The Speaker of the House had called for an update on the goings-on across the river. The president’s chief of staff asked Page to come in at nine in the morning to help with Norman Hearney’s briefing—Hearney was the new director of national intelligence. And Stanford Swift, an old friend from IBM, had called for lunch tomorrow, but Page had declined. “Full plate just now, Stan.” The problem was trust, something Alex didn’t know if she could count on for much longer. In the four years since she’d started here first as a substitute for Page’s secretary, and then the full-time position when the woman was killed in a car accident, the DCI had come to trust her. The most immediate problem was the Kraut showing up here in DC. By all rights, after the Milwaukee incident with his live-in, Alex had expected Schermerhorn to run for the hills. One less operator to have to worry about in the short term. But sometimes, like right now, she felt like a juggler with too many balls in the air while standing barefoot on a slippery slope that kept moving.
