Читать книгу To Kill the President: The most explosive thriller of the year - Sam Bourne - Страница 10

The Watergate Building, Washington, DC, Monday, 7.25pm

‘Here. Scotch, water, no ice. Let’s talk on the balcony.’

Robert Kassian let Jim Bruton steer him through the living room and outside. Bruton closed the door behind them, tight shut. ‘You can’t be too careful.’

It was a warm, May evening – in that precious interim between the bone-chilling Washington winter and the stifling, damp summer. He’d been here over ten years, but still Kassian didn’t care for this city. He dreamed often of moving back home to Cleveland or perhaps, who knows, California. But if the place was bearable at all, it was in springtime.

He looked at the glass dwarfed by Bruton’s hand, then down at his own. Physically, they were an odd match. They always had been. Bruton was a bear of a man. He’d played college football and, while the muscle tone had gone, the size had not. He was always the broadest, tallest man in the room. Kassian was perhaps an inch shorter than him, no more. But he was thinner and, he knew, with a fraction of his friend’s presence. Bruton spoke often and in a voice that demanded attention. Few would ever have guessed at their shared past.

Bruton spoke first. ‘So, tell me about New York.’

Kassian sipped from his glass and took in the view of the Potomac. The lights of the city were winking. ‘Not good, Jim. Not good at all.’

‘Did Zheng even understand what you were telling him?’

‘He understood. I’m not sure he believed me, but he understood.’

‘Will he get us the statement, from the North Koreans?’

‘I think so. Later tonight, he said.’

‘Has the President brought it up?’

‘At the briefing this morning, he mentioned it. The CIA briefer looked blank. I jumped in. I said we were still working on a translation.’

Bruton shook his head. ‘This is horrible.’

‘The good news is, there’s been nothing more out of Pyongyang. I think Beijing have told them to zip it.’

‘For five days.’

‘Exactly. Five days.’

‘And then?’

‘Then North Korea would have every justification, given what happened this morning, to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States. And China can’t promise they won’t stop them.’

There was a moment of silence. They both looked towards the Kennedy Center, illuminated and shining. Inside, doubtless hundreds of well-dressed, well-paid members of the capital’s elite were blissfully unaware of how close they had come just sixteen hours earlier to being incinerated.

Bruton spoke first. ‘Even if Pyongyang come to Jesus, play nice, it still could happen again. With them or with someone else.‘

‘Of course it could.’

‘And next time we might not get so lucky.’

‘The War Room couldn’t pull the same stunt twice.’

The two men paused again. Kassian would think often of the moment that followed. Were they awed by the thought they were about to utter, by the weight of it? Or were they hesitating, wondering which one of them was going to say it out loud first?

In the end, it was Kassian. ‘The current situation is unsustainable.’

Bruton nodded.

Kassian went on. ‘At any moment, a civilization-ending decision could be made.’

‘And there’s not a blind thing we could do to stop it. We’re impotent.’

‘On this, his power is absolute. He’s the nuclear monarch.’

Bruton raised his eyebrows.

‘That’s the term of art apparently, you know in “the national security community”. Can you believe that? No one even hides it.’

‘So he has no obligation to discuss anything with us?’

‘Not with us, not with Congress. Nobody. He can take this step at any time, for any reason. And we now know he’s ready to take it.’

Bruton knocked back his whisky. ‘Do you remember the oath we took, right at the start?’

‘I do.’

And suddenly, there on the balcony of the Watergate, the White House Chief of Staff and the US Secretary of Defense both raised their right hands and, in the dark, declared, ‘I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.’

Kassian drained his whisky glass. ‘Our oath is to defend the Constitution. It’s this republic we have to save. Against all enemies.’

‘Yeah, but now you’re cherrypicking.’ Cherr-pickin’. ‘What about “obeying the orders of the President of the United States”? That’s in there too.’

‘Like I said this morning, we are only required to obey those orders which are lawful. An unprovoked nuclear strike that will destroy America and most of the human race cannot be lawful.’

Bruton knew where they were heading. They both did. ‘It is our constitutional duty then.’

‘Yes, Jim, I believe it is. I believe we are honour-bound, by virtue of the oath we swore, to do all we can to remove the President.’