be living with my daughter.”
Nadine said, “We’ll work something out. Now let’s go see the President. Maybe he’s changed his mind.”
Sachs was firm. “Look, did you book me on the shuttle to New York or not?”
Nadine flashed the email confirmation on her BlackBerry. “I’ve got you out of Reagan National in forty minutes.”
“Nadine, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”
“You go to New York and we’re both gonna find out,” Nadine warned her. “Because if you don’t make it back tonight for the State of the Union, you’re gonna piss off the president.”
“That’s my job, remember?”
“Was your job,” Nadine huffed.
Sachs smiled. “I’ve got a better one now.”
3
USAF Colonel Joseph Kozlowski woke up and shifted under the huge down comforter that covered the king- size bed. He reached to feel for Sherry, but she was gone, without so much as leaving a warm spot.
Kozlowski turned onto his back and blinked his eyes open. He could hear the hair dryer in the bathroom. He held up his watch and squinted. Then he slipped out of bed and plodded toward the curtains and pulled them back. The bleak January light seeped in as he looked across H Street at the White House. The snow was still coming down, burying the Rose Garden and Ellipse. He could barely make out the towering spike of the Washington Monument beyond.
He smelled coffee and saw that Sherry had room service bring up breakfast for one. All that was left was some picked-over fruit and a pile of newspapers screaming about yet another crisis in the Far East. He fished out a melon cube with his fingers and poured himself some lukewarm coffee.
He was halfway through his cup when Sherry emerged from the bathroom with her blow-dried blonde hair draped over her terrycloth robe with the Hay-Adams Hotel logo on it, which she left open just enough to remind him why he never turned her down for these hotel hideaways.
Kozlowski said, “Leaving so soon?”
“Got to finish Vanderhall’s reaction to the State of the Union address,” she said, sliding open the closet door to reveal her Armani suit next to his uniform. The same uniform he had been wearing for eight years now, still a colonel.
“So where am I going, Sherry?”
“You’re going nowhere, Koz.”
Kozlowski watched her dress. “You finally figured that out?”
“The snow, silly.” Sherry helped herself to his Purple Heart medal from his uniform.
“What are you doing?”
“The colors go with my jacket,” she said as she pinned it beneath the lapel of her blazer.
“You ever been wounded while serving your country?” Kozlowski asked her. “That’s what it means.”
“I won’t lose it.” She put on her gold earrings and spoke to him from the closet mirror. “It’s not like it’s actually worth anything.”
No, thought Kozlowski, just a couple of lives. But it was no use arguing with Sherry. She was 27 and wouldn’t understand, he concluded as he watched her grab her Gucci soft leather briefcase and walk out the door, off to more important things like personal advancement.
Kozlowski walked over to the open closet and looked at his blue uniform where the missing medal belonged. Sherry was right. It was just clothing, bland at that, with some cheap ribbons and medals.
Cheap like his bosses. Cheap like the promises they made and the company they kept.
Everything he grew up to believe in — the armed forces, the presidency, even the United States — no longer seemed mythic, but quaint and kindergarten. There were no rules anymore. The current occupant of the White House was yet another empty suit, and he wondered if America was even capable of producing a leader worth following into battle anymore.
He unbuckled the holster sitting on the closet shelf and removed his sidearm, a.38 standard-issue automatic pistol. He felt its weight in his hand.
Almost ten years of his life had passed in two overseas wars, he realized. Just like that. What could I have been by now? A general like Brad Marshall? Certainly a father if Mary hadn’t left him. They could have had three or four kids by now. He could be sledding or having snowball fights this morning instead of sitting here, feeling old, used-up, worthless.
He pointed the gun to his head and put his finger on the trigger.
4
U.S. President Peter Rhinehart paced beneath George Washington on the wall of the Oval Office. He had fifteen minutes before his final meeting with Deborah Sachs, and he still needed to work on his delivery of his State of the Union address.
“And let us not live in the past,” he recited, stressing the word “past” like it was bad. “But look forward to the future.”
Meaning his own political future, he thought, when the ivory desk phone rang. The LED display flashed:
Annoyed, Rhinehart picked up. “What is it, Bob?”
“Mr. President, we have a situation.”
Rhinehart’s morning intelligence briefing had spelled out a number of situations, so he could only guess.
“The SS-20?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m about to address the American people, dammit, and our friend General Marshall is breathing down my neck in the polls,” the President huffed. “I don’t have time for any false—”
“Mr. President, NEST teams have confirmed there is a stolen Soviet SS-20 nuclear warhead somewhere in Washington. Now the Russians say they have evidence that the Chinese planted it, and that it is set to detonate in five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Rhinehart frowned. “What do the Chinese have to say?”
“The Chinese say that if anybody’s planted a nuke in Washington, it’s the Russians.”
“Goddammit,” groaned Rhinehart. “Every major elected official in America has got to be in Washington. How imminent is the threat?”
As if on cue, a military aide burst through the door carrying a black briefcase — the “football” containing nuclear authorization codes. Rhinehart stared at the attache, speechless.
“I’ll brief you after you’re secure in the bunker,” Sherman pleaded with him on the phone. “Mr. President, we have no time.”
Rhinehart hung up and walked out of the Oval Office, the football and military aide close behind. He brushed past the White House military operator at the switchboard on the way out.
“The vice president just arrived,” the operator reported.
“Tell him he’s leaving,” Rhinehart replied. “Get my chopper to airlift himndrews.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
