“Everything is ready. We’re waiting on the green light.”
“I hope this moron can see it my way.”
______
CRITZ
and the moron were staring at the walls of the Oval Office, their heavy silence broken occasionally by a comment about Joel Backman. They had to talk about something, because neither would mention what was really on his mind.
Can this be happening?
Is this finally the end?
Forty years. From Cornell to the Oval Office. The end was so abrupt that they had not had enough time to properly prepare for it. They had been counting on four more years. Four years of glory as they carefully crafted a legacy, then rode gallantly into the sunset.
Though it was late, it seemed to grow even darker outside. The windows that overlooked the Rose Garden
were black. A clock above the fireplace could almost be heard as it ticked nonstop in its final countdown.
“What will the press do if I pardon Backman?” the President asked, not for the first time.
“Go berserk.”
“That might be fun.”
“You won’t be around.”
“No, I won’t.” After the transfer of power at noon the next day, his escape from Washington would begin with a private jet (owned by an oil company) to an old friend’s villa on the island of Barbados. At Morgan’s instructions, the televisions had been removed from the villa, no newspapers or magazines would be delivered, and all phones had been unplugged. He would have no contact with anyone, not even Critz, and especially not Mrs. Morgan, for at least a month. He wouldn’t care if Washington burned. In fact, he secretly hoped that it would.
After Barbados, he would sneak up to his cabin in Alaska, and there he would continue to ignore the world as the winter passed and he waited on spring.
“Should we pardon him?” the President asked.
“Probably,” Critz said.
The President had shifted to the “we” mode now, something he invariably did when a potentially unpopular decision was at hand. For the easy ones, it was always “I.” When he needed a crutch, and especially when he would need someone to blame, he opened up the decision-making process and included Critz.
Critz had been taking the blame for forty years, and though he was certainly used to it, he was nonetheless tired of it. He said, “There’s a very good chance we wouldn’t be here had it not been for Joel Backman.”
“You may be right about that,” the President said. He had always maintained that he had been elected because of his brilliant campaigning, charismatic personality, uncanny grasp of the issues, and clear vision for America. To finally admit that he owed anything to Joel Backman was almost shocking.
But Critz was too calloused, and too tired, to be shocked.
Six years ago, the Backman scandal had engulfed much of Washington and eventually tainted the White House. A cloud appeared over a popular president, paving the way for Arthur Morgan to stumble his way into the White House.
Now that he was stumbling out, he relished the idea of one last arbitrary slap in the face to the Washington establishment that had shunned him for four years. A reprieve for Joel Backman would rattle the walls of every office building in D.C. and shock the press into a blathering frenzy. Morgan liked the idea. While he sunned away on Barbados, the city would gridlock once again as congressmen demanded hearings and prosecutors performed for the cameras and the insufferable talking heads prattled nonstop on cable news.
The President smiled into the darkness.
______
ON
the Arlington Memorial Bridge, over the Potomac River, Hoby refilled the director’s paper cup with green tea. “Thank you,” Teddy said softly. “What’s our boy doing tomorrow when he leaves office?” he asked.
“Fleeing the country.”
“He should’ve left sooner.”
“He plans to spend a month in the Caribbean, licking his wounds, ignoring the world, pouting, waiting for someone to show some interest.”
“And Mrs. Morgan?”
“She’s already back in Delaware playing bridge.”
“Are they splitting?”
“If he’s smart. Who knows?”
Teddy took a careful sip of tea. “So what’s our leverage if Morgan balks?”
“I don’t think he’ll balk. The preliminary talks have gone well. Critz seems to be on board. He has a much better feel of things now than Morgan. Critz knows that they would’ve never seen the Oval Office had it not been for the Backman scandal.”
“As I said, what’s our leverage if he balks?”
“None, really. He’s an idiot, but he’s a clean one.”
They turned off Constitution Avenue onto 18th Street and were soon entering the east gate of the White House. Men with machine guns materialized from the darkness, then Secret Service agents in black trench coats stopped the van. Code words were used, radios squawked, and within minutes Teddy was being lowered from the van. Inside, a cursory search of his wheelchair revealed nothing but a crippled and bundled-up old man.
______
ARTIE,
minus the Heineken, and again without knocking, poked his head through the door and announced: “Maynard’s here.”
“So he’s alive,” the President said.
“Barely.”
“Then roll him in.”
Hoby and a deputy named Priddy followed the wheelchair into the Oval Office. The President and Critz welcomed their guests and directed them to the sitting area in front of the fireplace. Though Maynard avoided the White House, Priddy practically lived there, briefing the President every morning on intelligence matters.
As they settled in, Teddy glanced around the room, as if looking for bugs and listening devices. He was almost certain there were none; that practice had ended with Watergate. Nixon laid enough wire in the White House to juice a small city, but, of course, he paid for it. Teddy, however, was wired. Carefully hidden above the axle of his wheelchair, just inches below his seat, was a powerful recorder that would capture every sound made during the next thirty minutes.
He tried to smile at President Morgan, but he wanted to say something like: You are without a doubt the most limited politician I have ever encountered. Only in America could a moron like you make it to the top.
President Morgan smiled at Teddy Maynard, but he wanted to say something like: I should have fired you four years ago. Your agency has been a constant embarrassment to this country.
Teddy: I was shocked when you carried a single state, albeit by seventeen votes.
Morgan: You couldn’t find a terrorist if he advertised on a billboard.
Teddy: Happy fishing. You’ll get even fewer trout than votes.
Morgan: Why didn’t you just die, like everyone promised me you would?
Teddy: Presidents come and go, but I never leave.
Morgan: It was Critz who wanted to keep you. Thank him for your job. I wanted to sack your ass two weeks after my inauguration.
Critz said loudly, “Coffee anyone?”
Teddy said, “No,” and as soon as that was established, Hoby and Priddy likewise declined. And because the CIA wanted no coffee, President Morgan said, “Yes, black with two sugars.” Critz nodded at a secretary who was waiting in a half-opened side door.
He turned back to the gathering and said, “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Teddy said quickly, “I’m here to discuss Joel Backman.”
“Yes, that’s why you’re here,” the President said.
“As you know,” Teddy continued, almost ignoring the President, “Mr. Backman went to prison without saying a word. He still carries some secrets that, frankly, could compromise national security.”
“You can’t kill him,” Critz blurted.
“We cannot target American citizens, Mr. Critz. It’s against the law. We prefer that someone else do it.”
“I don’t follow,” the President said.
“Here’s the plan. If you pardon Mr. Backman, and if he accepts the pardon, then we will have him out of the country in a matter of hours. He must agree to spend the rest of his life in hiding. This should not be a problem because there are several people who would like to see him dead, and he knows it. We’ll relocate him to a foreign country, probably in Europe where he’ll be easier to watch. He’ll have a new identity. He’ll be a free man, and with time people will forget about Joel Backman.”
“That’s not the end of the story,” Critz said.
“No. We’ll wait, perhaps a year or so, then we’ll leak the word in the right places. They’ll find Mr. Backman, and they’ll kill him, and when they do so, many of our questions will be answered.”
A long pause as Teddy looked at Critz, then the President. When he was convinced they were thoroughly confused, he continued. “It’s a very simple plan, gentlemen. It’s a question of who kills him.”
“So you’ll be watching?” Critz asked.
“Very closely.”
“Who’s after him?” the President asked.
Teddy refolded his veiny hands and recoiled a bit, then he looked down his long nose like a schoolteacher addressing his little third graders. “Perhaps the Russians, the Chinese, maybe the Israelis. There could be others.”
Of course there were others, but no one expected Teddy to reveal everything he knew. He never had; never would, regardless of who was president and regardless of how much time he had left in the Oval Office. They came and went, some for four years, others for eight. Some loved the espionage, others were only concerned with the latest polls. Morgan had been particularly inept at foreign policy, and with a few hours remaining in his administration, Teddy certainly was not going to divulge any more than was necessary to get the pardon.
“Why would Backman take such a deal?” Critz asked.
“He may not,” Teddy answered. “But he’s been in solitary confinement for six years. That’s twenty-three hours a day in a tiny cell. One hour of sunshine. Three showers a week. Bad food—they say he’s lost sixty pounds. I hear he’s not doing too well.”
Two months ago, after the landslide, when Teddy Maynard conceived this pardon scheme, he had pulled a few of his many strings and Backman’s confinement had grown much worse. The temperature in his cell was lowered ten degrees, and for the past month he’d had a terrible cough. His food, bland at best, had been run through the processor again and was being served cold. His toilet flushed about half the time. The guards woke him up at all hours of the night. His phone privileges were curtailed. The law library that he used twice a week was suddenly off-limits. Backman, a lawyer, knew his rights, and he was threatening all manner of litigation against the prison and the government, though he had yet to file suit. The fight was taking its toll. He was demanding sleeping pills and Prozac.
“You want me to pardon Joel Backman so you can arrange for him to be murdered?” the President asked.
“Yes,” Teddy said bluntly. “But we won’t actually arrange it.”
“But it’ll happen.”
“Yes.”
“And his death will be in the best interests of our national security?”
“I firmly believe that.”
2
THE ISOLATION WING AT RUDLEY FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL
Facility had forty identical cells, each a twelve-foot square with no windows, no bars, green-painted concrete floors and cinder-block walls, and a door that was solid metal with a narrow slot at the bottom for food trays and a small open peephole for the guards to have a look occasionally. The wing was filled with government informants, drug snitches, Mafia misfits, a couple of spies—men who needed to be locked away because there were plenty of folks back home who would gladly slice their throats. Most of the forty inmates in protective custody at Rudley had requested the I-wing.
Joel Backman was trying to sleep when two guards clanged open his door and switched on his light. “The warden wants you,” one said, and there was no elaboration. They rode in silence in a prison van across the frigid Oklahoma prairie, past other buildings holding less-secure criminals, until they arrived at the administration building. Backman, handcuffed for no apparent reason, was hurried inside, up two flights of stairs, then down a
long hall to the big office where lights were on and something important was going down. He saw a clock on a wall; it was almost 11:00 p.m.
He’d never met the warden, which was not at all unusual. For many good reasons the warden didn’t circulate. He wasn’t running for office, nor was he concerned with motivating the troops. With him were three other suits, all earnest-looking men who’d been chatting for some time. Though smoking was strictly prohibited in offices owned by the U.S. government, an ashtray was full and a thick fog hung close to the ceiling.
With absolutely no introduction, the warden said, “Sit over there, Mr. Backman.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Backman said as he looked at the other men in the room. “Why, exactly, am I here?”
“We’ll discuss that.”
“Could you please remove these handcuffs? I promise not to kill anyone.”
The warden snapped at the nearest guard, who quickly found a key and freed Backman. The guard then scrambled out of the room, slamming the door behind him, much to the displeasure of the warden, a very nervous man.
He pointed and said, “This is Special Agent Adair of the FBI. This is Mr. Knabe from the Justice Department. And this is Mr. Sizemore, also from Washington.”
None of the three moved in the direction of Mr. Backman, who was still standing and looking quite perplexed. He nodded at them, in a halfhearted effort to be polite. His efforts were not returned.
“Please sit,” the warden said, and Backman finally took a chair. “Thank you. As you know, Mr. Backman, a new president is about to be sworn in. President Morgan is on the way out. Right now he is in the Oval Office wrestling with the decision of whether to grant you a full pardon.”
Backman was suddenly seized with a violent cough, one brought on in part by the near arctic temperature in his cell and in part by the shock of the word “pardon.”
Mr. Knabe from Justice handed him a bottle of water, which he gulped and splashed down his chin and finally managed to stifle the cough. “A pardon?” he mumbled.