3
Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 8:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
Bill Ruppert was on his fourth cup of coffee at 8 o’clock. He had just finished reading the newspaper in the dining room when his wife came down the stairs.
“Working?” she said, a small towel over her shoulder and a water bottle in her hand for her elliptical workout.
“A little, earlier,” he said. “Now I am just reading the papers.”
“A big day in Washington,” she responded.
“I guess,” Bill replied.
“You’re not going, obviously.”
“I wasn’t invited, and even if I had been, I think I’d have stayed away.”
“Good idea. I’m afraid we’re in that virus-vulnerable demographic, dear,” she said, and walked out toward their small exercise nook.
“True. I was going to go in, but I thought maybe I’d stay home with you today,” he said loudly after her. “What do they call it – work remotely, like we did all last spring.”
Bill turned back to the headlines.
“INAUGURATION PROCEEDS DESPITE COURT CHALLENGES”
“MASS PROTESTS BY BLACK LIVES MATTER, WOMEN’S MARCH, DEMOCRATS PLANNED FOR INAUGURAL SPEECH”
“WHITE SUPREMACISTS TO FORM ‘PROTECTIVE CORDON’ AROUND CAPITOL; SECURITY PROBLEMS FOR INAUGURAL NOW COMPOUNDED BY VIRUS ISSUES”
Thank god he was finished with that whole mess.
Eighteen months earlier, he had been the tranquil eye of the hurricane, at the center of the greatest political storm, certainly, at least, of the still-young century: Special Counsel Ruppert.
The amount of criticism he had taken through the entire process, from all sides, had been like nothing he had experienced in his life, and that counted combat in Vietnam, as well as 9/11.
Not that he had minded. He had a thick hide. In fact, when he was not being attacked by someone, preferably everyone, he felt as though he was not doing his job, which was to do the hard thing when everyone else would have done the easy thing.
Democrats thought he would bring them salvation. Republicans cursed his name, or at best grudgingly said that he should be allowed to finish his work as Special Counsel, and then he could be judged.
When he did finish his work, all sides found something to hate. He thought that was a good measure of his rectitude. Democrats called him to testify before Congress, despite his openly telling the world that the report he had issued could speak for itself, and he would never go beyond its text in any testimony. He went before them; he answered their questions as often as humanly possible with “Yes” and “No.” When forced to elaborate further by the format of the question, he would stop, consider his response for several seconds, then answer in one short sentence.
He had warned them that he would not go beyond the conclusions he and his team had reached in his investigation, but they had hauled him up to Capitol Hill anyway, and he went. And frustrated everyone involved.
Except himself. He felt the angst of the Democrats at his refusal to say the President should be impeached for obstruction of justice; he felt the angst of Republicans who wanted him to exonerate the President completely. He was just where he wanted to be: equally annoying to all political sides.
Maybe a little more annoying to the Democrats. He had always, until he was asked to stay on by the Okomo administration in his last big full-time government job, been appointed by Republicans. Sure, sometimes the Republicans contained an untoward element that offended his Presbyterian-converted-to-Episcopalian sensibilities. But they were the party of order. He had spent his entire adult life as a guarantor of order – a military officer, then a prosecutor, then a federal law enforcement officer. His faith in the GOP as the party of orderliness and sense was a lot like his faith in the Episcopalian God: useful in allowing him to proceed with his work, whether that was conducting search-and-destroy missions in the jungles of Quang Tri Province, or prosecuting a murder suspect in Washington, D.C.; but never really examined.
The Democrats, to him, were the party of disorder and political hackery, of Dick Daley, and Jimmy Carter’s stagflation, and the Blue Dress. So, if he had resisted Democrats just a little more stoutly when they pleaded with him to be more forthright about this particular Republican President, obviously corrupt and repugnant though he was, it was because Bill’s unexamined and unexaminable faith in the institutional GOP as the bulwark of American stability made it psychologically impossible for him to give them what they wanted.
He didn’t know this President, even though they came from the same city and were similar ages. The little he had read and heard repelled him. But Bill was an institutional man. He simply assumed that the Republican Party he knew must be using this President as an imperfect tool to accomplish their accustomed mission of maintaining order, to keep the real barbarians away from the gates. If the tool was very flawed, he reasoned, the threat from the other side must be very great. Otherwise why would solid Republican guys like the Majority Leader and Senator Hanson tolerate him?
He had been grateful for the Department of Justice opinion that made it impossible for him to indict a sitting president; it simplified his job and gave him focus, which he prized above all things. He had been taken aback momentarily by his longtime acquaintance the Attorney General’s selective and misleading summary of his team’s findings, which he knew would lead the public to the wrong conclusions. But he trusted that Attorney General, as a long-standing Republican he had worked with, to defend order, far more than he trusted Democrats when they asked him to defend “rule of law.” So, he did his job, and went home.
And now, especially after the virus and the economic implosion and protests against police violence against African-Americans suddenly swallowed all media attention, he could fade away, old soldier – Marine – that he was. He could slip back into something approaching political irrelevance, a Cincinnatus returning to the plow, a Washington returning to his little Mount Vernon. And his legal clients would pay his bills, and allow him to leave a bit of money to his heirs, more money than he ever could have accumulated working for Uncle Sam. He was free, and better yet, it was an earned freedom. He had done his duty, and now here he was, in relative comfort, allowed to live his life. The system, the institutions, had worked. Whatever was going on down on the National Mall was none of his business. He even had come to like this remote work that the virus forced on everyone, though he would never have tolerated it from his own staff back in his heyday.
He was turning to the sports page – finally, after a year of chaos, populated by some actual sports – when his cell phone buzzed. It was his law partner.
He reached for the phone and restrained himself, as he still had to, from saying, “Ruppert, FBI.”
“Ruppert.”
“Hey, Bill.”
“What’s up, Jack?”
“Big day in the capital,” Jack responded.
“Not for me.”
“No, not for you.”
“So, are you wondering where I am?”
“Well, I was surprised to come in after seven and not find you at your desk,” Jack said. “I left you a little note on your chair.”
“Let me guess. ‘I came by at 0700, where were you?’”
“How’d you guess? I figured payback was due.”
“I guess that’s only fair, after 20 years of me doing it to you,” Bill said, equably.
“But you weren’t here this morning. Is the Marine easing up?”
“Maybe a little,” Ruppert said. “I am 75, you know. I’m right in the crosshairs of this virus thing.”
“I keep forgetting. It seems impossible.”
“Well, time passes. Anyway, I’m sure you did not call to wax philosophical.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“So what’s up?”
“We have a little bit of an issue with the aerospace client.”
“What kind of an issue?”
“I guess you would call it a political risk issue.”
“Something overseas? Israel? Saudi Arabia?”
“No, domestic.”
“Really? Is it something to do with the President?” Bill said, half-jokingly.
“Kind of,” Jack said.
“Really?” Bill said, again, now at a loss.
“The President, and you,” Jack said.
Bill was silent for several seconds. “Political risk. Me? And the president?”
“Our client has a lot of contracts with the federal government,” Jack said. “They seem to think that the President doesn’t like you, and if they are seen to be associated with you, it could create problems for their DOD programs.”
Bill was mystified again. Jack continued.
“So they have told me that they are going to have to terminate their relationship with our firm.”
“Let me talk to them,” Bill said.
“I don’t think that’s an option. They were pretty insistent.”
“What caused this?”
“I don’t know. I do know the President has continued to Toot about you and to call your investigation ‘illegal’ and ‘a Democrat witch hunt that cost me a whole term.’ I suspect that your name might be mentioned in today’s Inauguration speech.”
Again, Bill was nonplussed. Jack continued.
“It’s just one client. We’ve got plenty of others. We still see you as a rainmaker, Bill.”
“You can take my name off the list of partners. I’m just doing this to keep busy and to bring some money in.”
“I don’t think that would work, and we don’t want to do that anyway. We respect and value you, and we think our clients will too.”
“No idea where this came from?” Bill said.
“Something spooked them. Maybe someone got to their program director at DOD. They are losing a shitload of people at the Pentagon, and the replacements are very political and very green. Being pro-President is a lot more important than knowing about airframes or missile technology, these days.”
“So this could affect other clients too.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s just one right now.”
“Right now.”
“Yes.”
Bill took a long pause, and when no words of reassurance were forthcoming, he said, “Well, thanks for giving it to me straight, Jack.”
“So, no need to come in today for that meeting, I guess. Why don’t you hang around the house today. Traffic’s going to be nuts anyway, and I still think big crowds are something to stay away from, since I hear the virus might not be quite as beaten as the administration has told everyone.”
“Sure. Well, thanks for calling, Jack.”
“I’ll be in touch. And Bill,” Jack said.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe avoid TV and the Internet today. It’ll just get you upset, and you don’t deserve that crap.”
Bill stiffened at this obvious note of pity from one he still considered a protégé. “Thanks for the advice.”
“Take care,” Jack said, with just enough continued sympathy in his voice to annoy Bill further.
“You too,” Bill said, and hung up.
His wife walked in, now with a cup of coffee. Bill sat back on the kitchen stool, expressionless.
“Who was that?” she said, sipping from the cup she held in both hands. Bill shook himself from his reverie.
“It was Jack,” Bill said. “Just some work stuff.”
“Do you have to go in now?”
“I think I am all yours today,” Bill said, putting on a forced smile.
© 2020 Nolan O’Brian