The Threat

Dan thought he’d better try again. “Mr. President, those figures don’t reflect what I witnessed on the ground. There had to be four hundred bodies in that warehouse. More, many more, in the fields and in the woods. The UN doesn’t have a handle on this. I don’t think NATO does either. And just containing it isn’t going to stop the slaughter.”

Clayton said, “We’ve spent months on this. So did the previous administration. This is not an American problem. We support the UN. But basically, it’s a European responsibility.”

Dan told her, “No, ma’am. With respect. Genocide is not somebody else’s problem. And these are Muslims we’re talking about. The whole Middle East is going to judge us by how we respond.”

“Dan, I hear what you’re saying,” De Bari said. “But we’ve sent Mokey Revell over. Worked with Mitterrand and Kohl. Believe me, I’d like to stop this horror. But committing troops is a big step, in a direction I’m not sure we’re ready to go in.”

“What about air power?” asked Clayton. “Air strikes, or Tomahawks? We’ve got to do something to get out in front of this issue. Can we turn the situation around without ground forces?”

“Not with that command setup,” Dan said. “They’ve got some kind of UN-NATO-national triple-key approach that just doesn’t work. And the terrain, the forest cover … you need boots on the ground. To really make a difference.”

“We’ve just finished troop reductions in Europe,” De Bari said, shaking his head. “And we took a hell of a lot of heat for it, too. I have to tell you, Doris, I don’t feel much like going back now and saying, ‘Hey, boy, were we wrong on that one, let’s ship them all back.”

Dan saw Clayton’s brow furrow. The same expression she’d had putting down the phone in the Situation Room. When the man before her wouldn’t commit to Eritrea, either.

“Then give them arms,” Dan said. “If we can’t defend them. Lift the embargo.”

“Arm the Muslims?” De Bari said. “The French will never agree. Neither will the Germans.”

“Then we just leave them to be murdered?” Dan felt his mask slipping. He knew what he said wasn’t fair, maybe wasn’t even true. But he was losing it. The room was too elegant. These people, too detached. “This is the worst thing since Hitler. In Europe, anyway.”

Clayton told him, “Well, the president may be right. We could put troops in, tamp it down. But for how many years? What’s our body count? And what’s our exit strategy once we’re in?”

Dan couldn’t believe how quickly she’d put her tiller over, trimmed to match the president’s wind. Was this the vaunted loyalty the political staff valued above all else? He muttered, feeling each word like a piece of glass working its way out, “So the Holocaust didn’t teach us anything.”

Clayton said, “No one likes to say this. But some things can’t be stopped.”

“If you run, you hit the bullet,” Dan started to say, but stopped after “run.” The room was silent.

“I assure you, no one’s ‘running,’” Clayton said, angrily now. “All right, that’s enough. This is over—”

“No, no, Doris, dial it back a notch. This guy’s been through a lot,” De Bari told her. “You sent him to get a firsthand look, didn’t you? And he did. He really came home with what we needed to know.” His tone was so compassionate, Dan almost bought it. Then he thought: This turd fucks my wife, and pretends he cares about me?

“We’ll get you a written debrief, Mr. President. I’ll prepare a list of options, and my recommendation.”

“Do that,” the president said. He too gave Dan a harder look. “And include the option — I know how you must feel about this, Dan, but this is what I want — include the option of continuing with just what we’re doing now.”

Clayton took his arm. She pointed to the door as De Bari picked up his phone again.

When Dan looked back he was already talking, grinning up at the ceiling, his voice booming, hearty, jovial.

* * *

He was ready to go home. But he couldn’t find his car. He had to call the Metro police, then take a cab to the impound lot. Someone had scratched the paint, all the way down to raw steel. The tow company insisted they’d found it that way. Even though he left the White House before lunch, he didn’t get to Arlington until it was dark.

Her car was in the drive. He sat in the street for some minutes, the engine ticking over quietly, before pressing the accelerator and surging up to park beside it. Looking at the flaking eave he’d intended to scrape and paint, and not gotten to before it got cold. Remembering when he’d cared about things like that.

“Dan? Is that you?”

She was in the bathroom. He stood in the living room, not wanting to go in. On the TV Larry King was interviewing the vice president. They were talking about the designated-hitter rule.

“Yeah,” he muttered.