Charlotte Kramer: Madam President Part 18

"Either Central Command in Tampa or Offutt in Nebraska," Craig said.

"Send the director down here so I can tell him for the last time today that I'm not leaving the White House. The last time they sent the president hopscotching around the country, he had one h.e.l.l of a time getting back here. He was up in the sky chasing information all day while his vice president called the shots. With all due respect to my eminently qualified vice president, I have no intention of leaving the White House. There must be some occasions when my word is the last word," she fumed.

"Charlotte, maybe we should hear them out," Peter gently remarked.

She gave him a look that clearly said, Stay out of this.

Everyone in the room looked away from the two of them.

Charlotte was so frustrated with everyone that she wanted to throw the entire plate of sandwiches against the wall. Instead, she turned and walked out of the PEOC. A single Secret Service agent followed her silently as she walked up the stairs and headed straight to the West Wing. The sight of Samantha sitting quietly at her desk and Monty waiting in the office across from Sam soothed her. She walked into the Oval Office and sat behind her desk. She figured that Craig and the others would give her about five minutes to cool off before they demanded that she return to the safety of the PEOC.

Sam came in with a gla.s.s of ice and a bottle of water.

"Can I order you something for lunch, Madam President?"

"No, thanks, Sam. Did you call your parents?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tell them not to be worried."

"Yes, ma'am."

Sam returned to her desk, and Charlotte moved into her private dining room. She turned on the flat-screen TV on the wall and watched a CNN reporter interview a woman who was in such a state of shock that the responsible thing to do would have been to end the interview. The woman became hysterical describing how she had dropped off her parents and her children at the Port of Miami early that morning. Her parents were taking their grandchildren, her son and daughter, on their first cruise. They were all unaccounted for. Charlotte shuddered and fought the urge to punch a wall. On September 11, it was easy enough to say that they could never have imagined attacks so brazen, so coordinated, so far-reaching, and so lethal. But what was her excuse? She knew exactly what Al Qaeda and their more monstrous offshoots like ISIS and ISIL were capable of. And everyone in her administration knew exactly where and how they operated. They had just stopped being audacious enough to do what was necessary to stay a step ahead. Charlotte glanced at her watch and knew she only had another minute or so before Craig or Tim lured her back down to the PEOC.

"Sam, get Melanie on the phone, please."

"Yes, ma'am."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

Melanie Please attribute this to a senior military official. Earlier today, I directed the nation's armed forces to Defense Condition Three, an increased state of military readiness."

"Other than September eleventh, when have we been at DEFCON Three before?"

"Sandy, the press office will put all of this into historical context for you after I head back to the front of the plane to resume my briefings."

"Yes, ma'am, sorry about that."

"Don't apologize. I have five minutes before I need to get back up there, and I wanted to speak to what we've done on the military side. I'm not going to be able to speak to any of the response or recovery efforts. You're going to have to get that from your colleagues who cover the FBI."

"Madam Secretary, you have a call," Melanie's military aide announced from the front of the press cabin.

"Can I return it in two minutes?"

"I believe it's urgent."

"I'm coming."

Melanie left the press cabin and traveled to the front of the plane.

"It's the president," her aide said once they were out of earshot of the press.

"Madam President."

"Melanie. You're not on speaker. I'm in the Oval Office."

"I sincerely hope that isn't the case, Madam President." Melanie panted. She was out of breath from the walk to her cabin. The baby was already robbing her of some of her lung capacity.

"Calm down. I'll get back down to the PEOC in a minute," Charlotte said.

"Madam President, you need to get back down there immediately. If it gets out that you violated the continuity-of-government protocols, there will be h.e.l.l to pay."

"Jesus, Melanie, you sound like the rest of them. I am the continuity of government."

"Not if something happens to you. Please call me back from downstairs. I'm more concerned about the press reaction than I am about anything actually happening to you."

"Thanks a lot."

"I didn't mean it that way. But you know that they'll hammer you for losing your cool in the middle of the crisis and for making emotional decisions - all of the c.r.a.p they've been waiting to pin on you for being a woman, all of the criticism that you've worked tirelessly to avoid for six years, will come raining down on you if it gets out that you simply walked out of the PEOC in the middle of the attacks."

"Try not to worry about my reputation for five minutes so I can ask you something."

Melanie sighed. "What can I do for you, Madam President?"

"We took our foot off the gas, didn't we, Mel? I took my foot off the gas. We got distracted and lazy, and they hit us. They never take their foot off the gas, do they?"

"No, ma'am. They do not."

"What do I say to them?"

"To whom?"

"The families. The ones who had loved ones who were embarking on cruises or visiting New York City and got blown up this morning? How do we make this right?"

Melanie had seen a president rise to the occasion of comforting the families after September 11. She had seen him changed by it, and she'd watched the president turn the families' healing process into the nation's purpose. Melanie wasn't sure that Charlotte had the same capacity for communal grief.

"You'll do what you have to do to make it right. It will become the entire purpose of the rest of your presidency. It will go on after you're no longer president. You won't worry about your poll numbers or the stupid spats with Congress. Your purpose will be singular. You won't let it happen again."

She could hear the president tapping her pen against her desk.

"I know what you're not saying, Mel."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're afraid that I'm incapable of comforting people in a public, cathartic way."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. And I didn't miss your jab about focus groups and polls."

"Madam President, I-"

"No, you're right. We lean on Warren too much."

"He can actually be very helpful to you now, though not as a pollster. You could put him in charge of recovery efforts in New York or Miami. He's infinitely optimistic."

"When do we start talking about recovery as opposed to rescue?"

"The FBI director will make an official designation in consultation with each city, but I think you need to let people keep hope alive for a while longer."

"Is that a kind thing to do or a cruel thing to do?"

"Madam President, you're about to discover just what a fine line there is between the two."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Dale Dale, I have Marguerite calling for you." The military aide who was fielding all incoming calls to the PEOC pointed at a blinking line, and Dale picked up.

"What's going on?" Dale asked.

"I have an insurrection on my hands. CBS is going completely bats.h.i.+t; half of our press is stuck outside the gate; all of our interns were evacuated with the rest of the White House staff, and the Secret Service won't let them back in; and I'm sitting here by myself trying to answer the phones. Can you please come up here for a few minutes?" Marguerite sounded uncharacteristically hysterical.

"I tried calling you before the last briefing, and no one picked up. You should have called me sooner. I'm on my way."

Dale allowed herself a sideways glance at Peter, who looked up briefly. She smiled sympathetically in his direction and then turned to go. When he stood, Dale thought for a moment that he was going to follow her out. She waited in the hallway for a few seconds and then saw him pour himself a cup of coffee. Dale walked quickly to the press office. When she entered the hallway outside the offices that she and Marguerite shared, she could hear her deputy screaming into the phone.

"Get me your supervisor. Please. I need all of the credentialed press and all of the press interns allowed back inside the White House complex now!"

"Who is that?" Dale asked.

"Some jerk from the Waves office who refuses to let our press back in."

The Waves office was responsible for clearing staff and visitors into the White House complex. Dale took the phone from Marguerite and hung it up.

She dialed the PEOC and asked Craig for a favor. Two minutes later, the deputy director of the Secret Service walked into the press office.

"How can I be of a.s.sistance?" he asked.

"Thank you so much for coming up. We need your help getting our press and our interns back into the complex."

"Happy to help," he said.

The three of them walked out the door of the West Wing lobby. It was the first time Dale had been outside all day. She placed both hands around her eyes to s.h.i.+eld them from the bright light.

The sky above her was hazy from the smoke on the Mall. The sirens from fire engines and emergency vehicles competed with the whirring of the helicopters patrolling the airs.p.a.ce above the White House. Dale knew from her time in the PEOC that those helicopters were the only aircraft allowed to fly in the now-closed airs.p.a.ce. Dale noticed that there was a burning smell in the air. To her right, the White House fountains were running as they always did, a bizarre nod to the automated grandeur of the White House complex. As Dale, Marguerite, and the deputy director of the Secret Service strode purposefully down the driveway, Dale noticed that about half a dozen White House correspondents were filming live shots from their designated spots in front of the White House's West Wing. The press location was called the North Lawn, but it was actually a patch of gravel wired for live broadcasts so that the White House correspondents could air their news reports to the country and the world with the White House residence as the backdrop. As soon as all of the White House correspondents arrived back from the Women's Museum, they would stand shoulder-to-shoulder on that patch of gravel with hot lights s.h.i.+ning down on them. They'd provide minute-to-minute updates about the president's actions. Between live shots, they'd frantically call, text, and e-mail their White House sources for nuggets of news that hadn't aired anywhere else. Dale didn't miss that gravel at all.

She glanced over her shoulder to get another look at the North Lawn and was surprised that so few of them had returned from the museum. She should have offered to help Marguerite sooner. They approached the Northwest Gate, the entrance most commonly used by visitors, staff, and the press a.s.signed to cover the White House briefings. Dale spotted the well-known faces of the network correspondents at the front of the crowd waiting impatiently behind a temporary perimeter that had been set up twenty feet beyond the gate.

"Dale, come on, get us out of here!" one shouted.

"If we go out there, you'll make sure we all get back in, right?" Marguerite confirmed with the Secret Service.

"Yes, ma'am."

Dale and Marguerite stood outside the Northwest Gate rounding up their staff and reporters. The deputy director of the Secret Service worked his magic, and a guard held the gate open for everyone wearing a hard pa.s.s, the official photo ID that, on a normal day, meant that you could walk into the White House complex without inviting more than a glance at the pa.s.s from a guard. Marguerite stepped back out for a moment to shout at a reporter from the Huffington Post who was taking video of the chaos at the gate.

"You're either a cameraman or a White House reporter. Can't do both, Stanley. You coming or staying out here?"

"I'm coming," he replied.

Dale watched Marguerite pull the White House reporters through the rope line and push them toward the gate. Marguerite scanned the crowd one last time and then walked to where Dale and the Secret Service officer were standing.

"Is that everyone?" Dale asked.

"Everyone I could see."

True to form, some of the reporters started shouting questions at Dale as soon as they stepped through the gate.

"I'm not out here to brief. I came out to get everyone back inside. I'll come down to the briefing room as soon as everyone is back on the White House grounds."

"Can you bring the national security advisor to the briefing room?"

"I'll make the request."

Dale turned back toward the West Wing and noticed that Lucy and Richard were watching the entire ordeal. Two of their crews were filming the activity at the gate. Dale wasn't the least bit surprised that they'd ignored the evacuation order. Dale reminded herself that as a journalist, she never would have evacuated the White House on a day like this, either. For a reporter, there was something honorable about putting yourself in danger to cover the president. It was a mutually beneficial, if irrational, calculation, but from the perspective of the White House, there was a benefit to allowing the public to see the decisive actions that their leaders were taking in the face of grave danger through the press coverage. It was a dynamic that ensured that the press would always be underfoot even when dealing with them felt like an unnecessary burden.

"h.e.l.lo, Lucy, Richard. How are you guys doing?" Dale asked.

"How is the president holding up? How are you doing? I hope she's cooking up plans to obliterate whoever did this. Is she going to stay out of the PEOC for the rest of the day?"

Dale smiled at the anchors and glanced at the four cameras filming their interaction. "She's doing fine. I'll try to come up and brief off-camera as soon as we get everyone back in the briefing room. Some people got stuck at the Women's Museum."