“I’ll get it done this morning,” Shelley replied.
“I’m going to have to run this by the director.”
“Of course, Kerry, by all means,” Holly said. “Nobody’s trying to hang you out to dry. We’ve all bought into this.”
“Is that true?” Kerry asked, looking at the group.
Everybody nodded.
“Okay. You all have a second cup of coffee while I take this down the hall to the director.” He put on his coat and left the office.
“I thought that went well,” Holly said.
“It went well only if the director buys it,” Shelley said.
They chatted desultorily for the minutes before Kerry returned.
“All right,” he said, “the director is on board. As soon as I get Dave King’s memo and Shelley’s written recommendation, we’ll get it on the wire services, probably around five. Everybody, and that includes all of you, will be unavailable for comment. Clear?”
There was a murmur of assent, then everybody went their separate ways.
BACK IN THE CAR, Dino drove out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. “I feel relieved,” he said.
“I’ll feel relieved when we’ve got wheels up,” Stone said. “It’ll have to be in the morning. There’s a line of thunderstorms between here and New York that I’m not going to fly through, because I don’t want to die.”
“Once again, we agree,” Dino replied. “I don’t want to die, either.”
51
STONE AND DINO GOT BACK TO THE HAY-ADAMS, AND HOLLY followed close behind. Holly called her office from the bedroom and then made several other calls.
Stone went into the bedroom. “We’re ordering lunch. You want something?”
“A club sandwich on rye with mayo and a Diet Coke,” Holly said, covering the phone. “Let me know when it comes.” She went back to talking on the phone.
As Stone came out of the bedroom, Dino was hanging up the other line. “Shelley’s going to join us for a second farewell dinner. She insisted.”
“Okay with me,” Stone said, “but I know this is because you just want to get laid one more time before we fly out of here.”
“There’s that, too,” Dino said.
Lunch arrived, and Stone went to get Holly, who was still on the phone.
“Just keep a lid on the sandwich,” she said, covering the receiver again. “I’ll be there when I can.”
Stone went back to the room service table and watched as the waiter served his pasta. He was ravenously hungry, he discovered.
Dino took a bite out of his bacon cheeseburger, then switched on the TV to find the Yankees game.
While Dino watched in silence, Stone ran over the whole of their s burger,tay there, looking for some glitch, some loophole they hadn’t covered. Apart from the missing cell phone, he could think of nothing.
Holly finally came out of the bedroom, sat down, and uncovered her sandwich. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I’ve been on a conference call with Tim Coleman at the White House and Kerry Smith. They finally hammered out a press release that we all agreed on. I represented the first lady in the argument.”
“Was it all that tough?” Stone asked.
“To get the White House, the CIA, and the FBI to agree on language? It doesn’t get any tougher than that.”
“Are you happy with what they came up with?”