ever have seen Linus again…”
“Thank you, sir. God bless you, and Linus. I’ll send Kathy right over.”
The admiral left the office as brusquely as he had entered. He marched back down the corridor and said to Kathy, without breaking stride as he passed her desk, “Coffee. Car. Go see the boss.”
Then he moved back into his own office and called Admiral Mulligan. It was 0445 tomorrow in the South China Sea, a quarter to four in the afternoon in Washington.
“Hi, Joe. How do we look?”
“According to Frank Hart, the SEALs should be leaving the island right now with the second and final group of crewmen, all eight boats…starting to take off some of the Special Forces. Their ETD Xiachuan for the second run out to the submarines is 0445, their time. No one is reporting any Chinese activity within a fifty-mile radius of the transfer zone four miles south of the beaches.”
“Hey, that’s great, Joe. What time do they estimate the last guys get away?”
“Frank’s saying oh-five-fifty-five. Which is almost dawn.”
“Hmmmmm. That puts the last transfer in daylight, right?”
“Fraid so. But we do not really expect a Chinese attack.”
“Don’t you? I wouldn’t put anything past those little pricks. ’Specially when they’ve had their noses put out of joint, as they most certainly have.”
“Well, we can only keep watching, sea and air. Anything shakes loose, I’ll call you…”
“No need, Joe. I was just coming over to see you. Get some decent coffee ready, will you? Kathy’s ignoring me.”
The CNO laughed as he put down the phone. And almost immediately Admiral Morgan’s internal line rang.
“Outer desk to base. Coffee one minute. Car downstairs. Over and out.”
The admiral hit the intercom button and snapped, “Base to outer desk. Cancel coffee. Meet me in our favorite Georgetown restaurant at nineteen-thirty. Will you marry me?”
“Outer desk to base. Lovely to the first. No to the second. I love you. Over.”
The admiral gathered up his briefcase and headed out, marching down to the elevator that would take him to the underground garage where his chauffeur, Charlie, would be waiting if he valued his life, job and pension.
Kathy, meanwhile, was in the southwest corner of the West Wing, entering the Oval Office.
“Hello, sir,” she said. “I’m so happy for you. Isn’t it the most marvelous news?”
“The best possible,” said the President, and the future Mrs. Arnold Morgan noticed that he looked about 10 years younger than he had an hour previous.
“But now I want you to do me two favors.”
“Of course.”
“I want you to arrange for the church across the street in Jackson Place to be open, and please inform the Secret Service that I am planning to walk over there in the next half hour. Tell ’em to make whatever arrangements they need. Second, I would like you to come with me — I expect you remember we were together when my prayers were answered. And I would like us to walk to church together.”
“Well, yessir, I do of course remember. There’s a morning service at St. John’s, sir. And an evening one. I’ll make sure it’s open in the next half hour.”
She left the office and returned to her desk. A longtime White House staffer, she knew precisely the right buttons to press. And she hit the line to the usher and requested that someone contact St. John’s Episcopal Church and ensure that it was empty, open and ready to receive the President of the United States, as it had received every President since James Madison.
The next call, to the Secret Service, was more serious, because the prospect of the President walking anywhere in public is apt to hit them like an ice storm in Tahiti. A lot of people need to be alerted, since the White House grounds are swept at all times by infrared, electronic eye, audio and pressure sensors. Video cameras on the roof and all over the grounds record every movement. There is actually a full SWAT team positioned on the White House roof, machine guns drawn, every time the President enters or leaves. And that assumes he’s traveling in a bulletproof car.
The mere prospect of the President, in the company of the secretary to the National Security Adviser,
But when Kathy O’Brien announced that the President was walking to church, about 140 people went into full alert, as would be expected in a gigantic fiefdom that costs upward of a billion dollars a year to run. Guards were detailed to surround and accompany him every yard of the way, from the front door of the Earthly God to the open door of the Greater God.
They set off together at a quarter to five, walking through the corridors of the West Wing and then stepping out into the hot, sunlit 18-acre gardens, where there awaited more armed men than there were on the evacuation beach at Xiachuan.
Surrounded now by the protectors of the President, they strolled up through the lawns and across the private road into Jackson Place on the west side of Lafayette Square. And from there it was just a few yards more to the pale yellow-painted Georgian church with its six tall white columns and three-tiered tower.
The door to the empty St. John’s was wide open, ready to welcome the President of the United States on a private visit. When they arrived, he ordered everyone to remain outside, while he and Kathy walked in and closed the main door behind them.
And there in the cool half-light of the 190-year-old church, “the Church of the Presidents,” John Clarke humbled himself before his God, kneeling quietly next to Kathy O’Brien in the front row of the left-hand pews and silently expressing his ineradicable gratitude for the safe delivery of his only son, Linus.
His prayer was, he said, not just thanks, but a formal recognition that his “still, small voice” had been heard above the tumult of a world of sins. It was, he believed, an affirmation of his faith, the faith with which he had been brought up by his Baptist family in faraway Oklahoma.
He remained kneeling for perhaps 10 minutes, and then he turned to Kathy O’Brien and asked if she was ready to accompany him back to the White House.
They both stood and walked back down the dark red carpet of the left aisle. At the door, before he opened it, John Clarke said quietly, “I am not the President of anything in here, am I?”
“No, sir. No you’re not. But I am sure you are welcome, because God gets many more requests for help than He ever does expressions of thanks. And it was St. John himself who wrote the words of Our Lord, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
And there was a smile on the face of the Chief Executive as he walked back to the White House with a clear conscience.
As the senior officer in the evacuation, Captain Judd Crocker elected not to leave the island with the second flotilla, but rather to wait for the final boat and travel in the cold light of dawn with Lieutenant Commander Hunter and Ray Schaeffer.
And there were already orange fingers of light out over the water as the eastern sun fought its way above the horizon. They could not yet see the five Zodiacs making their way across the bay, but they could hear a distant growl of outboard engines, moving very fast over the flat calm water.
Three minutes later the SEAL drivers came charging into the beach, a new note of urgency obvious in their attitudes as they cut the motors and hauled up the engines, while the SEALs in the shallows grabbed the painters and hung on to the boats. There was no need even to spin them around away from the waves now, because the ocean was like a pond.
The lead driver came in yelling, “OKAY, SIR, LET’S GO…all equipment in the second boat plus three…seven in each of the others…we’re outta here.”
The light was having a nerve-wracking effect on everyone. Surely the Chinese could not now be unaware, somehow, that a diabolical attack had occurred on their heavily manned jail, even if the SEALs had wrecked every
