It was there that the light of good fortune finally spread to encompass Nick. Four months after Josh arrived in the Senate, a vacancy developed on the Supreme Court. The president filled it with a nomination, but his candidate soon found himself in trouble. The nominee had a history of recreational drug use in his youth, something he had not disclosed to the White House.
As it turned out, the high court candidate was a native of Oregon. He sat on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As a matter of courtesy, the White House consulted the senior senator from the state. This was not Root; still, he was sufficiently inside the loop to have influence and to know how to use it. The question was whether the senior senator from Oregon would continue to back the man from his home state.
Root discovered that on the short list of other candidates for the appointment was the name Nicholas Merle. Nick was still working in the solicitor general’s office. He was a dark horse for the high court, but he had a subtle advantage, and Josh saw it immediately.
Though Nick had argued cases before the Supreme Court, he had never handed down a decision or an opinion because he had never been on the bench. Consequently he was a clean slate with no controversial baggage that might erupt in a battle during Senate confirmation. Caught in the crosshairs of a drug scandal, the White House was already gun shy, Root realized. Josh convinced his senior cohort in the Senate that they could no longer afford to support the current candidate. It was the political kiss of death. The nominee withdrew his name from consideration the next day.
That was more than fifteen years ago.
As Root sat there sipping his Amaretto in the dimly lit lounge, it seemed almost surreal. His friend who had sucked tear gas with him and thrown bricks at police on the barricades had now spent the past decade and a half on the United States Supreme Court while he himself served as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Surely the gods must be laughing.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” said Root.
“Shoot,” said Nick.
“Have you ever thought about retiring?”
“What?” Nick looked up at him.
“Fifteen years on the bench is a long time. You’re not getting any younger. And now might be a good time to think about stepping down.”
“Josh, I know you had your own set of health issues. We all start to feel our own mortality at some point in life, but I’m not quite there yet.”
Most of Washington was aware that Senator Josh Root had serious health concerns even though his staff tried to keep a lid on the details. He had been in and out of Bethesda Naval Hospital as well as several other treatment facilities for the past two years. What troubled Root most was his increasing loss of short-term memory. Whether it had to do with the new medications or other factors Root couldn’t be sure, but there were periods of time for which he could not account. He collected his thoughts for another pitch to his old friend.
“The president would be able to fill the vacancy with someone younger who would have a much longer tenure on the court,” said Root. “And he would have no problem with confirmation since we control the Senate. If you wait until after the midterm elections, that may not be the case.”
Merle looked at him. “Has someone sent you here to ask me this?”
“No, of course not. I’m speaking as your friend. Look at yourself. Every time I see you, you’ve lost another ten pounds. You’re working yourself toward an early grave. If you stay on the court until the current administration leaves office, and there is no assurance of a second term, you may find yourself in a partisan vice, unable to get off without changing the balance of the court. Think about it.”
“Go on,” said Nick, “I’m listening.”
“If you end up with a Republican in the White House, and if he gets two terms, you’ll be well into your eighties before he leaves office, if you can live that long. Nick, I’m telling you as a friend, now is the time to think about getting off.”
“The administration has two more years on its current term,” said Nick. “That’s if they don’t get a second term.”
“Yes, but the confirmation process takes time. If you wait until the election is on top of us, there’s no way to be sure that the president will be able to make the nomination, and that it won’t get blocked in the Senate. Now is the time.”
It was a problem. Everybody knew how the game was played. It was why the balance on the court never changed, at least not in recent decades. There was a time when presidents made mistakes and unwittingly appointed moles from the other side of the philosophic divide. Now that was nearly impossible given the mind meld of interrogation to which candidates were subjected. So unless there was a sudden death on the court, which was rare, the balance was static.
Root realized, as did most observers, that the court was the only real agent for permanent and lasting change in the system. Its members were immune from the whimsy of voters and the restraints of the ballot box. Once confirmed by the Senate, they were there for life. They could pick and choose the cases they heard and in this way dictate the policy agenda for the country. If the voters rebelled and elected a hostile Congress and president, the court could strike down any new laws that were enacted. A long-term change in the political balance of the court was tantamount to a revolution. It was why Roosevelt tried to pack the court with additional new seats that he could appoint during the Depression. Sooner or later the balance on the court would change. The only question was which direction the revolution would take.
FIVE
Life has turned upside down in the eight months since the shoot-out in front of the naval base. I have trouble sleeping at night. Like a turtle shrinking into its shell, sudden noise has me compressing my neck until my head is between my shoulder blades. The doctor tells me that this will pass in time.
Who could have ever guessed that a chance meeting with a young woman, Katia Solaz, in a grocery store would have led her to become a client in a murder case, or that the quest for evidence in that case, and the search for a witness in Latin America, would have ensnared us in an attempted nuclear assault on an American military base. It is like an ongoing nightmare.
In the hours after the shootout, before the smoke had even settled, federal, state, and local police held a chaotic news conference not far from the scene. My name, along with Herman’s, got mentioned as “persons of interest” already in custody. It didn’t matter that the cops told the press we were not necessarily suspects.
In less time than it takes to boil an egg, the names Paul Madriani and Herman Diggs ricocheted from one cable news network to another. It was a story with global reach. Within an hour, people in Hong Kong supping on Chinese glass noodles with chopsticks were seeing file photos of Herman and me on television. Bad news travels fast. News of a terror attack travels at the speed of light.
It began as a routine homicide case, the murder of Emerson Pike, a somewhat secretive old man who dealt in rare coins and whose past seemed shrouded. To the police the motive was obvious, theft. And when Katia was arrested with coins belonging to the victim in her possession, her guilt was self-evident. But then no one knew of Pike’s background, except the federal government, and they weren’t talking. In the end it was history that ensnared us, Pike’s past, and that of Katia’s grandfather, the old Russian, and the specter of the Cuban missile crisis.
When it was all over, the feds held us for five days. They picked up Harry and planted the three of us, Herman, Harry, and me, in separate cells at the federal lockup in San Diego so that we couldn’t talk and compare notes. Then they interrogated us around the clock.
When I asked them if they were going to read me my Miranda rights and allow me to have legal counsel, I was told I was not a suspect, at least not yet. When I demanded that they either arrest me or let me go, they ignored me. After conferring with his lawyers, Thorpe then told me I was a material witness. He intended to hold me as long as necessary, for my own safety.
Because of the circumstances, they couldn’t be sure whether they had all the perpetrators. If some of them were still at large, they might try to silence me. At least that was the story.
What they wanted was information. Short of violating attorney-client confidences, I told them everything I
