Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

“I’m filling my glass with more Scotch. To the brim. Maybe I’ll mix it with sleeping pills. That works, doesn’t it?”

“Save some for me.”

“What do you know. This Scotch, it’s older than you.”

Cassandra’s arraignment the next day at the United States Courthouse drew a big media crowd. As Terry said to her once they’d made it inside, “When it comes to getting your message out there, there’s really nothing like being formally charged with attempting to overthrow the government.”

The valiant but peeved Allen Snyder explained to Cassandra that normally they would have prosecuted her only for counseling people to violate the tax laws (26 U.S.C. section 7206). But because of the increasingly dire situation-the stock market had lost a thousand points in one week; the dollar had lost 15 percent against the euro-the government was in a sour and paranoid mood. The decision had been made to throw the proverbial book at her and to charge her under 18 U.S.C. section 2385 (“Advocating Overthrow of Government”).

The U.S. attorney told the judge that Cass should be held in custody as a flight risk. Attorney Snyder did not put up much of a counterargument.

“Aren’t you going to say something to the judge?” she said.

“To be honest with you,” Snyder whispered, “I think I’d rather you were somewhere you didn’t have access to a microphone.”

“What is this, a time-out?”

Thus Cassandra found herself exchanging her K Street suit for an orange jumpsuit and shackles. As she was helped into the prisoner transport van, she gave the photographers a V-for-victory sign. The shackles kept her hands at waist level. One reporter noted that her hands “looked like two chained birds attempting to take flight.” The gesture appeared on the cover of the next week’s Time with the cover line “She’s Not Gonna Take It!”

On Cassandra’s first night in detention, four dozen gated Boomer retirement communities around the country were attacked by youth mobs, causing various state governors to have to call out the National Guard. As National Guard units were now massively deployed around the world-in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Bosnia, Bolivia, Quebec, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Comoro Islands-the incidents caused a tremendous strain, along with renewed calls for bringing the troops home.

“This Boomsday business,” the White House chief of staff said to the president, “is getting out of hand, don’t you think?”

Allen Snyder visited Cassandra at the Alexandria Detention Center, along with Terry.

“I’ve got some good news for you,” he said. “Some very good news. They’re prepared to drop the overthrow-the-government charge. And they’ll consider reducing the advocating-tax-revolt charge. Provided you cease and desist. They’re asking us-you-to sign a statement saying that you didn’t realize that what you were advocating was in violation of federal law.”

“That’s all?”

“No. You’re being sued by the owners of the gated retirement communities that were assaulted. Willful incitement to destroy property. So far it comes to a hundred and fifty million in damages. Most of it for repairing the golf greens.”

“Solidarity’s revolt began in a Gdansk shipyard,” Cass said. “This one seems to be teeing off from a golf course.”

“I’d seriously consider taking the government up on their offer. They’re nervous right now. They’ve got better things to do. If we say no at this point, they could very well dig in their heels. Once they do that…You must understand this is a very serious charge, overthrowing the government. Technically it’s a capital offense. They wouldn’t try for the death penalty. But they might go for the maximum sentence.”

“Which would be…?”

“Life without parole.”

“Um,” Cassandra said. “Not optimal.”

Terry said, “Look, kiddo, you made the cover of Time . Let’s declare victory and take the rest of the week off.”

“That’s not why I’m doing this. Kiddo .”

“You want to spend the rest of your life here? Wearing orange?”

“No. But I have to spend the rest of my life with myself one way or the other, and I’d rather not spend it detesting myself for going back on what I believe in.”

Terry had spent more time wading through swampy bottomland than standing tall on the moral high ground. He made a despairing grunt.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Would you stop saying that?” Terry said. He looked completely helpless.

She smiled at him. “Smuggle me in some Scotch? The stuff they serve in here can’t be even thirty days old.”

It had been a few months since Terry had spoken with Senator Randolph K. Jepperson of the great state of Massachusetts.

Randy had been disappointed in his first attempt to win a Senate seat, the year after the incident in Bosnia. Terry’s herculean efforts to make him into an icon of American heroism had largely succeeded, and going into the final weeks of the campaign, Randy held a small lead in the polls.

Cass, working for Terry on other client accounts, had declined all press queries pertaining to the Bosnian misadventure. But the pilot of the army Blackhawk helicopter that had plucked them from the minefield did offer a comment when a reporter finally tracked him down. He had retired from the army and was thus no longer restrained by military discipline and discretion. “I never did understand,” he said, “what that gold-plated imbecile was doing driving a vehicle in the middle of a f-- minefield.”

“Gold-plated imbecile” is not a term one wants applied to oneself in the final days of a fiercely contested political race, especially coming from the lips of a decorated former U.S. military officer. His opponent plastered it on every bumper sticker, website, TV commercial, and leaflet. Randy lost by seven thousand votes.

People around Randolph K. Jepperson remarked on the change that came over him. He went into what is usually called “seclusion,” with no movie-star girlfriend or ex-rocker’s wife. When he emerged, he had a look in his eyes that one staffer called “kinda spooky.”

On his first day back in Congress, he fired everyone in his office, including Lillian, who for once was correct in not finding any humor in the situation. He replaced his loyal staff with the equivalent of Capitol Hill mercenaries. He lured away seasoned pros from other congressional offices, paying above-standard salaries. He hired expensive lobbyists and operatives from K Street; trade association sharks and hired guns; legislative dogs of war. By the time the restaffing was complete, his House colleagues were referring to his office as “the Death Star.”

When Randy called Terry several weeks after his defeat, Terry assumed it was to fire him, too. But instead he told him, in a voice that Terry also thought kinda spooky, “Next time, we win. Whatever. It. Takes.”

A year later, Randy’s mother, last empress of the Jepperson dynasty, passed away after choking to death on a hairball from one of her eight Pomeranians. The butler was either unskilled at the Heimlich maneuver or-some said-had let nature take its course.

The governor issued a proclamation. The funeral was a state occasion. Throughout the service, Randy stared at the casket with what some found an inappropriate look.

“Did you see his expression,” said Mrs. Gardner Peabody Cabot at the reception afterward, “while he was tossing in the first spadeful of earth?”

“And the way he kept on shoveling,” said Mrs. Templeton Lowell Scrodworthy.

It was just as well no one knew that Terry Tucker had had to talk Randy into attending.

“Put it this way,” he told his client. “How many questions do you want, next time you run, about why you didn’t attend your own mother’s funeral? What are we going to say? That you couldn’t miss the vote on extending the debt ceiling?”