Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

“I think he does. Him and me both.”

“Well, there you are.”

“I can still do the daily phone thing with Roy, and come in with Joe like I used to. And we’ll get a big majority in Congress at the midterms, and then you’ll get re-elected—”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it. And by then Joe will be in kindergarten and beyond, and this phase will have passed. I’ll be really anxious to get back to work then, so I don’t want you to hold this against me and drop me, you know? That’s what FDR did to his aides.”

“I’m not as tough as he was.”

“I don’t know about that. But I’ll want to come back.”

“We’ll see when the time comes,” Phil said. “You never know what’ll happen.”

“True.”

Charlie felt disappointed, even worried; what would he do for work, if he couldn’t work on Phil’s staff? He had been doing it for twelve years now.

But he had wanted to stay with Joe. Actually, he wanted it all. But no one got to have it all. He was lucky he had as much as he had. He would have to keep working hard to stay innovative from home, over the phone. It could be done; he had done it before.

Phil gestured to his guys, following them at a not-so-discreet distance, and a car came to pick them up less than a minute later. Back to the White House; back to work; back to the world; back home. Phil was silent on the drive and appeared to be thinking of other things, and Charlie didn’t know what he felt.

ONE STRANGELY BALMY WINTER DAYFrank got the word from Edgardo during their run. It was time to go. They had everything staked out and rehearsed, the time was now. Good. But between lunch and dinner the thunderheads had grown, and big news had arrived from China: there had been some kind of crisis declared, ordinary law and all the normal actitivities there had been suspended. The American nuclear submarine fleet had turned up en masse in Chinese harbors, along with several aircraft carriers; but this was by Chinese invitation, apparently, and the fleet had immediately plugged into the Chinese electrical grid and taken over generating electricity for essential services in certain areas; the rest of the country’s grid had been shut down. And Phil Chase had landed in Beijing, apparently to consult with the Chinese leadership. The secretary-general of the UN and dignitaries and representatives from other countries had also flown in. From the sound of it, the Chinese appeared to be attempting a kind of near-instantaneous transformation of their infrastructure—the Great Leap Forward At Last, as one of the news strips at the bottom of the TV screens put it—but only to escape falling into a bottomless pit. And so the attention of the world was transfixed.

All that was very interesting; and maybe good, maybe bad, as far as any potential impact on their own operation was concerned. But there was no mechanism for bailing that Frank knew of, and all he could do was grit his teeth and wait for the time to arrive.

Finally the hour came. He was in his office, his door was closed; he knew just how his FOG phone was bugged, and by whom. Time to play his part. He picked up the phone, dialed the number he had been given.

Caroline picked up.

“Hey,” Frank said.

“Oh hey! What’s up? Why are you—”

“I’ve got to see you, I’ve got the proof you wanted. Meet me down where we met before, by the river, about nine.”

“Okay,” she said, and hung up.

He stood. Took the Kevlar vest from his desktop and put it on. Kevlar. This was what Phil Chase had to deal with all the time. The feeling of being a potential target. Of having been shot and then going out there again.

He left the White House compound, aware of just which one of the security guys at the gate had been tacking a new kind of chip on him. It had taken them a while to figure it out and get up to speed. The guard hadn’t been there all the time, but he had been there a lot, and they had made sure he was there now: thin face, impassive look, didn’t meet the eye quite. Do it again, asshole. This time they needed it.

Once out on the sidewalk he put the earbuds of his iPod lookalike in his ears. “Did he do it?”

“Yes,” he heard in his right ear.

He walked west on G Street to the Watergate, then across the Rock Creek Parkway, through the Thompson boat club parking lot, where his VW van was parked; then past the van, over the little bridge crossing the creek, and onto the Georgetown waterfront. It was about eight-thirty.

Then the city lost power. “Shit,” Frank said. The waterfront was now dark, and people were calling out and wandering in the sudden gloom.

“This is bad,” he said.

The voice in his right ear said, “—proceed for now. She says she can make it over no problem.”

Frank went down to the water’s edge and watched the cars’ headlights make an uneven line on the Virginia side. George Washington Parkway, Arlington streets above. Generators were bringing light back here and there across the city, on both sides of the river.

In this partial light Caroline appeared, looking flushed and intent. They met and hugged, then spoke like amateur actors, their voices extra-expressive—at times almost cutting each other off in their eagerness to say their lines. They rolled their eyes at each other, tried to pace themselves better. Two bad actors in the dark. He could see she was wearing the vest under her blouse, and thought her ex might be able to too. He handed her a little key-chain zip drive.

Awkwardly he put his arm around her shoulder, and they rested at the river rail for a moment, itching at the unfelt transference of the new type of surveillance tick that had been lofted onto him by the security guard—a thing of plastic and quartz, pinging at a frequency the wands didn’t cover. A programmable mobile chip, programmed to jump on first contact and then stay put: a nano-event neither of them could feel except in the set of their muscles, a kind of itch on the inside of the skull.

Together they hiked back over the little bridge, and stopped by Frank’s van. They embraced and drew apart, looking helplessly at each other, just barely visible to each other, and that only by the light of the passing cars on the parkway. This was a dark part of town even when the power was turned on. Frank let go of her hand and watched her walk away.

Now she was walking in a crowd of Umberto and Wallace’s people, disguised as ordinary citizens and as tourists, which explained their daypacks and camera gear, their iPod earbuds, their aimless gawking and walking. It was a very professional team, far more expert than an ordinary SWAT team. Special ops—

And yet.

Frank hopped up in his van’s driver’s seat, prepared to be carjacked or shot; the presence of Umberto’s guys quietly sitting in the back of the van was little comfort. The blackout was a factor they had not planned on, it was dark out there and blackouts always induced a little chaos. Caroline was headed for the Watergate and then to the Kennedy Center. The special ops teams were going to follow her for as long as it took. They knew Cooper’s group had overheard the call from Frank, they knew Frank had been followed. Because they numbered almost everyone in the area, they were confident they would spot anyone approaching her with intent long before they neared her. At that point they would close in, and act in the same moment as any approach.

Frank’s part in the cover story had had him passing along vital information, indeed proof of a crime, so he sat there uncomforted by his guards in back, expecting to be shot or blown up, but of course the van and the area were fully secured, and now one of the guards was wanding him with a bigger device than any he had seen before. Still a nanochip there on the back of his jacket. A tick, smaller than a tick. They would never find it in the fabric.