William Bernhardt - Capitol Conspiracy

“What the-?” Marjorie was about to speak, but before she could, the elderly senator moved it closer to his face to get a better look-and immediately regretted it.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

“Robert? What is it?”

“Get out of here, Marjorie.”

“But what-”

“I said, Get out of here! Leave!” He already felt his knees buckling. His stomach knotted and his digestive tract began to cramp. “Get everyone out. The whole staff. Lock the door behind you. Seal it. And don’t let anyone in until the Capitol Police arrive.”

“But-”

“Marjorie! Do it!” His body began to shake. He realized he was going into shock. Bad memory or not, he remembered the briefing they had all been given when the white powder was found in Senator Frist’s mailroom. “Damn. Damn! ”

Marjorie fled the office. Senator Hammond crumpled to the floor. Barely thirty seconds had passed, but his organs were already beginning to liquefy. Blood seeped from his ears and his eye sockets.

Damn it, this was not how he wanted to go out. He still had work to do!

To his credit, his last thought was not of himself. He thought of Marshall, of what must have happened to him. He realized the only possible reason someone would want to kill him, here, now. He was helpless, paralyzed, as every cell in his body was systematically attacked and destroyed. He heard the pounding of heavy-booted footsteps out in the corridor, but he knew the Capitol Police would not get to him in time.

“Oklahoma City,” he whispered to the lead police officer, with his final breath. Then he closed his eyes and passed from being the most powerful Democratic senator in the country to being a helpless puddle on the carpet.

Ben Kincaid stood at the corner of Lincoln Boulevard, still unable to believe he was really about to meet the President of the United States. In his short time as a replacement senator he had viewed President Blake from a distance, even attended ceremonies at the White House-but an actual face-to-face meeting was something else again. Was it only yesterday he was a small-time attorney with a struggling, profitless practice and a shoddy office in downtown Tulsa? It seemed that way. The whirlwind of events that had put him in the Washington limelight still seemed unreal. And the most unreal part was that his meteoric rise to the U.S. Senate was not the most amazing, unbelievable, life-shattering thing that had happened to him recently.

He stared at the gold band on the ring finger of his left hand, incredulous.

Ben Kincaid was a married man.

Major Mike Morelli, standing just beside him, leaned toward Ben’s ear. “Still can’t believe it, huh?”

“No. I was convinced I’d be a bachelor my entire life.”

Mike did a double take. “Ben-I was talking about shaking hands with the leader of the free world.”

“Oh.”

“This is a major event.”

“Getting married is a major event.”

“Ah, the lover. ‘Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’s eyebrow.’”

“If you’re going to start with the poetry, I’m disinviting you,” Ben said. “It’s just a big life change, that’s all. After you’ve been single so long.”

“Poor boy. ‘So we’ll go no more a-roving / So late into the night…’”

“I think I’m hearing poetry again.”

“You need to relax, Ben. People get married all the time. In fact, some people get married several times. But there’s only one president.”

Ben shrugged. “I didn’t vote for him.”

“You didn’t vote at all!”

“I voted for Christina. Till death us do part.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “You are too sappy for words.”

“I recall a time-” Ben stopped short. He remembered when Mike was in the flush of new love-with Ben’s younger sister, Julia. He and Ben had been college roommates, Mike an English major, Ben studying music, when Mike met Julia. After a whirlwind courtship, they were married, but the union didn’t last long. Julia fled to somewhere on the East Coast and neither of them had seen her in years. Happily, despite this trauma and the deep scars it left, he and Mike had remained best friends throughout the intervening years, as Ben established his law practice and Mike rose to become a senior homicide investigator with the Tulsa Police Department.

Mike glanced at him, a small sad smile flickering on his face. They’d known each other long enough that Ben didn’t have to finish the sentence.

As if he sensed the need for a mood change, Mike’s expression suddenly shifted to a broad and rather naughty grin. “Speaking of your new bride-is she still pissed?”

Ben’s neck stiffened. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“I’ll bet. ‘Hell hath no fury…’”

“She’s just…” Ben drew in his breath, then slowly released it. “…Grumpy.”

“Imagine. And all you did was cancel her honeymoon.”

“There were extenuating circumstances. President Blake personally requested that I be here when he visited my home state.”

“But that didn’t satisfy Christina?”

“You know how…forceful she can be. Plus, she’s wanted to see France all her life.” He paused. “Plus, the man is a Republican.”

Mike smirked. “Which I guess explains why she’s not standing beside you playing the loyal wife.”

Ben shuffled his feet. “Well, someone had to stay in the gallery with my mother.”

“Senator Kincaid?”

Ben felt a light tap on his shoulder. The man standing behind him was young, perhaps early thirties, sandy-haired. He was wearing a midnight-blue suit, thin tie, and sunglasses, which Ben knew meant he must be one of the dozens of Secret Service agents stationed around the Oklahoma City National Memorial. “Yes?”

“I’m Agent Max Zimmer. I’m here to escort you to the reception position, where the cameras and crowd can see the president emerge from Cadillac One”-he smiled-“from a safe distance.”

But of course. It wasn’t as if the president had asked him here because of his deep personal affection. After that business over the nomination of Justice Roush to the Supreme Court, it was a miracle the man would speak to Ben at all. What he wanted was to be seen at an important Oklahoma event with a newly minted senator with unaccountably high approval ratings.

Ben heard what sounded like the buzz of a bumblebee coming from Zimmer’s coat sleeve. The agent casually raised the sleeve to his mouth, listened for a moment, then spoke into it. “Understood. Samson in five.” He looked up. “Come along, Senator. Time for you and your guest to move.”

Ben and Mike followed the agent to the street just behind the Oklahoma City National Memorial, erected on the site of the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the office complex that was blown to bits by Timothy McVeigh’s fertilizer bomb on this very date, several years before. It was a catastrophic event no Oklahoman would ever forget. Memorial services were held here on this date annually, and this year, the sitting president was in attendance to offer his condolences and help the healing.

And, Ben supposed, the fact that Oklahoma was a borderline red/blue state whose electoral votes were currently uncertain had nothing to do with it.

It was a magnificent memorial, the largest of its kind in the United States, designed to honor the fallen, the survivors, the rescuers, and everyone else whose life had been indelibly changed by the tragedy. Enormous twin bronze gates framed the 3.3-acre expanse within. Because the explosion occurred at 9:02 a.m., the eastern gate was engraved with the time 9:01-the last minute of peace-and the western gate was engraved with 9:03-the first moment of the ensuing horror. A reflecting pool stretched across the center of the memorial between the two gates, a thin layer of water over polished black marble. On one side of the pool was the Field of Empty Chairs: 168 chairs of bronze, glass, and stone, one for each of the people who died in the explosion.