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MY GUESTBOOK
Bartlet filled in some of the details that I had been unable to see while CJ seethed quietly, taking everything in while trying not to burst with outrage that the President had kept her out of the loop. I felt for her. Bartlet never would have kept Leo in the dark. The thing was, though, that CJ was not a great actress and Bartlet needed CJ and Josh to clash over Santos� statements to make it seem less staged. CJ could lie to the press until she was blue in the face, but acting just wasn�t her forte. Something that the President didn�t factor into his decision was the amount of residual Press Secretary anger that CJ still had that was directed at Josh. I knew she could easily focus her anger over Josh�s press blunders�Mary Marsh, the secret plan to fight inflation, the welfare bill, tobacco, not to mention all the rumours about him and Donna that ran rampant through the Beltway over the years�into believable fury over Josh�s inability to control the President-Elect. Bartlet, however, was somewhat out of the loop on things like that, Leo having kept him in the dark about a lot of things to make everyone�s lives a little easier.
Bartlet nodded to CJ then looked at me with an unnerving stare. �How did you figure it out?� he asked.
After a moment of searching for the right words, I smiled softly. �I can see the whole board.�
The meeting with the President lasted for about ten more minutes, then he left and CJ and a woman named Kate Harper briefed me on what I had come to find out in the first place�number of military personnel being shipped out, potential for escalation, the major players and the minor players that could get things done for us without making too big a splash�which took another ten minutes. It was a lot to take in, and I knew there would be a lot more once Santos took office�as future Deputy Chief of Staff my clearance was iffy at best, and the fact that I hadn�t officially signed on yet pretty much gave me the same access as the average newspaper reader�but I absorbed the information, jotting down a few notes where necessary, and I was on my way back to the OEOB well before I had anticipated.
When I got back to �my office� there was a stack of messages on my desk. I didn�t have an assistant yet, the pool having been drained filling in at the White House and with the Transition team, so there were many different people�s writing that I had to interpret. Most were predatorily congratulatory calls that I would return eventually, probably after staffing was completed. One was a call from Sara who wanted me to know that she would be flying out for the weekend to start scouting for jobs. I was halfway through glancing at the stack when I saw a message from Josh that made me drop all the other papers.