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He was the president. He could wander the building on a Sunday if he liked.
He was clearing his head, if anyone asked. Heading for the washroom, like he’d told his forced companion. Taking a little stroll.
Or he could even tell the truth, to a point: I’m looking for Fowler, and I thought he might be here.
On the contrary, he very much hoped that the Secretary of State was out, and planned to stay that way for the afternoon. He hoped it so much that he assumed it, partly because he’d made his secretary insist on a rare weekend meeting at Fowler’s estate on the other side of town to sign and clear up some paperwork. Scheduled for this very time. Why on a Sunday? So the signatures and all their attendant useful seals could be filed first thing Monday morning. That’s what Fowler wanted, wasn’t it? Immediate approval and full cooperation? Well then, he could do a little work on a Sunday, and perhaps the Lord would forgive him.
Grant did not know if the Lord would forgive him for this particular trespass. But there were so many other things in the heavenly queue for which he was even less likely to be forgiven that he didn’t worry about it too much.
If everything went as expected, he’d have at least three hours before Fowler could possibly return. His office should be deserted, locked up for the Lord’s Day, with no potential spies or villains there to report to the Secretary that the president had been up to no good.
And inside that office, he expected to find … what, precisely?
Evidence? Information? Leverage?
He didn’t know, but he was tired of being left in the dark by those he’d appointed to assist him; he was exhausted and ashamed for feeling useless in the great seat of power, with no power to speak of except what was granted to him by subordinates.
Well by God, he would not be left in the dark anymore.
Though, if he had a drink, he was reasonably certain he could do something about that headache.
No. Clearheaded was the only way to proceed, even if that clear head came with a cost. He couldn’t seize control of his life and his administration as a sick old drunk, so he’d do it as an angry sober man with nerves of steel and shaking hands. The people had elected him. They’d hired him, and they depended on him, and he’d turned over the henhouse to the foxes because he hadn’t known what else to do.
Here was a chance to redeem himself, through petty crime with an ethical underpinning. He could trust no one—at least, no one he felt comfortable endangering.
The buck stopped here, at Fowler’s office, where he would break the law and save the nation … or maybe that was a grandiose delusion of an old drunk. But he liked the sound of it, so he rallied around it as he quietly stalked the hallways.
Yes, he could admit it to himself: His third presidential term had been weak. He’d overheard whispers about how he shouldn’t have taken the post again—that he ought to have left office in favor of going on a speaking tour, or writing his memoirs, or some other entertainment to which he’d be equally ill-suited, in his opinion.
But no, he’d stuck with the job. Not for Fowler. Not for Congress. Not for the courts, nor the lawyers, nor the slick, strange men who made their money on the misery of others—on weapons, murder, and government contracts.
Not for them. But for everyone else.
For the abolitionists and the people of color who he refused to think of as slaves, even down in Mississippi and Alabama, where the Southerners still called them that. The Southerners were wrong, and he’d show them the hard way if he had to. But they’d insisted upon that, hadn’t they?
He stayed in office for the soldiers, old and young—the ones who’d lost limbs and lost sleep, the ones who’d gone home only to die slowly of the sudden confusion of not having anything to fight for. He did it for the ones who’d rather end it quickly, even after they’d slipped through the corpse-catching sieve of the front and were given the chance to begin again.
He stayed for the ones who never got the chance. Who never came home. Tens of thousands of them, hundreds of thousands now. More like a million, when you factored in everything—the disease, the suicides, the civilians … and the walking plague.
His reverie was interrupted when he reached the door bearing Fowler’s name. It was painted on the frosted glass door in the expected fancy letters, for a fancy man who thought he knew better than everyone else. Grant had once believed it, too, that Fowler was the smartest, the cleverest politician of them all.
And now? Goddamn, but he hoped he was wrong.
He reached for the knob, but its firm, reassuring lock suggested that a smith would be required to compromise it. The president didn’t have a smith handy, and he didn’t feel like calling one. Instead, he had the silence of this particular hall, confidence that the office’s occupant was absent, and a hammer hidden inside his coat.
He wrapped the hammer in his scarf and shattered the door’s glass with one heavy swing.
Before the last clattering, clinking shards had fallen to the office floor, Grant jammed his hand into the hole and unlocked the door from within.
Was this a crime? Perhaps.
Was anything a crime, if the president authorized it? An excellent question, and one he’d put to Lincoln the next time he saw him. A good philosophical starting point for a conversation over brandy—he could imagine it now, and he did so with great anticipation, particularly with regards to the brandy. He’d been dry for hours, and those hours were starting to tell.
The door scooted open, scraping the broken glass aside and clearing a rainbow-shaped path on the enormous rug that filled most of the room.
“Close the door behind you, if you don’t mind. ”
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