Fanfic: Complicity
Complicity

Jane Harper

Rating: PG-13/TV-14
Synopsis: Sarah's past comes back to haunt her; Mallory pays her dad back; Leo gets a new "guy"; and the West Wing is haunted by leprechauns.
Archive: Be my guest but please let me know. HTML version available upon request.
Disclaimer: I'm just a stowaway on the USS Sorkin; please don't throw me overboard. Sarah can't swim.

Sarah Cooper was emphatically not a morning person; that was the downside of sleeping with the President's Chief of Staff. Leo McGarry was up before the chickens four days out of five. He usually let her sleep until he was dressed and ready to leave, since she wasn't normally required to be at her office in the Old Executive Office Building until eight am. So he answered her phone on this very early Monday morning after they'd spent Sunday night together.

"Yeah," he said.

A moment passed.

"Yes, Mr. Vice President, it's me. You want me to wake her up?"

"I'm awake," she said into her pillow. She turned over and reached for the phone. "What can I do for you, Mr. Vice President?"

"Sarah, I need to see you. Now. Can Leo's car bring you or do you want me to send one?"

"I'll come in with him, sir. I'll be there in . . ." – she looked over at Leo, who flashed both hands at her twice – ". . . twenty minutes. Is that all right?"

"Yes. Come straight to my office." The line went dead.

She launched herself into her wheelchair and grabbed a skirt, jacket, and blouse from the closet; seven minutes flat until the two of them were at the curb as Leo's driver pulled up. McGarry stepped into the back and helped Sarah transfer to the seat across from him.

"Mike," he began, not noticing the young woman standing by the door, "I need to have you drop Sarah—"

"Mike's on vacation, Mr. McGarry. I'll be driving you this week and next; my name is Catherine Giddings."

"I'm very happy to meet you, Catherine," Leo responded. "Can you stow Sarah's wheelchair in the trunk, please? She needs to be at the OEOB as soon as you can get us there."

"Yes, sir," she answered, and closed the door behind them.

The car fax beeped to announce that something had come through. Sarah pulled it free and handed it to him.

"Damn," he said, opening his briefcase and jamming the fax into it.

Sarah looked over at him. His normally hazel eyes had begun to look steely gray, and that meant he was angry. "Something you can tell me about?" she asked.

"It'll be on CNN by the time I get to the West Wing," he responded. "The Israelis are doing their level best to piss us off."

For the rest of the ride, Leo pored over briefing memos, and Sarah stared out the window. As they pulled up at OEOB, he reached over to kiss her goodbye. "Whatever it is, if it's bad news, we'll fix it," he reassured her.

"If it were good news," she asked, "would he have called me at 5?"

Leo sauntered through the hallways of the West Wing that were bustling even this early, and he noticed that people were looking at him and smiling, then looking away. Beginning to feel like the kid in the third grade with the "Kick Me" sign taped to his back, he strode through the bullpen to his outer office. Margaret wasn't in yet, so he pulled the overseas reports out of her in-box and walked into his sanctum. Dropping his briefcase next to the desk, he took off his topcoat, unbuttoned his jacket . . .

. . . and looked up to see a four-foot-tall fully-articulated stuffed leprechaun with sandy hair and reading glasses sitting in his chair.

Sarah went straight into the Vice President's outer office without even removing her coat. She knocked at the door.

"Come in," Hoynes said. "Is that you, Sarah?"

The Vice President was sitting at his desk. On the sofa were his Press Secretary, Mark Macmillan, and his Chief of Staff, Elaine Thompson. Sarah came to a stop directly in front of Hoynes. "Yes, sir. You wanted to see me?"

He walked out from behind the desk, to a point directly in front of where Sarah was sitting, and leaned against its forward edge. Folding his arms and crossing his ankles, he asked, "In May of 1970, did you deliver to the United States' Attorney in Los Angeles a signed statement admitting complicity to several counts of felony evasion of the Selective Service Act?"

CJ rapped on Leo's office door.

"Come in!"

The stuffed leprechaun was sitting in the corner of the sofa. CJ stopped briefly, then bit her lip.

"I'm over here, CJ," Leo said from behind his desk.

"Well you have to admit it's a great likeness. Where did it come from?"

"I have my suspicions."

"You wanted to see me before the gaggle?"

"Yeah." He stood up and handed CJ the fax he'd received on the way in.

"They'll be asking me about the arms deal, Leo. Is this going to torpedo it?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," he answered. "But at the moment we have no comment. Just say we're talking to their government."

"OK." The Press Secretary headed for her morning briefing.

"Mr. Vice President," Sarah said, "I don't understand why anybody cares about something I did thirty years ago that had absolutely no significance for anybody but me."

"Ms. Cooper," Thompson said, "You don't seem to understand. This isn't about you. You're right, nobody gives a damn about what you may or may not have signed or whether or not you broke the law – which, by the way, you did, and you could have gone to Federal prison for five years for."

"I knew that at the time," she responded. "I haven't forgotten it since. That was the point. Women didn't have draft cards to burn, so if we wanted to put ourselves at personal risk for a principle, we had to go out of our way to get the Government's attention."

"Whatever," the Vice President's Chief of Staff continued. "This isn't about you. This is about the Vice President and his judgement, about the kind of people he has working for him, about how he's going to look six years from now when his turn comes."

Sarah's jaw clenched. "In other words, if I understand correctly, there are three options on the table. One, I get fired for something that happened thirty years ago. Two, I resign, as if I had done something wrong. Three, and with all due respect, sir . . ." – she turned toward the man in front of her – "the Vice President decides he has the intestinal fortitude to tell anyone who asks that that was then, and this is now, and what's important is my work."

"Which is excellent, Sarah, and you know I think so," Hoynes interrupted. "Let's all take a deep breath and think."

"Mr. Vice President, wasn't this information in my FBI file?"

"Mark?" He turned to his Press Secretary.

"No, sir, it wasn't."

"It should have been," Sarah responded. "I know there was a clearance check right around the time I went to work for the First Lady."

"But they don't usually bother to clear her staff—" Thompson remarked.

"You're right, Elaine," the Vice President added. "They don't. . . ."

"Josh?" Donna called to her boss. "Turn on CNN!"

He reached over and grabbed the remote. The announcer's voice had a ring of concern. ". . . about an hour ago, when IDF forces cleared the area around the Western Wall and closed the Temple Mount. A spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister said that this was a temporary measure so that the area could be swept for incendiary devices. Hezbullah threatened an incident in the area after word was leaked to the media of the largest arms deal ever struck between the White House and the Israeli government . . . ."

Leo was on the phone chastising the CIA Director. "Why the hell didn't we know about this sooner?"

"There was no hint, Leo," he responded. "I think Sharon just had a temper tantrum and decided enough was enough."

"Are we on the phone with their people?"

"Yes."

"OK," Leo said. "I suspect the President is going to want to talk to the Prime Minister." He hung up the phone and opened the connecting door to the Oval Office.

"Josh," Donna asked casually, "what would happen if somebody here had done something illegal, a long time ago, that nobody knew about, and someone found out?"

"They'd probably get to clean out their desk and be escorted off the grounds. Why, do you have a deep dark past I should know about?"

"No, but Sarah Cooper does."

"What?" Josh put down the sheaf of papers he'd been looking through.

"What's a complicity statement?" Donna asked.

Josh got up and took Donna by the elbow, leading her through the bullpen toward the other side of the building. "We're gonna go find Sam, so you only have to explain this once."

Seaborn was standing over his assistant's desk looking for something. "Sam?" Josh said.

"Yeah?"

"Can we go in your office?"

The three of them walked into the immaculate room; Josh closed the door behind them and turned to Donna. "OK, what's this about a complicity statement?"

"You didn't tell me what that is yet," she responded, crossing her arms over her chest.

Sam pulled the chair out from behind his desk and sat down. "It's an admission that somebody helped somebody else break the law."

"OK," she went on. "Evidently Sarah Cooper signed a complicity statement saying that she helped people break the Selective Service Act."

Josh sat down in the chair across from Sam's desk. "She helped guys avoid the draft."

"There hasn't been an active draft in what, 20 years?" Seaborn said. "In any case, the statute of limitations is long past, so she's in the clear."

"Think, Sam," Josh replied. "The sitting Vice President, who would give his left . . ." He stopped and started over again. ". . . the heir apparent of this administration, has hired a woman who aided and abetted draft dodgers to help him work with the Veteran's Administration! What's wrong with this picture?"

"Oboy," Sam said.

Donna looked confused. "But why do we care if the Vice President looks stupid?"

"A couple of reasons," Josh responded. "First of all, we hired him."

"Like we had a choice," she interrupted.

"Second . . . it's Sarah. We all would have been bouncing off walls after Rosslyn if she hadn't been here . . . . Sam, she's gonna need a lawyer."

Sam picked up his phone and punched in a number. "Hey, Mom—"

Toby Ziegler was standing in the middle of Leo's office, hands in his pockets. "Things settling down in Jerusalem?" he asked.

"Yeah. Sharon has calmed down, the Temple Mount is open, everybody's taking a time out. Listen, I need to know if you can do something."

"What?"

"After today I'm gonna have a hard time keeping Armed Services and Foreign Relations from shooting down the Israeli arms deal. I need some opposition prep. Can you do it?"

"Of course I can do it, Leo. Why would you think . . ." Toby stopped, a sly smile creeping across his face. "What, because I'm Jewish I can't present a coherent argument for torpedoing the security of the State of Israel?"

"I just wanted to check," McGarry responded. "Now go, convince me."

As Toby was leaving, Margaret came to stand at the door. "Leo?"

"Yeah?" He reached behind him for a green binder with the Presidential seal.

She walked into the office, up to the edge of the desk. Dropping her voice, she asked, "Has anybody told you about Sarah yet?"

He flipped through the binder in search of something. "What about Sarah?"

"Evidently she's in some kind of legal trouble. Something about the draft. I didn't know we even had a draft anymore."

"We don't." He took off his glasses and laid them on the desk. "Now what's this about? Sarah and the draft?"

"Well," Margaret began, "evidently a long time ago she signed something about how she helped guys dodge the draft, and now she's in trouble because of it."

"A complicity statement. She signed a complicity statement. Lots of women did back then. They didn't believe in war – either war in general, or that war in particular – so they did the female equivalent of burning their draft cards." He shrugged. "Some of us went because we thought it was the right thing to do. Some of us didn't, because we thought it was the right thing to do."

"Can they still get her for it?" she asked.

"No, the statute of limitations passed a long time ago. It should be no big deal."

"Well evidently the Vice President's staff is all in an uproar over it. I thought you'd want to know." She went back to her desk.

Sarah and Sam were having lunch at an outdoor café with Josh. "Now this is how we play in the majors," he began. "Somebody wants Hoynes out of the way to have a clear shot at the nomination in six years. They find out that he just hired a war resister to help him work with the Department of Veterans' Affairs. They know he's not stupid, so they figure out he didn't know. They leak the story, or threaten to leak the story. This leaves him with three bad options. One, he fires you and looks stupid for having hired you to begin with. Two, he gets you to quit, and still looks stupid for having hired you. Three, he throws his political future to the wind and says hey, it was a crazy time, we all did crazy things, let's move on."

"So the last option is the best one, right?" she asked.

"Maybe," Sam interrupted, "and maybe not. Let's say the information hasn't yet been leaked. The Vice President tells whoever's got it to go hang themselves. They then – assuming they're either in Congress or have supporters who are – manage to get a Congressional committee's knickers in a twist about this wild-eyed radical from the sixties who is no doubt out to sabotage the government's tender care of their men and women who were formerly in uniform."

Josh continued. "Right. So you get subpoenaed to come to Congress and defend yourself. No matter what the outcome of the inquiry is, you're screwed and never work in this town again."

"So?" she shrugged. "So I have to get a job in the private sector. I was looking for a job when I found this one."

Lyman's eyes rolled. "Sarah? Hello? Whose craggy face do you see first thing in the morning?"

She put her head in her hands.

Late that afternoon, Mallory stopped in to see her father.

"Hi baby," Leo said. "You here to get Sam?"

"Hi Dad. No, I'm taking a couple of Presidential coffee mugs to school for Secret Santa."

"That way you're sure to stay anonymous," he commented with a grin.

Toby's assistant, Ginger, stuck her head in the office door. "Leo, Toby asked me to bring this by. It's the material you asked for this morning."

"Thank you, Ginger."

Mallory took it from Ginger and handed it to her father. "Pretty big memo."

"It's opposition prep on the Israeli arms deal. After the mess this morning, we're going to have a hard time selling it in committee."

"Dad, is this kind of stuff classified or restricted?"

Leo looked up over his glasses at his daughter. "I love you, Mallory, but if it was I wouldn't be telling you about it."

She smiled. "In that case can I have a copy of this? I'm doing a paper for grad school on the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East."

"I don't see why not, it's just a compilation of the other guy's arguments. I'll have Margaret make a copy for you."

"Thanks Dad," she said with a sly smile. "See you for dinner tomorrow?"

"Looks good so far," he responded, disappearing into his work again.

Josh was packing up to leave for the day when he saw Leo walking out the entrance. Pulling his coat up around his ears, he shivered in anticipation, then opened the outside door and looked up and down the drive.

"Expecting somebody?" Leo asked.

"My car's in the shop, Donna was supposed to call a car to take me home. I hate it when this happens."

"Let me drop you, Josh. I've got my guy."

"OK, thanks."

Leo's car pulled up and the two of them got in. "Evening, Mr. McGarry," Catherine said. "Are you going home or should I drop you at Ms. Cooper's?"

"I'm going home. Then would you please take Mr. Lyman where he needs to go?" He already had his briefcase open and three memos on his lap desk.

"Yes, sir."

As the car pulled away, Josh remarked, "You know, Leo, I know you and Sarah have a really solid thing going, but even so, I'd think you'd notice that your new guy is a girl!"

CJ finished the afternoon briefing and left the Press Room to see Sarah sitting in the bullpen with something in her lap, something small and teardrop-shaped, in a plastic bag. They waved at one another and CJ beckoned to the older woman to come into the office.

"Sarah, I have hardly seen you since Leo's housewarming, how are you?"

"I'm great," she answered. After a silent moment she shook her head. "No, I'm lying, I'm not great at all. CJ, I need your help."

The Press Secretary put her briefing notes down on her desk and went to sit on the sofa. "You look as if this is really serious. What's up?"

"CJ, I may have screwed the pooch but good, and I'm afraid it's going to hurt Leo somehow. Please, help me keep that from happening." Sarah moved over to the sofa and sat next to her.

"You know how much Leo means to me, Sarah. What can I do?"

Sarah took a deep breath and began. "Thirty years ago when I was in college . . . .". She told CJ what she had done and why, then continued. "Frankly, I had almost forgotten about it. Yesterday morning at five AM the Vice President called me into his office to ask me about it, because Mark Macmillan said somebody was threatening him with it. At this point, I'm waiting to see what's going to happen.

"I met with Sam and Josh to talk about the ramifications and, although Sam thinks I'm safe from prosecution, they were talking about a Congressional investigation!

"CJ, I'm terrified. I don't know what's going to happen to me, but that's not so important; I'm scared somebody is going to use my history to try to hurt him. You know the press, and whether this can hurt anybody ultimately depends on them. Is there any real danger?"

CJ smiled and took Sarah's hand. "If somebody is trying to use your history to spook Hoynes, the threat of exposure is the only weapon they have. There's a lot of rhetoric floating around here about the appearance of wrongdoing, but in the final analysis it's the people who define what that means, and I think we have had ample demonstration that the people don't give a damn who's sleeping with whom in Washington as long as it doesn't affect them directly.

"But I know that's probably not much comfort, so if you want, I'll ask around and see if there actually is any buzz about it anywhere except in Mark Macmillan's brain."

Sarah leaned over to hug CJ. "Thanks. You have no idea what a load off my mind this is." Heaving a small sigh, she pointed at the plastic bag she had been holding before. "Now, I need one more small favor. Have a look at what's in that bag."

CJ reached for the bag and pulled out a foot-high stuffed leprechaun that looked a great deal like the President's Chief of Staff, complete with bright green suspenders and double-breasted jacket. "You?" she laughed. "You're the one?"

Sarah nodded. "I need for you to put him somewhere appropriately conspicuous."

"And where might that be, do you think?" the younger woman asked with a conspiratorial smile.

"Well, isn't there a Christmas tree around here someplace that could use a friend?"

"Definitely," CJ responded. "I know right where one is."

Before leaving her office for the day, Sarah called Leo's private extension.

"Yeah," he answered.

"Hey," she said,

"Hey yourself, toots. I just called Mallory, I'm not going to make it. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine!"

"Sarah …"

She sighed. "I'm OK. I miss you."

"Listen," he said, "barring war in the Middle East or an approaching asteroid, how about we go somewhere and get lost this weekend? The President is going up to Camp David, we could just hang a 'Closed' sign on the White House and escape."

"I thought you'd never ask," she responded.

"Where you wanna go?"

"Surprise me." Sarah smiled with anticipation.

"I will," he said, with a smile of his own.

"Talk to you tomorrow."

"OK." He hesitated, then added, "Sarah . . ."

"I know," she replied before he could finish. "G'nite."

"G'nite, toots."

Sarah hung up the phone, collected her things, and set off for Mallory's for dinner. By the time she arrived, Sam was there.

"Get out of my kitchen!" Mallory exclaimed. "Out!"

"She loves me," Sam said to Sarah, giving her a hug. "How you doing, Mom?"

"OK, considering," she responded. "And when are you finally going to make an honest woman out of her, anyway?" Sarah saw, out of the corner of her eye, Mallory's head pop out from around the corner of the kitchen.

"That's your generation, Sarah!" She called to them. "I should be asking you that question!"

"Actually, Mallory, that's not true. More than half of the couples living together without benefit of matrimony are Social Security recipients preserving their non-marital benefit levels . . ."

"Shut up, Sam," the two women responded in unison.

"I'm shutting up now. Well, actually, I'm not. When's Leo getting here?"

"He can't make it," Sarah said.

Mallory poked her head out again. "I'm glad you could."

"Thanks, sweetie. What can I do to help?" Sarah rolled into the kitchen and rolled up her sleeves.

"Well," Sam said to nobody in particular, "I guess I'll have to strip down to my T-shirt, grab a beer, and go find a sporting event."

After dinner, Mallory went into the den to work on her paper and Sam and Sarah played Scrabble. Sarah was losing badly when Mallory appeared over her shoulder with a printout from a web site; it was in Hebrew.

"Help?" she said to Sarah, who looked the page over and responded, "It's from a bunch of loonies called Third Temple because they want to build one."

"Isn't the site . . . occupied?" Sam asked.

Sarah nodded. "You could say that. A little shack called the Dome of the Rock, third holiest site in Islam. But these guys won't let that get in the way."

Mallory's eyes widened. "They want to blow up the Dome of the Rock?"

"Well," Sarah responded, "they want to clear the site. The fact that they'd get to demolish the Dome and piss off a billion or so Muslims is just icing on the cake." She put six tiles down on the scrabble board. "What's this for?"

"Grad school. I'm doing a course on the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. You might be interested in some of the stuff I've collected."

Mallory returned to her den, then came back with a pile of papers and memos. Sarah thumbed through them until her eyes fell on the memo about the current Israeli arms deal.

"Right up to the minute, I see," she said, beginning to read. After twenty minutes of complete silence, she slapped the paper down on the coffee table and sighed. "I knew this was gonna happen. I just knew it."

"What?" Sam asked.

"Your someday father-in-law is showing his true colors at last. He wants to retaliate for this morning's shenanigans by demolishing the State of Israel."

"What? Of course he doesn't. Let me see that." Sam picked up the memo and glanced across it. "This is op—"

"Sam!" Mallory called from the den. "Help!"

Seaborn rushed into the den to find Mallory hale, hearty, and in no apparent danger. "Shhhhhh!" she whispered.

"Mallory," he murmured in reply, "that memo is opposition . . . prep . . ." A smile broke over his face as he got what Mallory was doing.

She grabbed Sam's tie and pulled him down for a kiss. "Payback," she remarked, "as they say, is a bitch."

Thursday morning Sarah and CJ had breakfast in the White House mess. "So," Sarah asked, "what'd you find out?"

"This is very interesting," CJ replied around her bagel. "Not only is there no buzz whatsoever, one of my sources said he saw Mark Macmillan huddled with Lloyd Russell the other day. It's no secret that Russell wants to oppose Hoynes for the nomination – at one point last year he was thinking of running against the President for re-nomination. If the Vice President has to work with Senator Russell on something, it's a have-your-guys-call-my-guys thing. He wouldn't send his PressSecretary, that's not Mark's job. Didn't you say that Mark was the one sounding the call to arms over the thing you signed?"

Sarah nodded.

"Why do you suppose he'd want to make a mountain over such a molehill?" A look of puzzlement crossed CJ's face. "Or maybe mole-hill is a more appropriate word than we thought." She got up, bent to give Sarah a hug, and swallowed the last of her bagel. "Don't worry, Sarah," she said. "I think I may have figured this thing out."

Leo came late to the Card Game; Sarah didn't make it at all. As the meeting was breaking up and he was putting his jacket back on, he walked over to where the Vice President was doing the same. "Can we talk a minute, John?"

"Sure. What's on your mind?"

"Strictly personal," he went on.

"I figured. This is about Sarah?"

"Yeah. Are you really expecting something to come of that? And why didn't you know before you hired her? It was in her security check . . ."

"Why did she have a security check, Leo? Do they usually clear the East Wing staff?"

"She wanted to come here, John, to the meeting. I didn't know her. I needed to be sure—"

Hoynes nodded his head. "I would have done the same thing." He buttoned his topcoat, then paused. "Wait a minute . . . you say it was in her file?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Mark Macmillan told me it wasn't."

McGarry turned to leave, then turned back toward the Vice President. "Speaking of Mark Macmillan, what was he doing schmoozing Lloyd Russell? Didn't he used to work for him?"

"Yeah, he did," Hoynes said as they left the room together. "It wasn't an amicable parting, either."

"Strange, then," came the reply. "Jordan Henry told CJ he saw them huddled together up on the Hill the other day."

"Really?" The taller man's face clouded fleetingly with disapproval. As the two turned to go their separate ways, he said, "Leo, that other thing?"

"The thing with Sarah?"

"Yeah. I'll fix it."

"Thank you, Mr. Vice President."

Friday evening Sarah sat in her apartment waiting. The sun had set, the Sabbath had begun, her candles were safely alit, the lights were on the timer. Finally she heard the sound of keys in the lock and heard Leo's voice in the hallway.

"Hey, toots, you ready?"

"Hey toots yourself."

"I know, I know, I'm late, it's after sundown, God can be mad at me." He picked up Sarah's weekender and turned back toward the door. "So let's go."

"She won't be the only one."

He stopped in his tracks. "What'd I do?" Rolling his eyes skyward, he continued, "Never mind. We can argue in the car. We've got a plane to catch."

Leo's new "guy" helped Sarah into the car, stowed the chair and the luggage, and started for the airport as the two passengers settled in the back.

"OK," McGarry said, "you have my full attention. Father forgive me for I have sinned, it's been thirty years since my last confession. Now, what am I confessing to?"

Sarah reached into her satchel and pulled out the memo she'd read at Mallory's, tossing it into his lap. "You can't be serious about this. The President can't be serious about this. Even if he could afford to spit in the eye of the Jewish vote, this is wrong, Leo! OK, Sharon had a hissy fit on Monday, but—"

Leo was having a hard time keeping a straight face. "Where did you get this?" he asked, waving the memo. He didn't wait for her to answer. "Let me guess, from Mallory."

"How did you know?"

"Nearly a year ago, when she and Sam were first seeing each other, I gave her an opposition prep memo that he had written about school vouchers. She thought it was really his position. We had her going for a day or so." He grinned from ear to ear. "I guess it's payback time."

"I don't understand," Sarah said.

"She played you, Sarah, like a kid's glockenspiel. She used you to get back at me. I asked Toby to write this memo so I would understand the arguments I need to be prepared to refute, not to support. It's ok. I'm really not a fascist anti-Semite. Honest."

Sarah smiled and shook her head. "I really did just fall off the turnip truck."

"It's ok, toots," he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. "Oh by the way, I have a present for you." He reached in his briefcase and brought out a long thin box.

Sarah opened it to find a pair of bright green suspenders.

"Congratulations," he deadpanned. "You're an honorary leprechaun."

"Well," Sarah responded, laughing, "it's been said that the Irish are one of the Ten Lost Tribes . . . . "

As the car disappeared in the night, Sarah's voice rose half an octave. "Hey wait a minute! Toby wrote this? Wait till I see him!"