Chapter Nine
MATT BRANSON REMOVED his suit coat and hung it on a hook near the door to his office. Retrieving a University of Michigan coffee mug from the top of his desk, Matt stepped into the corridor and marched to the coffee pot. Moments later, the fluid began to warm him. He settled behind his desk. He had arrived twenty minutes early, thanks to unexpectedly thin traffic.
Since college his life had been a struggle to put twenty hours of work into every twenty-four-hour day. It was that way at Princeton, in Michigan law school, the two years he clerked in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and the year he clerked for an appellate court judge. Matt not only considered hard work the key to success, but a sacred duty. That attitude so impressed the judges for whom he clerked that both made personal appeals to the attorney general. Alton Stamper had been quick to accept him into a non-political deputy assistant’s slot for the Office of Professional Responsibility.
On the desk, he kept a small plastic photo cube with the text of the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments on three sides. On the fourth side he had placed his favorite photo of his wife Michelle with his little Ruthie.
Matt tasted the coffee again.
“You need a warm up?”
Matt looked up to see Lisa Denton, his personal aide. She was short with long black hair that curled around her shoulders and dark eyes.
“You’re in a little early.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Traffic was light this morning. Go figure.”
“Take your blessings where you find them, Lisa. Tonight traffic might not be moving at all.”
“No doubt. Anything you want me to start on?”
“Let’s just pick up where we left off yesterday.”
“The assistant attorney general for DTED called. He wants to have lunch again.”
Matt grinned. “Did John say he was going to pay?”
“No, and I didn’t ask.”
“I’m just kidding, Lisa. We always split the ticket. After all, we’re both just poor civil servants.”
“Well, he wants to have lunch with you today. It’s been awhile.”
“I imagine he has his hands full. I know I do.”
“Do you keep up with all your college buddies?”
Matt shook his head. “Not really. We’ve all gone our own ways. Most of us lost contact when we went to grad school. John went to Harvard; I went to Michigan. I didn’t see him again until I started here. We’ve always worked in different areas of the law.”
“So he’s the only one?”
“I keep in touch with a couple others, but most live in other states. John and I just happened to go to work at Justice. When did he call?”
“Right before I left,” Lisa said. “He seemed surprised you were already gone for the day.”
“I hope you told him I was in a hearing.”
Lisa grinned. “Of course I did. You work as hard as he does.”
“Great. Go ahead and confirm the lunch. Did he say where he wanted to meet? Wait, let me guess: Terri’s Italian.”
“But do you know what time?” Lisa smiled and cocked her head.
“Um, noon.”
“Lucky guess.”
MATT WALKED THE two blocks to Terri’s Italian, a small bistro-type restaurant with a too-small common dining area and two large rooms in the back that could be reserved for meetings or parties. The rooms were often the choice of high-ranking government employees who needed a place to meet outside the office.
Matt arrived first and the hostess showed him to one of the rear rooms. He took a seat at a square table with the requisite red-and-white checkered tablecloth. Overhead hung empty Italian wine bottles. It looked like every other mass-produced Italian restaurant Matt had ever been in.
Five minutes later, John Knox Smith walked in wearing a charcoal gray suit, an emerald green tie, and a stark white shirt. “Sorry to be late, Matt.” He slapped Matt on the shoulder then removed his coat and draped it over an empty chair. “Glad you could make it.”
“Thanks for inviting me, John. I’m surprised you offered to buy.”
John laughed, “I didn’t make that offer. Wish we could do the National Gallery and lunch there more often. With the cheaper prices, you could afford to pay for mine without complaining.”
Matt laughed in reply, “We’ve both got pretty demanding jobs, and we’re not exactly after the same things.”
“We work for the same guy after all.”
“True, but there’s a world of difference between DTED and the Office of Professional Responsibility.”
“OPR is an important post. Keeping all us government attorneys in check is tough work.”
“We do what we can,” Matt said.
“I’m just going to have a salad. How about you?”
Matt thought for a moment. He seldom ate lunch away from his desk. “Antipasto sounds good to me.”
A waitress took the order and delivered the salads and diet drinks a few minutes later.
“I was glad to see you at the swearing-in,” John said. “A friendly face is always appreciated.”
“I was glad I could be there.”
“It means something to me. I didn’t have many friends in college. You were one of the few who could tolerate me.”
“Who said I tolerated you?”
“Cute. You’re a funny man.”
“So how’s the family?”
“Fine.” Matt doubted John had come to ask about his family. He had never been much on small talk. Clearly, John had something on his mind and that made Matt uneasy.
“Do you ever think about our college days?” John asked.
“Sometimes. I remember trying to keep up with you and Pat Preston. I always seemed a few steps behind.”
“Nonsense. You were a brain—you are a brain,” John said.
“I lacked the academic skills you and Pat had. I always had to work twice as hard just to stay even.”
“Nothing wrong with hard work. You still a Christian?”
The question came so suddenly, Matt had trouble formulating a response. “Yes, of course. Why?”
John shrugged. “I just remember that you and Pat shared that conviction. I saw one of your old mentors at the swearing-in.”
“A mentor of mine? Who?”
“Larry Jordan. You know him, don’t you?”
Matt set his fork down. “I’ve met him, yes. He’s the head of the Alliance here in D.C. I saw him at the ceremony. We didn’t get to talk.”
John took another bite of his salad. “Didn’t I hear that you went to one of their programs or something? It was while you were in law school.”
“I think you mean the Madison Scholars Academy. It was after my second semester.” Matt wondered if John had been doing research on him.
“Sounds fascinating. Tell me about it.”
Alarms started ringing in Matt’s head. He picked up his fork again but did nothing with it. “Not much to tell. It’s a summer study and internship program. It’s nine weeks long.”
“Where does it meet?”
“You can get that info from the Internet.”
John looked wounded. “Ease up, Matt. This isn’t an inquisition. I saw Larry Jordan at the swearing-in and it made me think of you. Seeing you again brought it to mind. Look, if you’re ashamed or—”
“Ashamed? It was the best summer of my life. It helped put faith and reason together for me.”
“Now, you see, that’s what interests me.”
Matt inhaled deeply. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe.
“As you know, the Alliance is dedicated to protecting our first freedom: religious liberty. The right of free speech; right of peaceful assembly—”
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievanc
es.” John raised an eyebrow. “They made us study constitutional law at Harvard too.”
“Okay, the Alliance seeks to protect that. I applied to attend the Madison Scholars Academy to get a perspective on a few things I was wrestling with. We met at a campus not far from Chicago and then I interned with a D.C. law firm.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“I learned a lot, John. Do you remember the debate where you squared off with Pat on revisionist history? Well, I learned Pat was right. There is a social, cultural, and religious history that has been expunged from our high school and college history books.”
“Pat would agree with you about that.”
“I had been struggling with what I thought were conflicts between faith and science; faith and reason; faith and law. The parish I grew up in had a tired pastor and an aging population. I’d never heard what my church really believed. At the Madison Scholars Academy, I learned that no conflict exists between theology and those things.”
Matt paused, then said, “I used to listen to you and Pat debate those issues and always left more confused than informed. Pat knew what he believed; you knew what you believed. I wasn’t so sure. The Madison Scholars gave me the information I needed to make up my mind. I wasn’t alone. There were many people like me at Madison. For a while, I thought I was the only law student in the world still trying to be a Christian. There are a lot of Christians in law who love America and want her to be great again.”
“I know a lot of law students driven to prayer by law school.” John chuckled at his joke.
“They challenged us intellectually. David Barclay did a full day of lectures on the religious roots of America. Dr. Jerome Berlitsky, who teaches natural law at the University of New Mexico challenged the way we think. He quoted others who said, ‘There are some things we can’t not know.’”
“‘Can’t not know.’ That’s awkward wording.” John pushed his bowl of salad away.
“Awkward but powerful. He quoted the Apostle Paul, who said some things are written on the heart.”
“Sounds like you had a good time.”
“Well, it’s not Disneyland. David Barclay’s lecture lasted five hours. It seemed like one. I can’t believe how little I knew about our founding fathers.”
“Sounds like you managed to keep your faith through law school, clerking, and your time in the DOJ.”
“Why the sudden interest in my faith, John?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Matt stared at him for a moment. “One time, back in college, I told you I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I told you because I hoped it might lead to further discussion, but you shrugged it off and changed the subject. Are you giving Christianity another look?”
“Not like you mean it, Matt. I still have my syncretic belief system. I draw from all faiths. Jesus is in the mix. The goal is equality.”
“Jesus is in the mix?” Matt laughed. “How’s that working for you?”
“You need to remember, Matt, ‘Every shaking advance of mankind towards equality and justice has come from the radical.’”
“John, don’t quote Saul Alinksy to me. As a Christian, I agree with Jefferson’s declaration that all men are created equal, that we all have value in the eyes of God, and we’re free to become whoever He wants us to be. And as to equality, one-time British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, ‘The single biggest intellectual error has been to confuse freedom with equality. Equality is usually the enemy of freedom.’”
John smiled. “Matt, let’s not go back to those debates at Princeton. And the Department of Justice’s official role now is to ensure equality, so you’d better not be quoting ancient Brits. And speaking of those old debates, do you ever talk to Pat Preston?”
Again, another question from left field. “No. We exchange Christmas cards every year. That’s about it.”
“Did he talk to you about the funeral?”
“He hasn’t talked to me about any funerals.”
“Not even the one he did for the preacher who shot the U.S. Marshal in the head?”
Matt’s mind began to whir. As one of the lead lawyers for the Office of Professional Responsibility at the DOJ, he had developed a sixth sense for when wayward prosecutors were lying to him. “No, we haven’t spoken or exchanged mail in years. Why do you ask?”
“He’s doing well, you know. Went to Rogers Memorial Church in Nashville a few years back. It was a big church then, about forty-five hundred in attendance; it’s over ten thousand now.”
“How do you know this? Are you investigating him?”
“What’s to investigate? He does, however, have an annoying habit of descending into hate speech topics in his sermons—sermons that are broadcast over radio and television and streamed over the Internet. It’s disconcerting.”
Matt pushed away his half-full salad bowl and drink, then leaned over the table. “You are investigating him. You’re trying to get me to deliver a message.”
John looked at his watch. “Wow, look at the time. I’ve got to go.”
“It’s been less than half an hour, John.”
“We should take a long lunch soon and head over to the National Gallery of Art. You know, break up our usual routine. It’s just two blocks from the office. They have a great new traveling exhibit of some modern art and architecture, including I.M. Pei, who designed the East Building. And let’s go see my favorite: Alexander Calder’s seventy-six-foot-long mobile. It’s hung high in the atrium—”
“I’ve seen it. John, what do you want?”
John pulled cash from his wallet and tossed it on the table. “Maybe you should send your Christmas card early.”
He didn’t wait for a response. John turned and marched out of the restaurant.
Matt was suddenly afraid for his old friend, Pat Preston.