24 Veto Power by John Whitman Read Free Book Online Page B

a man’s head, in her heart she felt that one ought to at least make an effort.
    She slipped out of her apartment in those first min utes after five onto the dark street spotted with street lamps. She started up the road at a slow pace, and a young man in an Adidas track suit fell in beside her.
    “Bobby,” she greeted.
    “Senator,” the young man said. She never said the word bodyguard out loud, but he wasn’t a regular part of her staff—at least, he did none of the analysis or fund-raising work—but when she’d started her predawn runs a month ago, her staffers had gotten him from somewhere to make sure that she always returned home. He ran, and they talked sometimes, but more often she was involved in her own thoughts, and he just kept pace with her.
    She kept silent for the first mile, running the streets that led to Golden Gate Park, trying to wrap her mind around Quincy’s phone call. What had been the point of it? He knew which way she was going to vote, and it wasn’t like the AG was going to twist her arm. Barnes might try—she could at least imagine him getting on the phone and using his President voice to intimidate her. That would have failed, too, of course. Barnes’ party might have succeeded in cowing a lot of other members of her party, but not her. So if the President himself would have failed, why had the AG even bothered?
    It had all started with the Patriot Act. Drexler had voted for it, too. Like everyone else, she’d been caught up in the emotions of 9/11 and her judgment had been clouded by the smoke of the burning towers. But Congress had possessed the sense, at least, to make the act temporary. She’d been appalled when the government had expanded it, and now she was furious that the Administration was attempting to replace it with an even more intrusive bill. The New American Privacy Act—the name itself was so Orwellian it sent shivers down her spine—granted the FBI and other investigative bodies powers that were tantamount to dropping the Bill of Rights into a paper shredder. Every time the politicians on her side of the aisle tried to sound the alarm, Quincy and the administration simply wrapped themselves in the flag and talked about the hordes of terrorists lurking in the shadows.
    Of course, it didn’t help that there actually were terrorists out there.
    They reached Golden Gate Park, which wasn’t nearly as big as Central Park in New York but had a beauty all its own, and started down the jogging path.
    “Bobby, do you follow politics?”
    The young man said, “I follow you, Senator.”
    She laughed. He was quick. “Seriously, I talk with the rest of my staff, I ask their opinions, I’m interested in their views.” She was beginning her second mile. Her breath and her sentences were getting shorter. “I want yours.”
    “I’m not much on having opinions on the job, Senator.”
    “You’d make a good politician, then.”
    “There’s no need to get nasty, Senator.”
    She laughed again. “So you’re in security, or law enforcement, or something like that. I want to know what you think of the NAP Act.”
    He paused. She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m not really an investigator, ma’am. I mean, I only had a little training in investigation at FLETC.”
    She repeated it the way he pronounced it. “Fletsee?”
    “Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. You get a little of everything there, but I focused mostly on the protective services area. I’m not really qualified to know what investigators need. This NAP Act stuff is over my head.”
    “No, it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not over anyone’s head. The bottom line is, do you want the government to be able to ignore all your rights if they think you’re a terrorist?”
    He considered. “I don’t mind them ignoring the terrorists’ rights when they catch them.”
    “But what if they catch the wrong people? What if they step on the rights of a hundred people to find one