Wexler stopped, aware that she was starting to babble. It wasn’t that she wasn’t making sense. She was, and she had worked with the president too long to believe he didn’t understand her point. So why hadn’t he called the Russians? What possible reason could he have?
As she studied him and saw him look away from her, saw a faint line of red creep across his jaw, she knew. With a heartsick lurch in her gut, she knew. He had proved himself beyond this before, but evidently he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
“There’s a problem,” he said finally. “Evidently one of our cruisers fired anti-air missiles at the missile launched by the Russians, intending to intercept and destroy it before it could hit anything. It may—may—have intercepted the other missile in the vicinity of the Montego Bay.”
So that’s it. You are pretty sure the Russians are at fault, but you can’t prove that our missile didn’t hit the cruise liner. And right now, that’s got you more worried than the people that died.
“What do you think the public perception of this is going to be?” she asked, careful to keep all traces of horror and disgust out of her voice. “How is the best way to approach this?”
“It’s hard to say,” he said neutrally, but it was too late. She had already seen a flicker of relief on his face as he decided she understood what his concern was. “On the face of it, it appears completely outrageous. But it’s dangerous to work off first assumptions without a complete report. For now, see what you can find out from their side. I’ll talk to their president soon, but I’d like to be a step ahead of him when I do.”
“I understand, of course,” she said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
The president stood and the ambassador followed suit. He came around the desk and laid one hand on her shoulder as he escorted her to the door. “Thank you, Sarah. Let me know as soon as you can.”
As she stood in the hallway outside the Oval Office, Wexler wondered just what was going on.
After she left, the president stared down at the papers in front of him, trying to concentrate. There would be nothing critically important in the pile — officer appointments, routine matters, a few personal letters his chief of staff had decided he should sign. Anything of substance, such as legislation, would have been hand-carried in to his office by the appropriate action officer, and he would have been rebriefed on the importance of it before he signed it.
Not that everything of importance got signed in front of his staff. Much as they might not like it, the president did have some matters pending that his staff knew nothing about. Oh, they’d caught hints that something was afoot, but he’d managed to deflect their suspicions, and for the most part, his staff believed that Betty Lou was entirely more human than she was.
“Mr. President?” his chief of staff asked. “Admiral Magruder is here.”
“Send him in. And keep everyone else out,” the president said, holding up his hand to forestall protest from his chief of staff and from the Secret Service. “Just do it.”
“Admiral,” the president said warmly as the senior Magruder entered the room. “Thank you for coming.”
“I am always at your disposal. You know that.”
“Sit.” The president waited until Magruder was seated, then said with a sigh, “That satellite business. It’s not going to stop there, is it? The Russians have really screwed the pooch on this one.”
“It was a risk,” Magruder conceded. “We knew that from the start.”
“I know, I know. Still, now that things are hosed up, what do you recommend?”
“We do nothing,” Magruder said promptly. “After all, we haven’t yet evaluated the Russians’ information, have we? And until we do, there’s no point in second-guessing ourselves on allowing them to take out the satellite.”
“That’s true. So when will we know something about their quid pro quo?”
The senior Magruder smiled, a wintry expression settling in around his eyes. “In a few days Mr. President. In a few days. We’ll also know more about what happened with our missiles and theirs and the Montego Bay. But even if we had final answers to those questions, I wouldn’t want to move until we knew the rest of the answers.”
The president sighed. “I know you’re right. But I’m going to be getting a lot of pressure here real soon.”
“I know. Let them think you’re just worried about the election. Or that you’re having some sort of illicit relationship with this Betty Lou.” Magruder stopped, seeing the look of distaste on the president’s face. “Just stall, Mr. President. Just for a few days.”
“Okay. I can do that. But get back to me as soon as you can on the other stuff. If they’re feeding us disinformation, I’m going to haul their asses into international court over that satellite.”
After Magruder left, the president forced himself to concentrate on the innocuous papers still needing his signature. The important matters, like the decision to let the Russians test their laser system on an obsolete American satellite, were never committed to paper.
EIGHT
When all the commercial flights had proved full, Carter had sprung for using the network’s corporate jet. The two women, plus their cameraman and baggage, flew in royal comfort from Denver to San Diego’s Lindbergh Field. There, the local affiliate had had a rental car and driver waiting for them. They had been picked up and were now being transported to the North Island Naval Air Station operations center.
“There’s a COD leaving today, but no one is exactly certain when,” their escort said, briefing them on their latest travel arrangements as he drove. He passed a brown envelope to Drake. “Those are your orders, shot records, clearance information. The usual stuff.”
“Like the clearance will make a difference,” she said, as she passed out the papers to the appropriate people. “They never tell us anything classified. At least not intentionally.”
“What’s a COD?” Winston asked. The cameraman smirked, and Drake turned away, a smile of amusement on her face. “Carrier on-board delivery. We’ll be CODing out to Jefferson, of course. It’s a lot of fun.”
“I see.” Winston’s voice belied her statement, but she asked no further questions. Pamela grinned.
Fun. Damn right. If you consider a controlled crash at one hundred and forty miles an hour onto a steel deck in the middle of nowhere fun, then I guess it qualifies. And do that facing backwards in what seems to be the flimsiest aircraft you have ever been in. But she’ll have to get used to it, just like the rest of us did.
Now, sitting on the hard plastic chairs in the operation center, their stomachs full of hot dogs from the snack bar, they waited. And waited and waited. The cameraman and Pamela took some background shots, then so did Winston. That accomplished, Pamela settled down and opened a book to read.
Winston had not brought anything to read. She shifted uneasily in her chair, watching the sailors pass. Finally she asked, “What the crap are we waiting for?”
“Who, probably. Not what,” Drake said, not looking up from her book. “Getting a seat on the COD right at the beginning of something is primarily a function of how much water you draw. Everybody wants to be on the scene right away, including a lot of people that are actually useful. Like them,” she said, gesturing at the junior sailors and technicians that made up most of the passengers. “But sometimes they don’t get out until the top brass and senior officer and reporters are on board the carrier.”