They negotiate the metal detectors into the ballroom, and Brooks heads for her table while Rena and Alabama look for the one assigned to Alabama’s ABN News network.
Anchorman Alan Tessier is standing with Diane Howell, the president’s national security advisor. They are talking with Cary Allison, the actor who plays a villainous senator in the television series Master of Deceit. A baritone voice speaking through the public address system announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, would everyone please take their seats.”
Rena recognizes the cue. Secret Service can more easily scan a crowded room when everyone is seated.
A moment later, most of the room down, the voice returns: “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”
With that, everyone in the room rises. President James Nash appears from behind a blue curtain and navigates his way to the center of the head table, shaking hands as he goes.
The room fills with the uneven, complex applause of political Washington, some polite, some enthused, some forced.
The president waves, smiles, nods, raises his hands to quell the crowd, and repeats the sequence until the applause finally fades, and he takes his seat. Then fifty waiters emerge through side doors balancing salads on trays on their shoulders.
Twenty-five months earlier James Barlow Nash defied nearly all prognosticators and won a second term to his enigmatic presidency. Tall, ruggedly handsome, and gracefully athletic, the fifty-seven-year-old Nash had built his career being underestimated. The heir to a pioneer Nebraska dynasty, he’d been dismissed for thirty years as too good looking, too ideologically suspect, too shallow, and too privileged to go very far. “He has the roguish charm of Harrison Ford and the rectitude of Gregory Peck,” an early profile gushed, “but what does he believe in?” As he moved to national prominence in an era of political alienation, the condescending distrust of both party establishments turned out to be one of Nash’s strongest political virtues. He had never lost an election.
As they turn to their salads, Rena notices one of the guests at his table, National Security Advisor Diane Howell, glance inside her purse. She is reading her BlackBerry. She looks up, face filled with worry. When the next message arrives, she says to her host, anchorman Tessier, “I’m so sorry. I am afraid I’ve got to respond to this.” She navigates her way to the side of the ballroom and tries unobtrusively to leave.
Rena scans nearby tables and locates the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, head down, reading a message of his own. Two tables away, Secretary of State Arthur Manion is conferring with an aide, Aaron Rubin, who is kneeling at his feet. The elderly Manion rises stiffly, and he and Rubin leave the room in opposite directions.
That’s three.
At the head table, the president is still sitting undisturbed, no aide whispering in his ear.
Rena looks back for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but the admiral’s chair is now empty. Then he sees the director of the CIA, Owen Webster, trying to stroll out discreetly as well.
WILL GORDON OF THE WASHINGTON TRIBUNE has noticed the same departures as Rena.
His own guest, Secretary of Defense Shane, never made it to the ballroom. He excuses himself and at the next table whispers in the ear of reporter Jill Bishop to wait thirty seconds and then meet him in the back of the room.
“Something’s up,” he says when she arrives. “Dan Shane never came in. Now Diane Howell has left. Along with Arthur Manion, Owen Webster, and Admiral Hollenbeck. That’s DOD, NSC, State, CIA, and Joint Chiefs.”
“News breaking out at the correspondents’ dinner? How ironic,” she says.
“Run traps,” Gordon says, his parlance that she should check with her sources. She glances around the room for signs of other reporters moving and, seeing none, slips out. Gordon follows a moment later. He finds an alcove to hide in and touches the name of a contact on his cell, the home number of Steve Packer, his Pentagon correspondent.
“Stevie, Will Gordon. What ya doin’?”
“Watching football.”
“Not anymore.”
* * *
When National Security Advisor Diane Howell reaches the limousine pickup area, Defense Secretary Daniel Shane and CIA Director Owen Webster are already waiting for their cars.
“What do you know?” she asks.
“The U.S. mission in Oosay, Morat, is under attack,” says Shane.
Howell has only received notice to come back to the White House; no details. She has told her staff to avoid saying anything of substance electronically.
“I thought it was some kind of protest outside the compound,” she says, having seen that much in an early news report.
“Apparently it’s escalated,” says Webster. Shane’s expression tells her it’s more than that.
“You have something going on in Oosay, Dan?” she asks Shane.
“Brian Roderick is there.”
Howell feels a rising, liquid anger mixed with suspicion.
General Brian Roderick is a brash, articulate, and ambitious military reformer famous for putting himself in danger. Howell considered some of Roderick’s theories about the war on terror unorthodox, possibly brilliant and perhaps a little mad. The last thing the administration needs is a general in danger.
Shane’s government phone rings. He answers and keeps repeating the word yes into it, his eyes fixed on Howell. His car pulls up and he tells the other two, “I’ll be at the Pentagon. I’ll talk to you when I know more.”
Webster’s car arrives a moment later. “I’ll be in touch, Diane.”
Neither will call, she thinks, though they don’t mean to lie.
She checks her watch. A little before 8:30 P.M. Saturday, just after 3:30 A.M. in North Africa, on December 7, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.