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the Situation Room.
    The Situation Room, for Christ’s sake. Twenty-one days wasn’t near long enough to get used to it. Cooper waved his pass at the guard hut on Pennsylvania, waited for the buzz of the door.
    “Morning, Mr. Cooper.”
    “Morning, Chet. I told you, it’s just Cooper.” He slipped off his jacket, set it atop his briefcase on the X-ray belt, then swiped his pass and typed his ID code into the machine. “How was your night?”
    “Lost twenty dollars on the ’Skins to my son-in-law. Arms up, please.”
    Cooper raised his arms as Chet ran a wand up and down his body, searching for traces of explosives and weaponized biologicals. The wand was newtech, developed in response to the public outcry over delays at airport security. Best Cooper could tell, it hadn’t sped anything up. “Bad enough he marries your little girl, he takes your money too?”
    “Tell me.” The guard smiled, gestured to the opposite end of the X-ray machine. “You have a good day, Mr. Cooper.”
    And just like that, he was through the fence and on the White House grounds. A long, curving driveway wound past the tri-d cameras at Pebble Beach, where the newsies waited day in and day out. Cooper put his jacket back on and walked, drinking in the building, the reality of it. The people’s house, the symbol of the best the nation could stand for, the epicenter of global power—his office.
    Well, sort of.
In actuality, his office was in the OEOB, the office building across the street. But he’d barely seen it; his working hours had been spent almost entirely in the West Wing.
    A marine in dress uniform executed a precise right-face and held the door for Cooper. In the lobby, he checked his phone and saw he was on time, a few minutes shy of seven. He passed the Roosevelt Room, stepping aside for a general and two aides. The carpet was thick and soft, and everything glistened, the furniture freshly polished. He’d never put a lot of thought into pondering what the air in the White House might smell like, but even so he’d been surprised by the answer: flowers. It smelled like flowers, from the fresh arrangements brought in every day.
    A right turn took him past the Cabinet Room—
the Cabinet Room!—
and a handful of paces later, he was stepping into the president’s outer office. Two assistants typed at keyboards projected onto antique desks, and their screens were polarized monoglass so thin that from the side, they vanished entirely. A funny juxtaposition of the old and the new.
    Press Secretary Holden Archer was locked in conversation with Marla Keevers, the chief of staff looking smart and vicious in a gray suit. Both were seasoned politicians and gave little away, but to Cooper’s eyes, the subtle stiffening at his arrival spoke volumes.
    Relax, guys. I’m not after your job.
    Cooper put his hands in his pocket and turned his attention to a gilt-framed painting, the Statue of Liberty draped in impressionistic fog. Nice enough, he supposed, though if he’d seen it at a street fair, he wouldn’t have paid any attention.
    “Mr. Cooper.”
    He turned. “Mr. Secretary. Good morning.”
    Though now the secretary of defense, Owen Leahy had come up through intelligence, and it showed. His posture suggested that not only would he not comment on the quality of the morning, he would neither confirm nor deny that it was in fact the a.m. There weren’t many people who gave off so little to Cooper’s eyes.
    “Anything new on the Children of Darwin?” Cooper asked.
    Leahy made a noncommittal face. “Have they found you an office yet?”
    “Across the street.”
    “Ah.” A tiny smile at that; Cooper had noticed people here put a lot of stock in the location of their office. Leahy continued, “And how are you enjoying working here? All these meetings must seem dull after the DAR.”
    “Oh, it’s not that different,” Cooper said. “Less gunplay, but still plenty of fatalities.”
    Leahy gave an
aren’t-you-droll
chuckle.