CHAPTER 1
Madame Secretary,” said Charles Boynton, hurrying beside his boss as she rushed down Mahogany Row to her office in the State Department. “You have eight minutes to get to the Capitol.”
“It’s ten minutes away,” said Ellen Adams, breaking into a run. “And I have to shower and change. Unless…” She stopped and turned to her Chief of Staff. “I can go like this?”
She held out her arms to give him a good look at her. There was no mistaking the plea in her eyes, the anxiety in her voice, and the fact she looked like she’d just been dragged behind a piece of rusty farm equipment.
His face contorted in a smile that seemed to cause him pain.
In her late fifties, Ellen Adams was medium height, trim, elegant. A good dress sense and Spanx concealed her love of eclairs. Her makeup was subtle, bringing out her intelligent blue eyes while not trying to hide her age. She had no need to pretend to be younger than she was, but neither did she want to appear older.
Her hairdresser, when applying the specially formulated coloring, called her an “Eminence Blonde.”
“With all due respect, Madame Secretary, you look like a hobo.”
“Thank God he respects you,” whispered Betsy Jameson, Ellen’s best friend and counselor.
After a twenty-two-hour day that had started with Secretary Adams hosting a diplomatic breakfast at the American embassy in Seoul, and included high-level talks on regional security and efforts to salvage an unexpectedly crumbling and vital trade deal, the endless day had ended with a tour of a fertilizer plant in Gangwon Province, though that had been a cover for a quick trip to the DMZ.
After that, Ellen Adams had trudged onto the flight home. Once in the air, the first thing she’d done was remove the Spanx and pour a large glass of Chardonnay.
She’d then spent several hours sending reports back to her deputies and the President, and reading the incoming memos. Or at least trying to. She’d fallen asleep facedown on a report from State on staffing in the Iceland embassy.
She woke with a jerk when her assistant touched her shoulder.
“Madame Secretary, we’re about to land.”
“Where?”
“Washington.”
“State?” She sat up and ran her hands through her hair, making it stand straight up, as though she’d had a scare or a very good idea.
She was hoping it was Seattle. To refuel, or take on food, or perhaps there was some fortuitous in-flight emergency. There was that, she knew, though it was neither mechanical nor fortuitous.
The emergency was that she’d fallen asleep and still needed to shower and—
“DC.”
“Oh God, Ginny. Couldn’t you have woken me up sooner?”
“I tried, but you just mumbled and went back to sleep.”
Ellen had a vague memory of that but had thought it had been a dream. “Thanks for trying. Do I have time to brush my teeth?”
There was a ding as the captain put on the seat belt sign.
“I’m afraid not.”
Ellen looked out the window of her government jet, which she jokingly called Air Force Three. She saw the dome of the Capitol Building, where she’d soon be seated.
She saw herself in the reflection. Hair askew. Mascara smeared. Clothing disheveled. Eyes bloodshot and burning from her contacts. There were lines of worry, of stress, that hadn’t been there just a month earlier at the inauguration. That bright, shiny day when the world was new and all seemed possible.
How she loved this country. This glorious, broken beacon.
After decades of building and running an international media empire that now spread across television networks, an all-news channel, websites, and newspapers, she’d handed it over to the next generation. Her daughter, Katherine.
After the past four years of watching the country she loved flail itself almost to death, she was now in a position to help it heal.
Since the death of her beloved Quinn, Ellen had felt her life not just empty but callow. Instead of diminishing with time, that sense had grown, the chasm widening. She increasingly felt the need to do more. To help more. To not report on the pain but do something to ease it. To give back.
The opportunity had come from the most unlikely source: President-Elect Douglas Williams. How quickly life could change. For the worse, yes. But also for the better.
And now Ellen Adams found herself on Air Force Three. As Secretary of State for the new President.
She was in a position to rebuild bridges to allies after the near-criminal incompetence of the former administration. She could mend vital relationships or lay down warnings to unfriendly nations. Those that might have harm in mind and the ability to carry it out.
Ellen Adams was in a position to no longer just talk about change, but to bring it about. To turn enemies into friends and keep chaos and terror at bay.
And yet…
The face that looked back at her no longer seemed quite so confident. She was looking at a stranger. A tired, disheveled, spent woman. Older than her years. And perhaps a little wiser. Or was it more cynical? She hoped not and wondered why it was suddenly difficult to tell the two apart.
Bringing out a tissue, she licked it and wiped the mascara away. Then, after smoothing her hair, she smiled at her reflection.
It was the face she kept by the door. The one the public had come to know. The press, her colleagues, foreign leaders. The confident, gracious, assured Secretary of State representing the most powerful nation on earth.
But it was a facade. Ellen Adams saw something else in her ghostly face. Something ghastly she took pains to hide even from herself. But exhaustion had allowed it to swarm over her defenses.
She saw fear. And its close kin, doubt.
Was it real or counterfeit? A near enemy whispering she was not good enough. Not up to the job. That she would screw it up, and thousands, perhaps millions of lives would be jeopardized?
She shoved it away, recognizing that it was unhelpful. But it whispered, even as it receded, that that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
After the plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Ellen had been hurried into an armored car, to read more memos, reports, emails. DC glided by, unseen now, as she got caught up.
Once in the basement garage of the monolithic Harry S. Truman Building, still called Foggy Bottom by longtime denizens, maybe even with affection, a phalanx formed to get her into the elevator and up to her private office on the seventh floor as quickly as possible.
Her Chief of Staff, Charles Boynton, met her at the elevator. He was one of the people assigned to the new Secretary of State by the President’s own Chief of Staff. Tall and gangly, his slender frame was due more to excessive nervous energy than exercise or good eating habits. His hair and muscle tone seemed to be in a race to jump ship.
Boynton had spent twenty-six years rising through the political ranks, finally landing a top job as a strategist on Douglas Williams’s successful presidential campaign. A campaign that had proven more brutal than most.
Charles Boynton had finally reached the inner sanctum and was determined to stay there. This was his reward for following orders. And being lucky in his choice of candidate.
Boynton found himself designing rules to keep unruly cabinet secretaries in line. In his view, they were temporary political appointments. Window dressing to his structure.
Together Ellen and her Chief of Staff rushed down the wood-paneled corridor of Mahogany Row toward the Secretary of State’s office, trailed by aides and assistants and her Diplomatic Security agents.
“Don’t worry,” said Betsy, racing to catch up. “They’re holding the State of the Union address for you. You can relax.”
“No, no,” said Boynton, his voice rising an octave. “You can’t relax. The President’s pissed. And by the way, it’s not officially a SOTU.”
“Oh, please, Charles. Try not to be pedantic.” Ellen stopped suddenly, almost causing a pileup. Slipping off her mud-caked heels, she ran in stocking feet along the plush carpet. Picking up her pace.
“And the President’s always pissed,” Betsy called after them. “Oh, you mean angry? Well, he’s always angry at Ellen.”
Boynton shot her a warning glance.
He didn’t like this Elizabeth Jameson. Betsy. An outsider whose only reason for being there was because she was a lifelong friend of the Secretary. Boynton knew it was the Secretary’s right to choose one close confidante, a counselor, to work with her. But he didn’t like it. The outsider brought an element of unpredictability to any situation.
And he did not like her. Privately he called her Mrs. Cleaver because she looked like Barbara Billingsley, the Beaver’s mother in the TV show. A model 1950s housewife.
Safe. Stable. Compliant.
Except this Mrs. Cleaver turned out to be not so black-and-white. She seemed to have swallowed Bette “Fuck ’Em If They Can’t Take a Joke” Midler. And while he quite liked the Divine Miss M, he thought perhaps not as the Secretary of State’s counselor.
Though Charles Boynton had to admit that what Betsy said was true. Douglas Williams had no love for his Secretary of State. And to say it was mutual was an understatement.
It had come as a huge shock when the newly elected President had chosen a political foe, a woman who’d used her vast resources to support his rival for the party nomination, for such a powerful and prestigious position.
It was an even greater shock when Ellen Adams had turned her media empire over to her grown daughter and accepted the post.
The news was gobbled up by politicos, pundits, colleagues, and spit out as gossip. It fed and filled political talk shows for weeks.
The appointment of Ellen Adams was fodder at DC dinner parties. It was all anyone at Off the Record, the basement bar of the Hay-Adams, could talk about.
Why did she accept?
Though by far the greater, more interesting question was why had then President-Elect Williams offered his most vocal, most vicious adversary a place in his cabinet? And State, of all things?
The prevailing theory was that Douglas Williams was either following Abraham Lincoln and assembling a Team of Rivals. Or, more likely, he was following Sun Tzu, the ancient military strategist, and was keeping his friends close but his enemies closer.
Though, as it turned out, both theories were wrong.
For his part Charles Boynton, Charles to his friends, cared about his boss only to the extent that Ellen Adams’s failures reflected badly on him, and he was damned if he’d be clinging to her coattails as she went down.
And after this trip to South Korea, her fortunes, and his, had taken a sharp turn south. And now they were holding up the entire fucking not–State of the Goddamned Union.
“Come on, come on. Hurry.”
“Enough.” Ellen skidded to a stop. “I won’t be bullied and herded. If I have to go like this, so be it.”
“You can’t,” said Boynton, his eyes wide with panic. “You look—”
“Yes, you’ve already said.” She turned to her friend. “Betsy?”
There was a pause during which all they could hear was Boynton snorting his displeasure.
“You look fine,” Betsy said quietly. “Maybe some lipstick.” She handed Ellen a tube from her own purse along with a hairbrush and compact.
“Come on, come on,” Boynton practically squeaked.
Holding Ellen’s bloodshot eyes, Betsy whispered, “An oxymoron walked into a bar…”
Ellen thought, then smiled. “And the silence was deafening.”
Betsy beamed. “Perfect.”
She watched as her friend took a deep breath, handed her big travel bag to her assistant, and turned to Boynton.
“Shall we?”
While she appeared composed, Secretary Adams’s heart was pounding as she walked in stocking feet, a filthy shoe dangling from each hand, back down Mahogany Row to the elevator. And the descent.
“Hurry, hurry.” Amir gestured to his wife. “They’re at the house.”
They could hear the banging behind them, the men shouting, commanding. Their words heavily accented but their meaning clear: “Dr. Bukhari, come out. Now.”
“Go.” Amir shoved Nasrin down the alley. “Run.”
“You?” she asked, clutching the satchel to her chest.
There was the splintering of wood as the door to their home in Kahuta, just outside Islamabad, was shattered.
“They don’t want me. It’s you they need to stop. I’ll distract them. Go, go.”
But as she turned, he grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, clutching her to his chest. “I love you. I’m so proud of you.”
He kissed her so hard their teeth collided and she could taste blood from her cut lip. But still she clung to him. And he to her. At the sounds of more shouts, closer now, they parted.
He almost asked her to let him know when she was safely at her destination. But didn’t. He knew she could not contact him.
He also knew, as did she, that he would not survive the night.
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