Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1210 14 June 2007

Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken looked at the caller ID window of his desk telephone, and then picked up the receiver.

“How may I be of assistance to the preeminent journalist of Wolf News?” he inquired of C. Harry Whelan.

“By telling me why I’ve been dropped from the pool.”

The pool to which Mr. Whelan referred was the small group of journalists who accompanied the President when he went anywhere and then made their reporting of presidential activities available to those members of the White House Press Corps who were not privileged to accompany the President.

The journalists who received the “pool” matériel then wrote their reports of the President’s travel and activities in a manner that suggested—but did not say so directly—that they had been along on the trip. This was known as “journalistic license.”

“C. Harry, old buddy, you have not been dropped from the pool. Trust me, the next time President Clendennen goes anywhere, you’ll be among the first to be invited to go along.”

“Like when he goes to Fort Bragg, for example?”

“When he goes anywhere, Harry.”

“There’s a story going around that he’s going to Fort Bragg tomorrow morning.”

“Where did you hear something like that?”

“Telling you where and from whom I learned this would betray my source. And I never do that. Suffice it to say that he is close to the center of things in the White House.”

“I think this fellow is pulling your chain, Harry.”

“I think you’re being less than honest with me, Robin Redbreast, my fine-feathered friend.”

“Harry, you know I don’t like it when you call me that.”

“I know. That’s why I do it. You leave me no choice but to go on the air tonight—probably on Wolf News at Five O’clock with J. Pastor Jones, or on Andy McClarren’s As the World Spins at seven, or maybe, probably both, with the story that President Clendennen is about to make a secret trip that Presidential Spokesman—”

“That’s Spokesperson, Harry,” Presidential Spokesman Hoboken interrupted. “Spokesperson. There is absolutely no sexism in the Clendennen White House.”

“. . . refuses to talk about.”

“Can we go off the record here, Harry?” Hoboken asked.

“What would be in that for me?”

“The gratitude of the President.”

“Gratitude for what?”

“Are we off the record?”

“Momentarily.”

“Gratitude for understanding a certain problem he and the First Lady are having.”

“That wouldn’t have anything to do with the First Mother-in-Law being a world-class boozer, would it?”

“Hypothetically speaking, Harry—”