Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) Page 6

  Before her mother’s death, Matti’s parents always appreciated the “little girl” in their daughter. They did everything they could to facilitate her youth as long as possible. When the principal of her elementary school suggested that Matti skip second grade, her parents refused. They also discouraged her participation in organized activities intended for older children, choosing instead to stimulate her intellect with extracurricular learning. She took part in museum youth programs and studied piano.

  Matti’s mother traveled a lot as a regional makeup sales representative. Her father worked at the high school and was often not home until after dark. She was a twelve-year-old latchkey child who learned how to pick the lock on the back door on the days she forgot the key. She learned how many holes to poke in the cellophane covering boxed macaroni and cheese after burning it too many times. Though she was sometimes lonely, Matti was happy.

  And then her mother died.

  Matti remembered her mom wearing a floral print top with a cream-colored skirt when she left for the trip. She’d smelled like peaches.

  “I’ll be back in three days,” Matti remembered her mother telling her. “Just a quick trip to Virginia and back. I’ll call tonight and we’ll say prayers.” She never called.

  The next day, the phone rang and her father had wailed. The vision of him sinking to the kitchen floor, the phone spinning as it dangled from the wall, was embedded in Matti’s flash drive of a mind.

  Hit and run. Killed instantly. Closed casket. No suspects. Toxicology. None of it made sense to either Matti or her father, and nothing was ever the same after that.

  The two coexisted. Though Matti’s father was home a lot more after her mother’s death, she was more alone than she had ever been.

  At night, as she lay awake, she would hear her father calling out for her mother in his dreams. He was at the other end of the house, but she could clearly hear his subconscious cry for answers. She was resolved to try to find them. Maybe they would help her father sleep. Maybe they would make the two of them a family again.

  “I don’t want to know,” he’d told her one night over a take-out pizza. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter,” she’d reasoned. “If I can figure out what happened, it will help. If I can get us answers, maybe you can sleep.”

  “I sleep just fine.” He’d shaken his head and torn a piece of pepperoni from a slice. “And you’re no Dick Tracy. Let it rest. Let her rest.” He’d rubbed his temples below his rapidly receding hairline.

  Sixteen-year-old Matti had picked at her plate. She knew there had to be a clear-cut answer somewhere. She reasoned that every puzzle had a solution and every code had a key.

  That was, until her boss gave her an assignment too good to be true. The NSA prided itself on allowing its employees to “move around within the agency” and experiment with different elements of the intelligence game. But this was an unusually rapid transition with no merit. Of that, she was positive.

  There was more to this “asset” and this “investigation” than her supervisor wanted her to know. It was as if she’d caught her mother hiding Easter eggs.

  Chapter 11

  Felicia Jackson was pacing in her office as a team of exhausted aides sat in chairs, three-ringed binders and reams of paper on their laps.

  “Look, people,” she directed, “I am not a constitutional scholar. I need the basic information here. I have to know what we’re doing and what we’re fighting against. Don’t give me legal mumbo jumbo.”

  The more experienced attorneys were busy elsewhere, formulating her case, and a young attorney on loan to her from a powerful DC law firm spoke up.

  “Madam Speaker,” he offered, “let’s get down to brass tacks here.”

  “Good!” She stopped pacing and pointed at the young man. She noticed that he was still in his three-piece suit, tie knotted to the top button.

  “The line of presidential succession is mentioned in the Constitution in two places. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides for the ascension of an able-bodied vice president. That element is essentially moot here because there is no current vice president.”

  “Won’t they make the case that Blackmon is the VP?”

  “Yes. But the Twenty-Fifth Amendment probably won’t come into play. We have to concern ourselves with Article II, Section 1.”

  “Which says what?” She asked the question as she turned her back on the lawyer and walked to her desk, half standing, half sitting on the desk’s edge with only one foot on the floor.

  “It reads—” the attorney looked down at the paper stack on his lap “—‘Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the president and vice president, declaring what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act accordingly.’ We argue,” he continued without looking up, “that you are the ‘officer’ at the top of the succession order. Though, you must first take the oath before you can assume the duties and authority of the office.”

  “So,” Felicia said, mulling over what the lawyer was saying, “this is nothing different from what I was told earlier. I am still not clear on why Blackmon has any case at all. He never took the oath.”

  “That is true, Madam Speaker,” the attorney replied. “But their case is about the constitutionality of your place in the line of succession. This will center on the Succession Act of 1947.”

  The lawyer picked up the stack of papers from his lap and placed them on the floor in front of his chair. When he bent forward, Felicia noticed the small circular bald patch on the top of the young man’s head.

  “Here’s where we make our case,” he said, sitting up straight in his seat. “United States Code Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 19 lays out the ‘officer’ eligible to act as president should both the sitting president and vice president be unable to perform their duties. In subsection A1, it clearly states that ‘the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, upon his resignation as Speaker and as representative in Congress, act as president.’”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, Madam,” the attorney paused, “they will point to the same US code subsection E. It reads ‘Subsections (a), (b), and (d) of this section shall apply only to such officers as are eligible to the office of president under the Constitution.’ And they will argue that you are not eligible.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that you are not ‘constitutionally’”—he used his fingers to indicate a set of quotes—“an officer.”

  She hated air quotes. “Why not?” she growled.

  “It’s an argument that predates the nineteenth century,” he answered. “In 1792, when Congress first developed the Act of Succession, there were politics involved.”

  “Aren’t there always?” the Speaker sneered. Her aides snickered in subservient agreement.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the lawyer agreed. He cleared his throat, adjusting his collar with his index finger. “In this case, Thomas Jefferson was secretary of state. His opponents did not want him atop the list. They bickered over who to place on top. It was decided that the president pro tempore should be immediately after the vice president. The Speaker of the House was next. James Madison, one of the authors of the Constitution, had a big problem with it. He wrote a letter to another founding father, Edmund Pendleton, in which he expressed concern over the Act.”

  “What does the letter say specifically?”

  “The letter reads, in part, ‘On another point the bill certainly errs. It provides that in case of a double vacancy, the Executive powers shall devolve on the President pro tempore of the Senate and he failing, on the Speaker of the House of Reps. The objections to this arrangement are various. 1. It may be questioned whether these are officers, in the constitutional sense.’”

  “It’s a letter. It’s not the law,” the Speaker opined.

  “Yes,” agreed the attorney. “But it is potential evidence. It was written by one of the C
onstitution’s authors. The point is salient enough that in 1886, the president pro tempore and Speaker of the House were dropped from the line of succession in favor of the president’s cabinet officers.”

  “I imagine,” countered the Speaker, “that was political too?” Her aides snickered again as she stood from her desk and walked around it so as to sit in the high-back leather chair behind it.

  “It was in deference to the emerging power of big business,” explained the lawyer. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his forehead, then his bald spot. “The thought was to reward appointed officers as opposed to ambitious politicians.”

  “Regardless”—the lawyer loosened the knot in his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt—“your position was removed for six decades. It wasn’t returned until 1947, as you know, when the Speaker and president pro tempore switched positions atop the line of succession. They will make these points. They will argue the lack of constitutionality based generally on these grounds. The court will listen.”

  Chapter 12

  Sir Spencer lumbered into a cab outside of the Hay-Adams and told the driver where to go. He sat in the right rear passenger’s seat. It was a cool night after what had been an abnormally warm day. The driver had the windows down and the radio turned up just enough to hear it over the whistle of the wind passing by the car.

  Sir Spencer looked across Pennsylvania Avenue. He waited for a dark sedan to pass and then crossed. He could not see the camera pointed at him through the vehicle’s darkly tinted windows.

  As he crossed the street, his eyes focused on a freshly painted red door, he noticed two men approaching from the east. He recognized them as his compatriots.

  “Gentlemen.” Sir Spencer nodded in their direction as he stepped onto the curb in front of the bar. “Good to see you.” He extended his hand to Art Thistlewood.

  “And you, Sir Spencer,” replied Thistlewood as he took his hand, “are looking as smart as ever.”

  “Good to see you too, Sir Spencer,” George Edwards chimed in.

  Sir Spencer nodded, smiled, and put his hand on the young artist’s back as they walked toward the red doors. “Splendid to be with you again, George.”

  It was Sir Spencer who had brought Edwards into the fold. After an initial introduction from Thistlewood, Sir Spencer was impressed with Edwards’s intelligence and political bent. He seemed creative and extreme. Sir Spencer saw himself in the artist and liked him.

  The old Brit watched Edwards try to open the locked doors to the pub. When Thistlewood took his turn pulling on the brass handles, the dark sedan passed again.

  The men did not notice. Nor did they pay attention to the jacketed bum leaning against a trash can a half block up the street. They were too far away to hear the rapid clicks of his camera’s shutter.

  “Let’s see here,” offered Sir Spencer. “I think we might rouse Mr. Ings if we knock loudly.” He rapped on the doors.

  Jimmy Ings walked down the stairs from his apartment, yelling at the front doors of the pub as he braced himself against the banister. “I’m coming!” he shouted. “Stop your knocking. I’m coming.”

  “Are you there, Mr. Ings?”

  Ings recognized the voice as that of Sir Spencer Thomas and was pleased to hear it.

  He opened the door. “I’m here.”

  “Art, George. Good to see you, men.” Ings reached out to shake their hands and then ushered the trio inside. As they disappeared inside the building, he checked quickly to see if anyone was watching and then shut the door.

  Ings surveyed the men in front of him as they settled themselves in his upstairs living room. He opened the oak cabinet next to the refrigerator and pulled out a trio of glasses, holding them with his thumb and forefingers. His other hand was grasping the two liquor bottles from downstairs.

  His hands and arms full, Ings walked back over to the group. Thistlewood was next to Sir Spencer on the couch. Edwards sat by himself in a brown leather and wood-grain-laminate Eames knockoff, his feet on the ottoman. Nobody appeared thirsty.

  “Okay then.” Ings put the glasses and bottles onto the coffee table. “The drinks are here if you want some later.”

  The barkeep rubbed his palms on his thighs and then took a seat in an antique gold recliner. The flared arms were peppered with cigarette burns, most of the buttons in the tufted cushion back were popped, and the reclining handle was damaged. Ings didn’t care. He loved the chair that often served as his bed.

  “Fellas, what’s up?” He smiled his crooked smile and thumbed his hands on the chair’s arms. “We got a lot to talk about, and none of you seem up to it.”

  “I’m still adjusting to the odor, James,” Sir Spencer finally offered. “You seem to have let the place go in the past year.”

  “It has been a year, hasn’t it?” Ings thought back to their last meeting at his place. It hadn’t been a good one.

  “I’m sick of not doing anything!” he remembered yelling at the others. “How can we do anything if nobody knows who we are and we have only five members? That seems insane to me.”

  Sir Spencer had assured him that political success did not always depend on numbers or volume, and that often it was about timing and strategy. If they chose the correct moment in time and executed the perfect plan, they would be effective. On the other hand, Ings recalled Sir Spencer informing him that a loud persistent voice was bound to be ignored eventually.

  “We don’t have a voice,” Ings had countered. “We’re invisible. We’re wasting our time.”

  They’d tried to effect change through back channels and lobbyists. The conventional cheating hadn’t worked and neither had funneling money to sympathetic candidates. It all seemed almost pointless.

  “Inaction can be the best action,” Sir Spencer had counseled. “We need to talk and meet and discuss so that when the time comes to act, we are ready. If you choose not to be a part of that, so be it.” Sir Spencer had hoped Ings would calm himself. He valued Ings for too many reasons to see him quit.

  The group had disbanded and didn’t correspond for three months. After years of discussion and organization, the Daturans were done. Ings thought for certain his discontent had regrettably ended the project.

  Then, out of the blue, George Edwards sat down at Cato Street and ordered a drink. Ings poured it himself and spent time talking to the young artist. During their conversation, Ings learned that Edwards and Sir Spencer were in constant contact. They still believed in the plan to effect a New American Order, and they needed Ings’s ideas and resources to make it happen.

  Reluctantly Ings agreed to give it another go. Sir Spencer subsequently stroked Ings’s ego and pocketbook just enough to make the partnership hold together.

  Ings now sat in his La-Z-Boy on the eve of action, reflecting on the water under the bridge, and he was again impatient.

  “What are we going to do? I thought we were here to act.”

  “We are here to act,” said Sir Spencer, his lips curling like a pair of salted slugs in what resembled a smile. “I have the perfect plan. But I think maybe we should wait for the attorney general.”

  *

  Bill Davidson was running late. He sat on the side of the bed, slid his watch onto his left wrist, and looked at the time.

  “I’m late,” he said without turning his head.

  “Better you than me,” purred the woman in bed behind him. She arched her back, stretched her arms, and reached across the sheets to run her finger lazily down his back. She laughed at herself. It was a deep laugh, throaty and sensual.

  Davidson smiled. He got the joke. He loved her laugh. It seemed genuine.

  “You’re not yourself, Bill.” She poked his back with her long red fingernail.

  “Just preoccupied…” He took his journal off the nightstand next to the bed and wrote down a reminder.

  “You and that little book of yours,” she said, sounding more judgmental than curious.

  “What about it?” Da
vidson was being overly sensitive and he knew it.

  “You’re always writing in there. Is it about me?” she purred.

  “Not this time.”

  “Is it the president?”

  “Remotely.” Davidson stood and was pulling on his pants. “I have a meeting to attend. Remember, I told you about it? It’s with a group of politically like-minded friends.” He closed the buckle on his belt without first putting on his shirt. He turned to look at her.

  She pulled the sheet down to her navel, revealing a small diamond piercing, but Davidson’s attention was held somewhat higher on her body. Her alabaster skin appeared flawless. His eyes moved down to the piece of expensive jewelry he’d purchased for her.

  “Are you sure it’s not another woman?” She smiled and then closed her mouth to lick the front of her teeth.

  Davidson laughed her off and went to the desk chair to grab his shirt, slipped on each sleeve, and then buttoned it. He left it untucked from his pants as he slipped on his loafers, placing a hand on the chair to balance himself. It was dark in the room, except for the light from the small window that shone onto the bed, and her red hair looked almost black.

  “Just checking,” she said. She rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up to her chest into a semi-fetal position as she watched Davidson finish dressing. “When will I see you again?”

  Her arms were stretched on the sheets toward the headboard. There was a small tattoo on the inside of her long bicep. It looked like a blue uppercase H. It was her astrological sign; Aquarius. Davidson thought it suited her. He’d read once that Aquarians were physically magical and prone to experimentation.

  “I don’t know.”

  He adjusted his jacket and stuffed his silk tie into an interior breast pocket. He grabbed his keys and some change from the desk.

  She slinked over to the edge of the bed and sat up, hanging her legs off the side. Her feet barely touched the floor. Davidson went over to her and touched her face. She looked at him, exposed, and smiled. She closed her eyes and stood to kiss him. He slid his hands from her shoulders down to her waist as she rose to meet his lips. He kissed her without closing his eyes, inhaling her scent. She smelled like an intoxicating mix of cinnamon, chocolate, and fruit.