< previous page page_276 next page >

Page 276
"Colonel Morgan?" She spoke sternly. "I am Harrelson, the nursing supervisor. Mr. Karmann is out of intensive care now, but still critical. Please keep your visit with him short."
Anna Neville cast a glance at herself in the mirror of the powder room as she swallowed her pain pill. I look like hell, she thought, more like a bag lady than someone about to confront two heads of state. Here I am, in the White House, and I'm too tired even to look around. What I wouldn't give for a half hour in a wonderful hot bath and at least two days of sleep. She could feel the disapproving, impatient presence of Colonel Duquesne, barely able to refrain from hustling Anna along. Damn you, Madame Colonel, Anna thought defiantly, I'm not one of your Quebecoise recruits. Her body ached all over, but particularly her right leg, the one that had never healed properly.
She straightened her shoulders, wincing, and took one last look in the mirror. The pill had better work, she thought. Otherwise, she would never make it through the remainder of the day.
At the door to the Oval Office, an American air force military aide wearing a brigadier's stars and an earnest-looking young man in a gray suit and heavy horn-rimmed glasses joined the two women. The civilian introduced himself simply as Jamison, a deputy press secretary to the President, and the general turned out to be the presidential aide from his service.
Jamison spoke in a hushed voice, filled with his own importance, "Before we go in, Mrs. Neville, I shall brief you on what we Americans already know about your accident last December. Colonel Duquesne can tell you what Canadian Forces have discovered since you left to go on your tour. It's best you have this information before speaking with President Caidin and the Prime Minister."
They're going to tell me about my accident, are they, she thought. What arrogance. She had found a sort of second wind now and wondered at her self-possession in such a politically

 
< previous page page_276 next page >