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wants the Commander-in-Chief dating a cabinet member. The fact that we’re both widowers doesn’t change anything. It just looks bad.”
    “ I’m your boss. I could order you to come to Camp David to discuss the Iranian trade embargo.”
    “ And that would be sexual harassment.” Eva stood and picked up her Louis Vuitton attaché.
    “ I’m not joking."
    “ You’ve always been bold,” she said. “I’ve loved you for that. Don’t be reckless.”
    “ You can always change your mind,” he said.
    “ I won’t.”
    As Eva left, Mary Chung took the opportunity to poke her head in the door. She was holding a freshly pressed suit. “Excuse me, Mister President,” she said. “The Security Council is waiting.”
     

White House Cabinet Room
    7:30 a.m.
     
    Defense Secretary Dexter P. Jackson arrived for the National Security Council meeting in uncharacteristically casual dress for himself on a Sunday morning, let alone Washington – chinos, boat shoes and an untucked white oxford shirt. Nearly the entire Congress and White House staff had already left town for the summer recess. Dex’s bags were packed and his wife was standing by to pick him up as soon as the NSC meeting was over. In less than three hours he would be trolling for marlin in Chesapeake Bay.
    Although his name was inscribed on a brass nameplate on his Cabinet chair, he could have found it blindfolded. Like everything in status-oriented Washington, the chairs around the long mahogany table that President Nixon had gifted to the White House were arranged in hierarchical order. The Defense Secretary’s chair was next to the President’s high-backed version. Chairs assigned to the Vice President and secretaries of State and Treasury were the next-closest, arranged in the order that the cabinet posts were first created beginning in the late 1700s. Likewise, the Homeland Security chair – vacant today, since President Hatch had recently fired the agency’s Director – was situated at the far end of the table.
    Dex stared out the French doors at the Rose Garden as the rest of the Council members filed in. There would be several additional vacant chairs today, since the Vice President was already on vacation, two of the four Joint Chiefs were abroad and the President’s National Security Advisor was at an off-site meeting.
    Speers sat in the back against the wall, chugging an energy drink. At the President’s request, Agent Carver sat beside him, leaving O’Keefe to baby-sit Lieutenant Flynn in Georgetown.
    This was Carver’s first NSC meeting. He turned to Speers. “Is there an agenda, Chief?”
    “ There are two agendas,” Speers whispered. “The President’s and the Joint Chiefs’. The President’s objective is to get NSC meetings over with as fast as possible, since he’d rather bypass General Wainewright and the Joint Chiefs altogether and keep expanding his executive powers. The Joint Chiefs’ agenda – and Dex Jackson’s, for that matter – is to bring up as many explosive items as possible within an hour, so that they can publicly say they’ve attempted to work with the President and won’t take the blame for anything that goes wrong. It’ll also make for gripping reading after they retire and fish for seven-figure book deals.”
    Carver shook his head. “Our tax dollars at work.”
    Secretary of Defense Dexter Jackson checked his watch. As usual, the President and Eva were late. Dex leaned over the table, his caramel face widened in a grin. “A hundred bucks says that Eva comes in about sixty seconds before the POTUS again,” he said, using the acronym common in military circles for President of the United States.
    General Wainewright looked up from the emails his assistant printed out for him each morning. “Too easy.”
    “ Okay. You want odds? The President walks in right after Eva, and he’s still tucking his shirt in.”
    “ You’re on,” Wainewright said. “And make it two hundred.”
    Wainewright, a four-star