Josh walked home, showered, changed, and took a taxi to the Hill. It was still early, but he knew a couple of congresspeople—congresswomen, actually—who could be counted on to be in their offices before seven. He called one of them from his cell phone and asked if he could have a few minutes in exchange for lattes and muffins from Starbucks; she greeted the proposal with the deep, fruity laugh he'd been expecting, and told him bribing a U.S. Representative was a federal offense but his security pass would be waiting at the door.

Five hours and twenty visits later, he wasn't sure whether he was going to be able to keep his promise to Donna or not. His story about the forthcoming bill had been greeted with surprise, guarded interest, and some disbelief, but not many promises to help spread the word. He'd been hoping to spark off a chain reaction; he'd never be able to get around the whole House by himself before tonight. And he was still convinced the leadership was going to call for a vote tonight.

He glanced at the list of names he'd jotted down this morning, trying to decide which one of three or four possibilities to try next. He was just setting off towards Campbell's office when his cell phone buzzed on his hip. He glanced at the number, and raised his eyebrows. He thought about not answering, but there was a question of respect—old habits died hard. He flipped it open and said his name.

"Hold for the President of the United States, please," an unfamiliar woman's voice said at the other end.

"Hello, Josh," said an all-too-familiar man's voice. "This is President Russell."

"Yes, sir," Josh answered. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I want to talk to you, Josh."

"Yes, sir?"

"In my office. In half an hour."

"In half an hour, sir?"

"Yes. That's not a problem is it, Josh?"

There was a question of respect, for the office if not for the man, and old habits died hard.

"No, sir. I'll be there, sir."

"Thank you, Josh." And the line went dead.

oooooo

The taxi set Josh down at 14th and Pennsylvania, which was as close as it could get. He walked the rest of the way, wondering what someone with a handicap would do. Presumably cars were still allowed in if the person in them was important enough, but access was definitely being severely restricted. The stretch of the Avenue in front of the White House was still closed to pedestrian traffic as well as cars, so Josh had to talk to a security guard to get by. He waited while the man spoke into his walky-talky, and watched what looked like an entire battalion of armed troops patrolling the streets around the building and Lafayette Square. Finally he was allowed through. He had to pass another security checkpoint at the gates, and then wait again by the metal detector at the front door.

"How are you, Steve?" he asked the uniformed guard as he waited.

"As good as you could expect, Mr. Lyman," the man answered, "with all this going on." And he waved a hand towards the street and, Josh assumed, the soldiers with their M-16's and grenade launchers walking up and down.

"It's certainly changed," Josh said.

"It has, Mr. Lyman," the guard agreed. "It has indeed. And not for the better." He leaned forward a little then, so the other guards wouldn't hear him. "Ain't nothing 'round here changed for the better, Mr. Lyman. Nothing." And he looked into the lobby, tilting his head towards the West Wing, then looked back at Josh. "Nothing, sir. You know what I mean? Nothing."

Josh gave a nod, surprised by Steve's indiscretion; White House employees were normally nothing if not tight-lipped about their personal politics.

"But we'll get through it, won't we, sir?" the guard went on. "We'll get through it. I keep thinking, that old flag out there, she's seen plenty. But she keeps on flying. We'll get through these times. We'll endure—that's what I say. We'll endure."

"Yeah," Josh said, suddenly intensely moved. "Yeah, we will."

"Don't have much choice, do we?" the guard added, rhetorically.

"Not much," Josh agreed, trying to smile. Steve suddenly straightened and squared his shoulders. "And here's Mr. Robarts, Mr. Porter's assistant, for you, sir. You take care now, sir."

"You too, Steve," Josh said, picking up his visitor's pass and turning to see a young, dark-haired man with an unsmiling face.

"Josh Lyman?" the man asked, as if he couldn't be expected to know. "This way."

He turned abruptly, without offering his hand or his own name, and led the way through the corridors of the West Wing towards the Oval Office. The President's secretary was away from her desk. Robarts gestured towards the door to the Oval, and left.

Josh opened the door. The room was empty.

He stood in the doorway, hesitating, not sure whether to walk in or not. The symbolism of the room was as powerful to him as it had always been, although he was vaguely aware that it looked different, and not in a way he liked. There seemed to be a lot more gold everywhere—on the walls, on the carpet—and a lot of mirrors and shiny crystal lamps and sconces. The Russells had redecorated, of course. It reminded him a bit of some baroque European palace like Versailles, and made him wonder if Bob Russell really saw himself as a kind of king. But if he did, he was an absent king: the chair behind the Presidential desk stood empty.

The door to the President's private office opened. Josh straightened his shoulders and took a step into the room. Harold Porter walked in.

"Josh," he said, nodding, and motioning to one of the chairs in front of the President's desk. "Sit down."

Josh crossed the room and took the proffered chair. Porter seemed to hesitate, and for a moment Josh thought he was going to take the chair behind the desk, but he stepped away from it and sat down in the armchair that Josh had left vacant. They sat there facing each other, the desk with the Presidential Seal in front and the empty chair behind it looming beside them in a way Josh found hard to ignore.

"Now," Porter said in a gravelly voice, "about this business on the Hill this morning—"

Josh interrupted him. "I came at the request of the President," he said. He tried to keep his tone neutral, knowing it would be more effective than if he went on the offensive right away.

Porter's eyes narrowed.

"The President had more pressing business to attend to," he said. "He asked me to take care of you until he was free."

Josh set his mouth a little. He knew this game well: Donna had played it for him many times, and he'd played it too. Just not for the President, and not in the Oval Office. President Bartlet would never, ever have allowed someone else to take a meeting in the Oval Office when he wasn't there.

But he knew how the game worked, and if Porter thought he was going to tie him up for the rest of the afternoon waiting for Russell to show up, he was totally mistaken.

"I'm afraid I have a commitment in half an hour that I can't break," Josh said, still striving for an easy tone. "I can come back tomorrow, if the President wants to see me, but I can only stay for about twenty more minutes now."

A flicker of annoyance crossed Porter's jowly face.

"Very well," he said slowly, sitting back in his chair and wrapping his hands across his stomach. "I can say what has to be said just as well."

Josh sat back too, and looked the man in the eye.

"I came at the request of the President," he said again, and this time he let a twinge of insolence into his voice. "If anyone else is going to take the meeting, it should be Will Bailey, surely. The President's Chief of Staff."

Porter's already purplish skin turned a deeper shade of purple, and he leaned forward, his watery blue eyes changing to ice.

"I think you'll find me good enough, Lyman," he said. "You're not doing a courtesy to the President, coming here. We're doing a fucking courtesy to you."

Josh raised an eyebrow.

"Really?" he said. "Because I haven't seen a whole lot of the courtesy yet."

"You always were a smart-ass, weren't you, Lyman? I don't have any reason to give you the fucking red carpet today, and you know it. This is as good as you're going to get from me, but if you're as smart as you think you are, you'll fucking well do what I say, whether you like the way I say it or not. You've spent this morning working against the President's Patriot Act, up on the Hill. If you ever want to be anything in the Party again, Lyman, you'll cut it out. Now. And you'll tell me who your fucking source was."

Josh gave Porter his own ice-cold look.

"I'll do nothing of the kind, Porter," he said. "And you know it."

"If you don't, Lyman, the Party's finished with you. Forever. For. Fucking. Ever. What the fuck do you think you're doing, Lyman, working against the President and your own fucking party up there?"

"I don't know, Porter. Maybe exercising my right to free speech before you and your President take it away from me?"

Porter snorted.

"Free speech! You can't actually be that naive, can you, Lyman? Things have changed since you were here; it's a different world out there."

"Not that different."

"The fuck it isn't! Bombs in American subways and malls; an airplane flying into the White House. People too scared to go shopping, the DOW tanking—my investments are down, Lyman. We're at war, and anyone who isn't with us is against us. Bartlet could afford to be highminded. He could afford to sit on his ass and give pretty speeches about civil liberties and democratic ideals. He didn't have to deal with the world we're in now. Though maybe if he'd made fewer pretty speeches and done a little more dealing with the world he was in, we wouldn't be having to deal with this one now."

Josh felt the heat flush into his face, and had to take a deep breath and hold it to keep his temper reigned in.

"That's President Bartlet," he said, softly, but with an edge of steel in his voice no one could have missed. "And that's really all the time I have to waste today," and he pushed himself out of his chair and started towards the door.

"Where are you going, Lyman?" Porter called out as Josh was leaving, his voice snaking towards Josh's back, laced with venom. "Back to that place in Virginia where you spent last summer?"

Josh stopped in his tracks, and turned slowly around.

"That was quite the vacation you took, wasn't it?" Porter's face was full of satisfaction now. "At quite the place. Not exactly your typical country inn, was it?"

"What," Josh asked, deliberately, "would you know about where I have or haven't spent my vacations? And how would you know it?"

Porter laughed.

"The F.B.I. works for me, Josh. And so do all the other intelligence agencies—for me, or for the President, which comes to the same thing. You don't think we actually waited to put all those clauses you've been lobbying against into practice, do you?"

"That's illegal."

"If the President authorizes it, it's legal enough for me."

"And did the President authorize this?"

Porter just smiled. He looked, Josh thought, remarkably like a crocodile. A fat, jowly, purple-cheeked, but very sinister crocodile.

"I told you you'd be finished in the party, Josh. I should have said you'd be finished in politics, period."

Josh stared at him for a long moment.

"I don't think so," he said then, leaning back against the doorframe and crossing his arms across his chest. "I'm good enough that they won't care."

"Are you really willing to chance it? To have everyone know? Your friends. Your family. Your girlfriend, if you have one. Any girl you'd like to pick up. That lovely little blonde who used to work for you—I've heard you had a thing for her; would you like her to know? Not that you'd have a chance with her anyway; she doesn't have a brain in her head, but she knew enough to get out of that job and sleep her way into this one. What, you're surprised? Wouldn't she put out for you? I guess you didn't offer her enough; Will Bailey had to make her Press Secretary, after all. But do you want her to know about you? Or anyone else? Everyone else. Every person you've ever met, every person you ever will meet, to know in exquisite detail just what a crazy fuck-up you really are?"

Josh felt the heat flash into his face at hearing Donna described that way, but his fury was tempered by relief at realizing that Porter didn't know that she was with him. He must have done his research back when Josh was blasting the administration, but dropped it after he'd gone quiet, or after the attacks of 6/16 had swept away other concerns.

He wondered how much information about him the man actually had. He couldn't imagine Sue Thornton parting with any details—at least, not knowingly. There was always the possibility that someone lower on the totem pole or with lower professional standards might have photocopied whatever notes she'd taken and passed them on. Or they might simply have surrendered the clinic's admissions records. He should have used a fake name, he thought, but there wouldn't really have been much point to that when his face was so well-known. And the place had expected a legal signature on all the waivers he'd had to sign. Not that it made much difference, really; the bare fact of where he'd been and why would be enough to embarrass him for the rest of his life. And his mother . . . . He shuddered a little inside at the thought of his mother finding out what he'd done.

But then he thought of what she'd say if she ever found out he'd traded the Bill of Rights for her peace of mind or his personal privacy, and lifted his chin.

"There are worse things," he said, and started to turn again towards the door.

"I knew a man like you once, Lyman," Porter said, and there was so much silken menace in his tone that Josh stopped and half-turned towards him again. "A real smart-ass, who thought he was the cock of the walk, but everyone knew he was a crazy man. It was back in Colorado—you know I'm from Colorado, don't you? I was at Colorado Mining; that's how I got to know the President. And this crazy guy. He was always mouthing off at somebody. Didn't seem to care who; he thought he was bigger than anybody, even the head of the mining company. Mouthed off to one of his guys once—to one of the President's guys. No one was too surprised when they found him at the bottom of a mineshaft the next day. They figured he'd done it himself, realized he'd burned his bridges, wasn't going to have much hope of a job or a life out there again. He'd always been a nut case, and Colorado Mining really was the only game in town."

Josh stared at him. A muscle in his face twitched, and a vein on his forehead throbbed. Porter smiled his crocodile smile. And at that moment, Will Bailey walked into the room.

"Mr. President, about this thing on the Hill—Harold? Josh?" Will stopped in his tracks, his mouth a little open. Then he shut it, firmly, and adjusted his glasses. But for just a moment Josh had seen the surprise in his face. And then something else, a flash of something in his eyes that, though guarded, was not unwelcoming.

"Don't worry, Will," Porter answered. "I've got it under control. Lyman here and I have just been talking about it. There's just one thing we still need to know, Lyman. Who's your source?"

Josh saw Will blink. He turned back to Porter and smiled his coldest politician's smile.

"Wouldn't you like to know, Porter?" he said. "I'm going now. The President's expecting me. President Bartlet, that is; you know I'm working with him on his library, don't you? You'd be surprised how well-informed he still is, even though he's been ill. He talks to everyone, and everyone talks to him."

Harold Porter glared at him. Josh turned and left the room.

"Remember what I said, Lyman," he heard Porter's voice calling after him, "I meant it. Colorado Mining's the only game in town."

And then Will's, angry-sounding, but lower-pitched than Porter's and too quiet for Josh to catch what he was saying as he nodded at Mary, back at her desk now, and then walked unescorted through the familiar corridors and out the front doors.

oooooo