The Threat

He hesitated at his door, unable for a moment to recall the code, then punched it clumsily into the lock. Bloom, Harlowe, and Lynch were solicitous and welcoming. He brushed off their questions. Instead he asked what was going on. Lynch said Ihlemann was still on maternity leave. They might not see her for a while; the Army was sending someone over from the temp pool until they found out. Meilhamer was over on the Hill, talking to staff about the upcoming HIDA hearings. Bloom said he’d been doing the advancing for the Bogotá conference. Dan said he wanted to see the plan, maybe talk with the Colombian and U.S. security people.

Lynch was reaching for another paper, starting to tell him something about airplanes, when the phone rang on the office assistant’s desk. Dan was closest, so he got it. “Counterdrug.”

“Lenson? Mrs. Clayton here. In my office, please.”

“Right now? I’m not in a proper—”

“I understand you’ve been through a lot. Sorry. My office.”

He said he’d be right there.

* * *

He got there as Clayton came striding out. “Come with me,” she snapped. Dan followed her down a narrow corridor, no more than three feet wide, past the vice president’s office. They turned at the chief of staff’s and the hallway widened. The curved wall of the Oval Office came into sight. A couple of protective service agents watched them approach. One was the round-faced African American who’d stared at Dan that first time he’d met the president. Clayton turned into a reception area. Two more agents stood there, and a somber-suited group of older men. She nodded to the secretary, and said to the suits, “I’m sorry, gentlemen. A national security matter. If you’ll give us a few minutes, please.”

Dan followed her into curved spaciousness. He seemed to glide across the floor, as if on slick tires through wet clay. He was surrounded by whiteness and light, as if he were approaching God. A marble mantel. Shell-shaped moldings above the bookcases. The only touches of color were the banners behind the desk, the Stars and Stripes and the deep blue presidential flag. Those, and to the left and right of the fireplace, two paintings. One was a brilliant Georgia O’Keeffe of sunflowers, too bright a yellow to look steadily at. Dan remembered reading that Letitia De Bari had donated it from her collection. The other, an oil of a little girl holding a black kitten and giggling in the sunlight. The daughter the De Baris had lost years before to leukemia.

The president hung up a phone as they approached. He shifted in a high-backed chair, eyes flicking to Dan, then back to the poised little woman whose heels tapped across the parquet before falling silent on a beautiful oval carpet.

The man, Dan thought, who was probably sleeping with Blair. For a second hate flared. Then it guttered away, like a candle flame cupped by an inverted glass.

“Mr. President,” the national security adviser said. “Something you ought to hear.”

“Make yourselves comfortable.” De Bari waved to a couch, started to get up, to move over there to sit with them.

“We’ll stand,” Clayton said, and Dan caught an edge to her voice.

She summarized Dan’s cable, updated with what he’d told Sebold half an hour before. It was a crystal-clear recapitulation of everything he’d tried to put across, but more concise; what he’d spent hours trying to write and say, given in ten sentences not one word of which he could have improved on. She finished by nodding his way. “I’ve brought Lenson in. So you can hear this for yourself. He hasn’t even been home to change.”

“All right, Doris … That pretty accurate, Dan? Gosh, I’m glad we got you back. That must’ve been hell.”

“No, Mr. President,” Dan said. His mouth felt as if he hadn’t used it for years. He took a breath, trying to be where he was, not somewhere far away. “I was only there a few days. For the people who have to live there — that’s hell.”

The president spread his hands. “Tell me what you saw. In your own words.”

Dan told him in unadorned sentences. He came to the events in the warehouse, and stopped, looking past the man who waited. Out the windows behind him. At the bare trees of the South Lawn. At a gardener pulling burlap over the pampas grass for the winter. Then he took another breath, and told about his escape and the dead he’d seen in the fields, lying in windrows like the old pictures from the Somme.

The man with the blow-dried hair swiveled back and forth, thrusting out his lower lip. “What are the numbers?”

“Numbers, Mr. President?” Clayton said.

“For deaths in that conflict. The trend line.”

“The trend line. In Bosnia — they’re down.”

“Well, that’s good. It’s not spreading. Like we thought it might. Though, the collapse of the safe areas — that’s bad news.”