Josh uncrossed his arms. Sam crossed his legs. CJ didn't notice that her mouth was hanging open. Toby rubbed his face tiredly. Leo turned away, looking out the window behind the president.

Jed Bartlet looked at each one in turn and continued. "We don't know who did this. We have to find out. The FBI is on it already, and I'm sure they're doing a great job. Sorry we couldn't inform you sooner, CJ."

Shaking her head, CJ said absently, "It's alright...really..."

"So we're going to ignore the fact that we don't have a Canadian ambassador right now. We're going to focus on possible terrorism. I've got researchers out digging up everything they can on FOLAX." He gave each one a last long gaze before returning to his chair. "It's not Oklahoma. We can be thankful for that. Get back to work, kids."

And they attempted to do just that.

*

Donna stuck her head in Josh's office at noon. "I have fries," she said gently.

Not lifting his head from his arms, Josh replied, "I don't want fries. Fries can't make it better."

Murmuring, Donna moved around to his side and patted his head. "Fries make everything better. Just like chocolate, but not as bad for your blood sugar."

He looked up, finally smelling the grease-stained paper bag in her hand. "If you say so." As he took the bag, he met her gaze and gave a small smile, making her smile.

"That's better. Should I hold your calls?"

He shook his head as he shoved a hand in the bag. "Naw. That'll just piss people off. Send 'em in."

After one last pat, Donna started to leave, then turned around. "What exactly is the matter, by the way?"

"There was a bombing in Seattle. Six people died." It made him feel hollow just to say it.

Donna's face fell. "Oh my god."

"Yeah."

*

Sam was going through a stack of files mechanically, sorting out the bad from the good, when he came across a printed e-mail. Normally, he wouldn't have noticed it, just thrown it in the recycling box with all the other office gossip, but since the meeting this morning, he'd been focussing on the oddest things. The naturalist painting of a beaver on his calendar, the small maple leaf pin in an aide's lapel, the tree that grew outside his window. Scanning the e-mail without thinking, he came to the end and looked up. On the television mounted across the room from his office door's window, the Maple Leafs were playing the Canadiens. He jumped up.

"No fucking way."

*

"Read this, Toby, read it," Sam threw the e-mail on Toby's desk and started pacing, rubbing his hands together. "Read it!" he shouted when Toby hesitated.

"That tone won't get you anywhere, mister," Toby mumbled, reaching for the paper. As he read its short message, he grew grave and very still. Sam stopped pacing and stared at him, watching the knowledge come over him.

Toby stood and pulled on his suit jacket. He left without a word and Sam scrambled to follow.

*

Leo was almost, almost back into his work when Toby and Sam burst in, Margaret following helplessly. Leo nodded at her and she left. "What the hell is worth scaring the beejesus out of my secretary?" he demanded.

"This," Toby and Sam said in unison, as Toby placed the e-mail on Leo's desk almost reverently.

"Geez, I know you guys are brilliant, but you don't have to come running every time you write a..." he trailed off as he got to the body of the e-mail. "Who else has seen this?" he asked, examining it closely.

Sam shrugged. "Us, whoever printed it, whoever wrote it...anybody, really. The internet is an amazing thing, Leo."

"God damn the internet," he replied, standing. "Margaret!"

She put her head in the door warily. "Yes, Leo?"

"Get me the agents on the Seattle thing. Now."

*

Cradling a cup of rich black coffee, Marianne attempted to relax. She was in her office, it was one-thirty in the afternoon, and Lawson and summarily announced in a rather surly manner that he was going out for lunch. The pleather shoes she wore were killing her, and she had a monstrous headache. Reynolds had reassured her three dozen times during their meeting, which had lasted two hours, that CSIS had the capability to figure out where the hotmail account was registered and there was no need to inform the FBI quite so soon.

"How can you keep evidence from them?" she had demanded, shocked to hear even Arthur suggest such a thing.

He had shrugged and looked at the e-mail with loathing. "Bloody thing."

"They have a right to see it! Six people died! They're terrorists, Arthur-I mean Mr. Prime Minister. We can't protect them like this." She knew, even as she leaned over the desk, attempting to meet his eyes, that she wasn't getting through.

Chou spoke up, saying, "Sir, perhaps we should give CSIS a few days, and if they haven't come up with the answers we want, we'll messenger it south."

Parsons and Landrey nodded heartily. Marianne fumed, stalking away from the desk, file in hand. As she grabbed her attache case and headed for the door, she shouted, "It's not right, Art! That e-mail'll bite you in the ass, and I won't be the one to stitch you up this time!"

So now she was huddled under her desk with a cup of coffee, attempting to pry her shoes off with one hand while steadying the mug with the other. The door opened. Marianne froze, trying to hide from whoever it was. "Why did you unplug your phone?" Lawson asked tiredly.

Marianne remained silent. Her right shoe began to pinch terribly and she bit her lip in agony. A knock sounded beside her head and she jerked her eyes in that direction. Lawson grinned at her. "Geez, Marianne. You don't look very comfortable."

In her fury at being caught, Marianne tried to stand, bumping her head on the bottom of the wooden desktop and spilling the coffee down her leg. "Shit!"

Lawson came around the desk and crouched beside her. "Honey, why don't you ever remember that he bought you a plexi-glass-fronted desk for just this reason?"

"Fucking weasel," she muttered. "I know it's a felony, but he's a fucking weasel." She stuck out her hand for him to help her up.

"It's not a felony anymore, Marianne. You wrote the proclamation," Lawson reminded her, pulling her from under the desk. "What did he do now?"

Holding the leg of her pants away from the skin, she hobbled to the garment bag where her jeans were stored. "Can you go to my place and get me another suit, please?"

"After the way you talked to me before?" he asked, incredulous, but mocking.

As she shed her coffee-soaked pants in the corner behind her door, Marianne realised he was back to his old self. "I'm sorry, Lawson. Really. Can you go get me some clean pants?"

"Nah. I think you should just lounge around in your jeans today," he replied, fiddling with a letter opener.

Marianne stuck her head out from behind the door, glasses slipping down her nose, as she tugged on her zipper. "Dammit, Lawson. We've got a crisis."

"I thought it was just a boom-boom on the other side of the continent, in someone else's country."

Having successfully buttoned her jeans, Marianne re-emerged and stared her secretary down. "Some things have come to light, and the Prime Minister is being an asshole. A stupid one, at that."

"Ahh," Lawson sighed, putting the letter opener down. "The e-mail."

"You knew about the e-mail?!" she exclaimed. "For Pete's sake!"

Smiling mysteriously, he said, "Secretaries can go places and see things Communications Directors can't because nobody knows them." He held out a styrofoam container. "Fettuccini? It's from Nosta's." Marianne took it gratefully. "And the White House Chief of Staff is on the phone. Line one."

*

While he was on hold for ten minutes, Leo had a lot of time to think. He thought about what he would say to this person he'd never met who neglected to release a potentially important document. He thought about how shocked the FBI agents had sounded when they told him the other recipient of the e-mail was the PMO complaints account.

"PMO?" he'd asked.

"Prime Minister's Office, Mr. McGarry," the agent had replied after a moment.

"Prime Minister of what?"

"Canada, sir."

"Oh. Of course. It's not as though there aren't two dozen countries who call their heads of state Prime Minister."

*

Marianne threw the container at Lawson as she picked up the phone. "Hello, Mr. McGarry," she said pleasantly, hoping that his name wasn't McGraw, as she secretly feared. "What can I do for you?"

"Hello. I don't know your name, and you can tell me that you did not receive an e-mail the White House Deputy Director of Communications did. About a bombing," he said factually.

Startled by his brevity, she tried to reply. "My name is Marianne Reuter. I, well, you have an e-mail?"

"Yes, Ms. Reuter. We do."

She cleared her throat, struggling for time, hexing Arthur and his demon prodigy for eternity. "Mr. McGarry, I'm sorry to find that our message has not yet reached the White House," she said, insinuating that they'd sent notice of the e-mail, when really she was talking about the letter of condolences.

"Ms. Reuter. Your letter expressing...'Deep sorrow for our country's loss,' did arrive. Thank you for the sentiment, but there was no mention of an e-mail. And I know you know that I know you know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Of course you do, Mr. McGarry." Lawson was picking fettuccini off his suit and making faces at her. Marianne rolled her eyes desperately and mimed being hanged. "I regret that the Prime Minister neglected to allow me to inform the White House of the e-mail we both, I assume, received."

Leo quickly translated her politicspeak. "Is that, in fact, the case then, Ms. Reuter?" he asked warily.

"Indeed it is, Mr. McGarry. Absolutely. You would not believe the frenzy we've all been in." She wiped her brow dramatically to show that she'd made a save. Lawson gave her a thumbs-up and flung a noodle at her. It landed in her hair.

"I trust your government is doing everything it can to discover who sent the e-mail and why?"

Marianne picked the pasta from behind her ear and put it in the trash can. "We did, Mr. McGarry. FLAG, the Front of Liberated Anglo Growers, apparently sent the e-mail. They're a group of English-speaking anarchists who live in the Okanagan."

"Where's that?"

After a pause, Marianne replied slowly, "In British Columbia, Mr. McGarry. North of Washington state."

Leo paused too, making a note of this 'Okanagan' on Belleveau's letter. Which reminded him..."And you know we don't have an ambassador just now, right?"

"Yes sir. I was actually on my way to the afternoon briefing to announce Monsieur Belleveau's resignation when you phoned," she replied, getting a little used to his abrupt conversational style. "Prime Minister Reynolds is doing his best to find a suitable replacement as we speak." I apologise for that one, she said silently as her mother rolled over in her grave, That was a great big lie.

"Well, don't expend too much effort on it. The President is not worried about the embassy. He's worried about FOLAX. What can you give us on this FROG group?"

"Um, well, FLAG is, as I said, a group of anarchists living in B.C. They collectively own about twenty hectares of land--"

"Dang it, honey, how many acres is that?" Lawson whispered in her ear with a thick Southern accent.

Swatting him away, she continued, "On which they grow corn, potatoes, wheat, and other agricultural products. Generally, they're a legitimate commune. Had to give up tax-exempt status last year when it was discovered they were selling some of their produce for personal gain. They've never been essentially associated with violence, although last year two leaders of the group were jailed for spraying clothes at several department stores across the country with mild acid. We couldn't predict this."

"Who can predict anything?" Leo asked tiredly. "Are their leaders still in jail?"

"Yes, and they're officially not the leaders anymore. The commune, and the Front, is now run by a council, the members of which are selected based upon the size of the population--about 60 right now--and each candidate's aptitude in a test." How many joints they can smoke and still count to ten, she added to herself.

Leo murmured to himself as he jotted more notes. "Can you talk to them?"

"They don't speak French, Mr. McGarry. And even if they could, yes," Marianne replied, kicking Lawson as he did an interpretive dance for her side of the conversation. He fell over laughing.

"What's that?" Leo asked, scribbling a note for Toby and Sam.

"Nothing, Mr. McGarry. Just a little problem with the building. We're installing new lavatories." Lawson cracked up again at her inside joke.

Leo hmmmed in response. "I think I have to phone Governor Lum now. Do you know who he is, Ms. Reuter?"

"Yes, Mr. McGarry. I met the Governor of Washington at an Energy Board hearing in October," she said, hopping off the corner of her desk where she'd been perched. Lawson stood and tugged his suit back in order, becoming once more the unflappable assistant everyone knew and loved. Well, gossiped about.

"Huh. You don't say. Well, I'm sure we'll be speaking in the future, Ms. Reuter. Communications Director, that's your title, right?"

Marianne rolled her eyes and switched her glasses back to the rose-coloured lenses she preferred. "Yes, Mr. McGarry. That's my title. And if we're going to be speaking a lot to each other, please, call me Marianne."

"I'll get you confused with my secretary. Her name's Margaret." At the sound of her name, afore-mentioned office staff stepped through the door.

"Yes, Leo?"

With a heavy sigh, he said, "Never mind. I didn't want to talk to you, I was talking about you," and waved her away.

Marianne chuckled. "Whatever you want, Mr. McGarry. I'll try to have more information next time we speak, and I'll do my best to inform the White House of any developments we encounter."

"I'd appreciate that. Good afternoon, Ms. Reuter."

"Au revoir, Mr. McGarry."

*

"Smart-aleck kid."

*

"American."