Legacy - 1. Rendezvous with Destiny - Sammy Austin

Friday, March 20, 2043 - Thirty-three Years after the End of Naptown Tales

I was enjoying a rare, pleasant meeting with some of my constituents in my office in the Rayburn Office Building, when Barry Smith interrupted us. Barry was a longtime friend from back home who’d come with me to Washington and was now my personal assistant. It was his job to keep me on schedule, make sure I didn’t miss important committee meetings, keep track of important bills that were coming up for a vote on the floor and steer me clear of certain lobbyists whom I needed to avoid. In four terms on ‘The Hill’, Barry had become a pro. I knew he missed the laid-back lifestyle of the Midwest but he’d become a real Washington Insider and he loved it.

“Mr. Congressman,” he said, in deference to our guests, as he’d have otherwise just called me ‘Sammy’ or ‘Sam’, “There’s been an ‘incident’.” Seeing the vacant look on Barry’s face, I suddenly knew. My good friend Paul Manning had been having premonitions of this day since we were teenagers but they’d only grown more intense with time and had become increasingly frequent of late. Barry was well aware of them too and had been trying to assuage my fears but now that they’d become reality, there was little we could do to take away the pain of losing one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Barry returned to my office alone after, I’m sure, he’d had our guests escorted to a safe location where they could be dealt with in a dignified and appropriate manner. In the meantime I flipped on the holoscreen in my office and we were instantly greeted with an image that would haunt me the rest of my life. Against the backdrop of the St. Louis Arch, the presidential limousine was on fire, with smoke billowing forth from its windows. There was no way anyone inside could have survived.

The two ambulances and fire truck that traveled with the President’s entourage were on the scene as were more police cars and motorcycles than I’d ever seen in one place at one time in my life. However, what could they could do? President David Reynolds was one of my oldest and dearest friends. President Reynolds was dead.

We were then joined by a secret service detail, as was mandatory under the circumstances. I was not just a congressman, but the brother of the President’s National Security Advisor and the brother-in-law of his Chief of Staff. I was a potential security risk.

I asked a single one-word question, “How?”

“The President opened his window to wave to the crowd of well-wishers as he often does,” Larry, one of my secret service agents answered. “Someone was apparently waiting in a building across the way with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.”

“Didn’t we sweep those buildings?” I asked? Since Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, presidential parade routes were kept secret until the last minute, buildings were swept for explosives, weapons and snipers along the route and counter-snipers were stationed on rooftops all along the route, for just such a contingency. Someone should have seen the grenade launcher and taken the perpetrator out.

“Yeah, of course we swept them, but whoever did this was well-organized and knew just how to escape detection. It’s possible they had inside assistance and we’re certainly looking into the possibility, but it could just be they outsmarted us. The attack happened at a bottleneck . . . there just wasn’t a safe route through that area, and we should have realized it.”

“Damn,” was all I could say as tears came to my eyes.

“The Vice President? . . .” I asked.

“. . . and her husband were in the car with the President.”

“That means Schroeder will be the president,” I lamented. I might be a fellow Republican, but Schroeder was an embarrassment to the party. Besides which, David had been one hell of a president. “Schroeder’ll try to roll back everything David’s done during the past couple of years, and that’s the last thing America needs right now,” I stated flatly.

“Not if he thinks it’ll mean losing control of the House,” Barry said, hopefully.

“That’s true,” I agreed, “and it’s our one hope. Schroeder’s an ideologue, but he’s not stupid and he’s not going to push his right-wing agenda if it means risking losing control of the House. I just hope the Democratic leadership has the balls to push forward and hard with David’s agenda in the Senate, and not to yield an inch.”

If there was one thing I was known for, it was for voting my conscience. I was adopted by the Austins when I was a young teenager and they were Republicans to the core. However, I never acquiesced to their strong belief in Evangelical Christianity, not that I didn’t believe in God but I just didn’t see organized religion as being the most effective way of serving Him. I believed actions spoke louder than mindless platitudes, so I dedicated my life to giving back to the community, becoming a teacher in an inner city high school, and then becoming a principal when it became clear that I could do only so much in the classroom. When I found my attempts at school reform thwarted repeatedly, I sought the job of school superintendent, and when it became clear that I couldn’t get past the politics, I ran for mayor, and won!

The funny thing was that I’d spent much of my life trying to lose the residual vestiges of my life growing up on the streets, the son of a crack-addicted prostitute, but when I ran for mayor, the first thing the strategists told me to do was to revert to going by ‘Sammy’ instead of ‘Sam’ and to allow a hint of my Kentucky accent to shine through. I had to actually un-learn two decades of conditioning. There I was, Phi Beta Kappa, valedictorian of the class of 2014 at Case Western Reserve University, holder of a doctorate in Education from New York University, fluent in a dozen foreign languages . . . and I had to come off sounding like a regular Joe six-pack.

It was during my second term as mayor that the Party approached me about running for Congress. The House seat representing the central city had been held by a Democrat forever but, with my popularity and my middle-of-the-road politics, the Republicans saw me as the perfect candidate to pull off an upset. I was and am strongly pro-life and I had a reputation as being fiscally responsible. I favored the low-tax, small government message of the Republican Party but drew the line at the tactic favored by so many Republicans of cutting services to the poor and particularly to poor minorities. Socially, I’ve always been a liberal, strongly supporting gay and women’s rights.

The voters certainly seemed to like my no-nonsense approach to government and have honored me with three terms in Congress now. Although I could never understand David Reynolds’ willingness to allow the murder of innocent, unborn children, in every other respect he was a moderate with political views similar to my own. The Speaker of the House, Marvin Schroeder, on the other hand, was a right-wing ideologue and a religious fanatic. He’d opposed David at every step of the way and now he was going to be president.

“I think Jer’s in his office,” Barry said, bringing me out of my reverie. “Would you like to go see him?”

“Do you need to ask, Bare?” I replied.

Because the Republican Party was in control of the House, we had all the prime offices. Both Jeremy and I had offices in the Rayburn House Office Building but while my office suite was on the top floor with a view of the Capitol building, Jer’s office was on the first floor and it had an interior view. Entering my fellow Congressman’s office, I was first greeted and hugged by Henry Garland, Jeremy’s senior Congressional assistant and a friend of his since middle school. It was obvious that Jeremy had been crying. His eyes were red and puffy and there were tear tracks down his face. Even so, he looked as handsome and dignified as a man approaching fifty as he had when I first met him, at the age of fifteen.

Fresh tears overflowed from both our eyes as soon as he saw me. “Oh man, Jer, it’s just like Paul said it would be,” I said as I wrapped my arms around him. “I always took it with a grain of salt, but now that it’s real . . . I just can’t believe it’s real.”

“None of us ever wanted it to be real, Sammy. We all hoped and prayed it was nothing more than Paul’s wild imagination,” Jeremy admitted.

“Even Paul’s been hoping that of late,” I revealed.

“Really!” Jeremy exclaimed. “I didn’t know he was still having premonitions.”

“That experimental therapy gave him normal intelligence,” I explained, “but it hasn’t changed anything about Paul that makes him who he is. Paul is still the same happy-go-lucky guy he’s always been. Yeah, he still has premonitions, and he’s been having a lot of them about this day,” I said with a shudder.

“I wasn’t aware you still had frequent contact any more,” Jeremy said. “I mean, I know he was the best man at your wedding . . . and you at his, but I thought since your divorce, maybe you two weren’t so close anymore . . .”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jer,” I explained. “He was so scared while he was taking that therapy . . . scared that he’d lose all the things and people that meant so much to him . . . but I stuck with him through it all. I did throughout our school years and I’d do it all again. If anything, the divorce has brought us even closer together, and I make it a point to visit him every chance I get.

“We all know the divorce was my fault . . . Sally was a wonderful woman and a great wife. She had more patience than anyone I know. God knows I loved her . . . I still do . . . but I couldn’t give her the love she deserved. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to love a woman without hurting them, thanks to Gary and what he did to me.”

“It’s amazing how that one bastard fucked up so many lives,” Jeremy cursed using one of his rare expletives. Jer’s meaning went much deeper than it might appear on the surface, as his adoptive brother, Cliff, died of AIDS thanks to Gary. Cliff and I had both attended a summer camp for disadvantaged youth when we were twelve. Gary was the senior counselor in our cabin and over the course of a few weeks, he repeatedly raped and abused a number of the kids. He even recorded us having sex with each other. I owed everything to a pair of junior counselors - it was Kurt, my brother-in-law, who saved my life and Trevor, my brother, who talked his parents into fostering me. We all shared a bond of brotherhood far stronger than most men who were born as brothers. That was the only good legacy that Gary left us.

Just then, the door to Jeremy’s congressional office opened and Sandra and Josh, his two children, were shown in. They both went to high school at Sidwell Friends. Sandra looked a fair bit like Jer did at seventeen years of age, with long, flowing golden hair and blue eyes that were now filled with tears. Josh, at fifteen, was the spitting image of David, with wavy brown hair and hazel eyes. Josh was putting up a brave front but it was clear he’d been crying, too.

Jeremy went to both his children and hugged each of them tightly and then said, “We’re going to have to be strong. We’ve always known something like this could happen. It comes with the territory when you’re the president. That doesn’t mean we can’t cry, but how we handle ourselves in the next several days is important. The whole country . . . and even the world . . . will be mourning Pop. How we mourn him will say an awful lot about how the rest of the world thinks of his legacy. If we treat his passing with respect and dignity, so will the rest of the world. If we treat his death with anger and a demand for vengeance, then so will the rest of the world.

“Don’t get me wrong, my children . . . I want to see his killers brought to justice . . . but it is justice we seek, not revenge. That is the message we must tell the rest of the world.”

“How can you be so calm, Dad?” Jeremy’s daughter asked through her tears.

“Because it’s what Pop would have wanted,” Jeremy said, “and what he would have done if the situation were reversed.”

I knew from the many historical books I’d read what happened during the Kennedy assassination and that it really was going to be up to Jeremy to calm the nation’s fears. Yes, the world would look to Schroeder as the new president and ‘Commander-in-Chief’ for reassurance that there would be a peaceful transition of power but Jeremy would be the one who would show the world that life goes on. The young widower and father would show the world by how he coped with his anguish, that we as a nation could deal with this. We as a nation would heal. We as a nation would get to the bottom of who had done this horrible deed but then we would rely on the rule of law to bring those responsible to justice.

However, unlike the first lady, Jackie Kennedy, Jeremy was a U.S. congressman, just like me. He had other responsibilities, not just to the nation as the first spouse and as a father to his children, but to our home state and his congressional district as their representative. He could not simply ignore his responsibilities during his time of mourning any more than I could. I couldn’t imagine the trauma of losing his spouse, let alone the responsibilities he now shouldered.

When David ran for president, much was made of the potential conflict of interest in having a spouse on Capitol Hill. He himself was a U.S. senator. Many suggested Jeremy should resign his seat when David became president but that was absolutely silly. There was no reason for Jer to resign . . . he was perfectly capable of fulfilling both roles.

Now in addition to being a single parent, Jeremy would have to maintain a dual role as mourner-in-chief and as a U.S. congressman, dedicated to carrying forth on behalf of his constituents and making sure that the gains made by his husband weren’t compromised by the new president, the current Speaker of the House, who would undoubtedly be sworn in at any minute.

We would also soon be entering an election year and, like it or not, David’s assassination presented a real opportunity for the Republicans. With Schroeder occupying the White House, there was now a chance to retake the executive branch for the long haul. However, David’s programs were very popular with the public and Schroeder was diametrically opposed to them. If President Schroeder took the country back in the other direction, there could very well be a public backlash. How cruel it would be for my party to regain the White House, only to lose it again. Schroeder would have to learn quickly, as did Johnson, the man who followed Kennedy, that the programs initiated by the assassinated president should be carried through if he wanted any support from the American public.

And who would run in David’s place? Certainly no one among the Democrats had anticipated the need to run and no one had built up a war chest. Now it was imperative that the Democratic National Committee move swiftly to rally the party behind the most promising candidate and to make the funds originally raised on behalf of David available to them. If they were smart, they’d realize there simply wasn’t time to let candidates scramble through the primaries - if they tried such a foolhardy strategy, we would cream them in the general election. Probably the best person to take David’s place would be Jeremy - not that he’d ever admit it. He’d probably say he was too junior and that there were many more seasoned Democratic politicians who were better qualified, but who better to carry on David’s legacy than the man behind the man?

I guess I’d been lost in thought for a while, as Henry approached us and said, “C’mon, guys, we need to get all of you to the White House.” He was absolutely right. The children probably should have been taken there first and were probably only brought to Jeremy’s office because he was here and they needed him more than they needed to be home.

Henry was another friend of ours from back home, although he only became a friend after we’d finished college. He and Jeremy had quite a history together going all the way back to middle school, for it was Henry who effectively outed Jeremy. Henry was Jer’s best friend in eighth grade but when they collided during a game of basketball in gym class, Jer was knocked unconscious and they ended up in a rather compromising position. Henry overreacted and, by the end of the day, the whole school knew about the infamous gym incident. It wasn’t until a few years later that Henry and Jeremy were able to truly put the whole thing behind them and become friends again - now, best friends. The fact that Henry had a gay brother-in-law didn’t hurt the situation, either.

Escorted by the secret service, we were taken by elevator to an underground passageway that led to a virtual fortress built in the days following the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001. Prior to 9/11, the assumption had always been that Washington’s greatest threat was from a direct nuclear strike. Hence, there had been a hardened bunker under the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and a few select essential wartime agencies only. Institutions such as the Congress were considered expendable in the scenario of a nuclear holocaust - the preservation of a basic wartime government came first.

Following 9/11 it was realized that far more damage could be done to the nation’s psyche by taking out the Congress or the Supreme Court or any of the major governmental institutions using a dirty bomb, or anthrax or any of a number of strategies intended to incapacitate but not destroy. Yes, one could always elect a new Congress but wiping out an entire generation of politicians would be devastating nonetheless. And if someone ever did detonate a dirty bomb in Washington, it might be necessary for Washington to function for weeks, months or even years while the military went about the task of decontaminating the surrounding area.

The obvious solution was to create a fortified Underground Washington, hundreds of feet below the real one. Of course there already was an underground Washington before 9/11 that served to allow for the safe and secure transport of government officials among the various office buildings but it wasn’t nearly safe enough, given the new threats that had emerged in recent years. The new underground Washington that emerged after 9/11 was safe not only from direct nuclear attack but from virtually any form of chemical or even biological attack. Hell, even David’s limo was designed to sustain a direct hit from a small-yield nuclear device . . . if only he’d kept his window shut. It was into this world that we emerged.

A people mover was included as part of the Underground project, serving as the primary transportation system that connected the various federal office buildings, the Capitol and the White House. It was, of course, hermetically sealed so that it, too, was immune from nuclear, chemical and biologic attack. A retina scan was required to gain access to the system and access to the individual cars was granted based on the individual security clearances of the individuals riding each car. Whereas I was cleared to ride in the same car as Jeremy, for example, Barry was not except when he was with me.

We all boarded a train and within a few minutes we were securely under the White House. Kurt DeWitt, David’s Chief of Staff, and Kurt’s husband, Trevor Austin, David’s National Security Advisor and my brother, met us down there and each of them gave us all a warm hug. Kurt had red eyes and had clearly been crying.

Turning to the children, Kurt said, “Sarah, Danny and Elizabeth should be here any minute, and I know Uncle Randy’s and Altaf’s brood are on their way here, too. I know you don’t feel like playing or anything but why don’t you go to the game room . . . your agents’ll take you there . . . and your friends can be together for this . . .”

Danny, Sarah and Elizabeth were Kurt and Trevor’s kids and when Kurt referred to Randy and Altaf’s brood, he was referring to the seven teenagers they were currently fostering. It was hard to believe in this day and age that there were still parents who couldn’t deal with having gay children but there were and Randy and Altaf never failed to take them in. Randy and Altaf, David’s Surgeon General and his Secretary of Health, respectively, were yet another gay couple who were long-term friends of theirs since high school. As the children followed their secret service agents out of the main conference room, Jeremy thanked Kurt for his help with the kids.

After taking us to the President’s main conference room, it was Kurt who raised the memory of the first premonition of David’s assassination. “Jeremy, I’ve been dreading this day ever since the trip we all took to Washington in 2009,” he said. “I still can’t believe this is real . . .” he went on, “it seems so spooky and I can’t believe he’s really gone. Do you remember what Paul said?”

“How could I ever forget?” Jeremy asked. “I’ve been haunted by that memory ever since, standing in Arlington Cemetery, looking out across all those tombstones from where Paul said David would supposedly be buried, sensing he was somehow right. By all rights, David should be buried with Benjamin Harrison on Crown Hill back home, but David’s bigger than that. Like Kennedy before him, he belongs to all Americans. He saved thousands of lives when all hell broke loose in Guatemala . . .”

“You had just as much to do with that, too,” Trevor pointed out to Jeremy.

“We hardly had a choice,” Jer replied. “We couldn’t let innocent victims be slaughtered.”

“Perhaps not, but most people would have tucked their tails between their legs and run,” Kurt agreed. “Thanks to you, not only were hundreds of innocent Guatemalan lives spared, but thousands of American servicemen saved as well. Our successful intervention in Mexico might never have taken place, had it not been for your actions. You were both true heroes.”

“Well in any case, David was a true war hero and he went on to become the first openly gay president.” Jeremy continued. “He brought peace to the Middle East, he extended a human rights agenda throughout the world, he finally brought marriage equality to all of America’s citizens and at long last, Americans now truly earn equal pay for equal jobs. And, unlike the Republicans, he actually succeeded in shrinking the size of the Federal Government. He’s beloved throughout the world and he deserves to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. David Reynolds truly was a national treasure.”

Slipping his arm around Jeremy, Trevor added, “He was a world treasure, Jeremy, and you have every reason to be proud of him. That plot of land in Arlington Cemetery that Paul pointed out to us all those years ago . . . it really would be the perfect spot for his burial. And someday, it’ll be your resting place, too. . . .”

“Now that really does kinda creep me out,” Jeremy admitted.

“Why should you let it creep you out?” Trevor continued. Like Kurt said, you’re every bit as much a war hero as David was, you’re a U.S. Congressman, too, and who knows . . . someday, you may be president. . . .”

“Yeah, right,” was all Jeremy could say in response to that but I knew that Trevor was absolutely right. Jeremy was every bit as qualified for the job.

As if echoing my thoughts, Trevor continued, “Jer, you’ve always tended to sell yourself short, but you’ve always been the man behind the man. Sure, David was the one with charisma, but he got all his strength from you. He himself said all his ideals, all his convictions he got from you. And in recent years, you’ve learned to step out from behind his shadow and become your own man. Look at you now . . . a five-term congressman. I really think someday you’ll be president . . . you’ll be the one to finish what David started. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

“It’s too crazy to think about, Trev . . . but I won’t discount it,” Jer finally agreed.

“I hate to bring it up,” Kurt broke in, “but we have a lot to do in the next few days.”

“Right . . .” I said. “There’s a funeral to plan, an investigation to begin . . .”

“And I have a eulogy to prepare,” Jeremy added.

“Don’t worry about the eulogy, Jer,” Kurt said, “you’ll have enough on your mind without having to worry about that. I’ll have David’s speechwriters get together with your speechwriters. The only question is whether you want to deliver it in the Washington Cathedral or at the graveside in Arlington National Cemetery. The acoustics in the cathedral would be much better, but the imagery in the cemetery might leave a more lasting impression.”

“I’ll do it at the graveside,” Jeremy replied without a moment’s hesitation, “but I’m not leaving the eulogy solely to the speechwriters. I want to see each draft along the way. The eulogy needs to be a very personal reflection of who David Reynolds was. No one knows that better than I do. I may have a lot on my mind, and I’m happy to let the professionals do the writing, but I’ll still be the one in charge.”

“Fair enough,” Kurt agreed, “and perhaps Brad could give his own eulogy at the Cathedral. It would be very fitting I think to have two eulogies . . . one by the President’s brother, the governor of the President’s home state, given in the National Cathedral, and one given by the President’s husband, himself a congressman and war hero, given at the graveside at the Arlington National Cemetery. I know David didn’t go in much for pomp and ceremony, but funerals aren’t about the dead . . . they’re about the living.”

It really was amazing when one got down to it - the legacy left behind by David Reynolds. Who knew what might have become of all of us had it not been for the ambitions of Jeremy’s late and beloved husband. Thanks to him, among our family and friends there were two governors, three U.S. congressmen, a U.S. senator, four members of the President’s Cabinet, the surgeon general, the President’s Chief of Staff, his National Security Adviser and the ambassadors to France, Germany, Mexico and Japan. Moreover, a number of our friends were well-positioned throughout the state and federal government, which undoubtedly would have never happened had it not been for David’s rise to power. I sure as fuck wouldn’t be where I was without David - that was for sure.

“Has David’s family been contacted?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, and we’ve already made arrangements for them to be picked up by the train that will carry David’s body back east. Of course we anticipated that he’d be interred in the Capitol for public viewing, regardless,” Kurt explained. “That was before we knew he’d be buried here rather than back home, but I pretty much figured we’d be making that decision. The viewing will almost certainly need to be a closed casket . . .”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I shuddered in realization. His body would be too badly burned.

“I’d best call his parents . . . and Brad,” Jeremy suggested.

“Of course,” Kurt agreed, “I’ll have the calls set up. We’ll let you know when they’re ready.

“Oh, and Kurt?”

“Yeah, Jer, I’ll get your parents on the phone, too. I know you were never that close to them, but I know you love them no less and that they love you. Would you like them to come on the train, too?”

“Yes, please . . . it would mean a lot to me. . . .” Suddenly, Jeremy burst into tears.

At first I assumed he was crying in grief from the loss of his husband but then Trevor grabbed him in a hug and Jer cried on his shoulder. Soothingly, he rubbed Jeremy’s back as he said, “Even after all this time, you still miss him terribly, don’t you?” It then dawned on me that Trevor was talking about Cliff, Jeremy’s adoptive brother, who’d died of AIDS when we were still in high school. It was amazing to me how Kurt and Trevor knew Jeremy so well.

“Thirty-three fucking years and I’m still not over it. I loved him so much,” Jeremy cried.

“He was a wonderful young man,” Trevor said, “and he’ll always hold a special place in our hearts. Even in the end, he died with his head held high. He lived life to the fullest and gave his all. That’s one of the reasons you love and miss him so much.”

“But why did he have to die?” I asked. “I came through it so well and now I’m cured.”

“Thank God you’re cured,” Kurt chimed in. “You’re a great guy, Sammy, a wonderful brother-in-law and we love you as much as Trevor and I love each other . . . just in a different way. It really sucks that for Cliff, the drugs stopped working and then he got PML and all. His was a life cut short before its prime and he suffered more than anyone should have had to. But one thing I do know is that he enriched all of our lives for having been a part of them. We are all better people because of the existence of Cliff Kimball.”

Finally releasing Trevor, Jeremy said, “You’re right, Kurt, we are all better because of Cliff, and the world is a better place because of David Reynolds, and I need to hold onto that and remember that.”

Changing the subject, Jeremy continued, “You know, if it hadn’t been for an important vote scheduled for later today, I would have been in St. Louis with David . . .”

“Oh my GOD,” Kurt practically shouted. “I forgot about that! You were supposed to go on this trip with him, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, and we were even going to take the kids. Believe it or not, they’ve never been, and we wanted to take them to see the Arch, Missouri Gardens and the Zoo, among other things. If it hadn’t been for the Organic Farming Bill, on which I’m a co-sponsor, we might all have been killed.”

“Let’s just thank God you didn’t go,” Kurt said.

“Amen to that,” Trevor agreed.

Just then, a virtual tsunami hit the presidential conference room as Marvin Schroeder entered the room, followed by two secret service agents. “All right, where is everyone?” he asked. “Is Roberts here yet? Where’s John?”

Schroeder was obviously referring to John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who, at 88 years of age, probably should have retired a long time ago. Being as sharp as the day he first started on the job, he seemed to have no intention of retiring. The poor Chief Justice’s body wasn’t cooperating much any more, however, and he found himself relying more and more on the use of a motorized scooter to get around and on the assistance of aides for help with basic bodily functions. His gnarled fingers made his writing virtually unreadable and his quivering voice was almost impossible to understand to all but those closest to him. Still, even his staunchest critics had to admit that his opinions, although very conservative, were brilliant nonetheless.

“I wasn’t aware he was supposed to be here,” Kurt volunteered, “but I’ll get right on checking into his whereabouts. Am I right in assuming you have yet to be sworn in?”

“Unfortunately so,” Schroeder huffed.

“Well we’ll certainly want to move on that as quickly as possible,” Kurt agreed. “I can assure you in the meantime that you’ll have our full cooperation and that we’ll treat you as the President, regardless.”

“That’s good,” Schroeder barked, “and why isn’t the cabinet here?”

“They’re all on their way, as dictated by protocol,” Kurt stated flatly. “It hasn’t even been an hour since the President was killed, after all. Everyone is being mobilized as quickly as is humanly possible. I’m sure you can understand why it will take Justice Roberts a while to get here. Secretary of Health Altaf El Tahari and his husband, Surgeon General Randall Bernstein, are up at the NIH . . . we’ve cleared and secured the Red Line and they should be here in about twenty minutes. The secretary of Education is in Minneapolis and we probably won’t be able to get a secure flight in and out of there until tomorrow.

“So you see,” Kurt explained, “it’s going to take some time to convene the full cabinet. The President wasn’t supposed to be back in Washington until the end of next week, after all.”

“This isn’t good at all!” Schroder fumed. “I’m going to need everyone’s resignation on my desk by the end of the day!”

“What!” Jeremy practically shouted.

“You heard me, faggot!” This was not going well.

Hearing that, I didn’t hesitate - I got directly in Schroeder’s face. “SIR! The President of the United States was just assassinated less than an hour ago, and you have managed to insult not only him, but also his widower. Out of respect, we are treating you as the acting president, but you have not yet taken the oath of office and you are technically not yet the president until you do so. The Constitution is quite clear that the Chief Justice has the authority to administer the oath to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate if he feels you are not fit to assume the duties of President. Not only does insulting a very popular president who was just assassinated demonstrate extremely poor judgment and insensitivity, but it might cause some to question your fitness to lead at this critical point in time.

“I would also remind you that the Republican lead in the House is razor thin. With you ascending to the presidency, the party can only afford to lose no more than two seats to the Democrats and hold on to that lead. Now back home, many have referred to me as a Republican in name only, since I tend to vote my conscience more often than I vote the party line. My constituents appreciate that, since Democrats outnumber Republicans by a two-to-one margin in my central city district. I seriously doubt they’d have too much of a problem with me were I to switch parties. Something tells me I’m not the only one who feels this way and if you were to fire David Reynolds’ entire cabinet, there would be other defections. How the Hell would you explain losing the House to the Republican National Committee?”

Suddenly, Schroeder looked shaken. Backing away from me, he put up his hands and said, “I’m sorry Sammy, but you got it all wrong.” Then he turned to Jeremy and said, “I’m sorry, Kimball, I didn’t mean to call you that. I didn’t mean to say that at all. I’m just so damn nervous. This is all so damn much responsibility. Reynolds made it all look so easy. I don’t know how he did it. How can I possibly follow in his footsteps? The whole world will be watching me and all I can think of is that I’ll probably fuck up!”

Turning back to Kurt, Schroeder said, “DeWitt, you guys got it all wrong. I didn’t mean I want the whole cabinet to resign. No, I didn’t mean that at all. I’m gonna need the cabinet. Reynolds’ cabinet. I’ll need every last one of ’em. I wouldn’t know where to begin without ’em. It’s just traditional for everyone on the cabinet and everyone in the first few layers of the administration to submit letters of resignation up front, to show their loyalty to the new president.”

Kurt went up to Schroeder and put his hand on his shoulder, which wasn’t easy considering that Schroeder was close to a foot taller, and said to him, “Mr. President to be, you don’t need to worry about such things. That’s my job. I know that you’ll eventually want your own Chief of Staff . . . someone you know well and in whom you can place all your trust but, for now, I know the inner workings of Washington and the White House and of this cabinet in depth. I’m prepared to keep everything working for you to the fullest for the remainder of this presidential term. You can count on my loyalty and support so long as you don’t try to undermine the accomplishments of your predecessor, who was more than my employer . . . David Reynolds has been a lifelong friend . . . more like a brother to me. He helped me when I was a young teenager . . . more than you could ever know, and that is a loyalty I will never betray.

“Other than that, you will have my complete cooperation in keeping the White House running and the cabinet operations running smoothly. Should you choose to run for this office, I expect that you will want to choose your own Chief of Staff for the next term and I will not, under those circumstances, stay on for the next term if you win the election. I expect you will also choose your own cabinet. Until that time, you will have my full cooperation.”

“I hadn’t even thought that far ahead,” Schroeder admitted. “I’m not so sure I even want to run for the office. I was happy in the House. I’m not sure I’m the man the RNC would want at the head of the ticket.”

“But now everything’s changed,” I reminded Schroeder. “The leadership of the RNC will be watching your every move during the coming months. Come February, if you’ve managed to heal the nation and done a decent job of running the country, then chances are you’re the man they’ll want to see stomping up in New Hampshire, winning the hearts and minds of the Party faithful.”

“Right now, February seems a long way away,” Schroeder lamented.

“Centuries away,” I agreed.

“Ah, here you all are!” Lance Cohen breathlessly shouted as he stormed into the conference room. Lance, another friend from back home, was the President’s press secretary. “The Chief Justice will be here any minute. We need to get you all to the Underground Press Room. That’s where the swearing in ceremony’s going to be held. We’ve been gathering members of the press down there as quickly as we could round them up and the news feed’s already in place. The whole world’s going to be watching.

“I’ve taken the liberty of preparing some remarks for you, Mr. Soon-to-be-President,” he said as he handed a sheaf of papers to Schroeder. “I hope they meet with your approval. They’ve already been fed into the holoprompters. If there’s anything you want to change, you need to let me know right away.”

Before Schroeder could say anything, Lance was already gone, leaving the poor soon-to-be-ex-Speaker of the House standing there, baffled. Slowly, he shuffled the pages he’d just been handed. He started reading them solemnly, nodding his head slowly as he went along.

When he reached the end, he said, “This is perfect. How in the world did he come up with something like this so fast?”

“Lance has been with us for a long, long time.” Kurt answered. “In fact, we’ve known him since high school. His father was a senior editor for the local paper back home and Lance cut his teeth in the newsrooms of one of the cable networks before we tapped him to work for us. You couldn’t find a better press secretary.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Schroeder nodded in gratitude.

“We’d better make our way to the Press Room,” I suggested.

“By all means,” Schroeder agreed.

I had no doubt that Schroeder had plenty of experience being in front of cameras and microphones before but I doubt that he’d ever been subjected to the kind of attention he now faced. The whole world, literally, was watching. Only fifty individuals in the history of the United States had taken the oath he was about to take. He was to be number fifty-one.

The Chief Justice wheeled in, in his electric scooter, accompanied by an entourage of personal assistants, clerks and a secret service detail. When everything was set up, he rose with dignity from his chair, the years of age seemingly melting away as he stood straight and tall. In spite of what we’d all expected, he spoke loudly and clearly into the microphone.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I had hoped I would never have the sad duty of administering this solemn oath under these circumstances. I suppose it is to be expected if one lives long enough and serves in this position for so many years that it’s inevitable that a president will die in office, but I never expected that it would be this president . . . one who was so young, and historic, and in spite of our differences in political philosophies, has had such a record of accomplishment. It is indeed a sad day for America . . . and for the world.

“I had the pleasure of administering this oath of office on three of the most historic of occasions . . . the inauguration of the first African American president, that of the first woman president, and that of the first gay president. It is sad indeed that I am also presiding on this day over the oath of office to replace one of these due to assassination. The one thing I know is that America is stronger than those who would seek to undermine the democracy that chose these presidents. We will go on as a nation. . . . You can kill our leaders, but you cannot kill our spirit.”

I had tears in my eyes after hearing John Roberts’ words. They were so beautiful. How could Lance have topped that? Indeed, Schroeder admitted as much after shaking Roberts hand once he had taken the oath of office.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the press, my fellow Americans, citizens of the world, it is with great sadness that I accept the reins of leadership on this very tragic day indeed,” he began his speech. “For more than thirty years I have served this great nation of ours as a U.S. Congressman, and during the past eight years as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I am a dedicated public servant who believes in the greatness of this nation and even more so in the greatness of its people. Time and again we have risen to the occasion, in good times and in bad.

“I know that you did not elect me to be your president and that I am not even from the same political party. I have often opposed the President’s policies in Congress . . . nevertheless, I cannot help but offer grudging respect to what he has accomplished during the last couple of years, and to the immensely popular policies he has put in place. It is up to the voters, not to me, to change these policies and I want to assure you, the American public, and to assure the rest of the world that nothing will change. I will uphold the ideals of President David Reynolds throughout the remainder of his term as best I can until the next election, at which time the American people can make their choice on who their next leader will be.

“Make no mistake, our democracy came under attack today, but it is not vengeance we seek, but justice. We do not yet know who it was that instigated this attack and, until we know more about the nature of the attack, we cannot properly frame our response. There will be a very thorough investigation, I assure you, and an appropriate and measured response will follow. If President Reynolds’ attackers acted alone and out of hate, they will be brought to justice for the entire world to see the dead end that hatred really is. Those who hate will come to see how alone and isolated they truly are as the rest of the world mourns the loss of a great man.

“If those who perpetrated this crime did not act alone . . . if this was a state- or terrorist-sanctioned act of cowardice against the United States . . . then the world will see how we deal with those who act in defiance of international standards of decency. Make no mistake . . . our response will be measured, and it will fit the crime.

“In the meantime, the United States will go on as it always has. The Government of, by and for the People will continue as it has for more than two hundred fifty years. Those who would attempt to do us harm have only killed one man, but they can never kill the spirit of that man or the spirit of this nation.”

Schroeder continued. “The great deeds of President Reynolds will live on. The legacy of President Reynolds can never be undone. His greatness will be with us forever. I understand that his relatives have agreed that his final resting place will be in Arlington National Cemetery as a gift to the Nation, much as was done with President Kennedy. It is certainly his right to be buried there as a war hero, even though he was never an enlisted man. Few soldiers have shown more bravery than David Reynolds and Jeremy Kimball. A presidential memorial will be built there as well.

“Now we turn another page in the book of American history, and another chapter begins. I am asking all of President Reynolds’ cabinet and staff to stay on throughout the remainder of their term. I will need their assistance until the American people elect a new president and until the day of his or her inauguration.

“And with that in mind, I would like to ask the Chief of Staff, who is himself an ordained minister, to lead us in prayer. Thank you.”

Kurt had obviously anticipated this, as he was already in motion as the new president concluded his remarks. He kept the prayer short and nondenominational. Although some of the members of the press tried to ask questions, none were taken and we all left the room with due haste.

Now came the hard part . . . transitioning the government to a man who quite obviously felt lost and who would be overseeing policies to which he’d been diametrically opposed throughout his career, ramping up an investigation into David’s death and planning a funeral that would be witnessed by billions of people worldwide.

Soon David’s parents, his brother and Jeremy’s parents would all be making their way to Washington by train along with David’s body while millions of well-wishers watched along the way. Millions more would wait hours in line to file through the Capitol rotunda, just to file past David’s casket, even though it would be a closed one. Millions would stand for hours in line to wait along the parade route to watch his casket make its way to the cemetery, and billions would watch the funeral on TV.