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gonna do to this guy when I got out. Next day was 9/11. Osama Bin Laden was all over the news gloating about what he’d done to America. Maybe it was the pain pills, but I had a dream – super vivid, I mean – that I was going to devote my life to protecting America. Next day, I called up the Army and asked about joining. They were real skeptical about the knee injury. Then I called up a guy I went to high school with that joined the Secret Service. Hadn’t talked to him in years. Turned out to be a Jaguars fan. Said his kid had my trading card. And here I am.”
     

 
    *
     
    The President loosened the belt on his robe, revealing the 28-inch waistline that his Presidential opponent had famously suggested was “out of step with mainstream America.” The President moved in for a kiss, but Eva turned her head. She hated the awkwardness of Oval Office meetings. The President had assured her that he’d had all the customary microphones and cameras removed, but she knew the Secret Service often backfilled his feeble attempts at privacy.
    She checked her watch. “This better be good,” she said. “We’ve got a Security Council meeting in ten minutes and I still have to pack.” They had planned a secret getaway to Martha’s Vineyard, going so far as to have the President’s body double rent an estate on nearby Cape Cod to throw off the paparazzi.
    The President sat on the couch and motioned for Eva to sit opposite him. He put his palms together, as if to pray, and leaned forward, speaking as delicately as he could: “It’s about the weekend.”
    He had hardly said anything, but Eva could tell where he was going with this. It was the downside of being the President’s lover. “No need to explain,” she said coolly, although she’d been looking forward to the trip for two months. “It’s just business.”
    “ The Iranian Ambassador’s asking for an urgent meeting at Camp David.”
    Eva’s brown eyes got wide. The President had made international headlines by extending an olive branch to Iran during his first term and opening up diplomatic relations for the first time since the 1970s. But the presence of an embassy in D.C. had done little to cool tensions. “I trust you’re going to run this by the Security Council,” she said.
    “ I can’t. Half the council’s against me.”
    “ Work with me, Isaac. I’m in the half that’s on your side.”
    “ The Iranian hardliners are making threats again.”
    “ So? Talk of wiping Israel off the map is an annual political rite for the clerics, nothing more.”
    “ This isn’t business as usual. Sixteen MIGs broke Israeli airspace last week. Looked a heckuva lot like a dry run for an attack. CIA says Iran’s reserve armor brigades have been called up too. And there’s this.” He took a handheld computer from the desk and handed it to Eva. She looked at the satellite image depicting a number of official-looking state cars surrounding some sort of industrial complex. “That was taken near the Caspian Sea just a few days ago.”
    “ Is that an Egyptian flag on that SUV?”
    “ Sure is, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are bigwigs from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Syria there too.”
    “ What are they selling? Nukes?”
    “ Water.”
    “ Water?”
    “ That complex in the photo is a desalination plant. It’s a long story. I can fill you in up at Camp David this weekend.”
    Camp David. The suggestion that she would join him there was stunning, even for the President, who in his second term had too often thrown caution to the wind. “Oh, the GOP would love that,” Eva quipped, giving the President room to play it off as a joke.
    His face was as serious as it had ever been. “Eva, we’re both widowers. We’re doing nothing wrong. Maybe we should just – “
    “ Stop. We’ve been over this. MSNBC did that Web poll, remember? When they caught us going to dinner together?”
    “ Hardly scientific.”
    Eva was insistent. “Nobody