John Sandford - Saturn Run

She was still on the floor, unwrapping the plastic bag that hadn’t done much to protect her from the waste, when Fang-Castro turned the corner and asked, “What’s that smell?”

When the explanations were finished, Fang-Castro told Pastor, “We’ve got a seat going down on the shuttle tomorrow. You want it, it’s yours.”

Leave was getting scarcer, especially for the military people. Pastor said, “Ma’am, I’d really love to see my mom one last time, before we go.”

“I’ll fix it with Captain Barnes. And thank you for this.”

A few days more:

Vintner was not quite asleep, his feet up on his desk, when he heard the heels snapping down the subbasement’s concrete floor, coming fast.

Women’s heels had different sounds. Most of the higher-ranked women in the White House wore chunky heels because they wanted to look dressy, but knew they’d inevitably spend a lot of time on their feet, and their days were long. Women of lesser rank tried to emulate the dressiness of those higher up, wearing the chunky heels some of the time, but many, on the days when they didn’t expect to do anything important, took a step down and wore flats, or disguised flats. Those of still lesser rank, who generally were making deliveries—mail, policy statements, budget documents, and so on—usually wore running shoes.

The chunky heels went clunk-clunk-clunk ; the flats went clack-clack-clack ; the running shoes went flap-flap-flap .

The shoes coming down the hall toward Vintner’s office were going peck-peck-peck on the concrete, which meant that they were high-heeled dress shoes, and very, very few women in the White House wore them, and those who did would not be coming to Vintner’s subbasement office… with one exception that he could think of.

The President.

A really, really angry president.

Santeros didn’t get angry when dealing with disaster, or plotting a disaster for somebody else—in those cases, anger was inefficient. But when she was pissed, usually about some stupidity, she tended to get physical.

Vintner kicked his feet off his desk, grabbed a bottle of water, poured some in his hands, rubbed the water across his face and up through his thinning hair, then wiped his face on his jacket sleeve. One second later, Santeros burst into his office.

She started by shouting, “Twibbit!”

Vintner popped to his feet. “Mr. President! I mean, Madam—”

“Grabaddibbit!”

“Ma’am, I can’t understand…”

Santeros’s face was a fiery red, but she slowed, took a deep breath, and when her voice came back, it was icy cold and totally comprehensible, which was worse.

“Jacob: your man Johnson Morton. Unless it’s Morton Johnson…”

“Uh, I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t recognize the name.”

The volume increased: “Do you recognize the name ‘Center for Psychological Policy Studies’?”

“Well, uh, sure, it’s a think tank, we contract out some policy studies to them when there might be a psychological component to whatever… the military sometimes… ma’am… what happened?”

“This happened!”

She fired a stapled wad of paper at his head. He managed to grab it, and unwadded and flattened it on his desk. The title said “Psychosexual Aspects of the Flight of the Nixon ,” and beneath that, the author’s name, Johnson Morton.

Vintner’s mouth dropped open: “Psycho what? I never heard of this.”

She was shouting: “Morton! Or Johnson! Thinks we ought to put hookers on the Nixon , to take care of the crew’s sexual problems.”

“What?” Vintner would have laughed, if he hadn’t feared for his life. And job.

“Two each, male and female, bisexual for efficiency, to haul the ashes of those unable to pair up!”

“What?”

“Honest to God, Jacob, if you say ‘What?’ one more time, I’ll strangle you!”

“Ma’am, I know nothing about this. I’ll track it down, we’ll—”

Shouting some more: “Look at the bottom of the last page. The small print. What do you see there?”

Vintner looked and saw a typical block of small print, with some handwritten numbers. He looked more closely. The study had been sponsored and paid for by the federal government, under the handwritten grant number.

“Oh, shit. Well, ma’am… we can still bury it—”

“No, we can’t! No, we can’t! You know how I found out about this? I found out on PBS! I had Gladys download the doc, and they’re right. You know how much we paid for the study? One-point-two million. Morton! Or Johnson! According to the doc, INTERVIEWED some candidates for the job. Did he fuck them, Jacob, with OUR one-point-two million? If he did, how many did he fuck? Look at page seven: he says… Give me that goddamn thing.” She ripped through the pages, and then, “I quote: ‘obviously would require sexually desirable physical characteristics…’ What’s that, Jacob? A big fat cock? Is that what we’re talking about? Grabaddibbit, Twibbit…”

It would be difficult, in the best of circumstances, to tell a president that she sounded like a gerbil, and these were not the best of circumstances, and Vintner stood and took it until the spit stopped flying through the air, and she slowed down again.

“I swear to you, on my life, that I didn’t know about this,” he said. “I never heard about it. I never had a hint or a suggestion of it, and if I had, I would have stopped it and fired Johnson. Or Morton.”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “I’m gonna rip somebody’s heart out.”

“I believe you. Do you want me to ask around—”

“No. I’ve got people who can do that better than you can. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t involved.”

“I was not.”

“Good. I really didn’t want to can your ass. But somebody will die.”

“Maybe nothing will happen…”

She snorted: “Jacob, this will be in history books. When they write the history of the Santeros Administration, this will be the third item. It will go viral, worldwide. They’re already cracking up in Beijing and Moscow. If I handle it just right, it will cost me only one percent of the vote in the next election. One-point-two million dollars, and there are underclassmen who work all day for eighteen dollars an hour. Jesus H. Christ.” She took a deep breath, then said, “Thank you for letting me scream at you, and not getting up in my face. I need to calm down.”

“A little yoga…”

“Yoga? Yoga? Gzzibit! Magrabbit!…” And she was gone.

Vintner turned on his office vid screen, which was tuned to CBSNN. He’d intended to click over to PBS, but that was unnecessary. The talking head—actually it was more of a talking-head-and-body, a woman so beautiful that she must have come from a different planet, possibly with the aliens—was saying in the most somber tones, “So we asked Johnson Morton what he meant by that, ‘obviously would require sexually desirable physical characteristics,’ and this is what he told us…”

Cut to Johnson Morton, a fleshy young man with black hair combed straight back from his forehead, and eyebrows like woolly bear caterpillars; Morton knitted his fingers together and said, “We did a comprehensive study of the most desirable physical…”

From up and down the subbasement hallway, where the President’s temper tantrum had been overheard, people started laughing. Roaring with laughter. Back-slapping belly laughs.

Vintner closed his eyes for a brief prayer, that Santeros was in fact gone.

Then he started laughing himself, laughing until the tears came.

If Morton hadn’t gotten fucked in the course of his studies, he thought, that was about to change.