Mental State, page 4
CHAPTER 7
One month later
Arlington, Virginia
Four men in nearly identical pinstriped suits got out of a silver Chrysler 300 and walked in unison into a nondescript glass office tower in Arlington, Virginia. They ranged in age from about forty to sixty; all lawyers at the very top of their profession. The four walked in seemingly practiced unison past the security desk without showing a badge or even making eye contact with the armed guards manning it. They went straight for the elevators, took one to the twelfth floor, buzzed into suite 1201, and without signing in or acknowledging anyone, walked past rows of worker bees in cubicles to a conference room in the southeastern corner of the building. Standing guard was a square-jawed ex-Marine in khaki pants and a blue blazer with a bronze star lapel pin in the buttonhole. He touched his ear and whispered into his collar as the men filed past him into the room. Each took a seat, opened a briefcase, pulled out a three-ring binder, and put it on the oak table in front of them. “Top Secret” was written on the cover of each binder. Fifteen minutes later, the president’s chief of staff walked into the room and took a seat at the head of the table.
“Update?”
The most senior lawyer at the table, Bob Gerhardt, Sr., a big-shouldered man with graying temples and a heavily lined face, opened his binder, and started to speak, “If you’ll turn to the first page…”
“I don’t want you to walk me through this, Bob,” the chief of staff said, addressing him as one might a child. “I want the summary of the summary. I’ve got ten fires to put out today.” He had more to say, but picked up his buzzing phone, listened intensely for a few minutes, then said, “Yes.” He hung up as abruptly as he’d answered. Then he looked back at the lawyers, spinning a Mont Blanc pen in his hand expertly enough to hypnotize.
Another lawyer, Jay Rudolph, an energetic triathlete with a shaved head and rumored to have a tattoo of a tiger on his right butt cheek, spoke up, “The Pakistan conference was a success.” He slid a manila envelope across the table toward the president’s man. On the cover was written “Operation Aspida.” The chief of staff picked it up, and in one motion opened it and pulled out the pictures inside. He flipped through grainy shots taken from a drone of two men walking arm-in-arm in a courtyard on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan.
“Is this Johnson on the left?”
“It is, sir. Chowdhury on the right.”
“Good. Well done.” He examined the picture with a magnifying glass.
“If you look on, there are some higher-resolution shots our man on the ground took with a camera hidden in his lapel. We also have affidavits in there from several witnesses claiming they saw Professor Johnson enter Chowdhury’s compound, address his followers, and leave several hours later after long conversations with him. We think the combination of these makes a compelling case.”
“I think these will do. Excellent work. Have you sent the pictures to the CIA?”
“That was not my understanding of the op, sir.” It was Gerhardt’s turn to speak again. “I understood that we were to get Chowdhury and Johnson together, and to document the meeting sufficiently that it could be used if necessary to discredit the professor. You know, in case he decides to—”
“Okay,” the chief of staff held up his hand. “I’ll take this to the president. Anything else?”
“I think we should discuss contingencies.” It was another member of the team speaking up, out of place.
“Contingencies?” The chief of staff seemed irritated.
Gerhardt always had his teammates’ back. He spoke quickly before this one found himself adrift at sea.
“Yes, sir,” addressing the chief of staff. “This was a good plan, and it might be a valuable tool in the event the professor decides to oppose the appointment of…you know…But one meeting with an Al-Qaeda bag man is not a sure thing. If he sings a song we don’t like, I think you might need more. I know how important this is to the president. I just want to make sure we’ve done everything we can.”
“What do you have in mind?” The chief of staff’s interest was piqued, but he sounded skeptical. He stopped spinning his pen and put the cap on and off nervously. One of Gerhardt’s team, a lawyer named Sean Flanagan, studiously made notes in his binder.
There was a moment of silence, not because no one around the table was short of ideas, but because everyone was afraid to say out loud what they were thinking. Jay Rudolph took the chance. “If he decides to oppose this appointment publicly, is it likely we will know in advance?”
Rudolph got the nod he was expecting from Gerhardt. He turned to the president’s man and continued. “So, if he does, we get out ahead of this before he goes public and frame the guy for something. You know, give him a reason to, uh, change his mind. And, if he won’t, we can…”
The chief of staff stood up abruptly, causing his chair to lunge backward and fall over. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that last comment and adjourn the meeting two minutes ago. I appreciate the work on the conference—I know a lot went into the op, and it seems like a great success. The president thanks you for your service to the country. I’ll be in touch.” He turned to the exit, walked out, and slammed the door behind him.
The lawyers waited a minute in silence, then they all started to talk at once. Gerhardt rose and walked over to Flanagan, putting his big hands on the man’s shoulders.
“You guys make a game plan. Jay, go visit the place where his Lebanese family is from in Ohio. East, eh, whatever. Does he have relatives linked with any group tied to terrorists? Where are the Muslim skeletons in this guy’s closet? If there aren’t any, we need to be creative about making some.” He squeezed Flanagan’s shoulder.
“Finny, you’ve been quiet today. What’s on your mind?”
“The president, sir.” Finny believed in hierarchies, and he felt Gerhardt’s years of service justified the honorific. “I’m worried that she’s putting too much on this guy’s shoulders. I mean, there are plenty of qualified people for the job. Yes, the president’s Fair America plan is probably headed to the Supreme Court, and yes, the balance of power on the court turns on this appointment, but aren’t there other reliable votes? Aren’t there other people she can trust? Why this guy? I don’t understand why we’ve got to be running ops like this to protect this guy. Why does it have to be Judge Pham? Or is this something that happens for every nominee to the court?” Finny was not one to question his superiors lightly. When he finished, he slumped in his chair.
“Your concern for the president is duly noted, Mr. Flanagan.” Adding the “mister,” Gerhardt was just putting him in his place, as he did to enlisted men thousands of times during his career in the Navy. “Your job is not to question our clients’ motives or their cost-benefit calculation. That is my job, not yours. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” He let it sink in. “To be clear, I waited until it was just our team to speak up—I would never second-guess the president outside of our squad. I was telling you so that you might think about how to broach this with the president, assuming you think that is the right course.” Finny felt the need to defend himself and dig himself back to level ground. He forgot the first rule of holes.
Gerhardt smiled broadly and patted him on the shoulder. It put Finny at ease, and he exhaled for the first time since he opened his mouth. But Gerhardt was not relaxed. He saw something he’d never seen before—a crack in the façade of Frogman Flanagan.
The meeting ended. The lawyers all packed up their bags in unison, like synchronized swimmers in Gucci loafers. They walked back to their car and headed across the Key Bridge to their offices on K Street just a mile up from the White House, where the president was, at that very moment, meeting with the man who was the asset being protected by Operation Aspida—the man the president was about to nominate to be the next chief justice of the United States.
Six hours later, Sean Flanagan walked through the heavy wooden doors of Saint James Catholic Church, a nondescript parish that just happened to be on the way to his house in suburban Virginia. The cross and the smell of incense and the dank feel created by the thick stone walls of the church gave weight to what he was about to do. He headed down the center aisle toward Father Case’s office. At this hour, the priest was sure to be next door in the rectory, putting finishing touches on a sermon only a few ears would hear.
Finny rapped softly on the priest’s door, then gently tried the handle. As expected, it was safely locked. Taking a sealed envelope from his breast pocket, he bent and slipped it underneath the massive mahogany door.
CHAPTER 8
April 2015
Chicago, Illinois
Royce walked a while in the cool Chicago evening, watching every face. After wandering the streets for an hour, he found a Courtyard Marriott. At two hundred forty dollars a night, this was no bargain, and he was paying his own freight on this investigation. Better be quick, he thought as he signed for the deposit.
Inside the room, he dropped his bags, collapsed on the bed, and grabbed the remote control for the large, flat-panel television that hung on the wall. Flipping it on, he looked for a game of some kind that would distract for a few hours. Royce stopped abruptly on CNN, when he saw his brother staring back.
Several bullet points were to the right of his brother’s smiling face. Age: 45; Professor, Rockefeller University Law School; Author, The Future of Liberty.
The screen split to the anchor and the man recently nominated to be chief justice of the United States.
“Thank you for being with us, Judge Pham,” the anchor said obsequiously. “Congratulations on your nomination. I understand you are joining us because you were friends with the late professor.”
“I’m sorry to be here under these circumstances, but thank you for having me.”
“What is your connection with Professor Alex Johnson, who, the police tell us, killed himself this morning in his Chicago home?”
“We were neighbors when I was in grammar school in Pittsburgh. I’m a few years older than Alex, but our families were great friends. We were friends most of my childhood.”
“I’m told he was going to testify at your confirmation hearings. Do you know if he supported you?”
“I was anxious to hear, frankly.” The judge smiled nervously.
“Anxious because he knew you well and you disagreed about law and the proper role of the Supreme Court, right?
“That’s right, Susan. Alex and I have different views about the world…I’m sorry, I said that in the present tense. It is still hard for me to imagine he’s gone. I think Alex was wrong about a lot of things, but I don’t want to focus on that. His was a life that should be celebrated.”
“How were his views different than yours?”
“Well, Susan, I believe government exists to help out the downtrodden. I think it is the instrument that allows everyone to have a fair chance in the world, no matter where they came from or who their parents were. Genetics and environment can deal some cruel hands, and government is the great equalizer of that randomness. Government is a force for good in the world. Alex thinks…I’m sorry, thought…that government is the problem, that we have too much of it. I look out at the good things in our country that government has done, and I think there are still more that it can do.”
“I know the White House was worried that such a prominent professor who has known you well for so long might come out against your nomination.”
“Look, Susan, I don’t want to overplay this. My job as a judge is to follow the law, to interpret the law, not to write new laws or just make stuff up. So this disagreement with Alex, my old friend, is—”
“But,” she cut him off, “you disagreed about judges too, right?”
“Yes, we do, er, I guess he did disagree with me. I think the Supreme Court has been and is a great force of change for our society. It has not only created many of the rights we hold so dear, but it has also let the democratic branches make commitments to the people that are vital to our society. The court is political too, I’ll admit, and for that reason, it needs to be composed of people who have great empathy for the plight of everyday Americans. Alex believed the Constitution was limited to the literal words on that ancient parchment. He would never have wanted someone as progressive as me on the court, despite our friendship.”
Susan smiled a toothy grin. “Judge Pham, I have something to share with you. We obtained a copy of Professor Johnson’s prepared remarks for his testimony, and he was going to support your nomination to be chief justice of the United States.” She giggled slightly and nodded at him.
“Is that right?” Judge Duc Pham seemed genuinely surprised, but Royce thought this was more a testament to his acting skills than the facts. In fact, Pham wasn’t. The appearance was staged entirely—the White House had closely choreographed the scene, right down to the color of the polka dots on the judge’s tie. Dozens of public relations experts were engaged full time in managing any potential blow back on the nomination.
The CNN anchor played along: “Indeed he was, Your Honor. We will be posting the testimony on our website later tonight, but the gist of the testimony is that although the two of you disagreed about a lot, he believed that the president should appoint qualified individuals of her choosing and that you are extremely qualified. He speaks of your character, judgment, and common sense. As you can see on the screen, he used the words ‘a fabulous choice’ and ‘a jurist we can all be proud of as Americans.’”
“Thank you, Susan. I’m honored to hear this from my friend, even if it is from the grave. I want to thank Alex’s family for releasing the testimony. It turns out his last act was to be a patriot.”
Royce flipped off the television as it went to commercial.
“What the fuck was that?” he shouted at the black screen.
He went directly to the minibar and emptied three mini-bottles into a plastic coffee cup, downing it in one gulp.
If Alex really wrote those words, how did CNN get hold of them so quickly? But he realized the question was meaningless. There were now more people who wanted Alex’s death to be declared a suicide, including two of the most powerful people in the world. If it were a suicide, the story would just be a tragic footnote to the future chief justice’s nomination. One that had just been spun with a Hollywood ending. But an FBI investigation into the murder of a political opponent, even one who was supporting him, that would make things much dicier. It might generate conspiracy theories that could sway an undecided senator. Or give political cover to those who might want to vote against the nomination. Royce was glad to see his old friend about to become chief justice and relieved that Alex didn’t let his politics stand in the way. But this just made his unauthorized investigation a whole lot more difficult. And for no reason.
His cell phone rang, and he knew without looking that it would be Jenny.
CHAPTER 9
December 2014
Chicago, Illinois
The dean of the Rockefeller University Law School was upset with Alex, so she called him to her office. Only his tenure and relative fame as the school’s lone conservative voice made the trip relatively stress free. No way they could rid themselves of him, no matter what he might be accused of doing.
Sylvia Ostergaard was the first female dean in the history of the prestigious school. She was sitting at her desk reading email from alumni when the door to her office flung open. With the confidence of someone who couldn’t be fired, Alex Johnson walked in. Before she could acknowledge his presence, he took a seat at her desk, reaching for the bowl of black licorice she kept on its corner.
“What’s up, Sylvia?” he said, stuffing a handful of candy into this mouth.
“We need to talk about Marcus.” Reaching into a drawer she pulled out a Redweld folder, which she set on her desk. “STUDENT 1189” was written in bold letters on its flap. She put on a pair of reading glasses and pulled out a stack of papers bound with a large black binder clip.
Alex stopped chewing. Nothing good was about to happen.
“I assume you are talking about his grade in Securities Regulation?”
“I am.” She paused. “I think—”
Alex cut her off. He wasn’t sure what her objection was, but before being caught in a trap, he decided to play both sides. “I took care of this, Sylvia. Look, this was F work. I mean, he didn’t answer a third of the questions, and the answers he did give were not acceptable. But I proposed a D in order to, well, to ensure that the institution was protected.”
“Well, I don’t think that is what you’ve done here. I am going to tell the registrar that the grade be changed to an F. This is Rockefeller, Alex, not Podunk U. We don’t pass those who don’t deserve it. Can you say in good faith that this person should be walking around representing clients with our school’s name behind him?”
Alex was taken aback. He was the conservative in the room, but here he was outflanking his liberal dean on the left. In theory, Alex opposed judging people by the color of their skin, but he was not blind to the effects of past discrimination and couldn’t imagine a law school without any black faces. Theory was one thing, living in the real world quite another. That the Supreme Court’s cases approved of affirmative action on what he thought were bogus grounds—having black students in the classroom improved outcomes for all students—was irritating. But he was more or less okay with the status quo.
“I agree with you about that, Sylvia. You know I take our standards seriously. I went here for goodness sake. I care about the value of the degree. But, failing a black student? Me, failing a black student? Aren’t you worried about that?”
