Henry will take the A Group. A Group can stay in the House Chamber, and we’ll move people assigned to Group B into Statuary Hall. Confer among yourselves as to what you think we’ll need for a twenty-four to forty-eight-hour stay. Enlist help from the rest of the Cabinet and anyone else you wish. Megan will act as my liaison. I’ll leave it up to you to work out bathroom usage, but it’s important that we don’t mix the groups as we move people around.”
“Why is that?” Broussard asked.
“For inventory control, Kate. We’ll manage our supplies by group size and we don’t want people thinking they can freely migrate between them.”
The Health and Human Services secretary did not look as if she were buying Allaire’s plan any more than his explanation of what they were up against.
“Yes, Jim,” she said through nearly closed lips.
Sean O’Neil was instructed to mobilize the Secret Service agents to maintain security.
“Report back to me as you make progress. Megan, please make an announcement that in twenty minutes I’ll address the House Chamber. At that time I’ll give an update on our status and share our plans to take care of everyone while we’re sorting things out.”
The White House chief of staff nodded.
“Jordan and Hank, stay here for a few minutes. You, too, Doc. The rest of you have your assignments. Stay calm, delegate to others, and remain in control of the situation. You are the leaders here. I expect you to lead. Good luck.”
With the press of a button, the hydraulics concealing the Hard Room kicked in and opened the wall.
Gary Salitas remained behind as well, though he had not been asked. The room emptied out, and the hydraulic doors closed. Those asked to remain took their seats again.
The president sighed, then inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly.
“Well, my friends,” he began, “I need to start by saying that what I just shared in this room is not exactly the truth.”
CHAPTER 6
Angela Fletcher had ridden only half of her daily ten miles on the stationary bike when the high-def broadcast of the State of the Union Address on her new Sony went dark. Using the remote, she switched channels on her cable box, but got the same black screen on all the networks. Other channels, those not broadcasting the president’s address, seemed to be working perfectly. The major networks, however, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News included, were all broadcasting the same thing, which was nothing at all.
From her perch atop the bike, surrounded by a melange of houseplants, every one of which she could name, Angie turned her set off, then on again, and did the same with the cable box. In that time, the stations managed to display their version of a technical difficulty announcement, letting viewers know they were working on the problem.
Angie hopped off the bike and crossed her airy living room to the kitchen, where she grabbed a bottle of vitamin-enhanced flavored water from the fridge. At thirty-eight, despite her disciplined vegetarian lifestyle and deep knowledge of herbs and nutrition, she knew her metabolism had begun to slow. The changes in her hips told her so every day, even though it was likely that she was the only one aware of them.
The bike and a set of weights were her way of battling back. Best of all, for someone who struggled to sit through most movies, plays, and concerts, the equipment allowed her to multitask to her heart’s content. E-mail and riding. CNN and lifting. Reading and pedaling. Unless she were asleep, at the most five hours a night, she always seemed to be doing something, and something else at the same time. That trait had been a constant source of dismay and even annoyance to her boyfriend, Bill Collins. But
On her way back into the living room, Angie grabbed her BlackBerry to check e-mail. Nothing about the loss of signal had arrived in her inbox. Just the usual digital mountain of PR pitches from some of the brightest minds in science. They all wanted the same thing—a story in her paper,
Angie tried the television again. Nothing new. She had voted for Allaire, as had most of her friends, and like them, she had been looking forward to tonight’s speech. She loved that his background was at least as much about medicine and science as it was about politics. In addition, his oratory skills could make a laundry list sound important, so Angie felt more than a little disappointed to be missing any part of the first State of the Union message of his second term.
Figuring that Webcasts might be working, she used her BlackBerry and tried CNN.com and then her own paper’s Web site. Both ran virtually identical headlines in bold lettering:
It had been six months or so since she had moved from Georgetown to the refurbished brownstone in the highly desirable Dupont Circle area of D.C. Her neighbor in 2B, the unit directly below her one-bedroom condo, worked at the White House, and Angie considered asking if he had heard anything unusual going on at the Capitol. Instead, she decided to towel off and cab it.
She darted into the kitchen, still clutching her BlackBerry, then suddenly paused to grab a spray bottle from the counter to spritz her herb garden, which seemed nearly ready to harvest, at least the mint anyway. The queen of ADD, Collins had called her, more than once.
She hurried back into the living room and over to Horace, on whom she kept her coat, hat, and gloves. The movers had said nothing about hauling an adult human skeleton, but she did notice them exchanging uneasy glances when they unpacked him.
Over the months she had dated Collins, a lobbyist for the insurance industry, he continually found it odd that she had a skeleton in her living room, and that her cluttered bedroom looked like a college dorm. But she assured him that Horace had everything to do with an innate curiosity for all things biological and not some Goth fetish he needed to fear, and that her bedroom was always impeccably neat—just not when he happened to be there.
Collins’s lack of appreciation for Horace should have been a sign right from the start, but he was urbane, witty, and handsome as hell—clearly in the top ten of D.C. eligibles, as her girlfriends had ranked him. That was undoubtedly why she had hung on as long as she did, although ultimately, it was he who had decided they should “see other people.” As tired as Angie was of dating, and as anxious as she was to connect with a mate for life, and as aware as she was of the statistics on maternal age and fertility, the breakup was a two-ton weight off of her back.
She slipped her toasty peacoat off of Horace’s shoulders and grabbed the red wool cap from the top of his stand. There was something going on at the Capitol complex. She could feel it. Her instinct for news was what made her one of the most sought-after reporters at
Having decided to spring for a cab, she was searching for her purse underneath the piles of stuff on her kitchen chairs, when her phone rang. She frowned at the name on her caller ID. Before she met Bill, it had been John Davis, chief of staff to one of the more powerful congressmen on the Hill. Davis had pursued Angie with such intensity that it made her at first uninterested and soon, uneasy. He had not called since her last plea just a few months ago that as nice as he was, it simply wasn’t going to happen between them—especially since she was
