“Mr. President, my point is, we don’t know who did it,” said Calibrisi. “We don’t know which family is behind it. Who do we accuse? Even if we did know, what would we do? Until we know, we can’t go out there and start pointing fingers.”

  “All I know is, we have to go out and find these motherfuckers,” said King. “Then we need to kill them all.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Lovvorn, the FBI director. “I agree with you. But I didn’t know if I should speak up.”

  “I’m not kidding,” said King, anger in his voice. “This is fucking war! They killed a guy who might’ve become the next president—sorry, sir,” he said to Dellenbaugh. “They also killed a major figure in the U.S. Senate, arguably one of the greatest senators of the past century. I was a lawyer on the Foreign Relations Committee for three years when he was chairman. He was a brilliant man.”

  “Adrian is right,” said Brubaker. “This is war. Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to fight wars on U.S. soil. We’re not allowed to use the military or the CIA.”

  “Well, it’s a stupid goddam law if you ask me,” said King. “What if China invaded? We couldn’t fight back just because we’re on U.S. soil?”

  “You know the answer to that,” said Dellenbaugh, shaking his head.

  “Actually, Mr. President, with all due deference, I don’t know the answer to that. We were just attacked,” said King. “Invaded. It’s time to change the rules.”

  Dellenbaugh didn’t say anything, but stared at his hotheaded chief of staff, deep in thought. In his typically bare-knuckled, blunt way, King had made a point. A good point.

  There were several laws that prohibited the president from using military and intelligence assets on American soil. The purpose was to ensure no president or politician could ever order the military and CIA to attack U.S. citizens, political opponents, and most important, that no president could execute a military takeover of the United States.

  The CIA, National Security Agency, and other agencies were also banned from intelligence gathering and all other covert operations on U.S. soil.

  A knock came at the door to the Oval Office and John Schmidt, the White House director of communications, stepped inside. His brown and gray hair was slightly messed up and his face was red. He was also breathing heavily.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Schmidt. “The New York Times is writing a story for tomorrow’s newspaper. They have someone inside the Blake campaign who’s going to speculate that the administration was somehow involved.”

  Dellenbaugh, King, Calibrisi, Brubaker, and Lovvorn all looked shocked, shaking their heads.

  “Call Sulzberger right now,” said King, seething. “Tell that miserable fucking bastard if he prints something like that, the next time a New York Times reporter sets foot in the White House there’ll be flying cars and vacation houses on the fucking moon.”

  “You need to hold a press conference tonight, sir,” said Schmidt calmly, ignoring King.

  “We don’t know what happened yet,” said Calibrisi.

  “You can keep it vague,” said Schmidt. “Threatening the Times isn’t going to kill the story. What will kill it is you going out there and talking about Nick Blake and John O’Flaherty. I also think it’s the right thing to do, Mr. President. You need to calm a nation, sir.”

  Dellenbaugh looked at Calibrisi.

  “Don’t do it to kill the story,” said Calibrisi. “Who cares about some stupid story that’s going to be laughed at and disproven? But I agree with John. You do need to say something. It’s the right thing to do.”

  Dellenbaugh remained silent. He turned and walked to a thin door near the entrance to the Oval Office, pulling it open. Inside was a small bar. Dellenbaugh poured himself a glass of bourbon, moved to one of the two large, tan Chesterfield sofas at the center of the Oval Office, and sat down.

  “Help yourselves,” said the president, taking a sip.

  When everyone had gotten a drink and was seated, Dellenbaugh looked at Lovvorn, the new FBI director, who was reading his phone.

  “What do we have so far?” said the president.

  “Let’s start with New York,” said Lovvorn. “According to witnesses at the restaurant, a waiter fell onto Senator O’Flaherty as he was bringing the senator his dinner. Several people, including the waiter, say the waiter was pushed from behind by a woman. She apparently broke the heel of her shoe and fell into the waiter by accident. Ten minutes later, he was dead. One of our coroners already made a first pass at the corpse. He found a fresh puncture wound in O’Flaherty’s left elbow. We’ll know more when the lab tests are done, but it looks like he was poisoned. Needless to say, the woman disappeared.”

  Dellenbaugh shook his head.

  “As for Governor Blake, well, the situation is a mess out there,” said Lovvorn. “Obviously, he was assassinated, but by whom? From where? The slug was a 6.5 mm Creedmoor. The front window of the hotel shattered at the same time Blake was shot. Both the slug and the window indicate he was killed by a sniper positioned somewhere outside the building. We have no witnesses, other than someone who saw a man open one of the doors to the ballroom immediately before he was shot. Based on a rough approximation of the trajectory of the bullet, the shooter was at ground level, probably in a vehicle across the street. The vehicle is gone. There was a security camera but it was spray-painted black. There’s no footage to look at.”

  Dellenbaugh sipped his drink, shaking his head, frustrated, upset, and angry.

  “The Secret Service was supposed to protect Nick Blake,” said Dellenbaugh. “As for Senator O’Flaherty, who can you blame? NYPD? The FBI? The truth is, nobody is to blame. Nobody except the people who did this. At some point, the U.S. government realized that La Cosa Nostra posed an existential threat. It took decades, but we decimated the Italians. This is a hundred times worse than anything La Cosa Nostra ever did. Yet, we’re nowhere with the Russians. They control organized crime in America.”

  “Mr. President,” said Schmidt, “I’m just a little old press secretary, so at the risk of speaking above my pay grade, you need to get out there. Who did it, what we’re going to do, all of that stuff needs to be put on hold. You have a room full of reporters, sir.”

  Dellenbaugh finished his drink and stood.

  “Good ideas have nothing to do with how much you make, John,” said Dellenbaugh. “Okay, fine. Go tell the press corps I’ll be out in five. We’ll do it in the briefing room.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  King, Lovvorn, Brubaker, and Calibrisi stood up.

  “Hector, stay for a minute, will you?” said the president as the others moved to the door.

  When they were alone, Dellenbaugh shut the door.

  “Hector, we need to figure out who did this,” said Dellenbaugh.

  “You have the FBI running hard at it, President Dellenbaugh.”

  “I don’t trust the FBI to do it,” said Dellenbaugh.

  “If you’re talking about running an off-balance-sheet investigation, I have to warn you, Mr. President, it would look bad and it might be against the law. You heard John. The Times is going to print a story accusing you, accusing us, of complicity in the crime.”

  “Which is why we need something better than the FBI,” said Dellenbaugh, his voice rising.

  “There are no options other than the FBI,” said Calibrisi. “It’s that simple. We can’t do anything on U.S. soil.”

  “What about private contractors?”

  “To do what? Fight the Russians? First of all, you’d need an army, and a very good one. There are no private security companies with the kind of scale you would need to be effective. But even if there were, if we hired private contractors to go after Russians on American soil we’d probably end up in jail. It’s against the law.”

  “I know,” said Dellenbaugh quietly. “I’m not suggesting we subvert any laws. But I’m angry as hell.”

  “You’re frustrated, sir,” said Calibrisi. “I don’t blame you. I am, too.”

  Dellenbaugh stared at Calibrisi an extra moment.

  “Can I trust you?” said the president.

  “What the hell does that mean? Of course you can trust me. Why?”

  “Follow me.”

  Dellenbaugh walked behind his elegant cherrywood desk and continued to the back corner of the carpet. As Calibrisi watched, the president knelt and pulled back the carpet. Beneath it was a hidden panel. It was black, made of steel, a few feet in length and a few inches wide.

  A small digital screen on the panel was illuminated with the letters NIO/ADF.

  Dellenbaugh placed his thumb against the screen. After two or three seconds, the secret compartment made a nearly silent click. Two small steel rods moved up from the ground. Dellenbaugh grabbed them and lifted the steel plate, putting it down on the rug.

  It was some sort of safe, though hidden in the floor and not the wall. Calibrisi watched as Dellenbaugh reached in and removed a manila folder. He handed it to Calibrisi.

  “Read it,” he said.

  Calibrisi opened the folder. Inside was a single piece of thin parchment laminated atop a thick piece of paper. It was a document, old and yellowed along the edges. It had, at one point, been folded. Most remarkable of all, it was handwritten.

  September 10, 1787

  We, the undersigned, make known by these presents the following:

  That there may arise times of such crisis in the Republic wherein it becomes necessary to enact temporary laws outside the charter and process of the U.S. Congress. The following codicil memorializes and creates the ability for the president, in ahistorical times, to create law in secret, as long as such law benefits America and mankind.

  That the President of the United States shall be able to call upon a committee of Senate Members cast equally from temporal partisan cloth, upon whose jurisdiction and expertise it shall arise so as to be therefor unimpeachable, unbiased by issues of the day, said committee thus enabled to create law in secret. The insurance is thus that the senators shall be required to vote unanimously on the proposed action therein, without opportunity for misconstruction, so as to ensure equality of representation as well as be done in such a way as to be considered fairest opinion in the land. In order for such law to be legal, such amendment may last but one year, and if re-enacted must be done by the same manner as hereto described, with sincerity and duty,

  In which the first was done.

  So be it, this day …

  Beneath were dozens of signatures, which Calibrisi stared at in disbelief. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers.

  Calibrisi held the document for a few more moments, rereading it. He looked at Dellenbaugh.

  “Has it ever been used before?” said Calibrisi.

  “It’s been called four times,” said Dellenbaugh. “The last time was by Franklin Roosevelt in 1941. Of the four times, only once has there been a unanimous vote, and that was in 1941. Roosevelt asked for permission to start helping Churchill.”

  Calibrisi handed the folder back to President Dellenbaugh, who replaced it in the safe, shut the panel, and put the carpet back.

  Dellenbaugh stood up and straightened his tie.

  “I need to get to the briefing,” said Dellenbaugh.

  “Mr. President, you obviously have something in mind,” said Calibrisi.

  “I’m going to ask a committee of senators—the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—to give the Central Intelligence Agency an exemption from various posse comitatus laws allowing it to operate on U.S. soil.”

  “In my world, the word ‘operate’ has a fairly specific meaning, sir,” said Calibrisi.

  “I know,” said Dellenbaugh. “This would not be an investigative unit.”

  “You’re talking about a kill team.”

  Dellenbaugh nodded as he pointed to the screens on the far wall.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” said Dellenbaugh. “Whatever we’re doing isn’t working. The enemy has invaded our country and we’re fighting back with our best soldiers on the sidelines.”

  “Why not JSOC?” said Calibrisi, referring to Joint Special Operations Command, a component of the Pentagon responsible for running covert operations throughout the world.

  “JSOC? No way,” said Dellenbaugh. “The CIA is one thing. The Pentagon is another. There’s no way the SSCI would allow the Pentagon to operate on U.S. soil. My guess is, they won’t even allow the CIA, but they trust you, Hector. You’re not political. You’ve been transparent with both parties. You’ve stopped attacks on this country.”

  “Thanks, Mr. President, but I haven’t,” said Calibrisi. “The people who work for me have.”

  “You get the point.”

  “So what do you want from me?” said Calibrisi.

  “After the press conference, I’ll have Adrian draft the action,” said Dellenbaugh. “I’ll submit it under an emergency priority classification. I want a meeting immediately with SSCI. I need the design from you.”

  Calibrisi nodded.

  “Mr. President, it’s one thing to be killing people in some dark alley in Paris or Tokyo,” said Calibrisi. “If my people are allowed to operate on U.S. soil, it will be in secret. There won’t be any legislative record of it. They could be charged with murder.”

  Dellenbaugh grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair and put it on. He started walking toward the door, deep in thought.

  “What do you have in mind?” said the president.

  “We’ll need to give anyone involved a preemptive presidential pardon,” said Calibrisi.

  Dellenbaugh had his hand on the doorknob to the Oval Office. Slowly, he started shaking his head.

  “A preemptive pardon would mean they could do anything on U.S. soil,” said Dellenbaugh. “For the rest of their lives. I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “You’re the one who said it, sir,” said Calibrisi. “It’s about trust. But trust needs to run in both directions. I’m not going to put people in-theater if they could be incarcerated for actions we ask them to take.”

  Dellenbaugh nodded. He smiled at his CIA director.

  “You’re absolutely right,” said President Dellenbaugh. “Fine. I’ll have Adrian take care of that, too. I want a plan we can take to the fifteen members of SSCI tomorrow at the crack of dawn.”

  * * *

  Dellenbaugh walked alone through the dimly lit halls of the West Wing, which was mostly empty until the part of the building that housed the offices of the communications staff as well as the press briefing room. This part of the West Wing was abuzz.

  Dellenbaugh stepped into John Schmidt’s office. Schmidt was sitting down. Two members of the communications staff were standing near him. They were watching a special report from ABC about the assassinations of Blake and O’Flaherty. A reporter was standing on the klieg-lighted steps of the Capitol Building interviewing a high-ranking U.S. senator—a Democrat—who appeared truly sorrowful at the loss of John Patrick O’Flaherty, despite their philosophical differences.

  Schmidt and his colleagues were mesmerized, to the point that they didn’t notice the president’s entrance. But Dellenbaugh didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched, too, listening as O’Flaherty’s political opponent talked about going sailing with O’Flaherty, drinking great wines with O’Flaherty, and being not just colleagues, but friends. When the interview ended, Schmidt shook his head, signaling his disbelief and sadness. He finally turned and found himself looking at J. P. Dellenbaugh.

  “Sorry, sir,” said Schmidt, standing up. “I didn’t know you were here.”

  “No need to apologize. But let’s get this rolling.”

  Schmidt looked at the two younger staffers and nodded them out of the room.

  “Get Cory,” he whispered to one of them.

  He shut the door after they left.

  “Let’s talk about ground rules,” said Schmidt. “Do you want to take questions?”

  “Not particularly. But I’ll do whatever you think is best.”

  “I wouldn’t take ’em. But I suggest you see how you’re feeling, sir. You’re excellent at it. Now, what are you thinking about what you’ll actually say?”

  A knock came at the door, then it opened. A tall, bespectacled bald man stepped into the office. This was Cory Tilley, the president’s twenty-six-year-old head of speechwriting. He was holding a piece of paper.

  “Hi,” said Tilley. He handed the paper to Dellenbaugh. “John and I thought I should put something down on paper, just in case you wanted it. We know you probably don’t want it and would prefer to talk from the heart, so to speak, sir. I actually support that and think whatever you would say would be a heck of a lot better than this. We wanted you to have it just in case.”

  Dellenbaugh smiled and patted Tilley on the back.

  “You’re right,” said the president. “I don’t need it, but I appreciate you two making sure.”

  “Let me cue it up,” said Schmidt.

  “It’s eleven at night,” said Dellenbaugh. “People want to get home. I’ll be fine.”

  “Roger that,” said Schmidt. He reached for the doorknob, opening the door for the president, who walked out of Schmidt’s office, took a left, and entered the White House briefing room.

  There was a low-decibel hum of conversation in the room as Dellenbaugh entered.

  At the back wall, a line of cameramen stood on a slightly raised platform. Most of the room was occupied by reporters, an even mix of female and male, all dressed in business attire, eight rows by twelve across, reporters from every major news outlet across the media complex—TV, cable, internet, newspaper, foreign correspondents—all credentialed and there doing what was considered the most prestigious job in journalism: covering the president of the United States of America.

  At the front of the room was a slightly raised stage, upon which was a dais emblazoned with the presidential seal. Dellenbaugh moved to the dais and looked out on the roomful of reporters.

  “President Dellenbaugh, is it true—”

  “Hannah, please stop,” said Dellenbaugh, staring at the reporter. “This is my press conference, not yours.”