The city of York, in England, was captured by the Vikings late in the ninth century. It became a Norse kingdom for over fifty years, and the city became known as Jorvik.
“Yes, well,” Yorke said with a shrug, “those were the days before Wikipedia. And the obvious can also work as misdirection. But I take your point.”
“I know what you did, sir. I know you were Roos and Tomblin’s boss. I know you ran the Janitors program for all that time and I have the names of all the people you had taken out.”
Yorke exhaled lengthily and sat quiet for a long moment. All of a sudden, it was like some magical mojo had been drained out of him, like my eyes could see him for how old he really was, without any filters. Then he finally got up and stepped around his desk and looked out the big windows.
It was a gorgeous day outside. Blue sky, perfect sun, a crisp bite to the air. Not a great day to accuse the President of the United States of having run a secret assassination squad that had targeted Americans. On home soil, too.
“It was a different time,” he finally said. “The guys we’re dealing with now… Al Qaeda, ISIS? They’re a joke. A bunch of primitive savages. They’re piss-ants compared to the threat we were facing back then.”
“I don’t care-”
“They had nukes, Reilly,” he blurted angrily. “Thousands of nukes, aimed right here, at our homes. This was an existential battle, a fight for survival. They hated every fundamental thing about our way of life, they wanted to take over the world, their goal was to wipe us out but you know the difference between them and these jokers we’re dealing with today? They were real. They meant business and they sure as hell had the means to get the job done.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures, right?” I replied evenly. “Keeping the country safe, making the hard decisions so people can sleep safely at night? I’ve heard it all before. Roos gave me the same speech. Still doesn’t make it OK to do what you guys did. Which was murder, plain and simple.”
That really riled him up. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he growled. “You didn’t live through it like we did. You didn’t know what we knew, you didn’t see what the intel was telling us on a daily basis. You have no idea how thin the ice was under us and you think you can just stand there, all smug and righteous, and pass judgment on us when you weren’t around to see what we were up against?”
“You had people killed. Civilians, Americans, foreigners-”
“And you think it was easy?” he rasped, slamming the desk with his palm. “You think we took it lightly? You think we didn’t do everything possible to try to find another way every single time we had to make one of those terrible decisions? You think each one of them didn’t haunt me?”
“I don’t know if they did,” I shot back. “I’d like to think so, but either way, it doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change what you did.”
“And you think you would have done things differently? Knowing what it could mean, knowing the risk of what could happen? How do you know you wouldn’t have done what we did?”
“I would have found another way. Because there’s always another way. Maybe you just didn’t look hard enough. Maybe it just got easier with each one.”
Yorke kept his gaze locked on me, his mouth tightly clenched. Then he looked away, nodding in silence, deep in thought.
After an interminable pause, he muttered, “Why are you here, Reilly?” He turned to face me. His face was all shriveled up. “Why are you here? You’re telling me you know what you know. Presumably, you’re sitting on some compelling evidence or you wouldn’t be here, right?”
“I have enough, sir. Enough to cause you some very serious problems.”
His expression darkened, and his voice went sharp. “So what do you want?”
It was a question I’d been wrestling with ever since Roos had finally talked.
“To be frank with you, I’m not really sure. Because you’re right about one thing. If this came out, and if your part in it came out, it would be catastrophic for our country. The country I love, the country I’m sworn to protect. But I know two things. I know I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. And I know I can’t let you get away with it. You and your people had my father killed.”
Yorke stared at me, then he pursed his lips and he looked away. His head was bowed down a little. “It won’t change anything to say I’m sorry, but for what it’s worth… I am. Hugely. Some decisions were… impossible. But the inevitable outcomes of not taking them were even worse.”
Maybe he was a great actor, or maybe it was my own wish fulfilment, but I sensed some genuine remorse. Regardless, I said, “I know all about how the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, but we’re still talking about murder. Multiple murder.”
He nodded in silence, deep in thought. After a few moments, he said, “So we have a problem.”
“Yes, we do.”
Yorke breathed out again with frustration. His shoulders stooped as he padded back over to me and sat down in the armchair facing me. “I’m not going to insult you by saying I could make things very, very comfortable for you, career-wise. We’re talking a fast lane at warp speed.”
“I’ll pass.”
“I thought as much.” He nodded to himself. “So where does that leave us?”
“I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a solution for this. Because, until now, I’ve had nothing but respect and admiration for you. I think you’ve been good for this country. Someone handed you responsibility for more than three hundred million people and you’ve done them proud. And I can’t ignore that.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
“But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a murdering son of a bitch who should be rotting away on death row.”
I took a breath. Part of me wanted to just walk up to him and strangle him with my bare hands, but I obviously needed to control myself.
“I can’t overlook what you did,” I continued. “Regardless of whether it involved my dad or not. But I’ve been trying to think of what he would do if he were in my shoes, not that I knew him well enough, but I know his values. I know how much he loved this country, what he was about. And I could only think of one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You give it all up. You drop out of the re-election campaign.”
His face crumpled with confusion and shock. “You want me to walk away from the presidency?”
“Yes.”
I could see the wheels spinning away frantically inside his brain. “You’d be satisfied with that?”
“Right now, and hard as that is, I think I just might be able to live with that, yes. Because the alternative would rip the country apart at the seams. Political meltdown, the economy, international standing down the toilet… Just massive pain, maybe for generations. And much as part of me feels, well, that’s justice, that’s what needs to happen, the truth will set us free and all that bullshit… Maybe the country’s better off living with that lie. So I’ll keep my mouth shut if you walk away, leave DC and devote the rest of your life to trying to atone for what you did.”
“Don’t you think I’ve been doing just that, from this office? It’s one hell of a place to get things done.”
“Maybe. But I can’t live with having you stay here.”
Yorke took a long moment to reflect on it. As he turned to look out the window, I could see that his eyes had taken on a faraway, doomed stare. The consummate politician, having to walk away from… this room. Maybe I wasn’t sending him to death row, but I was certainly condemning him to a life of hard labor, if only in terms of coping with what he’d had taken away from him.
Not my preferred outcome, but maybe it was the right one.
He finally asked, “How do you know the next guy won’t have even worse skeletons in his cupboard?”