Thomas Thorn was a true “techie” who made great use of computers, e-mail, and wireless devices to gather, analyze, and disseminate information. His usual style was to gather daily briefs from the cabinet secretaries and the military via secure e-mail, fire back questions and requests, and then get follow-ups. The cabinet officials had access to the president at any time, but the administration was now greatly decentralized — the secretaries were expected to handle situations and make decisions on their own, with only general thematic guidance from the president himself. The president’s chief of staff was not nearly as powerful as past holders of that office — he was little more than an assistant, trying to manage the president’s busy schedule and his voracious appetite for information.
Thomas Thorn treated the office of president of the United States as a sacred trust, putting his duties only a millimeter under his devotion to his family. He never took vacations, played no sports, had no hobbies, and only rarely used the Camp David retreat. Since the Jeffersonian Party was little more than a philosophy, a way of thinking devised, managed, and practiced only by Thomas Thorn himself, he had virtually no political apparatus behind him, so he rarely made campaign speeches and never went on fund-raising trips.
The National Security Council members met every Thursday morning at 7:00 a.m., usually in the Oval Office for routine matters, in the Cabinet Room for larger briefings, or in the Situation Room for crisis-management meetings; today the meeting was in the Oval Office. The outer-office secretary admitted the cabinet members all at once, and Thorn greeted them with a smile as he made final notes on his wireless PDA. “Seats, everyone, please,” he said. “Welcome.” The NSC members took their usual places at the chairs and sofas in front of the president’s desk, and a butler brought in each person’s preferred beverage. Thorn usually paced the office while the meeting was under way — although he virtually carried his life in the personal digital assistant, he rarely referred to it during meetings.
“You see Martindale’s press conference today?” Secretary of State Edward Kercheval asked no one in particular. “They did a ‘breaking news’ thing — I thought we’d dropped a nuke on China or something.”
“Brutal,” Vice President Lester Busick said. “The guy’s a nut. He’ll be the laughingstock of Washington in no time.”
“I didn’t think you were allowed to use Arlington National Cemetery for political events,” Darrow Horton, the attorney general, said. “Maybe I should check into that.”
Robert Goff, the secretary of defense and the president’s de facto chief political adviser, nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be too concerned about Martindale. When word about some of the things he’s been doing over the past couple years starts leaking, he’ll have no choice but to pull out. The American people won’t stand for an ex-president who uses his office to carry out secret mercenary missions.”
“Let’s get started, shall we?” the president began as he put away his PDA. “I saw the item in this morning’s news on the fighting in Chechnya. What’s the latest?”
“A bit more aggressive Russian response to what they view as escalating extremism in that region, sir,” Director of Central Intelligence Douglas Morgan responded. He knew enough to get his coffee with three sugars fast, sit down, and be ready to go right away, because he was usually the first to be called on. “We’ve been watching that for many weeks now, since the shake-up in Moscow following the imprisonment of General Zhurbenko and the implication of President Sen’kov in dealing with Russian mobsters. Bottom line: Sen’kov is cracking down on any kind of dissent in the Russian Federation, using more strong-arm tactics to gain maximum advantage for Russia.”
“Sen’kov has an election scheduled for 2005—it’s as if he’s already on the campaign trail,” Kercheval added.
“I just wish he’d be a little less bloodthirsty about it,” the vice president added. “The press said twenty-seven killed….”
“We believe the number is much higher — and that’s just in the past week,” Morgan said. “The death toll could be as high as fifty. The Chechens have an equally high body count — perhaps as many as forty Russian soldiers killed, as many as a hundred wounded in attacks. We can expect the Russian military to continue to crack down.”
“The question is where,” Busick said.
“Wherever and whenever they can,” Morgan surmised. “They have a vast, fractured empire that I think they would dearly like to take back.”
“I agree,” President Thorn said. He noticed the secretary of state make a quiet sigh and start examining his fingertips. “Comment, Edward?” Thorn asked.
“You know the question, Mr. President: What would we do about it even if we knew what the Russians were going to do?” he asked. It was no secret or surprise to anyone that Edward Kercheval was not a big fan of the president and his policies. What was the big surprise was that Thorn kept Kercheval around — or that Kercheval deigned to be around. Brash, opinionated, and considered one of the most knowledgeable secretaries of state in the past fifty years, Kercheval knew his stuff. Many speculated that Thorn had him in his cabinet simply to keep Kercheval from having enough time to mount a campaign against him come election time. “You didn’t intervene in the Libya-Egypt conflict, and your role in the Russia-Balkan conflict was barely noticed. Chechnya seems way outside your attention zone, sir.”
“You’re right — I wouldn’t intervene in Chechnya,” Thorn said. “I wouldn’t intervene in any conflict involving Russia’s trying to quell any sort of uprising or revolution within its federation.”
“That’s certainly your prerogative, sir.” It was obvious from Kercheval’s tone of voice both that he expected the president to say as much and that he did not approve of that position. “However, sir, if you’re concerned that Russian aggression against its ethnic minorities might spill over to other countries, a course of action might be advisable.”
“I know you don’t think I’m showing much of a leadership role in world affairs, Edward,” the president said. “But I think it doesn’t make much sense to attempt to support the Chechen rebels when we’ve been uncovering some of those very rebels hitting United Nations peacekeeping convoys in Central Asia. Those are exactly the kinds of cross-efforts that I wish to avoid if at all possible.” Thorn turned to Morgan and asked, “Speaking of Central Asia, Douglas, what’s the latest there? We still have a few surveillance and counterterrorist operations running there, don’t we?”
“We currently don’t have any military or intelligence operations running in Central Asia, sir,” Director Morgan replied. “The last was Operation Hilltop, which was a recon-and-interdiction operation using unmanned combat aircraft to counter some Taliban raiders operating in northern Afghanistan.”
“That was run by Air Force General McLanahan and General Rebecca Furness from her new unit at Battle Mountain, Nevada,” Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Richard Venti interjected. “His force successfully uncovered and attacked a force of approximately two hundred Taliban fighters that attacked the convoy. It was an operation conducted solely from the air, with assets operated by a single unit.”
“So McLanahan finally decided to join the right team?” Busick asked. He glanced at the president, who did not react to the comment. Busick knew that the president had given McLanahan and many of his men their military rank and privileges back after a series of privately run and financed military missions. In the president’s eyes McLanahan was a leader — but in Busick’s eyes he was nothing but a loose cannon.