"Steve White - The Prometheus Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

As they proceeded down the corridor into the West Wing, a tall, unfamiliar man on the outskirts of the
President's entourage caught Langston's eye. He felt certain he would have remembered the man if he'd
seen him before, despite his completely nondescript clothes. He looked old, with his thick mane of white

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/White,%20steve%20-%20The%20prometheus%20project/0743498917___0.htm (2 of 8)28-12-2006 15:57:06
 - Prologue

hair, and yet his movements were not those of an old man. His features were bleak and harsh, and
disfigured by a scar slanting across his left cheek. . . .
"Harvey . . . I mean, Mr. President-Elect," muttered DiAngelo, derailing his train of thought, "I still see
no reason for this meeting. If there's anything that needs to be settled, the staffsтАФ"
"Oh, it's all right, Sal. The President has asked for a private one-on-one conversation, and I see no reason
to object. I'm curious to see what he wants. And besides, we can afford to be obliging."
"Yes, butтАФ"
Before DiAngelo could finish, they passed by the Cabinet Room and the office of the President's private
secretary, and reached the door that was their destination. Langston glanced around, but the mysterious
old man was no longer in sight. The President led the way through the door. Langston followed, with
Secret Service men politely but firmly shooing everyone else away. Then the door closed behind him,
and he was in the Oval Office.
The President sat down behind the massive oak desk in front of the tall French windows of foot-thick
armored glass that admitted the pale light of late fall afternoon. He motioned to a chair across the desk.
Langston was impressed despite himself as he crossed the carpet with the Presidential seal in gold and
red against the deep blue. The momentary mood vanished as his eyes fell on the flags of the five armed
services in their traditional position to the right of the desk, along the south wall. Must get rid of those,
he made a mental note to himself.
Langston sat down and gazed across the desk at the man he would succeed in January. Silence and
mutual loathing settled over the room.
"Mr. President," Langston finally began, "I trust that in the spirit we both articulated at the press
conference just nowтАФ"
"Oh, cut the crap," the President interrupted in a voice as cold as his eyes. "I'm well aware that you have
no higher opinion of me than I have of you. So spare me your trademark smarmy hypocrisy. We're alone
nowтАФreally aloneтАФand we can dispense with the pap we were feeding those hyenas in the Press
Room."
"Do you seriously expect me to believe that? You're just trying to trick me intoтАФ"
"You can also spare me your paranoia. You know it's true, because otherwise I wouldn't be talking this
way. Besides, what would be the point of trying to trap you into anything? It's too late for it to do any
good. You've won." The President shook his head slowly, as though to clear it of a stunned disbelief that
still hadn't worn off. "There's no getting around that fact . . . and I'd even go so far as to call it fifty
percent just. You didn't deserve to win, but Ortega did deserve to lose."
Vice President Andrew Ortega had been the President's handpicked choice to succeed him, in line with
their party's strategy of reaching out to Hispanics. He'd won the nomination with little opposition save
that of isolationist commentator Frank Ferguson, a Holocaust-denial crank who had subsequently bolted
the party and launched an independent candidacy with the announced aim of acting as a spoiler for "that
spic." Still, Ortega's election had seemed a foregone conclusion. The opposition party, knowing it
couldn't win anyway, had thrown a sop to the Old Left hardcases who were its shock troops by
nominating one of their own: the patently unelectable Harvey Langston, congressman from a California
district for which the term "La-La Land" might well have been coined.
Then the unthinkable had begun to unfold. Ortega's campaign had been a parade of blunders, bloopers,
pratfalls and general ineptitude without modern precedent. The unfunny comedy show had climaxed the