“My ears only,” he says.
I can’t give Lester all the details, but I can give him enough to nibble on.
“We weren’t trying to rescue Suliman Cindoruk,” I say. “We were trying to capture him.”
“Then…” Lester opens his hands. “Why did you stop that militia group?”
“They didn’t want to capture him, Lester. They wanted to kill him. They were going to fire shoulder-launched missiles into his house.”
“So?” Lester shrugs. “A captured terrorist, a dead terrorist—what’s the difference?”
“In this case, a huge difference,” I say. “I need Suliman Cindoruk alive.”
Lester looks at his hands, twists his wedding ring. Staying in listen mode, revealing nothing on his end.
“Our intel told us this militia group had found him. We didn’t know more than that. All we could do was piggyback their operation in Algeria, try to stop them from a full-on attack, and catch Suliman ourselves. We stopped their attack, but Suliman got away in the melee. And yes, an American died. Something we wanted to remain covert and highly classified became viral on social media within hours.”
Lester works that over, his eyes narrowed, head nodding.
“I don’t think Suliman is working alone,” I say. “I think he was hired. And I think Toronto was the warm-up, the trial run, the appetizer.”
“And we are the main course,” Lester whispers.
“Correct.”
“A cyberattack,” he mumbles. “Bigger than Toronto.”
“Big enough to make Toronto look like a stubbed toe.”
“Christ.”
“I need Suliman alive because he may be the only person who can stop it. And he can identify who hired him and who else, if anyone, is working with him. But I don’t want anyone to know what I know or what I think. I’m trying to do something that is incredibly difficult for the United States of America to do—fly under the radar.”
A hint of realization comes to the Speaker’s expression. He leans back against the couch like a man who’s holding all the cards. “You’re saying our hearings will interfere with what you’re doing.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Then why did you agree to testify in the first place?”
“To buy time,” I say. “You wanted to haul my entire national security team before your committee earlier this week. I couldn’t have that. I offered myself up in exchange for the time extension.”
“But now you need even more time. Beyond next Monday.”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to go back to my caucus and tell them we should give it to you.”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t tell them why. I can’t tell them any of what you told me. I just have to tell them that I decided to ‘trust’ you.”
“You’re their leader, Lester. So lead. Tell them you’ve decided that it’s in the best interests of our nation that we temporarily hold off on the hearings.”
His head drops, and he rubs his hands together, warming up for the speech that he probably recited into a mirror a dozen times before coming over here.
“Mr. President,” he says, “I understand these hearings are not something you want us to do. But just as you have your responsibilities, we have an oversight responsibility that serves as a check on executive power. I have members who elected me to ensure that we serve as that check. I can’t go back to my caucus and tell them we are going to shirk our responsibility.”
It was never going to matter what I said to him today. He’s got a playbook, and he’s following it. Patriotism was never going to factor in. If this guy ever had an unselfish thought, as my mama would say, it would die of loneliness.
But I’m not done trying.
“If this goes well,” I say, “and we stop this terrorist attack, you will be standing right next to me. I will tell the world that the Speaker put aside partisan differences and did the right thing for his country. I will hold you up as an example of what is right in Washington, DC. You’ll be Speaker for life.”
He continues to nod, clears his throat. His foot, on the floor, has begun to tap.
“But if…” He can’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“If things go wrong? Then I’ll take the blame. All of it.”
“But I will be blamed, too,” he says. “Because I stopped these hearings without giving my members, or the public, any reason at all. You can’t promise me that I’ll come out of this unscathed—”
“Lester, this is the job you signed up for. Whether you knew it or not, whether you like it or not. You’re right. There are no promises here. No sure things. I am the commander in chief, looking you in the eye and telling you that the security of this country is in jeopardy and I need your help. Are you going to help me or not?”
It doesn’t take him long. He works his jaw, looks at his hands. “Mr. President, I’d like to help you, but you have to understand, we have a responsib—”
“Damn it, Lester, put your country first!” I push myself out of my chair too fast, feeling wobbly, the anger consuming me. “I’m wasting my breath.”
Lester rises from the couch, shoots his cuffs again, straightens his tie. “So we’ll be seeing you on Monday?” As if nothing I said remotely registered with him. The only thing he cares about is returning to his caucus and telling them he stood up to me.
“You think you know what you’re doing,” I say, “but you don’t have the slightest idea.”
Chapter
8
I stare at the door after Speaker Rhodes leaves. I’m not sure what I expected of him. Old-fashioned patriotism? A sense of responsibility, maybe? A bit of trust in the president?
Dream on. There is no trust anymore. In the current environment, there’s no gain in it. All the incentives push people in the opposite directions.
So Rhodes will go to his corner, leading a charge he can’t really control because his caucus twitches at each tweet. Some days, my side isn’t much better. Participation in our democracy seems to be driven by the instant-gratification worlds of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. We’re using modern technology to revert to primitive kinds of human relations. The media knows what sells—conflict and division. It’s also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. It reminds me of the old political joke: Why do you take such an instant dislike to people? It saves a lot of time.
What happened to factual, down-the-middle reporting? That’s hard to even define anymore, as the line between fact and fiction, between truth and lies, gets murkier every day.
We can’t survive without a free press, dedicated to preserving that fine line and secure enough to follow the facts where they lead. But the current environment imposes serious pressures on our journalists, at least those who cover politics, to do just the reverse—to exercise their own power and to, in the words of one wise columnist, “abnormalize” all politicians, even honest, able ones, often because of relatively insignificant issues.