Page 7 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“I told Merlin you’d say that. And he told me to tell you to do it anyway.”
“I won’t.”
“I told him that too. He said to tell you that you and Embry aren’t going to get re-elected on modesty alone.”
Embry.
Hearing his name from Belvedere’s mouth is like having my guts exposed. I rub a hand over my face, pray that the salt sting in my eyes is from sweat and not tears.
“What else?” I ask through my hand.
“Bakewell wants to meet about the Carpathian sanctions bill the House is floating around. I put her down at one. Then we’ve got a staff meeting in the Oval Office at one-thirty. Handshake session at three, at four we’ve got the police widows coming in. Merlin wants the photo op to smother the latest GOP claim that you’re anti-cop.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, dropping my hand. My party had sponsored and successfully pushed through legislation to track officer-involved shootings and to provide federal funds for body cameras and racial sensitivity training. The bill had been crafted in close consultation with the Fraternal Order of Police and several key police chiefs from around the country. It’s the kind of choice I would have easily made as a captain or a major in the war.
But this isn’t the war, I remind myself with a sigh. This is peacetime. And in peacetime, even the most careful of decisions can get ripped to shreds. Twisted for political gain.
I remind myself that I chose this way of living. Or it chose me. I’m still not sure which.
“And then there’s the gala for the Luther Center honors tonight. Trieste, Merlin, and Kay have made a few notes on your speech—would you like me to squeeze in Uri this morning for final revisions?”
Uri Katz is my head speechwriter, and he’s damn good. Normally, I want his input at every stage of a speech. But today is not a normal day, and today more than ever I’m feeling the bitter irony of speaking at the Luther Center—a foundation dedicated to promoting the arts and sciences that began with an endowment from my dead father, President Penley Luther. A father that only a few people in this world know is mine.
"Any word from Berlin?" I ask. "It should come through today or tomorrow, and it'll be unofficial channels."
Belvedere shakes his head. "Not yet, sir."
"Okay." I hand him the folder back. “We’re changing the day. Tell Lana to compile any information from her briefing and put it on my desk. Have Gawayne send the PDB digitally, reschedule the prime minister. I trust Uri to revise the speech on his own; I’ll tweak it later if I think it needs it. Something big happened last night, and our staff meeting is first thing now, got it?”
“Got it,” Belvedere murmurs, already typing into his iPhone.
“High school and widows stay, everything else gets bumped to tomorrow, please. I’ll go to the gala tonight—see if I can call the prime minister from the car on the way there, now that I think of it.”
My body man is nodding, tapping on the screen. “Anything else?”
“I want Merlin in the Residence as soon as possible.” I glance at the window by the weight machine; the pink dawn is glowing into the hot orange of morning. “He’ll be awake.”
“Done.”
We walk out of the gym together, making for the stairs to the second floor. “And Belvedere?”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
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“The moment my wife’s plane from New York touches down, I want to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
I touch his shoulder, and he looks at me, his young face a combination of honored and vulnerable and wary. It reminds me so much of a young Embry that I have to swallow.
“Thank you, Ryan,” I say quietly. “For all your help. I would be nothing without you. It was true during the campaign and it’s even more true now.”
“Sir,” Belvedere stammers. “You know that’s not true at all.”
“I wish you knew,” I say with a rueful smile, “how weak I really am.” And then I leave him to start my first day in ten years without my prince.
I FEEL MERLIN APPROACHING.
