9:25 p.m.
The White House Residence
Washington, DC
"I need you guys, that's all I'm saying. I can't do this all by myself. I can't be this person, and also be alone. I don't have the strength."
Susan pressed her phone to her ear as she talked. She had changed into a pair of old blue jeans, faded and ripped and sprung in all the right spots. She wore a hooded sweatshirt pulled over a wife-beater T-shirt she'd had since forever. She was wearing flip-flops and socks at the same time. If the photographers could only see her now. But she was stuck in this big scary house for the night, so she might as well be comfortable.
She sat alone at the alcove table in the family kitchen, taking her dinner. It was a room she had been in only a handful of times when Thomas Hayes was President. She reminded herself, for the umpteenth time, that it was not the same place. The entire Residence had been blown to smithereens-she remembered a giant chunk of it flying into the sky while she was escaping by helicopter.
It was a different kitchen-it just looked the same. Maybe it was a little roomier, brighter, with a more efficient use of space. But still, you'd never notice.
"I know that, sweetheart," Pierre was saying. "I want to be there for you. I hate it that I'm not. But I want to protect the girls. I want them to grow up safe from all this…insanity."
"I know," Susan said. "I know it. I want that for them, too. More than anything."
She took a bite of the chicken salad the chef had made at her request. She just wanted something light and simple-chicken salad, grapes, some crusty bread, and a little white wine-after a long, ridiculous day. But of course the chef had outdone himself. It was the best chicken salad she'd tasted in probably the past ten years-the tiniest bit tart, with raisins and walnut pieces embedded in it.
God, that was good.
"They're happy here," Pierre said. "They're away from all those pressures, all that scrutiny. They're free to be normal kids."
Susan smiled and shook her head. Pierre had a slightly skewed idea of what it meant to be normal. She loved her beautiful twin daughters more than anything, but these were two girls who bounced between an oceanfront mansion in Malibu, a thirty-million-dollar, ten-bedroom penthouse apartment in San Francisco, and a country house on a private island northwest of Seattle. They traveled everywhere in armored limousines and Secret Service jets, and their various teachers, tutors, and best friends of the moment traveled with them. The pop star Adrianna had played a thirty-minute set at their birthday party in September. They weren't normal kids.
"And you?" Susan said.
"I'm happier here, too. And I'm safer. You know I'm not an extrovert like you are." His voice took on a hard edge. "It just doesn't appeal to me to have all these TV talking heads dissecting my private life for the world to see. It doesn't appeal to me to have every angry, homophobic, xenophobic radio talk show host in America taking me down a peg for laughs. It's not fair, I didn't ask for it…"
"Pierre," she said.
"…and it's humiliating, Susan."
"I know it is. It's my private life, too."
"No, it isn't," he said.
She was about to speak, but he rushed ahead of her. "It's not your life. You're the President of the United States. I'm the overly sensitive, reclusive, gay computer geek who happened to get lucky during the dotcom era-that's my narrative now. Meanwhile, you get to be the smart, sexy leader of the free world. You're like Tomb Raider and Golda Meir wrapped in a tortilla. Every girl in America, from third grade through high school, wants to be you when they grow up.
"You know what TMZ is talking about this evening? The actor Tommy Zales, fifteen years your junior, was at the White House dedication today-he was photographed chatting very closely with you. He was also at National Press Club dinner two weeks ago, sitting one table away from you. He's a ladies' man, and he's a heartbreaker-what's going on? Is he trying to bed the President?"
Susan rolled her eyes. "Pierre, there's nothing going on between me and Tommy Zales. I don't even know him. I chatted closely with at least two hundred people today."
"That's not the point, Susan. Every week, there's a new interview with some disgruntled ex-employee of mine, talking about how secretive I am, how demanding I am, how I throw tantrums, and theorizing about what men at the company I might have had closeted relationships with-half of the people talking have never even met me. Do you know how many ex-employees I have? More than ten thousand. Are they going to put every single one of them on television?"
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
"Art asked me today if I was thinking about resigning."
Art Sayles was the chairman of Pierre's board, and a major stockholder. That was a bad sign. Susan really did feel bad about all of this. It had been going on in the background for months, and she just hadn't had time to focus on it or try to put a stop to it. The media was making Pierre into some kind of fall guy. Why?
"Pierre, I'm so sorry. What did you tell him?"
"I told him no! I built this company. The only way they're taking me out is in an ambulance."
The wide double doors to the kitchen opened. A Secret Service man held the doors and Kat Lopez stepped into the room. Kat was still wearing her conservative blue suit from earlier today. She looked tired. Her brown hair was slightly askew.
"Pierre, can you hold on?" Susan put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "Kat, what are you still doing here? Go home."
"Susan, there's been another coup attempt in Turkey. It started in the past half an hour. The power is knocked out across half the country, and we've lost touch with the Presidential Palace. There's chaos in the streets. A massive crowd gathered in a public square in Istanbul, and the military has been firing on them-no one even knows which side the troops are on. Kurt Kimball is still here, and he's assembling a skeleton crew of staff. He's got an Army four-star from the Pentagon on the way, and Haley Lawrence says he can be back here in forty-five minutes."
"Who's behind it?" Susan said.
Kat shrugged.
"Kurt thinks that it's homegrown radical Islamists, possibly with an assist from outside actors. But the details are sketchy. At this point, no one knows if the Turkish government is going to last the night."
Kat paused. "If Turkey goes, we're going to take a lot of criticism. The implications on the world stage are bad enough, but keep in mind we've also got the Congressional elections in two weeks. Our opponents are going to say we were sleeping while the-"
Susan held up a hand, stopping her chief-of-staff in mid-sentence.
"Pierre," she said into the telephone. "I have to call you back."
"Susan, you can't just hang up the telephone every time someone-"
"Honey, I don't have a choice right now," Susan said.
"What does that say about our relationship, or my place in your life? I can tell you that the implications don't look good."
"I'm going to make it right," she said. "We're in a crisis at this moment, but we'll get past it. And I am going to make it up to you, and the girls."
She felt it as she was saying it, and she wanted so badly for it to be true. But in her heart, she knew how far she was from making it happen.
"Good night, Susan," Pierre said. "Enjoy your meeting."
