had a meeting or was out of town, he should have known about it. This was unseemly.
A few more office checks found the same thing. Empty desks, empty chairs, no lights on at all.
That tingling feeling came back to him and, as he rounded into a connecting corridor, he heard voices and started smiling. There, at least someone was here and could tell him what was going on with the phones and the computers, and why in hell the goddamn place was so empty. Another office section and he went in, and three women sat up from their desks and looked over at him. They had the White House passes around their neck and he vaguely recognized their faces, and there was something a bit… a bit off as he entered the room.
First of all, they had been staring intently at their computer screens when he had come in, and he had caught a tantalizing glimpse of green and magenta colors on their screens that had made him smile with unexpected pleasure. But like they were part of a drill team, each woman tapped a single key and the colors disappeared, to be replaced by rows of numbers. Second, he didn’t know what kind of dress code his administrative folks were enforcing, but these ladies looked… well, they looked worn. Jeans and T-shirts. No makeup. No jewelry. Puffy eyes, like they hadn’t slept well in the past few days. And their desks were piled with food and water and soft drinks, like they expected a blizzard or something to hole them up here for a week or two.
The closest of the three women said, “Sir?” in a tentative voice, and he put on his best campaign smile and said, “Is there something wrong with the telephone system?”
She slowly nodded. “I believe there is, sir. I mean, I know the phones haven’t rung here in a while.”
“Then it’s been reported?”
She looked to her companions, and then back to him. “Yes, sir, I believe it has.”
“And what about the staff?” he asked. “There seems to be a lot of absentees here today.”
“Flu,” the second woman said, and the third nodded and said, “Training,” and the first woman said, “To tell you the truth, sir, I haven’t really noticed. We’ve been busy ever since we’ve gotten here.”
“I see,” he said, not liking the expressions in their faces. “Your computers, though.”
“Sir?” she said.
“I mean, your computers are working just fine.”
“Yes, sir, they are,” and the other two women nodded in agreement.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, you see, I have a problem. In my office. My own computer isn’t working.”
The women stared at him, and he saw that their fingers were trembling over the keyboard. He cleared his throat and went on. “I mean to say, would any of you know anything about computers?”
The first women spoke quickly. “No sir, I’m afraid we don’t.”
“Well, I don’t mean the inner workings. I mean just getting the damn thing to work.” He tried his smile again. “It’s in the Oval Office. You could come by, give it a shot.”
They all shook their heads no. He tried to think of something and came up with, “If you come in, I could get one of the While House photographers to stop by and get your picture. Something to show your family.”
By now the other two women seemed to be actually sitting on their hands. The first woman shook her head even more firmly and said, “Mister President, I’m sorry, we don’t know anything about computers. Not a thing. I’m sorry we can’t help you, and we must be getting back to work.”
He nodded and moved to leave, and then looked back. Their faces disturbed him. Something was wrong there, and he knew what it was. Nothing was going to get them out of their chairs. Bribes, promises of autographed photos with the president, maybe even threats of dismissal. Nothing. The three women were desperately waiting for him to leave, so they could get back to whatever they were doing, and that something wasn’t columns of numbers. It was…
Boss key.
Now why in hell did he think of that?
He went down the hallway, past the antiques and the paintings of POTUSes past, and then it came to him. Something he had read somewhere. Boss key. Workers with computers could be playing games, stored or on line, and all you had to do was strike a single key if the boss came by, and the computer screen would instantly show something else. Like a word processing program, or a graphics program.
Or columns of numbers. Boss key. And that’s why those three women, that’s why their fingers moved in unison when he entered their office. They were up to something and didn’t want to have the Boss of Bosses find out what they were doing.
Boss key.
Damn it, he’d have to talk to Rogers today, if that Chief of Staff ever showed up. It wasn’t right for the White House staff to be playing games on the taxpayers’ dollar. If the Speaker of the House ever heard about that, there’d be hell to pay, above everything else, and he didn’t need that. No more aggravations, please. Was it too much to have a working computer so a man could relax for a few minutes?
By now he was in a corridor near the gardens and thought he could use some fresh air. There were glass doors and a man in uniform standing outside, and the man snapped to attention when he went out. A Marine, in dress blues, and the sight of the man standing there was fine indeed. He stood next to the Marine and nodded to him, but the Marine just stared ahead. The President walked out onto the grass and enjoyed the fresh air, and then wrinkled his nose in distaste. Something was burning. A lot of somethings was burning. In fact there was so much smoke that there was a faint haze about the trees.
And another thing. Off in the distance. Popping noises, like firecrackers. He sighed. Gunfire again, in the capitol. No matter whatever they tried, this was always a high-crime district. He remembered as a state senator, hooting with disbelief as Bush the Elder went on national TV to display some crack cocaine that had been seized from a dealer across the street, in Lafayette Park. At the time he thought it was a cheap-ass political trick. Now? Now that he had been living for these years at 1600 Pennsylvania, he realized what a disaster the outer neighborhoods were, some just a handful of blocks away from what was known as the Peoples House.
The gunfire seemed louder. There were finally some sirens. If the People ever found out what kind of rough neighborhood their House was ever in, they’d demand to move. Maybe to Montana or someplace safer.
Safe. The thought made his head ache. He wished Bush the Elder and his several successors hadn’t left him such a mess in D,C., not to mention everywhere else in this quarreling world.
As he went back to the open doors he nodded again to the Marine and said, “How’s it going, son?” out of reflex, from nothing else, since all the Marines at the door ever did was to stand there and stare straight ahead.
“Sir?” came the hesitant voice.
He stopped, amazed. The Marine was now looking at him, a slightly scared young man, and he found if he stared at the Marine, the uniform almost disappeared and there was no one standing there but a nervous young boy, about nineteen or twenty. The white hat seemed almost too large for his head, and he saw that the boy had a bit of a complexion problem.
“Yes?” he said, not even guessing what the young man wanted.
“Sir, I’m very sorry to bother you, but I don’t know what to do,” the Marine said, his voice quavering. “I haven’t been paid in over a month, and my wife and kid, well, we’re running out of money. They keep on saying it’s a computer problem and that it’ll straighten out, and well… I thought maybe if you knew, well… I’m sorry sir, I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, not at all,” he said, standing next to the young Marine, again feeling that little bit of acid guilt at the back of his throat. This man and his friends, they would go places, they could die because of a decision he did or didn’t make. Those were the kind of decisions he didn’t have back in Albany.
Politics was politics, and whether it was scratching backs or calling in favors for a highway bill for a state or a nation wasn’t that much different.
But this boy here… that was in another universe of difference, and it was those kinds of things that kept him awake nights. Nothing else. Not the fights with Congress or the media or his own people in the party. That was normal. But this… thee thought of all those young men and women, ready to risk everything, just because of something he thought was the right thing to do, or something his staff thought was the right thing to do, it really did haunt him.
Especially now.
“I’m sorry, son,” the President said. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get ahold of one of my assistants and straighten this right out.”
The Marine grinned and nodded. “Thank you, sir, thank you very much. And… Mister President?”
