Vice President Callan Sloane set her encrypted iPad on the coffee table. It was early, and she needed to mainline some caffeine before digging in to the PDB—President’s Daily Brief. Outside the window, her assigned Secret Service agents strolled along the veranda and through the white-latticed gazebo into the gardens, enjoying the beautiful spring morning. Soon it would be hot and humid, everyone sweating, her included, a typical D.C. summer, but for now, the air was clear and cool, the flowers bloomed, and Callan was left to her own devices for another hour. She liked eating alone in the living room, with none of her people sneaking in to get a breath of air-conditioned air, or the cook bustling around preparing for the inevitable twice-weekly dinner parties.
Every day started the same for her. Rise at six; hit the treadmill; shower, feed and play with the cats; then move downstairs; grab the coffee, apple, and granola bar she preferred; and set up shop in the living room. It was clean and serene, with lush floor-to-ceiling draperies and cool, neutral beige tones, not the cluttered mess of her upstairs office or the formal severity of her two White House offices. It was much more her.
She drank her coffee from a chipped blue mug she’d brought from home when she’d moved into the vice president’s mansion. The mug had once read DODGERS, a gift from her baseball-loving dad before he’d died of a sudden heart attack five years before. She treasured it, couldn’t talk herself into not using it, though it would break one day and then where would she be? Up to her ears in Super Glue.
The PDB was the first thing she looked at once she settled in for breakfast. It was a daily intelligence publication that had started with President Truman, back in the late forties, to brief him on the immediate threats to the United States.
Callan set down her coffee and swiped a finger across her highly encrypted iPad. She knew what was tops on the PDB today—the bombing in New Jersey. It was being attributed to the terror group Celebrants of Earth. There’d also been a major cyber-attack on the oil sector, possibly tied to the Bayway bombing. But the biggest item would be about the current peace talks in Geneva and Israel’s balking over Iran’s latest claim that they had no plans to launch any nuclear weapons ever, even in the distant future, at Israel. Like anyone would believe that, ever, except for the president. The world’s going to Hell in a handbasket, as her grandmother used to say. Callan took some comfort from the knowledge that this was the belief of every generation, probably back to the cavemen. Truman had dealt with far worse than her boss, President Jefferson Bradley, but it was a different world back then. Today the nation’s enemies no longer wore uniforms and goose-stepped to cheering crowds. Now their enemies were faceless. They attacked silently, by land, sea, air, or computer, something Truman couldn’t have imagined.
Her cell rang. It was sitting on the table by her half-eaten apple. She went on alert when she saw the number. The president rarely called her directly. That meant he wanted to talk about Israel and how they were trying to destroy his precious Middle East peace talks.
“Good morning, sir.”
No hello, only: “Did you read the PDB?”