“I was thinking aloud.”

“You queried JFK’s portrait about his sexual escapades.”

“I queried him about his faith in God. I mean-” The president stuttered, stopped. His face reddened. “I pondered aloud whether he was a deeply religious person. I have always been interested in matters of faith. I am a man of faith.”

Swinburne kept barreling ahead like a snowplow. “You were skinny-dipping in front of your female chief of staff.”

“I didn’t ask her to come in there!” His voice was becoming strained. He was getting defensive. “I didn’t know she was coming!”

“Balderdash. You ditch your security people, it’s a sure bet your chief of staff will come looking for you. That’s her job. And if you didn’t know it beforehand, you would certainly know it after the first ten or twenty times it happened.”

“I did not know-”

“It was perfectly simple to anticipate that she would walk in on you. That’s probably why you did it. So you could see the shocked expression on this poor young woman’s face when she found the president stark naked!’

“That’s a lie!” Kyler said, but the more he insisted it was not, the more it sounded as if it were. Swinburne was doing a good job of shaking him out of his comfort zone and putting him on the defensive. Ben knew that anytime a defendant appears to be stretching, making excuses, juries start to lose faith in him. He needed to find an excuse to intervene.

“Are you sure, Mr. President? Are you sure exposing yourself didn’t appeal to your sense of goofiness?”

“Objection to the use of the term ‘exposing himself,’” Ben said, finding his opening. “It’s unnecessarily inflammatory.”

“Oh, whatever,” Cartwright said. “We all know what he’s getting at. Let’s move along.”

“But he’s talking about this minor incident as if he were talking to someone accused of a sex crime. That’s totally inappropriate.”

“Can I help it if the president has urges to flash the American public? I haven’t even gotten to the nudity fetish yet.”

“I object to the terms ‘exposing himself’ and ‘fetish’!”

Cartwright looked as if he were about to explode. “Could you please use a different terminology, Mr. Swinburne? We need to move along!”

“Yes, judge. Of course.” Swinburne continued working through his list. “You dangled off the edge of the White House roof and talked about flying.”

“It’s a universal dream,” the president replied through thin lips. “I hope you noted that I did not, in fact, attempt to fly.”

“This time.” Swinburne kept blazing ahead. “You talked about committing suicide.”

“In the abstract,” President Kyler emphasized. He was becoming louder with each sentence. His voice was strident. It had a razor-sharp edge. “I never ever said that I wanted to kill myself, or planned to kill myself, or even could kill myself. It was a purely abstract, philosophical discussion designed to comfort Sarie. I’m sorry she didn’t grasp that. She’s very efficient, but sometimes she’s a little slow. Maybe she didn’t get her grits that morning.”

Ben closed his eyes. That was not a smart play. Attacking his cute and spunky chief of staff was not a winning strategy. Ben wished there were a way to object to his own defendant’s answers, but unfortunately, that objection did not exist.

“I think she could have had all the grits in Alabama and still not be prepared for the image of the president of the United States blowing out his brains during a live press conference!” Swinburne wasn’t even asking questions anymore. He was just being argumentative, trying to agitate the president. And it was working. “I don’t think anyone could be prepared for that!”

“I never said that! And I would never do that!” Kyler leaned forward. Beads of sweat appeared at his temples.

“I’m not going to give you the chance.” Swinburne turned a page in his notes. “Earlier today, when faced with a national crisis, you retreated into a mentally withdrawn and delusional state.”

“Is it a crime to laugh? To sing?”

“It’s a bizarre and inappropriate response to a crisis situation. One that does not inspire trust.”

“Look, Conrad, I’m the president. And if I find it useful to sing ‘There’s a Hole in the Bucket,’ then I will sing ‘There’s a Hole in the Bucket’!”

Swinburne fell silent. He looked as if he had just seen a specter from the netherworld. Eventually, he said, “That’s not what you were singing.”

The president’s left eye began to twitch. “It isn’t?”

Swinburne’s lips parted. “No.” He laid his hands flat on the table. “My God, man-do you even remember what happened a few hours ago?”

President Kyler looked down at his hands. He was fidgeting. “Of course I do.”

“Tell me what you were singing.”

“What does it matter?” the president said, his voice cracking. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face. “I sing all the time. I don’t happen to recall what I sang last. What difference does it make?”

“My God,” Swinburne said, almost breathlessly. “You don’t remember anything about it, do you? Did you totally black out? Has your brain erased it from your memory?”

“Look, I’ve been very busy. Just because I can’t dredge up the details-”

“I remember all the details,” Swinburne said. “They are indelibly imprinted on my brain.” He paused. “But you seem to have undergone some kind of… mental erasure. As if the brain has erased memories that might cause stress or unhappiness. I believe the same thing happens after people experience seizures or bipolar episodes.”

“Would you stop talking about mental!” the president shouted, before Ben had a chance to lodge an objection. “I’m tired of all this talk about mental! Maybe you’re mental, huh? Maybe it’s… it’s… you…” All at once, Kyler reached forward, clasped his knees, and began to rock back and forth in his chair. “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout… down came the rain and washed the spider out…”

Ben closed his eyes. No. Please, God, no.

“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain…” His eyes widened. He stared up at the ceiling, as if he were seeing something that wasn’t there. “Then the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again.”

This time, as Ben surveyed the faces in the bunker, what he saw was not so much shock as embarrassment. After all they had seen and heard this day, Kyler’s actions no longer had the power to produce shock. What they produced, at best, was pity.

The president began the song over again. Swinburne shook his head sadly. “I think that’s enough from this witness, judge. I’ve seen enough.” He turned away. “Surely we’ve all seen enough.”

“Thank you,” Cartwright said. “If there’s no redirect…”

Ben shook his head. What could he possibly do with this suddenly imbecilic witness?

“Then the witness is excused.” Ben took the president by the arm and led him back to his chair. He barely seemed to understand what was going on around him.

“Now we’ll proceed to brief closing arguments,” Cartwright said. “And I emphasize brief. This trial has already consumed more time than we can spare.

“Understood,” they both agreed.

As he spoke, Ben was already contemplating what he might say. What could he possibly do to salvage this mess now? He wondered if the noble thing would be just to throw in the towel. He couldn’t possibly pretend that they hadn’t seen what they had all just seen. And he couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t justify it. There was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable judgment.

And he wasn’t sure anymore if he should try.

It was all well and good to be loyal to an inspirational leader. A man who wanted peace. And of course he would always be indebted to anyone who did his wife a kindness. But how could he justify leaving this man with obvious issues in control of the country in the midst of an imminent missile crisis?

And yet…

Something was bothering him. Something was nagging him at the base of his spine, jabbing him in the cerebral cortex. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. And he wasn’t at all sure that Vice President Swinburne was proceeding from altruistic motives. Everything he had seen suggested he was more interested in his own career than he was in the good of the nation.