"Thanks for bringing me this. Talk it over with State and CIA," he told them again. "I want a SNIE on this, and I want it soon."
"Right," George Winston said, standing for the underground walk back to his building across the street.
"Mr. Gant," Jack added. "Get some sleep. You look like hell."
"I'm allowed to sleep in this job?" TELESCOPE asked.
"Sure you are, just like I am," POTUS told him with a lopsided smile. When they left, he looked at Arnie: "Talk to me."
"Speak to Adler, and have him talk to Hitch and Rutledge, which you ought to do, too," Arnie advised.
Ryan nodded. "Okay, tell Scott what I need, and that I need it fast."
Good news," Professor North told her, as she came back into the room.
Andrea Price-O'Day was in Baltimore, at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, seeing Dr. Madge North, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
"Really?"
"Really," Dr. North assured her with a smile. "You're pregnant."
Before anything else could happen, Inspector Patrick O'Day leapt to his feet and lifted his wife in his arms for a powerful kiss and a rib-cracking hug.
"Oh," Andrea said almost to herself. "I thought I was too old."
"The record is well into the fifties, and you're well short of that," Dr. North said, smiling. It was the first time in her professional career that she'd given this news to two people carrying guns. "Any problems?" Pat asked.
"Well, Andrea, you are prime-ep. You're over forty and this is your first pregnancy, isn't it?"
"Yes." She knew what was coming, but she didn't invite it by speaking the word.
"That means that there is an increased likelihood of Down's syndrome. We can establish that with an amniocentesis. I'd recommend we do that soon,"
"How soon?"
"I can do it today if you wish."
"And if the test is…?”
"Positive? Well, then you two have to decide if you want to bring a Down's child into the world. Some people do, but others don't. It's your decision to make, not mine," Madge North told them. She'd done abortions in her career, but like most obstetricians, she much preferred to deliver babies.
"Down's-how and… I mean…" Andrea said, squeezing her husband's hand.
"Look, the odds are very much in your favor, like a hundred to one or so, and those are betting odds. Before you worry about it, the smart thing is to find out if there's anything to worry about at all, okay?"
"Right now?" Pat asked for his wife.
Dr. North stood. "Yes, I have the time right now."
"Why don't you take a little walk, Pat?" Special Agent Price-O'Day suggested to her husband. She managed to keep her dignity intact, which didn't surprise her husband.
"Okay, honey." A kiss, and he watched her leave. It was not a good moment for the career FBI agent. His wife was pregnant, but now he had to wonder if the pregnancy was a good one or not. If not-then what? He was an Irish Catholic, and his church forbade abortion as murder, and murders were things he'd investigated-and even witnessed once. Ten minutes later, he'd killed the two terrorists responsible for it. That day still came back to him in perverse dreams, despite the heroism he'd displayed and the kudos he'd received for all of it.
But now, he was afraid. Andrea had been a fine stepmother for his little Megan, and both he and she wanted nothing in all the world more than this news-if it was, really, good news. It would probably take an hour, and he knew he couldn't spend it sitting down in a doctor's outer office full of pregnant women reading old copies of People and US Weekly. But where to go? Whom to see?
Okay. He stood and walked out, and decided to head over to the Maumenee Building. It ought not be too hard to find. And it wasn't.
Roy Altman was the telltale. The big former paratrooper who headed the SURGEON detail didn't stand in one place like a potted plant, but rather circulated around, not unlike a lion in a medium-sized cage, always checking, looking with highly trained and experienced eyes for something that wasn't quite right. He spotted O'Day in the elevator lobby and waved.
"Hey, Pat! What's happening?" All the rivalry between the FBI and the USSS stopped well short of this point. O'Day had saved the life of SANDBOX and avenged the deaths of three of Altman's fellow agents, including Roy's old friend, Don Russell, who'd died like a man, gun in hand and three dead assassins in front of him. O'Day had finished Don's work.
"My wife's over being checked out," the FBI inspector answered.
"Nothing serious?" Altman asked.
"Routine," Pat responded, and Altman caught the scent of a lie, but not an important one.
"Is she around? While I'm here, I thought I'd stop over and say hi."
"In her office." Altman waved. "Straight down, second on the right."
"Thanks."
"Bureau guy coming back to see SURGEON," he said into his lapel mike.
"Roger," another agent responded.
O'Day found the office door and knocked.
"Come in," the female voice inside said. Then she looked up. "Oh, Pat, how are you?"
"No complaints, just happened to be in the neighborhood, and-"
"Did Andrea see Madge?" Cathy Ryan asked. FLOTUS had helped make the appointment, of course.
"Yeah, and the little box doodad has a plus sign in it," Pat reported.
"Great!" Then Professor Ryan paused. "Oh, you're worried about something." In addition to being an eye doctor, she knew trouble when she saw it.
"Dr. North is doing an amniocentesis. Any idea how long it takes?"
"When did it start?"
"Right about now, I think."
Cathy knew the problem. "Give it an hour. Madge is very good, and very careful in her procedures. They tap into the uterus and withdraw some of the amniotic fluid. That will give them some of the tissue from the embryo, and then they examine the chromosomes. She'll have the lab people standing by. Madge is senior staff, and when she talks, people listen."
"She seems pretty competent."
"She's a wonderful doc. She's my OB. You're worried about Down's, right?"
A nod. "Yep."
"Nothing you can do but wait."
"Dr. Ryan, I'm-"
"My name's Cathy, Pat. We're friends, remember?" There was nothing like saving the life of a woman's child to get on her permanent good side.
"Okay, Cathy. Yeah, I'm scared. It's not-I mean, Andrea's a cop, too, but-"
"But being good with a gun or just being tough doesn't help much right now, does it?"
"Not worth a damn," Inspector O'Day confirmed quietly. He was about as used to being frightened as he was of flying the Space Shuttle, but potential danger to his wife and/or kid-kids now, maybe-the kind of danger in which he was utterly helpless-well, that was one of the buttons a capricious Fate could push while she laughed.
"The odds are way in your favor," Cathy told him.
"Yeah, Dr. North said so… but…"
"Yeah. And Andrea's younger than I am."
O'Day looked down at the floor, feeling like a total fucking wimp. More than once in his life, he'd faced down armed men-criminals with violent pasts-and intimidated them into surrender. Once in his life he'd had to use his Smith amp; Wesson 1076 automatic in anger, and both times he'd double-tapped the heads of the terrorists, sending them off to Allah-so they'd probably believed-to answer for the murder of the innocent woman. It hadn't been easy, exactly, but neither had it been all that hard. The endless hours of practice had made it nearly as routine as the working of his service automatic. But this wasn't danger to himself. He could deal with that. The worst danger, he was just learning, was to those you loved.