“Oh, I like your face, too.”

“You’re sweet.”

“Even when it hasn’t been washed and made up.”

“Oh, God,” she cried, running for her bathroom. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did tell you. Just as soon as you got my tie tied.”

There was a sound of running water and splashing. “How much time do I have?”

Will checked his wristwatch. “Minus ten minutes.”

“Shit! Are they down there waiting?”

“They’re in the Oval; we’re having cocktails there.”

“You go ahead; I’ll be there a few seconds after you.”

“Someone on the staff has heard that Hugh English was seen having lunch with Cal Ferguson.”

“That will have to keep until I have a face again.”

Will went back to his dressing room, got into his waistcoat and dinner jacket, chose a white silk pocket square, put his glasses, pen and jotting pad, which contained his nuclear code card, into his inside pockets and started across the bedroom. “Minus twelve minutes,” he called out.

“Go fuck yourself, Mr. President!”

Will laughed all the way to the elevator.

They were halfway through their first martini when Kate swept into the Oval Office. “I’m so sorry to be late,” she said, shaking hands with the PM and his wife. “I wish I could blame it on national security, but it was just traffic.”

“That’s quite all right,” the PM said. “We have traffic in Australia, too.”

Will handed her a dirty martini with an olive stuffed with an anchovy. “Inhale that and relax.”

“It’s not like you’re late for the Queen,” the PM’s wife said. “I was once twenty minutes late for the Queen, when we were in London. She was not amused.”

“The Duke of Edinburgh was amused,” the PM said. “I thought he would burst out laughing, until the Queen gave him that look.”

Kate drew in a third of her martini. “Ahhhh,” she said.

“Mr. President…” the PM began.

“Please, we’re Will and Kate.”

“And we’re Geoff and Sheila,” he replied.

“Sheila is the national term for female in Australia,” Sheila said. “Makes it easy for people to remember my name.”

“Will,” the PM began again, “when I visited the Capitol this afternoon, a senator, that ginger-haired fellow, the tall one…”

“Senator Ferguson?”

“That’s the one.”

“He said something odd to me; he said, ‘When you see the President tonight, ask him how Teddy is.’”

Will shot a glance at Kate. “Oh?”

“Was he talking about Teddy Kennedy?”

Will shook his head. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what Senator Ferguson is talking about. You ever get any time for golf in your job?” Will asked, anxious to change the subject.

“Every Sunday,” the PM said, “if the country’s not being invaded. I think it gives you a sort of perspective to know that there’s an activity that’s more frustrating than government.”

Will laughed. “Exactly.”

There was a rap on the door and the chief usher opened it. “Dinner is served, Mr. President, Prime Minister.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t have more quiet time before this thing,” Will said.

“No,” Kate said, “I’m sorry; all my fault.” She dropped back a step and took Will’s arm as they followed their guests.

“What’s up with Ferguson?” Will asked under his breath.

“It’s Hugh English,” she said. “He isn’t wasting any time.”

“I’m confused.”

“I relieved him today; Lance Cabot has the job. I thought I had contained Hugh, but apparently not.”

“Do something painful to him,” Will said.

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“I don’t suppose you have an assassin over there who could deal with Ferguson?”

“Where is Teddy Fay when we need him?” she asked, and they swept into the East Room.

48

Senator Calvin Ferguson, R-UT, sat across the East Room with his wife, Evelyn, who was twenty-seven years his junior, and gazed at Katharine Lee.

“Who are you staring at, honey?” Evelyn asked him, leaning in close, so that he could look down her cleavage. That always got his attention.

“Kate Lee,” he said. “I planted a tiny bomb this afternoon, and I want to see if it explodes tonight.”

Evelyn, Ferguson’s former deputy press secretary, had replaced his late wife an alarmingly short time after her death; rumor had it that he had proposed to Evelyn in his wife’s hospice room. She was a smart woman, knowledgeable about the political flora and fauna inside the beltway, and she was jealous of Kate Lee, because she had a real job, while Evelyn no longer did, except to the extent that Cal Ferguson was a job. “You want to go over there and look down her dress?” she asked.

“Certainly not,” Ferguson replied testily. He was a bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and he did not like that kind of talk-not when someone might overhear it, anyway. The Marine Band began to play some Glenn Miller. “Tell you what I do want to do,” he said, as the president and his wife led everyone to the dance floor. “I want to dance with her for a minute. How would you like to dance with the president?” He took her hand, hoisted her from her chair and shuffled a beeline across the floor toward the First Couple.

“Evening, Cal,” Will said as they came close.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” Ferguson said. “I wonder if we might change partners for a moment?”

“Of course,” the president said, gracefully steering Kate into Cal’s arms while bringing Evelyn into his own.

“Good evening, Cal,” Kate said, flashing a brilliant smile.

“Hey, Kate. Tell me, what’s happening in the Caribbean these days?”

“The Caribbean? Well, let’s see: I can’t think of a thing. Were you thinking of invading some place down there?”

“I was thinking about a certain former Haitian who got his head blown off in St. Marks.”

“St. Marks? Isn’t that in the Mediterranean somewhere?”

Ferguson managed a chuckle. “My friend, Hugh English, tells me it’s not.”

Kate formed her features for tragedy. “Oh, isn’t it sad about Hugh?”

Ferguson frowned. “What?”

“Of course, I replaced him with Lance Cabot the minute we began to suspect. Just today, in fact.”

“Kate, you’re not telling me Hugh English is a mole, are you?”

“Of course not,” Kate said, shocked. “The man is a patriot!”

“Then what’s sad about him?”

“I’m sorry, Cal, I shouldn’t have mentioned it; I thought you already knew.”

“Knew? Knew what?”

Kate looked around, as if to see if she might be overheard. “Cal, you have to promise me faithfully that you’ll keep this to yourself. We don’t want this to get around; we just want a happy retirement for Hugh.”

“Of course.”

Kate sighed. “Well, this isn’t exactly a diagnosis, but some of Hugh’s actions over the past few days have caused a number of people to feel that he is suffering the early stages of…” She shrugged and made a face.

“Nonsense,” Ferguson said. “Why the man is as sane as I am.”

“That’s what I told everybody,” Kate said, “until…”

“Until what?”

“Well, there was an incident a couple of days ago during a staff meeting about…well, about a classified matter, and Hugh suddenly piped up and said, ‘We’ve got to get the man out, and quickly.’ That pretty much brought the proceedings to a halt, and somebody said, ‘Who, Hugh? And out of where?’”

“And what did Hugh say?”

“He said, ‘Nelson, of course; out of East Berlin.’”

“But East Berlin as a political entity doesn’t exist anymore,” Ferguson said.

“Exactly,” Kate replied, “and neither does Nelson, but at that moment, they both existed for Hugh. Someone had the presence of mind to say, ‘Right, I’ll get on it, Hugh,’ and the meeting continued, but Hugh got up and left. When I inquired about it, I was told that he had been exhibiting…memory issues and flashbacks. Someone thought it came on after his wife died.”