Bob Kassian dreaded occasions like these. He would do his best to arrive late and leave early which, in his role as Chief of Staff, was not just possible but expected. Of course he was too busy to spend more than a few precious minutes at a reception, hobnobbing with diplomats and selected ‘business leaders’. (In the previous era, a party like this would also have included a few journalists and academics, specialists in the relevant region, but McNamara had decreed that he’d had ‘enough of experts’ and so that custom had been terminated. Kassian disagreed but said nothing: pick your battles.) If anything, it would look suspiciously low energy and low status if the Chief of Staff were present there too long. Official Washington would be disappointed.
But tonight was different. Not the event itself: a reception in the East Room for the King of Saudi Arabia was as unappetizing as any other. But it provided a perfect opportunity to talk, discreetly and unheard, with the Secretary of Defense. If they had met in Kassian’s office in the White House, it would have looked too deliberate: a meeting, rather than a chat. Even more so if Kassian had made a special journey to the Pentagon. But grabbing a few moments to talk at a cocktail party? That was perfectly natural. Especially during a nuclear crisis, when discussion between the key players was around the clock. If someone spotted the two of them in earnest conversation, the most damaging interpretation would be that they were cementing an alliance that excluded the National Security Advisor: in other words a standard Washington turf war. No one would imagine they were plotting the assassination of the President of the United States. Hiding in plain sight: a tactic that had always served them both so well.
They now picked up where they had left off earlier that day. Once they had made the core decision, establishing the objective, they had moved swiftly to method. They talked first about what he, Kassian, referred to as ‘direct’ options.
Was there a way the two of them could kill the President themselves? The advantages were obvious. They would not be reliant on the discretion, or resolve, of anyone but each other. They could move fast, at a moment solely of their choosing. But could it be done?
Could they get themselves alone in a room with him, perhaps with a syringe containing a drug that might simulate a heart attack? Where would they source such a drug, without arousing suspicion? Once administered, would it leave a trace?
They were sure they could find answers to those questions. But as they went through the various scenarios, they found themselves running into the same brick walls. There was the simple fact that the President was almost never alone. On the contrary, he was the most closely defended human being on the planet. The Secret Service employed 6,750 people for the sole task of keeping him safe. There were agents in the Residence, agents in the office, agents wherever he travelled. Even if he were to demand a private, one-to-one chat with either his Chief of Staff or his Defense Secretary there was always a chance someone could join them at any moment. The one person who might have had a reason to be alone with the President, to demand complete privacy, with the time and space to do what needed to be done, was his personal physician. But that man was dead.
Even if they had found a way around that particular obstacle, and neither Kassian nor Bruton could easily see it, they’d run into the other, more serious hurdle: the fact that any one of the ‘direct’ options would make them immediate suspects. Had, say, Jim emerged from a private meeting in the Oval Office, only for the President to be found dead a few minutes later, he would be the first one accused. Yes, they might be able to engineer a delay to serve as an alibi, but if the death were eventually exposed as murder rather than the result of natural causes – and any post-mortem would be extremely thorough – then the automatic assumption would be that this had been an inside job. It might not be either one of them who was identified as the killer, but there would be no doubting that the President had been murdered by someone with proximity to power.
Neither needed to spell out what was obvious to the pair of them: that the personal consequences were not the issue here. Their fear was not that one or both of them might face justice and be made to pay for the crime of a presidential assassination. That was not why they needed to avoid any culpability.
‘If the finger pointed at you, Jim, can you even imagine it?’ Kassian had said. ‘The Secretary of Defense? It would be a military coup.’
Plenty of people, he argued, including many millions who couldn’t stand the President, would nevertheless be appalled at the brutality of such an act and its apparent contempt for democracy and the Constitution. Given the divisions that had been exposed in the election, and the loathing this President had aroused since, they both believed such an outcome could split the country in two. You could imagine it: the newspapers, the cities and coasts, much of the intelligence community in one camp; the rural counties, law enforcement and the border agencies in the other. Each side with its own political party, its own sympathetic TV networks, its own colours: a civil war of red versus blue.
America, they agreed, had always had the potential to do that again; the most lethal conflict the country had ever fought was against itself. An act of murder by the head of the US military would be the spark to relight the fire.
This was why it could not be either one of them who wielded the knife directly. That they would have the physical courage to do it, and damn the consequences – even if that meant risking their own life and liberty – neither doubted. The focus of their conversation in this crowded room, as they waited for the desert king to enter, was not saving their own skins, but saving the republic.
A man in a very expensive suit and with a head of thick, dark hair was hovering, waiting to introduce himself. Bruton turned and offered a handshake. ‘Good to see you,’ he said: the default Washington formulation, delicately insuring yourself against the possibility you had met before. Only a DC rookie ever made the mistake of saying, ‘Nice to meet you.’
The man turned out to be the Ambassador of Egypt, delighted to get a few moments with the Secretary of Defense. He mentioned something about an upcoming visit of his president and Bruton agreed that he would be delighted to meet to discuss further co-operation between their two countries, remembering to add, just in time, that of course he would consult with colleagues too. No need to piss off State.
The ambassador offered a graceful bow of the head and withdrew. They were bound to get interrupted again. They didn’t have much time.
‘So if not us, who?’ Bruton said by way of resumption. Then, without waiting for an answer, he offered one of his own. ‘You know, Bob, we’re not alone on this. There are senior people who feel the same way we do: at Langley, throughout the military, hell, even in the Secret Service. I could put together a group in a heartbeat, no doubt in my mind. Good men, all of them.’
‘I know you could, Jim. But it’s just too risky.’
‘Not if we pick the right people.’
‘It just takes one, Jim.’ He said the words through closed lips, lowering the volume yet further. ‘One person who agrees with us that the man is out of control but thinks this is a step too far. Who reckons our plan would, you know, violate the Constitution.’
‘All right, so they don’t join.’
‘And then what? They won’t just shake your hand, say, “Sorry, Jim, can’t be with you on this one” and wish you the best of luck. They’ll feel duty bound to tell the President. How could they do anything else?’
‘All right.’
‘It will only take one to feel that way. Just one.’ Kassian paused. ‘You gotta remember, Jim, none of them went through what we went through yesterday.’
There was a silence between them as they imagined trying to explain it to someone
