“And tonight…?” I asked.
Vice Admiral David Mercer checked his chronometer:
“At zero-two-hundred hours this morning, Eleanor…”
The Admiral tapped his heavy gold signet ring against the titanium case:
“…Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance convened an extraordinary, closed-door emergency midnight session of the Supreme Court inside the West Conference Room beneath One First Street.”
“He has brought four international defense raiders, two private banking partners from Zurich, and the Solicitor General.”
“He has informed the conference that an imminent foreign cyber-strike has compromised our military command channels.”
“He is preparing to issue an extraordinary, emergency administrative mandamus—a judicial decree permanently conveying Conduit Ten and the nation’s strategic launch ciphers to his private defense consortium in Switzerland for sixty billion dollars in sovereign debt relief.”
“He believes Harold left you weeping in an empty cottage in North Carolina, silenced by local power.”
“He believes that the Mercer bloodline has been erased by thirty years of quiet retirement and crushed flowers.”
