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looked at the other two dogs with disdain as she settled in for what she obviously hoped would be an afternoon nap on her mistress’s lap.
    Charlotte never thought she’d be the type to collect pets, but Cammie was such a special dog that when the breeder had called three years later with a puppy from his final litter, she couldn’t say no. That was how Emma had joined her family. The youngest, Mika, was a gift from the Hungarian ambassador, who was thrilled to learn that the American president was a fan of the Hungarian vizsla. Charlotte took the dogs everywhere. The best thing about being president these days,Charlotte thought, was being able to travel with the dogs. She knew people suspected she was becoming eccentric, but the dogs provided more companionship than anyone could imagine.
    Melanie helped create the image of a working mom with photo ops of Charlotte and Peter at official White House functions with the kids or traveling together to Camp David over the holidays, but the presidency had a way of isolating even the most well-rounded individuals. Charlotte stroked Cammie’s soft fur as Cammie let out a loud sigh and shut her eyes. Charlotte glanced at her briefing papers and started in on a lengthy report from her director of management and budget about the size of the deficit.
    Everyone always has an explanation for why they can’t do what I want done
, Charlotte said to herself.
Everyone except Roger.
    Roger Taylor was the defense secretary. She was having dinner with him and his wife at their home in Wesley Heights that evening.
    I’ll bring the dogs
, she decided, feeling better instantly at the thought of her three vizslas running around with their two standard poodles. Roger was just as nuts about his dogs as she was about hers.
    Roger and his wife, Stephanie, were rarities in Washington. They were happily married, liked by everyone—Democrats and Republicans—and seemingly oblivious to their status as power brokers. Roger drove the secretary of state and the national security advisor crazy, but Melanie had a way with him. The rest of the national security team called Melanie the Roger Whisperer and counted on her to mediate interagency power struggles. Melanie had worked closely with Roger when he’d served as deputy secretary of state for President Martin and she was press secretary. During the transition, when Charlotte was interviewing candidates for defense secretary, Melanie had suggested Roger for the job. After a brief phone conversation, Charlotte had offered him the position without a single face-to-face meeting. He’d roared with laughter when she’d made the offer.
    “So, Melanie’s got your ear, I presume from this phone call. That’s a good thing. A very good thing,” Roger had said.
    He was smarter than the others, and he wasn’t intimidated by Charlotte’s strength or lack of female charm. He was never disappointed by her, as all the others seemed to be, because he never expectedmore than her focus on his issues and her complete loyalty, and he had both in abundance.
    Together, they’d done what the two men who had come before Charlotte hadn’t managed to do: they’d won a war.
    Roger and Charlotte had traveled to Iraq three days after Charlotte’s inauguration. He’d shown her where all the insurgent strongholds had been and where the most deadly fighting had taken place following the original invasion. They’d driven the roads that had been lined with deadly IEDs for the first six years of America’s occupation. He’d shown her where the “Sunni awakening”—the turning point in the war—first took hold. Iraq was still in tatters, but the worst was over, and American troops were on their way home with a victory under their belts.
    They’d traveled from Iraq to Afghanistan on that first trip, and for all the progress that had been made in Iraq, it seemed that the situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated. It was not for lack of effort or for lack of popular