Madam President

by Wallace, Nicolle

  Charlotte took a deep breath and walked around her desk. She picked up the phone slowly.

  “Mrs. Carmichael?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Melanie

  The plane was starting to feel claustrophobic, and Melanie worried that her perspective on the attacks might be too insular for her to be guiding so much of the president’s decision making and shaping her public posture. She hadn’t seen an instant of news coverage yet, and she wasn’t sitting in the room with the rest of the president’s national security team. She was stuck at forty thousand feet.

  “Sit,” Melanie mouthed at her communications advisor, who had appeared in the doorway while she was holding for the chairman of the joint chiefs. She wanted to give the chairman direction about the plans that Charlotte would expect from them. He came on the line and listened quietly while Melanie outlined what she needed. When she finished, he launched into a long response about the fruitlessness of drafting plans that he couldn’t recommend in good conscience to the president.

  “Bud, of course you can put your finger on the scale in terms of the final outcome, but she is going to want to understand her choices at a very detailed level. She’ll want to know what each option would involve regarding troop strength, coalition possibilities, and logistical pros and cons. She will not rule out the harbor-and-support doctrine, and she will not want to rule out some extremely targeted military strikes.”

  Melanie listened as the chairman laid out a handful of reasons why the sort of war planning that she was looking for was complicated by the fact that Congress had been balancing the federal budget on the back of the military for the last five years. She listened patiently and then reiterated her request.

  Something in his voice made Melanie pause.

  “Bud, is there something that you’re worried about that we haven’t discussed?”

  “Madam Secretary, folks around here are shaken. The last time this happened, we were pulling bodies out of our offices. This brings all of it back.”

  Melanie prided herself on being in touch with the morale in her building, but in this instance, she’d underestimated the emotional trauma that another attack on the capital would cause for everyone working at the Pentagon.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t need you to tell me that. Being trapped on the plane is impairing my capacity to appreciate how everyone there must be experiencing this day.”

  “No apology necessary, Madame Secretary. People understand that they have a job to do. I’ll get a team together right away to start tweaking the plans that exist already for your review later tonight.”

  Melanie hung up and turned her full attention to her spokesman. “What are you hearing?” she asked.

  “We’re starting to get calls about our coordination with allies and intelligence sharing.”

  “Send all of that to State and CIA today.”

  “I did.”

  “What else?”

  “Our press is asking if you will come to the back of the plane and read out some of your meetings and calls.”

  “Not now. I’m crashing on the president’s speech, and I have something that I need your help with.”

  She wanted her spokesman to be prepared to release the statement she’d worked up from her and on behalf of the Pentagon that could be released as soon as the news broke about Warren’s death.

  He took out a pen and a pad. “Madam Secretary, there’s something sensitive that I’m going to need your guidance on.”

  “In that case, you go first.”

  “The first thing you need to know is that this didn’t come from our traveling press. It came from the CBS Pentagon producer back in D.C. My deputy passed it along.”

  “What is it?”

  “Patty Siebel, the off-air, said that she is hearing that the president, quote, stormed out of the PEOC earlier today against the advice of the Secret Service, end quote, and while the continuity-of-government plans and procedures were still in place.”

  Melanie nodded.

  “And that she refused to relocate to a more secure location even after the Secret Service and her husband urged her to do so,” he added.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK.”

  “How do you want me to handle this?”

  “Don’t do anything. Let me make a couple of calls.”

  The leak would be extremely damaging to the president. As Melanie had warned Charlotte hours earlier, it would make her look emotional and unprofessional. While it was debatable that what she’d done constituted storming away, it was a fact that she’d left the bunker at a time when the Secret Service would have preferred her to stay in the PEOC or relocate to a more secure place than the White House.

  “How did Patty describe her source?”

  “ ‘A senior administration official familiar with the goings-on in the PEOC,’ ” he read from his notepad.

  “The source isn’t claiming to be a witness?”

  “Not explicitly. She just said ‘familiar with the goings-on.’ ”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Thanks. What did you have for me?” he asked.

  “It can wait.”

  He turned to leave, but Melanie stopped him and closed the door to her cabin.

  “The president did leave the PEOC for a few minutes early in the day. No attacks were under way, but it was premature for her to leave the safety of the PEOC. She returned after spending about ten minutes in the Oval Office.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” he replied.

  As soon as he left her cabin, Melanie called Sam. “Is she there?”

  The president picked up immediately. “I was about to call you. The Carmichaels were unbelievable.”

  “I need to ask you about something first. The CBS Pentagon producer just got a tip from a senior administration official that would suggest that we need to tighten the circle of participants for future NSC meetings.”

  “What kind of tip?”

  “A senior administration official told someone at CBS that you may have violated security protocols by leaving the PEOC while the continuity-of-government plans were still in place.”

  “Why would someone discuss my movements with the press today, of all days?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s probably some deputy assistant secretary trying to show a reporter how in the loop he is. Why don’t you have Sam send me a list of all of the participants, and we’ll get the agencies to submit participant lists, too. Maybe some jackass at the State Department is trying to become famous.”

  “I thought the call came from a Pentagon reporter?”

  “It did, but it’s a rookie-leaking tactic to call a reporter who doesn’t cover your principal.”

  “What do you really think is going on?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’d like your permission to limit the number of people who get a draft of the speech and who participate in the next NSC meeting.”

  “Yes, of course. Is there any way to figure out who it was?”

  “It’s more important that it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I agree.”

  “I’m going to handle it, Madam President. Don’t worry. I’m going to call Dale now to enlist her help.”

  “Is she up for it?”

  “I’m about to find out. I wanted your permission to take the lead.”

  “Permission granted.”

  “Thank you, Madam President. I’ll call you back in a few minutes. I want to hear about the Carmichaels.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Dale

  Marguerite!” Dale called from her office.

  Marguerite appeared in her doorway.

  “Where are Lucy and Richard?”

  “They were broadcasting from the North Lawn about forty-five minutes ago.”

  Dale flipped through all of the stations to make sure she hadn’t missed them. “They’re not there now.”

  Dale and Marguerite stood together and watched the CBS Wh
ite House correspondent deliver a live report about the small group of aides who had been tapped to draft the president’s remarks for later that evening.

  “I hate that they keep reporting that I’ve been working on the speech all evening long. I haven’t even seen it,” Dale complained.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Marguerite said.

  “When they find out about Warren, am I supposed to confess that I didn’t work on the speech after all?”

  “I’ll ask Sam if I can get a copy for you,” Marguerite offered. She understood that it was better to make the story true than to go about setting the record straight.

  Dale stood.

  “Where are you going?” Marguerite asked.

  “If Richard and Lucy aren’t on the air or in our office, they’re getting into trouble somewhere. I’m going to look for them.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “No. I don’t want them to think we’re more concerned than we actually are about their whereabouts.”

  As she walked toward the briefing room, Dale contemplated how she’d deal with the condolences that everyone would offer about Warren. Just thinking about it made her feel like a fraud. She hadn’t deserved someone like Warren.

  She shook her head from side to side to expel those thoughts from her mind. If she only managed to do one thing to contribute to the day, she would salvage the “Day in the Life” production.

  “Have you seen Lucy or Richard?” Dale asked one of the deputy spokesmen.

  He glanced up at the television on his desk airing the three networks and shook his head.

  “I haven’t seen them since the briefing.”

  “Please send them up to my office if they turn up.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  Dale walked quickly past the Oval Office and down the hall toward Craig’s office. His assistant, Ben, stood up when she entered. He must know about Warren, Dale thought.

  She tried to act normal. “Is he free?” she asked, looking at Craig’s closed door.

  “He’s not in there.”

  “Is he with the president?”

  “He’s with the vice president,” Ben replied.

  “Thanks.”

  He had such a pained look on his face that she felt compelled to say something else to him.

  “I haven’t seen you since before they evacuated the West Wing. Were you guys all right today? Did you have to leave the building?”

  “A bunch of us just hung out in the mess.”

  “And the Secret Service didn’t mind?”

  “They didn’t say anything.”

  “At least you didn’t have to deal with getting back in. We had to escort our press back into the complex. It was a zoo.”

  He nodded politely at Dale and then turned back to the TV on his desk. Dale followed his gaze. On one side of the screen, the mayor of New York City was holding a news conference with the police chief, and on the other side of the screen, they were running live footage of Times Square. It looked like a scene from a movie. Emergency vehicles were parked haphazardly in the empty streets. Crowds were gathered at the police perimeter, but the area was otherwise empty except for police and investigators.

  Dale shivered and glanced at the bottom of the screen, where the news crawl was spitting out tragic data points like they were sports statistics. Dale read along for a minute and then looked away.

  “Ben, I’m sorry to keep bothering you, but those reporters, Lucy and Richard from CBS, have they been hanging around here?”

  He shifted in his seat and glanced nervously from the TV to Dale and then to the TV again. She wasn’t imagining his discomfort.

  “Did something happen with them?” she probed.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You don’t happen to know where they are?” Dale asked.

  His eyes darted to the hallway that led to the vice president’s office. “Uh, no,” he said.

  “It’s not your job to keep tabs on the press. That’s our job. Thanks for everything. Please ask Craig to call me when he has a free moment.”

  Dale walked down the short hallway that separated the chief of staff’s office from the vice president’s office. The hallway dead-ended into two separate suites. To the left, the national security advisor and his assistant shared a large office. Dale nodded at Tim’s assistant, who was watching the small TV on her desk. Tim was probably in with the president. To the right, the vice president’s secretary had a small desk behind which the vice president’s large West Wing office was located. The remaining members of the vice president’s staff were housed in the Old Executive Office Building, where the vice president had a ceremonial office that was mostly used for photo ops and bill signings. Several members of the vice president’s security detail were gathered around a second desk that had been squeezed into the corner of the reception area. When Dale entered the suite, the vice president’s secretary looked up. The look on her face said everything. It was as if she’d been caught committing a crime. Even the Secret Service agents looked as if they were anticipating something interesting in terms of a confrontation. Dale held her finger to her lips to silence the vice president’s secretary and stood there without speaking long enough to hear several loud voices speaking in an animated fashion inside. She was certain that the female voice she heard belonged to Lucy, and she thought she’d heard Craig shush her when the conversation grew too loud. A million red flags went off in her mind, but she forced herself to think before she acted. Why was Craig in there instead of in the Oval Office with the president? Why were Lucy and Richard in with the vice president? Why would the vice president be talking to reporters? If Dale hadn’t been so exasperated, she might have laughed at the absurdity of the rogue news anchors finagling their way into the vice president’s office on the day of a terror attack. Dale had her hand on the doorknob and was about to barge in when Marguerite appeared in the doorway and pulled her away.

  “I have an emergency call for you from the SECDEF.”

  “From Melanie?”

  “Yes. She said to find you and get you on the phone immediately.”

  Dale watched the vice president’s secretary breathe a sigh of relief as Dale turned to follow Marguerite back to her office.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Charlotte

  Shouldn’t we place the teleprompter exactly where it will be later tonight?” Charlotte asked.

  “They’re working on it, Madam President,” Sam said calmly.

  Staffers from the White House event production office were frantically rearranging the furniture in the Oval Office to make room for the camera equipment and lights. Charlotte’s national security advisor had convened the deputy director of the FBI, the White House counterterrorism advisor, and the two presidential speechwriters Melanie had deputized to make any of Charlotte’s edits to the speech after her first formal read-through.

  “Should we have some normal people in here?” Charlotte asked.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You know, people who can listen to the speech the way normal Americans will hear it later tonight.”

  Her advisors looked at her blankly.

  “Sam!” Charlotte called.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Can you ask Brooke and Mark to come down here?” Charlotte requested.

  “Yes, ma’am. What about Mr. Kramer?”

  Charlotte paused. “He can come, if he wants,” she concluded.

  Sam reentered the Oval Office a minute later. “Madam President, I have the Miami mayor on the phone. His assistant said that he just returned from the site, and he’s heading back to the port in a few minutes, but if you’d like to speak to him now, he has time.”

  “Yes, of course I’ll talk to him,” she said, and picked up the call. “Mr. Mayor, this is Charlotte Kramer. I’m sorry to take you away from more important duties, but I wanted to express my condolences and assure you that the entire federal government is at your disposal today, and in the days and weeks t
o come.”

  “Thank you, Madam President. I’m sure we’ll be taking you up on that offer. It’s an unspeakable scene and one that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.”

  “We are standing by and ready to assist in any way you need.”

  “I don’t even know what to ask for, ma’am. I’ve been watching them pull bodies out of the water since I arrived at the port a few minutes after the explosion—all ages, and I tell you, there’s nothing that prepares you to see a child in that sort of situation.”

  “I am praying for all of you. I will do everything I can for the victims and for their families. Please tell your first responders that the White House is prepared to send down any additional resources they need. I understand there’s an elite dive unit assisting with the rescue operation.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid that what they’re really helping with is more recovery than rescue, but we’re grateful for the help.”

  “Is there anything else you need at this moment?”

  “Madam President, our police chief is having a tough time getting much information out of the FBI about the suspects that were picked up down here.”