“This is the ultimate man-cave,” Rachel said. “It’s like a shrine to the submarine force. And to you. Not a single photo of a woman in here.”
Pacino shrugged. “Two divorces and one wife lost to a drunk driver,” Pacino said. “I think my dad is done with romance.”
“I heard he has been seen forehead-to-forehead with that pretty head of the CIA,” Romanov said.
Admiral Michael Pacino picked that moment to enter the office, and Rachel blushed crimson.
“Dad!” Pacino said. “What’s going on out there?”
“Hi, Son.” Michael Pacino hugged Anthony, then looked at Rachel. He smiled and shook her hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Rachel. And I’m particularly pleased you healed from that drydock incident. And that you’re friends with my boy. Maybe you can keep him out of trouble.”
She smiled back. “I doubt even I can keep him out of trouble, sir. Anthony talks about you every chance he can get,” she said. “I feel like I know your whole life story.”
The elder Pacino smiled and said, “He doesn’t know the classified parts.”
“So Dad, how is your campaign going? And who are all those people?”
The admiral rolled his eyes. “Advisors. Press consultants. Representatives of big donors. It’s a circus.”
“Part of that seven billion dollars, right, Dad?”
“Exactly. Look, this thing has another hour to go, and my lead press consultant wants to talk to you. Rachel can come out and see the craziness with me in the den.”
“Your guy wants to talk? To me? Why?”
“You’re a big press draw, Anthony. You seem to make the news as often as I do. Reporters, bloggers, and podcasters will want to interview you. And it matters not just what you’ll say, but how you’ll say it.”
“Fine,” Anthony said. “Bring him in.”
“Her,” the admiral said. “Diane Palmer.” He opened the door a crack and said something to the agent waiting outside the door.
A thirty-something-year-old woman walked in, so slender her collarbones jutted out. Maybe she was anorexic, Anthony thought. Her hair was a lush mop of blonde curling locks which she swept off her shoulder. She wore a silk beige suit and carried a tablet computer. She smiled at Anthony and Rachel. Introductions over, the admiral and Rachel left and Anthony sat on a club chair opposite the press consultant.
“Anthony, I’ll get right to business,” she said, her tablet computer in her lap. “About a hundred different people will be asking to interview you. I want to conduct a mock interview and ask the hard questions they’ll throw at you and see how you’ll answer.”
“You’re prepping me?”
“No. At least, not yet. I’ll listen to your answers first and see what I think. Let’s start with a softball. Tell me about yourself.”
“I don’t really like talking about myself,” Pacino said, frowning.
“Look, that question will come at you a few times. Once you answer it, you can go on to other things. Go ahead and try. Hit the high points.”
Anthony took a breath and started, mentioning his childhood with his father, the Naval Academy, his disastrous midshipman cruise on the ill-fated Piranha, then grad school, his assignment to the Vermont, and the mission of Operation Panther, then the New Jersey and Operation Poseidon. When he finished, Palmer was frowning at him.
“No,” she said. “No. Not like that. You spoke as if all that happened to someone else. It’s too deadpan. And there’s none of the drama. You didn’t even mention what you did to win the Panther operation or that you rescued the Russians. We need the kind of details that will make people like you.”
“Why?” Pacino said. “I don’t give a damn if people like me.”
“It’s important to your father’s campaign.”
“He’s running for president. Not me.”
The admiral opened the door and walked in with Rachel. He grinned. “I was listening for a bit of that. I told you exactly how he’d be, Diane.”
Palmer sighed. “You two are both hopeless.”
“We’re patriots, not politicians,” Michael Pacino said, smiling. “Diane, let’s reconvene the team tomorrow. I want to take these two cool kids to dinner out in town.”
“Will the Secret Service let you do that?” Palmer asked.
“Do you think for a moment I care what the Secret Service wants?”
Palmer sighed and shook her head. She imitated someone saying, “Join Michael Pacino’s campaign, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Dear God. You’re going to destroy my career.”
She left, exasperated.
Anthony smiled at his father. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Michael Pacino smiled back. “Son, you have no idea.”
Prime Minister and Acting President Platon Melnik sat at the gigantic desk and read the article on the tablet computer, his half-frame reading glasses perched on his nose. It was an intelligence summary from the SVR about resurgent China, with it now seeming a certainty that Red China and White China would reunite. They had debated for weeks about what to name the new nation, finally settling on, “the Federated States of the Middle Kingdom,” or FSMK.
Melnik detected motion in the room. Two of his SBP security guards put their hands to their ears as if they were listening, then suddenly wordlessly walked out of the room.
“What the hell?”
The door they’d left from remained open and four burly men in black tactical uniforms stormed in, with automatic weapons, full-face helmets and body armor. Their weapons were raised and aimed at Melnik. He stood from his desk, the tablet computer crashing to the carpeting. As he opened his mouth to speak, a man in a suit came into the room, wearing a black suit and red tie, exactly like Melnik’s. He was Melnik’s height and build and had the same baldness pattern. And as he grew closer, Melnik felt like he was looking into a mirror. The stranger was an exact duplicate of him.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
Another figure walked slowly into the room and shut the door. It was President Dmitri Vostov, in a sweater and jeans, limping in on crutches. He answered Melnik’s question, gesturing at the imposter.
“Why, this is Prime Minister and Acting President Platon Melnik. Say hello, Mr. Prime Minister.”
The imposter opened his mouth to speak, and Melnik’s voice came out. He said, “who is this man, Mr. President?”
“That man, Platon, is a man who violated my trust and almost started a war. He ordered our submarine to attack and destroy an American submarine. He ordered the Status-6 units be launched knowing that their navigation systems would be, at best, approximate, losing us control of the weapons, perhaps placing them in American hands. I do not know if he is incompetent, a traitor, or both.” Vostov looked at the tactical team. “Take him away.”
“Where am I going?” Melnik asked, watching the imposter calmly pick the computer back up and sit at the desk.
“To a dacha out of town,” Vostov said. “Don’t worry, it is luxurious. Fully stocked with food and alcohol. Fully staffed by beautiful hostesses. With news and internet and everything you could want, with the exception of a phone or the ability to send emails or digital information. You’ll remain under house arrest until I say you can return to society.”
Melnik swallowed hard and tried to resist the tactical team manhandling him out the door. They rushed him to the elevator, down the hall and out the building entrance doors. A waiting black panel van waited and he was loaded in the back. The van doors shut, and he was handcuffed into restraint hardware on the van wall. The van drove for hours, until it must have been hundreds of kilometers outside Moscow.