NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

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The room marked “closet” in the basement of the White House was his inner sanctum.

Here the President repaired every morning, when he was in town, for a jog, or a walk, or a ride.

Today he would run two miles through the Yosemite Sequoia Grove. It was a virtual route, down a virtual path displayed on the three walls surrounding him. The elevation of the treadmill was timed to the gradient before him, and his speed was adjusted based on the heart monitor that was part of his workout shirt. It was all connected wirelessly, a far cry from the set-up he had met when he first came to Washington, nearly four years before.

No one ever saw him. This was his time.

Except, that is, for his “coach,” the man in a gray sweatsuit sweating beside him, trying virtually to virtually keep up on a very real bicycle wedded to the treadmill.

Karl Rove hated this, but it was the price of power and, he knew, good for him in the long run.

Bush kept a pace that was hard for a fat man to ride alongside, but slow enough so he himself could both speak and think. Today he wanted to know what could be done about this Chinese so-called “peace offensive,” in his words.

“Piracy remains a problen in the South China Sea, sir,” said Rove, puffing to keep his wheels turning. “Things happen. And if there’s a hidden, untraceable bounty, more things happen.”

“Good, good,” said the President, nodding to the invisible people on the screen around him. “Sorry I can’t make that funeral, Karl, but it would be good for you to get in public more. You’ve got to get used to it.”

“That’s fine, sir.” It was just as well, thought Rove, that the President couldn’t make the funeral of Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, whose SUV had crashed a few days before on the way back from a New Year’s Eve party.

“Sorry thing, that,” the President said, as if reading Rove’s mind. “I was about ready to have Taft appoint that ol’ boy to the Senate. Good to have a black Republican in the Senate, you know.” Feeling his heart strong in his chest, Bush nodded again to the people he was passing on his wall. “How ya’ doin’?” he said.

“Yes, a sorry thing, that,” Rove said. The less the President knew, the better. Deniability was the key. That and a conspiracy laying in 10,000 places, one whose dimensions no one at all knew, save the man who set it in motion.

The President put on a burst, and Rove struggled again to keep up. He didn’t need a fancy monitor to know his own heart was racing now. “Now what are we going to do about this crap from Edwards?” he wanted to know.

“Sir?”

“John Edwards. You know, good hair, wanted your job? He’s holding some press conference today, claiming fraud in the re-election or some such. It’s bullshit, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Know what he’s got?”

“No, sir.”

“Find out, dammit!” Finally, the President began to slow down, and Karl Rove caught his breath. “He’s got nothing, I know, but I have to be ready to deny it, fact-actually, to Fox and CNN as soon as he’s finished. That’s the way these boys work. This time, Karl, we’re going to be on top of things. No more surprises.”

“Sir, we believe he’s got some forged files that may appear to come from some Secretary of State’s office. Nothing he can prove in a million years. And the Electoral College meets this week. It’s all certified, nothing changes, nothing to worry about.”

“Make sure of that,” said the President, as he slowed to a walk and nodded toward the virtual crowd near his virtual finish line.

“I always do.”

This was what former-Senator Edwards expected. He expected skepticism, cynicism, resignation. This wasn’t the Ukraine. This was America, the world’s oldest, best-functioning democracy. Which meant the rules were stronger here.

And what they said, as Senator Kerry had told him, was that elections were mere formalities which need not mean anything. That was the real key holding in Bush vs. Gore, not the Presidency itself but the precedent, the idea that states control their own electors. They would normally certify the result as machines or punch cards dictated, giving the winner all the state’s electoral votes. But they could certify an incomplete result, or even certify the loser as winner, if they chose. It was their sold discretion.

Maybe, if the popular vote had turned out differently (and how did that happen, Edwards still wondered, given the mid-afternoon exit polls) there might be something to complain about. But this was a clear 51-48 decision, with electoral votes to spare. And if Ohio was the actual margin so be it. Now, if that had gone the other way, maybe the Republican Supreme Court would have revisited Bush vs. Gore, and set some national standard in order to give their boy the win.

It didn’t matter what he said in this courtroom, he knew. The deck was firmly stacked against him. John Edwards had no more chance of overturning this election, despite his evidence, than Atticus Finch had of getting Tom Robinson acquitted in To Kill a Mockingbird.

He knew that, as he stepped to the podium at the National Press Club. But he was still going to fight until the last dog died.

So while that dog died, he resolved, he would make some demands. “We must have standards for running elections, transparent standards anyone can understand, which every state adheres to,” he said. “If we’re to have electronic voting machines, we must be able to audit them. We must be able to match totals with registrations, know that everyone who voted was registered, and know that every vote is counted.

“If we don’t get this now then democracy in America is a sham, a fraud, and no government can be legitimate,” he added. He let that sink in.

“The fact is that George Bush can’t prove he was elected on November 2 of last year. Had John Kerry and I won, we wouldn’t have been able to prove it, either. The Ukranian people were able to prove fraud against their system, because the evidence could be collected, and the system was transparent enough to allow the people to rule. Just in the last month Ghana and Romania have held close, free, and fair elections, where the winners could prove they won, and the losers had no fair complaint.

“We don’t have that. We must have that. And until we are assured of it, the American people need to rise up and demand it, as the people of the Ukraine did.

“And that’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I want you to do. You know, one of America’s greatest composers, Dmitri Tiomkin, was a Ukranian immigrant. Most folks don’t know that. He wrote some of our greatest western music. He wrote the music for Giant, for The Alamo, for Duel in the Sun.

“He also wrote the music for my all-time favorite film, High Noon.’ He wrote Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’. You remember that movie, don’t you? You remember how Gary Cooper went to every townsman, every friend, and how no one would stand with him against Frank Miller. They all had an excuse. His mentor was too old, his deputy wanted to be in charge, and the politicians thought it would just blow over.

“But Gary Cooper stood. He stood alone, knowing it would kill him. The actor was my age when he made that movie, he was sick, in pain, but he stood, he went the distance. And in the end he was saved, by the love of a good woman.

“As I am. I have my wife Elizabeth beside me. But that’s not enough in this gunfight. So I ask you, at home, if you’re within the sound of my voice. I’m calling for democracy. Do not forsake me, oh my darlins.

"This is freedom calling. Do not forsake me.

"This is what our forefathers fought for, being murdered before our eyes. And we need a posse of good honest citizens to stop it from becoming permanent.

"This is liberty calling. Do not forsake me.

"Everyone says we have no chance, that nothing can change, that the game may be rigged but the game's over.

"But this is America I'm calling on. Do not forsake me. Do not forsake freedom, oh my darlins'. As it was given to you, we must now, here, begin the fight to make certain it will go on to our children, and our childrens' children.

"Do not forsake me, oh my darlin's."