The door opened and Eleanor came in.
"Nice perfume," he said as she joined him at the table.
"How kind of you to notice."
Her impersonal comments had started in the last few months, but he'd chosen not to confront her. He wanted peace. He wanted to leave office with her at his side and turn the reins of government over to Vice President Cord, who was ahead of his Democratic opponent in the national polls. He wanted to give the party back what it gave him.
"How was the beach?" he asked.
She picked up a newspaper. "Sunny."
A waiter appeared to pour her coffee.
"It's good to see you taking advantage of the house," Jordan said.
"Uh-huh."
"Camp David. It would be a big help if you could come up to help entertain. The Russians are bringing their wives."
"The wives," she said glibly.
After a long, annoying silence, he cleared his throat. "Have you done any more thinking about the Kennedy Center?"
"I haven't made a decision yet."
"Some of the major donors would love to see you."
"What's that play again?"
"Long Day's Journey into Night."
He'd told her a week ago. But she didn't like the party fat cats and she was playing head games again.
"Yuck," she said.
"It's an awards evening. There will be press speculation if you don't attend."
"We certainly wouldn't want to have that, would we?"
"The major money people. That guy from Texas and his wife. They need him-"
"I don't like him and I don't like his low-class wife."
"Since when do we have to be in love with people to handle our social duties?"
Here he was, cajoling his own wife into attending a function with him. It was absurd.
"Duties," she said. "White House duties."
"Eleanor, do you have to break my balls over every little issue?"
"Sorry," she said coldly. "Okay. I'll go to the play."
"Good. And have you done any thinking about the lawyer issue?"
"I prefer to wait."
"I thought we could have someone begin the paperwork," he said. "It would be better than to wait."
"You mean the divorce paperwork?"
"An amicable thing and completely discreet, Eleanor. Super-secret. I feel it would be easier than just putting it off until the end of the term. Start the ball rolling by going through the negotiating and getting all the papers ready. Then later, there could be a quick court filing that would limit the press coverage of the matter."
"Could this be some advice from your trusted National Security Advisor Helen Pierpont?"
"Keeping the legal proceedings to a minimum would be easier for the both of us."
She glared at him. "How magnanimous of you to think of the both of us."
He sat back. He wouldn't press it further with her. He didn't want to enter into an endless argument. What he really wanted was to leave the White House with his head held high, take care of the divorce, and then move on with his life. He didn't understand why she didn't want to discreetly begin the divorce process now, to help simplify things after he went out of office. It wasn't logical. But sometimes women weren't logical.
The phone buzzed. He pressed the speakerphone button.
"Yes?"
"The National Security Advisor would like to know when you'll be in the office to discuss a priority matter."
"Shortly." He released the switch. "I have to run."
"What is it?"
"You don't want to know."
"I don't?"
"It's a threat thing. The Aryan Disciples is sending threat letters to me now."
"Why wasn't I informed about this?"
"I just didn't think you wanted to deal with all the negativity."
"Bye."
"Come on, hon," Jordan said gently taking her hand. "Let's don't do this to one another. We'll make it through this and life will be better." She looked up at him. "That's my baby."
He told her to have a nice day, and left the room carrying his cables. Moving along the hallway with an agent following close behind, Jordan felt relieved that she'd agreed to attend the Kennedy Center function. He'd been worried that the press would begin wondering why they were avoiding joint public appearances. Eleanor had never been able to resist the Jordan charm. And he believed that she would soon come around on his request to get the lawyers involved earlier rather than later. The entire matter was painful. He could tell that she still loved him. But it had to be done. How ironic, he thought, that his popularity rating with the women the pollsters called "soccer moms" was the reason he'd been able to win two national elections, but he would be the first President to divorce immediately upon leaving office. But irony was politics.
Jordan had only a few months left in his second term, and he would miss being President. He knew that his White House years would be the pinnacle of his life - that the accomplishments of an ex-President would pale in comparison to being in executive command. He didn't look forward to becoming a familiar face that provided the occasional sound bite on the evening news, a bystander rather than a participant in world events.
On the other hand, the concept of living without the burdens that came with the job was becoming more and more appealing. He was tired of riding on a thorned saddle. He'd nearly made it through two Administrations in one piece. He'd neither been assassinated nor involved in a scandal. He was going to leave the big white target on the Potomac with his legacy intact. There had been no war and the stock market had recovered from a two-year recession and was now healthy. He had nothing to complain about.
In the Oval Office, sunlight streamed in through the tall French doors. Jordan stood in the middle of the room on a bordered azure carpet with the Presidential seal. Hands in pockets, he listened intently to Wintergreen brief him on the Aryan Disciples threat to his life. Jordan didn't like what he was hearing. When Wintergreen finished, there was only the sound of ticking coming from an ornate grandfather clock.
Jordan glanced at National Security Advisor Helen Pierpont, who was leaning against an oversized oak desk. The expression on her face meant she was concerned. He turned to the portrait of George Washington over the fireplace.
"As I see it, the question is whether to believe the informant."
"Mr. President, Agent Garrison believes Hightower is reliable," Wintergreen said. "Without question. A proven track record."
Pierpont rubbed her eyes. "The code card corroborates his information. This can't be taken lightly."
She'd been pacing about the room, as was her habit during such briefings. She was wearing the sleek, black dress and the gold necklace Jordan had bought her for her birthday. He thought she looked more like a pampered New York socialite than a government bureaucrat. Helen Pierpont stood out in a crowd. Before coming to the White House she'd been a professor of international relations at Columbia and ambassador to Peru. She'd worked her way up in the second Jordan-for-President election campaign, and he'd personally picked her to be National Security Advisor.
Jordan made eye contact with Wintergreen.
"What's the plan, Mr. Director?"
"Agent Garrison will maintain contact with the informant."
Pierpont coughed dryly. "I think what the President means, Mr. Director, is: What proactive steps are you taking?"
"We're doing everything humanly possible."
"How about putting all your agents on the lie-detector machine?" Pierpont asked.
"Not yet-"
"That might be a good place to start, don't you think? Test everyone with access to the Secret Service radio code cards-"
"And if that doesn't uncover the turncoat, then test everyone who works in the White House-right down to the janitors if necessary," the President said, chiming in.
"That will take some time," Wintergreen said. "There aren't enough polygraph experts in the Service to get this done in anything less than a month."
"Use Army Intelligence personnel," Pierpont said. "Bring in every polygraph operator in the military if necessary."
Wintergreen turned to him. "Can do."
"That sounds like a good place to start," Jordan said to back her up.
He liked Pierpont's style. She was a mover and shaker, a woman full of surprises in more ways than one. She could deal with men like Wintergreen. She spoke Russian and German fluently, was a scratch golfer, and could quote from Henry Kissinger's The Age of Power and Diminishing Values. During Wintergreen's briefing, Pierpont had been slinking about the room, stopping now and then to put a hand on her hip. She was a few years younger than Jordan. She had reddish hair, green eves, and an athletic figure.
"Yes, sir," said Wintergreen.
"You're the expert on Presidential protection, Larry," Pierpont said. "Let me ask you a simple question: Is the President safe?"
Wintergreen coughed nervously. "The White House is a fully secure environment."
"That's not what I am asking."
"Pardon me," Wintergreen said bitterly. "I must have misunderstood."
"I think what Helen is asking," Jordan said, "is whether, if this information is true - if there is a terrorist spy, a co-opted Secret Service agent working on your staff-you can trust any part of your security operation. With all due respect, Larry, isn't a security system only as good as its weakest link?"
"Mr. President, it's possible that we have been compromised, but I am doing everything I can to rectify the problem in the best way I know how."
Pierpont turned to Jordan and gave him a nearly imperceptible nod.
"That should cover it, Larry," Jordan said to close the meeting.
"Because this is a matter of national priority, I would ask to have some leeway in the investigation," Wintergreen said.
Jordan furrowed his brow and wondered exactly what Wintergreen was getting at.
"Leeway?"
"I think Larry is asking about permission to conduct unauthorized searches and telephone monitoring," Pierpont said.
The first thing Jordan had learned, as President, was that acrimony never solved problems. Only consensus. Helen was taking the threat thing personally.
"Do what you have to along those lines," Jordan said. "We need to get this system back in order."
"Yes, Mr. President."
Wintergreen got up and left the room. Jordan left his chair to stretch.
"What do you think of all this, Helen?"
"Someone selling security information is a solvable security problem. The lie-detector tests should be able to clear it up."
The door was closed and they were alone. Jordan moved behind her and slipped his hands around her firm waist.
"Thank you for arranging that comprehensive briefing, Ms. Pierpont."
He kissed her neck.
"Will there be anything else, Mr. President?" she said wryly, looking him in the eye.
She wrapped her arms around him and they kissed. From the beginning, the sex between them had been wild and irrepressible. There was something about her, an enigmatic quality he found enthralling. It had something to do with the way she could look him in the eye. Though reserved and remote in official business, she was the most sexually uninhibited woman he'd ever met. The two dynamics acted on him electrically, and he found himself thinking about her constantly. Theirs was an affair that hadn't dimmed though an entire Administration.
"What did she say about getting the paperwork started?" Helen asked.
"She didn't reject the idea outright."
"Did you tell her that it would be so much easier to bring the lawyers in now?"
"It's not that easy."
"Why?"
"She could blow the divorce out to the press. She could ruin the party and me."
"She's not going to do anything like that."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I know women."
"Well enough for me to risk being made out to be the worst heel in the Western world?"
"Eleanor's public image is more important to her than life itself. She will eventually go along with the program. She will take the easy way."
"I'm not so sure. Please have patience." She pulled away from him. "It's no fun being in limbo like this, Russell. It makes me feel cheap. Damn it. You either love me or you don't. I've put up with all the tiptoeing, and now all I am asking is that we move forward. Please."
He'd been drawn to Helen Pierpont for the first time at a West Palm Beach political fund-raiser. She had a way of focusing her attention on him that he'd found hypnotic. When he'd appointed her National Security Advisor, the media had loved it, and had referred to her as a "think-tank star," the author of two well-received texts on foreign policy, which she had written while teaching at Yale and the Fletcher School of Diplomacy. At the time, Jordan recalled thinking how nice it was when one's personal and professional interests meshed so closely. Now, the public knew Helen Pierpont as the one who navigated a steady course through the dangerous straits of international politics.
She had also been the one who'd alerted him to a Democratic Party ambush, one that could have finished him in the election. She'd single-handedly engineered a deal with Governor Alfred Cord of California, placing Cord in the Vice Presidency and collapsing the radical right wing of the party, insuring the Jordan nomination. Without her, Jordan would have been a one-term President like Bush and Carter, politicians rejected at the peak of their power and influence, tossed aside by a fickle public. While Eleanor reminded him every day of what she had done for him, Helen stood quietly at his side. She was his support, his rock. Helen loved him without reservation.
"I'll talk to her again," he said.
"I don't know where the hell I stand."
He leaned down to kiss her neck. "Yes, you do."
"Say it."
"I love you, Helen."
"I hate lurking around like this. I can tell that the agents know. I can tell by the way they look at me. I hate the role of other woman-"
"I love you more than I can say."
"Honey. "
Reaching behind her, he grasped her taut buttocks and pulled her to him.
"I have thirty minutes before I have to meet with the Ambassador to Iran," he whispered.
"Then you'll have to concentrate."
"Yes, ma'am."
She kicked off her shoes and moved toward a blue-and-white-striped sofa.
He pressed a button on the wall. The curtain began closing slowly, automatically, left to right, dimming the glare from the South Lawn. His heart raced and he unfastened his belt.
After she left, Jordan opened the curtain and stared through the tall windows at the South Lawn, where a workman was setting up a microphone for an awards presentation later. A stranger driving by on Constitution Avenue and seeing Jordan now might describe him as a stockbroker or a Wall Street businessman. At sixty, his features were etched with maturity lines. His hair was full, parted and graying heavily only at the temples. He was six feet tall, and watched his weight so assiduously that his personal tailor had been making custom-made business suits from the same body form since his first inauguration seven and a half years earlier.
Jordan recalled standing at the window then, believing he was at the center of the universe, the apex of unfathomable power. It hadn't taken him long to learn that Presidential authority was a fleeting wisp of smoke. It required dodging scandal, assuaging powerful egos every minute of every day, being strapped to a telephone, wheedling one's way from one crisis to another, walking a tightrope with no respite, and peddling one's ass to party fat cats. The day-to-day pressure was something he could have never anticipated. As a Senator from California he'd dealt with complex, intractable issues for years. But nothing had prepared him for the trials of the Oval Office.
Thankfully, he'd survived. He'd taken his lumps while watching his political allies and followers drop off one by one as his own popularity inevitably ebbed in the second half of his second term. T
here were only two Cabinet officers remaining of those appointed at the beginning of the Administration. But he'd nearly made it to the finish line.
And now terrorists were out to assassinate him.
****
CHAPTER 6
BRECKINRIDGE ANXIOUSLY DROVE along the Potomac River into the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia, a milieu of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century streets lined with brick and wood-frame buildings and wrought-iron fences encircling brick courtyards. Because of traffic, it had taken her about twenty minutes to get there from D.C. She swerved into a long driveway leading inside a newly built condominium complex. The street names were Duke and Prince.
It occurred to her that Charlie Meriweather's murder involved a succession of horrors: informing his wife Delores of his death, the funeral, and now the painful errand of interviewing her. Breckinridge parked the car, and felt a warm breeze coming from the river. She knocked on the door of a modest walk-up condo, and heard footsteps inside. Delores Meriweather opened the door.
"Hello, Martha."
"I know this is unannounced, but I couldn't get through-"
"I took the phone off the hook."
Delores was a few years younger than Charlie. She had piercing, green eyes and wore her hair in a topknot. She was a petite, strident woman, and a veteran American Airlines flight attendant who Charlie had met on a Presidential campaign flight. She often played piano and sang at the annual Secret Service holiday party. At Charlie's funeral, Breckinridge had watched her accept condolences stiffly, her eyes red, her jaw set in the anger of loss.
"May I come in?"
"Of course."
Delores motioned her to the sofa. The living room was decorated with Oriental tapestries and Spanish art that Delores and Charlie had acquired during their ten-year union. Open shelving held the knickknacks that Meriweather had picked up when traveling across the world with the President: a Russian samovar, an African ritual mask, and a Colombian figurine.
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