The Book of Truths

Chapter 9

“Trust no one,” the president said.

The Keep had her quill pen poised over the latest page in the book, but didn’t write his words of wisdom down. “That’s been on every president’s list.”

“Maybe they should highlight it?”

The Keep carefully laid the pen down and flipped through some pages in the book. “It’s been highlighted and scored and given extra stars and exclamation points. You read it years ago when I in-briefed you after you took office.”

“Maybe it needs its own page?”

“Good idea, sir,” but it was apparent she wasn’t going to make any special note about it.

“I’m surprised JFK didn’t put that on a separate page,” the president said.

“He didn’t make it to this meeting,” the Keep said. An awkward pause followed that. “Terribly sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She picked up the quill and held it carefully and with respect. Its original owner, after all, was Thomas Jefferson. It was antiquated and archaic, exactly the way it should be as she entered the president’s observations from his four years in office in the Book of Truths with ink and quill from the third president.

The quill was archaic, not the ink, although it was specially made with the same formula Jefferson had used centuries earlier.

Templeton smiled sadly. “How about this: Especially don’t trust someone who tells you not to trust anyone? I learned that the hard way.”

The Keep nodded. “Very good.” She wrote in large, flowing letters, almost calligraphy, and he wondered if that was part of why she’d gotten this job or if she’d been taught it after getting the job.

Everyone in the White House thought the Keep was part of someone else’s staff. She wore the same type of bland business attire, had an access badge that gave her the highest clearance, and kept a low profile. In housekeeping, they thought she worked for the social secretary. In social, they thought she was a senior staffer at housekeeping. The cooks (chefs, since it’s the White House) thought she worked for maintenance.

There was only one other person on the top floor of the White House, seated too far away to hear, a shadow that always was behind the president, even when the sun didn’t shine: a military attaché who carried the “football.” Technically, it was just a metal briefcase. It weights forty-five pounds and a satellite antenna pokes out of the side. It is not locked to the aide, as many commonly thought, since they were in the relative safety of the White House. The case holds the key ingredients needed for the president to annihilate any enemy at a moment’s notice: a transmitter (never used); a black book listing options for nuclear strikes based on current threat analysis and updated at least daily, more often in times of crisis (peered at several times by presidents with reactions ranging from morbid interest to shock and dismay, but never used); another book containing options of classified sites the president could be taken to in case of emergencies (used on 9/11/2001); and most importantly, a three-by-five card with the authentication codes for launch (never used). There is also a sat phone and a pistol, the latter an object of speculation as to whom it was to be used on and why. The dark humor was it was the attaché’s last way out if the case had to be used.

The Keep had told Templeton four years ago during the in-brief that several presidents, most notably Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, had preferred to keep the code in their jacket pocket, indicating a strange combination of need for power and lack of trust. This had led to Carter sending the authentication codes for a nuclear holocaust out to get dry-cleaned along with the jacket while on a trip one time.

After that, the Secret Service began checking laundry.

Then it had ended up on the emergency room floor in discarded clothing after Reagan got shot.

After that, the Secret Service really tried harder to keep the president from getting shot.

The Keep had recommended following protocol and leaving the codes in the case.

Templeton thought the constant presence of the officer in range of the president was more than just a practical thing. It was a reminder of the seriousness of his job, for despite four years in office, he’d never been able to zone the guy out of his sphere of awareness.

He couldn’t comprehend carrying those codes in his pocket. Sometimes, late at night, he pondered what it would be like to have that briefcase opened and give the codes. Then he usually took a Xanax to get back to sleep.

The president heard his wife’s angry voice echo up the stairwell and sighed. “Why is Christmas so damn important around here?” he asked.

The Keep responded to the president’s question, because she did more than just keep the book. She was also fluent in White House and presidential history. “Christmas didn’t become a national holiday in the United States until 1870, during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant. One might think this would have something to do with the separation of church and state, but the same bill also made New Year’s, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving national holidays.”

President Templeton snorted. “Maybe Grant just liked days off and to party? He supposedly liked to take a drink or two. Or maybe the Founding Fathers were too busy for the first century or so to worry about national days off?”

The Keep nodded. “Possibly. But contrary to popular myth, Grant was not a great imbiber of alcohol in quantity. He simply had no tolerance for alcohol. So when he did drink, the results were, shall we say, not fortunate for him. As far as Christmas in the White House, Abigail Adams threw the first Christmas party here and it was quite the smash.”

The president was slouched in a chair in the solarium on the third floor of the White House, the uppermost level, while the Keep sat at a large round table, a large, leather-bound book in front of her. The president’s Secret Service detail was one floor below, quite irritated not to be on the same level even though they also had two guys on the roof, as always.

Somehow the Keep was able to overrule even the Secret Service inside the White House. Which made the president suspect there was more to her than just taking care of the big book. But in four years, he’d never seen her do anything except occasionally brief him on incidents that the covert world she represented dealt with. Incidents that never had After Action Reports typed up on computers, or paper; only verbal briefings, one on one. Incidents that didn’t even make the Top Secret daily intel briefing. Incidents that scared the shit out of him and caused him to take more Xanax than he probably should.

“Adams was from Boston,” Templeton said. “I thought they were all uptight hard-asses, like General Riggs.”

“Not Abigail,” the Keep said, making it sound entirely plausible that she was on a first-name basis with a long-dead First Lady. “She threw a great party.”

The Keep did not look the part. Midthirties, pale skin, with short dark hair. Athletic, slender build, and just barely over five feet tall. It was easy to see how she was rarely noticed. Templeton didn’t even know her name, only her title and first name, Elle, which no one used but was on her ID badge with Keep as her last name.

She’d been important the first month he was in office, and she was important in this last month, but for the rest of the four years, he had no idea what she did except for the incident briefings. Apparently she also brushed up on White House history. The last time he’d seen her was six weeks ago, giving him the summary on a Rift incident in North Carolina. The very existence of Rifts and Fireflies was just one of several secrets she’d briefed him on when he took office.

She had a tiny office down the center hall on this floor, where a cluster of the staff worked. Now that he reflected on it, Templeton realized he’d never seen her office. In fact, there were a few rooms in the White House he’d only glimpsed on the quick tour four years ago.

Templeton shook his head as the sound of the preparations rose through the floors below. Even here in this private sanctum they heard the clamor of hammers banging and voices shouting. “Does it have to be such a big deal? The money could be better spent in other ways.”

The Keep shrugged, such goings-on of little consequence to her. “Christmas at the White House has evolved into what it is with each administration adding their own special touch.”

It had indeed. As the decades and centuries rolled by, Christmas at the White House grew from Abigail Adams throwing a great party (according to the Keep) to an elaborate, drawn-out affair lasting from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, so significant that there was a year-round full-time staffer planning the event.

She probably had an office next door to the Keep, the president mused, and like a holiday vampire only rose at the appropriate time of year.

This year, the last in President Templeton’s term, the holidays had an added urgency to it, a feeling not quite of desperation but perhaps resignation. Christmas in the big house for a lame-duck president is an awkward event for the First Family, knowing they’re going to get the boot in less than a month. Why put up decorations when you’re going to be packing everything in a few weeks? Most people wouldn’t do it, but most people weren’t the First Family and subject to the obligations of tradition and the expectations of the “people,” whoever they might be.

“Do you think the treaty lost me the election?” Templeton asked. He was putting off the task the Keep was here for, but in reality, he was actually putting off going downstairs to the chaos of the preparations and the meeting with the press in the Entrance Hall in front of the tree. He could expect to be barraged with questions about the treaty, not good old St. Nick. And, of course, he also didn’t want to face the demands of the Oval Office over in the West Wing.

The Keep spread her hands, long slender fingers covering the book that was the purpose of this meeting. The Keep had started the meeting by asking him simply: “Tell me what you learned here.”

And he’d laughed and said: “Like what did I do during the summer?”

She had not laughed. “Lessons learned, to be passed down the line.”

And he’d had to begin to dredge up memories, many bad, a few good.

The Keep answered his question. “Your opponent did a good job of equating the treaty with being soft, Mister President. Of caving in.”

Someone telling the truth. That was a rarity in this building, Templeton thought. But the Keep had nothing to gain or lose by doing so, unlike most others that surrounded him. When he and his administration went packing, she would still be here, dumping on the next poor schmuck who had “won” his job.

“I think it was the name,” he said.

A furrow of confusion crossed her forehead. “Name, sir?”

“My middle name. Armstrong. What do you think of when you hear it?”

“Neil Armstrong, sir. First on the moon.”

“Ah yes, the little hop, as my wife once called it in one of her fouler moods while we were watching the Discovery Channel. It takes a lot to impress her. But that’s not how my opponent played it. Armstrong. Middle name. Just like you know who, who got it at Little Bighorn. How can they make that leap, then leap to the treaty leading us into another massacre? And, of course there’s Lance Armstrong. And what that’s about, I have no idea. There’s absolutely no connection.”

“There rarely is with politics, Mister President,” she said. “Human beings, while irrational, are predictably irrational. In fact, note how you went from hop to leap without consciously realizing it?”

Templeton laughed. “How come you weren’t working on my campaign?”

She tapped the book on the table, drawing them back to task. “I have a job, sir.”

Templeton straightened up in the chair and sighed. “You know, you scared the heck out of me that first month when you briefed me here, in this same room, with that damn book of yours. And not just the top ten lessons learned by every president, but all the rest. Especially the stuff about the Rifts and the Fireflies and the other near disasters.”

“I’m sorry, Mister President. I didn’t mean to.”

“You know what I call you in my head,” he said. “I call you the Heartbreaker.”

She nodded. “Your predecessor came to the same conclusion, and I understand all previous Keeps have been called the same in one form or another. We prefer realists.”

“I couldn’t even tell Helen or my chief of staff how you broke my heart and turned me into a liar for so many of my campaign promises. You and that damn book hog-tied me long before I got to this point of being a lame duck.” He shifted in the chair and stared her in the eye. “Do you know why they call it a lame duck?” He could tell she knew, but he didn’t care. This was his chance to bitch and by God he was gonna take it. “Birds molt a few feathers here and there, but ducks drop them all at once like a dirty bathrobe and have to sit around naked and vulnerable because they can’t fly for weeks. We should have a duck as the national bird, not an eagle.”

“Would you like me to write that down, sir?” she asked, and he knew she wasn’t jerking his chain. It was her job.

“Very funny.” He looked about, because he could use a drink. “Heck, Franklin fought against using the eagle as the symbol of our country, didn’t he?”

The Keep nodded. “Yes. He called the eagle a bird of bad moral character that did not make his living honestly. That an eagle was a carrion bird, which isn’t quite true as an absolute. He wanted the turkey as our national bird.”

“You know,” he added as he spotted nothing to drink in the room, “if I’d been reelected I was going to switch to pot. Easier on the liver. Enough states have made it legal. What the heck? Don’t drink, smoke pot. You can write that one down.”

The Keep smiled. “What a good idea. We’ve lost too many fine men and women to the bottle.”

“And a few bastards,” the president said. “McCarthy drank himself to death after losing to the army in his hearing. I remember there was a section in there from Ike about how, in retrospect, he’d realized he’d handled McCarthy the wrong way. Should have squashed him like a bug right from the start. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t judge or evaluate, sir. I just copy it down.”

“No,” the president said in a sharper tone than he intended. “After you copy it down, you read it to the next poor sap who inherits this house and shit on his head. Then you copy down what he’s learned four years later for the next poor sap.”

“It’s efficient,” the Keep said. “It preserves institutional knowledge.”

He stared into her deep blue eyes, so full of intelligence and a keen quickness that bothered him in a way he couldn’t define. “You should brief anyone who thinks they want to get the nomination from either party. I bet it would send some home before they even got started.”

“That wouldn’t be secure, sir.”

“So you trust all the former presidents to never speak of these things or write about them in their memoirs?”

“Will you, sir?”

“No.”

The Keep seemed to take that as sufficient answer to his own question. “You are joining a very unique club, sir. It’s why former presidents get along better than most people expect. You share something very special.”

“And you share it with no one.” It was not a question. “Why does the Keep have to be a woman?”

“We’ve learned that men respond better to women bearing bad news, sir. Less testosterone and less desire for the alpha to be right, regardless of cost.”

“Now that the new president is a woman, are you losing your job, too?”

“No, sir. She’ll have to resign herself to me like you did, until I pass the job along.”

“So are you a duck?”

“No, sir. I’m an eagle. I always hold on to a few feathers. No pun intended,” she added, quill in hand.

“That’s the funniest thing you’ve said,” the president noted, “and it’s not that funny. You might be considered carrion, feeding off my dead carcass now that the country has discarded me.”

To that, the Keep had nothing to say.

“How many presidents have you served?”

“You’re the second, sir.”

“How’d you get this job?” he asked.

“I was selected, sir.”

“By who? My predecessor? Your predecessor?”

“No, sir.”

Templeton waited for amplification, but the Keep only seemed a font of information regarding history and secrets. He was so sick of it all.

“Who selected you?” he pressed.

The Keep’s face showed the tiniest glimmer of… was it irritation, the president wondered?

“Hannah chose me.”

“Of course,” the president said. “Who else but her.” It too was not a question. “How on earth does she find someone like you with the weird combination of knowing just about everything and reading the secrets in that book but having no desire to tell anyone?”

“It’s Hannah’s gift to find people with certain talents, sir.”

“And how do you get replaced?”

“I don’t know, sir. It’s on the last page of the book if I feel a need to replace myself.”

“You haven’t read it?” he asked in surprise.

“No.” She seemed genuinely confused. “Why would I read it? It’s to be read when I need to replace myself if need be.”

“What if you get hit by a bus?”

“There’s always Hannah, sir.” She shook her head, as if trying to figure out how to explain something to an ignorant child. “What you’ve never understood, Mister President, as no president before you has ever really understood, although some came close, is that the United States of America is like a finely tuned engine. It runs because there are those who maintain it in the shadows, on the inside. For my part, we run on information. We take it in, we give it out.”

“And the Cellar takes action when need be. Sanctions.”

She frowned that he even dared mention the name and the term, even here in the sanctity of the White House. “We have operatives who take action at Hannah’s directive.”

“But you’re not one of those operatives?”

“I keep the book, sir.”

Templeton got up. He walked to the table and took the book, turning it to face him, and looked down on a page where the Keep had been writing in longhand, adding Templeton’s comments to its contents. “The Book of Truths. Really torpedoes campaign promises and lofty goals when you walk in the room and lay it out.”

“It doesn’t have to, sir,” the Keep said. “It just makes the world real.”

“Same thing. Blew Kennedy’s missile gap right out of the water when he read the truth about the numbers in this book. There was a gap all right, but it was the opposite of what the Pentagon and the CIA and the defense industry was telling everyone.”

“It was the truth,” the Keep said. “It helped him make the right choices during the Missile Crisis.”

Templeton shook his head. “This shouldn’t be called the Book of Truths. It should be the Book of Secrets. Why don’t we just publish the thing and let the American public know all the truths in it?” He didn’t wait for, or expect, an answer. “That’s why they’re secrets.”

There was a loud crash from downstairs and voices raised in alarm.

The president headed for the door. “‘What fresh hell is this?’” he quoted. “Shakespeare always had a good line for any occasion.”

“It’s not Shakespeare,” the Keep informed him as he left the room to investigate. “Dorothy Parker.”

“Great,” the president muttered. “Can’t even let me get Shakespeare right.”

Just a minute earlier, Debbie Templeton had bolted from her Secret Service limo and darted into the Entrance Hall, two stories below where her father was. She immediately ran into some stewards who were carrying boxes of ornaments that flew out of their arms and onto the pink and white marble floor. The sound of breaking glass and ceramic filled the hall, followed by gasps of dismay from both stewards.

One of them fell to his knees, as if he could magically reassemble that which had been broken beyond repair. “They’re so old and precious!”

“Irreplaceable,” the other steward said in shock.

“Precious?” Debbie hissed in her best Gollum imitation. She shifted to her regular voice. “What the hell is wrong with you? They’re just balls of glass. Balls like your balls, if you had any.” She found this quite amusing and cackled maniacally.

This trumped the broken ornaments and the entire Entrance Hall froze in shock: the stewards touching up the decorations on the towering tree that dominated the room (adding ornaments from the states of a delegation of congressmen coming later in the day, pulling ones from states not represented), the carpenters adding to the gingerbread house display (produce from same states being featured, removing said produce from same nonrepresented states), and the waitstaff cleaning up after a reception for some group and preparing for the next.

Never a dull moment.

“Debbie!” The First Lady’s voice was pitched in a tone everyone recognized. She strode across the hall like she owned it instead of borrowing it for four years. She gripped Debbie’s upper arm in a vise grip and hauled her out of the hall and toward the State Dining Room, cutting a hard right and shoving her into the elevator. The door shut before the First Lady’s own two Secret Service guards could enter, so they sprinted up the stairs next to the elevator.

Inside the elevator, Helen Templeton pressed her daughter against the wall. “What has gotten into you?”

Debbie was laughing and crying at the same time, which basically made her a mess. She started blubbering. “Brennan, Mom. They took Brennan away. He cheated on me.”

“He cheated on you? Who took him away?” Mrs. Templeton handled the statements in her view of the order of priority.

“In high school! That’s why we didn’t go to the prom. He got a blowjob. From Mary McCarthy of all people. Can you believe that?”

The elevator doors opened on the top level revealing the president, the Keep standing behind him, thick leather book in her arms, and farther in the distance the aide with the football. Seconds later, two winded Secret Service agents came dashing out of the stairwell to their right.

“I always knew that boy was no good,” the First Lady said.

“Oh, Helen, give the girl a break,” the president said instinctively. “What boy? Brennan?”

“You don’t even know what’s going on,” the First Lady snapped at him. She spotted the Keep in the background. “What’s she doing here?”

The First Lady had gone on a purge the first months in the White House and any woman she considered attractive, aka a threat, was banished from the main residence. She’d forgotten about the Keep, whom she’d added to the list. Everyone, it seemed, forgot about the Keep.

It was also why a female officer never carried the football, something the president hadn’t noticed.

The president ignored his wife and removed her hand from his daughter’s arm. “What’s wrong, dear?”

Debbie collapsed into his arms, heaving with sobs, yet bursts of laughter poked through. “Brennan. He always accused me of sleeping with that stupid quarterback who cheated off me all senior year. Turns out he was the one who cheated. And all these years he’d been putting that on me. How shitty is that?” Just as quickly, her mind jumped tracks as she looked over her shoulder at her mother. “Do you think you have enough Botox, Mom? Really? For God’s sake, you haven’t been able to smile in years.”

“Debbie,” her father said.

“What are Rifts?” Debbie asked. “Fireflies? Bren seemed upset about them. More secrets?”

In the background, the Keep was startled, which meant she clenched her left fist tight and dug her fingernails in to prevent showing any sign of being startled.

“And Pinnacle?” Debbie said. “He said something about Pinnacle?”

The president swallowed, ignored the questions, and misdirected, the way four years of dealing with the White House Press Corps had taught him. “I don’t care how upset you are, that’s no way to talk to your mother.”

Debbie pushed out of his arms and looked at him. “You’re not much better. Look at all the makeup you have on.”

“I have to address the press and the cameras wash you out so—” Templeton began to explain what he knew she already knew, but she cut him off by placing her hands on his face and trying to rub off the fake rose on his cheeks.

“Stop that!” Helen cried out. “It took that girl”—the First Lady rarely remembered any of the staff’s names, relying on “that girl” or “that guy”—“twenty minutes to do your father’s face.”

“I’m calling the doctor,” the president said as he gripped Debbie’s hands and pulled them away. Several Secret Service agents hovered in the background, uncertain what to do. Was this a threat to the First Family from the First Family, or was this a family squabble? Who, exactly, were they to protect from whom?

Their job sucked.

“Yes!” Debbie screeched, struggling against him. He was so surprised he let go. “Call the doctor,” Debbie continued, “and have him check out this loon you married.”

“I won’t stand for this!” the First Lady snapped. “Who do you think you are? I know you’re upset about Brennan and whatever he did, but it’s hardly fair for you to attack us about it. I told you a long time ago to walk away from him.”

Debbie ignored her. She looked at her father, perfectly calm for a moment. “Why did you marry her? She hates you, you know. She only cares about the power and she always wanted to live in this house and she saw you as the ticket. She helped get you here, but now what? What’s she going to do for an encore?”

The president took a step back, as if the words hit him with physical force. He spotted the Keep standing there, observing, book in her arms, and he knew this escapade would probably fill half a page. That made him angry. Something about presidents not having been divorced and remarrying, although hadn’t Reagan been married before Nancy?

He pointed at one of the agents, the female one. “You take care of her. Get her to the doctor. I’ve got a country to run and a press conference.” With that, he stepped into the elevator and hit the down button, then the close button several times hard.

The doors swished shut and he was free of the scene.

“I’ve never seen you treat us this disrespectfully,” Helen said mournfully, shaking her head sorrowfully, a nice show for the spectators. “It’s rather sad, Debbie,” she added, just in case no one had picked up the shake and tone.

“It’s not sad,” Debbie said. The female agent was at her side, reluctant to make a move. “You run this family like a corporation and you’re the CEO and all that matters is your bottom line. The world according to Helen, and we all must bow to you.”

Helen’s face flushed red. “You prim tight-laced little bitch. You think I don’t know exactly who you are and how you’ve tried to undermine me with your father since the day he brought me into his life? I’ve tolerated your condescension and little snips toward me since then, but not anymore. I will not stand for it!”

The Secret Service agents were swiveling their heads back and forth as if watching a really nasty tennis match with hard green exploding grenades instead of soft green bouncy balls.

Helen took a threatening step toward her stepdaughter, so threatening the female agent actually took up position in between them and got bumped by the First Lady into her daughter.

“I can’t believe I didn’t make him ship you off to boarding school!” Helen hissed. “Things would have been so much easier around here without you around.”

Debbie blinked, stunned in a moment of clarity. A horrified look crossed her face. “Helen! How old are you?”

“I’m fifty-two. And what of it? I look forty.”

“Oh my God,” Debbie whispered, the fight gone out as awareness washed over her.

“What, you self-important whiny baby? You think I look older?”

“You’ve never told anyone your real age before,” Debbie said. “Even when asked, you always change the subject.”

“So what if I haven’t?”

Debbie broke and ran for the stairs, screaming for her father, the Secret Service hot on her heels, all the while screaming: “We can’t lie! We can’t lie!”

They caught her just as she reached the top stair and it took three of them, one from her restaurant detail, to subdue her. All the while she protested: “You’ve got to stop him. You’ve got to stop my dad!”

Helen snapped her finger at another agent and he produced a cigarette and lighter, apparently well trained at the finger snap. She fired it up and regarded her stepdaughter. “You’ve gone over the edge now. Finally. When it does me no good.”

The Secret Service guy from her detail shook his head as he looked into Debbie’s eyes. “You look so sweet but I always thought you’d be a great lay.”

Debbie stopped struggling. “We’re all up shit creek now.” And then she kissed him, lips full on, mouth open.

Helen laughed. “See. I always knew what you were. Just like me.”

And in the background, the Keep had her special cell phone out and hit autodial one: her direct line to Hannah to inform her of the situation, part of which Hannah was already reacting to, the Cellar having intercepted the contain Protocol call from Upton earlier and the 666 call from Colonel Johnston at DORKA.

President Templeton walked past Chief of Staff Louis McBride without acknowledging him. He was in the Cross Hall en route to the Entrance Hall where he was to address a handpicked group of reporters in front of the Christmas tree about some bullshit — he couldn’t remember what exactly — but the speech would be on the podium, carefully written and vetted by the worker bees in the West Wing. Just the thought of more Christmas bullshit made the president furious. Plus there was whatever the hell was up with Debbie. The day had begun bad and was continuing to get worse.

“What’s wrong with your face, Mister President?” McBride asked, reaching out and trying to slow his charge. “You can’t go out there looking like that.”

The president pushed him aside and walked up to the podium, the tree looming behind him. He cleared his throat, glanced at the notes already in place on the podium. He picked them up, then tossed them away. He stared straight at the camera while McBride hovered just out of view. “My fellow Americans. You are so naive. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to deal with your total lack of understanding, your inability to process information, your willingness to believe whatever garbage some cable news channel spews out like so much—”

“Cut the feed!” McBride screamed. “Cut the feed!”

Except it had never been live.

Hannah’s reach from her office deep underneath the National Security Agency was long and efficient.

“We’re in lockdown! Security code bravo-tango-six-eight-two.” The tall woman stalking down the Cross Hall emanated total command.

The Secret Service hesitated at the lack of recognition.

“Move, people!” Moms snapped, holding up one of her real fake badges. “Listen to the security code for the day! Bravo-tango-six-eight-two. Seal off the residence from both wings and the outside. NOW! We are in one hundred percent lockdown and isolation.

“We have a contagious pathogen loose in the White House. No one gets out!”