Spencerville

Seventeenth Street into the White House basement where the Situation Room was located, along with a few offices of the National Security Council. He’d been on the ground floor a few times whenever he’d had occasion to see the national security advisor in a previous administration.
    After Charlie signed in, the appointments man at the desk said to them, “Gentlemen, if you’ll take the elevator down, you can wait in the lounge. Someone will call you.”
    They took the small elevator to the basement, and another man met them and walked them to the lounge.
    The lounge, a euphemism for the basement waiting room, was newly appointed with clubby-type furnishings and was pleasant enough. There was a television tuned to CNN, and a long buffet table against the wall where you could help yourself to anything from coffee to donuts, or fruit and yogurt for the health-conscious, or most any snack you wished, except alcohol and cyanide.
    There were a dozen or so other people in the room, men and women, none of whom Keith recognized, but all of them throwing furtive glances toward the newcomers, trying to place their faces in the pantheon of Washington’s gods and goddesses of the moment.
    Charlie and Keith found two chairs at a coffee table and sat. Charlie asked, “You want coffee or anything?”
    “No, thanks, boss.”
    Charlie smiled in acknowledgment of the changed situation. He said, “Hey, if you take this job, your immediate supervisor will be the president’s national security advisor, not me.”
    “I thought I was going to
be
the national security advisor.”
    “No, you’ll work directly
for
him.”
    “When can I be president?”
    “Keith, I’m a little anxious about this meeting. Can you cut the shit?”
    “Sure. Do some push-ups. Works for me.”
    “I’d like a cigarette, but I can’t smoke here. What’s this place coming to?”
    Keith glanced around the room. Despite its nice decor, it was still a windowless basement room, and the atmosphere was the atmosphere of waiting rooms all over the world. There was that electric hum originating somewhere in the bowels of this building that forced in cool air or hot air, depending on the season, and after being away from that big-city, big-building hum for two months, he noticed it and didn’t like it.
    More to the point, there was a heightened sense of the surreal in this room, a feeling of almost impending doom, as if each man and woman in the place were awaiting his or her fate in one of those less pleasant subterranean rooms in countries where they shot you if your name was on that day’s list.
    Keith had had the opportunity to visit the prison basement of the Lubyanka, the former KGB headquarters in Moscow, which had become sort of a tourist attraction for selected former enemies of the defunct Soviet state, such as himself. The cells were gone, replaced by clerical space, but Keith had imagined being in the old cells, hearing the screams of tortured men and women, the names being called out, the echoing gunshot at the end of the corridor, where his guide explained how prisoners were shot in the back of the head as they walked.
    The waiting room of the West Wing of the White House was quite different, of course—yogurt and world news on TV—but the sense of waiting for the government to call your name was the same. It didn’t matter what they were calling your name for, it only mattered that you had to wait for it to be called.
    Keith decided then and there that he didn’t ever again want to wait for the government to call his name. They’d called his name twenty-five years before, and he’d answered the call. They called his name yesterday, and he answered the call. They’d call his name today, but today was different: Today was the last time he’d answer.
    The door opened, and an appointments man said, “Colonel Landry, Mr. Adair, will you come with me, please?”
    They stood and followed the young man to the elevator. They rode up to the lobby and followed the man to the Cabinet Room at the east end of the wing. The man knocked on the door, then opened it, and they were shown in by the appointments man. Inside, another man, whom Keith recognized as Ted Stansfield, came forward to greet them. Charlie said, “Ted, you remember Keith.”
    “Indeed I do.” They shook hands, and Stansfield said, “Delighted you could come.”
    “Delighted to be invited.”
    “Come, have a seat.” He indicated two chairs at the long dark wooden table