Balance of Power: A Novel (19 page)

“Have you discussed this with your boss?”

“Yes, sir, I have. We’ve discussed it with State, and the Attorney General. They’re all in agreement.”

“Where is Benison? This should be his deal.”

“Yes, Mr. President, but you may recall that his wife is in labor.”

“Yes, of course. Is he aware of this?”

“Yes, sir, he is. We’ve been up all night analyzing this from every conceivable angle.”

“Well, why would it stop anything from happening?”

“Well, because we would ask for a temporary restraining order to keep Congress from enforcing the Letter of Reprisal.”

Manchester looked at Van den Bosch, who looked pleased. “It’s worth a try,” Van den Bosch said.

Manchester looked into Molly’s eyes. “How long would it take to prepare the lawsuit?”

“It’s ready. I have it here. I think we should file it this morning.”

Fifteen minutes after Molly returned to her office, the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Molly?”

Silence. She immediately recognized Dillon’s voice. “What do you want?”

“I tried your number at home. Then I figured you had worked through the night like I did. I want to see you if you’re available.” The direct approach. Couldn’t fault him for ambiguity.

“For what?”

“Breakfast.”

“I’m really busy.”

“Look, it’s only six-thirty in the morning. We’ve both been up all night. You need breakfast, like I do.”

“What I need is for the Speaker of the House to get rational. That would make my life much easier.”

“How about we don’t talk about that right now?”

Frustration flavored her tone. “How can we not talk about it? It’s the most important thing that’s happened to this government in ten years.” She sighed. “You act like
this is some kind of routine event, Jim. It isn’t. It’s tearing the country apart. The cracks are starting to form. I’m going to do what I can to stop it. I don’t have time for nonsense right now.”

“Okay. Just thought I’d ask. Sorry I bothered you.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to get the sand out of them. “I’m gonna run out to the Westside Café before I go to the airport.”

“You’re leaving—going where?” she asked, suddenly interested.

“I’m carrying the Letter of Reprisal to the USS
Constitution
.”

Her voice changed. “You’re kidding. When are you leaving?”

“Ten
A.M.
from National.”

“To where?”

“Singapore.”

She hesitated, then asked, “When will you be back?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Couldn’t you get out of it?”

“Probably. I volunteered. It’s my thing,” he said with pride. “I want to see it through.”

“Maybe I should see you before you leave. I’ll try to get there in twenty minutes.”

“Great,” he said, surprised. “See you then.”

D
ILLON DRANK FROM THE HEAVY WHITE COFFEE CUP
and soaked up the spilled coffee in his saucer with a paper napkin from the holder. His head jerked up as the café door opened for the fourth time in five minutes, but it still wasn’t Molly. He felt that his brain was starting to trick him. He was so tired he knew that he was skipping steps in his thought processes. He closed his eyes for a moment. His contacts felt as if they had been super-glued to his eyeballs.

He rubbed his face and felt the day-old growth. He grimaced. He had intended to use the electric razor he kept in his desk. He didn’t have time for this breakfast. He had to pack for whatever the weather was like in Singapore, which he thought was always hot, but he wasn’t sure. He made a mental note to check the weather channel.

The glass door opened and Molly entered. She looked around the small restaurant with its private booths and walked back toward him.

He waited until she had hung up her coat and sat down. “You know me,” he said. “I like to be blunt. How is it that when I call you this morning you’re so cool, to put it mildly, then you come here and you’re all smiles?”

She shook her head slightly. “I don’t know, really. I was thinking about how this is all going to play out, and I’ve basically come to the conclusion that, ultimately, this
is going to make
Congress
look foolish, not the President.”

“So how is Congress going to look foolish? I can’t wait to hear this,” he said, sipping his coffee.

“No admiral of a battle group is going to obey some vague Letter of Reprisal that has
no
historic precedent. He’s going to obey an order from his Commander in Chief.” She shrugged, as if she had just stated the obvious. “And that will be the end of it. Your Speaker will then be left holding the bag and looking stupid.”

“And that makes you feel better about having breakfast with me?” Dillon asked. “This some kind of competition?”

Molly opened her mouth to reply as a waitress walked up and stood quietly waiting for their attention. Her black uniform was perfectly pressed with a starched apron over it. “Good morning.” she said cheerfully. “Special is eggs Benedict and freshly squeezed orange juice.”

Molly shook her head. “I’ll have half a grapefruit and an English muffin, no butter.”

“Waffle with powdered sugar and a large orange juice,” Dillon said.

The waitress nodded and turned away, then stopped and came back to Molly. “Would you like coffee?”

Molly nodded, and the woman poured it immediately.

Molly looked down at the table as she pulled her hair behind an ear. She looked back up at Dillon. “Ever since we met in law school, since the first year, we’ve had this competition thing going on, haven’t we?”

Dillon smiled, as if remembering ancient history. “Yeah, we kinda have. Why is that?”

“Because you worked so hard to beat everybody with the best grades in the first semester that you challenged the rest of us. So we tried to outdo you. Some of us came pretty close,” she said pridefully.

He nodded.

“I was kind of hoping that the competition thing was over.”

Dillon chose his words carefully. “You know, Molly, I was also hoping that we could put the whole rivalry thing behind us. I kinda thought we could start dating again, this time….”

“So did I…”

“But,” he continued, “this Letter of Reprisal thing seems to have charged you up like nothing before. And you’re holding it against me.”

Molly played with her coffee cup. “You’re making a big political play. To make your splash in the world of politics.” She looked hard into his eyes. “It feels like you’re losing your judgment.”

“That’s unfair,” he said, trying not to respond as harshly as he felt. “Isn’t there some way we can at least try to go out?”

Her face showed warmth and regret. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait until this political crisis is over. Whatever happens, I think it will be fast. Especially now that you’re leaving…”

“So we’re going to leave it like that? I won’t know anything until I get back?”

She looked at him directly. “Call me when you get back, but remember, until then I’m on the other side. It’s nothing personal, and it’s not our rivalry or competition. It’s my job.”

The waitress returned and put their food in front of them. Dillon looked at his waffle for a moment, then started to eat. Molly cut her grapefruit expertly. She didn’t glance at him as she quickly ate each section of the grapefruit. She drank her coffee and finished her English muffin before she finally looked up. She spoke, with obvious difficulty. “I have to ask you something,” she said haltingly.

He noticed that she was troubled, “What?”

“Will you accept service of process?” She looked directly into his eyes.

“What?”

“As soon as the Court opens this morning, the President is going to file a lawsuit against the House and the
Speaker to declare the Letter unconstitutional, and ask for a temporary restraining order.” She looked away. “Will you accept service of process on behalf of the Congress and the Speaker of the House? Can I have them just deliver the lawsuit to you?”

Dillon stopped eating, put his fork down, and shoved his plate away. He tried to catch her eyes, but she was not cooperating. “Molly, look at me.”

There was a hint of moisture in her eyes.

“What is this?” he asked, trying to read her and not her words.

“You heard what I said.”

“Who put you up to this?” he said insistently.

She shook her head vigorously. “I’ve got to go.” She began sliding out of the booth.

Dillon grabbed her arm. “Who put you up to this?” he demanded again.

Molly looked at his hand on her arm and into his face. “I’ve got to go, Jim.”

“Tell me.”

“The lawsuit was my idea.”

He sat back and thought about the implications of the President suing Congress to have its Letter of Reprisal declared unconstitutional. It could bring the process to a screeching halt. “And it was your idea to agree to have breakfast with me on a pretense, then ask me if I would accept service?”

Molly pulled her arm away slowly. “It wasn’t a pretense. I did want to see you.”

“
Who
put you up to this?”

“The Chief of Staff wanted me to ask you to accept service, but I wanted—”

Dillon smirked. “Well, that figures, he’s such a worm….”

“He’s just trying to do his job.” Molly stood up at the end of the table.

“Just doing my job,” Dillon repeated, mocking. He stood next to her, pulled his overcoat off of the metal rack,
and tossed some money on the table. “Well, you can give him my answer. Tell him I said he can go screw himself.”

Dillon packed, showered, and dressed, then returned to the Hill. He hurried down the halls of Congress to his office and dumped his bag on the floor.

Grazio wandered in and said, “So you’re taking the Letter down to the Navy?”

“That’s right.”

“How come the Pentagon won’t deliver it?”

“If you were the Speaker, would you give it to the Pentagon, controlled by the President? You don’t think they could find the one guy who would take it on as a matter of principle to buck the House of Representatives? The Speaker doesn’t trust the Executive Branch right now.” Dillon sat down and began unplugging his laptop from the wires that connected it to his large monitor and keyboard. “He figures that the President is going to start issuing orders to keep us from pulling this off. It might get ‘lost’ at the Pentagon and never get delivered. Then where would we be?”

“So you have to go all that way and carry this thing by hand?”

“Yep.”

He looked at his watch. “Anybody in there with the Speaker?”

“I have no idea. I was down there about an hour ago. This place is like an anthill with a whole new group of ants trying to get in. There’s press everywhere, the phones are ringing off the wall, people are calling from foreign countries, it’s a complete zoo.” Grazio thought for a moment. “Kind of fun actually.”

Dillon left and ran down to his boss’s office.

Robin looked up and nodded toward the Speaker’s door. Dillon needed no other words as he walked right in. Reporters were waiting in every chair in the exterior office as well as up on the wall outside. There were television
crews with idle equipment, radio crews with recording equipment, and countless newspaper writers.

As he closed the Speaker’s door behind him, he could hear them starting to approach the door, assuming the Speaker would now be out shortly.

Stanbridge had no pleasantries for his assistant. “Where the hell have you been, Dillon?”

“I had to stop by my apartment to pick up my stuff so I could be ready to go.”

“Did you see anybody from the President’s office?”

Dillon hesitated.

That was enough. “Who did you see?”

“I think you know, Mr. Speaker, I have a friend, Molly Vaughan. She’s in the office of the Counsel to the President.”

“No. I
didn’t
know that. I knew you had a…friend…but I think you failed to tell me that she worked at the White House.”

“I’m pretty sure I did tell you, Mr. Speaker. Maybe you just didn’t see it as being very important….”

Stanbridge stared at Dillon. “Why would I not think it was important if you were dating someone from the enemy’s camp?”

“She’s an old friend, sir. And I never realized that the President was the enemy, Mr. Speaker,” said Dillon.

“He is now,” said the Speaker. “You know who is out there in the outer office?”

“Well, there are about a million people from the press, but other than that, no.”

The Speaker got up from his desk and began pacing. “There is a guy out there from the George Washington Attorney Service.”

Dillon felt a chill run through him. He said nothing.

“Do you know what he is here for?”

“What?”

“He is here to serve me
personally
with a lawsuit.”

“A what?” asked Dillon, feigning surprise. “From who?”

The Speaker turned and looked at Dillon from across the large office. The Washington Monument was bright in the background behind him. “Who do you think?”

Dillon said nothing, hoping the Speaker would answer his own question as he usually did.

“From the
President
. The President is suing me, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Congress of the United States. As the Chief of the Executive Branch of the United States Government,
and
as an individual—a regular citizen—he is suing me.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, Robin saw it and told me what it’s about. She refused to let the man into my office.”

“Well, what’s he going to do?”

“He said he’s going to sit there until I leave the office and then he’s going to personally serve me,” the Speaker said, visibly agitated.

“I’m not sure that it makes much sense, Mr. Speaker, to try and dodge ser—”

“I am not trying to dodge service! Do you understand the implications of this?”

“I’m not sure…”

“This could kill the entire thing! It’s a lawsuit for a temporary restraining order, and an injunction to have the court determine that our Letter of Reprisal is unconstitutional and unenforceable. How could they have known we were going to move this fast? How could they have known that you were going to be on your way this morning to the East Indies to deliver this to Admiral Billings—that is his name, by the way, that is the guy you are going to see. I checked.”

Dillon’s face had more color than usual. “Molly and I had breakfast together this morning. I told her I was leaving.”

The Speaker stared at him, motionless for what seemed like an hour. “You did what? You had breakfast with someone from the office of the Counsel to the President
and told her you were taking Congress’s Letter of Reprisal to the South Pacific this morning?”

“Basically…yeah. I…she…yeah.”

“What the
hell
were you thinking about?” asked the Speaker, his voice rising.

“I didn’t think anything about it, Mr. Speaker,” Dillon said defensively. “She’s a friend of mine and I told her where I was going. This thing has been on the news for a day and a half, and they know we are going to give it to the Navy. I didn’t know this was a secret.”

The Speaker waved his hand at him in disgust. “It’s not. I just don’t like getting outmaneuvered.” He clenched his teeth as he put his head back and closed his eyes. “So what should we do about this lawsuit?”

Dillon filled his cheeks with air and looked at his watch. “Mr. Speaker, my plane is leaving for Singapore in less than an hour. I could get to National Airport and take off before you let him serve the papers on you.”

“I want you on that plane!” He reached out and picked up the wine-colored leather folder. An imposing thick, rich leather binder that exuded importance and solemnity. The Speaker handed it to Dillon.

“Here is the Letter of Reprisal, Dillon. The original is to be delivered to Admiral Ray Billings in person by you. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir, I sure do.”

“Good. So what should we do about this
stupid
lawsuit the President has filed? Can he do that?”