The vice president opened up the leather folio and slid a document across the desk. Gabe sensed without looking what it was.

"There is a great deal at stake here, Doctor, and you have a significant role in the drama that may be unfolding."

As the president's frantic, frightening episode was beginning to resolve, Lattimore had mentioned that locked within The Football, along with the electronics and codes necessary to unleash Armageddon, was an agreement signed by Drew and Thomas Cooper III outlining those situations in which there was to be a transfer of power from president to vice president according to the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. At that moment, Gabe had made a mental note to ask the chief of staff for a copy of the document. Over the ensuing, chaotic hours and days, he had simply forgotten to do so.

Now, on the desk before him was that agreement, headed by the four impressively brief sections that made up the exceedingly complex Twenty-fifth Amendment—the statement believed by many to be the most comprehensive road map of political succession ever put to paper. Gabe had read the amendment at least half a dozen times during the hours he was caring for the president in his residence. Now he scanned the first of the two paragraphs composing section 4:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Following a glance at his watch, meant more as a reminder to Cooper than to himself, Gabe flipped through the pages. Listed in outline form, more than described in detail, were the scenarios in which the vice president, head of the White House Military Office, White House chief of staff, chief legal counsel, and physician to the president could act in concordance in deciding whether to proceed with the political process of replacing the president against the president's wishes.

Sixth on the list was "Mental Illness." Gabe was careful to scan the entire document slowly and evenly, so that it wouldn't seem to Cooper as if he had spent any extra time on this one scenario. Though there was no specific delineation of qualifying diagnoses, the agreement did state that the president should, if possible, be medically evaluated by his own physician and also by a qualified doctor of psychology or psychiatry. The mandate of these caregivers was to determine whether or not the POTUS's condition was affecting his ability to do his job without impairment.

Gabe set the pages aside and was about to ask what the vice president wanted from him when Cooper saved him the effort.