Debt of Honor

'Great idea.'

'What is it?' Bob Holtzman asked, sticking his head in. Like every man aboard at the moment, he needed a shave. Jack merely handed over the story.

'What gives?'

Holtzman was a fast reader. 'Jesus, is this true?'

'How long has Libby been on this one?'

'It's news to me—oh, shit, sorry, Jack.'

Ryan nodded with more smile than he felt. 'Yeah, I just woke up, too.'

'Is it true?'

'This is on background?'

'Agreed.'

'The FBI's been running the case for some time now. The dates in Libby's piece are close, and I'd have to check my office logs for the exact ones. I got briefed in right around the time the trade thing blew up because of Kealty's security clearance—what I can tell him, what I can't, you know how that goes, right?'

'Yes, I understand. So what's the status of the case?'

'The chairman and ranking member of Judiciary have been briefed in. So have Al Trent and Sam Fellows on Intelligence. Nobody's putting a stopper on this one, Bob. To the best of my knowledge, the President's played a straight game the whole way. Kealty's going down, and after the impeachment proceedings, if it goes that far —'

'It has to go that far,' Holtzman pointed out.

'I doubt it.' Ryan shook his head. 'If he gets a good lawyer, they'll cut some sort of deal. They have to, like it was with Agnew. If he goes through impeachment and then a Senate trial, God help him in front of a jury.'

'Makes sense,' Holtzman conceded. 'You're telling me the meat of the story's wrong.'

'Correct. If there's any obstruction going on, I don't know about it, and I have been briefed in on this.'

'Have you spoken with Kealty?'

'No, nothing substantive. On 'business' stuff I brief his national-security guy and he briefs his boss. I wouldn't be good at that, would I? Two daughters.'

'So you know about the facts of the case?'

'Not the specifics, no. I don't need to know. I do know Murray pretty well. If Dan says the case is solid, well, then I figure it is.' Ryan finished off the rest of his coffee and reached for a fresh roll. 'The President is not obstructing this one. It's been delayed so it wouldn't conflict with other things. That's all.'

'You're not supposed to do that either, you know,' Holtzman pointed out, getting one for himself.

'Goddamn it, Bob! Prosecutors schedule cases, too, don't they? All this is, is scheduling.' Holtzman read Jack's face and nodded.

'I'll pass that one along.'

It was already too late for proper damage-control. Most of the political players in Washington are early risers. They have their coffee, read their papers in great detail, check their fax machines for additional material, and often take early phone calls, or in a recent development, log onto computer services to check electronic mail, all in an effort to leave their homes with a good feel for the shape the new day will take. In the case of many members, facsimile copies of the late-edition story by Liz Holtzman had brief cover pages indicating that this might be a matter of great personal interest. Different code phrases were used, depending on which PR firm had originated the transmission, but all were the same. The Members in question had been compelled to mute their opposition to TRA. This opportunity, on the other hand, was seen as something of a payback for the earlier transgression. In few cases would the opportunity be missed.

The comments were mainly delivered off the record. 'This looks like a very serious matter' was the phrase most often used. 'It's unfortunate that the President saw fit to interfere in a criminal matter' was another favorite. Early calls to Director William Shaw of the FBI were met with 'no comment' comments, usually with the additional clarification that the policy of the FBI was to decline comment on any possible criminal case, lest the subsequent legal proceedings be tainted and the rights of the accused compromised. The clarification was rarely if ever conveyed to the public; in that way 'no comment' acquired its own very special spin.

The accused in this case awoke in his house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory on Massachusetts Avenue, North West, to find his senior aides downstairs and waiting for him.

'Oh, shit,' Ed Kealty observed. It was all he had to say. There was little point in denying the story. His people knew him too well for that. He was a man of an amorous nature, they all rationalized, a trait not uncommon in public life, though he was fairly discreet about it.

'Lisa Beringer,' the Vice President breathed, reading. 'Can't they let the poor girl rest in peace?' He remembered the shock of her death, the way she'd died, slipping off her seat belt and driving into a bridge abutment at ninety miles per hour, how the medical examiner had related the inefficiency of the method. She'd taken several minutes to die, still alive and whimpering when the paramedics had arrived. Such a sweet, nice kid. She just hadn't understood how things were. She'd wanted too much back from him. Maybe she'd thought that it was different with her. Well, Kealty thought, everybody thought they were different.

'He's hanging you out to dry,' Kealty's senior aide observed. The important part of this, after all, was the political vulnerability of their principal.

'Sure as hell.' That son of a bitch, the Vice President thought. After all the things I've done. 'Okay—ideas?'

'Well, of course we deny everything, indignantly at that,' his chief of staff began, handing over a sheet of paper. 'I have a press release for starters, then we will have a press conference before noon.' He'd already called half a dozen former and current female staffers who would stand beside their boss. In every case it was a woman whose bed he had graced with his presence, and who remembered the time with a smile. Great men had flaws, too. In Edward Kealty's case, the flaws were more than balanced by his commitment to the things that mattered.

Kealty read quickly down the page. The only defense against a completely false accusation is the truth…there is no basis in fact whatever to these accusations…my public record is well known, as is my support for women's and minority rights…I request ('demand' was the wrong word to use, his personal counsel thought) an immediate airing of the allegations and the opportunity to defend myself vigorously…clearly no coincidence with the upcoming election year…regret that such a groundless accusation will affect our great President, Roger Durling—

'Get that son of a bitch on the phone right now!'

'Bad time for a confrontation, Mr. Vice President. You 'fully expect his support,' remember?'

'Oh, yes, I do, don't I?' That part of the release wouldn't so much be a warning shot across the bow as one aimed right at the bridge, Kealty thought. Either Durling would support him or else risk political meltdown in the primaries.

What else would happen this year? Though too late to catch the morning papers in most of America-too late even for USA Today—the Kealty story had been caught by the broadcast media as part of their own pre-show media surveys. For many in the investment community, that meant National Public Radio's 'Morning Edition' show, a good program to listen to during the drives from New Jersey and Connecticut because of its repeating two-hour length. 'A copyrighted story in this morning's Washington Post…' The coverage on it began at the top of both hourly segments, with a preamble like a warning bell to get the listener's attention, and though political stories out of Washington were about as common as the local weather report, 'rape' and 'suicide' were words with unequivocal meaning.

'Shit,' a thousand or so voices breathed simultaneously in the same number of expensive automobiles. What else is going to happen? The volatility of the market had not ended yet, and something like this was sure to exert the kind of downward pressure that never really made any economic sense but was so real that everyone knew it would happen, and because of that planned for it, and because of that made it even more real in what computer engineers called a feedback loop. The market would drop again today. It had trended down for eleven of the past fourteen days, and though the Dow was replete with bargains by any technical measure, the little guys would make their nervous sell orders, and the mutual funds, driven by calls from more little guys, would do the same, adding institutional momentum to a totally artificial situation. The entire system was called a true democracy, but if it was, then a herd of nervous cattle was a democracy, too.

'Okay, Arnie.' President Durling didn't bother asking who had leaked it. He was a sufficiently sophisticated player in the game that he knew it didn't matter. 'What do we do?'

'I talked to Bob Holtzman,' Ryan told the Boss, prompted by a look from the chief of staff.