“You’re too much a Puritan, Ginny. Live a little. I’m going to. What do you think: How soon after the memorial service can I start dating?”
“Have you finalized your eulogy?”
“I’ve finalized everything. Final.” She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Oh, sweet home.” She looked at the chief of staff and said, “Let me have women about me that are fat / Sleek-headed women and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Gastrell has a lean and hungry look. / She thinks too much. Such women are dangerous.”
It was a speech from Shakespeare. From the play Julius Caesar.
“Madam President,” Gastrell said, choking down her anger. “I have to tell you something. You may get a question about it.”
A deep inhalation. The president blew a smoke ring and laughed at it. “What now, Ginny? What now?”
“There’s a video. It just showed up and it already has two hundred thousand views. It will hit ten times that within twenty-four hours.”
“An especially cute kitty?”
“It’s a fake, of course, but it’s very well done. It appears to be video of you. No, not actually of you. Video as if someone had a camera mounted …actually …Let me show you.”
The chief of staff leaned in with her own pad, turned it to landscape and tapped the screen.
Rough, jerky, maddeningly low-quality video showed various scenes, all apparently within the White House private quarters.
“So?”
“Wait.”
Suddenly the picture changed and there was Monte Morales. There he was lying on his back, chest bare, face contorted. And there he was talking, though there was no audio.
And there he was with hands, feminine hands, on either side of his head.
“Ah-ah-AHHH!” the president cried. She wanted to cover her mouth but instead grabbed her own blouse as if roughing herself up.
Gastrell put a hand on the president’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. It’s despicable. Even by Internet standards it’s vile.”
And now Monte was being dragged.
And now he was slipping below the water in the tub, and the blood was a swirling smoke pattern around his head.
“Ah,” the president said. “Ah. Oh. Oh God.”
“We can try to get it taken down, but it’s already propagated everywhere. Anonymous is claiming credit. They claim …well, it doesn’t matter.”
The president’s fist clenched around the cigarette. It burned into her palm and gave off the sickening barbecue smell of burning flesh.
“Are you all right, Madam President?”
“It’s a fake. It’s a fake.”
“Obviously. But it’s well done, as I said. The backgrounds look very much like the actual bathroom. The Secret Service is analyzing it, so it can be thoroughly debunked.”
“Debunked,” the president whispered.
“I wanted you to know.”
“Debunked.” She opened her hand and saw an angry oval burn in her palm, right over her lifeline.
“Get out,” the president said.
“There’s the briefing on the Azerbaijan situation in twenty minutes.”