THE WHITE HOUSE

The crowded pressroom was deathly still as the secretary of state slowly unfolded his prepared statement. He scanned those assembled and saw the president standing well away from any prying camera lenses. Secretary Nussbaum closed his eyes and then opened them, and tried in vain to smile.

“Good afternoon. For the many months of campaigning to succeed the president into this very office, I have been blessed with many letters of support from our party. Thus it is with a sad heart that I must now decline the upcoming nomination for the presidency due to health reasons I won’t go into here—”

The president listened for a moment and then turned away. He had never been so tempted in his many years in public life to throttle a man he had considered a close friend and advisor. A man who found it easy to lie, cheat, and murder his way into the highest office of the country.

“Hi, Daddy,” Kelly said as she joined him on his way back to the Oval Office.

He smiled and placed his arm around her. “Hi there, yourself.”

“What’s going to happen to that jerk and his buddies now?” she asked, thinking about Robby, Professor Zachary, and the others, and the horrible fate handed to them from these men her father had trusted.

“They are all being retired from public life.”

“That’s all? After what they did?” she asked incredulously.

He would have loved to explain the real inner workings of the world to his daughter, because she and the other survivors deserved at least that much. But what good would it do to tell them and his countrymen that, on his watch, trusted men were able to get their hands on the most deadly material in the world and use it for their own gains? None. Passing enriched uranium to a foreign nation and allowing them to use that material as a possible means of detonating a dirty bomb over the forces of an aggressive Iran was not legally treason. No U.S. law existed to forbid it. And so, the military men involved in the conspiracy were simply reassigned for their failure to foresee the Iranian threat of invasion. At least officially. They would be quietly retired, and their despicable lives would go on with only a look back at the positions they might have held in the secretary’s new government.

As for the secretary, he would die quietly in his sleep from something resembling a massive coronary. That would be the only justice handed down for the man who had cost the lives of over seventy Americans. Kelly did not need to know the details.

“That’s just the way of it, baby.” He stopped and turned her toward him. “I’m sorry. So, are you heading back to California to visit your friend, Robby?”

“Yes.”

“You tell him to get well, and we’ll talk about certain aspects of his summer with you when he’s better,” he said. He kissed her on the cheek and sent her upstairs to her mother. Then he turned and entered the Oval Office.

The four Secret Service agents and three FBI were standing around a lone man sitting on the couch. The director of the FBI sat facing the man, who held his head down. The president walked past them and sat at his desk. He looked up and shook his head. The ex-national security advisor slowly looked up into the eyes of his former boss.

“Now, what am I supposed to do with you?” the president asked no one in particular as he glared at his own personal Judas.

The Secret Service agent by the door reached out and closed it.