“You planted mines on Belgorod before there were hostilities ordered? How could you do that?” Trusov sounded hurt, as if she were taking it personally.
Pacino shrugged. “It was just a contingency. Just in case. At the time, our leadership showed no intentions of us engaging with you. Something must have changed or happened. Suddenly our orders became much more aggressive. I don’t know the whole story. Not yet, anyway.”
For a long time she was silent, staring at the deck of the shelter, as if she were pouting. He tried to change the subject.
“So, Irina, how much trouble do you think we’ll both be in with our bosses after we’re rescued?”
She looked at him. Those deep blue eyes again, he thought, blinking and looking away. At least her crying had stopped, but there were still the tracks of her tears on her dirty face. “We need rescue first. For all we know, this is our last stand.”
“Don’t let yourself think like that,” Pacino said. “Think positive thoughts. The universe will listen. At least, that’s what my friend Fishman, a professional bad-ass frogman, says.”
“I’m cold,” she said. “Do you think you could hold my hand?”
Pacino blushed. “Of course,” he said, putting her small, soft, ice-cold hand in his. She squeezed his hand. He could feel his pulse race for a moment.
And suddenly, the sound of the roaring wind stopped.
“Mr. Vice President? The Virginia delegation is here,” President Carlucci’s secretary announced. Eve LaBelle was seventy-two years old and couldn’t weigh more than eighty-five pounds, Michael Pacino thought, with a big head of hairsprayed gray hair.
“Please show them in, Eve,” Pacino said, slapping down the folder he’d been scanning on the huge desk, the label on it reading TOP SECRET / SCI / SPECIAL HANDLNG / RELEASE 12 / OPERATION POSEIDON. As he did, Carlucci’s chief of staff, Remi O’Keefe, scooped up the dossier and left by the door to the presidential study.
Pacino smiled at the two women from Virginia. So far, everyone had learned that Pacino did not have a politician’s smile, and that if he smiled, it was genuine.
“Madame Senator. Madam Governor, please come in. I’m honored by your visit. And a little stunned by your cross-aisle cooperation. Please sit,” he said, waving to the floral-patterned couch facing the coffee table, and taking the wing chair opposite. He looked at the pattern on the couch, thinking that Carlucci’s taste was odd — the couch looked like it had been upholstered using Great Aunt Maude’s curtains from the 1940s. Same décor as Carlucci’s cabin at Camp David, Pacino thought. It probably reminded the president of comforting times in his childhood.
The women seated themselves. Pacino paid attention to how closely they sat — close enough to hold hands if they’d wanted to — and their tense body language, which was formal, both sitting up straight on the couch, on the front five inches of the cushions, their feet on the floor rather than crossed, their hands on their knees. He judged they were here to ask for a favor.
“Can I offer you anything?” Pacino asked. “The coffee here is Navy coffee. Beans grown in Colombia on a Navy-owned plantation outside Bogota. Best cup of coffee you will ever have, with the notable exception of the coffee in a nuclear submarine. I also have some good tea. And, of course, scotch and bourbon. I note the sun isn’t over the yardarm yet, but it must be somewhere.” Pacino smiled, realizing he was babbling. These two women made him nervous, all the more so since they waved off any beverage.
Virginia’s American Party Senator Michaela Everett was a populist and in her first term, and though she was only a freshman senator, she was a media superstar, a firebrand, and a loud party partisan. Which made it all the more odd that she’d come today with Virginia Governor Leann Meadow, a staunch National Party icon, revered and feared both inside and outside her party, and who would be running against Everett in the next election. Both women were in their early fifties, very slender — one could even say slinky — and had long, straight blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips and clear alabaster complexions. Despite their vast political differences, they looked like they could be sisters.
Senator Everett spoke first. “Mr. Vice President—“
“Call me Patch, please,” Pacino said.
Everett smiled. “Patch, then. I’ll get right to business. Paul Carlucci’s term is up soon, and no one knows if he will run again. Or if his health will hold out after the assassination attempt.”
“I heard he was recovering nicely,” Pacino said, frowning.
“What I mean,” Everett said, “is that in the case where Mr. Carlucci decides not to run, we’d like to draft you as the American Party candidate for president. And if he does run, we’d like you to stay on as vice president and focus on running four years later.”
The governor smiled, her eyes crinkling. “And if the American Party doesn’t want you, the National Party certainly does.”
Pacino sat back heavily in his seat. This was unexpected, he thought. In his mind, he was the worst fill-in president in the past 150 years. He was impatient with domestic issues, irritated at partisan politics, erupting at aides and congressman that their issues were ridiculous and not meaningful to the continued survival of the United States. On more than one occasion, he’d scolded powerful members of the opposition, and his own party, for lacking patriotism, and feeding like hogs at the troughs of corrupt Washington. He’d made an impassioned impromptu speech at one of the meetings that they were all Americans, and the political class had lost sight of that vital fact. Someone, an aide, or maybe even Carlucci’s secretary, had secretly filmed the ass-chewing and posted it on the internet, and it had gone viral, making the national news for days. Pacino had been embarrassed, mad at himself for forgetting what a public figure he was. Yelling at politicians was not his job, and probably reflected poorly on Carlucci, but the country — both American Party faithful and National Party devotees — lauded and applauded Pacino’s instinctive, stirring, blazing rhetoric. He was later told that no one since Kennedy or Reagan could speak like he could.
He’d dismissed the hero worship. People loved the idea of an outsider, someone who wasn’t a career politician, taking office. But as time had proved over and over again, those outsiders eventually became insiders, and forgot about the American people, seemingly only caring about their power and continuation of government. They were the politicians he’d hated the most, remembering how his mission to rescue the Tampa had been handcuffed by the then-president’s wife, that bitch who thought she was the power behind the throne.
It occurred to him that Everett and Meadow were looking at him expectantly, waiting for his answer. As he opened his mouth to speak — not knowing what he’d say — he was saved by the main entrance door suddenly opening and Chief of Staff O’Keefe dashing in, coming up to Pacino and whispering in his ear.
“There are developments in Operation Poseidon, sir. We need you in the Situation Room immediately.”
Pacino stood. “Madam Governor, Madam Senator, I’m afraid I have to leave you. But I will consider what you said. Very seriously. Please excuse me.”
Pacino followed O’Keefe out of the Oval Office, the chief of staff nearly jogging, Pacino struggling to keep up while acting calm.
As he and his Secret Service detail entered the already crowded Situation Room, Pacino said a silent prayer that Anthony was okay. How many times had he said that same prayer during Operation Panther, he wondered. Too many to count.