Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

before the gas attack. Of course, the Capitol basement is monitored, but being the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you have access to all kinds of hi-tech goodies, including camera bugs that can loop recordings, so your boys could have held a keg party down there and no one would have known the difference. They even set up L’Enfant Plaza to look like the gas attack was used as cover to access the sewers and the Capitol tunnels.” Danny took in the president’s stoic reaction. He hoped his next words would strike the president’s Achilles’ heel.
    “I had all the pieces, but do you know what was the glue that brought them all together? I was sitting in the balcony of the House chambers when two officers wheeled down Ethan Goodnight. Your son suffered from the same form of muscular dystrophy Ethan has. You couldn’t save Simon from endless pain, but you could have saved Ethan by providing him with a quick death.”
    Anger finally flashed across the president’s face. “Do you know what you did last night?”
    “I saved people’s lives,” Danny said sternly. “People you wanted dead.”
    “All you did was ensure the demise of America, Danny.”
    Danny heard the words, but they took a backseat to the president’s actions. Danny watched his head shift. He was looking up toward Arlington House.
    “So, if things had gone according to plan and Congress had perished last night, you would have blamed Great Britain, what with King Edward basically throwing down the gauntlet after Fantroy’s death, how could you not?”
    Sydney gasped. “King Edward knew all along that Fantroy was a Bilderberger. That’s how you knew to time the burglaries at the library and Monticello with the lawsuit filing.”
    The president remained silent. Danny continued. “The King then does a little snooping and finds that Fantroy and his Bilderbergers were behind all the bombs. You and King Edward kill two birds with one stone. The late Anthony Fantroy is blamed for blowing up the House of Representatives, and an unprecedented investigation into the Bilderbergers operations would have put them out of business.”
    The president wiped a patch of dirt off the top of the nearest headstone and then looked out over the cemetery toward the White House. “Presidents are temporary. We only have four years, eight if we’re lucky, to make things happen.”
    “But others were there last night besides members of Congress,” Danny reminded him. “I know from experience, Jack. Having blood on your hands is a hard thing.”
    The president focused on Danny. “Exactly who all was in the House of Representatives last night, Danny?”
    “Members of Congress, people on their staff. A ton of lobbyists. Little Ethan Goodnight and his mother, who I’m pretty sure didn’t want to take over the world.”
    The president smirked. “You’re forgetting a whole group of people seated around you in the mezzanine. Those people were given special invitations by the president to be there.”
    Danny pictured the faces in the mezzanine from last night. Mostly white, mostly middle-aged and older. They were all dressed in their best suits and chatted with each other in familiar ways.
    “I give up,” Danny said.
    The president turned and stared into Sydney’s eyes. “They were people like Ben Speakes and Dexter Walsh. They are the career bureaucrats, the true power brokers, the Washington establishment. Like I said, presidents may have power, but we’re very temporary compared to a man like Speakes, who has remained an insider for forty years or a congressman who serves a twenty-year term and then goes on to become a seven figure a year lobbyist.”
    “You wanted a revolution,” Sydney uttered. “You wanted to start America over.”
    No one spoke for several seconds after her declaration. It was so silent that Danny could actually hear the drizzling rain strike the president’s umbrella.
    The president finally broke the silence. “History has taught us that failed democracies were not toppled from outside forces. They rotted from the inside.”
    “So, last night was about removing the rotten apples from the bunch?” Danny asked. “But not all lobbyists are greedy, not every member of Congress is corrupt.”
    The president chuckled. “Like a surgeon friend of mine once told me, there’s only one good way to rid a body of cancer. You’ve got to cut it out, even if you take some good tissue with it.”
    Sydney piped up.