Conrad
10:59 PM
The door shut with a thud, and the cream and pearl stripes that contoured the Oval Office slotted back into place. Conrad braced himself against the arms of his chair, the leather warm and dented from where his elbows had rested against it, and he eased up from the seat.
He studied Russell for a long moment—the way his hold slipped from the door handle, the way his shoulders sagged, the way the seconds dragged as he turned to face him, the unbuttoned cuffs, the shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, the charcoal tie that had long since been slackened—and when he could delay no longer, he dared himself to ask the question.
"Any news?"
Russell held Conrad's gaze for a second that spun to at least four times its length, and then he shook his head, just slightly, just enough to prise open a crack in the numbness that had enveloped Conrad ever since Elizabeth's DS agents had first called.
Collapsed, poisoned, critical condition.
Each word smarted like a piece of shrapnel twisting in a wound.
Russell slumped down onto the armrest of one of the cobalt couches, and he folded his arms across his chest. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, and more gravel than usual clung to his tone. "They say the next few hours are vital. Someone'll call as soon as there's an update."
Conrad arched his eyebrows at him. "So, no news is good news?"
"That's one way to look at it."
Conrad sank back into his seat. His hand opened and closed in a fist where it hung over the edge of the armrest, and he stared at the carvings of the desk, as though the ridges and grooves of the stained oak held more than just history—held the future, held the answers, held...absolution.
His gaze darted up to Russell. "How's Henry holding up?"
Russell scratched the back of his head, and then he let his hand fall back to his side and gave a stilted shrug. "About as well as you might expect."
"And the kids?"
"Secret Service took them to the hospital. Henry wanted them there, just in case."
Conrad huffed. "You mean just in case they have to say goodbye?"
Russell stared at him for a moment, his eyes wide, and then conceded that with a small nod.
Conrad clenched his jaw, and he let his gaze wander—from the cut crystal of the decanter that sat on the coffee table, a quarter filled with the amber warmth of Scotch; to the shadows of the Secret Service agents that lurked beyond the doors to the walkway; to the chair at the edge of his desk, empty at a glance, but the longer he stared at it, not empty but straining beneath the weight of memories—and as he did, the tension deepened and it spread throughout him until he could contain it no more.
"Why her?" The question snapped through the hush. "Why Bess?"
Russell threw his arms wide. "Why anyone? Who knows what compels these people? Maybe they have a grudge, maybe they resent the fact that she polls higher than everybody else put together, maybe they just don't like what she wears. They're not rational."
"Well, it's not good enough. I want answers. Whoever did this is going to pay."
"The FBI are getting into it."
"I mean, how does someone poison the secretary of state on our own soil?" Conrad pinched his lips and shook his head to himself. "The press are going to have a field day."
"I'm liaising with State. We'll keep it under wraps for now. But if Bess doesn't make it..."
"Then the press will be the least of our concerns."
Conrad pushed himself up from his seat. He turned his back on Russell, stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and strode past the small wooden desk, with its photographs and medals, a display of the people he cherished and the guilts he lived with, and towards the gauze curtains that veiled the dusk beyond. The longer he stared out of the window and into the spotlit grounds, the more the photographs and medals overlapped in the corner of his eye, until the borders between family and guilt could no longer be discerned.
He took a deep breath, but it stuck high in his chest, and he let it out again in a sharp sigh. "You know, Bess never wanted this job, but I told her I wouldn't take no for an answer. And I know what you might say—she could have refused, after all, since when does Bess ever do anything just because somebody's told her to? Even the President of the United States. And that might be as infuriating as all hell at times, and if she were anybody else I probably would've fired her for insubordination more than once by now, but that's one of the things I love about her."
His lips quirked into the twitch of a smile that lingered for a second, maybe two, before it faded. "No, I knew what buttons to press, I played on her guilt over leaving the CIA, because I knew that, despite what you and others might have argued to the contrary, this administration needed her."
He shook his head. "I needed her."
The stutter of the grandfather clock measured out the pause.
"And I tell myself that she knew the risks, that she was aware there was always the potential for something like this to happen, but in truth I've always known that she's never exactly been married to the idea of caution."
He spun around, and swept a hand across the room. "Hell, you've seen what she's like, flying into war zones on little more than a hope or a whim. I mean, Iran, Algeria, Libya...and even before that, when she was meant to be sat a desk at Langley, she'd drop everything to fly halfway around the world to interrogate terrorists in Iraq."
He gripped the back of his chair, his head bowed, his fingertips pitting the leather. "And perhaps that's what makes her so good at her job, that relentless commitment even in the face of danger. And perhaps if something had happened to her then, if she'd been kidnapped, if she was the one who hadn't come back alive, I could've at least kidded myself into blaming her, blaming them, blaming anyone but myself."
His gaze flicked up to meet Russell. "But that's all I'd be doing, kidding myself, because the truth is this goes back much further. It goes back to the decisions I've made. The decision to recruit her, to bring her on as secretary of state, to pick her as the one to continue my legacy... If she dies, then it doesn't really matter who poisoned her or what their reasons were. This is on me."
"Sir... You can't honestly believe that she'd hold this against you."
"She wouldn't, no. But Henry...? Their children...?" He pursed his lips and his nails dug into the leather cushion. "I will forever be the reason why he lost his wife and why they lost their mother."
Russell paused, and it looked as though he was debating whether or not to voice the thought that had flitted across his eyes. But then he shrugged and said it anyway. "And their uncle."
The huff of a laugh escaped Conrad, and he gave a wry smile. "And their uncle."
Russell skirted around the end of the couch. He held the end of his tie flat to his stomach, leant over the coffee table and unstoppered the decanter with a chink. He glugged out two fingers of Scotch into each of two of the glasses. The cut crystal of the decanter caught the cold glare of the light from the chandelier overhead. Then he passed one of the tumblers to Conrad before he held his own aloft. "To Bess."
"To Bess." Conrad echoed, and he chimed his tumbler against Russell's.
He took a sip, and then welcomed the Scotch with a wince as its bite dragged down the back of his tongue. It should have warmed him, but instead it spread through him like a layer of frost that prickled out and numbed the earth, and he stared down into the amber depths.
He saw a young blonde girl sat cross-legged on a chipped white bench, her nose buried in a French text, and he smelt the fragrance of cherry blossom whilst the petals tumbled around her like confetti on the breeze. He saw the pinch in Bess's brow tighten and the tremble of her teardrop earrings as her voice soared above his own until it reached just shy of a shout, and he heard the hush it ushered in over the Oval Office before her look softened and she added an apologetic 'sir' at the end. He saw her smile and the way that it danced in her eyes as she untucked the bundle of pink cellular blanket, and he heard the pride in her voice when she told him, 'Conrad, I'd like you to meet Stephanie'. He tasted single malt unfurling across his tongue as he sat in her living room, opposite her and Henry, and he saw the way Henry stilled the quiver in his hand by resting it against her thigh, as though that touch alone were enough to dull his fears of nuclear annihilation. He heard the crack in Henry's voice when he protested that she couldn't have gone missing in Iraq, what did that even mean, and he heard the desperation when Henry said they'd promised Stevie that Elizabeth would be back in time for her birthday. He saw the sky blue of her gloves swept up in applause, and he saw his reflection in the tint of her sunglasses when he stepped down from the podium after his inaugural speech. He felt her soft warmth as she hugged him on the ward of Walter Reed, and he smelt a note of jasmine in her fragrance that lifted him back to his days in Vietnam. He heard the tentative knock at his office door at Langley, and he saw the way that she worried the edge of the brown DL envelope clasped in her hands, but he didn't hear her apologies. He saw a woman, a wife, a mother, with her blonde hair tied back in pigtails, one hand pressed to her forehead, the other rested against a shovel, whilst his motorcade churned up the dust track that led to their home, and he smelt the pungent mix of manure and hay dust when the car door clunked open and he stepped out, ready to tell her that he expected her to move to DC—I won't take no for an answer, Bess. I know you won't let me down. And they both heard the words that he left unspoken—Not this time.
Russell's cell phone rang. The trill cut through the silence. He placed his tumbler down on the desk, fished the phone out of his trouser pocket, and then frowned down at the screen.
Conrad traced the gaze from the glare of the screen to Russell's eye, and something inside of him sank. "Don't tell me. It's Henry."
Russell looked up. He gave a curt nod, more of a flinch. "Do you want to take it, or should I?"
Conrad stared back down into his glass as the tone continued to drill through him. He swirled the last of the Scotch around the bottom of the tumbler, and then tipped it back into his mouth and slammed the glass down against the desk. He met Russell's eye and held out his hand for the phone. "As I said, the buck stops with me."
He took a deep breath, and lifted the phone to his ear. "Henry, it's Conrad... How is she?"