Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

There is, of course, provision in the law for the removal from office of a President who is physically incapable of performing his duties, and this is understood to include mental illness, although those words do not appear. No one likes to admit that a President might become, to use Mr. Lammelle’s phraseology, absolutely bonkers.

Each of the people in the Cabinet Room was familiar with previous problems of Presidents who left, or should have left, office before their successor was sworn in on Inauguration Day. Obviously, these included Richard M. Nixon, who ultimately resigned, and William Jefferson Clinton, who had to face an impeachment trial in the Senate but managed to hold on to his job.

And there were other cases of Presidents whose physical condition raised serious questions about their ability to properly discharge their duties.

Woodrow Wilson, for example, was one of these. Many people believed that after suffering a massive debilitating stroke in 1919 he should have resigned and allowed the Vice President to assume his duties. Instead, he stayed on in the White House and allowed his wife, the former Edith Bolling Galt, to determine which visitors he saw, and which he did not, and which papers were presented to him for his approval, and which were not, leading his detractors to refer to his wife as the “first unelected President.”

Whenever anyone at the Cabinet table thought of biting the bullet and getting rid of Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen by making his psychological problems public, the face of First Lady Mrs. Belinda-Sue Clendennen popped into their minds.

From the moment—and perhaps even before—her husband had acceded to the presidency following the sudden demise of his predecessor from a ruptured aortal aneurysm, Belinda-Sue had had her eyes on the vice presidency and perhaps—even probably—the presidency itself.

The first clue to this came when Belinda-Sue sat down on her throne at her husband’s very first Cabinet meeting as President. As soon as she could get the secretary of State alone, she opened a conversation dealing with the political history of the Argentine Republic, especially that of its president, Juan Domingo Perón.

“Do you know that President Perón appointed his wife,” Belinda-Sue began, “not the blonde, Evita, the other one, the redheaded one, Isabel, to be vice president?”

“Circumstances in Argentina are somewhat different than they are here, Mrs. Clendennen.”

“You can call me Belinda-Sue, honey,” Mrs. Clendennen said. “And I’ll call you Natalie.”

The secretary had smiled wanly but had not replied.

Mrs. Clendennen’s ambitions regarding the vice presidency had had to be put on hold when her husband was forced to appoint Charles W. Montvale to that office. His only other option was to face impeachment charges in the Congress for a number of offenses. One of these, for example, was described by the attorney general as so egregious that its “illegality boggled the mind.”

But she had by no means abandoned them, which everyone in the Cabinet Room had to consider very carefully when they thought about getting President Clendennen out of the White House.

So long as her husband was President, there was the possibility that Vice President Montvale would suffer a rupture of his aorta, or get run over by a truck, thus making the office of vice president vacant once again. If something like that happened, God forbid, Belinda-Sue wanted to be available.

The people in the Cabinet Room today had decided—not in a formal meeting, but in an interlocking series of private conversations between no more than three of them at a time—that the best, and probably only, way to deal with the situation was to do nothing and hope for the best.

The President’s aorta was reported to be in absolutely no danger of rupturing, and it was highly unlikely that he would get run over by a bus, but hope, someone said, springs eternal in the human breast.

Eventually the President’s term of office would expire. In the meantime, they would just have to live with him and with Belinda-Sue attempting—with only slight success—to decide who got to see her husband, and who did not, and what documents of state were—and were not—presented to him for his signature.

In the meantime, they would pretend the President was sane, and that the First Lady was indeed the twenty-first-century embodiment of Martha Washington, which was, she had confided to her friend Natalie, how she often thought of herself.

Everyone stood as the President walked from the door to the Oval Office to his chair.

“Good afternoon,” he said, flashing his benign smile. “Please be seated.”

Everyone sat down and looked at him expectantly.

“Inasmuch as the First Lady had to go to Mississippi to deal with a family medical problem and won’t be with us, we might as well get started,” the President said.

“I hope it’s nothing serious, Mr. President,” Secretary of Defense Frederick K. Beiderman said solicitously.

Freddy, CIA Director A. Franklin Lammelle thought, you know as well as I do that means that Belinda-Sue’s mother has once again escaped from the Ocean Springs Baptist Assisted Living facility and is now holed up somewhere they can’t find her with three Mason jars full of Mississippi’s finest 140-proof white lightning.

“Nothing serious,” the President said. “A recurring problem.”

Usually recurring about once a month, Lammelle thought.

Well, at least Belinda-Sue won’t be here to offer her solutions to the nation’s problems.

“I have been thinking…” President Clendennen began.

Oh, shit! We’re in trouble!

“. . . about our war on the drug trade and piracy.”