“Faah-ther,” Shoshana called from inside, “I’m back.” Tamir turned and waited for her on the balcony, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. His daughter joined him, still wearing the old shirt she used as a beach wrap. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and settled onto a chaise longue, stretching out her long legs. They talked about the usual things a father and daughter share — his work in Tel Aviv that took him away during the week, her new job with a citrus fruit export firm — all safe and pleasant subjects.
“Did you wear your new swimsuit today?” he finally asked. He mentally berated himself for acting like the father of a teenage girl. It was no longer any of his business what she wore. But he couldn’t help it. He managed a smile, still trying to keep the conversation light and easy.
“Of course,” she laughed, knowing the way he was. She stood up and shed her wrap. “It’s not that bad,” she teased him. His smile faded when he saw it. “I had hoped you’d like it,” she said, modeling the latest in swim wear, a one-piece suit that was severely cut to her waist, showing all of her back and too much of her breasts for his taste. It was cut high on her hips, forming a deep V that accentuated her legs.
A sadness crept into his brown eyes, for he was looking at a twenty-six-year-old woman, vain about her looks and not the young, overweight, ungainly daughter he wanted to preserve forever. Like him, she stood exactly five feet ten inches tall and was big-framed. But unlike him, there was not an ounce of fat on her. Still, she was exquisitely feminine and graceful; her well-shaped legs were not those of a model, but developed and reflected her Dutch heritage; her full hips tapered to a narrow waist and she was big-busted. She turned around for him, smiling over her should. “Yoel likes it,” she said.
“I don’t doubt it.” He glanced at her flawless back, perfect bottom, and sighed. “When are you going to get married?” It was the old argument, but they had both learned to control it and keep it in bounds. Tamir knew that Yoel spent every night in Shoshe’s bed while he was away during the week in Tel Aviv. At least, he consoled himself, they maintain appearances when I’m home.
She spun around and put the old shirt back on and gave him another smile, completely disarming him. “Soon enough Father, soon enough.” It was her face and hair that did it, so much like her mother’s — high cheekbones, doe-shaped brown eyes, a full mouth and perfect teeth, and thick, shoulder-length black hair that she pulled back off her face — a beautiful face. Tamir had long ago seen how Shoshana could stop traffic even though she was not fashionably thin. She was pretty in a way the fashion magazines would never accept. Shoshana was a big woman and could have modeled for Rubens. Looking at her, he smiled, for she was also a thoroughly modern sabra: born in Israel, intelligent, independent, and tough. And he loved his daughter. If Miriam, her mother, were still alive, life would be perfect.
“Where’s Yoel?” he asked, wanting to stop thinking about his wife.
She sat down and started to brush out her hair. “Home. Big family dinner tonight. We’re invited.”
“Must we?” Tamir would have preferred spending a quiet dinner alone with his only child. He watched her work the brush through her hair, again seeing her mother, and he remembered how Miriam’s hair, her long and glowing black hair, had first caught his attention when he was a young man working in a kibbutz.
“Faah-ther!” She pursed her lips and blew a strand of hair away. “You’re the one that keeps talking about marriage. That does involve other families, you know.”
“What time?” He knew when he was defeated.
The young man who had covered the chief of staff’s office during the night had sorted the mail, message traffic, briefs, memos, and whatever else had come into the White House for the President’s attention into three piles. Since it was Saturday and the three stacks were relatively small, Melissa Courtney-Smith was able to quickly review the priority he had given each item. “Good work, Tim,” she said, dismissing him. The woman watched him retreat out the door, picked up the most important stack, and carried it into the inner office.
She followed a well-established routine and aligned the pile of documents and folders on the chief of staff’s large mahogany desk, making sure the left edge of each was lined up with the left margin of the document below it, creating an orderly, staggered pattern. Melissa Courtney-Smith gave the desk one last check before she left. Her boss, Thomas Fraser, was a perfectionist. Her practiced eye swept Fraser’s office — everything was in the proper order and the coffee was made.
It was by chance that she glanced at Fraser’s collection of small pewter soldiers displayed in a cabinet and was shocked that they were not lined up properly. She rushed from the office, rummaged through her desk until she found a ruler, and ran back into the office. A quick look at the clock told her it was 7:59 a.m. — she had less than a minute. Quickly, she measured the distance between the figurines, spacing them evenly along the shelf. The woman made a mental note to speak to the cleaning supervisor. Someone had fouled up when they cleaned the office during the night and it wasn’t a mistake that Fraser would tolerate. The staff did have to take care of each other.
Melissa was finished and barely back in her office when the door swung open. Thomas Patrick Fraser, the chief of staff, rushed through. He grunted at her in passing. She went to the silver coffee urn, drew exactly two thirds of a cup, and stirred in one level teaspoon of sugar before she followed him into his office. Saturday or not, the daily routine had started. She sighed, wishing she had time to go for a long bike ride. But it was the price she paid for being the chief of staff’s first assistant, a job that was as close as Fraser would let her get to Matthew Zachary Pontowski, the President of the United States.
Fraser was hunched over his desk, scanning the PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, the top document on the stack. “Goddamn it all to hell,” he snapped at Melissa. “Tell the analysts who put this piece of shit together to get it right or I’ll squash some fucking heads.” He threw the thin, twelve-page document at her. “No way I’m going to send intelligence based on pure speculation to Zack.” He was one of the few people who still presumed to use the President’s nickname and it grated on Melissa’s sensibilities.
She thumbed through the professionally printed brief that contained the best and most exclusive intelligence available to the United States. It was considered so sensitive that it was sealed and only twelve people saw the final product. And Melissa and Fraser were two of them. She found fresh red marks slashed across the section on the Middle East. Her eyes scanned the offending paragraphs until she found the name of the analyst at the bottom — William Gibbons Carroll. “Carroll’s the best analyst we’ve got on the Mideast,” she told Fraser. “He’s got an impressive track record and the President knows it.” She paused, letting him digest this information.
“The President if very knowledgeable about the Middle East and you know how he works.” Melissa waited impassively, carefully hiding her dislike for the fifty-eight-year-old man. During the campaign, she’d come to understand Fraser’s importance to Pontowski what with his political connections, ability to tap unlimited sources of campaign contributions, and links to the corporate world. She just wished that the President had given him an ambassadorship to an out-of-the-way place in Africa or the South Pacific, rather than made him his chief of staff, but rumor had it that Fraser demanded this position because the Senate would have rejected his appointment as an ambassador. His reputation as a wheeler-dealer matched his slicked-down, grossly overweight appearance that even expensively tailored suits could not hide.