DR CISCO STARED at the hospital room TV, stunned over what he’d just heard. This couldn’t be… Not after… His mind wound back to the reports of when Andy and Paul had rushed Isabel in. Her panicked intensity. Her demands for a phone. Even the confused ramblings he heard himself before she went under anaesthesia. What was going on? Cisco was tentative about Ed, but increasingly certain he should mention this. He heaved in a chestful of air but, when he saw the thin smile cracking Ed’s lips apart, he hesitated.
The door burst open and Davey rushed in. He’d run from the cafeteria where, rather obviously, he’d been shovelling a breakfast of scrambled eggs and crispy bacon into his mouth.
George followed him in, panting, his liver spots blotched over the craze of veins on his cheeks, and his grey ponytail swinging. “Did you hear?” he said, before seeing the TV to realise they had. “Foster… The White House won’t say where he is,” he puffed. “What if he’s dead, too?”
“That’s what they’ve just been asking,” said Cisco, pointing to the TV.
“Do you r-realise…?” stuttered George, shaking his head at the enormity of what he was about to say, “if Foster’s dead, it means Isabel’s…”
“President.”
“It’s incred…”
“It’s justice,” said Ed, tossing a serene shrug and turning to the window, observing the police barrier now encircling the hospital, and the milling security agents and local cops holding back the growing crowd of onlookers.
Both the doctor and George eyed Ed strangely, but George was less controlled and was about to say something he would have regretted when Davey tugged his sleeve and pointed to the TV. The nine-year-old had been doing his best to read the announcer’s lips simultaneously with the newsbar scrolling across the bottom of the screen…
ISABEL DIAZ… NEXT IN LINE AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES… CURRENTLY UNDER SEDATION AFTER WOLF…
Meanwhile, the TV commentator—a local—was mid-sentence:
…last heard of on board Air Force One late last night. According to sources, the President and First Lady were flying to St Louis after Mr Taylor’s fatal heart attack yesterday to sit with the former Vice-President’s widow, Julia Taylor and their three small children. But Air Force One never landed at Lambert-St Louis Airport. The White House won’t say where it went and has completely clammed up over the President’s whereabouts, though senior officials insist off-the-record there is nothing unusual. Excuse me! Our Vice-President is dead, our President is unaccounted for even though he’s due to deliver his State of the Union Address tomorrow night, and finally the next in line is discovered up in the mountains, by chance I might add, herself only hours from death. No wonder the conspiracy theorists…
His eyes flashed off camera for a split second.
Just a moment… we’re crossing to Washington. Secretary of State Bert Robinson has just called a media conference…
The Secretary stood on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by the leadership of both major political parties:
…inform you that President Foster suffered an acute… a very serious… and sudden asthma attack while on board Air Force One on his way to St Louis late last night, but I am glad to say he survived it and is doing well. The White House Physician, Rear Admiral Dr Morris Blakeney was, as always, on board and, working with the aircraft’s excellent medical facilities and crew, he arrested the attack. Despite the timing, we see no suspicious link to yesterday’s tragic death of Vice-President Taylor. I’ll take questions.
The first rang out like a shot:
“Mr Secretary. Where is President Foster right now?”
“He is safe, recuperating in a secure location.”
“But if there is nothing suspicious, Mr Secretary, why won’t you tell the American people where he is?”
The Secretary’s eyes moved in a manner that Ed’s interrogation training told him that a lie or an evasion was coming:
“I understand your concern, but please… the President is due to deliver his State of the Union message tomorrow night,” the Secretary said, “and he will.”
Another question immediately hammered at him. It was from an old hand in Washington, who had been around long enough to know personally that a president didn’t actually have to attend Congress to deliver the State of the Union Address. Carter and Nixon had merely sent their last State of the Union messages in writing, as had Truman, though that was before his time, and he’d heard that Eisenhower had recorded one of his in a film made when he was recuperating from a heart attack.
“You said message, not address. President Foster is going to deliver his State of the Union in person isn’t he?”
The journalist also knew that a president’s address in their first year in office was not formally a State of the Union, but this wasn’t the moment to quibble about trivia.
“You can assume he will be there,” said the Secretary.
“Assume? You’re choosing your words extremely carefully, sir. My simple question to you is this: is President Foster alive and conscious? A straight yes or no, please.”
Even to the untrained eye, the Secretary was looking uncomfortable as he shifted on his feet: