18

THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION Room sits in a bunker whose thirty-inch thick ceiling is fifty feet underground. Guarded by a special detail of Secret Service personnel known as the Paleface Squad because they never see daylight, it is able to function for two weeks without outside power and is supplied with richly oxygenated air, highly filtered water, and sufficient vitamin-enriched food for thirty-six designated individuals whose idea of roughing it is a four-star, not a five-star, hotel.

No matter what hell is breaking loose above ground, if you are not on that list you do not get in. Among those on the list are Admiral Brent Staley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at sixty-five about to be retired; Prof. Felix St. George, the Hungarian-born foreign policy guru to four presidents, a seemingly ageless hard-head who—having studied under Henry Kissinger at Harvard—has never seen a stable dictator he doesn’t like; and Flo Spier, the president’s thirty-eight-year-old domestic policy advisor, a specialist in assessing the internal political implications of foreign policy decisions whose impact the generals and statesmen surrounding the president tend to ignore. As one political columnist famously put it: “Here’s why the US will never go to war with Poland: Even if Prof. St. George thinks it’s in the best strategic interests of the US and Admiral Staley gives it every chance for success, Flo Spier—upon careful consideration of the Polish-American vote in Chicago—will kill the idea as dead as a swatted housefly.”

The president’s face is expressionless as he walks in wearing a silk robe with the presidential seal over where most people have a heart. All stand. Admiral Staley salutes his commander in chief, never a tradition outside of ceremonial occasions but the kind of ass-kissing the president normally cannot get enough of. He returns the salute by touching his right forefinger to his brow. “Folks, I hope y’all are aware this is my date night. The First Lady and I get one a week. So I got to assume this is important?”

Admiral Staley takes the point, and the point position. He is a military man. “Mr. President, I do apologize for interrupting your—”

“Just get to it.”

Staley removes his rimless glasses, which causes him to look younger, somewhat innocent, perhaps over his head. He was not the president’s first choice for the job, and he knows it. The admiral has been playing catch-up ever since. “Sir, DIA is picking up unusual activity in the Sand Box. At the same time, other agencies...”

St. George runs his hand over his shaved scalp, perhaps a vestige of the time he had hair. “Central Intelligence, sir, has reason to believe locations critical to operations of the Revolutionary Guard—”

“Iran? We were just in the Sand Box.”

“Indeed, sir,” St. George says. “We’ve been monitoring transmissions between Tehran and Damascus, also Tehran-Cairo, Tehran-Amman, Tehran-Baghdad. In other words, Tehran and every major player, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.”

“What are they saying, how’s your mom? Get to it, Felix.”

“Mr. President, as yet...”

The president’s face is no longer expressionless. “You don’t know what they’ve been saying and you got me out of bed?”

The guru persists. He is known for it. “Sir, we do know coded traffic has been rising over the last two months. This week it’s intensified.”

“Yes?”

“Yesterday it reached a crescendo, sir.”

The president is not happy. These people never get to the point. “What does that mean, music? Guys, I get one early night a week.”

At this point Felix St. George displays an impatience of his own. He knows he can get away with it. He learned that much from Kissinger: when dealing with the leader of the free world, show no fear. “Mr. President, all messaging has stopped. Total silence. At the same time, the general staffs of the Revolutionary Guard and the military leadership in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan are not in their beds. Ditto Hamas and Hezbollah.”

The president considers. “The Israelis?”

“Minutes ago, Israel station clocked IDF Chief of Staff leaving home. In a hurry.”

“Mobilization?”

“Not yet,” Admiral Staley breaks in. When it comes to military matters, he is not going to play second fiddle to some over-educated Hungarian who wore a uniform only when he was a child; in Admiral Staley’s mind, the striped pajamas of Bergen-Belsen don’t count, especially since when he came to the US St. George changed his name to suit his new religion. “But if they’re seeing what we are, you can bet on it.”

“Are they seeing what we are?”

“Impossible to say, Mr. President.”

“Well, at the risk of asking the goddamn obvious, has anyone informed them?”

The silence that ensues seems to last minutes, but it is only a matter of seconds.

“Flo,” the president says. “You hear that? In an election year.”

“We can turn this around, Mr. President,” Flo says in a voice as raspy as a nail file. “But not in a vacuum.”

“I hear you, Flo,” the president says. “I hear you loud and clear. Now, will someone get that Israeli bitch on the phone?”