The Presence

by T. Davis Bunn

  TJ thanked him, passed through the metal detector, and stopped in front of a large display of photographs showing details of gloriously ornate rooms, hand-finished ceilings, and detailed iron scrollwork. He stooped to read a placard:

  Next door to the White House, the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) commands a unique position in both our national history and architectural heritage. Designed by Supervising Architect of the Treasury Alfred Bult Mullett, it was built from 1871 to 1888 to house the growing staffs of the State, War, and Navy Departments, and is considered one of the best examples of French Second Empire architecture in the country.

  TJ looked around. He was the only one looking at the display. The hall was crowded with people, but they all hurried by with blind eyes, intent on internal issues and pressed for time. Saying little, seeing less.

  Once he was away from the entrance, the hallways were tall and broad and nearly empty. The marble-tiled floors were grooved and worn by a century of scurrying footsteps. Ornate brass lamps that must have originally been gaslit were suspended from the ceiling. People he passed would look, search for recognition, smile a blank hello, and move on.

  The door to Room 202 was locked. TJ looked around, saw no one to ask, and decided to try the door to the right. He knocked, heard nothing, tried the handle, then pushed the door open.

  An attractive auburn-haired young woman looked up from her desk. “May I help you?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is TJ Case and the door to my—”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Case.” She stood hastily, calling over her shoulder, “Joan, Mr. Case is here.” And to TJ, “My name is Ann Crenshaw, I’m one of the secretaries assigned to your office.”

  “How nice to meet you,” he replied, then turned to greet the young woman who appeared in the doorway. She was probably in her mid-twenties, but her fragile features, framed by pale-blond curls, left him thinking of her as a child.

  “Mr. Case, I’m Joan Sammons, your assistant,” she said, holding out her hand. Her voice was quiet, almost resigned, but her eyes were bright with intelligence and a hard, assessing quality that belied the fragility of her face and voice.

  It surprised him that his secretaries and assistants had already been chosen, but he hoped it didn’t show. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Sammons.”

  “Call me Joan.” She glanced at her watch. “I was supposed to tell Blair Wellesley up in Presidential Personnel when you got in, but I’m not sure he’s there yet.” She gave him a wan smile. “We work Washington hours here, nine or ten in the morning to midnight.”

  “Or until nine or ten the next morning,” Ann added. “Depends on when your item comes up on the President’s agenda.”

  TJ nodded. “Are you both coming from Education?”

  “No,” Joan replied. “I was with a computer consulting firm in Phoenix, and Ann was with a bank in Fairfax County. We both quit our jobs a year and a half ago to help with the President’s campaign.”

  “Everybody in the office was on his campaign staff,” Ann said.

  Except me, TJ thought, and asked, “How many are we?”

  “Five, with two slots still unfilled. One guy’s supposed to start next week. There’s been some holdup with his FBI clearance. The other one I haven’t heard about yet from Personnel.”

  TJ searched for the proper response. “It certainly is nice to know that I have some experienced people working with me. I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about how Washington works. Or the White House.”

  Joan and Ann exchanged a glance. “It’s pretty much a club atmosphere,” said Joan. “Almost everybody in the building was active in the campaign. People gave up their jobs, their careers—”

  “Their families,” Ann added.

  “Some of us,” Joan admitted. “There were a lot of sacrifices made during the campaign. This is sort of the payoff.”

  “The money’s not much, but it’s fun being right at the seat of power,” said Ann. “And exciting.”

  “I’m sure it is,” TJ agreed, glancing around. The L-shaped outer office was jammed with two desks, a computer work station, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and two armchairs covered in some kind of Chinese fabric. A small radio on the floor was playing rock music at a low and insistent level. On the wall behind Ann’s desk was a blowup of a Far Side drawing—skulls planted on poles in the front yard of a ranch-style house, with the caption “Suburban Headhunters.” The other walls were bare except for a couple of pictures of the President.

  “Why don’t I show you around,” Joan offered, and said to Ann, “Call down to Personnel and see if Blair’s come in yet.”

  Joan took him through what had clearly been an antechamber but now contained a shoulder-high partition blocking off space for a desk and a second computer terminal. “This is my office,” she said.

  The third room was long and narrow and as crowded as the others. Two desks faced each other, separated by a row of filing cabinets and another computer terminal. A plaque on one desk read, “The Washington Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

  A high ceiling accented the room’s cramped dimensions. Slender windows at one end opened onto a small balcony; TJ craned, glimpsed the White House through the bare tree limbs and falling mist.

  “John Stuart was a lawyer with a firm in Boston,” she said, pointing to the desk with the plaque. “And the desk over there is for the guy who hasn’t been cleared yet. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with the fifth person. Stick a desk out in the hall, I suppose.”

  “Or stuff them in a drawer,” TJ agreed. Every inch of space seemed occupied.

  She led him back through the secretary’s office, where Ann was just hanging up the phone. “Blair’s on his way over,” she said.

  Joan nodded, opened the doors across from the unoccupied desk, said, “This is your office.”

  The room was more spacious than the others, but not by much. The desk was large enough to look cramped; the bare conference table seemed totally out of place. The nicest aspect was the set of large, old-fashioned window-doors that opened onto the balcony. The view of the White House was stupendous.

  Trying to keep his voice casual, TJ asked, “Does anyone here have experience in education?”

  Joan’s eyes turned hard as stone, but her voice was as soft as ever. “You do,” she replied. “The rest of us have experience in politics.”

  TJ nodded. “Beautiful view,” he said.

  “There are some chairs and a little table on the balcony, they’re pushed over to one side,” she said. “It’s going to be a nice place to work in the springtime.”

  TJ moved close to the glass and looked down on the parking lot that separated their building from the White House grounds. Joan came up beside him.

  “That’s the West Wing,” she said, pointing to the side closest to them. “The President’s office is on the other side, overlooking the Rose Garden.”

  Beneath them, a police officer was leading a German shepherd from car to car. The dog circled each one, carefully sniffing tires and underbody. For bombs, TJ decided.

  “Blair’s going to have you pretty busy for a day or so,” Joan said. “But we need to meet as soon as possible to go over some urgent matters. The President’s made education a priority issue, and they want us to get to work on policy as quickly as possible.” She gave him another wan smile. “We can’t let Congress get the jump on us, can we?”

  “No, we can’t,” TJ replied, turning away from the windows.

  Joan led him back to the outer office, where a young man now sat perched on the edge of Ann’s desk.

  “I told him I wanted a signed picture of the President,” he was saying. “And I didn’t want any fakey signatures. I’ve done enough of ’em in the campaign to be able to tell the difference.”

  “Blair, this is Mr. Case,” Joan said.

  “Hey, hey, welcome to Washington, Mr. Case.” The young man walked over with outstretched hand and a smile that meant absolutely nothing.
“Blair Wellesley, Presidential Personnel. I’m the one assigned to show you the ropes.”

  “Nice to meet you,” TJ said, wondering if everyone here was as young as this trio. And as casual.

  “Yeah, same here.” He turned to Joan. “You tell that cowboy of yours he pulled in a lot of favors on that last one. The ball’s in my court now.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Joan promised.

  “You’ve got a hotshot from Boston on your team who’s out to solve all the world’s problems in one day,” Blair said to TJ. “Well, you ready to go? A lot to get done this morning.”

  “By all means,” TJ replied, and motioned for him to lead on.

  Outside the office, Blair stopped and pointed at the doorknob. “Seen that? Here, take a look.”

  TJ bent down, saw that the brass knob boasted an ornate anchor-and-stars design.

  “I love showing these things to visitors. When this place was built, it housed almost half the entire government. The knobs tell what the rooms were used for. This was part of the Navy Department.”

  As they walked down the hall, TJ ventured, “Everybody certainly does seem young.”

  Blair laughed. “There’re seventeen hundred employees here and in the White House, and I’ll bet you money that two-thirds of them are under thirty. See, the money’s pretty awful, so those who take the lower jobs have to be young enough to live on bread and water for a while. The payback is intellectual. People give up four years of pushing their careers forward so they can have the chance to play with power.”

  “And most of them were with the President’s campaign staff?”

  “Yeah. You’re a real exception to the rule. Most of us have either worked together or known about each other for a couple of years now. We pretty much lived in each other’s pockets during the campaign.” Blair glanced sideways at him. “Some people’ll be kinda cool toward you at first. You know, the new kid on the block. It’ll pass. Especially with you working on a high-priority item like education.”

  TJ decided he might as well ask it now. “What’s the policy on hiring and firing within my section?”

  That sobered his guide immediately. “Why, do you have any complaints?”

  “Of course not,” TJ said. “I was just a little surprised to find my section already fully staffed.”

  “They’re good people in there,” Blair said flatly. “The best. They’ve given up just about everything for the past year or so to get the President elected. Shoot, Joannie’s husband ended up divorcing her, she was spending so much time away from home. They know politics, and they know what the President wants. You’ll be glad you’ve got them, believe me.”

  ****

  TJ followed Blair Wellesley downstairs and along the whitewashed hall, a bit dazed and bewildered by too much too fast. First they’d gotten his ID, which had to be a temporary one because TJ’s FBI clearance had not been completed. Blair explained that until he had his permanent ID, he would have to be escorted inside the White House or met at the entrance by a West Wing staffer. Then came an excruciatingly boring conference with a serious young man from the Legal Affairs section who droned on for over three hours about what TJ could not do while in office and after leaving government service. TJ had listened and nodded and tried to pay attention, but found his mind going back to the ethics class he attended in law school.

  ****

  I’m sixty-seven years old, Professor Seers had told them that first day. I’ve seen the laws that govern this nation go through changes I would not have believed possible when I qualified forty-four years ago. But this class isn’t about those changes. You’ll have all your lives to study and learn about them. What we’re going to study is the foundation, the rock, the one thing that can’t change, not if we intend to keep this nation alive.

  He was a tall man who wore his wisps of gray hair like a crown. His body was stooped and clearly feeble, and movements came with a great deal of hesitant shakiness. But his voice was firm, and the light in his eyes brilliantly clear. TJ remembered him as the best professor he’d ever had.

  “Ethics is the rarest word in the legal vocabulary,” Professor Seers told them. “Most of you here think law has to do with right and wrong. That is true only in the rarest of cases. Most of the time, law is about limiting freedom. Law is about defining what you can and can’t do. Law is about prohibitions. Law is about punishing. We hope for right and wrong. And that’s about all we guardians of the law can do, hope. And pray for guidance.

  “The only way we can be sure that right or wrong is followed in the law is if our nation comes to know the Lord in its heart and mind. For the makers of law, it gives them guidelines to follow. For the average citizen, it teaches that nobody is above the law.

  “That is the single biggest problem with our society today. People consider themselves safe from the law so long as they think they won’t get caught. They see the law as something valid only for others, and only applicable if it suits them.

  “It is impossible for someone who has not had a personal experience of God, that deep-down heartfelt transformation, to accept that laws can be truly eternal. And without this belief born of personal experience, law will remain something to scramble around, rather than something to strive to uphold.

  “It is impossible for anyone to remain totally within the law. The Bible is full of this fact, as anyone who has studied it can testify. It is a three-thousand-year legacy of man’s weakness. But with an acceptance of God, we can be assured that man will at least try to follow the law. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all we can hope for. That man will try.

  “Man has developed a myriad of terms to describe a government without God seeking to rule a people without God. And how many words are in our vocabulary because of man’s inhumanity to man—communism, pogrom, anarchy, dictatorship, military coup, Stalinism, concentration camps, civil rebellion, prisoners’ suicides. How many of us are doomed to a hell on earth because of the absence of God from our lives?”

  There were fifty people who listened to the professor that first class. By the time the next class met, forty-three of the students had opted for other courses. One of them had made his opinion very clear in a conversation that TJ had happened to overhear. What’s the point, the student had told a friend, of listening to five months of some religious nut? His friend had agreed and added, it’s hard enough to make a living out there anyway, without carrying around this extra burden of guilt.

  ****

  On their way to lunch, TJ listened with half an ear to Blair’s determined chatter. The people moving past them were mostly male, mostly white, and most looking urgently important.

  The cafeteria was a clutter of noise and people and tables of various sizes. Blair led him through the serving line and over to a larger table that still had two empty places. From the expression on Blair’s face he clearly knew everyone.

  TJ set his tray down, but before Blair could follow suit a large woman with bright red hair shouldered past him and jammed her tray down with a clatter. Dull eyes in a face caked with makeup dared him to argue.

  Blair hesitated, his confidence clearly shaken. He said, “It’s okay, TJ. I’ll see you after lunch.”

  TJ watched his only acquaintance in the room turn and walk away. He decided to excuse himself and follow, but the other black man at the table stood and extended his hand.

  “Carter Williams,” he said. “You look about as lost as I did my first day here.”

  “TJ Case. Nice to meet you.” He shook the proffered hand. “I’m sorry it shows.”

  “Don’t apologize. Everybody’s got to start sometime.” He looked at the redheaded woman who had taken Blair’s place. “Right, Bella?”

  “Don’t ask me,” said a voice made from equal parts gravel and boredom. The woman did not even look up from her food. “I just work here.”

  Williams gave the top of her head a sardonic look and rolled his eyes at TJ. “Come on, sit down. I’ll introduce you so you can get busy and forget eve
rybody’s name.”

  Swiftly he introduced the other six around the table, giving brief anecdotes about their background and positions. TJ saw a group of intelligent, carefully casual people who inspected him intently. No instant judgment here. Just caution. They were all good at what they did, he was positive of that. Very good.

  “And this is Bella Saunders,” said Williams, completing the circle. “She’s one of the top OMB liaisons with White House staffers on that most important of policy instruments.” Carter was giving special emphasis to his words, his eyes losing their gleam as he gave TJ a warning look. “I’m talking about money.”

  “Without which nothing gets done,” a woman across the table added, her eyes carrying the same warning.

  “I see,” TJ said noncommittally.

  They were clearly not satisfied with his reaction. “The OMB approves all the funding proposals coming out of the various agencies,” Williams continued. “Including the White House and all OEOB policies. And anytime a White House staffer, like you, has to testify before a congressional committee, your testimony has to be approved first by the OMB.”

  “Extremely powerful,” a young man said from the far end of the table, speaking into his coffee cup.

  “Bella’s been here longer than anybody, haven’t you, Bella?”

  “I’ve seen ’em come, watched ’em go.” She looked at TJ with eyes as devoid of emotion as her voice. “Thomas Jefferson Case, late of Raleigh, North Carolina. Seconded by senatorial recommendation to the position of Special Assistant to the President for Educational Affairs.”

  The man on the other side of Bella snapped his fingers. “Case. Yeah, now I remember. You’re the guy who switched parties to help that congressman with his campaign. What was his name?”

  “Silverwood,” TJ said, impressed with their knowledge and feeling even more the novice.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Silverwood.” The man said to the others, “Brought over half the black vote. First time in history we’ve got a Republican congressman from that district.”