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'â€Å"I have an unavoidableness!” The doer was breathless. â€Å"… phone c alto dragher for the death chair.”\r\n tench looked incredulous. â€Å" non now, you dont!”\r\nâ€Å"Its from Rachel sacristan. She says its urgent.”\r\nThe scowl that darkened tenchs face appeared to be to a greater extent one of puzzlement than anger. tench eyed the cordless phone. â€Å"Thats a house line. Thats not secure.”\r\nâ€Å"No, maam. But the immersion call is open anyway. Shes on a radiophone. She postulate to allow out to the President right away.”\r\nâ€Å"Live in ninety trices!”\r\ntenchs cold eyes stared, and she held out a spider- uniform hand. â€Å"Give me the phone.”\r\nThe operators datet was pounding now. â€Å"Ms. Sexton wants to speak to President Herney directly. She told me to postpone the puppy love conference until shed talked to him. I establishd-â€Å"\r\ntench stepped toward the operator now, her vo nut a hum whisper. â€Å"Let me tell you how this works. You do not take aim orders from the daughter of the Presidents opponent, you take them from me. I can assure you, this is as close as you are acquire to the President until I find out what the sanatorium is going on.”\r\nThe operator looked toward the President, who was now surrounded by microphone technicians, stylists, and some(prenominal) staff members talking him through and through final revisions of his speech.\r\nâ€Å"Sixty seconds!” the television supervisor yelled.\r\nOnboard the Charlotte, Rachel Sexton was pacing wildly in the tight quadrangle when she finally heard a click on the telephone line.\r\nA raspy voice came on. â€Å" hello?”\r\nâ€Å"President Herney?” Rachel blurted.\r\nâ€Å"Marjorie Tench,” the voice corrected. â€Å"I am the Presidents higher-ranking adviser. Whoever this is, I must warn you that prank calls against the purity digest are in violation of-â€Å" \r\nFor Christs interest! â€Å"This is not a prank! This is Rachel Sexton. Im your NRO liaison and-â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"I am aware of who Rachel Sexton is, maam. And I am doubtful that you are she. Youve called the face cloth household on an unsecured line telling me to interrupt a major presidential broadcast. That is hardly proper MO for roughlyone with-â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Listen,” Rachel fumed, â€Å"I briefed your whole staff a couple of hours ago on a meteorite. You sit down in the present row. You watched my briefing on a television sitting on the Presidents desk! Any questions?”\r\nTench fell silent a moment. â€Å"Ms. Sexton, what is the centre of this?”\r\nâ€Å"The meaning is that you have to stop the President! His meteorite data is all wrong! Weve just learned the meteorite was inserted from beneath the ice shelf. I dont come by whom, and I dont know why! But things are not what they depend up here! The President is about to own some seriously errant data, and I strongly advise-â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Wait one goddamned minute!” Tench lowered her voice. â€Å"Do you realize what you are express?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes! I suspect the NASA administrator has orchestrated some kind of large-scale fraud, and President Herney is about to get caught in the middle. Youve at least got to postpone ten minutes so I can inform to him whats been going on up here. Someone tested to kill me, for Gods sake!”\r\nTenchs voice turned to ice. â€Å"Ms. Sexton, let me give you a word of warning. If you are having second thoughts about your role in helping the White family line in this campaign, you should have thought of that pine before you personally endorsed that meteorite data for the President.”\r\nâ€Å"What!” Is she even audience?\r\nâ€Å"Im revolted by your display. Using an unsecured line is a cheap stunt. Implying the meteorite data has been faked? What kind of intelligence appointed uses a radiophone to call the White House and talk about classified information? simply you are hoping someone intercepts this message.”\r\nâ€Å"Norah Mangor was killed over this! Dr. Ming is also dead. Youve got to warn-â€Å"\r\nâ€Å" forego right there! I dont know what youre playacting at, but I will remind you-and anyone else who happens to be intercepting this phone call-that the White House possesses videotaped depositions from NASAs top scientists, several renowned civilian scientists, and yourself, Ms. Sexton, all endorsing the meteorite data as accurate. Why you are suddenly c intermission your story, I can only imagine. Whatever the reason, consider yourself palliate of your White House post as of this instant, and if you hand over to taint this discovery with any more(prenominal) ridiculous allegations of foul play, I assure you the White House and NASA will sue you for defamation so libertine you wont have a chance to pack a suitcase before you go to jail.”\r\nRache l opened her sassing to speak, but no words came.\r\nâ€Å"Zach Herney has been generous to you,” Tench snapped, â€Å"and frankly this smacks of a cheap Sexton furtherance stunt. Drop it right now, or well press charges. I swear it.”\r\nThe line went dead.\r\nRachels mouth was still hanging open when the master key knocked on the door.\r\nâ€Å"Ms. Sexton?” the captain state, peering in. â€Å"Were picking up a faint call for from Canadian National Radio. President Zach Herney has just begun his press conference.”\r\n68\r\nStanding at the podium in the White House Briefing Room, Zach Herney felt the light of the media lights and knew the world was watching. The targeted blitz performed by the White House Press Office had created a contagion of media buzz. Those who did not hear about the address via television, radio, or on-line(a) news invariably heard about it from neighbors, coworkers, and family. By 8:00 P.M., anyone not living in a cave was spe culating about the topic of the Presidents address. In disallow and living rooms over the globe, millions leaned toward their televisions in upset wonder.\r\nIt was during moments like these-facing the world-that Zach Herney truly felt the weight of his office. Anyone who said power was not addictive had never in truth experienced it. As he began his address, however, Herney sensed something was amiss. He was not a man prone to defend fright, and so the tingle of apprehension now fasten in his core startled him.\r\nIts the magnitude of the audience, he told himself. And further he knew something else. Instinct. Something he had seen.\r\nIt had been such a little thing, and yet…\r\nHe told himself to forget it. It was nothing. And yet it stuck.\r\nTench.\r\nMoments ago, as Herney was preparing to take the stage, he had seen Marjorie Tench in the yellow hallway, talking on a cordless phone. This was strange in itself, but it was made more so by the White House operator sta nding beside her, her face white with apprehension. Herney could not hear Tenchs phone conversation, but he could see it was contentious. Tench was arguing with a vehemence and anger the President had seldom seen-even from Tench. He paused a moment and caught her eye, inquisitive.\r\nTench gave him the thumbs-up. Herney had never seen Tench give anyone the thumbs-up. It was the prevail contrive in Herneys mind as he was cued onto the stage.\r\nOn the blue rug in the press surface area inside the NASA habisphere on Ellesmere Island, Administrator Lawrence Ekstrom was seated at the center of the long symposium table, flanked by top NASA officials and scientists. On a large monitor facing them the Presidents orifice statement was being piped in live. The remainder of the NASA confederacy was huddled around other monitors, teeming with uplift as their commander-in-chief launched into his press conference.\r\nâ€Å"Good evening,” Herney was saying, sounding uncharacteristica lly stiff. â€Å"To my fellow countrymen, and to our friends around the world… â€Å"\r\nEkstrom gazed at the great charred mass of rock displayed prominently in front of him. His eyes moved to a standby monitor, where he watched himself, flanked by his most austere personnel, against a scope of a huge American flag and NASA logo. The hammy lighting made the setting look like some kind of neomodern painting-the twelve apostles at the last supper. Zach Herney had turned this whole thing into a governmental sideshow. Herney had no choice. Ekstrom still felt like a televangelist, packaging God for the masses.\r\n'