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“I appreciate the call, Dad.”
“Check in later, all right?”
“I will.”
“I’d tell you to have a good day, but…”
Nick laughed. “Talk later.” He ended the call and put the phone in his suit coat pocket.
“What’d he say?”
“He’s disgusted by her, as usual.”
“What’s the plan for dealing with this?” Sam asked.
“I spoke with Terry and Christina earlier,” he said of his chief of staff and press secretary. “We’ll issue yet another statement that says the president has no relationship with his mother, has never had any relationship with her and will have nothing to say about her arrest.”
“I think that’s the right way to go. Not that I know anything about these things.”
“Thanks to me, you know more about crisis communication than you thought you ever would.”
“That’s a fact, Mr. President.”
Nick held her close for a minute before they went their separate ways for the day. He drew most of his strength from her and their relationship, which was a bright light at times like this, when outside forces threatened to intrude on their sacred bubble.
“I wish there was something I could do for you,” she said.
“This helps.” He breathed in her familiar lavender-and-vanilla scent, hoping it would rub off on his clothes and stay with him through the endless day. “What’s on your schedule for today?”
“More work on the mess Stahl left us. We’re reviewing all his old cases and figuring out which ones were investigated and which ones had reports that were total fiction.”
“Damn, that’s got to be a grind.”
“We have to go back to every witness who was supposedly interviewed and make sure they did, in fact, talk to him. Some did and some didn’t, so we’re asking them all.”
“Will that result in overturned prosecutions?”
“Undoubtedly. Malone is still trying to figure out who helped Stahl archive phony reports. He’s ruled out the senior officers and is moving on to the IT people who worked for the department at the time the reports were archived.”
“What a mess.”
“You have no idea. I fear it’ll get much worse before we’re done.”
“So we’re both spending today cleaning up messes someone else made for us.”
“Good times.”
He smiled as he kissed her. “The best of times. I’ll see you for dinner?”
“I’ll be here. The good thing about working cold cases is we knock off at quitting time.”
“I like when that happens. Later, we need to talk about our first overseas trip, which I’m under pressure to schedule. I’d love to have my first lady with me for that.”
“Where to?”
“Europe—London, Paris, The Hague and Belgium, to start with.”
“Those old places?”
