Читать книгу The Testimony - James Smythe, James Smythe - Страница 23

Before the static had even stopped we had POTUS locked down in his office, and the service went over Air Force One top to bottom. They could do the whole plane (offices, press seats, cabin, hold, exterior) in two and half minutes. We cut off all comms to the aircraft – radio dark, they called it – and we sat still as they checked us a second time. I mean, totally still. Not even blinking. When they were sure that the noise didn’t come from the aircraft they let us get up from our seats, start using some of the tech again. POTUS was on the phone to China as soon as the handset was passed to him, and he had the Russian PM holding, with calls to return to the Brits, the Germans, the Japanese. I heard him speaking to the Chinese President. I assure you, he was saying, this was nothing to do with us, it was a natural phenomenon, it was not an attack. It’s a fine line, he said when he hung up, because those guys are ready to bite. They’ll lash out as soon as we do. We step off the ledge first, they’ll dive in after us.

When he was making the rest of his calls I told Kerry what was going on – she was the press secretary – and told her to keep the rumours under control. Does anybody know what the fuck is going on? I asked, and she said, Not a clue, so I told her to make something up. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of confused people out there, and the last thing we need is them reacting, so we’re going to have to tell them something. The leaders of the free world couldn’t just sit there and quietly wait for an explanation to fall into our laps; we had to make that explanation happen. You can’t fly tonight, the service told us, so we got back into the cars and went back to the White House before anything else could happen. We were there within five minutes, and I was watching them fielding questions in the press room within seven.