After a moment, Parker recognized the voice as that of Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence.
There was a brief pause, and then Clendennen, even more impatiently, drawled, “All right. Let him in.”
The Secret Service agent at the door waved Parker into the Oval Office.
The President was at his desk, slumped back in his high-backed blue leather-upholstered judge’s chair. Ambassador Montvale was sitting in an armchair looking up at the wall-mounted television monitor. Secretary of State Natalie Cohen was sitting sideward on the couch facing Montvale, also looking at the television.
The President looked at Parker and pointed to the television. Parker moved to the opposite wall, leaned on it, and looked up at the television.
Surprising Parker not at all, the President was watching Wolf News.
There was a flashing banner across the bottom on the screen: BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!
The Wolf News anchor-on-duty was sitting at his desk, facing C. Harry Whelan, Jr. A banner read: C. HARRY WHELAN, JR., WOLF NEWS DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTOR.
Whelan was answering a question, and although he hadn’t heard it, Parker knew what the question was: “What’s going on at Fort Detrick?”
“Well, of course I don’t know, Steven,” C. Harry Whelan, Jr., said, somewhat pontifically, “but it seems to me, with the director of Central Intelligence there—plus that unnamed senior official from Homeland Security—that the situation there, whatever it is, is under control. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say we have a case of high-level arf-arf.”
“‘Arf-arf,’ Harry?”
“You don’t know the term?” Whelan asked, surprised.
The anchor-on-duty shook his head.
“Well, far be it from me to suggest anything at all that would cast any aspersion whatever on my good friend, Central Intelligence Agency Director Jack Powell—or for that matter on the unidentified senior Homeland Security official—but, hypothetically speaking, if President Clendennen had two dogs—say, a Labrador and a coc
ker spaniel—and they started chasing their tails, the sound they would be making would be arf-arf.”
The camera paused for a moment on Mr. Whelan’s face—he looked very pleased with himself—and then a picture of the front page of The Wall Street Journal replaced it and a voice-over deeply intoned, “For only pennies a day ...”
The screen went black.
“I hate that sonofabitch,” President Clendennen said.
A full thirty seconds later, Porky Parker broke the silence: “May I ask what’s going on at Fort Detrick?”
President Clendennen glared at him.
Secretary of State Natalie Cohen came to his rescue.
“Mr. President, you’re either going to have to make a statement, or have Jack make one in your name.”
“That might prove to be difficult, Madam Secretary,” President Clendennen said sarcastically, “as we don’t seem to have the first goddamn clue about what’s going on at Fort Detrick.”
He let that sink in, and then went on: “And if what the DCI has just told me is true, I don’t think we should broadcast that little gem from the White House.”
“Mr. President, what exactly did DCI Powell say?” Ambassador Montvale asked.
“He said this colonel had gotten word to him that he ‘strongly suspects’ that the attack we made on the quote unquote Fish Farm in the Congo—the attack that brought us this close”—he held his thumb and index fingers perhaps a quarter of an inch apart—“to a nuclear exchange—did not kill all the fishes.”
“You’re talking about Colonel Hamilton, Mr. President?” Montvale asked.
The President nodded.
“How could he know that?”
“That’s what Powell said; that he got a message to that effect from Hamilton.”