“We’ll get right on that, sir,” Monroe replied before she left the office.
“This is un-fucking-believable,” Nick said to Christina.
“It certainly is.”
“Have you reviewed the statement I plan to make about Gretchen’s resignation once we locate her Russian pal?”
“I have, and I think it’s spot-on. You put the onus firmly on her, and she’ll have to answer for her relationship with him.”
“I’m worried about her getting defiant and telling her own version of the story once she’s no longer in office.”
“I’ve thought of that and wanted to suggest you make her sign some sort of nondisclosure agreement that prohibits her from publicly discussing internal conversations or other privileged information after her resignation. She’s frightened right now. It’d be a good time to nail that down.”
“Good thinking. Ask the counsel’s office to draft and execute it right away.”
“Will do, Mr. President.”
“Will this take me down, too?” he asked his longtime friend and trusted aide.
After a second or two, she said, “It shouldn’t. You had no knowledge of the friendship or anything to do with him.”
“People will say I should’ve known. They’ll say it doesn’t matter if I had no contact with him. If my VP did, then my administration was involved with him.”
“Your statement clearly spells out that her dealings with him were entirely personal in nature and had nothing to do with her role as the VP.”
“And you think people will believe that?”
“Well, it helps that it’s the truth. You’ll probably take a beating for a few days, but it’ll die down when something else happens. You know how the cycle goes. If I could add… I think it helps that he was promoting resistance to the Petrov regime rather than working on his behalf.”
“How do you think Petrov has taken the news that the guy who’d like to see him deposed was hanging out with my VP at her official residence? Even if I didn’t know about it, he certainly did.”
“Probably not well, but again, Ivanov wasn’t there on official business.”
“So she says. Who knows what they were up to?”
“I know this is a huge disappointment, but better to find out now that she’s compromised than later when Ivanov was turning his plans into action.”
“I guess so.”
Terry came in, looking as stressed as Nick had ever seen him. “Monroe said the FBI is checking out a John Doe at the MPD as possibly being Ivanov?”
“Right,” Christina said.
“I don’t know whether to hope it’s him or that it isn’t,” Terry said.
“I’d rather he was alive to say his visits with Gretchen were based purely on an old friendship,” Nick said, “and not an effort to recruit the United States government into supporting an overthrow of Petrov, even if I’d like nothing more than to see the end of that son of a bitch. We’re not in the business of foreign regime changes. Not on my watch, anyway.”
“You should say something to that effect when you’re asked whether you support Ivanov’s cause,” Christina said.
Nick sat behind the desk and ran a hand through his hair, still in disbelief over this unreal day. “I will.”
“Are you okay, sir?” Christina asked.
“I’m exhausted by this place.”
She sat in his visitor chair. “That’s understandable, especially when the drama is coming from inside the house.”
“Who investigates this if it turns out to be him?” Nick asked.
