The little and big tyrants in the White House now found themselves in a difficult if not downright intractable position. A warrant had been issued. If the warrant were withdrawn, it would look as if the government were caving in to popular pressure, for the second time, in the case of Cassandra Devine. A great many midnight hours were spent deliberating over this, at the very highest levels of government.

“Why don’t we just pardon her?” Bucky suggested.

“I can’t pardon her when she hasn’t been convicted of a damn crime,” the president growled. His mood was worse than ever. Everywhere he went, he was asked, “When are you going to stop persecuting that poor young woman?”

Frank Cohane, the father of the poor young woman, was finding himself, too, beset by a hostile media.

“I’m not involved in any of that.” He grinned tightly. “I’m just trying to concentrate on helping to reelect a truly great president.”

Against Bucky’s counsel, he had accepted an invitation to go on Greet the Press.

“Is it true that you pressured the president to go after your own daughter?” Waddowes asked. Frank froze. If you’re trying to get yourself appointed secretary of the Treasury, this is not an ideal question. Frank tried to California-smile his way out of it but found himself confronted by a look of curdled contempt on the face of Glen Waddowes. Waddowes had good sources in the White House and was not known to ask frivolous questions.

“Uh…of course not,” Frank said. Should he mention that he had recently received a Stepfather of the Year award? “I…she’s…well, my Cass has always, ha ha, been an independent sort of person. Why, as a little girl, she used to-”

“Did you or did you not counsel the president to have her arrested?”

“Glen, the president hardly needs my advice on a question like that. I’m just a finance guy. Of course, I like to think that I’m a capable finance guy.”

Frank felt the cold stare of millions of viewers. The only correct answer to Waddowes’s question, really, was, Absolutely not, Glen, and give me the name of the swine who suggested that I did, in order that I may challenge him to a duel to the death.

A few days later, The Washington Post published a lengthy and rather well-sourced article entitled “The Dad from Hell?” There was a copious amount of biographical detail in it, including his having spent Cass’s Yale tuition money-and the mortgage on the family home-on his start-up. Cass recognized her mother’s unattributed quotes.

“That’s some finance chairman you found me,” the president said to Bucky the morning it came out. “Anything else I ought to know about him?”

Why, as a matter of fact, yes, Mr. President. He has a tape recording of me asking him to criminally implicate his innocent daughter in a serial murder scheme. Won’t that make our day when it comes to light?

Bucky did not utter these words aloud, though they did form in his mind.

Gideon was riding a wave. The cover of Newsweek showed a picture of him looking like a younger version of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, beaming beneath a headline: PRESIDENT FOR LIFE? Inside, Newsweek asked soberly, “His beliefs on the sanctity of human life are shared by many, but is the country ready to be led by an old-fashioned moralist who may or may not have killed his own mother?” It was all very heady, yet all Gideon could think about was his little Russian honey. He was obsessed. He called her ten, twelve times a day, just to hear her say, “Darrling Gidyon, I am wery wet for you. When you bring me more money?”

Though very new to the business of romance, Gideon was not naive enough to suppose that Olga’s apartment, decorated in a style that might be called “contemporary Russian prostitute,” was that of a woman who earned her living teaching second grade and spent her nights volunteering for the Red Cross. He grew jealous thinking of her other “wisitors.” He considered hiring a private detective to keep an eye on the comings and goings. During interviews with the media, while called upon to discuss his views on Social Security reform and stem cell research and the death penalty, he found himself daydreaming of Olga and her perfumy thighs.

On Super Tuesday, the day when voters in a large number of states cast their votes in the primaries, several facts became apparent.

The most glaring of these was that President Riley Peacham was in trouble-or, as it is called by savvy political observers, “deep doo-doo.” The second was that Senator Randolph K. Jepperson had taken serious chunks of flesh out of the president, and though he would not likely beat Peacham for the party’s nomination in August, he clearly had enough votes to run on his own as an independent. The third was that Gideon Payne had a hammerlock on the powerful evangelical Christian vote and was poised to do pretty much whatever (the hell) he wanted.

Peacham had managed to mitigate some of the furor over his administration’s handling of Cassandra Devine by having the attorney general issue a plea to Cass to turn herself in. If she did, the Justice Department promised “leniency and understanding.”

Cass, however, had no intention of turning herself in. She had a bully pulpit. One magazine had named her “the New Swamp Fox.” Her website postings were anticipated and reported by everyone the moment they appeared. The FBI, invoking some obscure antiterrorism statute, had shut down Cassandra, but Cass’s followers kept starting new ones, called Cassandra.2, etc. The latest Cassandra was.54. To judge from the millions of hits on the site, her following was growing every day.

A few days after Super Tuesday, Randy declared that he was withdrawing from the remaining party primaries and would be a candidate for the Whatever Party, proudly named for the generation it represented. Columnist George Will dryly recorded his gratitude that “we will at least be spared a party named STFU.” Randy’s operatives swiftly went about collecting the requisite signatures; his lawyers began suing all fifty states and U.S. possessions to get him on the November ballot.

One week later, Gideon Payne announced that he too was withdrawing from further party primaries and would run as the candidate of the Life Party.

All this left President Peacham facing the unhappy prospect of having to finish off his remaining four challengers for the party’s nomination-all of whom were staying in the race until the end so as to inflate their speaking and product endorsement fees-at which point, badly weakened, he would have to face Randy and Gideon in the general fall election.

“Where are you?” Randy said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cass said. Randy’s guy Mike Speck had informed Randy that his phone lines were not tapped. (Since the early 1970s, U.S. presidents have shied away from overtly listening in to their opponents’ telephone calls.) It was safe to talk. Even so, Cass kept these conversations short.

She said, “It’s warmer where I am now.” She had taken a series of bus rides south and was in New Orleans, where no one particularly cared who you were. Mike Speck had arranged for credit cards and an ID under an assumed name, so at least she wouldn’t have to go on sleeping in parks.

“I was thinking,” Randy said. “The night Peacham accepts the nomination, why don’t you show up at Jepperson headquarters. We walk out together. That would take the piss out of him!”

“You get a bounce in the polls, and I go back to playing hearts with Pulitzer Nation at the Alexandria Detention Center? Thanks. Pass.”

“They’re probably going to lift the warrant on you.” He said it with an unmistakable note of disappointment.

“I’m riding buses and eating out of Dumpsters, and you’re worried that they’ll lift the warrant for my arrest? Your concern for ‘the woman I love’ is really touching.”