Donna stumbled out of bed and into the shower an hour earlier than usual that morning. She was on her way out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee when she realized she wasn't alone. Josh was sitting on the living room couch, surrounded by the papers she'd been planning to get to work on.

"Josh?" she called out in surprise, coming over to sit beside him.

"Yeah?"

"You're still here?" She was up early, but she knew he usually left well before this so he wouldn't be seen by curious neighbors or gossip-hungry newspaper writers looking for a story on the White House Press Secretary and her love life.

"Yeah. I was—reading."

"Reading?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't you sleep?"

"Nah. Couldn't."

"Excited? Worried?"

"A bit of both, at first. And then—I read this."

"The bill?"

"Yeah. Thought I'd help out, since you weren't going to have a lot of time this morning, and I wasn't sleeping anyway."

"How altruistic of you."

"Yeah, I'm like that."

"Forcing yourself to do something you don't have the slightest interest in, like getting the inside scoop on the White House's secret new anti-terrorism proposals."

"Secret? Donna, there wasn't any 'Classified' stamp on it; I wouldn't have read it if—"

Donna couldn't help smiling.

"I'm just kidding, Josh. I know there wasn't any stamp on it; I wouldn't have brought it home from the office if there was."

"Why did you say 'secret,' then?" He didn't sound reassured; there was still a tension in his voice and face she didn't understand.

"I don't know, I just—they've been keeping this awfully quiet. It's just been Will and Porter working on it, mostly Porter, with Swayne and the President. Mostly Porter and Swayne, I think, and Porter's been treating it as if was the nuclear codes or something. I was amazed I got this; I didn't think he even wanted me to see it. I asked to see a complete text yesterday and he wouldn't let me have the draft they were working on. Gave me a one-page summary that didn't look any different from HR-2010."

"The War Measures Act."

"That's right. It expires next week; this is supposed to replace it."

"Porter wouldn't let you see a draft yesterday?"

"No. They were going to work on it more during the day, but they couldn't have been going to do much, really—just cosmetic stuff. I was surprised when this showed up on my desk. He'd made such a thing about my only needing the summary. Said I wouldn't have time to read the full text, and he wanted me to get my beauty sleep."

"Patronizing bastard."

"He really is an absolute prick."

"But then he gave you this?"

"Someone did; I don't know who. It was strange, really. . . ."

"Strange? How?"

"It just showed up in my folder. I saw it there when I was packing my briefcase. Someone had slipped it in, behind the summary. Jennifer would never do that, and I can't imagine why Porter or Will would, either. Unless . . . ."

"Unless?"

"Unless—well, I know this sounds crazy, but—I couldn't help thinking—unless whoever put it there didn't want anyone else to see it. You know, if someone came into the room and was looking at my desk or something."

She only had to say it to know how silly it sounded, and felt embarrassed for ever having entertained the thought.

"That's interesting." Josh didn't sound as if he was teasing, which surprised her.

"That's nuts, you mean."

"No, I don't."

"Come on, Josh—of course it's nuts. I expect Will or Porter just didn't want me to forget it, so he slipped it into the right folder. It's kind of odd, but that's all. I'm probably just being hormonal about it."

"I'm not so sure, Donna. I can think of a couple of other reasons why either Will or Porter might have given you this, or even someone else—one of their assistants, maybe, the one who typed it up."

"What reasons, Josh?"

"One would be to try to get you into trouble. Porter doesn't want you to see this; if it turns up in your folder and you talk about it in your briefing today, he'll accuse you of insubordination, or something like that. Make you look bad; maybe lose you your job."

"That's a really creepy thought, Josh. But why would one of the assistants do that? They don't have any reason not to like me."

"I wasn't thinking of the assistants for that one."

"Will wouldn't do that, Josh. If he doesn't like me, he can just fire me."

"I wasn't thinking of Will for that one either, Donna. I was thinking of Porter."

"Porter? But he's the one who didn't want me to read it."

"He's the one who said he didn't want you to read it."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. I see. Yuck, Josh . . . ."

"But there's another possibility too, Donna. I think it's really a lot more likely than the first."

"What's that? I hope it isn't as nasty."

"It could be, or not."

"What is it?"

"The second possibility is that someone wants the information in this to get out, but doesn't want to be the one to put it out there. That person is afraid. The nasty possibility is that he or she doesn't mind if you get in trouble for putting it out there, as long as he or she doesn't."

"And the not-so-nasty possibility?"

"The person knows you're too smart to do that, and will find another way to get this out without exposing yourself."

"I could leak it to a journalist."

"You could. That would be pretty easy to trace, though."

"I could leak it to a friend who would leak it to a journalist."

"That's better."

"I could leak it to a friend who would leak it to a friend who would leak it to a journalist."

"That's better still. Or maybe not. How eager is the press these days to publish a story the White House doesn't want out?"

"Not eager at all."

"I didn't think so."

"There are some independent voices still, Josh. Helen Thomas, for instance."

"She's not getting the questions these days, is she?" Donna blushed. "But even if she was, her editors would have to be willing to publish what she wrote. And based on what we've seen of their coverage of the build-up to the war and the war itself, I'd say the editors of the major papers were all in line behind the President, Porter and Swayne."

"They're afraid."

"They're afraid. The papers' owners are afraid. Bombs on subways, truck bombs driving into shopping malls, airplanes flying into buildings, Disneyworld—of course they're afraid. I'm afraid, damn it; we're all afraid. And of course the intelligence community needs to be able to get information if we're not going to see more of this, and sometimes they need to be able to get a lot of it and get it quickly. But there has to be serious oversight; there have to reasonable limits; we can't have any branch of government able to do anything it wants. There are things we should be more afraid of than bombs and airplanes, things we have to be more afraid of, or we'll lose everything we've got. Everything that makes us different from the people driving the truck bombs and flying the airplanes, everything they'd like to see us lose."

"You know, Josh, I was falling asleep when I was reading that last night, and I didn't get very far before you made me go to bed. Everything I read was innocuous enough, just a rehash of the War Measures Act, which is what I was expecting. You obviously don't think it's innocuous, or that someone hid that bill in my folder just because they have a compulsive tidy streak. So—what is it, exactly, that's in there that I might be tempted to risk my job to leak?"

"Just . . . the Constitution, Donna."

"The Constitution?"

"The Constitution. The Bill of Rights."

"I thought the Constitution was in the Archives?"

"It won't matter where the Constitution is if that bill gets passed, Donna. It will just be a piece of dirty old paper crumbling away in a vault somewhere. If that passes and the Supreme Court doesn't strike it down, the Bill of Rights won't mean much anymore."

"This bill is supposed to be to fight terrorism, isn't it, Josh?"

"It's supposed to be. Maybe that's what your guys really think it's for. But according to this, the President can have any person he suspects of terrorist activity—any person he suspects of associating with people suspected of terrorist activity—arrested and held without charge. Indefinitely. Without a lawyer, without a trial. Habeas corpus is suspended; heck, the Miranda warning's suspended. Any person, on the authority of one person, the President, can be whisked away in secret and held in secret, without access to a lawyer, without access to his family, without any legal protections at all. He could be held anywhere, for any length of time, and as far as I can see, just about anything could be done to him, because he's considered an 'enemy combatant,' outside the protection of civil law."

"But an enemy combatant would be protected by military law, surely? By the Geneva Convention?"

"Not according to the fine print in this. The Geneva Convention's just a convention now; we've declared ourselves free of its pointless restrictions when they interfere with our God-given right to defend ourselves, even if that means torturing people to try to get information they may or may not have. And the 'enemy combatant' doesn't have to be a soldier, either. He could be a civilian. She could be a civilian. It doesn't matter."

"Josh, that's impossible."

"That's here. Oh, the language is discreet, but that's what it adds up to. And that's not all. There are clauses in here allowing the N.S.A. to obtain any kind of private information on anyone they want, without a warrant. No judicial oversight required. Any N.S.A. officer can sign off on a letter requiring the recipient to hand over whatever he's being asked for: telephone records, banking records, medical records, computer records. Heck, even library records. The records don't have to be the property of the person being asked for them—bank managers could be asked to give up the financial records of any of their customers, doctors could be asked to give up medical records for their patients. And the customer or the patient will never know."

"Doctors would never do that."

"They wouldn't have much choice. If they refuse, they can be charged and sent to jail. Their trials won't be public, though; the whole process is secret. No one's ever supposed to know about these letters. The person who gets one of these letters is told they can never discuss it with anyone, not even a lawyer. Even if they comply with the request in the letter, they could still go to jail if they tell anyone that they got it. Anyone. Not even a lawyer, not even a doctor, not even a priest or a rabbi or a clergyman. And they don't have to agree to that, the way you or I did when we went to work at the White House; they could be the most hopeless blabbermouths in the world and know it, they could have a drinking problem or a drug problem and talk when they're high, it doesn't matter—if the N.S.A. finds out they've said anything, whoosh, that's it—secret trial, secret jail term. Because, you know, they're enemy combatants now too."

"Josh, are you sure you read this right?"

"I'm sure, Donna."

"It will never pass."

"You told me last night that Will and Porter were confident of a win."

"But that's because the Congressmen they've been talking to all think this is just a renewal of the War Measures Act."

"Do they? All of them?"

"Well . . . ."

"The leadership have been complete sheep so far, Donna; they've done anything the White House has asked. They handed over the right to declare war without a second glance. They listened to all that talk about terrorist training camps and chemical weapons programs and nuclear capability programs and cheered on the invasion of Qari'stan without an intelligent question, without a blink. The handful of representatives who did blink, who did ask intelligent questions, were all branded 'unpatriotic' and got their houses egged and their families threatened by flag-waving yahoos who put bumper-stickers on their cars that say, 'My Country, Right Or Wrong.' And the rest of the House and the Senate just wave their flags and watch their numbers going up. Do you really think they're going to protest anything this White House sells them when it's got the word 'patriot' stuck all over it?"

"Some of them will, Josh. You know that. You know we have some good people in Congress. Andi, Matt Skinner . . . ."

"Some of them will. Maybe more than some. But it depends on how much time they get to think about it."

"What do you mean?"

"When's this going to the Hill?"

"Today, I think."

"And when's it being voted on?"

"I'm not sure."

"I'll lay you ten to one that bill doesn't go anywhere near the Hill until after six tonight. And if it doesn't, I'll lay you twenty to one the House Leader will call the vote on it tonight."

"When half the members won't be there."

"When at least half the members won't be there, or will have to rush back from their families and get the bill off their desks as they're walking in. But even the ones who stayed in their offices won't have had time to read this. It's six hundred pages long, and most of it just repeats the wording of the WMA, the way everyone's expecting it to. The scary stuff all comes in the last fifty or sixty pages. Not right at the end, either, but sort of tucked in just before the last section, so someone who tries to skim the beginning and the end would miss it."

"The Senate?"

"Same deal—they'll get it tomorrow and rush to a vote. The Republicans will pretty much all be on board with this anyway, and the Democrats won't be looking to make a stand against their own administration. It will just be a few independent-minded types on either side the White House will have to worry about, and there aren't enough of them to hold this up."

"What about afterwards?"

"Who's going to make a fuss? No one wants to look like he was asleep at the wheel while this was going through."

"The press?"

"I thought we agreed the press had pretty much all turned into sheep too."

"The Supreme Court, Josh?"

"The ACLU will bring a lawsuit, of course. But you know how long it takes anything to get up to the Court. And I wouldn't count on this Court to hurry anything along; they're not exactly the most progressive group we've ever had up there right now."

"We've got to stop it."

"I think we've got to try."

"We should call Leo, Josh. He's still got a lot of influence in the Party. He'd help. And President Bartlet—"

"We can't take it to them, Donna; they're not strong enough yet to have to deal with this, either of them. Abbey and Annabeth would skin me alive if I even tried to talk to them about it, and I'm not going to be responsible for killing Leo McGarry or President Bartlet. I can do this myself."

"I'll resign. I'll make sure every member of the White House press corps has a copy of this, and then I'll resign. They're not all sheep, Josh—I know Helen Thomas will write about it. And some of the others."

"I was thinking about that, but—I don't know. That's a big step, Donna; that's your career."

"Not my whole career. I'll be able to get another job, Josh."

"Maybe. I don't like it, though. Anyone who could write this legislation has no scruples. They could say things, do things to make it so you wouldn't work in this city again for a long time. Not in politics. I don't want you to have to do that, Donna."

"If . . . that's what I have to do, Josh. It would draw attention to the issue. It would make a point. I could get the discussion going, keep it going for a while. I think it's the right thing to do."

"I don't like it. I don't want to think about what they'd say about you, what they'd come up with. Your qualifications, your finances, your personal life, you and me in the White House or why I first hired you—if Porter is the kind I think he is, he'd go after anything to discredit you, and even though there's nothing there they could make it look as if there was. Listen, Donna—where's Will in all this? I never thought he'd be the kind who'd okay something like this."

"I don't know; I don't know where he is in it. I think this has been Porter's project, Porter and Swayne."

"Will's out of the loop? The Chief of Staff?"

"I'm not sure. He's been in some of the discussions, I know, but I can see he's not getting on with Porter, and Porter isn't getting on with him. And Porter seems to have the President's ear, Porter and Swayne."

"So there's going to be a coup, and Porter's aiming for C.O.S."

"There could be. I'm really not sure. I don't know if the President would be willing to lose Will or not. It's more like there are two chiefs-of-staff right now, and the President listens to whichever one is telling him the things he finds most convincing, or whichever one is saying what he agrees with right then."

"Does the President ever listen to you?"

"About presentation, yes."

"About policy?"

"I haven't been encouraged to speak out about that."

"By the President?"

"By Will or Porter. They wanted a more definite hierarchy than you or Leo did. I've never been included in the kinds of discussions C.J. was."

"Idiots."

"Will didn't use to be like that. He changed when he got into Leo's office. I don't know why, whether it was the way the President wanted it, or not."

"Will was overwhelmed, Donna. He didn't have anything like the experience he needed to do that job. I think C.J. was overwhelmed at first too, and she knew far more than Will did about the job, and had Leo there to help her. Hell, I would have been overwhelmed, and Leo had been training me all those years. When people are out of their depth they don't want other people to know it. Sometimes they try to hide it by shutting the people they should be listening to out of the conversation, so they won't get challenged, they won't have to deal with dissent."

"You wouldn't have been like that."

"I hope not. I got a reputation as a micromanager on our campaign, but that was because I didn't have anyone I could trust to lean on, not because I was afraid of being disagreed with. I was desperate to have someone disagree with me, actually: when I found someone who was willing to argue with me, I hired her. Matt listened to her half the time instead of me and it drove me crazy, but I knew enough to know I didn't have all the right ideas and couldn't do the job by myself. Not that we managed to do the job anyway, even with Lou on board, even with Matt—and he's a good man, Donna. He's good because he doesn't listen to everything anyone's saying to him. He's smart, he has great ideas, and he's his own man, he thinks for himself. He wants to do the right thing whether it's going to get him votes or not. I really thought he was the real thing."

"Oh, Josh. I wish I'd gone to work for your campaign instead of Russell's."

"I wish you had too, Donna. But I guess it was my fault you didn't."

"No, Josh. It wasn't your fault."

"Yeah, it pretty much was. Will gave you chances I never did, I'm not sure I ever would have. It's one thing I've got to say I'm grateful to the guy for. I hated his guts for it at the time, but now . . . ."

"Oh, Josh."

"I just couldn't imagine life without you there beside me, you know? Looking after me, helping me out . . . ."

"I'm sorry, Josh."

"It's okay. I meant it—I'm grateful Will gave you the chance to find out what you could be. Gave both of us the chance to find that out. Look, Donna, could it be Will who put this bill in your folder?"

"It could be. I've been thinking about that, and I think it really could be. I can't see his assistant or Porter's walking into my office and going through the files on my desk to put something into one. Jennifer would have seen them go in and gone to find out what they wanted."

"They might have gone in when she was away from her desk."

"They might have, but I just can't imagine their doing that. They'd have sent it to me through an interoffice envelope or put it in Jennifer's inbox for me; they'd never walk into my office when I was out and treat my desk like it was their own. And I really can't see Porter risking this bill to set me up; it's too important to him. I think it must have been Will."

"Then Will wanted you to do something with it."

"Yes. But what?"

"I'm guessing he wants it to get out. Maybe he's hoping you'll leak it to the press. Maybe . . . ."

"Maybe what, Josh?"

"You'll say it's my ego talking, but—I was going to say, maybe he's hoping you'll leak it to me."

"I haven't told him about us yet. You know that."

"I'm not sure you'd need to. I might be wrong, but—it wouldn't surprise me if Will guessed we'd have kept in touch. He might not know we're sleeping together, but he knows how close we used to be. And he knows how much you meant to me."

"He does?"

"Yeah, he does. He was there when we heard about that bomb in Gaza; he saw me wigging out, yelling stuff about killing everyone who'd done it and everyone who'd helped them do it and everyone who was even happy they'd done it. He was there when I went tearing out of the White House and flew to Germany to be with you. Hell, he was there when I went to get you to go to the Inaugural Ball all those years ago; he saw my eyes popping out of my face when I saw you, even then. And he said some stuff, when he was trying to get me to join your campaign. He knows how I feel about you."

"Then he knows how I feel about you, too, Josh. Or knows enough. You might be right—he might be hoping I'll show this to you. Or to Helen Thomas and you."

"If you show it to Helen, Porter will know who's behind the leak, Donna. If I do something, only Will will know. And if Will gave it to you hoping you'd show me . . . ."

"What if he didn't, Josh?"

"It's a pretty good bet that he wanted you to show someone, anyway, Donna. If you don't leak it to the press, Porter can't accuse you of being behind the leak. If I go to the Hill this morning and start working to get people to vote against this, chances are Porter will never know a thing. You'll be able to keep your job—at least for a while."

"The job isn't important, Josh—not as important as this. I think I should resign."

"The job is important, Donna. If there's a power struggle going on, Will needs all the allies he can get. I'm guessing he's going to start counting you in on discussions more often now. You've said before that you think Russell likes you personally, and I expect he does—you're a very likeable person, he'd be an even bigger fool than I think he is if he didn't. You could have a chance to influence him, or to help Will influence him, to try to offset some of what Porter and Swayne are doing."

"You're starting to sound like Will, Josh. That's what he used to say during the primaries—that Russell was going to be the Democratic candidate whether he was the best man or not, and he needed people like me and Will to get him to go in the right direction."

"It's different now. That's a bad way to choose a candidate to work for, but Russell's President now. There's nothing we can do about that except make sure he's got good people around him to listen to, not just the Porters and the Swaynes."

"You're very convincing, Josh."

"It's because I'm right, Donna, and you know it. And that's why I think I might be able to swing this vote the other way if I go and talk to people today. I still know most of the guys up there on the Hill, and they know me. I have access, and I have some credibility, because I never played dirty with them—I played hardball, but I played fair, and I think most of them respect me for that, even if they hate my guts. I don't have the power of the White House to bargain with, but I've got something better than that."

"What, Josh?"

"The Constitution, Donna. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights."

"You're an idealist, Josh. Everyone always says you're just a Washington politician, but you're an idealist."

"I'm a Washington politician all right, Donna. I just have some principles. I believe in the rule of law, not men. That's what democracy is all about—anything else is tyranny."

"That's what I'm talking about."

"You think there's something wrong with that?"

"I think there's everything right about that. You'll go to the Hill today, then?"

"I'm going now."

"You might want to go home and change first."

"I guess I could manage that."

"But Josh?"

"Yes?"

"If it doesn't work—if you don't get the votes—I'm resigning."

"I'll get the votes. Do you really doubt me?"

"I've never doubted you, Josh."

"Donna?"

"Yes, Josh?"

"Be careful, please. Don't do anything—just, don't do anything you could get yourself in trouble for."

"I won't, Josh. Not today, anyway."

"And get plenty of rest, and drink lots of water, and . . . and . . . I'm not sure what else a pregnant woman is supposed to do, but be sure to do it."

"I love you, Josh."

"I love you too. You—you will marry me, won't you, Donna?"

Donna actually burst out laughing, though she was crying a little too as she nodded and kissed him and said, "You ridiculous man. Of course I will."

She was halfway to the White House when she realized she'd forgotten to tell Josh to be careful, too.

oooooo