Ultimatum (33 page)

There he was, turning to the
Toronto Herald
reporter. Her question. Then he was staring. For an instant. Like he was stunned. Then the sideways glance. Benton’s heart sank when he saw it. “Help me out here,” it was saying. “I don’t know what to say.” Worse. “How the hell did she find out about that?”

It’s the cover-up that gets you, he thought, not the misdemeanor. That was the great lesson Richard Nixon handed down to posterity.

He looked around. Jodie Ames was staring at him, as if she had just seen that glance for the first time.

“Is it. . .” She stopped before she uttered the word she wouldn’t be able to take back. Besides, she didn’t need his answer. She could see, from that look. It was true. She didn’t want to make the president lie to her.

“Should we take the footage off the site?” she asked quietly.

Benton shook his head. “That’ll turn into another story.”

News moves fast through the West Wing. John Eales came in. A moment later Ben Hoffman arrived.

“We need to prepare some kind of communication,” said Jodie. “My phone’s going to be running hot.”

“The president gets risk assessments and scenario analyses all the time,” began Eales smoothly, as if he was giving dictation. “Some of them are designed to be purposefully extreme. It’s possible there was an analysis that used assumptions along these lines, but it’s only one of many, and it’s not White House policy to comment on every scenario analysis that’s provided to it because if we did, that’s all we’d ever be commenting on . . .”

Benton stopped listening. His mind was following another line of thought. Someone had leaked. Who?

“Show me what you’ve got when it’s ready,” said Eales.

Benton was aware that there was silence in the room. Jodie was looking at him. “Are you happy with that, sir? What John just said?”

Benton nodded.

“Okay.” Ames threw a last glance at the screen, now showing the White House website home page. “I’ll try it.”

She left.

Benton turned to Eales and Hoffman. “What do you think?”

John Eales threw himself down in a sofa. “Joe, you looked guilty as hell.”

~ * ~

Thursday, March 24

Oval Office, The White House

His day was meant to have started at eight o’clock with the morning CIA briefing followed by a meeting to review communication strategy after the previous day’s events. It started at six a.m. with a phone call from Erin O’Donnell.

Something had happened at Whitefish. It was unclear yet whether some or all of the group had attempted a breakout, or whether they had simply provoked the FBI into a firefight. All O’Donnell knew was that in the predawn darkness, shots had been exchanged.

Katzenberger rang a couple of minutes later. It turned out the firefight was still taking place. The FBI was going in.

From that moment, through everything else that happened that day, Benton was conscious that the final assault at Whitefish was under way. It was as if he could physically feel the shackles on his hands constraining him from what he wanted to do. If the siege ended well, those shackles would be loosened. If it ended in a massacre, they would be screwed tighter than ever.

At 8:15, Ames, Hoffman and Eales were in the Oval Office to go over the communication strategy. Jodie’s face was grim.

“Jodie, it couldn’t be that bad,” Benton chivvied her as he sat down.

Ames shook her head. She wasn’t in the mood to smile.

“What’s happening?”

“The environmental groups are having a field day. They’re saying the figures the
Toronto Herald
journalist gave out are a good scenario. They’re saying they’ve been telling us this since the moment they took office. Apparently, they’ve sent us these figures.”

The president glanced at Hoffman. “Have they?”

“Probably. You wouldn’t believe what we get. There’s some guy who keeps sending e-mails that the end of the world’s coming tomorrow . . .” Ben stopped in midsentence. “That’s a thought. Why don’t we get some journalist to stand up at your next conference and ask if it’s true you’ve had a report that the world’s ending tomorrow?”

The president stared at him. So did Jodie.

Ben glanced at Eales. “Why not? It might work.”

“Mr. President, the problem,” said Ames, “is it’s becoming a trust thing. You’ve never been doubted on the trust issue. Whatever else anyone’s thrown at you, you’ve always been rock solid on trust.”

The president waited. He knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming next.

“NewsPoll ran a sample last night, divided between those who had seen the footage and those who hadn’t. The question was simply: Do you trust the president? Those who hadn’t seen the footage, seventy-eight percent, right up where you normally are. Those who had seen it, fifty-four.”

“That’s NewsPoll,” snarled Eales. “A bunch of self-selected, self-important respondents who haven’t got anything better to do than sit around doing online polls. We’ll get our own polling. I’ll get Chris Plenty to take a look.”

“John, everyone knows the NewsPoll methodology is hardly scientific, but I think they’re picking up on something here. More importantly, every other press outlet agrees. They’re all quoting the NewsPoll numbers.

“Jodie, what do you suggest?” asked Benton.

“I want to lay out a defense of everything you’ve done. We can show without question that you’ve moved to carry out your major campaign promises in your first hundred days faster and more comprehensively than any other president in modern times. If that’s not a trust issue, I don’t know what is. I’ve had Barry do some research on Gartner.” Jodie glanced at her handheld. “Of the eighteen major pledges during his campaign for his first term, only four of them received any kind of action during his first year in office. And we can show that already a good twelve of your pledges are being actioned. That’s a proud standard and we should put it out there.”

“Comparing ourselves to Gartner is not a proud standard,” said Eales, “no matter what we’ve done.”

“We can check Shawcross.”

Eales shook his head.

“Jodie,” said the president, “I think what John’s saying is we don’t want to fight them on this. And I agree. I don’t want to make trust an issue by responding. If we do that, we’ll be arguing about trust for the next four years. Trust is something you earn by doing, not by talking. If you need to address the issue, just tell them that, and then focus on what we’re doing.”

“I still think—”

“Sorry, Jodie. Maybe we’ll use the comparison some other time. Not now. What else can you suggest?”

“We could bring forward our announcement of the Teacher Support Program. We were planning that for next week, but we could advance it. Personally, I don’t favor that. It smacks of trying to divert attention. The press won’t buy it, and if it doesn’t work, we lose the mileage we could have got out of it.”

The president glanced at Eales.

“Sounds to me that idea works both ways,” said Eales. “It’s a pledge you made back in the campaign, and Jodie, it lets you make your point, we’re fulfilling promises.”

Ames shook her head. “They won’t go for it. We’ll just lose it.”

There was silence.

“And what am I saying on the other thing?” asked Ames. “The sea levels, the evacuation of Miami?”

“What we agreed yesterday,” said Eales. “We get all kinds of scenario analyses, including extremely hypothetical ones, and we don’t comment on them. As far as action is concerned, there’s an established multilateral procedure going on, the planning for the Kyoto 4 round under the auspices of the United Nations. The United States will play its part, and we’ll share what we know with our partners in that process.”

“Can I say the president personally is fully committed to that process?”

“Go with the wording John just gave you,” said Benton quietly.

Ames shook her head. “The press isn’t going to like it. This is just like what we did over the Chinese contracts. It’s a generic response. There’s no specifics. They want something real.”

“You can say I’m going to meet Nleki.”

Eales and Hoffman looked at the president in surprise.

“Ben, let Al know. Let’s not do the meeting too soon, huh? Spin it out a couple of months.”

“You sure you want to meet him?” said Eales.

“There’s no reason for me not to.”

“You want me to let Larry know?” asked Hoffman.

“No, I’ll do that.”

Jodie frowned. “So I go with the same line as yesterday, but I say you’re going to meet the UN secretary-general?”

“As part of the U.S. commitment to playing its part in the process. That’s it. That’s as far as you go.”

Jodie still didn’t look happy. “That’s better. It’s not much, though.”

“Jodie,” said Benton, “there’s something else happening that you need to know about. At Whitefish. It started a couple of hours ago. We’re going to finish the siege.”

Now the expression on Ames’s face changed. “Can we leak that?” she asked eagerly.

“No, I’m not going to compromise the operation. Once it’s finished, it’s all yours.”

“How soon will they be done?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’ll get Miami off our backs. It’ll knock it right off the front pages. That’s great.”

“Not if it ends up like Waco,” said Hoffman. “Already we’ve got a trust issue. We’re not going to look too good if we end up with a hundred dead rednecks on our hands.”

Eales smiled. “Come on, Ben. No one cares about dead rednecks except other rednecks.”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” said the president.

“I’ll get Barry to prepare our case,” said Ames. “We’ll lay out the way you’ve handled it, Mr. President, show that you’ve been moderate and patient. Whatever happens, everything you’ve done you’ve done to protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens. It’ll be ready to go.” Jodie Ames had brightened up. “Okay. I’ll get to work.”

Ben and John stayed on after Jodie left.

“The wonders of the modern news cycle,” said Eales. “In’t it great?”

“You think Katzenberger’s guys know what they’re doing out there?” asked Hoffman.

“I hope so,” said Benton. “They’ve had seven weeks to figure it out.”

There was silence.

Benton looked at Eales. “Are we trying to find out who leaked?”

The president wasn’t talking about Whitefish now, and Eales knew it. “Likelihood is we won’t find the source. It’s probably someone on the Chinese side anyway.”

“Or some do-gooder at the ESU,” said Hoffman.

Benton didn’t reply. He had his own suspicion.

“This is going to hurt us, Joe,” said Eales.

Hoffman nodded. “The Budget Reconciliation Bill goes to the Hill next week. Then we’re scheduled for the Small Business Bill two weeks after that. They’re both crucial.”

“And they’re all going to take months,” said Benton. “Let’s not panic. A dip in my ratings now doesn’t make any difference as long as we can bring them back. We just need to keep the momentum going until the ratings come up.”