"I don't know. If you can get it out to three, great. Six, even better."
"It's going to take you six months to do this?"
"It's going to take as long as it's going to take, Elliot, and rushing it isn't the way to see this done right."
Trent told me he would see what he could do. The White House chief of staff is one of those jobs that everyone has heard about, and most people have no idea what it entails. Considering that the person holding the position has often been called "The Second-Most Powerful Man in Washington," that's a little disconcerting.
The chief of staff is the highest-ranking member in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He is responsible for controlling access to the President-a duty that has oftentimes earned him the nickname of "the Gatekeeper"-because there are always people who want the President's time. The chief of staff vets these requests, turning away those that, for one reason or another, do not meet either his own, or, more importantly, the President's requirements.
He oversees the work of the White House staff. This means everyone-the maids, the butlers, the gardeners, the staffers in the West Wing, and the caterers in the galley. He makes the White House run, each and every day, and he deals with preparations for all state visits and the like.
He often is one of the President's closest advisors, which goes a long way to explaining why he is considered to be such a powerful figure. Given that he oftentimes has a front-row seat for and even participates in major policy decisions, he needs to be reliable, smart, and frank. He must be willing to offer his own opinions, while ultimately abiding by the President's final decision.
These things being said, not every administration has had a chief of staff. In some instances it has been deemed unnecessary; in others, the position has been simply unfillable. Where there is a strong and actively involved President, the chief of staff can find himself with little to do, especially with regard to formulation of policy and issues of governance. By the same token, there have been Presidents who had demonstrated very little interest in the day-to-day minutiae of governing, and as a result the chief of staff becomes very powerful indeed, sometimes even referred to as a "quasi-prime minister."
Most of them don't last in the job very long, the average time of service being two and a half years. There's high burnout due to stress. Jason Earle had the distinction of being the longest-serving chief of staff, at seven years, beating out the previous record-holder, John Steelman, who served under Harry Truman for six.
Panno found that as ironic as I did.
Then there are the unofficial duties. A good chief of staff maintains strong relationships with both the first lady, the Vice President, and the wife of the Vice President. He is trusted by all, and endeavors to facilitate communication between each of their staffs. In many cases, he adopts some of their projects and preferences as his own. A bad relationship with any of them can undermine his key relationship with the President, and therefore, a good chief of staff-or, at least, a chief of staff who wants to remain in the position-makes it a point to work with, and to make himself available to, the other three. "He was hospitalized for chest pains last spring," Alena told me. "He complained of shortness of breath and a sharp pain in the side while in the office last April, and was taken to Bethesda for examination and observation."
"And?"
"There was no complication, and it was attributed to stress on the job."
"You think they're covering up a heart attack?"
She shook her head. "There is no shame in it, so why bother concealing it?"
"Still."
She gnawed on her lower lip. "Worth considering." Trent, via Panno, via whoever, got us a copy of his schedule. We were in the beginning of the third week, now, and Panno was spending more and more time away from the house, presumably running between us and whoever he was messengering for in Washington. I hoped whoever it was he was reporting to-if he was reporting at all-was discreet. The last thing we wanted was for our location to be blown.
The second to last thing we wanted was for Earle to find out he was in our sights. If he knew-or for that matter, even suspected-that Alena and I had grown tired of being hunted and had decided to turn the tables on him, he wouldn't be simply a hard target; he would become an impossible one. He would go to ground, wrap himself up inside his protective bubble. Then there would be no way we could pierce it to reach him.
When Trent finally got us Earle's schedule, it took less than a minute to realize that what we'd feared was exactly what had happened.
"There's nothing here," I said. "No public appearances, nothing. He's got one trip with the President to Camp David, that's it."
"It's his tentative schedule for the next three months." Trent fixed me with his sunken eyes. "Tentative. Don't read too much into it."
Alena shook her head in disgust, tossing the paper onto our ever-growing stack of research, which now dominated the dining room table.
"He knows," she said. "Someone tipped him, and he knows."
"No one tipped him," Trent said. It wasn't defensive; it was defiant. He looked from Alena to me as if suspecting us of lurking betrayal.
"Then he suspects," Alena said. "For whatever reason, he suspects, Mr. Trent. Look at this schedule. There are no public appearances. None. He is the chief of staff at the White House, and yet he has not taken a single public engagement, not a single appearance. According to this schedule, he is behaving in all ways like a man who knows he is being targeted."
"The schedule's considered tentative, at best," Trent said. "It may change."
I shook my head. "Not unless he thinks the threat's gone."
"Then you'll just have to convince him it is."
"Well, the easiest way to do that, Elliot, would be to use the phone there and turn us over to the cops."
"No," Alena disagreed. "It would be easier to kill us."
"Don't tempt me," Trent said.
"We can't fake our deaths," I said to Alena, ignoring him. "Earle would never buy that."
"He will not expose himself until he is certain that our threat is removed," Alena said, flatly. "Until he believes without doubt that we pose him-or mean him-no harm. He can afford to wait."
"I can't," said Trent. "Stannous acetate," Alena said.
We were in bed, each of us on our backs, staring at the dark ceiling and listening to the not-so-distant waves. We weren't post-coital; we hadn't made love since moving into Trent's house, and it wasn't out of any deference to him or concern for what he might think. It was hard, I suppose, for either of us to feel romantic while planning what, in its most naked terms, was murder. It wasn't that we were no longer comfortable with each other, nor that we no longer felt as strongly as we once had. There was a time and a place for it, and that time and place just wasn't here and now.
"Tin?" I asked. It took me a moment. I'd been lost in my own thoughts, missing Kobuleti, and wondering how Miata was faring with the Raminisshvillis and their Internet cafe in Kobuleti.
When Alena spoke, her voice was soft, and her tone one of resolve. "You dissolve it in glacial acetic acid, you get a solid, stannous acetate." She rolled onto her side to look at me in the darkness. Her almost-blond hair seemed luminescent. "The CIA used it to induce heart attacks during the Cold War. It can be dissolved and then ingested as a liquid, or placed as a contact agent."
"How quickly does it work?"
"Ingested, it works very quickly. Within minutes. As a contact agent, absorption is slower unless aided by a solvent of some sort."
"How traceable?"
"Anything can be discovered if one is to look for it. The question is whether or not an autopsy will be performed."
"White House chief of staff dies of an AMI-"
"After complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath the previous year," Alena interrupted.
"-I'd think an autopsy is standard operating procedure."