Arnold van Damm’s alarm lights were all flashing red. The good news was that Jack had handled himself pretty well. Not perfect, but pretty well, especially on the sincerity. Even the controversial stuff, he’d come across as believing what he’d said. Ryan took coaching well, and he learned fast. He hadn’t looked as relaxed as he should, but
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that was okay. Ryan wasn’t a politician–he’d said that two or three times–and therefore looking a little tense was all right. Focus groups in seven different cities all said that they liked Jack because he acted like one of them. Ryan didn’t know that Arnie and the political staff were doing that. That little program was as secret as a C1A operation, but Arnie justified it to himself as a reality check on how the President could best project his agenda and his image in order to govern effectively–and no President had ever known all the things done in his name. So, yes, Ryan did come across as presidential–not in the normal way, but in his own way, and that, the focus groups all agreed, was good, too. And going live, yes, that would really look good, and it would get a lot more people to flip the channel to NBC, and Arnie wanted the people to get to know Ryan better.
“Okay, Tom, a tentative yes. But I do have to ask him.”
“Fast, please,” Donner replied. “If he cancels out, then we have to jerk around the whole network schedule for tonight, and that could mean my ass, okay?”
“Back to you in five,” van Damm promised. He killed the button on the phone and hustled out of the room, leaving the receiver on his desk pad.
“On the way to see the Boss,” he told the Secret Service agents in the east-west corridor. His stride told them to jump out of his way even before they saw his eyes.
“Yes?” Ryan said. It wasn’t often his door opened without warning.
“We have to redo the interview,” Arnie said somewhat breathlessly.
Jack shook his head in surprise. “Why? Didn’t I have my fly zipped?”
“Mary always checks that. The tape got screwed up, and there isn’t time to reshoot. So Donner asked me to ask you if you would do it live at nine o’clock. Same questions and everything–no, no,” Arnie said, thinking fast. “What about we get your wife down here, too?”
“Cathy won’t like that. Why?” the President asked.
“Really, all she has to do is sit there and smile. It will look good for the people out there. Jack, she has to act like the First Lady occasionally. This should be an easy one.
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Maybe we can even bring the kids in toward the end–”
“No. My kids stay out of the public eye, period. Cathy and I have talked about that.”
“But–”
“No, Arnie, no now, no tomorrow, no in’the future, no.” Ryan’s voice was as final as a death sentence.
The chief of staff figured he couldn’t talk Ryan into everything. This would take a little time, but he’d come around eventually. You couldn’t be one of the people without letting them meet your kids, but now wasn’t the time to press on that one. “Will you ask Cathy?”
Ryan sighed and nodded. “Okay.”
“Right, okay, I’ll tell Donner that she might be on, but we’re not sure yet because of her medical obligations. It’ll give him something to think about. It will also take some of the heat off you. That’s the First Lady’s main job, remember.”
“You want to tell her that, Arnie? Remember, she’s a surgeon, good with knives.”
Van Damm laughed. “I’ll tell you what she is. She’s a hell of a lady, and she’s tougher than either one of us. Ask nicely,” he advised.
“Yeah.” Right before dinner, Jack thought.
“OKAY, HE’LL DO it. But we want to ask his wife to join us, too.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” Arnie asked. “Not sure yet. She isn’t back from work,” he added, and that was a line that made the reporters smile.
“Okay, Arnie, thanks, I owe you one.” Donner turned off the speakerphone.
“You realize that you just lied to the President of the United States,” John Plumber observed pensively. Plumber was an older pro than Donner. He wasn’t of the Edward R. Murrow generation–quite. Pushing seventy now, he’d been a teenager in World War II, but had gone to Korea as a young reporter, and been foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Bonn, and finally Moscow. Plumber had been ejected from Moscow, and his
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somewhat left political stance had nonetheless never turned into sympathy with the Soviet Union. But more than that, though he was not of Murrow’s generation, he had grown up listening to the immortal CBS correspondent, and he could still close his eyes and hear the gravelly voice which had somehow carried a measure of authority usually associated with the clergy. Maybe it was because Ed had started on the radio, when one’s voice was the currency of the profession. He’d certainly known language better than most of his own time, and infinitely better than the semi-literate reporters and newswriters of the current generation. Plumber was something of a scholar in his own right, a devoted student of Elizabethan literature, and he tried to draft his copy and his spontaneous comments with an elegance in keeping with that of the teacher he’d only watched and heard, but never actually met. More than anything else, people had listened to Ed Murrow because of his honor, John Plumber reminded himself. He’d been as tough as any of the later generation of “investigative journalists” that the schools turned out now, but you always knew that Ed Murrow was fair. And you knew that he didn’t break the rules. Plumber was of the generation that believed that his profession was supposed to have rules, one of which was you never told a lie. You could bend, warp, and twist the truth in order to get information out of someone–that was different–but you never told someone something that was deliberately and definitely false. That troubled John Plumber. Ed would never have done that. Not a chance.
“John, he rolled us.”
“You think.”
“The information I got–well, what do you think?” It had been a frantic two hours, with the entire network research staff running down bits of such minor trivia that even two or three of the pieces, put together, didn’t amount to much of anything. But they’d all checked out, and that was something else entirely.
“I’m not sure, Tom.” Plumber rubbed his eyes. “Is Ryan a little out of his depth? Yes, he is. But is he trying pretty hard? Definitely. Is he honest? I think so. Well, as
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honest as any of them ever can be,” he amended himself. “Then we’ll give him the chance to prove it, won’t we?” Plumber didn’t say anything. Visions of ratings, and maybe even an Emmy, were dancing in the eyes of his junior colleague like sugar plums on Christmas Eve. In any case, Donner was the anchor, and Plumber was the commentator, and Tom had the ear of the front office in New York, which had once been peopled by men of his own generation, but was now entirely populated by people of Donner’s, businessmen more than journalists, who saw ratings as the Holy Grail on their quarterly earnings statements. Well, Ryan liked businessmen, didn’t he? “I suppose.”
THE HELICOPTER LANDED on the South Lawn pad. The crew chief jerked the door open and jumped out, next helping the First Lady out with a smile. Her portion of the Detail followed, walking up the gentle slope to the south entrance, then to the elevator, where Roy Altman pushed the button for her, since the First Lady wasn’t allowed to do that, either.
“SURGEON is in the elevator, heading for the residence,” Agent Raman reported from the ground floor.
“Roger,” Andrea Price acknowledged upstairs. She’d already had some people from the Technical Security Unit check all the metal detectors the NBC crew had passed on the way out. The TSU chief commented that occasionally they got a little fluky, and the large-format Beta tapes the networks used could easily be damaged–but he didn’t think so. Maybe a line surge, she’d asked. No chance, he’d replied, reminding her archly that even the air in the White House was checked continuously by his people. Andrea debated discussing that with the chief of staff, but it would have been no use. Damn the reporters anyway. They were the biggest pain in the ass on the campus.
“Hi, Andrea,” Cathy said, breezing past her.
“Hello, Dr. Ryan. Dinner is just coming up now.”
“Thank you,” SURGEON replied on her way into the bedroom. She stopped on entering, seeing that a dress and
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jewelry were on her valet. Frowning, she kicked off her shoes and got casual clothes for dinner, wondering, as always, if there were cameras hidden somewhere to record the event.