AllFreeNovel
Share Us
53
“Ms. Ramson.I’m so terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.” He had come directly to her first upon entering the Situation Room.
Rose had never been in this part of the White House and was unsure how to react. She’d attended any number of state dinners with Hunter, but those were always in one of the grand rooms in the Residence’s ground floor.
The President and Hunter had despised each other despite her best efforts, so invitations to the smaller, more elite parties in the private areas above had been rare. Only when Hunter’s power in the Senate had finally mandated an invitation had she climbed to those stratospheric social levels.
“But I’m quite sure that you will not miss him.”
His wry smile was also kind. “We never did see eye-to-eye.”
“Especially not lately.” Rose thought it best to have everything on the table between them. Having now stepped this close to power, the Situation Room, she didn’t want to be brushed back out to the lobby.
His nod acknowledged Senator Hunter Ramson’s bitter battle to block the President’s Mid-East Realignment Plan.
She looked at this man in this particular room. His entry had changed it, without changing anything. The world clocks were still on the wood paneled wall. The screens beyond the end of the conference table remained blank. The comfortable chairs still circled the oak conference table. She’d been warned how small the real Situation Room was in reality, which was true.
Yet the focus of power had shifted with the President’s arrival, tracking him like an all-seeing eye. The eight Marines, sitting out in the main area of the Situation Room in their two-tiered semicircular desk, were now poised to answer his slightest request. With President Cole’s entry, this was no longer another well-equipped conference room—it was the seat of American political and military power.
This was where the strategic implications of the MERP had been hashed out.
Rose had little doubt of the result when Taz and Jeremy finished their investigation. Hunter’s inability to block the passage of MERP had infuriated the Saudis and several other OPEC nations.
And yet… “Mr. President, though it may prove to have cost my husband his life, personally, I believe that your plan in the Middle East is sound and well-considered.”
In that instant, she had his full attention.
No longer the gracious politician at state functions, which was Rose’s only real exposure to the President outside of television and the papers, he now embodied the soldier as well. Such a contrast to Hunter, who had always been soft. There was nothing soft about President Roy Cole.
“Thank you. That means more than I expected.” And his simple nod brought an unlikely warmth to her cheeks.
“The truth, Mr. President. This seems a place where anything else would be inadvisable.”
“Indeed, Ms. Ramson.” Then he turned to take his chair as he thanked Taz and Jeremy for coming.
The shift of attention was so abrupt that she practically stumbled into the void the President left in his wake.
She managed to find her seat as a disembodied voice announced a call for Mr. Jeremy Trahn. As it was patched through, Rose tried to understand what had happened.
In truth? Nothing.
And yet it felt as if she was telling herself a bald-face lie while sitting in the nation’s Situation Room.
