Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

“I didn’t say I was going to tell Leno what was in the letter,” said Scarborough. “I’m just going to tell him about it.”

“Okay, fine, I don’t have to see it,” said Bonguard. “I’ve heard enough of the details from you to know. If even half of what you say is there, this thing’s going nuclear. I’m telling you, cable news, the networks, a banner headline in the Times big enough to make people think World War II has ended again. How could it not? Discovery of a secret letter-

Footnotes to the Declaration?”

“All of that is true,” said Scarborough. “But there’s something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m not at liberty to say right now.”

“Either you trust me or you don’t,” said the agent.

Scarborough’s silence answered the question for him.

“In time you’ll know everything,” he said eventually.

“Yes, come death, we’ll all know the riddles of life,” said Bonguard. He hated the Zen-like conundrums of this guy. Terry Scarborough was like the kid in the clubhouse who always had the biggest secret and wanted everybody to pound the crap out of him to get it because it made him feel important.

As he looked at his client in the mirror, the thought crossed Bonguard’s mind that maybe Scarborough was talking to another agent. In his business, especially in the stratosphere where they were playing now, you always had to look for poachers dangling the prospect of a better deal. It was the reason Bonguard was glued to him on this book tour. You never want to let a $22 million prick walk around alone.

“After the show we can talk about a few details. We won’t have to worry about chasing the media. They’ll be coming to us,” said Scarborough.

“Yeah. A year early,” said Bonguard. “In this business, timing is everything.”

“I’m getting tired listening to the same song. The J letter is national poison, and there’s no expiration date on the bottle,” said Scarborough.

People in the White House were already pulling their hair out over the first book, and there was nothing they could do. It could only get worse when the J letter was revealed.

Strangely enough, the controversy that Scarborough had ignited with the current book swirled around arcane language in the Constitution. Like original sin, the words had been there since the beginning, since 1787, the year the Constitution was first adopted. They had been overridden by a civil war and later amendments, but they were still there.

The words may have been dead-letter law, but to a generation sensitized to racial slight they were offensive. And because of the peculiar manner in which the Constitution is published, they were still visible in public print, right there in the organic law of the nation. They were the original words of slavery.

To a broad public unschooled in the stylistic nuances of codebooks and statutes, the vast majority of Americans, the fact that these shame-filled words and their hidden meanings still graced their Constitution was news the minute Scarborough published his book and took to the trail on his publicity tour. Suddenly people who had been outraged that some states could even consider flying the Confederate flag were confronted with words that confirmed African American bondage and defined black people as “three-fifths” of a human being, and then only for purposes of voting by their white slave masters. The public outrage, in black communities, in colleges and universities across the country, exploded.

Slavery may have ended, but the stigma and the sudden reminder that it was embedded in the Constitution brought back history with a vengeance. The words were there for all time, for their children and grandchildren, for all of posterity to read.

The problem was that government was powerless to remove the offending words. Republicans and Democrats all stumbled over themselves trying to placate the African American community. There were resolutions of comfort in Congress. The president had done everything but go on national television to offer a public apology. He had been quoted, while heading to Marine One on the White House lawn, as saying, “We’re all looking very hard at this, in a bipartisan way.” He talked as if words engraved in the Constitution more than two hundred years ago had suddenly uncoiled themselves, slipped up behind the entire country, and strangled us all in our beds.

Without realizing it, the founders had created a literary monster in the way they’d amended the Constitution. Unlike federal statutes where laws once repealed were removed from the codebooks and disappeared from view, provisions of the Constitution repealed by later amendments remained in the document. They may have been dead-letter law, but they were still there for everyone to read. And this wasn’t like the repeal of Prohibition, with alcoholics stumbling through the streets demanding the removal of language foisted on them by Carry Nation.

Supported by sociological studies, statistics on prison population by race, disparities in income since the Civil War, and psychological data showing long-term damage rooted in race, Scarborough’s book punctuated it all with the words of slavery still visible in the Constitution.

The book was peddled to a mass market that had never put all the pieces together before. Many of them now saw the old words of slavery staring at them from the nation’s most fundamental, organic law as a national insult. They were carrying placards in the streets bearing the preamble to the Constitution superimposed over the Confederate flag.

Scarborough couldn’t believe that someone else hadn’t exposed it decades earlier, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It had been left there for him to pluck, like some ripe fruit.

Still leaning against the frame of the bathroom door, Bonguard was getting nervous. He had never seen the letter. Now he wanted to see it.

“Do you mind telling me where the letter is?”

Scarborough turned and looked at him. “In a safe place.”

“I just thought I’d ask. What I’m afraid of is you’re gonna go on Leno tonight and blow it.”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to tell them everything tonight,” said Scarborough. “I mean, if they came unglued over the words of slavery, I’d need to peel the contents of Jefferson’s letter for them like an onion so that they can get the true flavor before I add the special seasonings”-he stared at Bonguard as if there were some hidden meaning in his face-“drop it all in the pot, and cook it with a book.”

Another brain teaser, thought Bonguard. “But why not save the details?”

“Oh, I’ll have all the details in the book, all right.” He ran a comb through his hair and headed for the bedroom with Bonguard following.

“This revelation. What exactly…?”

“Wait and learn,” said Scarborough. “Feelings of racial discord in this country run deep. Roll out the letter with all the details, the real in-depth story, and if everything goes well, we may have a new American Revolution.”

Scarborough pulled a shirt off a hanger in the closet, still talking as if to himself. “I wonder how many of them were involved. It had to be more than one,” he said.

“One what?” Bonguard looked as if he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone.

“Stay tuned,” said Scarborough. “Besides, if I did it on a hard-news show, they’d nail me. A million follow-up questions. Where did I find the letter? How long did I have it? Who does it belong to? Why hadn’t I revealed it earlier? How could I? I didn’t know all the facts. I was in the middle of an ongoing investigation. But why get into all that when I can do it on Leno? I was disarmed by humor, caught up in the comedy of the moment. I let my guard down. Next thing I know, there it is, history’s biggest national turd on America’s living-room floor. More news later.” Scarborough smiles at the thought.