In the embassy in Belize, Randolph—like every other American in the building—found his attention riveted to the television set. For the moment, he had entirely forgotten why he was in that place. Like the rest of his fellows in the room, he heard the message: the United States was going to enter a crisis such that the Constitution would hang in the balance. It was deeply disheartening, even for the men and women who were there for the express purpose of renouncing their citizenship.
In Washington, President Vantassa paused long enough to sip from a cup of water. She was afraid that she would cough or choke in front of the national and international audience and that would be misinterpreted as a show of emotion. Her sense of dignity would be shattered by such a mistake.
“My fellow Americans, and my friends around the world,” she resumed. “I have studied this situation very carefully and have compared it to similar constitutional crises of the past. We cannot have a government gridlocked by such a division.”
She paused for another sip, and took a deep breath. The people of the nation—and that included the about-to-be ex-Americans in Belmopan, Belize—held their collective breaths. President Vantassa summoned an inner core of strength and seemed to grow more resolute in front of the cameras. She forcibly brought to her mind the passage in Job that had so arrested her attention during the previous sleepless night.
“‘If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall prove me perverse,’” the Book of Job says. “Therefore, faced with an insoluble dilemma, and effective immediately, I shall, in the interests of the greater good of the people of the United States of America, hereby resign my office as president. God bless America.”
She stood up and walked purposefully from the room with a dozen cameras in pursuit.
Daniel Hernandez was the first person in the delegation’s room to awake from the state of shock.
“Marshal, come with me now. Gentlemen, please follow me. We need to place Citizen Vantassa under arrest now, before we have to chase her down the West Wing hall.”
The vice-president was ushered into the Oval Office. Mrs. Chou appeared calm and poised, whatever turmoil might have been roiling in her breast at that moment. The TBS cameras focused on her and let others pursue the departing former president.
Hernandez stepped into the hallway, followed immediately by the U.S. marshal. Walking down the hall towards them was a gaunt faced shell of a woman who had—until twenty seconds before—been the most powerful person in the world. The marshal stepped in front of Hernandez. A roving cameraman followed Vantassa with his lens and caught the confrontation for the world.
“Muriel Vantassa?”
“Yes.”
She was surprised and sullen, irritable, and vulnerable.
“I am U.S. Marshal Avery Cassell. You are under arrest for conspiracy, for felonious malfeasance in office by ordering murder and assault on a United States citizen, for ordering—under the cloak of authority—the felonious placement of illegal evidence at a crime scene to obstruct justice and to deprive a United States citizen of his constitutional rights to equal justice under the law.”
She winced at the application of the obscure 1874 law making it a crime to deny constitutional rights. She had regarded herself and her Task Force as resourceful when they had applied the old law to corrupt Southern sheriffs who had the hubris to regard themselves as being the personification of the law.
“You have no right. How dare you invade the White House; this is mutiny!” she shouted, breaking her resolve to remain in control.
“No, madam, this is justice, and this is what justice looks like.” Daniel Hernandez said. “No one—and I mean no one—is above the law. Even the president must obey the law.”
He was fully aware of his paraphrase of the Magna Charta.
“Marshal, do your duty,” he ordered.
Cassell placed Citizen Vantassa’s wrists in handcuffs and intoned the ritualized formula of the Miranda decision. In the hallway ahead of them, the protests of Margaret Thaler could be heard. Those protests were stilled when a second U.S. marshal placed her under arrest. The delegation ushered the former president out of the White House and into ignominy.
Randolph Kennedy was next in line to meet the embassy secretary to obtain his renunciation of citizenship documents when the televised evaporation of Muriel Vantassa’s administration took place. He watched Supreme Court Justice Adolph Nielson swear in Marianne Chou as the new president. It was ten forty-nine in the morning. Randolph made note of that moment then turned and walked out of the embassy.
-END-