Interface

"I've got the black box ready. And I've got some information for you. The secretaries-designate of Defense, Treasury, Commerce, and State, and the Speaker of the House, have all spent time at the Radhakrishnan Institute in the last few months."

Mel shook his head. "Tragic," he said. "A tragic epidemic of strokes. Anyone else?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well, that will be useful knowledge," Mel said. "Now, Mary Catherine, there's only one thing we need from you."

"My father," Mary Catherine said.

"Right. Can you give me Willy?"

"I have a plan, Mel," she said. "I have a scam."

That night after supper, Cozzano called Mary Catherine in for another game of Scrabble. She'd had two or three glasses of Chianti, she was in a good mood, and she spoke without restraint. "Dad, it's the most boring game ever invented."

"If only you would play it right," he groused, "and not cheat."

They went into the study and sat down at the desk in front of the works of Mark Twain.

Mary Catherine always started the same way: she reached into the heap of tiles and spelled out ARE YOU STILL THERE. They had a fancy Scrabble board mounted on a turntable and so when she was done, she spun it around so he could read it.

Cozzano frowned. "Stop playing around," he said. "You know the rules." Both of his hands were active. It was a bizarre sight: with his left hand he was breaking up the sequence that she had spelled out, rearranging the letters, plucking more of them out of the overturned box top. With his right hand, he was picking seven tiles at random and placing them neatly on his little rack. He continued to speak at the same time. He seemed genuinely a

Why do I have to explain this to you every time? Are you teasing me, girl?"

Mary Catherine was accustomed to strange neurological tics because of her work, and she had grown accustomed to her father's peculiarities over the months that she had been putting him through daily therapy. She had to remind herself just how bizarre this would look to anyone else.

Cozzano's left hand spun the board so that Mary Catherine could read the words DID YOU SEE MEL.

She looked into his eyes. He was frowning, staring down at the Scrabble board, befuddled. "How did those letters get there?" he asked.

Mary Catherine messed them up with her hand before his eyes could read them. Then she combed some more tiles out of the heap and spelled out the word YES.

He got the same look on his face as when she had come home from school with Bs on her report card. "Is that the best you could do? A three-letter word?"

"Sorry," she said. "I got bad letters."

"Thanks for giving me that big fat Y," he said. "That's four easy points for me. You need to think harder about strategy." As he was talking, both hands were again active on the Scrabble board. His right hand was turning her Y into the world YTTRIUM. His left hand was spelling out HOW IS HE on the bottom left corner of the board.

Mary Catherine spun the board around. Again, Cozzano's eyes picked out the letters that had been laid down by his left hand. "How did those letters get on there?" he said. "For god's sake, peanut, we need to make sure the board is clear before we start. Get rid of those."

She had already read them, so she swept them away. Then she used the I in YTTRIUM to spell out the world PLANNING. In order to do it, she had to rummage through the box top for some more letters. Cozzano frowned and grumbled about this cheating.

The conversation went back and forth like that for several more rounds, the Scrabble board spi

Cozzano: FOR WHAT.

Mary Catherine: INAUGDAY

"I defy you to find that word in any dictionary," Cozzano said.

DuLafayette Webster, Heisman trophy wi

A live shot from a hovering chopper zoomed down on the twinkling Christmas lights of Tuscola, which had begun billing itself as "America's hometown." The Christmas decorations had been heavily enhanced by the largesse of Ogle, and coordinated by his designers. The camera pa

Cut to a shot of Cozzano, James, and Mary Catherine sitting together on the sofa. Zoom into a talking-head shot of Cozzano alone.

The President-elect made a heartfelt statement of thanks to the American people, expressed his happiness with his daughter's career plans and his son's excellent book, and incidentally, a

Then he stood up and introduced them personally. The cabinet-to-be were all gathered around the huge dining room table, dressed in cozy sweaters, drinking cider. They interrupted the convivial routine for a moment as Cozzano introduced them, one by one, to the American people. They were good-looking, confident, bipartisan, and multicultural.

Finally Cozzano returned to his seat by the fire to address a few last words of greeting and holiday cheer to the American people. Cozzano had developed a sense of timing that was positively eerie. He brought his little speech to a close just in time to cut back to the Scoreboard clock at the bowl game.

On the eighteenth of January, the Cozzanos climbed on to a chartered plane and flew to Washington, D.C. Journalists from around the world were converging there at the same time. So were members of the incoming administration and transition team, all of Cy Ogle's top people, several big GODS trucks full of electronics, Floyd Wayne Vishniak, and an irregular caravan of buses, cars, and airplanes carrying old teammates and Marine comrades-in-arms of William A. Cozzano.

58

At eight o'clock on the morning of Inauguration Day, a cluster of Secret Service agents burst from the elevators and into the lobby of the Georgetown Four Seasons Hotel, striding calmly but implacably across hardwood floors, green oriental carpets, and weathered brick. At the same time, a motorcade of three dark cars was spiraling out of a parking garage down the street. The motor­cade pulled into the brick driveway at the front entrance just as the cluster of agents, and the dignitaries hidden among them, was bursting through the brass front doors. Within a few seconds, the cars and the people were gone, trailed by a few journalists who had been quick enough to notice that the President-elect was on the move.

At the same time, William A. Cozzano himself was emerging quietly from an elevator tucked into a dimly lit corridor near the restaurant on the next floor down. He was accompanied by his son and daughter and two Secret Service agents. The Cozzanos were dressed in ru