word.
Still furious, Jenna pulled out her cell, but not to contact the network. National security concerns trumped her own anger as she placed her second call in the past eight hours to the man who lived at Number One Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C.
An assistant to Vice President Andrew Percy answered on the first ring. Jenna told the young woman that she needed to speak to him as soon as possible about “a matter of the utmost urgency.”
“Vice President Percy is not available at this time, but I’ll see that he receives your message.”
Jenna could almost see the eye rolling from nine thousand miles away. “That’s great, and I appreciate that, but I left my first message a few hours ago and I haven’t heard back from him. This is really urgent, and I’m on his task force.”
“Which one?”
“On geoengineering.”
“All right.” The woman sounded bored. “I’ll pass this on to his chief of staff.”
“May I speak to him now, please. This is really important.” In government, Jenna was learning, there was no telling if the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, and she wanted to make sure that the executive branch knew without question that North Korean rockets were on the verge of changing world history.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I will make sure that your message is heard.”
Jenna heard no sense of urgency. It was as if she’d been speaking to an automated message center.
As she and Nicci hurried to the elevator, she tried to think of someone on the task force who could get through to the vice president—or higher. She drew blanks. Maybe someone at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Stepping off on the third floor, Jenna left a message for the gentleman with the white goatee who’d given her the eye at the first meeting.
As soon as they entered her room, they spotted Rafan walking out of the bathroom with his shaving kit.
He smiled, looking so much better than he had last night. Nicci extended her hand while Jenna fished the room service menu out of a drawer. She handed it to Rafan, saying, “Order something in, please. I don’t want you risking a trip downstairs, not with all your ‘fans’ looking for you. I had to do an interview that turned into a disaster, so I never got to eat. Would you mind ordering me yogurt, fruit, toast, and coffee? I’ve got another call to make.”
“Disaster?” Rafan asked.
“More on that later,” Jenna said. “What about you?” she asked Nicci. “You hungry, or did you get enough downstairs?”
“Stop being a mother hen and go call Elfren,” Nicci pushed her toward the balcony, “before she does.”
But Jenna got no further than Elfren’s administrative assistant. As she was leaving a message, Marv called. She picked up expecting the worst.
“You are not,” he shouted, “to disrespect our foremost producer of terrorism coverage. You are not to leave a run-through for an interview that she’s set up about a terrorist bomb until she’s satisfied with your answers. You are not to unilaterally cancel an interview about a terrorist act. And you are not to refuse her reasonable requests to provide sound bites that place you at the center of stopping terrorism.”
Four sentences, and each one contained a variant of “terror,” Jenna couldn’t help noting.
“Marv, shut up.” That was one of the great things about having a stellar academic background at a time like this. What was the worst they could do to her? Send her back to an Ivory Tower where she’d teach, oh, maybe two classes a week, and take a sabbatical every six or seven years? “I do not,” echoing his emphasis, “have to put up with this kind of abuse. Not from you. Not from her. She was ordering me to say things that weren’t remotely accurate. You can ask Nicci, she was there.”
“You mean the sex-u-al har-as-ser?” Marv sounded like he was savoring every syllable. “Alicia says that she’s filing a sexual harassment complaint against your producer, who didn’t like having her aggressive lesbo advances rejected by a married colleague. Nicci’s days are numbered.”
“Did you say ‘lesbo,’ Marv? Did you actually use that epithet?”
“So what?”
“For the record, I don’t know what Alicia’s marital status is, and I don’t see that it’s even relevant, but I do know that this morning Alicia was the one reaching across the table to hold Nicci’s hand. And it was Nicci who told her to bugger off when Alicia tried to bulldog me.”
“What are you accusing her of?”