Silence. He’d been speaking for most of that ten minutes, with the younger man interrupting a lot at first and then settling into silence.
“You’ve got that look on your face.”
“What look is that, Mr. President?”
“I told you to call me Jed. The look that says ‘Oh, my God! He’s finally cracked. This is it, the President has gone crazy.’ I’ve seen a lot of that in the past few years, since the MS thing. Only your face went on to say, ‘I wonder if C.J. can hold things together until the inauguration? Will we be able to cover this up? Poor old man, he’s been through a lot. Don’t want to expose him to public ridicule in the last days of his administration.’ That about right?”
“Mr. President… I…”
“Wait there.” The older man got up and went to his desk, pressing a button on the intercom. “Debbie, send the two officers in please.”
A moment later the President’s aide Curtis opened the door and admitted a man and a woman in US Army uniform. “Major Finn and Captain Finn, Mr. President.”
“Riley, Samantha! Come in! Come in!”
Matt Santos shook his head in disbelief for the umpteenth time that day and stood up. Three pairs of eyes watched him as he wandered over to the window to look at the White House gardens, the picture of order and normality compared with the world of chaos and evil he’d just been shown. There had been videos, photographs, a presentation of things he’d never dreamed about…
“I don’t understand. You authorized this? You, Jed?”
“Hell, no! Not my idea at all. It was all FDR’s fault!”
“What?”
Major Riley Finn spoke up. “The Initiative dated back to the Second World War, sir. It started out investigating reports of Nazi research into the supernatural. Turned out there was more to it than just superstition. Fortunately for the world, the Slayer at that time was German herself and knew the Nazis for what they were. But when our side found out that there were real threats involved… Well, the organization just grew and grew over the next few decades. Until the disaster at Sunnydale.”
“That was when I found out,” the outgoing President said. “The FBI and the GAO noticed the anomalies caused by the decision to shut down the Initiative and bury it. If the people behind it…”
“Who were?”
“Senators and congressmen from the Intelligence Oversight Committee, some defence contractors, a couple of generals. There’s a list in the file. If they hadn’t been so eager to bury it and ensure complete deniability, I’d likely never have found out about it.”
“What happened to them?”
“The politicians decided not to stand at the next election. The defence contractors and the generals took early retirement. None of them felt like staying to face the FBI going through their lives with a fine toothed comb. Which is a pity because some of them had earned mucho jail time from things unconnected with the Initiative. But in a situation like this the threats aren’t all one way.”
“No. I uhhh see that.” He stared out at the garden for a while. “These people… The Slayers and the Watchers. Any chance I could get to meet them?”
The two Finns looked at each other. Captain Samantha Finn was the one to answer, doubt in her voice.
“I think… It may be possible, sir. But it’s not a sure thing.”
“Let me see what I can do,” said her husband.
| Contents | Day Two |