“What kind of group?” Stephie asked suspiciously. “What are they after?”
Bill shrugged. “They want to kill me, actually.”
“Oh!” Stephie expelled sarcastically. “That explains it!” She needed her sleep, but he was agitating her. He had wanted to calm her down before bedtime, but instead she had grown livid. “You should fucking arrest her! Is her father in on it?” Bill nodded. “Then arrest his ass too!”
“It’s all under control,” Bill assured her. “And Stephie,” he suggested with an awkward laugh, “you really ought to start watching your language.”
“You sound like Mom,” Stephie said, sinking back to her pillow and grimacing upon her back’s contact with the mattress.
“Well, I mean, it’s all right for the army, but it sounds a little out of place in the civilian world.”
Stephie studied him now through narrowed eyelids. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked with budding outrage. “Are you suggesting that I’m not in the army anymore? Is that what you meant by that ‘veteran’ remark?”
Bill opened his mouth but ran out of words before he’d even begun. He was totally unprepared for her question. “Well, after all that’s happened… What I mean is, Stephie, that your mother and I just assumed, I guess, that you would’ve felt that maybe you’d done enough fighting, you know, for one war. I don’t mean to suggest that you should resign your commission,” Bill lied, “but maybe you’d consider a reassignment.”
“I’m an infantryman,” Stephie said reasonably enough, again sitting up. But again she began to grow agitated. “And I’m a damn fucking good one! We’re at war, and, and, and the Chinese army occupies half our fucking country! And…” Bill was motioning for her to stop. Nodding his head. “I’m going back to my unit tomorrow!” she blurted out defiantly.
“But,” Bill objected, “your wounds.”
“They’re nothing!” she cried. “I’m not quitting! I’m not!” He tried to get her to lie down in a more restful pose. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Mom! Over my dead fucking body!”
In spite of himself, Bill burst out laughing, just as Stephie did an instant later. “You said that?” Bill asked. “To Rachel?”
“Yeah,” his daughter replied, again the little girl, arching her eyebrows and waggling her head. “I did.”
“Okay, then,” Bill said. “Okay.” He kissed Stephie’s smooth and soft forehead.
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek three times. It was the same hug and the same kiss from the same girl whom he’d first met when she was an equally serious four year old.
“I love you, Dad,” she said.
“I love you too,” he replied before rising and turning out the lights.
Bill found Clarissa sitting propped up on pillows kneading the sheets with both hands. The fabric was wrinkled from the tight, repetitive clutching. It was at least half an hour’s worth of work. The gripped fists gave her a hunted look Bill thought as he undressed. Or maybe he was just projecting. She said nothing, and neither did he.
She’d returned to the bedroom from her office saying nothing to anyone even in reply to casual greetings. Bill and Fielding had scrutinized her demeanor close-up on ultraslow, ultra-HD digital video recordings. Bill had gone from feeling sickening guilt over spying on her, to a love for her that lay crushed under the weight of what he saw.
For when Clarissa had entered the elevator alone, she had broken down completely. It wasn’t that she had taken the chance that there was a gap in the security. She had to know that she was being watched. She was rising three floors to the personal residence of the president of the United States, but even so she couldn’t control her sobs. It was as if a blow had knocked the air from her, and Bill felt exactly the same blow. He had watched Clarissa turn into the corner of the elevator and heave soundless cries. Her hand gagged her mouth to prevent her outburst, but still she muttered stifled, pitiful pleas. Lonely cries to which Bill deeply yearned to reach.
Thus had he joined her in the only place where Bill had said, “No cameras,” to the Secret Service. His personal residence was free of all bugs, friendly and not.
“I thought,” Bill said without thinking, but luckily with his back to the bed, “that you were going to your office.”
“I did go to my office,” Clarissa replied defensively. As if she was covering up for her infidelity, which she was, though not sexual. She was faithful to him in every arena except the political, where she plotted with his enemies to kill him and to rip the Constitution to shreds. “I just got back! An hour ago. I did some paperwork. Sent some E-mails.”
“You didn’t stay long,” Bill noted, hanging his pants over a chair. “Is anything up?”
“Why don’t you turn around and face me when we talk?” she demanded in a shrill tone and at an urgent pace.
Bill turned and smiled as he had always done for the cameras. It was too easy. “Is something wrong?” he asked innocently. “Something, maybe, at your office?”
“My father…” Clarissa began before her eyes began to dart and search the far corners of her mind for an exit. “He wasn’t at his office. I spoke to his chief of staff and secretary. He wasn’t at home. Or the club. Or any other place that I checked.”
Bill knew that Tom Leffler was holed up with lawyers under arrest for high treason during time of war. “He’ll turn up,” Bill said lamely as he climbed into bed next to Clarissa, feeling as heartless as he actually was.
“Something’s happened to him,” she said calmly. Since Clarissa hadn’t exclaimed her conclusion, Bill had missed the great leap she’d made. She turned to Bill, and he looked into her eyes. She was panicked. Trapped like the cloth in her white-knuckled fist.
“But you’ve seen him,” Bill said, disgusting himself. “Lull her into a false sense of security,” Fielding had advised. He looked away and turned off the light. “Your father was in the Oval Office,” he said, then sat there in the dark thinking, You also saw him in the park. “This morning,” he continued guiltily, “when I handed over power to Simon. And he accepted my written declaration this evening when I returned and the chief justice certified me to be president again.”
“Why wasn’t I there?” Clarissa asked from the black pit of the lightless dungeon.
The rustle of her hair against the pillow signaled a turn of her head. He was taking too long. “Well,” Bill ventured in a measured tone meant to put her at ease and to give him the time to swallow the clot in his throat, “there wasn’t much of a ceremony. It was just a repeat of what you saw this morning. We just went ahead and did it.”
“My father was in the White House? Tonight? And he didn’t come to see me?”
“No, he was patched into a videoconference call,” Bill explained.
The room was still. “Patched in by whom?” Clarissa asked.
“White House operators, I guess. You know he’s tracked by NCA locators. He’s in the chain of presidential succession. High up in the chain, as a matter of fact. Third behind me and the vice president.”
That had been stupid. Clumsy. He waited. She said nothing for several long, excruciating seconds during which he braced himself, but nothing happened.
“He’s an old man,” she murmured. “I worry about him. Since Mom’s gone.”
He’s on suicide watch, Bill thought. The man who’d been Bill’s mentor. Who’d handed him the baton of leadership of their party when Bill had won the presidential nomination. He had trapped that man — the Speaker of the House — in an act of treason.