“What are you doing?” Drake demanded, her voice still heavy with sleep.
“Just went to the bathroom,” Winston said. But the younger reporter’s voice was far too awake for that. Drake snapped on the small reading lamp over her bed. Its illumination revealed that Winston was fully dressed, not in a bathrobe, and carrying her recorder and notebook.
“Where have you been!” Drake was fully awake now and swinging her feet out onto the cold tile floor. “I told you, no solos.”
“I wasn’t alone. Jeff was with me.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“So be more specific next time. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get some sleep.” Winston quickly shucked her clothes, flinging them over the chair she’d run into, and climbed into the top bunk.
Drake stood, and as the younger woman settled down in her rack, she grabbed her by her nightshirt and pulled her to the edge of the bed. “Who did you talk to?”
Winston let out a yelp of protest. “Just getting some background information and update on the rescue attempts.”
Drake took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. When she spoke, her voice was a model of murderous reasonability. “I am going to give you one more chance. Level with me now or I’ll see you get your young ass packed off this ship as fast as possible.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Want to bet?”
There was a long moment of silence, then Winston spoke sullenly. “We went up to the bridge to watch the helicopters coming back. And while we were up there, I talked to the captain.”
“And exactly what did the captain say?” Drake asked, horror starting to build.
“He said if there was anyone alive, they would have been found by now and there was no point in continuing the search.” Drake could hear the satisfaction in Winston’s voice.
“You can’t use that,” Drake said. “He didn’t know you were there, did he?”
“I just asked him a question.”
She would talk to Jeff, find out exactly what had happened. There was no way Philips would have said something like that to a reporter, no way at all. She had to have tricked him somehow, and Drake would find out the details. “Well, you can forget about using it,” she said firmly. “Not unless the captain specifically okays it. That’s taking him out of context.”
“I think we’ll let Control decide that,” Winston said, letting out a huge yawn. “You’re not the content editor.”
“You already sent it?” Drake couldn’t believe it.
“Yep. It was breaking news, so we sent it as an update.”
Drake grabbed her cell phone, pulled on her clothes, and headed for the passageway.
“Where are you going?” Winston asked, her voice for the first time showing a trace of fear.
“To try to undo the damage you’ve done.”
Alone on the sponson, Drake called ACN Control. She knew the editor on duty well, and he would put a stop to this once he understood how things were. When she got through to him, he said, after listening to her story, “Too late. I already ran it at the top-of-the-hour update.”
“You didn’t.” Drake swore silently.
“Yes, I did. Pretty good work for a new kid, isn’t it? Although, I have to say, it makes your evening update look pretty silly, Pamela. I have you standing there saying everything is going well and everybody’s trying hard, and then the kid brings in the quote from the captain saying they’re just going through the motions. If you were in my seat, which one would you run with? I have to say, it makes you look pretty stupid.”
“I don’t care about that.” Although, of course, she did. But there were other issues at stake here. “Then pull the spot. She ambushed him. We’ll never get another useful word out of him if you run it.”
“You’re a reporter, Drake,” the producer snapped. “Or have you been covering the Navy for too many years? If you’re willing to live with just what they tell you instead of going after the story, then it’s time we had someone like Winston out there. Now, unless you’ve got something useful for me, I’m a little busy right now.”
Drake charged back to her stateroom, her mind working furiously. She had no doubt that there were going to be major repercussions from this. The producer might understand what news was, but he had not a clue what it was like to work on board a ship, to try to get the story where every part of the story was classified. And when the captain and the admiral saw the story playing on ACN, she and every other reporter on board would be lucky if they were allowed to read press releases, much less report a story.
THIRTEEN
The president was just beginning his working day when the news began to break. His quarters were silent, save for the normal quiet movements of the staff and Secret Service. His wife, Nellie, was off on some junket or another. What was it this time? Something to do with farms, he thought. Or animals. If he really needed to know, he could check with her secretary or the Secret Service. He found it faintly tragic that they should know more about her comings and goings than he did.
His two oldest children were fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. He had made it a priority to try to let them have as normal a childhood as possible. “As possible” being the key qualification. At least the press had been fairly decent about that, he reflected. His kids were rarely in the news. Somehow, the Secret Service, long adept at dealing with children in the White House, had managed to work out a fairly normal schedule of activities and team sports. Their needs had changed rapidly over the last four years as they went from being winsome ten-year-olds to being teenagers, but the Secret Service had taken it a good deal more calmly then he and Nellie had.
Timothy, the youngest, was just barely out of diapers, or so it seemed to the president. At five years old, he was a powerhouse, and the president had more than once heard the comparison made to John-John. There was something still and quiet about Timothy, a sense of unexpected maturity. The president wondered how many years in therapy the last four years in the White House would earn him.
With a sigh, he relaxed and leaned back, elevating the leg rest on his easy chair. In a few minutes, the steward would bring in breakfast. Until then, he was free.
He shut his eyes and reflected on the last four years. Some successes, some failures. For the most part, he felt he had been a good president, one who had grown into the office. The prospect of another four years in the White House was both exhilarating and daunting. Of all the men and women around him, only Nellie knew the strain he was under. The Secret Service and his staff knew from long experience in general what he was going through, but the specifics were left to him and his family.
“Mr. President?” a soft voice asked. Jim Arnot, one of the more senior agents assigned to his detail. Arnot knew better than to interrupt him during these precious quiet moments unless it was absolutely necessary.
The president lowered his leg rest and brought the seat into an upright position. “Come on in.”
Arnot moved quickly to his side and held out a message. The president glanced at it then and snapped, “Turn on CNN and ACN.” Arnot switched on the three televisions, each one tuned to a different news station. The president wondered when the last time had been that he’d watched television for anything other than the news.
He focused on the report in progress on ACN. That new anchor, what was her name? Winston, that was it. He stared at her picture for a moment, watching the clear blue eyes and the satisfaction behind her reporter’s mark. That particular look in a reporter’s eyes never boded well for the White House. He clicked up the volume.