Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

But neither, for reasons she understood, was happy with the prospect of her leaving her empty nest to join either of their firms. She was determined, however, to leave that empty nest, and the first thing she did was volunteer her services to various charitable organizations, including, for example, the United Jewish Appeal.

She immediately proved herself to be very good at two things: the raising of money, and the straightening out of the often out-of-kilter administration of such organizations. She moved from good works to the State Department when the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a Princeton classmate of Mortimer’s, asked her to join his staff as financial adviser.

She moved from the UN to the State Department itself, where she was appointed deputy assistant secretary of State and given responsibility for doling out the taxpayers’ money to various foreign governments for various reasons. She held that position until there was a change of administration. She resigned when it became apparent to her that the new President posed a real threat to the United States, and she could not in good conscience work for him.

She devoted the next three years and some months raising money for the campaign of the man who was to become Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen’s predecessor. During that period, she got to know him well, and Mortimer joked that when he gave speeches on international monetary and economic problems and their solutions, the candidate sounded like Natalie.

As it became increasingly apparent that her guy was going to move into the White House, Natalie, who by then was familiar with the way Washington worked, knew that there was going to be some sort of reward for all the millions she had raised.

And that worried her because the most likely reward was for her to be appointed the President’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the State of Israel. Considering, as she did, Israel as her spiritual homeland was not the same thing as being overjoyed at the prospect of moving there for four years.

She had been to Tel Aviv often enough to know that it was hot, muggy, noisy, and crowded. Furthermore, the ultraorthodox Jews who had so much power in Israel made her uncomfortable. Finally, the ambassador’s residence there was not nearly as comfortable as either their house in Washington or their apartment in New York. And equally important, she was about to become a Jewish grandmother, and eagerly looking forward to that.

The man-who-was-to-be-President elected to learn the election results in the Plaza Hotel in New York. Before going there, there was a really small dinner—designed primarily to give him a little rest so that he would be better prepared for whatever happened—at the Cohens’ apartment two blocks away on Fifth Avenue.

Natalie and Mortimer had seriously considered not going to the Plaza at all. Watching the returns on Wolf News in their living room with their feet on the coffee table held far more appeal than did the Plaza. But the candidate insisted.

“I need you around me, Natalie,” he said.

So they went with him.

And thirty seconds after Andy McClarren of Wolf News called the election, the President-elect said, “Natalie, my first appointment will be my secretary of State. Guess who?”

“I have no idea, Mr. President-elect.”

“I’ll give you a hint. She just fed me dinner.”

That marked, she often thought, the end of her innocence. She had quickly learned that while lying and deception were still wrong, she could not honestly argue that they were counterproductive. The exact opposite now seemed inarguably to be

the case.

Some of the proofs of this were major, and some relatively minor, as her current problem showed.

The basic, major problem was that Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen was as mad as a March hare. There was no question in Secretary Cohen’s mind about either that, or that he posed a genuine threat to the security of the United States.

The law provided a solution to that problem. But it was very complicated. The Cabinet and certain other officers, in a meeting presided over by the secretary of State, would hear the evidence in the matter. Presuming they agreed that the President’s mental state was such that he could not perform the duties of his office, that committee would inform the Vice President and speaker of the House of their judgment, and that the Vice President—who was also president of the Senate—now was in charge, pending action by Congress.

So many things could go terribly wrong, producing chaos in the country even exceeding the chaos and paralysis of the government the impeachment proceedings of President Nixon had caused, that Secretary Cohen had decided it would be undertaken only as the absolute last resort.

And she was very much, even painfully, aware that the decision whether or not to remove President Clendennen was hers alone. The makeup of the “committee” that she chaired under the law was not precisely defined in the law.

Frederick P. Palmer, the attorney general, had told her—unofficially—that it could be interpreted to mean that her authority to convene the committee carried with it the authority to decide which senior officials should be on it.

She had run with this. The committee she was about to convene now included Palmer, Secretary of Defense Frederick K. Beiderman, DNI Ellsworth, DCI Lammelle, FBI Director Mark Schmidt, and two men who she realized had no right to be on the committee except for her decision to include them. They were General Allan B. Naylor and Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.

McNab had insisted the meeting be held. President Clendennen’s appearance at Fort Bragg convinced him the Chief Executive was over the edge and had to go.

Cohen had included Naylor because she concurred that he was, as Wolf News’ Andy McClarren had dubbed him, “the most important American general.” If the absolute worst scenario—civil insurrection—happened, he would be the man best able to apply martial law and—equally important—to end it when that became possible.

When she telephoned Naylor to tell him they needed to meet, she had to be evasive to the point of not telling him that they were going to the Greenbrier. Frank Lammelle had told her that even encrypted conversations over the White House circuits were intercepted and decrypted by the NSA at Fort Meade, and that an astonishing number of people in many intelligence agencies had access to the intercepts—including outside contractors on occasion.

The one thing that absolutely could not be allowed to happen was for President Clendennen to learn of the meeting.

She had had the same problem when she spoke with the FBI director, the secretary of Defense, and the attorney general. But not when she talked to Lammelle or McNab. Charley Castillo had equipped the latter, as he had Cohen, with CaseyBerry telephones. The interception equipment at Fort Meade had been designed and installed and was maintained by Aloysius Casey, Ph.D., and his design of the CaseyBerry ensured that the computers at Meade could not decrypt anything sent over the CaseyBerry network.

The secretary had just finished her last call—with Defense Secretary Beiderman—setting up the travel arrangements for the meeting at the Greenbrier when the Communications Center duty officer appeared at her door.

“Madam Secretary, there is a message from Lieutenant Colonel Naylor.”