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  “You’re full of shit, Meric. You’re so transparent, it’s almost funny. You couldn’t care less about my surviving in the Presidency—”

  “That’s not true!”

  “The hell it isn’t. What’s really bugging you is the idea of keeping the Presidency intact. You’re not working for me, you’re working for the god-damned Constitution.”

  Meric Albano, the patriot? “No, I’m not that noble,” I countered. “But it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you and the Constitution were on the same side.”

  He threw his head back and pleaded with the ceiling. “He doesn’t want a President, he wants a saint. A Catholic saint, at that!”

  “Only dead men can be made into saints,” I said. “I’ve worked damned hard to keep you alive.”

  He snapped those deep brown eyes on me. It was like facing a pair of gun muzzles. “I owe you that much, don’t I?”

  “You don’t owe me a thing.”

  “Not much,” he muttered. He got up from the chair again and started pacing the room. Not much floor space for him to work with; three long strides and he was at the window, four in the other direction and he reached the door.

  Turning back toward me, he said, “I could put a pretty good face on it. Tell the people that my brothers were my advisers… the closest kind of aides a President could have. Hell, Kennedy made his brother the Attorney General, didn’t he? And there’s no hint of scandal; I mean, as far as money or political deals are involved.”

  “I could help you write a speech like that,” I said.

  He grinned. “A referendum. It might work out. It could work.” The grin broadened. “I can see the Congress wrestling with that one. They’d be on the spot to decide on calling the special election or not.” He laughed outright.

  I shifted on the bed. “It’ll be damned hard to keep that shootout in the Capitol rotunda hushed up.

  “It can be done,” he said. “If I can count on you to keep your mouth shut, I can cover the rest of them with the National Security Act. They’ll keep quiet.”

  “You’ll have to tell the people about the cloning,” I said.

  “Yes. They won’t like that. They’ll be afraid of it.”

  “But you’re not the one who did it,” I pointed out. “It was your father’s decision. You were only a helpless infant.”

  He stared at me for a moment “There’s still hope for you, Meric.”

  “And you’ll have to bring your brothers out to the public,” I quickly added.

  “H’mm. I’m not sure Josh could take that. He’s pretty close to a nervous breakdown as it is.”

  “It could work,” I said.

  “You don’t really care if it works or not,” he accused. But he was still grinning slightly. “All you’re interested in is the national welfare.”

  I shrugged an admission of guilt.

  “But I’ll bet I could swing it,” he said. “I could get them to swallow it. Especially if I start right after my father’s funeral. Get their full sympathy.”

  I sank back in the propped-up bed, watching him plan his campaign in his head. I didn’t think he’d have a prayer of keeping his office. It would be too much for the public to accept. But then I hadn’t thought the public would elect Brandon, his predecessor. And if he’d tell the public that much of his story, I’d work like hell to help him. He deserved that much from me.

  NINETEEN

  They let me out of the hospital the next day. The first thing I did was call Vickie. She had just been turned loose, too, so I hopped a taxi to her apartment, intending to take her out to lunch. We had a lot to talk about.

  I leaned on her bell and she opened the door immediately.

  “You’re really okay?” we both asked simultaneously. And then we laughed and we were in each other’s arms and there wasn’t a damned thing to discuss.

  It was getting toward dusk as we lay side by side on her waterbed and Vickie said, “Is it really all over?”

  “Yeah. We’re setting up a press conference next Monday to…”

  “I don’t mean that,” she said. Turning on her side, sending waves through the waterbed and through me, she asked, “Is it over between you and Laura Halliday? The torch is extinguished?

  “How’d you know…?”

  “I knew,” she said simply. “And I get the feeling that you’re finally free of her.”

  “It was over a long time ago,” I said, “only I didn’t understand it.”

  “You’re much too good for her,” Vickie said.

  “For a researcher,” I joked, “you’re damned perceptive.”

  “For a reporter,” she cracked back, “you’re a warm and sensitive human being.”

  “A credit to your race,” I said.

  “An ornament to your profession.”

  “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

  “Fifty-four forty or fight.”

  All of a sudden I was making a confession. “There were a couple of hours back there… when Jackson told me he’d picked you up and offered to trade you for my silence…”

  Vickie closed her eyes. “I know. I did the same thing. They told me they’d let you go if I promised to keep quiet. I didn’t promise.”

  We were both quiet for a while. There wasn’t all that much to say. The phone rang.

  Vickie sat up, sending a small tsunami across the bed, and touched the VOICE ONLY button.

  “Hiya.” Hank Solomon’s voice sounded cheerful. “Y’all busy or are y’all jes restin’?”

  How’d he know…? I started to wonder.

  But Vickie took it calmly. “Do you want to talk to Meric?”

  “Both of y’all. Thought yew might like to come out fer some dinner and hear ’bout mah new promotion.”

  So we showered and dressed and met Hank at the old Black Angus, where he treated us to real Texas beef steaks and the news that he’d been promoted to head the security detail for Vice -President Lazar.

  “Kicked upstairs, t’ keep me quiet.”

  Knowing what the President thought of Lazar, I had to laugh. But still, it was more than fair treatment for the man who’d shot the General. All the other Secret Service agents who’d been present at the Capitol shootout had been transferred out of Washington: the farther the better, apparently. A few had gone to American Samoa. At least one of them was on her way to the lunar station, although why they needed a Secret Service security woman on the moon was a question I never got a satisfactory answer to.

  It was a busy week. Not that setting up a major press conference for the President was all that difficult. Hell, if I couldn’t do that blindfolded, with the staff and experience at my fingertips, I should look for another line of work.

  I put in a lot of time helping the President to write his speech. All three of them contributed ideas and phrasings. Even Joshua seemed to have pulled out of his funk and added some key insights to humanize the prose.

  The thing that was really banging away inside my head was Vickie. I kept thinking about her, day and night. I spent all the time I could with her, and wanted to be with her when we were apart. I was scared brainless about big words like love, and even more so of the idea of marriage. But somehow she seemed an integral part of my life now, in a way that Laura or any other woman I’d known had never been.

  The morning of the press conference, I couldn’t stand it anymore. We were fidgeting around in the State Dining Room, on the first floor of the White House, where the press conference was going to take place in another half-hour. The dining tables and chairs had been removed, a podium for the President had been set up right in front of Healy’s portrait of Lincoln, and the big room was crammed with folding chairs for the news people. TV crews were rolling their cameras in and talking into their headsets to the remote transmitting station in the van outside.

  I pulled Vickie from the umpteenth shuffling through the piles of copies of the President’s speech and dragged her out into the hallway.

  “What’s the matter?”
she asked, looking troubled. This time I was glad that my mouth worked independently of my brains. Otherwise I could never have uttered a sound.

  “Will you marry me?” I blurted.

  She looked sort of surprised for an instant, then smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I blinked. “You mean you will?”

  She had to reach up on tiptoes to peck me swiftly on the lips. “No. Not yet. But I’ll move in with you.”

  I must have looked pretty stupid. I know I felt it.

  “That’s a beginning,” Vickie said. “Marriage is awfully permanent… or at least it should be. Let’s take it slow.”

  With a nod, I agreed.

  “Besides,” she added, with her elfin grin, “my lease is up at the end of the month.”

  I didn’t let her get away with that. I grabbed her and really kissed her.

  * * *

  I was still grinning a half-hour later when I stood in front of the cameras and lights and all those newshawks who were quivering like a pack of hounds about to be turned loose after a fox. They never forgave me that grin, even though I’ve tried time and again to explain why they were wrong about it.

  I said my piece: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

  The news people gaped in unaccustomed silence as John, Jeffrey and Joshua strode into the room in perfect step.

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