The Nation's President Picked Me Up From Prison-Chapter 16: Greg: Cabinet Meeting

"Sir, your meeting with the cabinet is in fifteen minutes," Rowan, my chief of staff, says as I sip my morning coffee in the west wing of the Crown Palace.

Someone else strolls in.

"Oh, is it today?"

Lewinsky drops into the seat across from me. Rowan slips out, closing the door behind him.

"I bet you’ll get roasted by the cabinet today," Lewinsky says, smirking as he snatches an apple from the fruit platter.

"Something I expect."

"Hmm." His eyes narrow with that mischievous gleam that usually means a question not related to work is coming. "So... when can I meet her?"

I ignore him, returning my focus to the tablet displaying foreign news.

"Come on, Mr. President," he presses. "You know I’m a big fan of hers. Elyn Hansley is so pretty, and it’s always a pleasure to meet pretty girls—"

"Elyn Merrit is her name," I hiss.

"Huh?"

Lewinsky is smart for a press secretary, but sometimes he’s remarkably slow.

"Oh, right. That must be her maiden name." He chuckles around a bite of apple. "Anyway, the surname doesn’t matter. But are you really serious about this marriage? You can’t think of anything better?"

"A weapons project is controversial enough, especially for a president who just started his term. Congress needs public support to justify raising my approval rating, and how do I get that? I need a good story. Something that makes people think of me as a kind hero. After all, public opinion can push the Congress to approve a project."

"I get the point, sure. But you can play hero without getting married. That girl was a murder suspect."

He leans back with a smirk so smug I seriously consider throwing the rest of my coffee in his face.

"Or maybe you don’t want to play hero only in the public’s eyes," he adds. "Maybe you want to play hero in her eyes too." His look tells me he thinks he’s decoded every corner of my mind.

The probability of me throwing my coffee at him just rose to 70%.

"Does she even remember you, though?"

Okay, it’s 80% now.

"Maybe you should just—"

"Mr. President," Rowan calls from outside the door, rescuing Lewinsky from death.

I rise and leave my press secretary behind. Talking to him is tolerable only when it involves work.

When I reach the meeting room, everyone significant enough to matter is already there.

"Hello, everyone. I hope you had a good sleep last night," I say though my tone leaves little room for the warmth usually associated with greetings.

I take my seat, and the folders containing what this meeting is all about are being distributed to the vice president and secretaries.

"What you have in your hands, ladies and gentlemen, is the project I’m proposing."

One by one, cabinet members pull the draft in front of them. I can see the moment their eyes catch the scope of it. The way shoulders go still, the way breathing pauses.

Good. Awareness is the first step toward agreement.

The Agriculture Secretary is flipping pages like she expects a trap to fall out. Treasury looks as though he wants to calculate the budget in his head on the spot. The Interior Secretary has already underlined something mentally, I can tell from the twitch of his jaw.

"Launching a major defense program in your first year is... unconventional," he says carefully. Formal tone, thinly veiled disapproval. "Congress is already wary. This could trigger substantial pushback."

"Public perception will be harsh," State adds. "Some may call it premature militarization. Others will assume you’re ignoring domestic priorities."

"And the foreign situation isn’t severe enough to justify it," says Homeland Security. "Tension with Renia exists, yes, but it’s hardly a casus belli."

"It might even escalate things," State adds.

"Renia is developing next-generation missiles," I cut in. "They unveiled prototypes last month and tested ranges we cannot counter. Our current defenses are outdated. We cannot pretend otherwise."

A murmur passes through the room.

"Even if this program is viable, Congress controls the purse. They won’t give you a blank check."

"They won’t," I agree. "But they’ll give us something if the justification is solid."

"And what exactly is the justification?" Treasury presses. "We have mild tension, not a full strategic threat. Our intelligence community says escalation is unlikely."

I lean back in my chair.

"They said the same thing five years before the Strayton Crisis," I reply. "Complacency is the prelude to disaster." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Silence.

A heavy, thinking silence.

State folds his hands. "What, precisely, is this new system you envision?"

I tap the document. "Page seven."

* * *

The cabinet meeting was nothing short of a disaster.

I expected it, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.

"Sir, at this point, I don’t think it’s easy to pass the project through Congress," Harrington, the defense secretary, says.

We’re talking privately in one of the rooms in the west wing. Well—not very privately, because there’s a third person in the room playing with his phone in the corner.

"I never said it would be easy," I tell Harrington. "But we need to go through the process. Otherwise, our plan will fail."

"Gregory Brandt doesn’t fail, Harrington, so don’t worry," Lewinsky butts in.

"What do you think Renia is planning, Mr. President?" Harrington asks.

Renia is a neighboring country we’ve had rising tensions with. It’s also one of the reasons I told the cabinet we need a new weapons program to strengthen the country’s defense.

But this kind of project might appear too grandiose, especially for a president in the first year of his term.

Still, I have my own reasons for doing things, and I’m serving the country’s best interests, not my cabinet’s.

"They won’t start a full-scale war," I say, the confidence in my voice coming not from ego, but from knowledge. "They’re expanding their warfare, but it’s just intimidation. The best they can do is send special agents, people not directly affiliated with their government, to get what they want."

"Do you think the other countries know about it?" Harrington asks, his voice smaller now.

"I don’t know how Renian spies learned about it. But I’m sure they’re keeping it to themselves because they want it. They won’t risk another enemy."

Lewinsky walks toward us. "We need to have a meeting. Franco called me earlier. We have new leads on who the spy is."

A meeting, yes.

But not in the Crown Palace this time.