"I… I guess so." He looked fearfully at the urn. "What do we do?"
Patrick nodded to David Luger, and he cut the engine. Patrick led his son back to the built-in swim platform on the stem, and they knelt at the very edge. He unscrewed the cap on the urn. Bradley at first couldn't look, but eventually his curiosity took over. He peered into the urn, and his eyes grew wide with fear. The tears started to flow again, and his lower lip quivered.
"Bradley, listen to me," Patrick said, holding his son tightly. "This is a pretty grown-up thing we have to do. Most little boys can't do it. I'm a grown man, and it's hard for me to do." Bradley looked at his father, now curious to see what his father looked like when he was afraid-and he was comforted to see that he looked pretty much the same, just very sad. "You have to help me do this, son. I can't do it by myself. You have to say it's okay first, and you have to help me. Please."
To Patrick's amazement, Bradley took the urn in his hands. He looked as if he was going to simply pour the contents into the water-but instead, he stopped, then turned toward David Luger. "Uncle David?"
"Yeah, Brad?"
"Go fast," he said. "Go real fast." He turned to his father. "Mommy liked going fast, didn't she? She liked flying."
"She sure did, big guy," Patrick said with a tearful smile. How in hell did I get so lucky to have a son like this? he thought. "She sure did." He reached out, kissed the urn, and said, "Good-bye, sweetheart. I love you. Have a nice journey." He then stepped back into the cockpit and held tightly on to Bradley's life jacket as Luger gradually eased in the throttle. The big MerCruiser stern drive leapt to life. The speedometer topped sixty miles an hour, close to sixtyfive-the Cobalt was fast, but it had never gone this fast ever before. Suddenly the ocean was as smooth as glassthere wasn't a ripple as far as they could see, when moments before there was a light chop.
Bradley held the urn tightly, tears flowing dewn his cheeks. He kissed the urn, whispered, "Good-bye,
Mommy. I love you. Come see me anytime," over the loud hum of the engine, then held the urn up over his head and tipped it slightly. In the blink of an eye, the urn was empty, and he let it fly out of his hands.
The silvery ash never seemed to fall to the surface of the ocean, but gently floated upward into the sky until, several long moments later, it disappeared inside a sunbeam that had appeared through the clouds.
It seemed as if Patrick never let his son leave his arms for the next eighteen hours as they traveled from San Diego to Washington, D.C. They arrived and checked into the Hay-Adams Hotel, across the street from the White House, in a suite of rooms reserved for them by former president Kevin Martindale.
Patrick's sisters Nancy and Margaret came in a short time later; they were going to be Bradley's baby-sitters during the Night Stalkers' post-action debriefing on the Libyan conflict and their role in it. The first of several meetings was scheduled for eight A.M. the next morning in the Old Executive Office Building with the senior White House staff, followed by more briefings at the Pentagon and the State Department-and then the congressional committees and subcommittees were going to hold hearings, both classified and unclassified. There was no telling how long the debriefings were going to last-and there was no indication yet on what the final outcome might be. They were all betting on confinement-Patrick had already had custody documents drawn up so his sisters could legally take Bradley with them, just in case.
Bradley was still on West Coast time and so wasn't tired, so he, his father, and Hal Briggs walked around the White House and the Capitol Mall until after ten P.M. On their return, it was Hal who noticed the first one: a plainclothed agent standing inside the lobby across from the hotel entrance. Several members of the hotel staff looked apprehensively at them as they went past, then smiled and nodded nervously. As Patrick walked by, the first agent spoke into his sleeve. Another agent was at the top of the stairs; another was standing at the door to Patrick's suite of rooms. The Secret Service agent nodded to Patrick and opened the door for him; he stopped Hal long enough to take his.45-caliber automatic from him before he stepped into the room.
"I should have known you weren't going to be tired," President Thomas Thorn said, rising from the chair as Patrick entered. "How are you, General McLanahan?"
"Fine, sir," Patrick replied stonily. He looked at his son. "Bradley, this is the President of the United States, Thomas Thorn. Mr. President, my son, Bradley James."
"How do you do, Bradley?" Thorn asked. He extended his hand, and Bradley shook it, then stepped back to be beside his father.
"Who are those guys?" Bradley asked, pointing to the Secret Service agents inside the room.
"Those are Secret Service agents," Thorn replied. "They're called the Presidential Protection Detail. They watch out for me."
Bradley pointed to Hal Briggs, David Luger, and Chris Wohl. "Those are my uncles," he said, "and they watch out over my dad."
"I know they do-and they do a very good job," Thorn agreed. Patrick's sisters came and took Bradley into their room, closing the door behind them.
"I'm sorry about Wendy," Thorn said. "I wish I had gotten to know her like President Martindale did. She sounded like an extraordinary woman."
"She was," Patrick said woodenly.
"I'm off to Israel tomorrow, then Egypt, and probably to Libya," Thorn said. "Muhammad Sanusi is going to be proclaimed the monarch of Libya, the true Idris the Secondthat's something that hasn't happened in over fifty years, so I'd like to be there, if we can set up security in time. His first official act is going to be a call for national electionsand he says his name won't be on the ballot. He says he's happy just being a Libyan again. Libya will be a constitutional monarchy."
"So I heard."
"President Salaam asked to speak with me," Thorn went on. "She wants to normalize relations with the United States, both for herself and the Muslim Brotherhood. She hinted that she's going to step down as leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-she's nominated King Idris the Second to be its leader. She also said she's going to step down as president of Egypt." Patrick looked at Thorn in surprise. "She's going to name General Ahmad Baris as acting president until new elections are held; I think he'll be elected. What do you think?" Patrick made no response. "I wonder what Susan Bailey Salaam is going to do?" Still, Patrick said nothing.
"I think most of official Washington wants to interview you," Thorn went on. "I think you're going to get grilled for a few days. At least you picked a nice hotel for Bradley to hang out in… until you're done." He studied his hands for a moment. "But from where I sit, there's only one thing I have to know."
"I'm not going to join your administration," Patrick said. "I can't be your national security adviser."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because we both feel strongly that we're right."
Thorn nodded. "I agree." He paused for a moment, then said, "Thomas Jefferson once said that a Council of War is at the same time the most valuable thing and the worst thing for a democracy. But he did have one-and the office was right next to his, not because he consulted them frequently, but so he could keep an eye on them. I think that's what I need to do with you, General McLanahan-put you somewhere so I can keep an eye on you."
"I can't support you as part of your administration," Patrick repeated. "I'd be a serious liability."
"But you would be in a suit and tie, not in a flight suitor in Tin Man battle armor," Thorn said. "You'd be in Washington, where the bureaucrats can stifle a thought or an action more swiftly and more surely than an entire Marine division. More importantly, I can keep an eye on you. With all due respect, General, I like that idea."