20

President John Williams seethed. How could he have been bested by Ann Kinji? He stormed the halls, special agents scurrying to keep up with him. He spun around and glared at everyone in his path. “Stay away from me!” he snarled. He ducked into the restricted area that led to the underground maze of secret parking.

“But Mr. President!” protested Special Agent Billings, because it was his duty to do so, not because he particularly cared about the president’s well-being. In fact, he had applied for a new detail assignment and was biding his time until he could move on.

John ignored him and quickened his long angry strides. Billings kept up with him easily, being half the President’s age, and in much better physical shape. Billings signaled the team to keep up, and they too had no difficulty. The party of nine ended their manic flight only when they reached the presidential limo station. There they all stood, glancing questioningly at each other.

Billings made the decision for them: let John go alone, they’d do a convoy. He assigned his eight agents to William’s impromptu road trip and returned to the White House. There was one perk to not having a bond with the Prez: Billings felt no twinge of guilt when he opted out of these unplanned ventures.

The limo driver opened the door for the president, and returned to his seat behind the wheel. “Just you today, Mr. President?” he asked.

“Yes, Jason.”

“Your security detail driving separately then?” he confirmed.

John grunted. He knew he couldn’t shake his own detail, but he could at least be alone in the limo. He pressed the divider button. Jason and his partner Penny were not offended, John was often prickly. Seldom was he interested in conversation. They didn’t take it personally.

In contrast, President Kinji knew all about Jason’s dreams of becoming a personal chef, or opening a café in Italy one day, or both. She knew about Penny’s dreams to become a lawyer, and that her paycheck went straight to the Dean’s office where she was attending law school, living on the cheap as she paid cash for her tuition. Yes, President Ann Kinji cared enough to listen, and she made them feel special. It is for this reason that Jason and Penny felt loyalty to her over John – it wasn’t politics; they simply liked Ann more.

So when President John Williams requested that they drive him to the home of the former President of what-used-to-be the United States of America, they placed a call to President Kinji on her special line; the line she gave each of them if they ever got into any serious trouble. What was happening now was something they thought she should know about. Ann agreed, and thanked the pair of them for their courage.

Penny had made the call while still on the road, taking advantage of the privacy barrier that John himself had established. With a hushed voice, she got the message across, while John sat not two feet behind her head, completely oblivious that his nemesis had been tipped off about his upcoming meeting.

After quick deliberation with her team of experts, Ann instructed them to leave the phone line open, so that her team could record everything. They would easily clarify the sound, removing ambient noise, enhancing the sounds of the voices; all of it was fairly routine work for the team, no problem: if they were close enough to hear the conversation with their own ears – the phone would pick it up too. Both Jason and Penny agreed to get as close to President Williams as possible, two open lines were better than one.

Upon arrival, President Williams’ security detail stayed outside of the former president’s house, as John requested, giving him a false sense of privacy which liberated his tongue. Unbeknownst to John, the upper window of the cathedral-ceilinged home was ajar. With the acoustics of the home creating an amplifying effect, eavesdropping on the conversation between the two men was hard to avoid, and the hearing was made easier because every one of them was actively listening.

William’s security detail could hear every word that was said, and Jason and Penny were in an excellent position to record everything. Best of all, ten credible witnesses were even more valuable than the recordings; recordings that could be doctored, as surely the other side would suggest. Ten witnesses? All of them with good clean impressive records? Much harder to dismiss.

“John, long time.”

“Not long enough.” The former president stared into John William’s blue-gray eyes; eyes that should have been deep dark pits by now, haunting him like the eyes of Scrooge’s business partner Jacob Marley. But he found no sign of remorse or regret, or even awareness. Williams was no ghost of America Past come to make him repent, he was just another old man with used-up power, same as himself.

Neither man offered his hand to the other. They squared off, sizing each other up. Both thought the other was showing his age. The years had brought each of them hairlines baring more of their foreheads, more grays in the hair that was left, and more creases weathering their faces. Both men were on a variety of medications to control high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and accelerating heart disease.

The stand-off over, John walked inside the house and shut the door. “We have to talk,” he said.

“Are we alone?”

“My detail is outside,” said John. “What, you think this is entrapment? I’m as vulnerable in this as you are – more so, as sitting president.”

The former president led the way down a marbled hallway: the house was only modest from the outside. The interior of the home was tricked out with the most expensive materials and the gaudiest displays of lighting, art, furniture, draperies, fixtures, and collectibles.

He entered the library, a room that held over two million dollars’ worth of rare books and artifacts. The library was two stories high, with the top row of books nearly aligned with the cathedral ceiling. In this room, not one, but two windows were ajar. The conversation between the two presidents was even easier to listen in on. The agents quietly celebrated.

“John, what do you want?” he said.

“To the point, you’re a man after my own heart.”

“Then get to it.” He settled into a chair, lit a cigar, and took a long draw. His deep red shirt, sharp, beak-like nose, and the unfortunate placement of ornamental horn-like fixtures on the back of his chair directly above his head added to the overall image of the devil himself on his throne. The rings of smoke drifted toward John like a graveside fog.

“They know about the e-mail.” John did not wait for an invitation, that he knew would not come, to sit down. He selected the chair directly across from the devil, feeling no trepidation, as he was largely unaware that he was staring into soulless eyes.

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I have people.” The former president stroked the goatee he had grown since he’d left office. It was remarkably dark, with no gray hair at all. The contrast between the nearly-white hair on his head and the jet black hair on his sallow face was startling. The grays on his head had made his hair coarse and wild – giving him the look of a madman.

“It’s all going to come crashing down. I tried to cut it off, but Kinji is running with this thing.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” John threw up his hands in disbelief. He stood up to pace the room.

“It doesn’t matter to me. I’m sure it matters a great deal to you, John.” He folded his hands across his narrow chest. He was a tall man, of an enormous stature due to having Marfan’s syndrome, a condition similar to, or possibly the same as, the disorder that Abraham Lincoln had. His arms were unusually and disproportionately long, and his overall frame was imposingly lanky. He towered above most other men. Marfan’s syndrome had also given him a weak heart, which had been rumored but never confirmed while he was in office.

“You’ll be arrested right alongside me. Your legacy will be that of a traitor.”

“I’d do it all again. We had endless deadlock, bi-partisan bickering, lobbyists in everyone’s pocket. While we were buying up weapons, kids in our own country went hungry, went homeless. Our food supply was toxic but we kept right on selling more of the poison -- while Europe banned the same stuff we served our kids for breakfast.”

John groaned. “I thought I heard enough of this rhetoric while you were on the campaign trail. You don’t really believe your own spin doctors, do you?”

“Yes, John, I do. I could see our America headed for ruin. There was no end in sight, what with our open borders and our out-of-control spending. We couldn’t make it stop. No one could agree on anything. The old boys club got bigger and bigger. We’d been reduced to distracting people with gay marriage debates so that no one would notice that our country was dying.”

“I look at you and see someone who doesn’t fit in the old boys club.”

“Because I represent the gay community? Is that what galls at you, John? But flaming liberal that I am, I couldn’t change a thing, not even with democrats taking the majority.”

“Then how can you blame my party? You had the majority.”

“The Republicans wouldn’t ever see reason, or they didn’t care, I’m not sure which. They’d never stop throwing money on defense, getting us further and further into debt – while lining the pockets of contractors and manufacturers, over the blood of our young men and women.”

“What do you care about them? I seem to recall that you cut their pay.”

“Everyone has to make sacrifices. You’d stand behind the Republican agenda? Shelter the richest Americans in the world while letting the poor and the middle class wither and die, sometimes literally. Our health care went from bad to worse.”

“Hey now, don’t lay all that on Republicans.”

“We are going to debate now, John? Not your strong suit, never was.”

“Big government is not the answer. How far did liberals get with all those bailouts? And don’t get me started with Obamacare,” said John. “Whatever happened to that disaster?”

“Exactly. Nothing worked. Nothing. We were never going to agree. The Republicans manipulated the ‘Christian Right’ to believe that they were their party. To keep the masses loyal, the Republicans gave them what they wanted. What did they care either way if women’s health care services were cut? Tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans? Why not, that’s who finances the party. And I have three words for you: oil, oil, oil.”

“You hated Republicans so much that you’d nuke our own country to get rid of us?”

“You feel the same about Democrats.”

“Touché,” said John.

“We both got what we wanted. And the country is the better for it. We were headed for complete economic ruin. There was no way out, and you know that. It wasn’t a recession; it was a depression that kept on depressing. There was no way out of all of that debt. We were bankrupt. Our money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.”

“We were headed for Communism. We were already halfway there,” said John.

“That’s where you and I disagree, but that’s water under the bridge. The country is functioning much better as a split nation, well on its way to recovery. It was time for the two ideologies to go their separate ways.”

“I knew Democrats hated us, but I must say that your malice toward Republicans is impressive,” said John.

“And you loathed us also. Nothing like common hatred as the tie that binds.”

“You are delusional if you think we’re doing better. We are not doing better. We are doing worse. The cost of the Big War sank us. We’re still cleaning up. People are still dying or getting sick from the nuclear fallout, the waste, the contaminated water in places we didn’t expect it to be. Talk about toxic food? We have much bigger problems than that now. You mentioned homeless kids, starving kids? What do you think happened when the Big War ended? You think the land repaired itself? You think it was a clean kill, and those who survived are just peachy? Haven’t you seen a single podcast?” John ranted.

“The way is open for strong leadership. America can heal herself.”

“With a liberal agenda of big government? Restricting freedoms until children are property of the state from birth, parental rights stripped to nothing – that is if the babies even make it to life, given that abortions are now legal even at the late stages. What’s next, killing them after they’re born?”

“That’s ridiculous and you know it!”

“I see we’ve made no progress, and here we are with a torn, battled country littered with nuclear fallout and death.”

“You should step aside, John.”

“What? How dare you! You think Kinji can fix this nightmare? This apocalypse? If anything, she should step aside. I could repair this country much faster without her interference. But why are you going down this road? Weren’t you making the point that America functions better as a split nation? Or has the truth come out: your hidden agenda was to rid the nation of Republicans!”

“Now, John, simmer down. I know you won’t ever die off. You are like cockroaches. And so are your issues. Take pro-life for example. Neither of us give two figs about what happens to these women, or if a baby is a baby in the womb. Hell, I don’t care if a baby is a baby when he’s two. Raise them, kill them, I don’t care. But don’t tell me that God has tied my hands – at least we have statistics and results to back up our stand – your only argument is ‘God’. But we are the same at the core. We both cater to our parties: we tell them what they want to hear. You say you care about the sanctity of life. I say I care about a woman’s right to choose. The irony, or hypocrisy, is that we are both misogynistic prigs who’d sooner deny our own seed than claim it.”

“I was on board with everything. I have a vigilante spirit. I actually believed that a split America would do as you said: break us to heal us. But it didn’t work. And hearing you talk right now – you’re crazy.”

“John, you were walking right alongside me in those days. May I jog your memory – how we alone conspired to stall the debt ceiling negotiations? Deliberately letting the nation default, sabotaging nation and world markets, crippling our own government? You have amnesia?”

“The idea came after coming close to default in 2011, I wasn’t the only one involved. It wasn’t you and I like you allude to. We had support from both sides of the aisle.”

“But John, it was the two of us who kept a cool head and had the balls to go through with the plan. The others would have caved, would have signed off at the last hour. The two of us made the play to switch sides, stalling the bill, running the clock. We had no tea-partiers in our way this time around, and after cleaning house of most of those zealots, we were home free for the big crash and burn – phase one of the plan for America to go its separate ways – a covert civil war, if you will.”

“I lay awake at night wondering if we needed to take it a step further – wasn’t financial ruin enough to split the union? Did we really need to let the bombs fly? We knew that the Iranians had moved their weapons within range – we could have taken them out.”

“Regrets, John? I don’t believe you. You and I are cut from the same cloth. I appeal to common sense and you appeal to the rest.”

“You’ve got some serious hate going on for Christians.”

“No, those poor people are only sheep to the slaughter.”

“So your hatred is only toward Republicans then?”

“I wouldn’t say that I don’t have contempt for the Christians, of course they’re a thorn in my side. They cloud simple issues with their morality, blocking my path. Not a one of them can think for himself, yet they manage to bring the machine to a grinding halt, over and over again. No, I hold no love for Christians. But I have no more contempt for them than you do: you manipulate them for your own political gain, pretending to be one of them, catering to their religious zeal. You don’t know the first thing about their God, do you, John?”

“I see myself through your eyes and I have a strong feeling I’m going to hell,” said John.

The two men looked at each other and then broke into laughter. “I missed you, John.”

“No you didn’t.”

“You got that right.”

Their banter was disrupted when they heard gun shots outside the house.