Charlotte Kramer: Madam President Part 30

"I'm not sure what time I'm going to go in tomorrow, but it will be early," Melanie told the agents as Brian helped her out of the vehicle.

"We will be here all night, Madam Secretary," they a.s.sured her.

Brian thanked them and guided Melanie into the house. He led her straight to the bedroom and plugged in all of her devices while she brushed her teeth and then crawled into bed.

They sat up together watching the news coverage. When Melanie saw the early footage from Miami for the first time, tears streamed down her face. She couldn't believe what she was watching. They'd bombed a cruise ship as long as a football field and as tall as a building as though it were a battleship. It lay on the bottom of the bay.

"The first footage that everyone aired had the images of people jumping off the ship - just like the Towers on nine-eleven. We all stopped using it as soon as people figured out what they were looking at, but it's all over the Internet," Brian said.

"Can you imagine what the horror must have been like aboard that ship for a mother and father to look at each other and take their children by the hand and jump into the water? I can't imagine it."

Melanie lay with her head on Brian's chest, watching the coverage. When she woke up a few hours later, Brian was in the shower. She swung her legs around and started to get out of bed but was. .h.i.t with a wave of nausea and exhaustion so strong that she immediately lay back down. This baby had opinions all of a sudden. Melanie rubbed her stomach and promised him that if he let her get to work for the next few weeks, she'd slow down afterward. He seemed to listen.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE.

Dale Will the briefing room be open all night?"

"Yes," Dale promised.

"How about the North Lawn?"

"I'll check with the Secret Service," she called over her shoulder.

Dale hurried back to her office to avoid having to talk to any of the reporters who were lining up to offer their condolences. Marguerite walked next to her and stopped just before they arrived at Dale's door.

"We need to pull our staff into a meeting. You don't need to say anything about Warren, and they won't, either, but they need to see that you're all right."

Dale agreed.

After the meeting, she went to the West Wing lobby to offer Lucy and Richard the first sit-down interview with the president in exchange for halting their live reports from the West Wing lobby and other off-limits locations. For the first time all day, they were satisfied with Dale's offering. They immediately packed up their things and marched out to the stand-up location on the North Lawn to report on their exclusive. The White House counsel had pulled Dale aside at one point during the day and suggested that she had the legal authority to throw all of the press off the premises under the same set of laws that granted the president of the United States extraordinary powers during times of war.

"The nation has been attacked. If we can justify a national security threat that the press being underfoot creates, we can send them packing," the gray-haired White House lawyer had said.

Before Dale could respond with her full-throated defense of the press's right to cover the president's actions at a time of grave national importance, the president had inserted herself into the conversation.

"Thanks, Bill, but that would be the worst thing that we could do. The press is so accustomed to knowing everything about everyone in their government that if we suddenly shut the doors and turned off the lights, the public would be more terrified than they are watching the same men and women they watch every single day of the year stand in the same exact spot reporting what usually amounts to complete nonsense from out there. Today, of all days, is a day to let them do their jobs."

Dale had been stunned, but she shouldn't have been. Charlotte had always understood the modern presidency better than anyone, especially the rest of her White House staff and the reporters who covered her. It was why Dale had always had such a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for her. It was why today, even after learning about Warren, she pulled herself together and tried to do her job.

She'd promised the president that she wouldn't watch any of the news coverage about Warren, but when she got back to her office after the president's address to the nation, she turned on the televisions. The picture they kept showing of Warren was one that Dale had never seen before. In the photo, he was walking next to the president as they approached the stairs to Air Force One. It had been taken during her reelection campaign. Dale didn't recognize the airport, but there were palm trees in the background. Warren was dressed in khaki slacks and a white b.u.t.ton-down shirt. Charlotte was in light gray pants and a sleeveless silk tank the exact same shade of gray. She was holding her hair with one hand and had the other on Warren's shoulder while she spoke to him. He was listening intently to whatever she was saying. It looked like the kind of photo the press snapped after the last campaign event of the day.

Dale hadn't even met Warren yet when the photo had been taken, but there he was with the president. She tried to listen to what the news anchor was saying about him. It was something about how he was one of President Kramer's most trusted advisors and also a personal friend. Dale wondered if perhaps they were reading the statement from the president. She couldn't focus for long enough to make out the words. She wondered what he and Charlotte had been talking about at the instant the photo was snapped. Was she suggesting a new campaign message or soliciting his feedback on her stump speech?

Dale started to feel a sense of panic about all the things she still didn't know about him. She'd rarely asked him about his work for Charlotte. Dale hadn't realized how close they'd been during the campaign. Her chest tightened. She slid to the floor and continued to stare up at the television. She wasn't sure how long she was sitting on the ground before Marguerite came in and found her.

Marguerite barely contained her alarm at finding Dale slumped against her desk. At first, she darted around Dale's office, bringing her water and offering to call her parents. Then she kneeled next to her and tried to coax her to move to the couch. Now she was talking on the phone on Dale's desk. Whoever she was talking to was getting someone else. Marguerite was speaking in a low voice, and Dale couldn't focus on what she was saying. Maybe she was in shock, like the doctor had suggested earlier.

This must be what it feels like to wake up during surgery, Dale thought. You were supposed to be safely anesthetized when they cut through your skin and through your muscle and into whatever sick part of you they needed to remove or repair. Human beings weren't meant to be awake for that kind of searing pain. The brain simply couldn't process what was happening.

Dale was aware of feeling cold and thirsty. There was a bottle of water next to her, but she couldn't send the message to her hand to pick it up.

"How long has she been sitting there?"

The voice was familiar. Dale looked up, and Peter was standing in front of her.

"I found her here about ten minutes ago."

"Dale? What's going on, honey?"

She couldn't speak.

Peter scooped her off the floor and placed her on the couch.

He was looking at her with a kindness that she didn't deserve. She wanted to push him away, but her body still wasn't responding to her brain's commands.

"Marguerite, hand me her sweater, please."

Peter gently pushed Dale's arms through the sleeves and then handed her the bottle of water.

"Take a sip."

Dale did as she was told.

"Do you think you can stand up? We need to get you out of here for some air."

"Where are we going?" Marguerite asked.

Dale didn't hear what Peter said, but she saw alarm register on Marguerite's face again.

"Do you think that's a good idea?"

"We're about to find out."

Peter pulled Dale to her feet and guided her to the West Wing bas.e.m.e.nt, where his SUV was waiting for them. Marguerite climbed in and helped Dale up. The car was freezing. Dale started to shiver.

"Turn off the AC, please," Peter ordered.

Dale didn't look out the window until the car stopped. When she did, there were emergency vehicles everywhere. Dale looked up and saw the shattered facade of the Air and s.p.a.ce Museum. She rolled down her window and stared out.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Marguerite warned.

"Can I get out?" Dale asked.

"Whenever you're ready," Peter answered.

Dale nodded, and Peter opened the door. His Secret Service agent escorted her through the yellow police tape. The agent pointed toward an area that was crowded with investigators.

She stood watching them do their work and tried to picture the scene twelve hours earlier. She remembered her last text from Warren. She'd been heading down to the PEOC. He'd told her to be strong for POTUS. Dale had been a nervous wreck. He was the one who'd wanted to be strong for the president, and she should have antic.i.p.ated that he'd want to head to the place where he could do more than simply watch the horrors unfold on television. Nothing in his DNA would have prepared him simply to observe a tragedy from a distance, and if she'd taken the time to think about what he'd been going through when the attacks had occurred in Washington, she would have known that.

Dale was so angry that she hadn't been enough to make him not do something that he must have known could kill him. Surely he knew that the blast was close enough to be lethal. He'd seen combat. He could have grabbed the boy and made a run for it. If only thinking about her and their future together had been enough to force him to make a different choice in the instant the bomb exploded. If only she'd agreed to be more serious, to do more than change the subject every time he mentioned marriage and kids and a life together. If just one time she'd shown some interest in the life that he'd envisioned for them, maybe he would have thought twice about trading his life for the child's. But as she wiped the tears from her face, she knew that even if she'd given him all the things she knew he'd wanted from her, he still would have done what he did. It was who he was. And she was who she was, and he'd loved her anyway. She felt glued to the spot where she stood. It felt good to be this close to where he'd been. She tried to think about what he would have been doing and thinking about in his final moments. He would have been happy that he was doing something for someone else. He would have been happy that he'd be remembered this way. The thought gave her enough comfort to take a deep breath for the first time since she'd heard the awful news. She turned around slowly. Peter was standing on the other side of the yellow tape, just a few feet away. Dale knew from the look on his face that he'd been standing there the whole time. She also realized that Peter had loved her the whole time, ever since they'd first met in the early weeks of Charlotte's first term as president. She realized that she was the one who had devastated him, not the other way around, as she'd convinced herself. She'd been the one to reject him when she'd taken a job on the vice president's staff instead of building a life with him in San Francisco, where they'd moved together after their affair had become public. She was the one who'd refused to carve out the small s.p.a.ce in her life that he'd asked for during their long-distance relationship. And it was Dale who had rejected the sanctuary he'd built for their stolen moments together. Even earlier that morning, when they'd met in the family theater, she had belittled his effort at reconnecting with her by acting incredulous that he'd suggest a rendezvous without any intention of sleeping with her. Dale was so ashamed she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye, but she let him guide her back to the Suburban. Peter quietly directed his driver to Dale's apartment building. When they pulled into the parking lot, he got out of the car with Marguerite and whispered something that caused Marguerite to do a lot of nodding. One of Peter's Secret Service agents accompanied them up the elevator. Once inside, Dale wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes, while Marguerite boiled water for tea.

"Do you want to change?" Peter asked.

Dale shook her head.

"Marguerite is going to stay with you, and if you need me for anything, just call."

Dale's eyes remained glued to the window. When she turned around, Peter had his hand on the door.

"Marguerite has all of my numbers."

She managed to whisper, "Thank you."

Her plan was to stay up all night, but at some point, she fell asleep on the sofa in the living room. When she woke, the sky was just starting to brighten. Marguerite was sleeping on the couch across from her. Dale covered her with a blanket and wandered into the bathroom, where she noticed Warren's T-shirt and shorts on the floor from the morning before. She picked up his shirt and held it to her face. It smelled like him - a mix of Dial soap and Old Spice deodorant. She walked into the bedroom and picked up the pillows and held them to her face. They smelled like him, too. Dale frantically pulled the pillowcases off the pillows and then stripped the sheets off the bed. She surrounded herself with the linens and sank to the floor. Dale sobbed desperate, gulping sobs, careful to weep quietly so as not to wake up Marguerite. She cried for all the things she'd taken for granted until it was too late.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.

Charlotte Charlotte broke up the final NSC meeting of the night when her most senior Cabinet members started snapping at one another. Tensions had been building between the CIA director and the attorney general all day, and when the AG suggested that the press might pursue a story line about how the law-enforcement community was, once again, left to clean up after a major attack that the CIA had failed to predict, Charlotte had called for an immediate end to the sniping. She'd ordered everyone to get some rest and return at six A.M. Now she was listening to the prime minister of Great Britain offer his condolences. When he stopped for a breath, she took the opportunity to thank him and promised to call again the next day.

"Are there any other calls you need me to do tonight?" she asked her national security advisor.

"No, ma'am. But I have some news that will dispel your belief that we are all hostages of the intractable bureaucracy."

"This sounds promising."

"The advance folks went down to the Mall tonight and walked through a scenario for an off-the-record visit to the D.C. site with the Secret Service for you first thing tomorrow morning. Not an announced stop, but we can take a small press pool, and you can thank the first responders and investigators and lay a wreath for women and the other victims."

"Thank you, Tim."

"And we're working on getting you up to New York tomorrow afternoon and to Miami by the end of the week."

"Good."

"We'll regroup in the morning."

"Call me if there are any developments overnight."

Charlotte couldn't have made any more calls if she'd had to. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed.

She left everything on her desk and closed the door to the Oval Office behind her.

"Samantha, I thought you went home before the calls. That's why I asked Tim to stay for them. Did Monty leave?"

"He went down to the Mall to do a walk-through for your trip in the morning."

"You both need to get home. It's almost two in the morning. Please have them drive you home tonight and pick you up in the morning, and tell Monty I'd like for him to do the same."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Promise me that you'll have a car take you home?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Charlotte walked slowly out the door behind Sam's desk and down the colonnade. When she arrived upstairs, the two younger dogs jumped from the couch in the Yellow Oval to greet her. Cammie opened her eyes and wagged her tail but didn't move from her spot on the sofa.

"Hi, girls," Charlotte cooed. As the dogs licked her face and wiggled in front of her, she felt a lump form in her throat. So many people had died such violent deaths. And not one of them had done a single thing to prepare for such a tragic end. She couldn't shake the images of the burning cruise ship from her mind. She'd watched as it sank into the bay and had nearly cried out when she saw the last of it completely submerged along with any hope of recovering any more victims alive. They were working to raise the ship, but it would take days, possibly weeks.

She let the dogs lick the few tears that had fallen, and then she took a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose.

"Char, how are you doing?"

Mark had entered the room from the Truman Balcony.

"You guys didn't need to wait up for me," she said.

"Can I get you a drink?"

"No, thanks."

He filled two gla.s.ses with something from the bar and handed her one anyway.

"Do you want to sit?"

Mark pointed at the balcony. Charlotte followed him out. Brooke was snoring softly on the sofa. Mark sat down next to her and put a small pillow under her head.

"She pa.s.sed out about half an hour ago. She wanted me to wake her up when you got home," Mark whispered.

"Let her sleep," Charlotte insisted.

They sat sipping scotch and listening to Brooke snore. When Charlotte's eyes started to feel heavy, she forced herself up from the couch.

"I should go check on Peter."