walking up to the White House gate this morning had come as a welcome distraction. Last night’s arrival at Washington’s historic Union Station had capped a trip horribly tainted by the terrible news from the Maldives. Bidding good-bye to Dafoe had been sweet, but the weekend’s pleasure had dimmed the moment Jenna had read about Basheera’s death. She’d made her way to the venerable Hay-Adams Hotel still stunned by the news—and grateful for the capital’s edifices of white marble with their reassuring displays of permanence and resilience. Even in Washington’s most frenetic periods, the city offered a mellower mood than New York. And the District, though hot and muggy, hadn’t endured the grisly murders that had made New York so bleak and edgy of late, perhaps because the high temperatures didn’t feel like an order of magnitude beyond what this Southern town had always known.
Jenna glanced around the Oval Office. How great is this? she asked herself. Very great. By joining the task force, she’d plunged right into the fiercely unpredictable currents of history.
As her eyes settled on the carpet’s presidential seal, she realized, with a bolt of sadness, how dearly she wished that her parents could have known about this event: Their lives had been swept away by black ice just outside Burlington three years ago, a mere month after their only child had joined The Morning Show.
The click-click-click of the White House photographer’s camera snagged Jenna’s attention as easily as the young woman behind the lens had caught her smiling minutes ago at President Reynolds, who didn’t possess all of Hair Apparent’s polish, but the president did have that uncanny, hand-in-the-cookie-jar smile, which had charmed tens of millions of voters. Another click made Jenna think that the photo of her with the president would be great for her scrapbook, if she ever got around to making one. Show it to the kids someday.
There you go again with the kid thing. That’s no biological clock you’ve got ticking, she thought. That’s a biological storm trooper beating down a door, determined to have his way with you.
Maybe you should focus on this, she scolded herself, now that the president had cleared his throat—so noisily that she worried he’d use the historic brass spittoon inches to her left. Thankfully, he did not.
“All of you are about to embark on a task critical to our nation’s future, and to the future of our children and our children’s children…”
She tried to focus—she really did—but clichés always sent her thoughts reeling, making even the most sincere sentiments sound as limp and disposable as a wet paper towel. Reynolds concluded his mercifully brief remarks with “And may God bless each of you and guide you on this momentous journey. Now, I have to go down to the Situation Room, and you’ve got your own duties to attend to.” Pausing only to grip the vice president’s shoulder for a moment, Reynolds headed out the door with that mischievous and—Jenna had to admit—appealing smile of his.
A White House aide ushered the task force out of the Oval Office—though it was likely the group would have followed Vice President Percy down the hall without the aide’s help. As she left the room, Jenna took a final look around, noting the portrait of George Washington above the fireplace. And Abraham Lincoln, just to her left as she headed out the door. She adored Lincoln and had read several biographies of him.
Jenna trailed the other task force members to a conference room where carafes of coffee awaited them. She didn’t need caffeine to get jazzed, not this morning.
The vice president, in his role as task force chair, moved to the head of the long mahogany table. As he perused his notes, another aide, as clean-cut as a pine plank, handed out confidentiality agreements that each member signed.
Though Jenna recognized a number of scientists on the task force, the person grabbing her immediate attention was Senator Gayle Higgens, who’d represented Texas until two years ago. “Tossed out with the other rascals,” was how she’d described her defeat to The Washington Post. In that interview, Higgens did not mention how deeply she’d been bankrolled by the petroleum interests so dominant in her home state, or her controversial six-figure “speaking fees.” They had become such a scandal that in the end, most voters in Texas went for the other guy … a landslide defeat that made Higgens even more memorable.
Two environmentalists of note sat to Jenna’s right. She nodded and smiled, and had