Sitting immobile and staring into space, Jonathan Sprague took a moment to reassess his career choice. Maybe it had all happened too fast. Barely forty, Sprague had graduated from running local campaigns to the big time. Maybe this is it, he fumed, once you’re at the top, there’s no place to go but down.

In the space of barely five minutes, his political future, the only future that Sprague valued, had been threatened by both the President of the United States and the Chairman of the Party. Sprague was no neophyte. He was fully familiar with the governmental concept that the credit for success flowed up the chain of command, while the responsibility for failure invariably trickled down. The buck might stop with the President, but the blame always settled at a lower level.

Replaying Bergamo’s words in his mind, Sprague’s blood began to boil. Being saddled with the blame for the destruction of not only a Presidency, but the entire Democratic Party, coupled with the threat that he would never work again was tough love indeed. Hell, Sprague mused, in thirty-six States, love of that variety was considered to be sodomy.

Sprague bitterly concluded if there was some level of the cosmos lower than that consigned to whale shit, he had arrived at his destination. He fought back against the inclination to feel sorry for himself, and made a silent resolution. “Screw those bastards. I’m not going down without a fight. This is a matter of survival. Give them a plan, or else? I’ll give them a plan. They’re not going to be able to pin this mess on me.”

Sprague had unknowingly crossed that invisible barrier separating the possible from the prudent. In his current state of mind, all options were now on the table.