straight face.
“It’s horseshit,” she replied, clinking her glass against his. “What’s this I hear about you fucking the deputy press secretary?”
“What?” he demanded, then his face softened. “All right, I deserved that.”
“You certainly did, Bubba. I hope the Stone thing has faded from the bubble memory of the media by this time. Some blogger, no doubt spurred on by Marty Stanton, circulated it. Probably Marty thought it was a shot across my bows. What are you going to do about him?”
“Do? What can I do? He’s already been caught in flagrante delicto.”
“Well, not quite.”
“As near as, dammit—nothing I can do about it now, except haul him in and treat him like a schoolboy.”
“That would make a nice story, as soon as we could get it leaked.”
“I’m not going to do it, though. I’m going to ignore the event and ignore Marty, too. He won’t be invited to any more intelligence briefings, and I’ve already ignored two of his phone calls.”
“Ah, the freeze.”
“The deep freeze. He hates that.”
“And that man is a heartbeat from the presidency.”
“So are you, come to that. Closer.”
“But it ain’t in the Constitution.”
“I don’t think we have time to get an amendment ratified before the convention.”
“Pity.”
“How’s it going, baby?”
“I think it’s going about as well as can be expected.”
“Any signs in your polling of support for Marty cracking?”
“In Nebraska, maybe, not in sunny California.”
“Pity about all those delegates.”
“Damn straight. I had thought we might peel off enough of them to get us to a second ballot at the convention.”
“I can see how you might have thought that, but I can see how it might not happen, too. Californians are accustomed to, if not inured to, Marty’s sexual escapades. It’s what they’ve come to expect of him.”
“Whatever happened to the Bible Belt?” Kate asked. “Why don’t they rise up against him?”
“Because they’re voting at the Republican convention, instead of ours. Well, all right, they’re voting at ours, too, but they’re not as easily shocked as they once were. I think it’s Hollywood movies, People magazine, and the supermarket tabloids.”
“No doubt,” Kate agreed.
“Now, if Marty would be kind enough to make a couple of other great big mistakes, you might be able to rub them all together and start a fire.”
“I wish I could count on him to do that, but he’s not as stupid about other things as he is about sex.”
The house phone rang, and Kate picked it up. “Yes?” She covered the phone and looked at Will. “The kitchen wants to know what we’d like for dinner.”
“Something plain—meat loaf?”
“Can you rustle up some meat loaf?” Kate asked. “Good.”
She hung up. “Be here at half past seven.”
“I’m going to miss being able to order anything I want,” Will said.
“Well,” Kate pointed out, “with a little luck, we may not have to move out of here.”
They clinked glasses again.
“From your lips to God’s ear,” Will said.
“Oh,” she said, “I’ve got gossip.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Ann Keaton is fucking Stone Barrington.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, she’s seeing him—can sex be far behind?”
“Lucky guy.”
Kate laughed. “Lucky girl!”
They had another drink.
28
Scott Hipp gazed at Holly Barker’s e-mail, then, with his finger on the DELETE button, he paused. Why not have some fun with this? He pressed the FORWARD button and typed in Lance Cabot’s private e-mail address, then he added a bit of text to the message: The name in question is that of Teddy Fay. He pressed SEND and chuckled to himself.
Holly got on her computer and began visiting law enforcement websites, beginning with the FBI’s. She typed in “Fay, Teddy” and got an immediate response. “No match found.” She moved on to other databases and got the same response from each one. Then she went to the CIA mainframe and tried again. “No match found.” She was stunned.
Her hotline to Langley went off, and she picked up the phone. “Holly Barker.”
“It’s Lance.”
“Good afternoon, Lance. How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I’ve had an e-mail from you, forwarded from Scott Hipp at NSA.”
“Ah,” she said.
“Ah, what?”
“Ah, Scott is trying to make trouble.”
“May I ask on what authority have you made this request to him?”
“My own authority. Or does the director have to approve every such action?”
“Not necessarily. Why don’t you tell me the background to all this.”
“Lance, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that on the phone or in an e-mail.”
“Not even on this phone?”
“Especially not on this phone. You’re coming to New York tomorrow, why don’t we discuss this off-campus at that time?”
“I’m coming to New York this