Page 159 of Enemy Within
Sasha was gone. And this time, he wasn’t ever coming back.
Final Day of Congressional Hearings Set to Begin for President Jack Spiers
The final day of congressional hearings of President Jack Spiers is set to begin on Capitol Hill today. For two weeks, lawmakers from both the House and the Senate have conducted an extensive investigation into President Spiers’s actions from the day of the Russian coup in Sochi to his return to the United States from Moscow, following a questionable joint US-Russian black strike on former General Porter Madigan’s terrorist camp in the Arctic. The joint strike led to the death of Madigan and the disbandment of his terrorist army just prior to the launch of what has been described as “a devastating terrorist attack against the world.”
Investigators have questioned whether any of the actions taken by Presidents Spiers and Wall were constitutional. The White House and President Spiers both claim that Presidents Spiers and Wall were working in “close cooperation” during the entire operation. Who was in charge of the strike, and who ultimately authorized the mission, are critical questions for the investigators, who have struggled to unravel President Spiers’s and Wall’s murky chain of presidential succession. President Spiers claims he surrendered his presidency to then-Vice President Wall under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
Under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, a president may voluntarily surrender his duties only after notifying the Speaker of the House of his decision. Such notice was not given by President Spiers. However, the Vice President may also assume the office of the president provided that a majority of the Cabinet or the House of Representatives affirm that the president is unable to discharge his duties. Vice President Wall ascended to the presidency after the Cabinet was briefed about President Spiers’s injuries in the Langley blast, injuries which turned out to be fabrications. Their signatures affirming President Wall’s ascension to the presidency, and the invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment itself, have been challenged as fraudulent, with several Cabinet members publicly complaining that they were misled.
President Spiers’s legal status during the events of the previous month is a critical concern. If Spiers was legally the sitting president, then his actions with the Russian insurgency would have legal basis. However, if he is determined to not have been serving as the sitting president at the time, which he himself maintains that he was not, then congressional investigators suggest he has broken the Logan Act, a law that forbids private US citizens from conducting diplomacy on behalf of the United States government. Jack Spiers, private citizen, would have had no legal grounds to offer support to the Russian insurgency or lead them to a rendezvous with US naval assets.
Republican congressional investigators have repeatedly raised the question of whether Spiers’s actions violate the Espionage Act. During the course of his Arctic strike, the Russian president, a former FSB officer, and other Russian and foreign nationals, “entered and transited” on a US nuclear submarine. US nuclear submarines remain Top Secret installations and have been deemed “vital and essential” military equipment by Executive Order. The foreign nationals were reportedly in the command center of the submarine, exposed to America’s highest technological inner workings. Several congressmen have called for charges of treason to be brought against President Spiers.
The hearings are unprecedented in American politics, bringing both chambers of Congress together in a patchwork of investigations. Due to overlapping and deeply specialized issues, a bicameral special investigations committee was established, comprised of members of the House Judiciary Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Committee on Oversight.
In the final day of hearings, Senator Stephen Allen, famously hostile to President Spiers, is set to take the floor and address President Spiers directly.
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Washington DC
JACK’S PALMS SLICKED WITH cold sweat. He breathed slowly, in and out, as representatives and senators took their seats at the crescent-shaped dais. They stared down at him, sitting alone in the center of the chamber at the long inquisitor's table. In the gallery, well behind him, Ethan sat with Scott and Levi. He could feel Ethan’s gaze, a warmth in the center of his back, like Ethan was the sun trying to shine just for him.
One more day. Only one more day.
And after… well, it was best not to think too far ahead of himself.
He’d known, as soon as he gave the reins to Elizabeth, as soon as he slipped out of that hospital, that his choices would come back to haunt him. He’d been compromised by everything—by his aching, bleeding heart, his wounded soul, and his broken dreams—and he’d absolutely put Ethan over the United States. He wouldalwaysput Ethan over the United States. Overeverything.
But that wasn’t what presidents did. It didn’t matter that, in the end, they’d saved the world.
Now, his choices were being picked apart by bureaucrats, by lawyers and congressmen who hated his guts. Who’d railed against him, and had called him an abomination. A traitor to the party, and even to the nation.
His hands shook as the proceedings were called to order, and he was reminded that he was still under oath. He laced his bruised and scabbed fingers together, trying to hide their trembling. His thumb played with his wedding band, rolling the diamonds and dark metal around his finger.
“Senator Allen, you have the floor.” The chairwoman turned the proceedings over.
Jack turned and locked gazes with Senator Allen.
Silence.
“Mr. President…” Allen began, shaking his head. “I can’t believe we’re here. I cannot, for the life of me, actually believe that we are right here. Sitting in this room, having these discussions. Over the past two weeks, we have already established the facts surrounding your actions. My questions to you will be brief. I expect your complete forthrightness.”
Jack swallowed.
Senator Allen leaned forward, glaring at him. He lifted a sheet of paper and peered down his glasses. “Mr. President, were you or were you not incapacitated in Bethesda Naval Hospital for three weeks following the attack at Langley?”
“I was not.”
“Did you or did you not delegate your presidential powers to then-Vice President Elizabeth Wall and conspire to leave the country?”
“I did.”
“Did you or did you not join with Russian President Sergey Puchkov and the Russian insurgency in the Russian Caucasus?”
“I did. But not to fight in their insurgency.”I went to find Ethan and put us back together.“I went to forge an alliance with President Puchkov and join forces to take out Madigan. He posed a grave threat to not just our two countries, but to the entire world.”
“And did you forge this alliance with President Puchkov?”
