At the end, a controller — somebody Hart didn’t know at all — asked, “Echo Foxtrot, two one nine, do you acknowledge the orders?”
“Echo Foxtrot,” Hart replied, beaten down into a daze, “acknowledged.”
“Do you have any questions?” the guy asked.
Hart’s mind spun. “What the hell is going on?” he wanted to shout. “And where’s the one-eyed colonel? Who are you? Shit!” But he was expected to ask only about practical details. They wouldn’t tell him anything more. He was behind enemy lines.
But there was one practical detail that his briefers had omitted. “What about my egress?” Hart demanded.
There was a long silence. “Use the best available means,” came the anonymous reply. A new, deeper, more sympathetic sounding voice said, “After this, you can bring it all the way home, Echo Foxtrot.”
There would be little chance of that, Hart knew. “Copy,” he whispered through a hoarse throat. He wasn’t used to that much talking. “Two one nine, out.”
Bill didn’t want to transfer his powers in the Situation Room. He didn’t want a presidential succession taking place in a bunker. The throng had gathered, therefore, in the sunny Oval Office. The biggest change was that the rocket screens had been removed from the windows. Bright daylight again streamed in. The United States had won the Battle of Washingtonand pushed the Chinese back from the city. It was that scene — one of victory — that Bill wanted history to record.
An ashen Clarissa stood just inside the doorway together with Bill’s appointments secretary, steward, and others from his personal staff. The cabinet was gathered around the desk at which Bill sat. The military brass — returned to wool uniforms of greens and blues — stood in a ring just outside. Two large, flat-screen monitors had been wheeled in beside Bill’s desk. One bore the image of the vice president, who was on the airborne command post over Baltimore. He would land and make his way to the White House as Bill headed for the prisoner exchange site. The other screen bore the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who was in a deep underground bunker in Omaha. The president pro tempore of the Senate, and Tom Leffler — Speaker of the House — sat in chairs on the opposite side of the president’s desk.
Upon her arrival, Clarissa had tried to whisper to her father, but he had halted her with a quick shake of his head. After a sick-looking smile at Bill, she had receded to the doorway. She looked fresh and beautiful. “I love you,” she said to Bill with slight movements of her lips.
The young widow, Bill thought. Straight out of central casting. Wearing a proper dress. Clutching a handbag to her thighs. Trying to hold up. To get by. To make it through.
Her father slumped — a shell of his former presence — and glared through greasy eyes at Bill.
“Sorry to keep you up there so long,” Bill said to the vice president on the monitor as they got started. The Republican congressman and former secretary of defense had been on a military command and control airplane the entire month since he had been confirmed as vice president.
“That’s all right, Mr. President,” Glen Simon replied. Bill had informed him of his decision to hand himself over in a quick audiophone call the day before, but this was the first time the two had faced each other. It was made doubly awkward by the presence of so many people. “I can’t tell you, Bill, how much my heart goes out to you,” the vice president said. “What you’re doing, it’s… Well, you’re a remarkable man, Mr. President. And this office is yours. You go get your daughter. We’ll get you back here — some way — even if we have to fight all the way to China to do it. I pledge that to you.”
“That’s exactly what we’ve got to do,” Bill said to the man soon to occupy his chair. And to his cabinet. And his military. And to all the rest of posterity via the cameras, which discretely recorded the ceremony. “We were fools. We fell asleep. We made the mistake of allowing ourselves the luxury of thinking that national survival isn’t solely and completely dependent — ultimately — upon brute force. Our nation is still rising up from that slumber. In two years, we’ll have put twenty arsenal ships to sea. Let’s see how the Chinese deal with that.” There were nods from the Joint Chiefs and many in the cabinet. A couple said, “Here-here.” “But we can’t stop until we win this war. Until the Chinese military is demolished and all the world is liberated. You cannot shrink from the fight once it’s conveniently far away. It is your duty to press on — press on—to total victory so that our children’s children can know total peace.”
The room was silent. There was no tumultuous applause. Sobriety reigned. Somber heads were bowed, as Bill looked down at his script. “Mr. Chief Justice,” he read into the monitor beside the vice president’s, “whereas tomorrow morning, at zero six hundred hours Washington time, I will cross the Potomac River and deliver myself into the hands of this nation’s enemy; and whereas immediately prior thereto, I desire and intend to transfer, automatically and without further process, the powers and duties of the office of president of the United States to Mr. Glen Simon, Vice President of the United States, who will thereupon become the acting president of the United States.”
Bill cleared his throat, which constricted with fear.
“Whereas I have further been advised by White House counsel and the National Security Council that a temporary transfer of power pursuant to Section Three, Article Twenty-Five of the Constitution of the United States would entitle me to reclaim the office of president while still in the hands of the enemy by transmittal of a written declaration to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which declaration might be obtained by duress; whereas, as a consequence, I, Bill Baker, president of the United States of America, hereby request that the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States certify a conditional transfer of the authority and duties of the office of president in accordance with the procedures set forth in Section Four, Article Twenty-Five, of the Constitution of the United States of America.”
Bill looked up at his cabinet. Almost all had fought long and hard on a political campaign dedicated solely to getting Bill elected so that he could save the country. Some were bitter over his abandonment of that country. The rest begrudgingly understood. Bill lowered his head from their silent gazes and returned doggedly to his lawyers’ script.
“Whereas, in the opinion of White House counsel and the National Security Council, any attempt that I might make while in Chinese captivity to reclaim the office of president could be forestalled by delivery of a written declaration to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives that I am unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of president by the vice president and a majority of the principal officers of the executive branch of the government of the United States.”
Bill sat back. It was the chief justice’s turn.
Clarissa — standing in the doorway — caught his eye and shook her head. Anguish crimped her lips. The young widow could hold up no longer. She turned to hide her face, then had to walk away.
“I have in my possession,” the chief justice said from a bunker deep under Omaha, “a written declaration by Vice President Glen Simon and by a majority of the principal officers of the executive department of the government of the United States.” The white-haired man held up a legal document. “In it, there is a conditional finding that you will be unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of president from the moment you ascend the Highway 301 bridge across the Potomac, until the moment that you return to territory in the possession and control of the United States.”