Sharon usually came with him to those dinners. Being in the health-food business, she was generally unhappy with the fare, though she always loved the settings, which were from different administrations, different centuries.

When Sharon couldn't make it, Op-Center's press liaison Ann Farris went with Hood. She liked any food that was put in front of her and, unlike Sharon, enjoyed talking to whoever she was seated with.

This was the first time Hood had come stag. Regardless of how the White House might try to position it, Hood did not consider Mala Chatterjee as his date. The UN secretary-general was also coming alone and was assigned a seat at Hood's table, directly to his left.

Hood opened the door and looked into the long, chandelier-lit dining room. Fourteen round tables had been brought into the dining room. Each one was set for ten people. Hood's invitation had said that he was seated at table two, near the center of the room. That was good.

He was rarely seated so close to the president. If things got tense between him and Chatterjee, Hood would be able to exchange knowing glances with the First Lady.

Megan Lawrence had been raised in Santa Barbara, California.

She had spent time with Hood when he was mayor of Los Angeles, and they got to know each other quite well. She was a smart, classy lady with a dry sense of humor.

While senior staff members watched, liveried White House wait staff hurried around, making last-minute adjustments to the rose centerpieces.

They were dressed in black jackets and were multiethnic, which was to be expected at an affair of this kind.

The White House selected from a large pool of security-cleared hourly employees. And though no one liked to admit it, the composition of the staff was determined by the nature of the dinner. The young and attractive personnel were filling crystal water glasses and making sure the flatware was spaced exactly alike from setting to setting.

Straight ahead was the towering 1869 portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hadn't impressed Alexander. It was the only painting in the dining room. Directly across from him, inscribed on the mantel, was a passage written by John Adams to his wife Abigail before they moved into the newly completed executive mansion. Franklin Roosevelt had read the lines and liked them so much that they became the official White House prayer. The inscription read:

I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it.

May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof- Sorry, Mr.

Adams, Hood thought. We managed to blow that one.

One of the senior attendants walked over. Dressed in white trousers and a white waistcoat with gold braid, he politely but insistently shut the door. Hood stepped back into the Red Room. It had grown noisier and more crowded as people began filing in from the Blue Room.