CHAPTER 48

Washington, Tuesday 10 July [Now]

"How's Ally?" asked Paula Zarte.

"Still wants a cat." Gene Newman's smile was sour. "Still thinks I should be able to talk her mother into allowing it."

"And that stuff with the boy?"

The President looked at his Director of the CIA. "You're keeping tabs on Ally?"

Paula Zarte shook her head. "Ally texted me," she said. "Girl talk."

Gene Newman wasn't sure how he felt about that. And there was something more important worrying him. "You know," he said, "the First Lady's not going to like this."

Glancing round the low-lit restaurant, Paula took in the other couples bent over their meals or gazing into each other's eyes. A plate of squid-ink linguini sat untouched before her.

The President had eaten two grissini, leaving crumbs all over the white linen tablecloth, and was looking doubtfully at a bowl piled high with mussels. A bottle of a good Frescobaldi Frascati was chilling in an ice bucket next to their table.

"She's not going to know," Paula Zarte said.

When Gene Newman raised his eyebrows it was in a studied, post-ironic sort of way. It was simpler than asking the question which was on his tongue. Just what the fuck did the elegant black woman in the simple Armani jacket think she was doing? She'd called him direct and they had an agreement about not doing that. What's more, she called him on his family cell phone, a number he didn't even know she had.

It was true he'd had an assistant her husband was seeing reassigned to duties outside the White House and he knew how outrageous that was. Paula also knew this was how it worked. In these kinds of deal it was the woman who got moved or fired, because she was invariably younger and had less powerful allies.

If he'd had his choice, he'd have made Mike take the ambassador's job in Ecuador but Paula was against that. Mike and he had history, which was pretty obvious really, given he'd slept with the other man's wife.

"Stop worrying," Paula Zarte said. "At least, stop worrying about that. And believe me," she said, "there are a lot more serious things for you to worry about."

"You think nobody's going to talk?" The President gestured at the tables around them. He'd been sat with his back to the wall, next to a door that led through to a loading bay. One of his agents stood by the door, another guarded the loading bay and a third guarded the loading bay exit in the alley outside.

"Of course they're not going to talk," Paula Zarte said. "There isn't a single person here whose salary isn't paid by the Agency... They're mine," she explained, when the President look bemused. "The place was closed for renovation. As of now it's opened a week early."

Paula Zarte smiled. "The owner used to be one of ours," she added. "It was simpler to do it this way."

"Simpler?"

"It gives us deniability. Say this gets out. What's the worst anyone can say?"

"That we had supper together in a tiny Italian restaurant where no one in the White House has ever eaten before. One which was obviously chosen because it was out of the way."

"Exactly," said Paula Zarte. "And what's the inference?"

"That we're having an affair."

"Again." The black woman sat back in her chair and nodded. "Believe me," Paula Zarte said, "as rumours go that's way better than any of the alternatives."

"It is?" Gene Newman wasn't entirely sure Paula Zarte understood how angry the First Lady could get.

In the end, a pretty Italian-looking girl came to collect their plates, brushed away the President's grissini crumbs with a tiny metal scoop and brought them dessert menus bound in red leather.

"Don't tell me..."

"Five languages and she can strip and reassemble a handgun faster than most of the men in this room," Paula Zarte said. "She'll be a section chief in five years."

"Who's here from the FBI or the NSA?"

"No one," Paula said, "they're not involved."

"You know what you're doing?" Gene Newman sounded genuinely concerned. There were laws governing inter-agency relationships. The President knew, he'd introduced some of them.

"You have a problem."

President Newman looked at her. "You're not the first person to tell me this in the last few days."

"I know," Paula Zarte said. "I had a call from Petra Mayer."

That was the moment the President knew his world had finally gone pear-shaped, to use one of his daughter's expressions. There were no circumstances under which Petra Mayer and Paula Zarte should talk to each other through anything other than attorneys. It was Professor Mayer who'd made case law by extracting her files from the archives at Langley and Paula Zarte's predecessor who spent a large amount of the Agency's money appealing the case.

"Do I want to know about this?" he asked.

To his surprise the woman opposite took the question seriously, disappearing behind her eyes while she considered the possible answers. In the end, she just reached down beside her chair and opened her briefcase. It contained police records, files from drug clinics, banking details from a family trust and even an old copy of NME.

Paula Zarte left all of these in the case. What she produced belonged to her daughter and came from Santa Claus. It was a child's Etch A Sketch. Twisting the plastic knobs, Paula wrote a simple sentence, showed it to the President and then shook the toy so that its screen went grey again.

"Let me know what you want to do."

Gene Newman didn't even need to think about it. "I want to know how this happened."

The woman on the other side of the table sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that." Signalling for the bill, she paid cash and pushed back her chair. "My car's outside," she said, "and I've booked a double room at a tiny family hotel overlooking the Sound. You'll be surprised to know that it's opening early."

The receptionist's hair had faded from red to grey and her pale blue eyes watched the single car draw up with little interest. If the old woman behind the desk recognized Gene Newman she gave no hint of that fact.

"Sign here."

"I'll do that," Paula Zarte said. She signed the form with a name so anonymous it had to have been chosen by computer for lack of recognition factor. The address was similarly anodyne. "They're real," she said, when the old Irish woman was off fetching a key.

"Don't tell me..."

Their room was small with a shower rather than a bath and one window that looked out over grey waves lapping a shingle beach.

"What do your people think is happening?" Gene Newman turned back from the window and its view of three muscular fishermen casting weighted lines into an unpromising looking surf.

"You mean, do they think we're really having an affair?" Paula Zarte smiled sadly. "It's possible. But they know that's not why I'm here. We've got budgets coming up and it's known you're not happy with Homeland Security. In fact, you're rumoured to be looking at breaking HS up and giving everyone back some level of autonomy, subject only to an overview from your new National Security Advisor."

"That's your price?"

"There is no price," Paula Zarte said. "As far as everyone out there is concerned we're discussing budgets and the limits to this Agency's responsibility. The reason we're meeting like this is you can't be seen to talk to us before talking to anyone else... You haven't talked to anyone else, have you?"

Gene Newman shook his head. "You know," he said, "I'm beginning to see why we couldn't have this meeting in the Oval Office."

Later, Paula brought up the issue of pardoning Prisoner Zero. "It's going to play better at home if he's American," she said.

"I still need him to appeal to me directly."