As the others queued up for their turn at the coffee urn, Penn and Strasky took seats next to each other at the front of the room, waiting for others to find spots for themselves. Something about the space wasn’t right. The walls were devoid of decoration and were painted an unsettling green. Not fluorescent, exactly, but close. The last time Penn had seen this hue was on the walls of a hospital morgue when he had to identify the body of a friend. Combined with the checkerboard-pattern tile on the floor, it was an unpleasant room to sit in.

If the rest of the interior was like this, the next sixty days of confinement were going to be damned difficult. “I’m open to any suggestions anyone might have,” he said.

“I’ll go,” Burton Sinclair said. Pushing eighty, he’d represented Oklahoma’s Fourth since before the youngest member of the current Congress had even been born. Decades before, he’d made a run at the White House and lost. Since then, he’d dedicated himself to being the House’s unofficial historian and parliamentarian. “I think you made a mistake taking us to recess—if I may speak so plainly. As a matter of law, sir, you are already the president of the United States. The language of the Twenty-fifth Amendment is clear. Upon the death or incapacity of both the president and vice president, the Speaker of the House of Representatives becomes acting president. There’s no language about whether or not said Speaker represents the majority present in the chamber. You were Speaker when the officers of the executive branch died, so you therefore are, in fact, president. Sir.”

“You might have brought that up inside the chamber,” Oscar Colson said.

“What would be the point?” Sinclair said. “Fact is fact. Discussing it doesn’t change reality. Mr. President, the oath of office is not even necessary.”

Penn turned to his chief of staff. “Arlen?”

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“That’s not helpful.”

“Perhaps not. But it is my answer. Mr. President.”

Lianne Holt stood. “I think we need to be careful not to get too far out over our skis here,” she said. “History will be watching us. Perhaps not in real time, but we have to believe that there will be a future, and with that as the basis, we have to understand that optics are important. I think taking the oath of office is essential. Lyndon Johnson was criticized at the time for what the media called grandstanding after the JFK assassination, but that picture from the plane made a statement to the world that America is bigger than its leadership. The United States survives.”

“There was no challenge to the legitimacy of Johnson’s vice presidency,” said Jack Collins of Montana.

“Nor is there one here,” Sinclair said. His tone had hardened. “Tantrums from the other side of the aisle have no impact on truth and reality.”