by Bob Mayer
Zoey gave it a pretty good attempt, ending up in a ball on the grass. “It still stinks,” she noted as she got to her feet.
“I’ll help you,” Nada said. “You have to keep your legs straight.”
Zoey was less than enthused but gave it a try. As she cartwheeled to the right, her hand came down on a dead bird buried under the leaves. She instinctively tried to pull her hand back as her body toppled over and Nada lost his grip on her ankles. She landed in a heap, saw the bird, and gave a little girl shriek, the kind that carries much farther than tiny lungs should be capable of.
“Easy, Zoey, easy,” Nada said. “It’s dead. It can’t hurt you.” He leaned over and tried to pick her up, but she was scrambling away from the body, now crying and hyperventilating.
“You okay, little girl?” A young man stopped jogging and was walking over.
“She’s fine,” Nada said.
“You her father?” the man asked suspiciously, because Nada looked like no one’s father.
Nada hated being asked questions, especially by strangers. “Go back to your run.”
Zoey got to her feet, crying and looking totally forlorn.
A few more people were being drawn in and Nada tried to put his arms around Zoey and comfort her.
“You know this man?” the jogger asked Zoey.
Nada ignored him and leaned his head close to hers. “Scout, it’s just a bird.”
She shoved herself out of his arms. “My name is Zoey,” she shouted. “Not Scout!”
“Somebody call the cops,” the jogger yelled, taking a step to get between Nada and his niece.
Nada’s instinct was to run, to avoid the confrontation, but he couldn’t leave Zoey. He had his federal ID and could clear it up with the cops. And that depressed him, to realize that he was going to have to use his false identification to prove he was what others take for granted. Because he knew he wasn’t an uncle, not in the real sense. He was the outsider, the weird one, and because of that, he was going to have to be the one doing the accommodating in this, the normal world.
“I’m her uncle,” Nada said to the jogger, raising his hands slightly and spreading them in the universal sign (in Nada’s world) of “I won’t kill you right this second.”
The guy didn’t appreciate the gesture.
“He’s got a gun!” the jogger screamed, spotting the MK23 in its holster, and then more people screamed and everyone began running away. No heroes here, especially not with someone who looked like Nada who had a gun, not even for a little girl like Zoey.
Maybe it was an LA thing.
Nada sighed as he heard the distant siren coming closer and pulled out his real fake badge and ID. A clusterfuck.
And then his cell phone began its distinctive ring, “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and as he sprinted away to the call of duty, no time to talk his way out of this, knowing the cops would reunite Zoey with his brother, he realized the irony of what he’d always told the team:
Zoey leads to getting Zevoned.
Chapter 9
An Hour Earlier
“Trust no one,” the president said.
The Keep had her quill pen poised over the latest page in the book, but didn’t write his words of wisdom down. “That’s been on every president’s list.”
“Maybe they should highlight it?”
The Keep carefully laid the pen down and flipped through some pages in the book. “It’s been highlighted and scored and given extra stars and exclamation points. You read it years ago when I in-briefed you after you took office.”
“Maybe it needs its own page?”
“Good idea, sir,” but it was apparent she wasn’t going to make any special note about it.
“I’m surprised JFK didn’t put that on a separate page,” the president said.
“He didn’t make it to this meeting,” the Keep said. An awkward pause followed that. “Terribly sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She picked up the quill and held it carefully and with respect. Its original owner, after all, was Thomas Jefferson. It was antiquated and archaic, exactly the way it should be as she entered the president’s observations from his four years in office in the Book of Truths with ink and quill from the third president.
The quill was archaic, not the ink, although it was specially made with the same formula Jefferson had used centuries earlier.
Templeton smiled sadly. “How about this: Especially don’t trust someone who tells you not to trust anyone? I learned that the hard way.”
The Keep nodded. “Very good.” She wrote in large, flowing letters, almost calligraphy, and he wondered if that was part of why she’d gotten this job or if she’d been taught it after getting the job.
Everyone in the White House thought the Keep was part of someone else’s staff. She wore the same type of bland business attire, had an access badge that gave her the highest clearance, and kept a low profile. In housekeeping, they thought she worked for the social secretary. In social, they thought she was a senior staffer at housekeeping. The cooks (chefs, since it’s the White House) thought she worked for maintenance.
There was only one other person on the top floor of the White House, seated too far away to hear, a shadow that always was behind the president, even when the sun didn’t shine: a military attaché who carried the “football.” Technically, it was just a metal briefcase. It weights forty-five pounds and a satellite antenna pokes out of the side. It is not locked to the aide, as many commonly thought, since they were in the relative safety of the White House. The case holds the key ingredients needed for the president to annihilate any enemy at a moment’s notice: a transmitter (never used); a black book listing options for nuclear strikes based on current threat analysis and updated at least daily, more often in times of crisis (peered at several times by presidents with reactions ranging from morbid interest to shock and dismay, but never used); another book containing options of classified sites the president could be taken to in case of emergencies (used on 9/11/2001); and most importantly, a three-by-five card with the authentication codes for launch (never used). There is also a sat phone and a pistol, the latter an object of speculation as to whom it was to be used on and why. The dark humor was it was the attaché’s last way out if the case had to be used.
The Keep had told Templeton four years ago during the in-brief that several presidents, most notably Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, had preferred to keep the code in their jacket pocket, indicating a strange combination of need for power and lack of trust. This had led to Carter sending the authentication codes for a nuclear holocaust out to get dry-cleaned along with the jacket while on a trip one time.
After that, the Secret Service began checking laundry.
Then it had ended up on the emergency room floor in discarded clothing after Reagan got shot.
After that, the Secret Service really tried harder to keep the president from getting shot.
The Keep had recommended following protocol and leaving the codes in the case.
Templeton thought the constant presence of the officer in range of the president was more than just a practical thing. It was a reminder of the seriousness of his job, for despite four years in office, he’d never been able to zone the guy out of his sphere of awareness.
He couldn’t comprehend carrying those codes in his pocket. Sometimes, late at night, he pondered what it would be like to have that briefcase opened and give the codes. Then he usually took a Xanax to get back to sleep.
The president heard his wife’s angry voice echo up the stairwell and sighed. “Why is Christmas so damn important around here?” he asked.
The Keep responded to the president’s question, because she did more than just keep the book. She was also fluent in White House and presidential history. “Christmas didn’t become a national holiday in the United States until 1870, during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. One might think this would have something to do with the separation of church and state, but the same b
ill also made New Year’s, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving national holidays.”
President Templeton snorted. “Maybe Grant just liked days off and to party? He supposedly liked to take a drink or two. Or maybe the Founding Fathers were too busy for the first century or so to worry about national days off?”
The Keep nodded. “Possibly. But contrary to popular myth, Grant was not a great imbiber of alcohol in quantity. He simply had no tolerance for alcohol. So when he did drink, the results were, shall we say, not fortunate for him. As far as Christmas in the White House, Abigail Adams threw the first Christmas party here and it was quite the smash.”
The president was slouched in a chair in the solarium on the third floor of the White House, the uppermost level, while the Keep sat at a large round table, a large, leather-bound book in front of her. The president’s Secret Service detail was one floor below, quite irritated not to be on the same level even though they also had two guys on the roof, as always.
Somehow the Keep was able to overrule even the Secret Service inside the White House. Which made the president suspect there was more to her than just taking care of the big book. But in four years, he’d never seen her do anything except occasionally brief him on incidents that the covert world she represented dealt with. Incidents that never had After Action Reports typed up on computers, or paper; only verbal briefings, one on one. Incidents that didn’t even make the Top Secret daily intel briefing. Incidents that scared the shit out of him and caused him to take more Xanax than he probably should.
“Adams was from Boston,” Templeton said. “I thought they were all uptight hard-asses, like General Riggs.”
“Not Abigail,” the Keep said, making it sound entirely plausible that she was on a first-name basis with a long-dead First Lady. “She threw a great party.”
The Keep did not look the part. Midthirties, pale skin, with short dark hair. Athletic, slender build, and just barely over five feet tall. It was easy to see how she was rarely noticed. Templeton didn’t even know her name, only her title and first name, Elle, which no one used but was on her ID badge with Keep as her last name.
She’d been important the first month he was in office, and she was important in this last month, but for the rest of the four years, he had no idea what she did except for the incident briefings. Apparently she also brushed up on White House history. The last time he’d seen her was six weeks ago, giving him the summary on a Rift incident in North Carolina. The very existence of Rifts and Fireflies was just one of several secrets she’d briefed him on when he took office.
She had a tiny office down the center hall on this floor, where a cluster of the staff worked. Now that he reflected on it, Templeton realized he’d never seen her office. In fact, there were a few rooms in the White House he’d only glimpsed on the quick tour four years ago.
Templeton shook his head as the sound of the preparations rose through the floors below. Even here in this private sanctum they heard the clamor of hammers banging and voices shouting. “Does it have to be such a big deal? The money could be better spent in other ways.”
The Keep shrugged, such goings-on of little consequence to her. “Christmas at the White House has evolved into what it is with each administration adding their own special touch.”
It had indeed. As the decades and centuries rolled by, Christmas at the White House grew from Abigail Adams throwing a great party (according to the Keep) to an elaborate, drawn-out affair lasting from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, so significant that there was a year-round full-time staffer planning the event.
She probably had an office next door to the Keep, the president mused, and like a holiday vampire only rose at the appropriate time of year.
This year, the last in President Templeton’s term, the holidays had an added urgency to it, a feeling not quite of desperation but perhaps resignation. Christmas in the big house for a lame-duck president is an awkward event for the First Family, knowing they’re going to get the boot in less than a month. Why put up decorations when you’re going to be packing everything in a few weeks? Most people wouldn’t do it, but most people weren’t the First Family and subject to the obligations of tradition and the expectations of the “people,” whoever they might be.
“Do you think the treaty lost me the election?” Templeton asked. He was putting off the task the Keep was here for, but in reality, he was actually putting off going downstairs to the chaos of the preparations and the meeting with the press in the Entrance Hall in front of the tree. He could expect to be barraged with questions about the treaty, not good old St. Nick. And, of course, he also didn’t want to face the demands of the Oval Office over in the West Wing.
The Keep spread her hands, long slender fingers covering the book that was the purpose of this meeting. The Keep had started the meeting by asking him simply: “Tell me what you learned here.”
And he’d laughed and said: “Like what did I do during the summer?”
She had not laughed. “Lessons learned, to be passed down the line.”
And he’d had to begin to dredge up memories, many bad, a few good.
The Keep answered his question. “Your opponent did a good job of equating the treaty with being soft, Mister President. Of caving in.”
Someone telling the truth. That was a rarity in this building, Templeton thought. But the Keep had nothing to gain or lose by doing so, unlike most others that surrounded him. When he and his administration went packing, she would still be here, dumping on the next poor schmuck who had “won” his job.
“I think it was the name,” he said.
A furrow of confusion crossed her forehead. “Name, sir?”
“My middle name. Armstrong. What do you think of when you hear it?”
“Neil Armstrong, sir. First on the moon.”
“Ah yes, the little hop, as my wife once called it in one of her fouler moods while we were watching the Discovery Channel. It takes a lot to impress her. But that’s not how my opponent played it. Armstrong. Middle name. Just like you know who, who got it at Little Bighorn. How can they make that leap, then leap to the treaty leading us into another massacre? And, of course there’s Lance Armstrong. And what that’s about, I have no idea. There’s absolutely no connection.”
“There rarely is with politics, Mister President,” she said. “Human beings, while irrational, are predictably irrational. In fact, note how you went from hop to leap without consciously realizing it?”
Templeton laughed. “How come you weren’t working on my campaign?”
She tapped the book on the table, drawing them back to task. “I have a job, sir.”
Templeton straightened up in the chair and sighed. “You know, you scared the heck out of me that first month when you briefed me here, in this same room, with that damn book of yours. And not just the top ten lessons learned by every president, but all the rest. Especially the stuff about the Rifts and the Fireflies and the other near disasters.”
“I’m sorry, Mister President. I didn’t mean to.”
“You know what I call you in my head,” he said. “I call you the Heartbreaker.”
She nodded. “Your predecessor came to the same conclusion, and I understand all previous Keeps have been called the same in one form or another. We prefer realists.”
“I couldn’t even tell Helen or my chief of staff how you broke my heart and turned me into a liar for so many of my campaign promises. You and that damn book hog-tied me long before I got to this point of being a lame duck.” He shifted in the chair and stared her in the eye. “Do you know why they call it a lame duck?” He could tell she knew, but he didn’t care. This was his chance to bitch and by God he was gonna take it. “Birds molt a few feathers here and there, but ducks drop them all at once like a dirty bathrobe and have to sit around naked and vulnerable because they can’t fly for weeks. We should have a duck as the national bird, not an eagle.”
“Would you like me to write that down, sir?” she asked, and he knew
she wasn’t jerking his chain. It was her job.
“Very funny.” He looked about, because he could use a drink. “Heck, Franklin fought against using the eagle as the symbol of our country, didn’t he?”
The Keep nodded. “Yes. He called the eagle a bird of bad moral character that did not make his living honestly. That an eagle was a carrion bird, which isn’t quite true as an absolute. He wanted the turkey as our national bird.”
“You know,” he added as he spotted nothing to drink in the room, “if I’d been reelected I was going to switch to pot. Easier on the liver. Enough states have made it legal. What the heck? Don’t drink, smoke pot. You can write that one down.”
The Keep smiled. “What a good idea. We’ve lost too many fine men and women to the bottle.”
“And a few bastards,” the president said. “McCarthy drank himself to death after losing to the army in his hearing. I remember there was a section in there from Ike about how, in retrospect, he’d realized he’d handled McCarthy the wrong way. Should have squashed him like a bug right from the start. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t judge or evaluate, sir. I just copy it down.”
“No,” the president said in a sharper tone than he intended. “After you copy it down, you read it to the next poor sap who inherits this house and shit on his head. Then you copy down what he’s learned four years later for the next poor sap.”
“It’s efficient,” the Keep said. “It preserves institutional knowledge.”
He stared into her deep blue eyes, so full of intelligence and a keen quickness that bothered him in a way he couldn’t define. “You should brief anyone who thinks they want to get the nomination from either party. I bet it would send some home before they even got started.”
“That wouldn’t be secure, sir.”
“So you trust all the former presidents to never speak of these things or write about them in their memoirs?”
“Will you, sir?”
“No.”
The Keep seemed to take that as sufficient answer to his own question. “You are joining a very unique club, sir. It’s why former presidents get along better than most people expect. You share something very special.”
