With both hard copy and a diskette of the Options Paper in his small black briefcase, Paul Hood hurried to his car in Op-Center's underground parking lot. Once inside, he handcuffed the briefcase to his belt and locked the doors-- he also carried a.38 in a shoulder holster when he was carrying secret documents-- then logged himself out using the keypad at the gate; the sentry visually ID'd his badge and marked the time of his departure on a separate computer. This process was virtually identical to the procedure each employee went through upstairs. The code here was different from the one upstairs, and the feeling was that security might be compromised at one point, but rarely two.

Which doesn't matter much, Hood mused, If we've got someone slipping into our computers without getting near the place.

Distrustful of technology, Hood had little understanding of the way it worked. But he was keenly interested to hear what had happened this morning: Stoll was the best at what he did, and if something got past him it had to be one for the books.

As he cleared the concrete structure and drove toward the gate at Andrews-- a third and final checkpoint, card ID only-- he snapped up the phone. He called information, got the number of the hospital, and punched it in. He was connected to their son's room.

"Hello."

"Sharon-- hi. How is he?"

She hesitated. "I've been waiting for you to call."

"Sorry. We've got a situation." The phone was not secure; he couldn't say more. "How's Alex?"

"They have him in a tent."

"What about the injections?"

"They didn't work. His lungs are too full of fluid. They have to control his breathing until-- until he clears up."

"Are they concerned?"

"I am," she said.

"So am I. But what do they say, honey?"

"This is standard. But so are the injections, and those didn't work."

Shit. He looked at his watch and cursed Rodgers for not being here. What the hell kind of goddamn business was he in where he had to choose between being at his ailing son's side and being with the President-- and picked the latter. He thought of how unimportant this would all seem if anything happened to Alexander. But what he did today would affect thousands of lives, maybe tens of thousands. He had no choice but to finish what he'd begun.

"I'm going to call Dr. Trias at Walter Reed and ask him to come over. He'll make sure that everything possible is being done."

"Will he hold my hand, Paul?" she asked, and hung up.

"No," he said to the dial tone. "No, he won't."

Hood lay the receiver back in the cradle. He squeezed the rim of the steering wheel until his forearms ached, angry because he couldn't be there, but also frustrated because Sharon was exacting her pound of flesh. In her heart, she knew that as much as he loved her and Alex and wanted to be at the hospital, there wasn't much he could do there. He would sit, hold her hand for a few minutes, then walk around and be otherwise useless just as he was when his children were born. The first time he'd tried to help her breathe through a contraction, she'd screamed for him to get the hell away from her and find the nurse. It was an important lesson: Hood learned that when a woman wanted you, it wasn't the same as her needing you.