Early Warning by Michael Walsh Page B

Louisiana. There were plenty of folks who thought Johnson was simply an affirmative-action appointment by a floundering president looking to shore up his minority base, but Seelye had already learned the hard way that Ms. Johnson was one of the toughest human beings in Washington, which was saying something. If the country were ever really to go on a war footing, she would be the fiercest, most uncompromising warrior since Scipio Africanus. He dreaded having to have the Devlin discussion with her, when and if the time came.
    “He’s in the air.”
    “Where is he going?”
    Seelye hesitated. “He…he didn’t say sir?”
    “The fuck you mean, ‘he didn’t say’?” At the other end of the line, Seelye could feel the temperature rising inside the White House.
    “He was supposed to return to Fort Meade, but—”
    Tyler exploded. He hadn’t yelled at anyone all day, and it felt good. “God fucking damn it, I don’t give a rat’s fucking rear end what he was supposed to do. I’m in the goddamned fight of my life with this phony from Rhode Island, even my bought-and-paid-for pollsters and TV pundits are telling me there’s no way I can win, and after all I’ve done for this goddamned country, and if something goes tits up in New York, well, this job won’t be worth a plugged nickel. And neither will yours, General. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Perfectly, sir, yes.” Seelye was used to dealing with Tyler, had even come to almost like him, and he reached for the right words to say. The last thing he wanted to see was Angela Hassett—untested, untried, a creature of the media and mostly of Jake Sinclair, who was probably fucking her or was thinking about fucking her—in the Oval Office. Especially since her one qualification for the office was that she was not Jeb Tyler. “Devlin has an instinct for these things, Mr. President. He’s probably on his way to New York right now. That’s where I’d head if I were him. Teterboro, most likely—no commercial traffic.” Seelye paused, the telephone equivalent of a shrug. “Anyway, you know his deal. He does what he wants, when he wants.”
    “I know it,” said Tyler evenly, “but I still don’t like it.”
    “It’s the only deal we have.”
    “It’s the only deal you have,” Tyler reminded him. “And he can pull the plug on it any time he wants. So you’d better make damn sure that, whatever he’s up to, it goes smoothly.”
    “Yes, Mr. President,” said Seelye.
    “Now make sure he gets wherever he’s going, on the double.”
    “Er…sir?” Seelye got his question in just before Tyler hung up on him.
    “Yes, General?”
    “It’s not just him, sir. It’s her, too.”
    “Who?”
    “The woman he’s taken as his partner in Branch 4 operations. You remember, the Iranian. You authorized it, at the meeting at the Willard Hotel.”
    “I don’t remember anything about an Iranian.” That part was probably true. Tyler only remembered things that were important and, of course, grudges. “Who is she?”
    “We don’t know, exactly. Only Devlin knows who she is. That was part of the deal. We haven’t even been able to vet her, and here she is—”
    Tyler didn’t feel like arguing. The U.S. Government was so endemically riddled with moles, sleeper agents, old Soviet illegals, and various other burrowed and semi-dormant creatures that one more wouldn’t make any difference; it was a miracle the Republic had lasted this long, what with all the enemies, foreign and domestic. And, these days, it was impossible to tell them apart…
    “Whatever. Defend your country, General Seelye.”
    “Yes, sir. Thank you sir.”
    Once again, the President of the United States was alone.
    Tyler leaned back in his chair. He’d only been president for three years, but it already seemed like a lifetime, and as he looked back on that much younger man who had sought, and won, the office, he hardly recognized him. From the outside, running a presidential campaign