by James Phelan
“Thank you.”
“Well done, those men,” Wallace said. He clinked glasses with Fox and Gammaldi. “Don’t know if I can afford to let you award-winning reporters off the front line for a while. And here I was, considering if either of you wanted to go to work in Washington next year.”
“Doing?” Fox asked.
“We’re getting a seat in the Press Room.”
“I’ll go,” Gammaldi said.
“Why, so you can hit on Dana Perino?” Fox said.
“Who?”
“Never mind,” Fox said. He noticed Wallace check his watch. “You have to be somewhere?”
“I’m going to The Met,” Wallace said, checking his watch again. “Should be leaving now. I’ll see you at the office tomorrow.”
“What you seeing?” Gammaldi asked.
“Nabucco. James Levine has come back to conduct it,” Wallace said. He’d already started to move away. “We’ve got some tickets to each performance, if you want to see it?”
“Yeah, I might,” Fox said, deliberately stalling Wallace. “I haven’t been to The Met yet, and I do like Verdi.”
“Well, I’ll let you know what it’s like,” Wallace replied, about to turn and leave.
“Wait a second,” Fox said, protracting his boss’s getaway. Tas Wallace, founder of GSR, had a highly profitable news business at his fingertips. By providing content rather than end product, the company turned massive profits from every major outlet of news media across the globe. It meant they were well-placed to take advantage of new media opportunities—their website gsrnews.com was one of the most trafficked news sites on the net.
He had noted the fifty-five-year-old bachelor was dressed especially sharp. He’d seen him attired for the opera before, but this was something else. “Who are you seeing the opera with?”
“A friend,” Wallace said. “Just a friend.”
“Come on,” Fox persisted, “spill it. You’ve got a date, haven’t you?”
Wallace looked around, and a woman about Fox’s age approached. She shook Wallace’s hand and he made the introductions.
“Lachlan, Alister, this is Jane Clay, of The New Yorker,” Wallace said.
“G’day,” Gammaldi said.
“Hi,” said Fox. She was attractive—he gave Gammaldi a look that said Wallace has done well here.
“Jane is writing a piece on us, starting with you and your department,” Wallace said to Fox. “I’d better go, not polite to keep a lady waiting.”
Fox and Gammaldi shared a quick look—Jane wasn’t their boss’s date.
No way was Fox going to let him off the hook.
“Tas?” Fox said as his boss was heading off.
Wallace turned around, came back and spoke quietly: “Maureen Dowd, okay?”
He left with a grin and a flick of his white scarf over his shoulder.
“I knew it,” Fox said, watching his boss weave through the crowd. “He likes the redheads.”
“Most guys do,” Jane put in, still standing beside them.
Fox took a second to appraise her in more detail. Early thirties, dark hair, five six or so, a slim build typical of the type of journalist more fuelled by coffee and deadlines than yoga and serenity. Despite New York having just had a hot summer and the fact they were into the middle of a dry fall season, her skin wore the tan of a computer screen. Alabaster had more colour.
“Hell, I’d chase after Dowd if I was twenty years older,” Gammaldi added.
“Al, who are you kidding?” Fox said. “You’d date her in a heartbeat.”
“Yeah, you’re right—but only because of her beautiful mind and way with words. I’m gonna get us another drink,” Gammaldi announced, hightailing off after a waiter with a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
“So, what’s your piece on, specifically?” Fox asked Jane. Her dark brown eyes were almost black, the kind you could get lost in.
“You.” Jane drank the last of her champagne.
“Tas said—”
“Yeah, he wanted me to take a tactful approach,” she said. “Something I’m not very fond of.”
“Lachlan!” Graydon Carter came up and took Fox’s offered hand in both of his. The Vanity Fair editor’s hair was characteristically coiffed, his smile beaming. “Wonderful speech.”
“Thanks,” Fox said, looking from Carter to Jane. “Have you two met?”
“Yes we have. Jane is a protégé of Tina Brown, no less. How are you, dear?” he asked, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Lachlan, I want you to come over and meet the Pulitzer committee. They’re already buzzing about the Indian water crisis articles you’re doing for us for next year…”
“Sure,” Fox said, scanning around for Gammaldi.
“I’ll wait here for Alister,” Jane said. She had a wicked smile. “You go and reserve your medal.”
3
THE WHITE HOUSE
“Good morning, Mr President,” Bill McCorkell said as he entered the Oval Office. The chief resident doctor was taking the President’s blood pressure and unfastened the sphygmomanometer’s Velcro strap.
“Pretty good, Mr President, one-thirty over eighty-five,” the physician said. “Be sure to keep up the meds after your op on Saturday, and keep up the cardio work.”
“You should check Bill’s blood pressure,” the President said, rolling his sleeve back down. “Sure, he runs and rows and does God knows whatever other lame excuse for exercise, but I suspect he’s one global crisis away from a triple bypass. It’s the French blood in him.”
“His heart rate puts mine to shame, Mr President,” the physician said, a colonel five years younger than both the men there.
“I just cut out coffee too,” McCorkell said, pouring himself a tea.
“Mr President, I’ll be travelling with you to Washington Hospital Center on the way to your op,” the physician said. “Don’t forget to follow the anaesthetist’s instructions for the night before.”
The President grumbled his reply and the physician left the room.
“First up is Iraq: two Marines of the fifteenth MEU killed overnight in Baghdad,” McCorkell said. The 8 am meeting was the President’s Daily Brief. A half-hour rundown of national security issues. McCorkell handed over the PDB folder and took a seat opposite the President. “IED went off at a security checkpoint.”
The President sighed.
“Have their families scheduled in for a phone call tonight,” he said.
“Will do,” McCorkell replied, skimming down the notes. “Still in that area, the Iraqi government’s interior minister survived an assassination attempt, one of his bodyguards turned but he was taken down quickly. And Britain pulled out the last of their forces in the Basra province.”
“Their new force in Afghanistan?”
“Arrived overnight our time,” McCorkell said. “Canadians and Aussies are each committing a company-sized infantry force to Kabul, in country by the end of the month. Denmark just announced they’ll send a military police outfit, about a hundred guys.”
“We need more boots in there,” the President said. “Thousands, not hundreds. Body count is rising too damned fast.”
“We’ve got a NATO military leadership meeting a fortnight from now, Vanzet will get the boots the Afghan government has asked for,” McCorkell said. “And the CIA has just deployed a new squadron of Reaper UAVs, they’re all armed hunterkillers, to the north. They’re working with some Task Force Orange boys to clean out the mountains, village by village, house by house.”
“Congress are still pushing for a timeline for the next Iraqi troop withdrawal,” the President said. “Attached it to the latest appropriations bill.”
“I saw that,” McCorkell said. “You going to veto?”
“Have to,” the President said. “They’ve made their point again, and round and round we go.”
“And we go out with the staged withdrawal based on security goals being met,” McCor
kell said. “It’s the only interim option. We broke that country, and sure, we can’t fix it in a hurry, but we can keep the civil conflicts from getting out of hand.”
“You don’t call this out of hand?“ The President tapped the headline of the Washington Post on his desk.
“Mr President, can you imagine what it would be like without our force in there? The country would split apart real fast, and it would be real messy. We’re gonna need a big chunk of our own guys to remain there, at the very least inside Baghdad, for decades.”
“You don’t think that if we announce withdrawal dates the insurgents will just hide under rocks until we bug out and then kick up hell again?”
“They can’t pretend to stop the sectarian fights, it’s in them, they’ll do it until they wipe each other out,” McCorkell said. “Or, hopefully, until their spiritual, political and community leaders can spread the peace.”
“So your security goals most likely won’t be met. Congress will see right through that,” the President said.
“Like we see through their troop withdrawal add-ons to bills that pass through.”
“Round and round we go.”
“You got it, Mr President,” McCorkell said. He tapped his finger on his PDB folder. “It’s all we can do until we get the UN to move on putting blue helmets in there. Sure, we’ll still have to foot the bill, but it will get the Hill to stop hassling us on this one. A force under a UN flag has the best chance of working.”
The President nodded.
“What’s next?”
“Bomb went off overnight in Port Harcourt, Nigeria,” McCorkell said. “Target was an oil company building, a couple of confirmed casualties and more to come, probably around twenty.”
“What’s it mean for us?”
“Too early to say, but it’s not a good sign for oil prices, they jumped a full ten cents in the past twenty-four hours.”
“The Middle East?”
“The terrorist attack in Qatar is hurting the markets bad,” McCorkell said. “The fire at the Knock Nevis is out. They’re moving quicker than we expected, a good half a million barrels of production coming back on tomorrow. Should have production back to capacity within eight, nine days tops.”
“NYSE, Dow Jones, NASDAQ, NYMEX—”
“Yeah, I know—”
“They don’t share your optimism on this, Bill.”
“The markets are at their worst while being reactive to shock events, they’ll rebound on this once the Qatari good news hits the stands tomorrow,” McCorkell said. “Saudis will remain the real kicker on current oil prices though.”
“We’ll go over that with the NSC this morning,” the President said. He made notes in the margin of the PDB for National Security Council discussion. “You attending the eleven o’clock with the Saudi ambassador?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” McCorkell said. “I think that this highlights the need for us to move faster on increasing the holding capacity of the SPR.”
“What’s capacity now, close on a billion barrels?”
“Give or take, but bear in mind we’ve only got just over seventy per cent stored away in crude stocks.”
The President chewed it over.
“They done their feasibility on a gas storage?”
“Due tomorrow,” McCorkell said. “Refined fuels don’t have the shelf life of crude. A bigger buffer of crude will be our best measure of help, and it means we can use it more frequently as a driver of price, if not globally then at least here at the gas pumps at home.”
“Good. That all?”
McCorkell nodded, got up and made for the door.
“Bill?”
“Mr President?” McCorkell turned around to face his Commander-in-Chief.
“You all right with him? With Tom?” The President pointed to the side door that led out of his office, through his small kitchenette and into the Chief of Staff’s office.
McCorkell walked back and stood behind the chair at the side of the Resolute Desk.
“Since you’re asking, I think his time’s up,” McCorkell said. “Fullop’s had three and a half years as Chief of Staff, that’s pretty standard. It’s a tough office, he should bow out while his record is still in good shape.”
“You’d have me not having a Chief of Staff, like Kennedy?”
“No, sir, the world’s too busy nowadays. Was too busy even back then,” McCorkell said. “And you and I know Fullop is good at getting things done below the agenda of Secretary level. He’s a damn good political operator.”
“But what?” the President asked. “You think too good?”
McCorkell paused to think about his answer. To word the truth just so.
“We don’t see eye-to-eye very often, which I can deal with,” McCorkell explained. “And I understand that you need varied voices of advice. I think he’s got issues with the friendship you and I have, but that doesn’t mean much either.”
“I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known you,” the President said. “And going into this, I did offer you your choice of jobs.”
“I know. And I know he’s probably the most organised guy in this town, he could be CEO anywhere,” McCorkell said. “Hell, he’s been on enough boards as it is. It’s—it’s his political agenda lately. Fullop’s been too focused on the next election, and it’s blatantly driving the policy decisions out of his office.”
“Better he spends his time worrying about running for a second term than me,” the President said over the steam of his coffee. “As it is, I’ve got the general chairman of my committee to reelect on my back twenty-four seven. And I don’t need them both to remind me, although they’ve done so often enough already, that we’re less than two months out from the election and we’re just next week announcing to the public that I have colon cancer. That’s something that’s going to weigh in on a lot of decision making around here from hereon in—you know that.”
“Yeah, I know that,” McCorkell said. This was the third president he’d worked for in this office, and he’d seen seven chiefs of staff come and go during that time.
“But what?” the President asked. He took his reading glasses off, looked at his National Security Advisor. “What’s he doing wrong?”
McCorkell met the President’s gaze. He wasn’t going to lie to the guy he’d known since undergrad days at Notre Dame.
“He’s operating too much like a co-president,” McCorkell said.
“What—is this about the Veep thing?” the President asked, using the common West Wing jargon for the Vice-President’s title. He leaned back in his chair, considered McCorkell while chewing on the arm of his reading glasses. “That was your tipping point with him?”
McCorkell nodded.
“He cleaned out the Vice President’s office and put his own deputy in charge as Chief of Staff,” McCorkell said. “Put all his own guys in there, from aides to assistants. Poached over a dozen senior staff from the EOB and Secretary’s offices and cherry-picked enough congressional aides that they’ve got jokes being made about it over on the Hill.”
“‘Bout time they developed a sense of humour,” the President said. “What kind of jokes?”
“Vice President Jackson could be perceived as an instrument of your Chief of Staff.”
“I knew what you were getting at,” the President said. “See, that was some humour on my part.”
“I’m with the three hundred million Americans who don’t really get your sense of humour.”
“Jackson’s office had an intel leak,” the President said. “That stuff on Iran hurt us bad and every poll and commentator in the country called for a change of Vice President. Besides, I asked Tom to keep a close rein on him and his staff, he knows what damage another leak would do to this administration.”
“And Tom went in there with a scythe and a torch, slashing and burning everyone who he’d come up against over the years. He’s got unrivalled influence in there now. And, w
ell, I don’t like coincidences. Don’t believe in them.”
The President continued to chew over the info. He got up, put his glasses in his shirt pocket, and stood facing the south lawn with his hands in his pockets.
“You think the Vice President is gonna run this year—against me?”
“They put a poll out last Friday,” McCorkell said.
“I know about that.”
“Jackson’s seen as a serious contender for this office.”
“The party is with me.”
“They see him as a viable alternative.”
“And he’ll get his chance in four years, god damn it!”
McCorkell leaned on the back of the chair. “Unpledged delegates on the Hill are being lined up,” he said, his voice calming. “Back-channel word is he’s going to nominate against you for Iowa. A party hasn’t done that to a sitting president since Carter—”
“You can spare me the history lesson, Bill.”
“You selected Jackson as a running mate to appease the party hardliners in the first place,” McCorkell said, some exasperation seeping through. “Look, I couldn’t care less about the politics of this, I really couldn’t. I’m working here because I believe in you. Jackson’s a reliable operator, he’s great in the West and somehow both California and Texas love him. He knows the country well, served as a damn good governor. But he ain’t you. He’s not a contender. He certainly doesn’t belong on the world stage as a shaper of global history.”
“Bill, we’ve had a lot of party splitting over Iraq, you know that,” the President said. “But I’ve spoken to Jackson. He’s loyal. He’s by my side, and he’ll run in four years with my support and the full party backing, that’s the deal we struck and I have his word.”
McCorkell nodded. He knew the deal. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the Veep or Chief of Staff for the very reasons he’d just aired. But with POTUS’s cancer …
