to find an armed merchant ship to attack these terrorists?”

The Speaker nodded, his countenance clouding slightly. “That’s one of the things we’ll need to solve. But I’ll tell you what, Mr. Grazio, if Dillon is right, and it’s still in effect—dormant but in effect—then it’s our
ticket
.” He breathed deeply and looked at Grazio intensely. “And the President can’t stop us.” He looked back at Dillon. “Did you think of exactly who will receive the commission?”

“Yes, I did. I thought about that a lot.” Dillon scratched his head. “At first I thought maybe a CIA armed merchant ship or something like that. But then, it hit me.” Dillon was suddenly transported back to the constitutional law seminar he had loved so much at UVA. He sat directly across from Molly and not only enjoyed her presence but disagreed with her on almost every point. She was always calling for a living Constitution, a document that changes with the times to accommodate a modern world. He found himself fighting for the traditional understanding of the Constitution and the way it was interpreted by those who wrote it. He feared that once the words in a document came to mean whatever the Supreme Court said they meant, then they could mean anything. He was about to turn the tables. “I realized there aren’t any armed merchant ships today like during the War of 1812. So the Constitution therefore must change to accommodate modern times, a living document. The only armed ships that exist anymore are Navy ships.”

The Speaker’s eyes grew suddenly large; the rest of the staffers began to murmur as the implications became obvious.

Dillon continued, “We’ll issue it to the USS
Constitution
Battle Group in the Java Sea. If the President won’t use them,
we
will.”

The room was full of electricity. The implications were enormous and satisfying. Stanbridge was speechless for the first time in their memories.

Rhonda spoke first. “Has such a commission ever been issued to a Navy ship before?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Dillon said.

“There’s always a first time,” Stanbridge said excitedly.

Dillon stared at his computer screen as the legal research graphics loaded. Before baring his idea to the Speaker and the others on the staff, he had been able to do some basic research. He had felt strongly about the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal because it was in the Constitution. Nothing trumps the Constitution. Not a treaty, not a law, not a state, not custom—nothing does. Only a constitutional amendment can officially change the Constitution. Sometimes interpretation can gut a concept, but that was certainly not the case here. The number of times the Supreme Court had even dealt with it was minuscule. Still, he wanted to be
sure
.

Dillon was confident that he had uncovered a strong durable weapon that Congress could use as it saw fit, both in ways in which it had been used in the past, and in newer, more creative ways, as a result of the rubber sides the Supreme Court had given to the Constitution, claiming it was a living document.

But there might be something out there that could preclude using the power as he had envisioned. If there was, he had to find it.

His fingers flew across the keyboard, accessing the cases, law review articles, and anything else that cited this provision in the Constitution. He hit more and more wrong keys as he pushed himself. Sweat was beading on his forehead in a way unusual for him. He was perceived as cool, cocky. But he felt a nervousness that ran to his core as he glanced at the clock. This night could mark one of the most dramatic changes in this century’s U.S. foreign policy. If he was right. Being wrong would not be simply a question of preparing a memorandum that
proved to be embarrassing. This was the kind of thing that could end careers. Not only his, but the Speaker’s, and that of anybody else who signed on.

Pinkie sat down in the dirty-shirt wardroom, the forward wardroom on the 03 level of the USS
Constitution
where the air wing ate, and took the food off his tray. He unzipped the leather flight jacket festooned with patches of the squadrons he had been in and ships he had been on as an intelligence officer. Still, he had never actually flown in a Navy plane other than the COD, the Carrier Onboard Delivery plane, the ugly bugsmasher that carried parts and people back and forth from shore. He had shown the requisite amount of ingenuity, though, by getting hold of a leather flight jacket he wasn’t entitled to.

Lunch was the usual fare. Lasagna, corn, bread, milk; starch, carbohydrates, and fat. If they had sailed from a port less than ten days ago, there might have been some semblance of a salad or fresh vegetable or fruit, but not here. They were a month out of port with no likelihood of a port call anytime soon. At least not until the latest crisis was over, the latest call for the Great American Aircraft Carrier to steam around angrily and convert jet fuel into noise.

As the air wing intelligence officer, he knew what many on the ship didn’t. They had located the terrorists on an island and were about to send SEALs ashore to determine their strength and composition. The sticky part was that they were going ashore on an island that was Indonesian territory, and they had received specific instructions from Indonesia not to overfly their land. He chuckled to himself as he cut into his lasagna. They didn’t say don’t
walk
over their country, they just said don’t
fly
over it.