businesses.
He was a thin man who drank more than he ate and sucked down two packs of Camel unfiltered regulars a day. His thinning hair was white and tinged with yellow from cigarette smoke. The skin on his cheeks and nose was reddened from a severe case of aggravated rosacea.
He was an unhappy man with a dry wit and a penchant for the television show Jeopardy! He was particularly good at historical and political categories.
Ings was also a founding member of the underground Datura Project. The “Daturans”, as the small group’s members were called, had met each other at various political events in the Metro DC area. They shared a singular, radical idea about the future of their nation and of the world.
They first met in Ings’s upstairs apartment as a group of four and soon added a fifth. The group determined that half of a minyan was large enough and stopped recruiting. They called themselves the “Datura Project” in honor of the poisonous plant certain Native American tribes would diffuse into a hallucinogenic tea during rites of passage. The Daturans believed their eyes were open. They could see what others could not.
They also knew what was best for their country, and they believed they could best effect change with swift action. But in meeting after meeting their leader, Sir Spencer Thomas, convinced them the right opportunity had not presented itself. A shift of such magnitude, he’d reasoned, required the perfect, historic moment.
Maybe that will change now that the president is dead.
With chatter of the president’s death on the flat screen behind the bar, but nobody in the seats, Ings decided to close up early. He sent his barkeep and cook home with a few extra bucks, locked the front doors, and climbed the stairs into his apartment. The rest of the group would be there in a few hours, and he needed to be ready.
Plus, Jeopardy! was on Channel 8 and he didn’t want to miss it. It was “College All-Stars” week. He hoped it wouldn’t be preempted by news coverage of the president’s death.
Chapter 3
Standing in the Cox Corridors on the House side of the US Capitol, Felicia Jackson’s mind was swirling with possibilities. She was transfixed by the large mural above her in the Central East-West Hallway that depicted the inauguration of George Washington. It was breathtaking.
She was somewhat saddened she’d never taken the time to appreciate the work in the past. But with the halls eerily quiet as everyone on the Hill busied themselves behind office desks and in front of televisions, she had the perfect chance to reflect and admire.
Felicia rubbed her neck as she kept her gaze upward. As Speaker of the House, she knew she might be the next American to take that oath and inherit the green office.
She’d asked her staff for a few minutes of privacy as she took the short walk from her first-floor office to the Cox Corridor murals. She’d been in high-level, classified meetings all day. Her people were fighting for her to assume the presidency, while not-yet-sworn-in Vice President John Blackmon was staking his own claim.
Her case was open and shut, she’d thought. But Blackmon’s attorney had quickly filed an injunction in US District Court in DC. He claimed her ascension to the presidency would cause irreparable injury for which no damage award could compensate. He also contended his case, on constitutional grounds, was in the public interest.
While the district judge considered the case, she was temporarily stopped from taking office. Nancy Mayer-Whittington, the Clerk of the Court, had told her lawyers the injunction was filed along with her team’s response and that the judge would decide on its merits the next morning.
Mayer-Whittington had called just before the office closed at 4 p.m. They were short staffed already, and Felicia imagined this case would only further stress the Clerk. She pictured lines of reporters banging on the Constitution Avenue entrance, all of them