Page 148 of The First Gentleman

He’s fingerprinted.

He’s led into a tiny room, where he takes off his bespoke suit and puts on an orange outfit stenciled withROCKINGHAM COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

No more power. No more influence. Now he’s just a number. And he doesn’t even know what that number is.

Two guards lead him from the changing area through a series of doors and into the main prison corridor. The sounds of men shouting and metal banging remind Cole of a locker room. It’s as if his mind is searching for ways to make sense of this, to relate it to a world he knows.

The guards stop and turn him. He’s facing an empty cell. A buzzer sounds. The door slides open. The guards pull him to the threshold, then nudge him in. “Home, sweet home,” one of them says.

Cole takes the final step himself. The door slides shut behind him.

The cell has two metal bunks, bolted to opposite walls. Each bunk has a thin mattress, a sheet, a small foam pillow, and two blankets. In one corner of the green concrete space rests acombination stainless-steel sink and toilet; on the wall is a mirrored sheet of metal.

Cole avoids the mirror. He doesn’t want to see himself like this. If he doesn’t look at his reflection, it’s easier to pretend this is some kind of nightmare.

A guard outside the cell passes a paper bag through the bars. “Hygiene pack,” he says.

Cole looks inside the bag: a cheap toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, a thin bar of soap, and a roll of single-ply toilet paper.

He puts it down, places his hands on the bars, and looks out as two guards lead another inmate up the corridor. Shaved head. Sharp eyes. The build of an offensive lineman.

The procession stops in front of Cole’s cell. One of the guards raps his nightstick above Cole’s knuckles. “Step back,” he orders.

Cole retreats to the middle of the cell. The door opens and the man enters.

The door slams closed again.

Cole looks across the corridor to a row of empty cells.Why the hell did they put this guy in here when there’s all that room over there?“Hey! Hey!” he shouts at the guards.

But the guards are already passing through the double doors into the outer corridor. They don’t even look back.

His new cellmate says, “I don’t think that’s gonna help.” He holds out his hand and says, his voice in a near whisper, “Jeremy Knox, Secret Service.”

“Oh, Jesus,” says Cole. He hangs his head and leans against the bars. “This is the detail they handed you? To babysit me in prison? What happens if I get life?”

“They trained a bunch of us down in Virginia just in case the verdict went this way. We got processed like normal prisoners. Nobody else in the system knows who we are. They plan to switch us out every few months wherever you go, like tag-teaming.”

That this plan was already in place seems to Cole more depressing than reassuring.

He turns to Knox and asks, “Do you have a gun?”

“No, sir. But I can handle things.” Knox flops down on one of the bunks. “I’ll take this side. Better angle. And by the way, that’s the last time I’ll call you ‘sir.’”

CHAPTER

134

The White House

Read it out loud,” says Maddy. “I need to hear it.”

Burton Pearce is standing in front of the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. He can hardly believe what he’s holding. It’s a handwritten draft of a resignation speech in Maddy’s neat script. For once, he didn’t contribute a single phrase.

“Nixon’s resignation speech went on for fifteen minutes,” says Maddy. “I want mine to be shorter than the Gettysburg Address.”

Pearce looks across the desk. He’s known the woman sitting behind it for more than twenty years, since their days as Dartmouth students. It seems impossible that this moment has come. “You really want me to do this?”

The president nods. “I do.”

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