And what better time than the present to do that? Ballard suddenly thought.
He caught Terskoff's eye and crooked a finger at him, then waited as he pushed his way through the sea of invitees and into the corridor.
"Yes, Mr. President?" he said, stepping close.
"What's the delay?"
"They're working a bug or two out of the satellite feeds, technical stuff," Terskoff said. "We'll be on in five."
The President looked at him.
"On in five," he echoed.
Terskoff nodded. "Maybe less."
The President kept looking at him.
"You sound like the stage manager of a talk show."
Terskoff seemed flattered.
"In a sense, that's my role here today," he said.
The President leaned in close. "Brian, if I'd had it my way, the signing would have been handled as a routine piece of business, something that passed quietly in the night," he said. "Instead, thanks to you, we've got ourselves a spectacle."
"Yes, sir, I believe we do," Terskoff said proudly, glancing into the room. "A stately spectacle. That is my preferred approach to these events."
"Your preferred approach."
"Very much so, Mr. President."
Ballard frowned, nibbling the inside of his cheek. "You know," he said, "it occurs to me this approach might have been utilized to promote another of my little endeavors. One I feel hasn't been quite the attention-grabber I'd anticipated it might be."
Terskoff scratched behind his ear, all at once unsure of himself.
"You're referring to SEAPAC," he said.
"Yes," the President said, snapping his index finger at Terskoff's chest. "You guessed it. And what I'm thinking, Brian, is that it's still not too late to change things. For example, we could have football cheerleaders accompany me to Air Force One as I leave for Singapore tomorrow. Or better yet, Playboy models dressed as cheerleaders. They could be spelling out the name of the treaty while they do their pom-pom waving on the field.
'Give me an S, give me an E,' and so forth. And they could have the word SEAPAC written out across their bikini tops in sequined letters, one letter to each model. How's that for a stately spectacle, as you phrased it?"
Terskoff grimaced. "Mr. President, I know you feel the treaty has been neglected in favor of Morrison-Fiore. But please understand, the press feeds on the sensational. The best one can do is give them what they want, and I choose to do it in whopping portions—"
"I've heard that song a hundred times before, which is more than enough," he said. "Let me tell you something, Brian. You fucked up. You and the pack of propeller-heads you call a staff. And as a result, an initiative to which I've dedicated tremendous effort has been sidelined."
"Sir—"
Ballard raised his hand like a traffic cop.
"I'm not finished," he said. "Crypto isn't my fight. It never has been. I've never wanted to go to blows with Roger Gordian over it, not publicly, and yet that's exactly what's happening today. At this very instant, he's across town putting on his big Everlast gloves. And that does not make me happy."
A pause.
"Mr. President, if there's anything you feel I can do…"
"Actually, there is," Ballard said. "For starters, you can notify those television people that I'm entering the room in thirty seconds, whether they're ready or not. And then you can take that pretty news executive you were chatting up out to lunch — the Fourth Estate might be an appropriate restaurant — and see whether she can find a place for you in her department. Because I'll be expecting your letter of resignation on my desk when I return from Asia next week. You got me?"
Terskoff had paled. "Sir…"
The President pointed to his wristwatch.
"Twenty seconds," he said.
His lower lip quivering, Terskoff hesitated for another two of those seconds, then whipped around and plunged into the East Room.
Precisely eighteen seconds later, the President heard his name announced and made his entrance.
The Murrow Room at the NPC Building was packed with newsies. Like some huge, self-replicating organism, the Washington press corps had divided between two fronts of a battle that it hoped was about to reach a roaring public climax, with the President and Roger Gordian hurling verbal thunderbolts across Pennsylvania Avenue. They wanted banner headlines, they wanted dramatic sound and video bites, they wanted to keep the legion of attorneys and ex-politicos who had been reborn as television commentators regularly bickering through the next ratings sweeps period. They wanted bombs bursting in air, and Gordian was a little intimidated by their expectation— probably because he knew there wasn't much chance of reaching the level to which the bar had been elevated. A lifetime of conducting one's affairs with businesslike restraint scarcely prepared a man to generate oratorical hell-fire.
In the end, though, it didn't matter to him whether they were disappointed. Nor would it have been devastating had none of them showed up, leaving his electronically amplified words to float unheard above a roomful of empty chairs. He had come to make his stand, and win or lose, that was ultimately the best anyone could do.
Mounting the podium, he waited for a long moment, Chuck Kirby, Megan Breen, Vince Scull, and Alex Nordstrum behind him on the right, Dan Parker, Richard Sobel, and FBI Director Robert Lang on his left.
"Ladies and gentleman of the press, thank you for coming today," he finally said. "Right now, only a few short blocks away from here, the Morrison-Fiore cryptographic deregulation bill is being signed into law. I don't know what personal feelings any of you may have about it, but for the past several months I have tried to make mine clear. My opposition to the decontrol of cryptographic hardware and software remains firm and uncompromising. Still, there seems to be some confusion about my views, and that is at least fifty percent of the reason I am addressing you today."
Gordian paused, adjusted his microphone.
"I know a little about technology and its importance as a binding and unifying global force," he continued. "I believe that knowledge is freedom, and information the core and cornerstone of knowledge. I have tried with my communications network to break down the barriers that keep people around the world in darkness and tyranny. And I am extremely proud of my successes.
"But the reality is that America has its enemies. We would be mistaken to confuse the globalization of advanced technology with the abdication of our rights and imperatives as a sovereign nation, and I believe Morrison-Fiore is a disturbing step along that road. My critics, on the other hand, argue that I am vainly trying to put the genie back in the bottle by advocating we control encryption technology as we might any other powerful tool.
They argue that because cryptographic software may be smuggled across the transparent borders of cyberspace with relative ease, we ought to pretend those borders do not exist, rather than better define and regulate them. That because we acknowledge the inadequacies and inconsistencies of current laws, and the real and great obstacles to applying them across territorial borders, we should abandon them altogether rather than work toward bringing them into greater harmony.