Sam Seaborn was a lawyer and a friend. He was a friend and a political advisor. And, if he was to believe Mac, he was going to need to fulfill all of those roles tonight. He couldn't imagine what this could be. Everyone in Washington DC had skeletons. The nature of American politics was such that, in order to rise to the top, you had to climb over a lot of corpses. He sat in the car, parked up against the curb, outside the house in Annandale.

To be honest, Sam wasn't even sure what they were going to talk about. Close friends, it was said, could spend days or even years without talking and with one telephone call it would be as though they had just spoken the day before. In the almost twenty years he'd known Nate, they'd gone years at a time without speaking but, whenever he dealt with Nate it was always in the closest of confidence. Like they were still in adjacent rooms at the frat house.

Sam knocked on the door and, as though she was expecting him at that very moment, Mac flung the door open. "Good to see you." Her face beamed behind a pursed upper lip smile. "Come on in."

"Nate home yet?" Sam looked over Mac's head to see if the familiar frame of his old Fraternity brother could be found stalking around the halls.

"He is." Nate stepped in from the dining room off the main entry way. "Just taking a call. It's pretty rare that I get to leave the office this early. Hell, it's nothing short of a miracle that I'm not on the campaign trail."

"Well, Mac, I'd say that you have a captive audience." Sam turned to Mac who was standing between them.

"She didn't tell you what it was about either, huh?" Nate turned to lead the three of them into the sunroom at the back of the house off the kitchen. It seemed to be where all of these types of conversations took place in this house. The room was secluded, with only one way in or out and a window that saw into the kitchen. Nate threw himself down on to the futon that was pressed up against the back wall. "But it must be important."

"It is." Almost immediately after walking into the room, Mac began to pace. This was something that Mac wasn't quite sure how to broach. It was a conversation that she'd played over and over in her head. But now that she had to say it out loud, it all seemed so circumstantial.

For his part, Sam was starting to get used to the way things ran in the upper echelon of politics in this City. He'd worked in the Whip's office in the House, but that seemed like ages ago now. It was also a different game. In the Whip's office, you counted votes. At this level, there were aides and advisors, senior operatives, other Senators and military men going in and out of offices at a rate that made you feel less like an aid and more like a courtier.

On the nightstand at his apartment he had a copy of Richard Marius' biography of St. Thomas More. The perils of being a chief advisor had never been more apparent than when he was reading through that book. "Whatever it is, it can't be that bad, Mac." Sam tried to cool her down. "I talked to an old Advertising guy once who told me that 'somewhere in this business, this has happened before'."

"I'm sure it has." Mac fired back at him. "But usually the implicated isn't innocent. Or, they at least know that they aren't."

"Hold up a minute here, when we start throwing around words and concepts like innocence and guilt. You make people in Washington nervous." Sam's eyeballs almost shot out of his head. "Has anybody done anything illegal?"

"No." Mac shook her head. "In fact, I wonder if I shouldn't just shut up and let everything go on the way it has. It seems to work for everybody."

"Settle down there, Marine." Nate got to his feet with that smile that disguised concern as amusement. "This is clearly something that's been bothering you. As is usual, you do a pretty bad job of disguising when you have something on your mind. It's been easy to tell for a few days now. So, what's up?"

A strange calm always came over her when she felt his big hands on her shoulders. She took a seat in the lounge chair that had been a housewarming gift from one of his Senate colleagues. "You remember a couple weeks ago when we were laughing about that Robin Williams joke about Cocaine addicts not being able to tell if they're awake or dreaming. Then you said you had a few bourbon drenched nights like that in the eighties?"

"Unlike George Jones, the bottle never let me down." Nate gave a self-deprecating chuckle.

"That was Merle Haggard." Sam countered.

"First, you're Mr. Gilbert and Sullivan, how the hell would you know? And second, it was George Jones." Nate looked a little exasperated at the challenge.

"It couldn't possibly matter less." Mac interrupted the two of them. "But it was Merle Haggard and I'm trying to get to something pretty important here. Anyway, you know how I sometimes have these…"

"You're precognitive." Nate nodded. "You thought you had a vision when you crashed after I got out of the hospital last winter."

"A pretty long and vivid one." Mac nodded. "Part of which involved a story about you getting drunk and asking someone to come and pick you up." Even at this point she wasn't sure she could say it out loud. She was just hoping he would get her drift. When his eyes damn near shot out of his head, she knew he got it.

"Lily." He staggered back like Mac had just caught him with a right hook to his ribs. All of a sudden he looked five years older and more exhausted. "It passes through my mind. It has for years but it's always been hard to tell if it was memory or vivid imagination."

"Wait a minute." Sam's voice cut in with a particularly harsh edge. "Lily what?"

"I had my suspicions. It just made too much sense." Mac started pacing again. "You know, I'd see pictures of you as a teenager at your parents' house and think they were Billy. Or I'd catch myself noticing little physical similarities between the two of you. I asked Lily last week if it was possible."

"You what?!" Nate and Sam roared simultaneously as they bounded up from their seats. Considerable experience in Washington told them that the less people talked about a secret, the less likely it was to get out.

"I had to know if my suspicions were real, if they were founded in concrete or if I'd imagined this one. A part of my mind had always told me that it was possible it was all a coincidence. You and your younger brother do have some similar physical characteristics. You both resemble the General, I figured it was possible that it was just familial." Mac felt almost like she was being called on the carpet in AJ Chegwidden's office. "I'm a good lawyer. I know when I'm being lied to. Even though Lily denied it, I will put every penny I've got on the fact that she was lying to me."

Nate softly lowered himself back into his seat. Every emotion in the world was running through his body and almost all of them felt like raw venom coursing through his veins.

"Is it possible?" Sam turned to Nate. Going line by line through Mac's trail of evidence hadn't unnerved Sam nearly as much as the look on his old friend's face at this very moment.

"Late '87. Had to be late…I'd just come home from a float with my MEU, I think it was the Med off the coast of Libya. We got in a couple days early. I was out with some guys from my unit." Nate was slowly shaking his head.

"This was back in your bourbon days." Sam added as if to provide context.

"I still have bourbon days. This was back in my Jack Daniels days." Nate grimaced at the memory. "It was late. I'm pretty sure we closed the place. No one from the family was around. I needed a DD, and she was the only person I could call…more likely, she's the only one whose number I could remember." He ran a hand through hair that almost seemed to be thinning by the moment. "When she got there, I mean, we flirted. I was twenty-four, she was nineteen or twenty. She drove me back to her place, I think. Although, it might have been my apartment."

"If you were this drunk, how were you able to…"Sam didn't get to finish the question.

"Once again, it couldn't possibly matter less, but know him that's the least shocking part about this for me." Mac had crossed her arms. "So, what you're saying is, it's possible?"

"I'm saying that for sixteen years, I've asked myself whether it was possible or not. Whether I dreamed that night. I just never knew. I was twenty-four, I was killing people for a living, drinking to forget that fact and having sex dreams almost every night." As she watched the strain this was having on him, it was like she was watching him shrink. "It's possible. But I don't know how likely."

"This is where you come in." Mac turned to their legal counsel who looked to be still processing the events of the night. "What happens now?"

Sam had his fingers tented in front of his lips as he stared down at the floor. "I think the best news I've heard tonight is that we don't know anything for certain. And even if all this speculation, convincing as it is, is true, only four people in the world know about it. None of them seem to have any interest in saying anything."

"That may not be exactly true either." Mac interjected. "You see in the same vision…"

"Mac, with all respect," Sam interrupted her, "while Nate seems to have a lot of faith in these visions of yours, I have to base a strategy on fact."

Nate raised his hand to stop Sam there. "Who else knows?" He turned to face Mac and for the first time all evening she saw the kind of calm control she was used to.

"I'm pretty sure that your mother knows." Mac's voice was just a little softer. "At least her suspicions are pretty strong."

"Even so, that's another person with a lot of interest in making sure that this doesn't become public knowledge." Sam countered. "It's also pretty easy to check to see if Mac's right. I also want to point out that we don't have any conclusive proof of anything. We have a guy who's pretty sure he had sex with a woman sixteen years ago, but he can't be positive. We've got a kid who, I'll grant bears a strong resemblance to the aforementioned man and happens to be around the right age. The mother denies the possibility that he's the father and the only thing connecting the dots here is a vision that you had six months ago."

"My problem is, I think she's right." Nate submitted meekly. "I've always felt a little closer to Billy, a little more responsible for him. Maybe that's because when he was little, I was able to spend more time with him than the other kids but maybe it's that primal instinct in every guy that lets him recognize which cubs are his and try to protect and nurture them. I mean, for God's sake Sam, the kid's living with us."

Sam paused. It was his turn to look a little ragged. "Listen, when I knew you, you weren't that much older than he is. I can see it in that kid. But there's a lot riding on this. You know what the likelihood is that any campaign survives having a Vice Presidential nominee who turns out to be the father of a child, out of wedlock with his brother's estranged wife? You'd be right up there with Tom Eagleton as the greatest Presidential campaign liabilities in American history."

"But like you said, at most five people know about this." Mac countered. "And none of those people have any interest in letting it be known to the broader public."

"That's not the point, Mac." Sam retorted. "You don't think your psychology changes about the kid if you have to acknowledge that Nate's his father? You go from being an Aunt to a Stepmother. He goes from being and Uncle to a Father. That's what we're talking about here."

The clouds broke outside the window and it started to pour. Heavy rain pounded down on the aluminium siding. "That's the political implication. The legal implication is a little trickier. She disputes the fact that he's the father, legally the father is still Stephen and the child already lives with you. She could move for back child support but to do that, she'd have to prove he was the father. That would require a DNA test which, as the attorney for both of you, I'm certainly not going to suggest." Sam tossed his jacket off on the chair. "On a personal level, Mac, I think you're right. Too many pieces fit together, even if the reason they fit is outside the usual."

It was a soliloquy by Sam that unsettled her. One the one hand, she was right and everyone seemed to acknowledge it. For the last few weeks, she felt a little strange. A little like a conspiracy theorist, like someone was going to fit her for a tinfoil hat. On the other hand, what they were acknowledging was that the man she loved, a man she'd long held as being one of the most honourable she knew, had a child with the wife – well, girlfriend at the time – of his younger brother.

If he was someone else, a Professor or a Marine, this wouldn't be a problem. They'd run a test and if it came back positive, they'd have a son. In many ways, they already did. They ran him to school and football practice. Nate paid his tuition and they cooked for him and made sure he was getting the grades to get into a good school. She'd taken the place of Billy's mother since he moved in. While this was set up under the auspices of a temporary arrangement, no one believed that Billy would be moving out before he graduated from high school.

"So, I have to talk to Jed and turn down the Vice Presidency." Nate let his head fall into his hands.

"You're only the greatest liability since Tom Eagleton is any of this comes to light. If it stays with the people in this room, then nothing is really all that different from before I got here." Sam sat back down. "That's my last piece of political advice."

Nate smiled, only somewhat grimly and looked up at Mac. "Not quite, Sam. I'm not sure how many lessons I actually took from the General. Certainly tonight's enough of an exhibition that there were some times in my life where I failed to measure up. But now, as a man looking back on the things in my life which I regret, I'm arrived that I should take one lesson of the General's to heart. Character is defined by those things we do when the world isn't looking. I may have become the next Vice President of the United States, I may have become President of the United States after that. But I am Billy Ross' father. And I was raised well enough to know which of those three jobs is the important one."

2345 ZULU

RACHEL MULLER'S HOUSE

GEORGETOWN

Her house was a cozy brownstone townhouse build almost straight up from the sidewalk. For all of her unconventional nature as a professor, this was an entirely conventional neighbourhood for an academic. This little date at her home was brought about by Harm inviting her to Washington's wedding of the year. When he was given an invitation, it allowed him to RSVP with a plus-one. She decided that going to a wedding together was a pretty big step. One that, if they were going to take, he would need to meet her son first.

Going into this meeting, he was more nervous than he had in countless meetings with flag officers, congressmen or even first dates. Over the last five days, he'd spent more time on the phone with his own stepfather than he had in the last five years. Most of Frank's advice had been fairly straight forward when he took the time to think about it. Don't talk down to the kid, try to learn as much as you can about him, realize that the kid is used to having his mother to himself so respect what he sees as his turf.

Some of the other advice was pretty interesting. It was something that only a former car salesman would think of. He told him to dress like a father. Or at least like a TV version of a father – which Harm took, from Frank's description, to be some combination of Ward Cleaver and Mike Brady. So, Harm did his best to look the part. Blue denim instead of black, a blue glen plaid sport jacket, sweater underneath and a collared shirt. He figured that Mike Brady, would at least approved of the appropriateness of his outfit.

He knocked on the door and stood there with a bottle of wine in the hand that was sweating the least. Vaulting off a carrier deck really had nothing on having to meet and impress a kid for the first time. He couldn't remember being this nervous when he was trying to date Annie Pendry and he had to get along with Josh. But there was a reason for that. When he looked back, it seemed almost more like he was trying to inherit Annie rather than date her.

When Rachel opened the door, she couldn't help but allow herself a small chuckle. "And what exactly are you supposed to be?" She crossed her arms in front of her chest as she examined him. Her hair fell in an unorganized wave of slight curls down past her shoulders. She was dressed simply in a pair of trousers, a blouse and a button down heavy sweater over it. That was probably the Mom that her son was used to looking at, and tonight wasn't going to be anything out of the ordinary.

"I just figured, you know to make a good impression…"Harm tried to explain. She reached out and took his free hand to help him into the house. Once upon a time, Jordan had told him that the idea of an instant family would appeal to him. A part of him wondered if that was the impulse that was guiding him here. But so much of the evidence ran to the contrary.

"Adrian." Rachel called into the house and somewhere down the hall, Harm could hear the sound of a television going quiet. "Come out here and meet our guest." The brownstone was laid out almost as you'd expect. A large staircase climbed out of the floor just beyond the entry way that took you upstairs. A long hallway led straight down from the front door to a kitchen at the back. Down the hall came a short, lithe figure in shorts and child sized Rangers F.C. jersey.

Adrian Muller, at least Harm assumed that the young man had his mother's last name, was short for his age and thin. Although lean might have been a better word for it. His eyes were a piercing grey and his hair an auburn shock with orange-ish highlights. It's hard to imagine a child that could look less like a young Harmon Rabb.

"What do we say?" Rachel stood over her son with a firm maternal tone but a dancing light in her eyes.

"It's nice to meet you, sir." Adrian extended his young hand to Harm, who crouched down and shook it lightly. The child's voice had a different intonation than the mother's. Whereas Rachel sounded like she was out of the hardscrabble Midwest somewhere, the boy sounded a little English and a little Virginia tidewater to Harm. A product, no doubt of a Father across the pond and being raised in an around the District.

"Nice to meet you, too, young man." Harm extended back to his full height. "Are you a Rangers fan?"

Adrian shook his head. "My Dad sent it. I don't watch soccer." He grinned, missing a tooth that had obviously recently fallen out. "I'm a baseball guy. My mom tells me that I have to cheer for the Indians, but they stink."

"My mom told me that I had to cheer for the Padres growing up." Harm chuckled. "But when I was growing up, it was pretty hard not to be a Dodgers fan in Southern California."

"I was playing baseball on Playstation." Adrian stopped grinning and turned to face his mother. "Mom, can I go now?"

"No, we're going to have dinner." Rachel scolded lightly. "Go wash up your hands and join us at the table." Adrian turned around and padded his way down the hall toward the bathroom.

"Smart kid. Must take after his mother." Harm grinned as they walked into the dining room. "Anything exciting in the world of academics today?"

"A lesson on the evolution of 'Total War' as a tactic, starting with Sherman's March to the Sea." Rachel pulled out a chair in the living room for Harm. "It's always one of my favourite lessons of the semester because I'm not sure that – aside from D-Day – more has been written about a single American military operation than has been written about Sherman's March."

"What's your favourite part?" Harm looked over his shoulder, through the archway that led to the kitchen. Rachel was pulling something out of the oven.

"How Sherman and Grant are a fundamental departure from the early mindset about how the war was run. From the start, the Union had an overwhelming manpower and mechanics advantage. The South's only advantage was willpower. Sherman understood that in order to beat the South, you had to destroy their will to fight. The greatest effect of the March to the Sea wasn't military defeats or infrastructure destruction," Rachel walked out and set the pan of home-cooked macaroni and cheese on the table. "It was psychological. South had to confront being destroyed, because Sherman was actively destroying it."

"I bet you're quite a sight when you give this lecture." Harm chuckled a bit to himself."

"It's fascinating stuff because it would change how wars were fought afterward." Rachel sat across from Harm at the table. Little Adrian Muller came bouncing up to his mother's chair with his hands open and his arms outstretched. "Alright, young man, they look clean to me." She watched as her son vaulted up into his chair.

After making sure, everyone's plate was full, the three of them sat down to eat. It was an actual family meal. Harm couldn't remember the last time that he'd had one of those. "How come every time I try to make a vegetarian dish, it never comes out like this?" Harm skewered a few more noodles.

"I don't know, I think you're a pretty good cook." Rachel looked over the table at Harm.

"Mr. Rabb, my mom says you were a pilot. Do you still fly?" Adrian looked up from his plate.

"A little." Harm smiled fondly at the boy. "A couple of times a year, I'm required to do qualification flights just to continue to be able to fly for the Navy. I've also got an old Steerman bi-plane that I take up on weekends."

"But you're a liar for your job, right?" Adrian stuck another fork between his teeth.

Rachel's eyes bolted open and she went to correct her son. "No, honey, that's a lawyer. Harm's a lawyer for his job."

"Though, I agree, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference." Harm laughed again and finished off his dinner. "So, your mom says you have to cheer for the Indians but who do you want to cheer for, Adrian?"

"The Red Sox." The young man answered with enthusiasm. "Pedro is awesome!" Harm laughed and Rachel just rolled her eyes.

"Kids these days." Rachel shook her head. "They've got to learn how to suffer alongside the home team."

"How about a game after dinner, sport?" Harm turned to Adrian and the kid just smiled.

2212 ZULU

CASEY'S GYM

LEESBURG, VIRGINIA

It may not have been the official family sport, but it was General Jack's favourite way of settling family squabbles between the three boys. You put a pair of sixteen ounce gloves on them, told them the rules and set them to ten, three-minute rounds. Casey's Gym was pretty much what you'd expect. A hole in the wall without any modern machines, a lot of exposed brick and a lot of free weights.

It was also where the General took Billy Ross to spend time with him. The General was a little past being a sparring partner, but there was always a trainer at the gym willing to climb into the ring with the All-American. The kid had a good reach, Nate would give him that. But he'd hardly filled out at sixteen. Might be a hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet.

"I still think this is a bad idea for his hands." Nate took a seat next to his father.

"Helps him relieve some stress. Think we can both agree that boy's had more of that than he's needed in his life." The General had his hands up in front of his face in a striker's pose as though he was in the ring himself. "It's a great workout for him in the offseason. Besides, every man in our family does it. You and your brothers all did. Though none of you the same way."

"Yeah, Preston used to kill me." Nate laughed and rubbed a cheekbone as if in memory.

"He was the brawler. He had more power and that killer left hook. That dropped you the first time. After that, you learned your footwork. Always had the best footwork of any of your brothers. Long arms, great jab and good footwork." The General watched Billy dance around in the Ring. "What brings you down here? Figured you'd be up to your eyeballs in wedding preparation right now."

"Needed a little head clearing." Nate shrugged and watched the sparring session continue. "Was tempted to climb in the Ring myself. After you and AJ tried to get Harm and I to box down in Jacksonville last year, I kind of missed it."

"Well, you wouldn't make for a good fight." The General shook his head. "Thanks to the kid, you're not the only Southpaw in the family anymore."

That one sentence. Just that one, and Nate understood how Mac had managed to add it all up.