III

Jed slipped awkwardly behind the table in the Situation Room. His back was playing up again, and his eyes were aching. It had been a good morning, up until the point where he'd left the residence and had the mother of all headaches delivered to his doorstep.

There was a brief pause after the customary greetings, and then Baker cleared his throat and said "Leo's on his way?"

"No."

The whole group looked taken aback, not just by the news but by their leader's curt delivery. "Sir...?"

"He's not here. We don't know where he is. We're trying to find out."

There was another round of surprised, slightly confused silence. Jed found himself watching their eyes to see if any of them shared the same treacherous thoughts that had crept across his mind when he first heard the news.

Dear God, he's gone and got himself drunk again.

If any of the officers around him were thinking that, they didn't show it. Damned military types. Right now he could have done with somebody to bawl out.

All too soon, professionalism clicked back into place, and papers that he didn't want to read and wouldn't understand were being pushed at him. "Mr. President, we've got a situation in Qumar..."

Jed listened, or tried to, as facts and figures and scenarios were bandied about. Normally he would have Leo at his side, translating military jargon into words he could easily grasp and relate to, telling him the right thing to do but never glossing over the cost or making it sound simple. Could he trust any of these near-strangers to do the same? He didn't think so.

Everybody has an agenda but Leo. Whether it's funding, glory, strengthening our borders... everybody has an agenda.

If everybody had an agenda, who was looking out for what was right? That should be him, but he didn't know how. Jed hated this, hated being in a place his knowledge wouldn't stretch to cover. If his greatest strength was his wisdom, what did that say when he dealt in things of which he knew nothing?

He was lost, and he didn't have Leo to be his compass. He tried to comprehend, knowing how important this was, and all that happened was his brain began to blur and blur until he began to fear that it wasn't confusion at all, but the first advances of the disease insidiously eating at his nervous system.

Finally, he could take no more. He thumped a fist on the table, bringing the babble of noise to a merciful halt.

"Simplify this for me," he ordered. He was faced by a room full of blank faces.

"Mr. President-"

"Simplify it," he growled. "I don't want to hear your advice. I don't want to hear the technical terms. I don't want to hear what you happen to personally think I should or shouldn't do. Just tell me what I need to know."

There was a silence, and he began to fear that nobody would speak up. Finally, one of them did. "Mr. President. The situation in Qumar is very precarious. They rebel faction is begging us to intervene, and there's sure to be bloodshed if we don't. But if we move against Qumar's legitimate government, it's likely a great deal of the Middle East will rise up in protest; it could mean war."

"And if we help this... 'rebel faction' take control, what exactly are we getting ourselves into?"

Baker coughed nervously. "Mr. President... the Free Qumar faction are no better than the government they're trying to replace. They've taken responsibility for terrorist strikes that have taken a number of civilian lives, and if they wrest control they're liable to execute the people they replace."

"So basically, there's a war going on between two sides, neither of which we support. We can stand by and watch a massacre, or intervene and start a full-scale war." They answered him with grave nods.

Well, at least he'd got a handle on what was going on.

Now all he needed was someone to tell him what the hell he was supposed to do about it.

Donna hovered hesitantly in the doorway. She almost rapped on the doorframe, something she never did... Josh hadn't even looked up at her. He was flipping through papers and scribbling at a furious rate, like a college undergrad who'd suddenly realised he only had twenty minutes to finish his assignment.

"Josh?" she said cautiously. He didn't seem to hear her, so she marched in to stand directly in front of him. He carried on scribbling, then froze and slowly raised his head to look up at her. His eyes were bleary, as if he'd been working all night, though he'd been bright and breezy just that morning.

"Donna," he said; flatly, without the usual warmth he injected into her name. Josh had many tones of voice, and Donna could distinguish all of them; whether the yell that sent interns scurrying for cover was angry or playful; whether when he called her Donnatella, he was being teasing or intimate.

This particular tone she barely recognised. If pressed, she'd have to call it a blend of his usual snappish impatience with the what-the-hell-am-I-doing-up-this-early? dopiness. He sounded quite earth-shatteringly weary.

"I brought you coffee," she said, with a cautious smile. He took it from her with a detached nod, not even making some snarky comment about how she never brought him coffee. He opened his folder, and then looked up when he realised she was still there.

"Do you have the Buchanon file?" She shook her head. "The landfill thing?"

"Nope."

"Congressman Tyler's press release?"

"Nope."

"Then what the hell are you still doing here?" His voice raised into that frustrated whip-crack he used when he was at the end of his tether. She fought down a wince, knowing he was under stress but unable to completely ignore the sting.

And then, with its usual impeccable timing, Josh's sensitive side stole over him. He shook his head and slumped back in the chair, offering her a wry smile. She smiled back, tentatively.

"I'm sorry, Donna. It's just-" he shrugged and shook his head.

"I know."

Josh sighed, and pulled a face at the paperwork on his desk. "How does he do it, Donna?" he asked, and she knew he was talking about Leo. "Seriously. Does he have, like, a secret team of invisible midgets who hide in his office and do all the paperwork for him?"

"Invisible midgets?" She raised an eyebrow.

Josh pulled a face, and shrugged. "It's late. I'm tired."

"It's really not."

"No, it's really not," he agreed, looking mildly surprised. "It feels it."

"I'll bet." Josh was juggling both Leo's work and his own - and it wasn't as if either man had a particularly light workload. Donna hugged herself, feeling suddenly cold in the afternoon sun. "No news?" she said, sounding a little wobbly to her own ears.

Josh shook his head. "Sam and Margaret'll be back soon. Maybe they'll... they'll have something they can tell us."

Donna made herself smile weakly for him; this arrogant, brilliant, egotistical and terribly fragile man she'd somehow found herself devoted to. It was strange... it felt like she was experiencing anxiety secondhand. She adored Leo, and would feel the pain if something happened to him - but not half so harshly as she would feel Josh's pain. Actually, Leo was one of the very few people who saw what she saw when he looked at Josh; how incredibly easy it would be for some dark shadow to shatter him into tiny pieces.

Josh was strong, but he was delicate with it, and not just when it came to drinking. Leo was one of the few remaining cornerstones in his tragic personal life - if anything happened to him, Josh would be destroyed.

So I won't let it happen.

Never mind how that was probably beyond the reach of her secretarial super-powers. If that was what it take to protect Josh, she'd find a way to rearrange the universe accordingly.

But since she couldn't quite think of a way to do that just now, she reached out and gently touched the back of Josh's hand. "He'll be okay. I know it."

"They're here!" Donna came scurrying hurriedly into the office, like a schoolgirl who'd been waiting for the first guests at a party - though her face was anything but gleeful. Josh got up to follow her, but somehow the folder he had his nose stuck in came with him.

The sea of the White House staff parted around him as he made his way through the corridors without looking up. He stepped in to join Toby and CJ and sat down at a side table, immediately producing a pen and beginning to scribble in the margins.

A few moments later, Sam and Margaret arrived. Sam looked subdued, but Margaret was alive with jerky nervous tension. She almost jumped at the sound of Toby clearing his throat, and Sam quickly guided her to a chair. She smiled up at him gratefully.

"What did the police say?" asked CJ gently, leaning forward in her chair. That was all it took to fire Margaret up into babble mode.

"They said, um, he could have been kidnapped, but it's also possible that the damage was done while he wasn't there and he's gone missing of his own accord. They said without any evidence of foul play in his disappearance and without a ransom note they can't really do anything."

Toby made a disgruntled noise deep in his throat. "The fact that his apartment was redecorated with a baseball bat doesn't constitute foul play?"

"Not without anything to connect it to his disappearance," supplied Sam. "One of the investigating officers even suggested that he came home to the place in that state and went out to have something done about it."

"Without calling into work?" demanded CJ sceptically. They all exchanged looks. The DC police might think that was a viable scenario; the DC police didn't know Leo.

"They're not doing anything?" burst Donna disbelievingly. Univited, but not precisely barred either, she'd been lurking by the door to listen.

"There's nothing to do," said Sam, quietly despairing. "No note, no blood, no fingerprints, no proof... they can't even put out a missing persons yet, when we all saw him late last night."

"So we're gonna do nothing but wait?" demanded CJ, although her hot tone had more to do with frustration than disbelief.

"We should call Mallory," said Margaret suddenly. "Mallory and Jenny."

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. "I don't think we can," said CJ awkwardly. "Not this early. We've got no answers for them, and if they come charging down to the White House the press might take notice."

"Kidnappers might panic if there's a sudden blaze of publicity," Toby observed quietly. He didn't have to fill in the blanks about what that could mean for Leo. Dead men told no tales...

"What are we gonna tell people?" asked Donna quietly. "I mean, he's Leo McGarry. You can't pretend he's not missing."

"We could tell them he's got the flu," suggested Sam. "I mean, they must know that not even Leo's invulnerable."

There was a weighty silence, as they all fervently wished he hadn't said it.