DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN (18 page)

“I can’t allow it, Gina.
 
Do you understand me?
 
I need you to let me handle this for you.
 
Not because I think you can’t.
 
Not because I think you’re weak and I have to come to your rescue like some knight in shining armor.
 
But because the game is rigged, honey.
 
They don’t want information from you at that hearing, they want dirt from you.
 
And if you won’t give it to them, they’ll just sling it themselves.
 
And I’ll not have that.
 
I’ll not have you as the scapegoat for all that ails this country.
 
I won’t have it.”

He had to settle down yet again.
 
Gina placed her hand on the side of his face.
 
“You have got to trust me on this one, Gina,” he said.
 

“But I can handle it, Dutch.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“I’m an attorney, remember?
 
They aren’t going to trip me up or make me say ‘yeah, I had an affair, yeah, I’m a crackhead,’ when I know I didn’t and I’m not.”

“But they won’t give you that kind of opportunity, Gina.
 
This won’t be some sedate court of law.
 
You’re fresh meat to them, and they plan to eat you alive.
 
That’s what this is about.”
 
Dutch closed his eyes, to steady himself.
 

When he reopened his eyes, they were as cold as ice.
 
He was about to assert
 
himself with finality, Gina could see it in those eyes.
 
“I am not asking you anymore,” he said to her.
 
“I am not pleading with you anymore.
 
I am telling you that you will not be going to that hearing.
 
You will phone Nurse Riley, you will tell her that she will not be needed tomorrow at all, and you will stay in the Residence and take care of our baby.
 
Call it male chauvinism, call it overreach, call it anything you want, Gina.
 
I don’t give a damn.
 
But no wife of mine is going anywhere near that place tomorrow.
 
Do I make myself clear?”

Gina could have continued the fight.
 
It was in her nature to fight back.
 
But she couldn’t pull herself to do it.
 
Because she understood what Dutch meant.
 
And she didn’t call it male chauvinism.
 
She didn’t call it overreach or anything like that.
 
She called it love.
 
He loved her.
 
He wanted the best for her.
 
And she just had to trust him to represent her.

“Yes,” she said.
 
“You’ve made yourself clear.”

And now the day had arrived and he was seated at that witness table facing the firing squad for her.
 
And somehow, she thought, as she hugged Little Walt tighter and kissed him on his forehead, Dutch looked head and shoulders above those committee members.
 
He looked, it seemed to her, like the man in command, not the other way around.

The chairman finally stopped conferring with his counsel and returned to the microphone that sat in front of him.
 
He smiled.
 
“I would assume you would like to give an opening statement before we launched into our questioning?
 
Or is your appearance here today statement enough?”
 
The gallery laughed.

Dutch didn’t so much as crack a smile.
 
“I have no opening statement.”

Again, the chairman, not expecting that answer, reared back in his seat and conferred once more with counsel.
 
When he leaned forward, to the microphone, he smiled again.
  
“We won’t bother with swearing you in, Mr. President, since that already occurred at your inauguration.”
 
More laughter.

“I’ll begin the questioning,” the chairman said.
 
“Mr. President, why are you shielding the First Lady from facing the American people?”

Dutch’s jaw tightened.
 
Gina could tell he was raging inside.
 
“Next question,” he said.

“Next question?” the chairman asked.
 
“Why won’t you answer
that
question?”

“When you want to be serious, and ask me a substantive question, then I’ll be pleased to answer it.
 
But I’ll not play your game.”

“Game?
 
What game?”

“You know damn well, Jake,” Dutch said to the chairman, “that I’m not shielding my wife from any American public.
 
You also know damn well that your question was meant to imply that I was.
 
So ask me another question or shut the hell up and give your colleagues a turn.”

The gallery was amazed.
 
The committee members were amazed.
 
The network commentators were amazed.
 
President Dutch Harber, they all now realized, didn’t come here to lose.
 
There was no contrition, there was no apology, there was nothing but contempt in his voice and demeanor.
 

The chairman, realizing it, cleared his throat.
 
“Were you aware that your wife was having an affair with Roman Wilkes?” he asked the president.

“She wasn’t having an affair with Roman Wilkes.”

“But how can you be so certain that she wasn’t, sir?”

“How can you be so certain that she was?”

“Max Brennan, your own chief of staff, said that she and Wilkes were lovers.”

“Believe Max Brennan at your own peril.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the chairman wanted to know.
 
“Isn’t he your best friend?”

“Max and I were close once upon a time, yes.
 
But not anymore.
 
He’s no friend of mine.”

“Why isn’t he your friend anymore?
 
Because he told the truth about what’s going on in that White House?”

“He lied about what’s going on in the White
 
House.”

“But why would he lie, sir?
 
Why would he claim your wife was having affairs if she wasn’t?”

Dutch didn’t hesitate.
 
There was a time he would jump in front of a train for Max Brennan.
 
Now, after all of the hurt and pain his lies had caused Gina, he’d throw him in front of the train himself.
 

“Max Brennan is a homosexual,” Dutch said to gasps from the audience, “who despises the fact that he’s homosexual.
 
Max Brennan is obsessed with, some may say in love with me, and he is disgusted by the reality of that fact.
 
Every woman that I have loved he has found a way to undermine.
 
The First Lady was just his latest target.
 
You believe Max Brennan at your peril.”

The chairman attempted to smile.
 
“You think mighty highly of yourself.
 
Brennan in love with you, obsessed with you, targeting women you love?
 
And that’s why he supposedly lied on the First Lady?
 
But come now, Mr. President.
 
If he was lying, what about Paul Davenport?
 
He lobbed accusations against the First Lady too. Is Mr. Davenport lying also?”

“Yes.”

The chairman, again, smiled.
 
“But how do you know that?
 
By Davenport’s own admission, you were never in the White House when his trysts with the First Lady took place.
 
How can you be so certain?”

“Because Paul Davenport cited three precise dates when he was in the White House with the First Lady, making love to her he claims, and also witnessing her smoking crack.”

“That’s correct.”

“On two of those three dates the First Lady wasn’t even in the White House.
 
She wasn’t even in DC.”

Gina smiled as the chairman frowned.
 
She halfway expected him to yell,
what you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis
?
 
But that, she realized, would have been too human-like for that robotic clown.

“What do you mean?” the chairman asked the president instead.

“I mean exactly what I said.
 
If this Congress would have bothered to do its homework and simply ask a few simple questions, you would have known those facts yourselves.
 
But instead you chose to play politics and jump on the
Trash the First Lad
y train.
 
Well the train stops here, Mr. Chairman.
 
You and your committee, and anybody else who believe that they can drag my wife’s good name through the mud, can call that good Christian lady a whore and a crackhead and any other derogatory name you can find it in your hearts to call her, and expected me to sit back and let you do it, doesn’t know me very well.”

Gina wanted to shout amen, but she was too riveted to the TV.

“The days of bashing my wife, my family, are over,” Dutch continued.
 
“We refuse to participate in our own destruction.
 
I will not parade her nor my child before you or anybody else.
 
Not now nor ever.
 
We will not give answer to any more of these scurrilous attacks, I don’t care what direction they come from.
 
You can believe an alien birth my child, I don’t give a damn anymore.
 
You can believe my wife is a socialist/Marxist/communist, everything the worst human being ever created could ever be, I couldn’t care less.
 
Believe it as much of that garbage as you care to believe.”

Dutch made a point of making eye contact with each committee member when he said this.
 
“You can castigate me until my presidency is crippled with castigation,” he went on, and I still wouldn’t care.
 
And I still won’t give you what you ultimately want and resign.
 
The Harber family will never quit to appease our enemies even though we hate every hour of every minute of every day of this fishbowl existence.
 
But we will never quit.
 
And if you don’t like my resolve, if the American people or the world at large find me arrogant and getting a little too ahead of myself, then tough.
 
To hell with them too!
 
Impeach me if you find me incompetent.
 
Kick me out of the White House if you find me that objectionable.
 
You’ll be doing me a favor, to tell you the truth.
 
But don’t ever again expect me or my wife or our precious son to aid and abet in your hate.”
 

Then Dutch exhaled, his body racked with tension.
 
“Are there any more questions?” he asked.

The committee members looked at each other, and the chairman looked at them, but no one was brave enough to prolong this mockery of a hearing by asking a question.
 

And Dutch, pleased that some civility still existed in the room, stood up and left the gallery the way he had come.
 

The applause was deafening before he could reach the door.

Max, with tears dropping freely from his eyes, was so ashamed he didn’t know what to do.
 
He grabbed the front of his shirt and began rubbing his chest, as if the pounding of his heart was a physical pain.
 
He looked around, to see if anybody recognized him; to see if anybody heard the President of the United States call him out as the sick, perverted bastard he felt he truly was.
 
How could he live after this?
 
Now everybody knew.
 
How could he ever dream of running for office, or working ever again in politics, with Dutch calling him out like that?

He drained the last of his drink, tossed a twenty on the counter, and hurried out of the bar.
 
How could Dutch betray him so completely, he kept asking himself.
 
How could his best friend, the man he loved more than life itself, do that to him?