I didn’t vote for Greg Gascoine, and I don’t care for him all that much. On the other hand, I don’t especially dislike him either. I suppose I have no strong feelings about him either way, and maybe that explains why I didn’t vote for him. But it’s one thing not to vote for a president, and it’s another thing to find yourself in a White House conference room with one when you never expected to be anywhere near the White House in the first place, and you realise you’re there because he wants to talk to you. Gascoine greeted Henry Shilling like an old friend, and shook hands with his staff before coming over to our side of the room.
‘Welcome to the White House,’ he said, extending his hand to us in turn. ‘First time?’
‘For me, Mr President,’ I replied.
‘I took the tour once when I was in high school, Mr President,’ Sam said, ‘but nothing like this. This is… fantastic.’
Gascoine smiled.
‘Well, we must arrange for you to take the real tour once we’re finished here, if you’d like to. We can do that Ben, can’t we?’
‘We sure can, Mr President.’
‘Good. Well I hope you’ll stay and see the House from the inside. It’s quite impressive, even to me, and I work here every day.’
‘Thank you, Mr President.’
‘Good. Well, have a seat, and let’s make a start.’
He took a chair at the head of the table. Ben Silber sat down unobtrusively to his right, and back a few feet towards the wall, notebook in hand.
‘Ben will keep an eye on the clock for me. I have to meet with the Jordanian ambassador at eleven.’
He poured himself a glass of water and took a drink.
‘I don’t suppose you expected to be meeting with me today, did you?’
We smiled. ‘No, Mr President,’ I replied. ‘This is the last thing we expected.’
‘That’s because I don’t generally get involved in settlement negotiations. I can’t, wouldn’t have time, even if I had the inclination. After all, the federal government gets sued, what, hundreds of times a year, Henry, isn’t that right?’
‘Thousands of times, Mr President.’
‘Thousands of times. And Henry and his staff either settle those cases or they go to trial, and the White House doesn’t get involved. But in this case…’ He paused. ‘I’m going to be honest with you. When I first heard about this lawsuit, I didn’t take it seriously. Henry brought it to my attention, because it is kind of unusual. But my reaction to it was, I thought it was some kind of shakedown. I believed that the Justice Department would make it go away as quickly as it had come. I truly did, and in my defence, that was not just my own view; it was also the impression I was given by my legal team. I think it’s fair for me to say that, Henry, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mr President,’ Shilling replied, glancing darkly down the line towards Harry.
‘But obviously, developments over the past few weeks have made all of us think again. Not only have you survived our challenge about the case being filed out of time… what’s it called, Henry…?’
‘The statute of limitations, Mr President.’
‘Statute of limitations, right. Not only did the court go against us on that, but you’ve also uncovered some evidence that, as I understand it, seems to point to Jacob van Eyck having made some pretty sizeable loans to bail out George Washington’s army when they were freezing to death at Valley Forge. Am I right about that?’
He was looking in our direction.
‘Exactly right, Mr President,’ I agreed.
‘So now, what started out as nothing more than an old wives’ tale has turned into a political hot potato, and it’s something the White House can’t ignore.’
‘It’s become a political issue, sir?’ I asked. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Well, Jacob van Eyck is now, unofficially at least, an American hero. The public knows that he played a part, behind the scenes, in winning the War of Independence. Without him, we might never have beaten the Brits. We might still be paying taxes to the King, playing cricket or whatever they call it, and drinking tea and warm beer. In his own way, Jacob may be up there with Washington and Paul Revere and all the rest of them.’
‘Forgive me, Mr President,’ Sam said, ‘I’m not sure I understand why you see that as a problem. Shouldn’t it be something to celebrate?’
The President nodded. ‘Yes, indeed, and we would like to celebrate it. In fact, I don’t see that we have a lot of choice about that. The American people are now very much aware of Jacob van Eyck and they’re looking to me, as their President, to do what’s right.’
‘That’s all we’ve ever asked, Mr President,’ Sam replied.
‘I could tell you, “No deal, we’ll take our chances in the Court of Appeals,” and from what I understand, my legal team thinks we would have a pretty good shot there, right, Henry?’
‘Right, Mr President. Very good, I would say.’
‘Right. But even then I have a problem. If I refuse to honour Jacob van Eyck because of some technicality, just because his family filed their claim late, it’s going to look like I’m a cheap son of a bitch who’s playing lawyers’ games with an American hero just to save a few bucks. The public are not going to like that, and when I run again in a couple of years’ time, my opponent is going to beat me over the head for my lack of patriotism.’
‘As I said, Mr President,’ Sam persisted, ‘all we’ve ever asked is for the government to do right by Jacob.’
‘I understand that, Miss van Eyck, but the amount of money involved in your claim is astronomical. I can’t pay out that kind of money, and –’
Oh, not again, I thought. Surely Henry Shilling has explained this to him?
‘Mr President,’ I replied, ‘I sincerely hope your legal team has made this clear to you, but if they haven’t, let me make it clear now. We’ve said from day one that we’re not interested in recovering the compound interest calculation.’
‘Yes, Henry told me that. I understand that you’re not trying to take the whole farm, Miss Harmon, but you can slash a lot of money from your claim and still be left with enough to bankrupt the federal government several times over. I can’t allow that to happen.’
‘We’re not asking you to bankrupt the government, Mr President,’ Sam insisted.
‘Well, what are you asking me to do?’
‘We want the family to have some financial compensation, of course we do. But please understand, the van Eyck family are decent, patriotic people and they have no wish to bankrupt the government. We can negotiate the amount, and I don’t think you’ll find us unreasonable. The only thing that’s not negotiable is the question of recognising Jacob for the national hero he is, and we want that to take a tangible form.’
‘What kind of tangible form?’ the President asked.
I’d been looking at Sam in admiration. Any nervousness, any reluctance to speak out, had evaporated completely. She was on stage now, in full flow, and she was putting her case. I saw every eye in the room turn to her. It reminded me unmistakably of the conference room at the New Orleans Intercontinental during the reunion. She was in charge, and every eye in the room had turned to her.
‘The government will erect a statue to Jacob van Eyck in Philadelphia,’ she replied with wonderful dignity, ‘and the President of the United States will unveil it.’