Madam President (3 page)

“Madam President, from a message and tone perspective, I thought you nailed it in there. You were serious and determined but not overly alarming.”

Charlotte was annoyed that no one on her staff wanted her to be alarming. What the hell was wrong with all of them? The country had just been bombed. She looked down at her intelligence briefing from that morning.

“How long until this gets leaked?” she asked.

“Someone from the House or Senate Intelligence Committee will probably do it by the time the morning shows come on tomorrow.”

“There’s nothing in here about the chatter getting louder, right?” she asked Craig.

“Nothing. You have no exposure along the lines of September
eleventh. No Richard Clarkes are going to come out of the woodwork and say they told you so.”

“Does that make it better or worse?” she challenged.

He knew better than to offer an answer.

“What do we have next?”

“Just the final National Security meeting. The FBI is going to do a briefing on the DNA testing from the remains of the suicide bombers at the airports in Chicago and L.A. The director is on his way back over here, ma’am. I spoke to him before your speech,” Craig replied.

“We didn’t need to drag him back over here. Please make sure he knows that he can participate via videoconference next time. He’s going to be the busiest man in D.C.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Those are the only bodies so far?”

“Yes. And the Miami suspects are still in play.”

“They won’t talk for a while.”

“Depends somewhat on your decision on enhanced interrogation measures.”

“When am I visiting the cities?”

“We’re doing our best with New York and D.C. The others won’t want to divert resources from the investigation or recovery efforts to—”

“I know, I know, to escort my goddamned motorcade. I know. Why do we always have to drain everyone’s resources? Why can’t I just land, drive in an SUV without the whole motorcade to survey the damage, visit with local law enforcement, pay my respects to the families of the victims, and then get the hell out of the way? Can you ask them if they can make that happen?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What else?”

“Are you up for a few foreign leader calls after the National Security Council meeting?”

“What kind of question is that? If I have to do calls, just give the list to Samantha, and I’ll do them.” Charlotte couldn’t figure out why Craig was asking her if she was “up” to doing the things that needed to be done. She understood that he was being deferential and trying
to gauge her stamina for the long list of official to-do’s that emerges during a national security crisis, but it still bothered her that he was talking to her as though she might not have the endurance to complete her obligations.

“Why don’t you have the vice president do some calls, too?” she suggested.

“She’s done a half a dozen. Maureen is also in contact with the leaders on the Hill. I just spoke to her, and she’s suggested that we have the chairmen and ranking members of all of the national security committees down here tomorrow to brief them on the investigation.”

Maureen McCoughlin, Charlotte’s third vice president, was the former Democratic speaker of the House, and she maintained excellent relations with her former colleagues.

“How’s the mood on the Hill?”

“I think some of them are still in their undisclosed locations.” For the most part, an undisclosed location was just that, an office that was simply undisclosed to the press and public. Only in very rare instances did government officials evacuate to secure government installations.

“Ask Maureen to make a list for me, and I’ll add courtesy calls to the senators from New York, Florida, Illinois, and California, plus the leaders and anyone else she suggests tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Charlotte could hear people crying on one of her televisions. She turned up the volume and shushed Craig so she could watch. Seeing the scene of mass chaos just blocks away from the White House complex on her TV screen made her feel oddly walled off from what was happening. She contemplated walking out the door and racing to the Mall below to help with the recovery operation. It was incredibly unsatisfying to be cooped up in the White House with the wreckage and suffering so near.

“You know what, Craig?”

“Ma’am?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Ma’am?

“Don’t ask. Please inform the Secret Service that I plan to visit the Mall first thing in the morning, and tell them that this is the compromise you reached with me when I asked to go tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Craig replied.

She stood watching the TV coverage.

“This isn’t the day I thought we were going to have,” she said, more to herself than to Craig.

“Twenty embedded news crews filming your every move don’t seem like such a bad deal in comparison, do they?”

Charlotte turned away and hoped he’d return to his office. She appreciated Craig’s attempt to lighten her mood, but she found herself missing Melanie’s quiet intensity. Charlotte did her best thinking when no one was talking to her. Mercifully, Craig fell quiet.

She thought about what she’d been doing before news of the first attack reached her. Her Democratic vice president, Maureen McCoughlin, had asked for a rather large favor in return for delivering enough Democratic votes in the House and the Senate to pass Charlotte’s legislative priorities. She’d asked Charlotte—a Republican—to become a vocal supporter of women’s health providers, including those that also provide birth control and abortions. In a move that her admirers had called bold and her detractors had called politically suicidal, Charlotte had been delivering a speech at the Women’s Museum in Washington, D.C., in which she laid out the “enlightened conservative’s” case for reproductive freedom. As the first female Republican president, her decision to stand with her Democratic vice president and voice her support for a woman’s right to choose had been the topic of breathless morning-show commentary, large antiabortion protests in front of the White House, and a phone and e-mail campaign from the prolife groups that had jammed the White House comment line for hours. Then, just as she was hitting her stride with the crowd gathered at the Women’s Museum, Monty, her lead advance man, had handed her a note saying that New York City had been attacked. She’d excused herself and made her way backstage. In the motorcade back to the White House, she learned about the attacks in Chicago and Los Angeles. She’d just arrived back at the Oval Office and turned on her television when the media first started reporting on the attack
at the Port of Miami. The attack outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington had occurred after she’d already been rushed to the underground command center. After the D.C. bombings, the Secret Service wanted to take Charlotte out of the White House, but she’d insisted on staying.

Now she asked Sam to give her five uninterrupted minutes. She dialed Peter in the residence.

“Hi,” she said.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m all right.”

“Do you want me to come down?”

“No. I’ve got another NSC meeting and then a few calls to do. I’ll be up in a couple of hours. What did you think of the speech?”

“Was the Longfellow poem Melanie’s idea?”

“Was it too dark?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

Charlotte leaned forward so that her elbows were resting on her knees. “How are the kids?”

“They’re fine.”

“Do you think they’ll still be up in another hour?” Charlotte asked.

“With the time change, I’m sure that they will.”

Their twins, Harry and Penelope, had just completed their freshman years in college, Penny at Stanford and Harry at Charlotte’s alma mater, U.C. Berkeley. Both had stayed in Northern California for the summer.

“Please tell them that I’ll call tonight.”

“Will do.”

“Are Brooke and Mark awake?” Brooke and Mark were Charlotte’s best friends from college. They made frequent trips to Washington to provide Charlotte with a much-needed reality check from her life inside the presidential bubble. They also added comic relief to Charlotte’s structured and formal existence. Charlotte suspected that they came as both an act of charity and genuine friendship and to escape the boredom of their suburban existence.

“They tried to get flights home, but everything has been canceled.”

“Tell them not to worry. Sam can work on getting them out of here tomorrow.”

“Char, don’t worry about us. We’re worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

“We’ll see you whenever you finish, then.”

“Don’t wait up,” Charlotte insisted.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Charlotte was being passive-aggressive with Peter, but she really couldn’t help it at this point. Her emotions were swinging between fury at the terrorists who carried out the attacks, rage at her own advisors who did nothing to prevent the attacks, and desperate frustration at Peter’s inability to anticipate what she needed from him, even though she didn’t know what it was herself.

“Have you been watching the press coverage?” she asked.

“It’s awful,” he confirmed.

“That ship was full of young families. And the museums on the Mall are always full of school groups.” Charlotte felt a lump forming in her throat, but she didn’t want to cry.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come down there, Char? I could wait in the Oval while you have your meeting and then sit with you while you make your calls?”

His voice was so tender. Maybe he did understand. She felt tears forming, and she swallowed hard to stop them. She wanted to accept his offer, but she couldn’t bring herself to open up to him and tell him how desperately she needed to be reassured that she was capable of whatever new and unknown responsibilities now fell to her.

“Char, please say something.”

She covered the phone with her hand and cleared her throat. She waited until she was sure that her voice would come out steady and strong. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t know how long the NSC meeting will go—or the calls, for that matter.”

“If you change your mind, let me know.”

“I will.”

Charlotte hung up the phone and stood with her back to her desk. She felt bad about being short with Peter, but other concerns quickly overtook her guilt. She watched the helicopters above make
patterns on the South Lawn with their searchlights. How could she convince people that they should go about their lives and not worry about threats if terrorists could hit targets less than half a mile from the West Wing of the White House? The enormity of her failure to protect the country from harm was hitting her in waves. How could she ever make things right? She had made more than her share of mistakes in five and a half years as president, but this one felt unrecoverable. How had this happened? How had she
let
this happen?

CHAPTER FOUR

Melanie

Twenty-four hours earlier

I
f I had half a brain or a scrap of integrity, I’d resign. Effective immediately,” Melanie grumbled.

“You’re in Baghdad, Mel. That seems slightly irrational, especially for my levelheaded wife,” Brian gently teased.

“If Charlotte thinks I’m going to let this go on indefinitely, she’s out of her mind. Does she seriously think that I’m going to be able to pretend that nothing happened and continue to put my ass on the line for her? I mean, after her White House threw me under the bus and left me for dead?”

“We’ve had this conversation a thousand times. You have every right to be mad.”

“I can hear the ‘but’ from ten thousand miles away, even on this crappy satellite phone.”

“Actually, that was my call-waiting.”

“It’s after eleven.”

“It’s probably the
Today
show. I have a piece on Charlotte’s abortion speech that’s supposed to be leading the show tomorrow. Hang on for one second.”

“That speech is a really stupid use of Charlotte’s political capital,” Melanie griped.

“I know, honey. I’m sure you’d rather see her squander her remaining political capital on your unpopular wars.”

“Exactly.” She laughed.

As Melanie held for Brian, the White House correspondent for NBC News, she thought about how, for the first time in her life, her personal life was in a relatively blissful state, while her career had careened into the realm of the ridiculously dysfunctional.

Melanie was working out of an office inside the heavily fortified green zone. She would be meeting with troops involved in training the Iraqi army and a handful of local leaders to thank them for their ongoing service and cooperation. Later in the day, she’d host a video town hall between Baghdad and Washington. For the town hall, the Pentagon press folks had been ordered by the White House to round up a diverse group of military trainers, USAID workers, and local elected officials and cabinet members in the new Iraqi government who would illustrate the collaborative effort under way to solidify recent gains in the political and security situation in Iraq. What Melanie understood as a veteran of three White House staffs was that the West Wing had added an event in the war zone to showcase the commander in chief as a strong and competent wartime leader for the benefit of the TV production under way in the White House today.

It was bad enough that she’d been roped into participating in the “Day in the Life” special. She’d persuaded every president she’d ever worked for to do the same thing that Charlotte was attempting. She’d made the case that by allowing a single network to film every detail of life inside the White House over a twenty-four-hour period, viewers would gain a better understanding of the numerous problems the president had to deal with. The “Day in the Life” was a good idea as part of a larger White House effort to refocus the press on Charlotte’s agenda, but Melanie had no interest in being part of the West Wing’s public relations apparatus anymore. For nearly six years, Charlotte’s image had been her central concern. Enhancing and protecting it had been her purpose in life. But as the country’s secretary of defense, she felt a far greater obligation to the men and women who served in far-flung places and to their families who raised children,
ran households, and nursed their wounded and traumatized soldiers. Melanie made a point to visit Iraq and Afghanistan as often as she could, and it had served her well in her eighteen-month tenure. The appointment capped a decade-and-a-half career in government that spanned three presidents. Melanie had served as Charlotte’s first chief of staff and her closest advisor for the entire four years of her first term as president, but on the eve of Charlotte’s reelection, she had resigned. Charlotte had enticed her to return to the administration by offering her the Cabinet post commonly referred to as the SECDEF. In her new post, Melanie had earned praise from both sides of the partisan divide for her management acumen and for her understanding of the impact that the never-ending deployments were having on soldiers and their families. At thirty-nine when she was sworn in, she was the youngest secretary of defense in history, but in an era when soldiers took to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to communicate with family, friends, and reporters, Melanie’s youth wasn’t held against her as it might have been a generation earlier.