William Bernhardt - Capitol Threat

Moving as quickly as decorum would allow, Ben made his way inside the Senate chamber. He emerged on the carpeted center aisle but veered left toward the curving rows of nineteenth-century mahogany desks (exactly one hundred of them) arranged in concentric semicircles. Ben found his assigned desk on the Democrat side: Desk 101 on the far rear left of the chamber, the desk reserved for the most junior freshman senator in the assemblage. He slid behind it, sat up straight, and tried to act as if he had been there all along and knew exactly what was going on.

Ben had been in such a rush it took him a moment before he noticed that no one else was there. The other desks were all empty.

What was going on? Had he gotten the dates confused? He checked the memo Christina had given him. No, she had told him to be here thirty-five minutes ago, and Christina did not make mistakes. Where was the rest of the Senate?

There was one other person present, but he wasn’t at a desk. The junior senator from Alaska, Byron Perkins, was on his feet, milling aimlessly about the Senate floor in the general vicinity of the rostrum. He was a tall, prematurely gray senator in his second term, but Ben knew he had already managed to get appointed to some of the most prestigious committees. He appeared to be reading from the newspaper—something about grape imports in Pago Pago.

Perkins spotted Ben and made his way toward Desk 101. He eventually stood directly in front of Ben, winked, and continued reading.

“…while the commerce secretary assured the crowd that a steady stream of fruit would continue throughout the spring season. The representatives from the agricultural community were pleased by the announcement. In other news…”

Ben listened to the scintillating prose from the Washington Post read aloud for the better part of an hour. Could this really be what he was supposed to be doing? And if so, why was he the only person here? He wanted to ask someone, but he was afraid to get out of his chair. Could one false move end the filibuster? Perkins never took a breath long enough for Ben to ask him anything. What should he do? Eventually, a potent combination of confusion, fear, and boredom gave him the courage to raise a hand.

“No, sir,” Perkins rambled on, “I will not yield to the young senator from Oklahoma, because if I did, my filibuster would come to an end and the Republican majority could seize control of the chamber. However, the weather forecast for this week in D.C. looks exceptionally rosy…”

Ben lowered his hand.

“…but despite the fine weather outside, I might do well to offer the eager but rather inexperienced senator from Oklahoma the knowledge that during a filibuster, although the senators have to remain on the premises in case a quorum call is made by the opposition, only the most inexperienced rube would actually go to the Senate chamber and listen to the continuous drivelous spiel that makes up the actual filibuster.”

Ben shrank down into his seat.

“Interested parties might find the members of the Senate in the large conference room across the hall. If such interested party will be going there now, I wonder if he might consider fetching me some coffee. I don’t want to presume, but when one is the most junior senator in this august legislative body, and one has been foolish enough to actually attend a filibuster in progress, a certain degree of errand-running might not be utterly inappropriate…”

Across the hall in the large conference room, Ben found a vast expanse of cots stretched as far as the eye could see. The other ninety-eight members of the Senate, with few exceptions, were resting on the cots, for the most part sound asleep. Ben gazed at the field of legislators, some of whom he had admired his entire life—Senate Minority Leader Hammond, Senator Keyes from Texas, and numerous others, all arrayed before him, many of them stripped down to T-shirts and boxers, and also—

Snoring.

Ah, the glamorous life of a United States senator.

2

It still didn’t seem like his office.

Ben, aided by Christina’s eternal resourcefulness and dubious decorating taste, had tried to remake the place in his own image. Almost everything that had belonged to Senator Glancy had been removed—including that creaky copying machine that printed only in blue ink. Ben had ordered the walls painted, the carpet replaced, and new furniture imported. Christina had contributed plants, a mostly dying breed from her nearby apartment on “C” Street. The walls were loaded with family photographs and press clippings pertaining to some of Ben’s more high-profile cases. He’d noticed that most of the other senators decorated the walls with campaign memorabilia, but since he’d never campaigned for anything in his life, he’d have to make do with mementos of trials gone by.

He’d made his private retreat in the right rear of Senate office S-212-D in the Russell Building a near replica of the one he had back at Two Warren Place in Tulsa: a cozy nook in which he could deal with the endless stream of memos, e-mail, phone calls, lobbyists, and constituents. He needed a place for personal privacy or private meetings. He still hadn’t been assigned one of the basement hideaways—just as well, given the unpleasant memories of Glancy’s hideaway he still retained, not to mention his inability to navigate the basement without becoming hopelessly lost. And no one seemed to use the Senate library anymore. It was dusty, musty, poorly lit—and worst of all, they didn’t carry either of the two books Ben had written. There was a rumor circulating that Christina was mounting a boycott.

Speaking of whom…

Ben stared up into the vivid blue eyes of his law partner, Christina McCall, currently serving as his chief of staff, who was seated on his desk, hovering over him. Her strawberry blond hair encircled her head like the flaming halo of the Angel of Retribution; her arms were akimbo, her brow was creased, and she had called him “Benjamin J. Kincaid,” a certain sign that she meant business.

“You have to make a decision. Now.”

“I—I don’t see the urgency.”

“That’s why you have a chief of staff. So what’s it going to be? Decide!”

“Look, I’m a United States senator—”

“Which is precisely why you can’t dither about the way you usually do. Decide!”

Ben tried to push his chair back, but the wall blocked his escape. “It’s only been a few months since the governor appointed me to fill out the remainder of Senator Glancy’s term. I don’t even know if I like it, much less whether I want to run for reelection. Well, I don’t know if it’s really reelection when you weren’t elected the first time, but I still—”

“Stop.” Her eyebrows knitted together. “You thought I was talking about deciding whether to run for a full term?”

“Everyone has been hounding me for a statement. The press, the governor, Senator Hammond—”

“I don’t give a damn about that.”

Ben blinked. “You don’t?”

“Well, I mean, I do—but I already know what your decision will be.”

“Is that so. Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me.”

“Nope. Violates the Prime Directive.”

“Excuse me?”

“Forbids interference with the natural development of a dithering personality.”

“Then what are we talking about?”

She thrust the back of her left hand into his face. “This!”

The sizeable diamond glittered in his eyes. “Oh, that. Well, gosh, we’ve only been engaged for, um…”

“Thirteen weeks, two days, and roughly four-and-a-half hours.”

“Yes. Exactly.” He pressed his hand against his brow. “I thought it was understood that we’d get married after this term ended and we were back in Tulsa.”