“I’m sorry, Chris. Madam President.”
“Chris is fine. We’ve known each other long enough for that.” Todd reached her hand to the doctor’s arm and patted it. “I do want to know everything. And I’m not blaming you.”
“I know.”
Todd squeezed the doctor’s arm, then sat back down in the chair. “Tell me everything you know about large cell undifferentiated carcinoma. I won’t interrupt until you’re done.”
“I’M NOT RESIGNING.” PRESIDENT TODD POINTED HER finger at her husband. For just a moment he was the enemy, he was the cancer.
“Resectioning your lung, followed by chemo? Chris-tine.”
The way he said her name, dragging it out so that it was a piece of music—it took her back in time to a dozen different occasions, all difficult and yet somehow happily nostalgic now. She loved him dearly—but if she didn’t stay hard, if she didn’t stay angry, she would crumple.
“I did not take my oath only to give up two years into my term.”
“Three, I think.” He looked over his reading glasses. He was sitting up in bed, reading his latest mystery novel, as was his bedtime habit for all the years she’d known him. “And don’t think I haven’t counted the days.”
“In any event, I’m not giving up.”
“Jesus, it’s not giving up, Christine.”
“I have a responsibility to the people who elected me. To the country.”
“Not to yourself?”
“The office comes first.”
“Well maybe you should think about the sort of job you’ll be doing when you’re vomiting twenty-four/seven from the chemo.”
Her lip began to quaver. She felt her toughness start to fade. “You’re so cruel.”
Daniel Todd put the book down and got out of bed. He glided across the room, forty years of wear and tear vanishing in an eye-blink. He reached down to the chair and pulled her up, folding her gently in his grasp. He put his cheek next to hers. She smelled the faint sweetness of the bourbon he’d drunk earlier in the evening lingering in his breath.
“I love you, Chris. I’ll stand by you, whatever you decide. But honestly, love, just for once, could you please think about yourself? Your health. The Republic will survive.”
“I know it will, Dan.”
The President bent her face toward his shoulder, wiping away the single tear that had slipped from her eye.
And then she was over it, back in control.
“I get to the point where I can’t carry out my duties, then, yes, yes, then I will resign. But the doctor assures me—”
“Now listen—”
“The doctor assures me that it is at an early stage. There’s hope. A lot of hope. And a plan to deal with it.”
“I know there’s hope.”
Todd rested against her husband’s arms for another few seconds, then gently pushed him away. She took his hands, and together they went and sat on the edge of the bed.
“When are you going to go public?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You can’t keep it a secret.”
“I realize that. But there’s a lot going on at the moment.”
“Chris-tine. There is always a lot going on.”
“I think what I’ll do is announce it right before the surgery. That’s the most appropriate time.”
“Says you.”
“Yes, but I’m paid to make that decision.” She smiled at him; Reid was always telling her the same thing. “Besides, there’s no sense worrying people beforehand.”
“You won’t tell your staff?”
“I will. But doing that is almost a sure guarantee that it will go public.”
“What about your reelection campaign?”
“That—That is a problem.”
“You’re not running for reelection.”
“No. I agree.” Todd had given it a great deal of thought. Even if things did work out right—and she was sure they would—she didn’t think the public would vote for someone who’d had lung cancer. True, attitudes about cancer were changing, but they weren’t changing that much. Todd herself wasn’t sure whether she would give someone a job knowing he or she had cancer that would require aggressive treatment. So the best thing to do would be not to run. She’d been on the fence anyway; this just pushed her off.
“I’ll avoid the issue for a while,” she told her husband. “If I make myself a lame duck, Congress will be even more of a pain.”
“Avoid the issue, or put off a decision?” asked her husband.
“The decision is made, love.” She let go of his hand and patted it, then moved back on the bed. Her nightgown snagged a little; she rearranged it neatly.
“They’ll hound you until you say something, once the news about the cancer is out.”
“True. But I’m used to that. The big problem is lining up a successor.”
“You’re going to line up a successor?”
“If I can, yes.”
“How?”
“With my support. I have my ways.”
“Not Mantis?” He meant Jay Mantis, the vice president.
“Don’t even think it.” Privately, Todd called him the Preying Mantis, and it was anything but a compliment. He was the most duplicitous person she had ever met in politics, and that was saying a great deal.
“Who then?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my mind.”
“I have some ideas.”
“I’ll bet you do.” She pulled back the covers and pushed her feet under. “I have more immediate problems to worry about over the next few days.”
“Chris.”
“Don’t be a mother hen.”
“A father hen.”
Todd let her head sink into the pillow. Her health would wait; she had to deal with the Iranian mess first. Which meant a few hours nap, then back to work.
“Feel like going to sleep?” she asked her husband.
“To bed, yes. Sleep no.”
“That sounds a lot like what I was thinking. Let me turn off the light.”
5
Iran
BY NINE O’CLOCK TURK HAD GIVEN UP ALL ATTEMPTS at sleeping and lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the cave they were huddled in. He was ready for the mission, ready to succeed. But time moved as if it were a man crawling across the desert inch by inch.
He got up and left Grease sleeping to see what the others were doing outside. Dread, the medic who had looked him over, was pulling a radio watch, manning the communications gear with Gorud, the CIA officer.
“How we doing?” Turk asked Dread. The main com gear was a surprisingly small handheld satellite radio-phone that allowed the team to communicate with Whiplash and its parent command. Dread also had a separate device to talk to other team members who were working in Iran, including two-man teams watching the target. There was a backup radio, much larger, in a pack.
“We’re all good,” answered Dread. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Can’t.”
“I have some sleeping pills. Like Ambien, but stronger.”
“I heard that stuff will make you sleepwalk.”
“Not this. Puts you down and out.”
“Then I might not get up. You got any coffee?”
Dread shook his head. “Can’t cook here. Might see the smoke or the flame. Or maybe smell the coffee. If we had any.”
“None?”
“Got something that’s basically Red Bull. You want it?”
“No, maybe not.”
“Caffeine pills?”
“Maybe I’ll try to sleep again in a little while.” Turk sat down next to him, legs crossed on the ground. “Any sign that we were followed?”
“No. That house hadn’t been lived in for at least three months,” added Dread. “Don’t know what they were up to. Came to buy it or maybe have sex. Two guys, though.”
“Weird, being in somebody else’s country.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just—nothing. They don’t seem to know it’s a war.”