by Jason Letts
“And how are you able to do that effectively when you’re spending several hours a day training for bike rides with the president?”
Jane’s lips parted as she was taken aback by the question. She’d been fully prepared to be offended by being in what appeared to be an attempt to make her interview for the job she already had, because they were not able to find a reason to pin the Air Force One bombing on her based on her duties during the trip, but with just a few words Agent Trice was trying to make the case that the cycling had caused her to be negligent.
“Another easy question. I’m able to effectively perform my duties while also handling the responsibility of personally protecting the president during his weekend rides by being diligent and making sure my work is done to the highest possible standard. It’s also important to note that everything involving the president’s protection is the result of a team effort with the assistance of a technical security agent, an intelligence agent, a transportation agent, advance agents, and the assistance of field office agents.”
But none of them had gotten so much as a call from the Office of the Inspector General, and Jane had her suspicions as to why. She was the only woman, though perhaps she had stretched the bounds of her responsibilities by burgeoning into other agents’ territories. But that was only to help make things easier for them.
“The president is about two years older than you, correct?” Trice asked.
“Approximately.”
“My understanding is that during these rides there has been a high degree of socialization. Would you agree with that?”
The president. The president. The president. What Jane wanted to shout out was that his name was Alex, but that would’ve been the worst possible thing to say while this OIG agent groped for a sense that less-than-professional behavior was taking place.
It made Jane realize what Alex had been getting at that had disappointed him so much. Her responsibility was to the office and the officeholder, but he still wanted to be treated as an individual on his own merits and responded to with a human touch. When his own identity vanished within the office of the presidency, he was truly alone to the point of having disappeared completely.
“The president views the training rides as partially for the purposes of socialization, and with the Camp David perimeter encompassing roughly twenty-five miles of space protected from intruders in all directions this explicit directive from the Commander in Chief appeared permissible.”
Agent Trice looked straight on at Jane with neither malice nor sympathy.
“Many would consider it inappropriate for a man in his position to be fraternizing with a woman like this.”
Jane pursed her lips.
“He is not ‘a man’. He’s the president of the United States. I am not ‘a woman’. I am a member of the Presidential Protective Division charged with guarding the officeholder. We were not fraternizing. We were engaged in a discussion that predominantly centered on how the Secret Service carries out its mission.”
Though she said these things, Jane found it increasingly difficult to force the words out of her mouth, as they’d come to be anathema to how she felt. She wanted him to be Alex and her to be Jane, and after some of the things Leslie Hodge wrote about him in her tell-all she found herself feeling protective about him in ways that had nothing to do with his life and his job. She needed to find a way to tell him, to make right what she’d done wrong, and to do it of her own initiative in the way that he wanted.
“How would you describe your feelings toward the president?”
The way Agent Trice looked at Jane was so impersonal it was almost as if she hadn’t been arranging the entire line of questioning as a series of traps. The thought crossed her mind that this agent may have been posing these questions as much to further her investigation as it was out of a sense of loyalty to the president, perhaps to spare him a scandal, but whatever the reason it made clear that in this day and age who the president slept with was like a bed of nails.
“My feelings are patriotism, respect, and duty.”
Trice’s lip twitched ever so slightly. That wasn’t the answer she was looking for.
“Have you ever imagined yourself in a relationship with the president?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Jane had intended never to lie, but she hadn’t expected questions to pertain to things that existed entirely in her head either. She worked for the government and abided by its rules and regulations, but there was space in there that remained her own. After being close to him and seeing the way his strong body moved in ways that made her breathless to remember, she had imagined doing plenty of things with him that her employer was not privy to.
“Have you made any sacrifices to your job performance because of the cyclist training?”
“No.”
Agent Trice glanced down at her pad, perhaps imagining there were more questions to ask after that particularly vacuous one that only showed how desperate she was to identify even the slightest impropriety.
“That will be all.”
But she hadn’t gotten anything, and Jane left with a little bit of a sore rear because of the chair and a crushing sense that the OIG was going to be watching her like a hawk and scrutinizing her for things that had absolutely nothing to do with the Air Force One bombing. That made it an inopportune time to have a revelation about what was in her heart and the need to do something about it, but having to deny everything she felt only inflated her feelings.
Back in her office, she picked up the phone and gritted her teeth. Wanting to talk to Alex was one thing, but doing so in a way that wouldn’t get her canned was quite another. What was she even going to say to him? Bringing up her attraction and admiration were thorny subjects. And how was he supposed to respond? Even if he felt the same way, which she could only vaguely guess at, any sort of advance or proposition would be one leak away from ruining him. The Leslie Hodge story was already doing so much damage.
Why would he risk it all for her? She was nobody.
Trying to talk to him over the phone was out of the question. She knew as well as anybody in her building that every call to the White House was recorded and that every one with the president on the line had multiple people listening in at all times. She closed her eyes, wondering how she could thread this needle. It would’ve been so much easier to keep her feelings buried or run, but the only way Jane knew how to deal with challenges was to attack them.
Slowly, she dialed the president’s secretary, Ally Wilde.
“Ally, it’s Jane. Nothing about the schedule this time. I’m hoping to arrange a chance to speak to the president. In-person.”
“Oh, do you need to let him know he’s in danger?” The voice coming over the line crackled in her ear.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Is there a change to his detail or a complication with one of his upcoming trips?”
“No,” Jane said, the unease in her gut growing.
“Then what do you need to speak to him about?”
Wincing, Jane knew she couldn’t say the truth and had to come up with a plausible explanation.
“It’s about something that came up during the last training ride at Camp David.”
“I can take the message to the president and get a response for you,” she said, making Jane grit her teeth harder. It was almost like they didn’t just let people show up and see the president on call for some reason.
“Ally, if you don’t mind I think it best if I bring it up to him in person, please. It’s really pretty complicated, technical, you know,” she said trying not to make it sound too much like she was begging for a personal favor.
Some breathing over the line followed.
“I suppose. We could slot you in later in the week. Do you have the schedule in front of you?” Ally asked, and Jane was ready to start pulling her hair out.
“I was hoping for something much sooner and a little less formal. I hate to take up much of his time and I only
need a second to stick my head in.”
More breathing. She really didn’t want to have to explain why she didn’t want him to know she was coming.
“Let me get this straight. You need just a second to get across a nuanced and elaborate inquiry that can’t be delivered via a message.”
Shutting her eyes, Jane realized she’d been caught.
“Ally!”
“Alright, alright. I’m sure you see the office time scheduled for today after the Health and Human Services secretary comes in. You should be able to drop in then.”
“Thank you,” Jane said with all of the emotion of having asked someone for the time before hanging up the phone. But Ally shouldn’t have made her work so hard for it. Now all she had to do was make it over to the White House, waltz into the West Wing, and hope that somehow it all worked out.
She slipped out of her office, leaving all of the other things she had to do behind. Thankfully her division chief, Harold Vale, didn’t say anything to her on her way out, even though he’d certainly had plenty of contact with the Inspector General’s office. Maybe everything was crashing down around her and Agent Trice was minutes away from filing a report that found her negligent for the Air Force One bombing and derelict and compromised in regards to the president and his rides.
That only made going to see him seem direr, even if it was the last thing she did in a professional capacity as a member of the Secret Service.
But whether she was able to make her overture to him at all was still up in the air, and White House security had so many places that could trip her up. She made it through the gate, past the bomb-sniffing dogs, through the Secret Service interview at the door, inside the entrance, through the screening checkpoint with more Secret Service agents, across the hall, around to the West Wing, and over to the secretary’s room.
All so that Ally Wilde could nod her in with a look that made it clear she was more than a little suspicious about what was going on. The door handle felt cold, though perhaps it was only some kind of reflection of her own clammy palms.
Nerves flared up as she stepped into the West Wing, where the comforting sight of Alex standing by the Lincoln portrait holding a packet of papers greeted her on the other side. That light-brown hair, those blue eyes, and the handsome blue suit, he looked surprised and intrigued at her sudden appearance.
Unfortunately nothing else around the room was nearly as inviting, including Vice President Jeffreys seated on the couch with his legs spread wide as he apparently lounged about the Oval Office. Then there were the Secret Service agents in the room. Evans and Royer stood in their proper places. Another agent, Simmons, was just outside by the walkway. Then of course there was the Secret Service office directly underneath their feet known as W-16 staffed with yet more agents.
“Mr. President, might I have a word,” she said, completely unsure what words her feelings would take and how she’d be able to mold them with so many ears around. She flagrantly glanced at Jeffreys, and luckily Alex took the hint.
“Would you mind giving us a moment, Harrison?” Alex asked.
“Of course.”
It was a relief when the vice president got up and left the room, but they’d never be able to get rid of all of the ears and eyes. Jane wished Dedan were on duty instead of Evans, though it was debatable whether any of them would keep her confidence. It struck her that the only one who might actually support what she was doing was Nathan. At least he didn’t seem to begrudge people getting theirs, and the ethical and workplace rules for him were less bright red lines and more winking suggestions.
Jane stepped forward as he set down the packet and faced her. It was now or never, but considering how tight the boundaries were on what she could say, it was looking like never.
“Alex, I just wanted to say something in reference to the point that you made last Saturday. I understand what you mean and want to apologize for my error. In truth, I appreciate what you meant. The office can be all-consuming, but don’t stop being you and finding ways to shine through it,” she said, holding her index finger in front of her. It felt like there was so much feeling being strained through a very narrow sieve. She was about to leave, overcome by a sensation of being ridiculous and out of place, but she turned back to look at him one more time. “And about the stuff that Hodge wrote, I don’t care at all.”
He looked at her sternly and studiously in a way she found unexpectedly withering, perhaps mostly because he didn’t move to approach her more closely like she wanted.
“Thank you, Agent Roe,” he said, and Jane nodded at him as she retreated.
As she shut the door behind herself and closed her eyes for half a second, she knew that he only saw her as a Secret Service agent, trapped within the confines of her position just as much as he was. The job that got her close to him was the same thing that kept them apart, and these days the Oval Office was not a place for igniting passion. Even though Evans, Royer, and all the rest would’ve never spoken a word in public no matter what they’d done, her professional reputation and mission were still important to her.
Somehow they had won the day and pushed her personal wants back where they were buried, again.
Back within her office, Jane had mixed feelings about her rushed trip and veiled declaration. Alex may well have thought she was crazy, another fawning underling who lost her mind in the face of the highest office of the land. But maybe he would see that she had come there of her own accord and had tried to say something, anything to make it clear she knew what went wrong. Mostly she hoped he would recognize that she’d been there for him and wanted to be there because of him, not what he did.
There was a lot of work to be done, mostly advance prep for a trip to a pharmaceutical plant the president wanted to take in the coming months, but Jane found it difficult to focus properly. She kept jumping back and forth between work and flipping through apartment listings in town, wondering where she was going to live.
She made good money at her job and could afford to live in a nicer place, but she had to factor in that she could end up being fired and forced to take whatever work she could get, even if it paid significantly less. Mostly her search revolved around finding a modest apartment in a better section of town that a middle-class single woman would feel comfortable living in.
But making much progress on either went out the window when Nathan stopped by her office, leaning against the doorframe with a magazine in his hand.
“I’ve tried to keep up on your investigation,” he said. “You hanging in there?”
Jane flashed the brightest smile she could under the circumstances.
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
Nathan looked her over and nodded.
“I just think they’d be crazy to throw you out over this. People aren’t going to forget about the Air Force One bombing, but that’s far from the only thing swirling around the president. Did you read this?” he asked, showing the cover of the magazine in his hand. It was the one Leslie Hodge’s story had been printed in.
“Regrettably, yes,” she said, leaving out that she pretty much had the entire thing memorized at this point. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“A little provocative, don’t you think?”
A begrudging grin came to her face. She was coming to learn that this was the sort of thing Nathan would always find a way to bring up. He scratched his trimmed beard and shrugged.
“What gave you that impression, how she knew exactly how many minutes the intercourse lasted or that there were two full paragraphs dedicated exclusively to describing his penis?”
“She has to be angling for a book deal with this,” Nathan said, dropping the magazine on her desk. It had been folded so much that it naturally opened right to Hodge’s story. “It’s nearly ten thousand words with absolutely no detail left to the imagination. All of it incredibly critical of President Morrin. I mean, cut the guy some slack. So he wanted her to keep her bra on. Getting all Freudian and making the case that it w
as a precursor to the demise of their nascent relationship seems excessive.”
Jane nodded along, though debating the merits of Alex’s sexual preferences on this particular occasion wasn’t appealing to her. That did leave her in the minority, and as best she could tell that was exactly what everyone else in the country was talking about since the article was published. Maybe it was no wonder Alex wasn’t about to put himself in the line of fire for more feminine torment.
“A lot of research went into this too,” Jane said, happening to glance at a pull quote from an interview the president had given to Olly Ip that Hodge had included about the divorce. “That’s probably doing as much damage as anything. His poll numbers are starting to crater.”
“Anyway, I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it,” Nathan said. “Might be relevant in some way. I wouldn’t be surprised if angry women started threatening to kill him after reading the part about how he sent her away in the morning carrying her shoes. Though from what the guys have told me, that’s not exactly true.”
“Thanks,” Jane said dryly. “If you come across any other dumpster fires, let me know.”
Nathan winked at her as he pushed off from the doorframe and started away down the hall, leaving Jane and the magazine behind. Without an easy way to dispose of it at hand, Jane had absolutely no other choice but to read it again for what had to be the tenth time. Some of the disclosures made her embarrassed on behalf of Alex, but no matter how poorly Hodge tried to paint him Jane couldn’t help but get the sense that what really happened was not nearly as bad and she’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
A tiny voice in her head whispered a note of jealousy that this woman had had such an incredible evening with a man as handsome and powerful as Alex and yet was completely ungrateful about it, using the experience for nothing more than tabloid slander.
