“I’d be glad to talk to Mike Freeman for you.”

“Let’s think ahead,” Eagle said. “Security at The Arrington is pretty good.”

“Better than good,” Stone pointed out, “especially while the president is here.”

“Right. And we’ll be in your skybox for Kate’s speech tonight, so I should be okay there.”

“Right.”

“And we’re out of here tomorrow morning.”

“If you’re comfortable, then I’ll try not to worry about you.”

“I’m never going to feel completely comfortable, knowing that Barbara and I are in the same town at the same time,” Eagle said, “but I can’t let myself get paranoid about it.”

“Don’t go armed tonight,” Stone said. “You’d never make it into the hall.”

“Don’t mention this to Susannah,” Eagle said. “She’d find Barbara and kill her.”

“You don’t need that,” Stone said.

“I do, but you’re right, I don’t,” Eagle replied.

Chapter 35

Stone and his guests, the Bacchettis, the Eagles, and Ann Keaton, were settled in the skybox while the conventioneers took their seats. Tonight’s program was short.

Promptly at six o’clock the lights dimmed, music swelled, and an enormous screen on the stage came to life. For the next thirty minutes, the audience followed Will Lee from his boyhood in Delano, Georgia, through university and law school, through his tenure as a legislative assistant and later chief of staff to the legendary senator from Georgia, Benjamin Carr, and as counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There was a brief snip of Will questioning Katharine Rule, a CIA analyst, who was testifying on an agency budget request, their first meeting. The film then followed Kate’s rise at the Agency to deputy director for intelligence, her marriage to Will, and finally to the passage of an act of Congress that allowed him to appoint her director of Central Intelligence. Brief attention was given to some of the crises where she was a principal adviser to the president, then to their travels around the world together, when she acted as both adviser and first lady. Then, as the film faded to black and the room to darkness, a voice proclaimed, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.” As Will Lee strode from the wings and took the podium to wild applause from the audience, the armored glass curtain rose from the floor.

He finally got them quieted. “Fellow delegates, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I am rapidly running out of occasions where I can address an event this large . . . and this friendly . . . so I have a great deal of gratitude to spread around, and that is best done to a captive audience. Don’t try to make a break for it, the doors are closed and guarded.” Big laugh.