“Sounds like a potential security hazard.”
“Of course it was bolted, but on the inside. Who even knew it was there?”
“The president, apparently.”
“Well, yeah. The cook just saw the tips of his shoes before they vanished out of sight. When I inquired, she pointed out the passageway to me and I dutifully scrambled up it. I really should be paid more than I am, you know?”
“As should we all.”
“So I grabbed this little iron ladder that looked as if it’d been there since John Adams first moved in, and pretty soon I was on the roof. Can you believe it? The roof of the White House. Who even knew that was possible?”
“Not me. But I didn’t know there was an underground bunker before they dragged me here today.”
“Good point. So the wind was horrible—practically blew me off the roof—and I knew this couldn’t be safe because we were probably vulnerable to snipers and such, but I toughed it out and looked around. Over by the railing—and by that I mean the edge of the roof—that’s where I found the president.”
Ben wondered if he should object on grounds that the witness was employing a horrendously run-on sentence. He decided Cartwright probably wouldn’t be amused.
“What was he doing?”
“He was… laughing.”
“Laughing? Not crying?”
“Well, that too. It was strange. He was doing both at the same time. And talking.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Oh, many things. Rapidly. One topic after another.”
“Let’s take them in order. From the top.”
Sarie frowned. “Well, at the start, he was talking about flying.”
Swinburne did a double take. “Flying? Like a butterfly?”
“I suppose. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could get away from it all? Just fly away.’”
“Then what did he do?”
“He stood up.” Sarie licked her lips. It was obvious that this had been a difficult experience for her, one she did not relish recounting. “That was a bad idea in and of itself. I told you how strong the wind was up there. An accident would be easy. But he didn’t seem to notice. He extended his arms in front of him, like Superman, you know? He shouted, ‘Up, up, and away!’ Bent his knees and sort of… sprang. ‘I can flyyyyyyyy!’ he shouted at the top of his lungs. ‘Flyyyyyyy!’” She paused, caught her breath. “I thought he was really going to do it. I panicked. I grabbed desperately for his feet. The irony is, he wasn’t actually trying to fly, but my stupid groping almost knocked him off the roof.”
“Did his feet leave the roof?”
“No, thank God. But that seemed to puzzle him. He acted as if… as if he really thought it was going to happen.”
“As if he really believed he could fly?” Swinburne suggested.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That was my impression. He expected it to happen and it didn’t. So he was perplexed.”
Beside him, Ben saw the president shaking his head. Did that mean it wasn’t true? That it hadn’t happened like that? Or just that the president was miserably embarrassed by this testimony?
“What happened next?”
“He sat down, eventually. But his mood had changed. He wasn’t talking ninety miles a minute anymore. There was a lot more crying and a lot less laughing. Somehow the fact that he had failed to fly seemed to have really depressed him. He became despondent. Difficult to talk to. So mostly I just listened.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t remember it all. He just seemed so… hopeless. Helpless. Deep in despair.” She turned toward President Kyler. “I’m sorry, Roland.”
“You just go on telling them what you saw,” he said softly but firmly. “There’s never any harm in telling the truth.”
A noble sentiment, Ben thought. But he knew from personal experience that it was the truth that could often be the most damaging.
“Please continue,” Swinburne said, urging her on.
“He was sobbing. Tears were streaming down his face. He said things like, ‘What’s the point of it? What’s the point of going on? No one cares if I live or I die.’”
Even Admiral Cartwright, he of the stoic judicial face, reacted to this. This testimony was getting darker by the moment.
“He said he was barely getting started but he was already a terrible president. He said he had let the American people down. He said he knew things were going to get worse before they got better and he just couldn’t handle it. I tried to talk to him, tried to tell him that wasn’t true, that he was a good man, that people all around the world had tapped into his optimism, his desire for change, for world peace. But it was no use. He was inconsolable. That was the greatest irony, I thought. He had brought hope to people all around the world. But he couldn’t bring hope to himself.”
Swinburne nodded sadly. “What else did he say?”
Sarie thought for a moment. “He was particularly overcome with tears when he started talking about parenting. He said he had been a horrible parent, a failure. He said if there were anything at all he could do over in life, it wouldn’t be with his wife, or his education, or politics. He wanted a second chance to be a better father.”
Like everyone else in the room, Ben knew the president had only one child, a daughter, Jenny Kyler, who had been something of a rebel ever since she left home. She’d gone to school at Smith and was apparently bright, but she’d frequently made headlines by getting caught out after curfew, underage drinking. Once when Kyler was governor she was arrested while protesting outside the auditorium where her father was about to speak. Sophie Kyler had referred to Jenny among friends as “proof that no good turn goes unpunished.”
When Kyler had announced his candidacy for the presidency, it looked as though he might be the first candidate in some time with no children being used as campaign props. And then, to everyone’s surprise, Jenny came on board. She was even useful. Ben had heard Sarie say that she was very good at keeping her father on schedule, which apparently was an ongoing problem. And then, just after the first debate, a journalist’s microphone caught her referring to the opposing candidate as “a first-class asshole.” The next day, that was splashed all over the papers. Kyler’s campaign had no choice but to publicly apologize—since Jenny refused—and to remove her from the campaign staff. Jenny threw a fit, publicly vowing to never have anything to do with her father again. And she had been true to her word. Despite the best efforts of a number of people, she had not visited once in all the time her father had been in the White House. Ben had heard rumors that no one was even sure where she was.
Ben could understand how the loss of his only child could hit the president hard. Anyone could. But the thought of him blubbering about it on the roof of the White House was not going to encourage anyone to keep him in office.
“He said he couldn’t stand to go it alone,” Sarie continued. “He needed the support of his wife, his offspring. Without them, he was nothing.” She paused, though she was clearly not finished. Her eyes darted from one side of the room to the other. Even though Ben was sure she didn’t mean it this way, he knew the break was having the effect of giving particular emphasis to whatever blockbuster was yet to come.
“Yes?” Swinburne said. “Please go on.”
Sarie licked her lips. “He said he didn’t think he could stand to go on living.”
There was an audible gasp in the bunker. Papers shuffled on the television screen. The secretary of education stood and got a drink of water. The president slid deeper into his chair.
A suicidal president? That was simply unacceptable. On any grounds. No one would care now whether he was crazy or not. A suicidal president had to go, by whatever pretext was possible.
“How did you respond?”
“Of course I tried to bolster his spirits. I told him that he was wrong, that he was a great president, that he had done everything he could for Jenny. That it wasn’t his fault she was unmanageable. And I told him that in time she would come around. It’s true. I was a bit of a rebel myself back in the day. Didn’t talk to my parents for almost ten years over some grievance so petty I don’t even remember what it was now. I told him everything I could think of to say. But nothing seemed to help.”
“What else did he say?”
“He just went on and on in that vein, for probably almost half an hour. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to get the Secret Service—I didn’t want anyone to see him like this. So I waited it out.”
“And he was still talking?”
“Yes. Eventually he wrapped his hands around his knees and began to rock back and forth—” She cut herself short. “He said he was going to kill himself, just get it over with. Just jump off the roof and be done. Over. I tried to get him to think about what impact that would have on his wife, his child. ‘They’ll never miss me,’ he insisted. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘maybe they will at first, for a week or two. But they’ll get over it. They’ll move on. And they’ll be much better for being rid of me.’”
The other people in the room were shifting in their seats, wishing there were someplace they could go. This would be uncomfortable to hear in the best of circumstances, but when the president was sitting right there, only a few feet from all of them, it was awkward in the extreme.
“Did he talk about how he might do it?”
“Yes.” Another deep breath. “He realized in time that jumping off the roof might not be fatal, though it was sure to bring great pain. He talked about getting a knife from the kitchen and doing himself in hara-kiri style. He talked about grabbing a Secret Service agent’s gun and shooting himself through the head. Then—then—”
She choked. Ben realized it must be incredibly difficult for her to do this. She wasn’t presently married. As far as anyone knew, the primary man in her life was Roland Kyler. And now she was effectively betraying him, in what was perhaps his moment of greatest need.
“Then,” she continued, with great difficulty, “he talked about doing it at a press conference.”
The secretary of education gasped.
“He said he’d smuggle a gun in when no one was looking, and once the cameras were rolling he’d blow his head off in living color. That would show the bastards, he said. That would show Colonel Zuko and all the other people who were conniving to bring him down. He wouldn’t give them the chance. He’d just do it himself.”
Ruiz threw down his pencil and turned away. Rybicki covered his face. No one looked the president in the eye. The murmuring and whispering in the tiny bunker was so intense Admiral Cartwright had to pound the table several times. “There will be quiet in here! The witness is still testifying.”
“I’m really not,” Sarie said. “That’s all there is. That’s everything I’ve seen. Before today.”
“Let me ask you one more question before you go,” Swinburne said. “And let me thank you for your honest testimony. I know it wasn’t easy for you and I appreciate it. But my question is this: when you witnessed this spectacle on the roof of the White House, did the president seem… sane?”
“Objection,” Ben said. “She’s not qualified.”
Cartwright waved him down. “She sees the man virtually every day. She may be the best observer we’ve got of his daily condition. I’m going to allow her to answer the question.”
“But she’s not a—”
“I’ve ruled, Mr. Kincaid. Sit down.”
Ben unhappily returned to his chair.
Sarie shook her head. “I don’t know if I would call him insane. He didn’t seem himself. I will say that. He didn’t seem like the Roland Kyler I know. It’s was as if somehow he had been changed. Altered.”
“Incapable?”
“I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“I’m not asking for a medical diagnosis. But you can give us your own opinion, based upon what you saw and heard. I’m sure the judge will allow it.”
Sarie continued shaking her head, searching for the words. “I just don’t know what was wrong with him that night, or in the pool, or before the Easter egg roll. I don’t know what brings on these… episodes. But I know they’re real. And I know they’re scary.”
“But Ms. Morrell, did he seem stable? When he was threatening to kill himself? In graphic and bloody ways?”
Her head hung low. “No,” she said quietly. “I suppose not.”
“Thank you,” Swinburne said. “Your witness, Mr. Kincaid.”
Very generous of Swinburne, but what the hell was Ben supposed to do with this witness? She looked as if she couldn’t go on, at least not without a recess, something the judge couldn’t and wouldn’t grant. He didn’t doubt that she had been telling the truth. There was no chance that he was going to impeach her on cross. Her credibility and honesty were ironclad.
Still, he had to do something. He just didn’t know what that might be.
He stood and addressed the witness. Some of the people in the room were absolutely glaring at him. They didn’t want him to go on. They’d heard enough.
“Sarie,” Ben said, “I know this has been a terrible ordeal for you, and in most circumstances I would ask for a recess before proceeding. In this case, though, there just isn’t time. Do you think you could answer a few questions for me? I promise I won’t go on too long.”
She looked up. Her face was pale. “I’ll do my best.”
“Sarie, the whole purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether the president is incapable of serving as president due to some mental infirmity. The president can be as odd as he wants. That doesn’t matter. It’s only important if it prevents him from performing him official duties.”
“I understand.”
“And I know you saw some strange things. But I haven’t heard anything that suggests that the president couldn’t do his job.”
Ruiz slapped himself on the forehead, looking at Ben as if he had lost every marble he ever had.
“You’ve testified that these episodes come without warning or any discernible trigger.”
“That’s true.”
“And you’ve said that they eventually pass.”
“Yes.”
“After a brief time, he seems normal again. Able to perform as president?”
“Absolutely.”
“Has he failed to accomplish any work as a result of these odd interludes?”
“Never once.”