“I’ve been painfully aware about those,” Pendano said. “Scott Jevons, one of the Secret Service men, has been smuggling me the Washington Advertiser-Gazette, but he wasn’t on duty this morning, so I hadn’t seen the election results. I can’t say I’m surprised.”
Heather tilted chairs against the doorknobs of both entrances to the main room, then dragged a couch around to provide some cover between the men and the doors. Best improvisation I’ve got. She crouched behind the couch. Come on, Graham, get to—
“Roger.” Graham’s voice was soft, gentle—and as intense as Heather had ever heard. “Roger, I wish I didn’t have to ask, but we’ve got to get rid of Shaunsen, and—”
“I thought that might be what you were here for. Amendment Twenty-five, Section Three; I figured Randolph was too much of a wuss and too old to do anything.” Pendano groaned, shaking his head as if he’d been punched. “I don’t know what will happen if I try to resume my office. I… I’m not the man I was a couple weeks ago. I’m not sure at all who I am, now.”
“It would only have to be a for a few days,” Graham said. He explained quickly.
Heather said, “We probably have five minutes before they react to the bugs being dead,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”
“So we put Norcross in early and he’s promised to act presidential?” Pendano stood. “That solves the problem, all right. But you get me out of office fast; I’m ashamed enough of what I’ve become without having it paraded in public.” Pendano moved to his private correspondence desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and scrawled:
November 6, 2024
To Speaker Kowalski and the President Pro Tem—
“Who did Shaunsen put in as Pres Pro Tem at the Senate?”
“He refused to do that, and he hasn’t resigned his seat, either, even though the Twenty-fifth Amendment says he has to,” Weisbrod explained.
“Great. Crap, Graham, I’m sorry I cracked up on you all. All right, then.” Anger seemed to straighten and steady him, and he bent to write, quickly and in a surprisingly firm hand:
November 6, 2024
Dear Speaker Kowalski and President Pro Tem Shaunsen or his successor,
In accordance with Sect. 3 / 25th Amendment / US Constitution, this is my written declaration that I am now able to resume the discharge of the Constitutional powers and duties of the office of the President of the United States. With the transmittal of this letter, I am resuming those powers and duties effective immediately.
“That last one is giving Cam the power to straighten this mess out if necessary,” Pendano explained. “He may be a crazed right-wing nut and the coldest man in Washington, but if Shaunsen does any more damage to the Constitution, it will be over Cam’s dead body, and I don’t think that’ll be easy to achieve. One of my best appointments, I think.”
“Absolutely,” Weisbrod said.
“The lawyer in me says we’d better have both of you witness it,” Pendano said, extending the pen. Graham signed, WITNESSED NOVEMBER 6, 2024 and his name; below that Heather signed, her eyes never leaving the doors.
Weisbrod said, “Heather, just in case, I’d feel better to have you carrying this.”
She folded it and placed it carefully, thinking, Not everybody gets to have the fate of the nation stuffed into her bra. “Now I’ll just put the dead bugs back and—”
Pendano shook his head. “We’d better just run for it.” Unselfconsciously, Pendano shucked off his robe, turned to his closet, and pulled out an old white shirt and a pair of jeans. “Please forgive the lounging-around clothes, they’re all I have right now.”
“I don’t quite follow—” Graham said.
“I do.” Heather felt sick. “This letter has to be officially received by Kowalski and Shaunsen, and they have to admit they got it, or receive it in front of witnesses. If President Pendano were to die before it’s delivered—”
“Shaunsen would succeed in his own right,” Pendano said, “and then you’d be good and well shit up the crick, as one of my favorite voters used to say. And there’d be a lot of stories they could tell to explain my death—I’m in poor health, I’m insane and died struggling against restraints, I could be found with a big load of sedatives in my belly—given the moral character of our Attorney General, I could be found with an ax in my head, and he’d rule it suicide. I need to put myself out of their reach, now, or make them damn well get my blood on their hands in public.”
He had dressed while he was talking, and now he slipped his feet into loafers. “Secret Service outside—black man, shaved head, short and solid, mustache?”
“Right.”
“Good, that’s Scott Jevons. Ask him to come in.”
Pendano explained the situation in a few swift, brutal sentences, not hesitating to say that Shaunsen was in the process of a coup and would murder him if he could. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you to make the decision.”
Jevons shrugged. “The President and a Cabinet Secretary have just told me that the President is healthy and taking back over. The President looks good to me. My job is to protect the President. That’s how my outfit will see it.” He pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket, untied the condom in which it was bagged, and dialed. “Big Fox, this is Bravo. President Pendano has just signed a letter, witnessed by the Secretary of the Future and the Assistant Secretary for… uh…”
“Future Threats.”
“…Future Threats. The letter says he’s well again, and he looks like it to me. He believes some people here in the White House may pose a threat to his safety. In the, um, present circumstances I recommend we move him to DRET at St. Elizabeth’s, with a stop at the Capitol to present the letter to Speaker Kowalski. Standing by for—”
The door crashed open; Jevons shot first, hitting the NUG in the head. Heather got the one who came in after him. Gunshots rang in the hallways below; Heather and Scott Jevons moved to cover the elevator and stairs.
Scott had been shouting into the phone; he looked up from it, his face streaked with tears. “Mr. President, the Secret Service are being killed, the NUGs jumped us—”
Graham clapped Heather on the shoulder. “Can you climb down from the balcony behind us?”
“I probably—”
“Yes or no.”
“Yes, or whatever else—”
“Deliver that letter to Kowalski. Now. It’s effective as long as neither of you knows that Roger is dead—so go before you see anything.”
Heather dropped hand over hand down a fire access ladder and plunged down a folding fire escape onto the South Lawn. Gunfire was rising to a crescendo inside; Shaunsen’s forces were probably rushing the last few Secret Service holdouts and getting ready to storm the Third Floor. When I last saw Roger Pendano, she reminded herself, preparing to be a good witness, he was alive and totally sane.
As Heather burst through the open, unguarded gate, she still heard a few gunshots behind her, but she put all her effort into the race along the Mall toward the Capitol. On morning runs, she’d sometimes gone this way. This would be one great time for a personal best. She ran.