Oath of Office

“I do,” Montgomery managed to say. “These… kind of… hit pieces… come out… all the time… But this… feels… differ… ent…”

Garcia gave him another side eye, slowing even more. “Tell me if you need to sto—”

“I need to stop,” Montgomery blurted. He tried to walk but ended up bent over at the waist instead, hands braced on his knees. “How… far was that?”

“A little over four miles,” she said, grinning.

“Shit.” Montgomery coughed. “I should be able to run four miles.”

“At a seven-minute pace? Awfully fast for a sixty-year-old.”

“I’m forty-eight… thank you very much.” The spasms in Montgomery’s lungs began to subside. “Can we please get back to saving the President?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Garcia said. “Cybercrimes has a pile of intel regarding bots and propaganda warehouses all over China, Eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf. The Internet is the battleground for the new cold war. This audio and video manipulation is relatively new — at least the level of sophistication we’re seeing here. Five years ago, I would have told you a state actor was behind this particular video, but with computers being what they are today… this could be some middle school kid working out of his parents’ basement in Bethesda.”

Montgomery rubbed his eyes, chasing away the last of the stars. “Our protective intelligence guys told me the same thing.” He shook his head. “Wouldn’t a kid go for the laugh? This threat of hoarding a flu vaccine is killing the stock market, not to mention terrifying everyone.”

“You obviously don’t know teenagers,” Garcia said. “They find other people’s pain hilarious.” She gave a crooked, crazy-eyed smile, looking like she knew just such a child. “Anyway, I spoke to Legal first thing this morning. They’re going to run it by the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, but so far they don’t see a crime here. Public figures have to take a certain amount of pelting with rotten fruit.”

“I know,” Montgomery said, hangdog.

An eerily familiar voice caught his attention from the television mounted on a concrete pillar above the free-weight area. The voice was female and husky, like Anne Bancroft with a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. It took Montgomery only a second to recognize it was Michelle Chadwick, the senior senator from Arizona.

“…impossible to say if these allegations are true at this juncture, but I can assure you my office is addressing this. Sanctioned assassinations, covering up epidemics, hoarding vaccine for the elite… Any one of these is a serious breach of the public trust…”

The agents rounded the corner and stopped to watch.

The crawler on the bottom of the screen said this was a taped press conference given by the senator an hour before.

“Listen to her,” Montgomery said. “Those Internet stories are awfully damned convenient.”

Garcia looked up at him, her brow knitting over narrowed eyes. “You really think she’s behind it?”

“Probably not,” Montgomery said. “But she’s sure as shit happy about it.”

“And piling on,” Garcia said.

At forty-six, Senator Chadwick was young to be on her third term in the United States Senate. She was a bony woman, gaunt even, with high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Auburn hair draped her head like a helmet. It was common knowledge around the Beltway watercooler that the twice-divorced senator had leapt over the bounds of propriety with a staffer named Corey Fite, deciding the #MeToo movement pertained only to powerful men and their subordinates. Fite had not complained as of yet, and Chadwick’s fellow senators didn’t want to rock the boat and screw up their own quasi-consensual relationships.

Her grandfather had made his first million as a Scottsdale real estate man when he came home from World War II. Still, she came from new money so far as the East Coast aristocrats were concerned, and the chip on her shoulder was a heavy one. Jack Ryan was rich — much richer than she was. The President came from blue-collar roots and made his money instead of inheriting it, which only served to infuriate her all the more. She consistently referred to him as a Washington blue blood, going so far as to affect a boarding-school lockjaw as if she were clenching an FDR cigarette holder in her teeth when she spoke of him.

“…past allegations of lying to Congress, an extramarital affair, insider trading, though unsubstantiated.”

“Past allegations.” Montgomery came up on his toes, ready to rip the television off the pillar. “How about exonerated,” he spat. “Unsubstantiated my ass… That’s just another way of saying he’s hiding something.”

“Let’s walk,” Garcia said.

“Hang on.”