She pointed out a doorway. “That’s the Old Supreme Court Chamber. The justices met there until 1860. Samuel Morse sent the first Morse-coded message from that room in 1844.”
“What did it say?”
“‘What hath God wrought?’”
“How prophetic.”
They climbed a flight of stairs to the second level of the Capitol. The Great Rotunda, defiled only two weeks earlier, glowed with the warm light streaming through the upper windows of the dome.
Agent Barnes turned to the right. “You’ve been assigned a seat down on the lawn, but the president-elect asked us to give you a quick tour of the platform to put your mind at ease.”
They emerged through a doorway onto the temporary structure abutting the West Front: one hundred and sixty thousand pounds of scaffolding, thirteen hundred sheets of plywood, a half million nails, twenty thousand pounds of grout and mortar, and twelve hundred gallons of gleaming white paint. Like the rotunda, it bore no traces of the damage inflicted just fourteen days earlier by the insurrectionists.
The three previous presidents and their wives had arrived and were mingling with the other dignitaries. A few members of Congress were searching for their seats, including a universally loathed and poorly groomed senator from Texas who had attempted to overturn the results of the election. Agent Barneswas describing some of the extraordinary measures the Secret Service had taken to secure the event. Gabriel was gazing at the two hundred thousand American flags fluttering in the cold breeze blowing across the empty Mall.
Shortly before eleven a.m., the president-elect’s family stepped onto the platform. “We should go downstairs to our seats,” said Agent Barnes.
“Ourseats?”
“I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“Poor you.”
They entered the Capitol, descended a flight of stairs, and emerged onto the lawn that two weeks earlier had been trampled by the marauding insurrectionists. Their seats were next to the camera platform. The first female vice president in American history, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, was administered the oath of office at 11:42 a.m.; the new president, at 11:48. Nine minutes before the constitutionally prescribed start of his term, he took to the podium to deliver his inaugural address to a nation ravaged by illness and death and torn by political divisions. As Gabriel rose to his feet, he scanned the platform for a Russian asset code-named Rebel.
“Don’t worry,” said the young Secret Service agent standing at his side. “Nothing is going to happen.”
He declared that this was America’s day, democracy’s day, a day of history and hope. The nation, he said, had been tested by a crucible for the ages. And yet its institutions, the very institutions his predecessor had spent four years trying to destroy, had risen to the challenge. He called on Americans toend their uncivil war—a war that pitted red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal—and assured them that their democracy would never fall to a mob like the one that had invaded the Capitol. Gabriel, awed by the majesty of the ceremony, hoped the president would be proven correct. The world’s oldest democracy had survived its brush with authoritarianism, but it had been a near-death experience.
When the speech was over, a country music star sang “Amazing Grace,” and the youngest inaugural poet in American history declared that the country wasn’t broken, simply unfinished. Afterward, the new chief executive withdrew to the President’s Room, a gilded chamber on the Senate side of the Capitol, where congressional leaders looked on as he signed an Inauguration Day proclamation and several nominations to cabinet and sub-cabinet positions.
Next they moved to the Great Rotunda for a traditional presentation of gifts, a ceremony that ordinarily takes place during the inaugural luncheon. One of the gifts, a framed photograph of the ceremony that had occurred only moments earlier, was bestowed by the House minority leader, a Californian who had repeatedly claimed that the president had not won the election. The president, intent on bridging the nation’s cavernous political divide, accepted the gift graciously.
The final event before his departure took place on the steps of the East Front. There the president reviewed a parade of troops from every branch of the armed forces, a ceremony dating back to George Washington’s first inauguration that symbolized the transfer of power to a new, duly elected civilian leader. Power had indeed been transferred, thought Gabriel, watching the ritual from the East Plaza, but it had not been peaceful.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the largest motorcade Gabriel had ever seen assembled at the base of the steps, and the new president settled into the back of his limousine. By two fifteen he was headed down Independence Avenue toward Arlington Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“I told you nothing would happen,” said Agent Barnes.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” replied Gabriel.
“What do you mean?”
“You live in an extraordinary country. Take good care of it.”
“Why do you think I work for the Secret Service?” She offered Gabriel her elbow in farewell. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Director Allon. I have to say, you’re not what I expected.”
“Really? How so?”
She smiled. “I thought you’d be taller.”
The razor wire sparkled in the brilliant winter sunlight as Gabriel walked down the gentle slope of Constitution Avenue. He crossed the empty boulevard at New Jersey Avenue and headed north, past the grassy plateau known as Lower Senate Park. In the deep silence of the locked-down city, he could hear footfalls behind him, muted, the occasional chirp of rubber against concrete. Female, he reckoned. Perhaps fifty kilograms, slightly out of breath. The footfalls drew closer as he approached the intersection of Louisiana Avenue. He slowed, as though to take his bearings, and turned around.
Caucasian female, mid-forties, five foot one or two, solidly built, professionally attired, visibly agitated. No, thought Gabriel suddenly. She was spun up out of her mind. In her righthand was a gun, a compact Glock 32 .357. It was a lot of firepower for so petite a woman. Fortunately, it was pointed toward the sidewalk. At least, for the moment.
Gabriel smiled and addressed the woman in a voice he reserved for those of unsound mind.
“Can I help you?”
