The Game Everywhere

P.S. Burton
(special bonus points to anyone who can recognize where that pen-name comes from)

SPOILERS: Minimal to none. Back story about several characters has been invented as I pleased.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own these characters. I'm not making any money from this story. I should be spending my time more constructively.

WARNING: this fic includes graphic descriptions of atrocities. Do not read it if you are squeamish about such things. It also contains a bit of sex, but the sex is not at all graphic; so really, it's a complete downer in every way. Also there's a few swear words.

NOTES/SUMMARY: Speaking of "dark" ... this fanfic basically takes the 1994 Rwanda genocide and puts it in the lap of the Bartlet administration. Whether this is accomplished by moving the Bartlet administration back in time, or the genocide forward in time, I am not sure, but probably the latter, as Bosnia does not appear to be happening at the same time.

Part One is quite fact-heavy; it gets more character-focussed later.

And to fans of Josh, apologies for his minimal presence here. It seemed necessary, for this story, to concentrate heavily on the communications staff.

One final note -- the "Batmobile" comment which comes up partway through was written before "The Fall's Gonna Kill You". So I thought of it first, ha ha ha.

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She has seen the papers building up on his desk, the maps and photographs. Some of them she has read too, and had to walk for hours to get the images out of her mind before she went to sleep at night. Others, she is aware, he is not supposed to have at all. There is trouble on the way.

"Some people dressed in uniforms and carrying guns came into the church. They asked everybody to come out with their arms in the air ...They separated the boys from the women. They removed baby boys from their mothers' backs. Then they macheted the men including the babies right in front of us ... They brought a tractor to take the bodies away."

The man from State leans against the wall, a hand over his eyes. "You know the worst, the worst thing? They're actually sitting on the Security Council right now. And we go in there for meetings and we shake their hands. Not one of us says, "You disgust me". Not one of us says, "Get out of my sight". That's the worst part for me."

"She said, "Ah, you have given birth to another Inyenzi", and she picked up a stick and killed my child."

She knows, too, the question that is coming towards her. She doesn't know just what day it will come.

When it does, she thinks, *I could not be prepared for this. What has State done that this is coming to me?* She looks at her hands and sees that her knuckles have turned, very suddenly, dead white.

This is her job. She clears her throat and speaks.

"If you want a detailed answer to that, you're going to have to go to State. But I can tell you that we're obviously extremely distressed by these reports, though I'm in no position to comment on their accuracy. You must be aware that we're in constant communication with other Security Council members, and at whatever time decisions are made ..."

"CJ, that's not what I asked."

"Well, what did you ask, Arthur?" she says. (Smile. Deflect it a little. See if he'll get tired.)

"I asked if the US government would be prepared to describe this as a genocide."

(Slight sigh. Look like this is an old question.) She notices that her briefing papers are going limp with the sweat from her hands. "I'm not sure you fully appreciate the complexity ..."

"CJ, I'd like to describe some events to you. According to Doctors Without Borders, last week the Interahamwe entered a hospital and hacked to death approximately 170 wounded Tutsi patients. A Hutu nurse was also killed because she was seven months pregnant by her Tutsi husband. The baby was torn out of her body and cut to pieces. The UN High Commission for Refugees
reports that in nine small villages around Cyangugu, 16,870 people have been killed, mostly with machetes. In a number of cases, the victims' Achilles tendons were severed so they could not walk. They were left lying in the sun for a day or more until the Interahamwe began to gradually chop off body parts. Death did not come quickly. Oxfam reports ..."

She is gripping the side of the podium now. Somehow -- she knows this fromlooking at the monitor -- she is standing upright, with a calm, professional expression on her face. Her heartbeat pounds in her ears.

" ... so I'm asking again, CJ, under these circumstances, can you not use the word genocide?"

*I really, really don't know why State isn't dealing with this*. But she has been briefed. "Because, Arthur, there is a reason for the selection of words we have made, and I have -- perhaps I have -- look, I'm not a lawyer. And the use of the term genocide has a very precise legal meaning. When looking at a situation to make a determination about that, before we begin to use that term ... I mean, we're certainly looking into this extremely carefully right now. But I'm not able to look at all of those criteria this moment."

Hands can shake if you don't lift them. But your voice mustn't shake. Your knees mustn't shake.

"Okay, CJ. I'd like to ask you, then, to clarify for us why this administration refuses to use that word."

"I told you, it's a complicated legal determination that ..."

"CJ, bodies are lying all over the hills!" Arthur is on his feet, this is not really a press briefing any longer, his face is twisted with fury, this is something else. "There are churches, stadiums, roads filled with bodies! We've all seen the pictures, CJ. Use the word. Use the word."

"I can't do that."

"Then tell the people here why you've been forbidden to use it."

*How in hell did he know that?*

"I'm not in a position to answer that question. There are formulations that we are using that we are trying to be consistent in our use of."

"All right. Let me ask you this. Is it true that you have been forbidden to use the word genocide because this administration knows that under the 1948 Genocide Convention, you would be obligated to take action to halt it? And this administration is not prepared to take that action? Can you confirm that for me, CJ?"

"I cannot."

"Can you deny it?"

"I'm not in a position to comment."

"Then use the word, CJ!"

"I will not."

Someone is moving beside her. For a moment she thinks a reporter has somehow jumped up on the stage. But of course not. She turns her head, and it is Toby.

He looks at her. She meets his eyes, and she steps back. She could stop him, she could easily stop him, but she does not. Later, she will think that if she did nothing else, if she failed in every other way, at least she did this -- she understood what he was going to do, and she stepped back.

"I will," he says. "I've read the reports. It's clear to me that this meets every legal criterion to be considered a genocide."

The room explodes. CJ closes her eyes, wishing she could stop existing for a few minutes, just a few minutes.

"... speaking as a representative of this administration?"

Toby seems confused now, a bit lost, but she can't do anything to help him. "Ah, no ... I, ah, I'm speaking in my personal capacity ... I suppose ..."

"But as a senior staff member, you would clearly consider this situation to be a genocide? And you would consider the administration to be bound by the 1948 Genocide Convention?"

"Yes. Yes, I would."

He has said enough now. She has to shut it down quickly. She steps forward again. He moves back. "Go now," she says. "Go out that way. Don't stop."

"What kind of shithead prank did you think you were pulling?"

Toby rocks back and forth on his heels, his eyes absent as Bartlet thunders across his desk. Leo motionless against the wall, Josh and Sam in the background, uncomfortable, aware that they've been called in purely to make the occasion more embarrassing.

"And as for you, CJ, what were you even doing letting him get up there? Can't you control your own press briefings?"

"I'm sorry, sir." She looks straight ahead as she speaks. "I was ... I was taken off guard. I didn't realize what he was ..." She hears Toby exhale sharply beside her, as if he's been hit.

Bartlet swings back to Toby. "I should fire your ass!"

Toby rocks back and forth some more. "Fine. Go ahead," he says softly.

Bartlett's eyes narrow. "I'm going pretend you didn't say that."

"You don't need to."

"Nevertheless, for the moment I will. What I want to know right now is whether you understand the magnitude of the public relations disaster which you, the Director of Communications, have just created."

"Yes, sir." He looks around at nothing in particular. "That was in fact my intention. I have to be open about this. I can't ... I can't live any longer with the fact that this country ... my country, which I love ... that the government I serve is acting as the single most obstructionist force at the United Nations in the face of, let me say this again, genocide." He swallows. "I can't live with that, sir, and not say something about it."

A slow dark fury moves across Bartlet's face, but neither man has yet spoken loudly. Toby looks at the carpet, continues to rock.

"Would you care to expand upon what you feel we should be doing, Mr Ziegler?"

"Yes, sir. The UNAMIR commander, General Dallaire, has drawn up a fairly detailed proposal. He believes it would take no more than five thousand well-trained, well-equipped men to contain the genocide. I've run the plan past some of our military people and they agree that it's feasible. New Zealand and the Czech Republic have taken this to the Security Council repeatedly and ..."

"Let's back up a minute here. To how many people in the adminstration have you spoken about this? Without bringing it to Leo or me?"

"A fair number, sir."

"A fair number."

"Yes, sir. And what I'm saying is that the United States has blocked this proposal in the Security Council, has blocked exploring other avenues of expanding UNAMIR beyond the current skeleton ..."

"We've committed to providing the UN with fifty APCs."

"Yes, sir. We've offered to lease them at a price of fifteen million dollars. Which the UN cannot afford because," his voice is beginning to rise, "because the United States has regularly defaulted on its dues, currently to the tune of several billion dollars."

"Which is the responsibility of Congress, not of this office!"

"Frankly, sir, I don't care whose responsibility it is. The responsibility I want to talk about right now is an overriding obligation under
international law to intervene in a situation of genocide. This is our most solemn international treaty responsibility, and we cannot just brush it aside with ... with fucking dictionary games." He has stopped rocking, and there is something dangerous in his face.

Bartlet raises his hands, lowers them. "What would you have me do, Toby? Do you really think that the American people want to send their sons and daughters off to die -- because you know there will be deaths -- for a country where we have no strategic interest, not even any ..."

"Besides," says Toby, tight and bitter, "It's just full of black people anyway."

Bartlet's shoulders tense. "See, this is what you do, Toby. You make these huge, sweeping, oversimplified generalizations and you use them to beat people with like a stick. It doesn't work on me."

Toby turns his head around the room again, searching for help from thin air. "It doesn't even have to be American troops." He waves his hand desperately. "We don't have to send a single person, we just have to stop obstructing it. Although I have to say, sir, the last time I checked, people were actually pleased that we fought in World War Two."

"But if we do this, if we agree to this, where does it stop? Where do we go, where do we not go? There's a whole world of misery out there. Sooner or later, there are going to be body bags coming back here, and you know ..."

"Oh, sure!" His voice suddenly arcs out of control, his arm flying up. The Secret Service men stand a bit straighter. "God forbid that anything should disturb the tranquility of the American people! I suppose I should apologize for standing here at all, because really my mother and father should have been left to be gassed at Dachau rather than trouble the wonderful American people!"

"Toby," says Bartlet quietly. "Calm down. I'm sorry, but please calm down."

His face is working nervously. CJ wants to reach out and touch his arm, but she isn't sure if this would send him over the edge. "Listen to me," Bartlett continues. "This is not really my decision, and you know that. I could not get this, any of this, past Congress. Even getting the APCs on the terms we did was a battle. You know these things, Toby."

"Then we should tell the truth." He has started rocking again. "We should ... we should just tell the truth. Tell the press, tell the voters, that Congress has made a cold, knowing decision to violate our treaty obligations and to ... to just let these people die. To just let them ... lie there in the sun with maggots breeding in their wounds and die slowly by the side of the road. We should tell the truth."

"I don't think," Bartlet speaks as gently as he can, "I don't think they would care. Most of them. This is not easy. But this is the truth as well. Our people don't want to send their kids -- they don't even want to send their money. We would create a national crisis ... for no purpose. It would only work against us."

"Then send me, goddamnit!" Toby slams his hands onto the desk, his voice cracking, very close to tears. The Secret Service men move forward, Bartlet gesturing slightly to keep them back. "Send me, draft me! I'll go, I swear to God I'll go. I can ... I can learn to shoot a gun, I can ... I can at least go over there and die. If you can't do anything else, goddamnit, send me!" He falls back against the couch, his head dropping into his hands.

No one speaks.

"You know what?" He raises his head, quiet now, drained. "Forget it. Just forget it. You'll have my letter of resignation tomorrow morning. I can let myself out."

Through a suddenly vast silence, he walks slowly towards the door and out.

CJ watches him go, and slowly becomes aware of a shift in the attention of the room. No one is looking at her. No one says a word. But somehow she has become the focus of their expectation.

They want her to go after him.

Her first reaction is a resentment so intense she nearly starts to shout at them, but she knows that if she acknowledges this, if she says anything at all, she will be helplessly implicated forever. So she doesn't move. She waits.

Still no one is looking at her, but the whole room is circling around her.

Step by step she moves towards the door, not understanding just what is happening, but knowing somehow it has to happen this way. She will go to his office. He will already be gone. She will walk up and down the streets until she finds him. And she will find him. She will know where to go.

She walks through the door.

When she is gone, Josh raises his head for the first time. "He's right, you know," he says very softly, almost in a whisper. "Never again. That's what we said."

Bartlet's hands clench and unclench. He doesn't know where to look for a response, so he settles on anger. It seems to him that he does this a lot these days. "Let's get something straight here," he says, picking up his briefcase and snapping it shut. "I am the President of the United States of America. I am not, thank God, the President of Rwanda, nor am I the personal President of Joshua Lyman. I've been put here to serve the interests of the people of the United States, and under my watch we've expanded medical coverage, we've started a pilot project which is bringing thousands of high-quality teachers into the public system, we've increased
Family and Medical Leave, we've started to stitch up the social safety net that's been shredded for so many years. Now, if you want to walk away from all of that, just go ahead. If you want to bring down this administration over some tiny country that 98% of the population has never heard of, you're free to try. But I don't think that millions of American children living in poverty are going to thank you for it. Do you expect them to, Josh?" He pulls open the glass door and leaves, not looking back, the Secret Service moving behind him like black wings.

Leo steps out from the wall. "Josh, you can go," he says quietly. "Sam, in my office. I need you to look at something."

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"Hi." He doesn't acknowledge her. She sits down beside him.

For several minutes neither of them speaks.

"What you did in that briefing was disgusting," he says finally. "You know that, don't you?"

"I suppose."

"I never really expected ... you of all people ..."

"I was in the situation. I didn't see a way out." She waves down the bartender, orders a beer. "You know I don't make policy. I'm a million fucking miles from making policy. Little old ladies in Peoria have more influence on policy than I do. I get sent out to spin. So I spin."

"You happy with that?"

"No. But it's what I do."

"Isn't there ..." he runs a hand over his face. "There's got to be a place for right and wrong. There's got to be a place you stop."

"I don't suppose anyone's even considered asking me what I think about right and wrong. I'm a goddamned spin doctor. I can do that, or I can do nothing. That's about my range of choices."

"Maybe nothing is better."

"Maybe. Maybe it's just nothing."

They sit in silence for a few more minutes.

"It's strange," he says slowly, "being ... you know."

"What?"

"I mean, my parents being ... It's ... I don't know. You never quite feel like ... a living person in some way." He stares at the drink in his hand. "I always wanted to talk to David about it. Not that we ever actually ... he wouldn't give me the time of day lately."

"You could talk to me."

"No." He looks at her for the first time. "No, I couldn't. You couldn't possibly understand." He looks away again.

She finishes her beer.

"Why did you come here?"

"I suppose I wanted to make sure you were all right." She pushes the glass back across the counter.

"Should I go?"

"That's probably best."

She is almost at the door when she hears his voice behind her.

"CJ?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't go. Don't go, okay?"

She folds her arms tight around her chest. *I have no idea what I'm doing*.

"Okay."

Sam grinds his fist into the palm of his hand, Leo leaning against the desk.

"So. A legal opinion?"

"Do I have to do this, Leo?"

"Yes."

He breathes in, breathes out. "Why can't the lawyers at State do it?"

"Because I'm asking you."

"Jesus, Leo, why don't you just make me sell Romanian orphans on E-bay?"

"We can do that too. But right now I want a legal opinion."

"Right." He looks at the carpet, at the window, anywhere but into the other man's eyes. "Right, then. From a strictly legalistic standpoint ... and I want you to understand that this is a purely academic opinion I'm offering you ... but from that standpoint, I think it's fair to say that the wording of the Genocide Convention is ... not free from ambiguity."

"Go on."

"Well, in practical terms, in lay terms ... whereas it's generally understood that the Convention obliges action in a case of genocide, it is ... it falls within a reasonable understanding of the wording ... it could be interpreted merely to *enable* such action, without the obligation necessarily being incurred. I'm saying it *could* be read that way. I'm not saying it should be. But it could."

"Good." Leo pushes himself off the desk. "I want a written opinion by tomorrow morning."

"Leo, no."

"Sam, yes."

"Damnit!" He punches his palm once, again. "Why can't the damn lawyers at State give it to you? Why me, Leo?"

"Sam, this fuck-up came from your department, and since Toby is apparently no longer with us, you're the one who's going to fix it. And you are going to fix it. You're going to get that opinion to me tomorrow morning."

"I don't want to do this."

"None of us want to do this. Do I look like I'm having a good time? This is the game, Sam, and you're a player like the rest of us."

"It isn't a game over there."

"It's a game everywhere. No one ever said a game couldn't kill you."

Almost imperceptibly the walls close around him.

"I'll have it for you by nine. It's purely a legal opinion, Leo. It's not a recommendation."

"That's all we need it to be."

"They want me to convince you to come back. It's not too late. You still could."

He runs a finger around the top of his glass. "Let me paint a picture for you here. There are people standing across the border counting the bodies coming down the river. Literally. They count how many bodies float by per hour. The main radio station inside the country, in between such popular hits as "Kill All Cockroaches", is broadcasting detailed information about where people can find Tutsis who are still alive, and ideas for good ways to kill them. Meanwhile you've got this lunatic Canadian general who's refused UN orders to evacuate, and a handful of peacekeepers, mostly from Ghana. They have one truck that works. As far as I know they're living on an old deposit of tinned peaches that they found somewhere. Every day they get in their one truck and drive around Kigali trying to rescue people. Next door you've got Doctors Without Borders running a sort of a hospital, but they're encountering some difficulties with that, because the Interahamwe keep coming in and killing all their patients."

"I know about all this. I know."

"And you know that the United States is prepared to use its veto on the Security Council to prevent any expansion of UNAMIR whatsoever, regardless of whose troops are involved."

"Look, I hate this as much as you do ..."

"I believe, I do, I have to believe, that if we actually told people the whole truth, they would be horrified. They would care, they would want to do *something*. Instead we tell people that we can't confirm the reports, when we're holding intercepts that do confirm them. We tell people we've committed the APCs when we're really keeping them on the tarmac until we get fifteen million fucking dollars. I can't play along with it any longer, CJ. I just can't."

"I told you I hate what I'm doing with this." She runs her hand over her hair, waves at the bartender for another beer. "I hate it. But I also believe that I do a lot of things that are good. If there was any way at all I could change our policy, I would. If anyone should ever ask me what I think, which is unlikely, I'll damn well tell them. But I also have to figure -- do I want to give up on all the things that are worthwhile? Is the world really going to be better off if CJ Cregg makes a largely invisible moral gesture and goes back to Hollywood to promote shitty movies?" The bartender brings her beer; she takes a drink, rubs the back of her neck. "You do a lot of good, Toby. You know you do. Is this really going to be the best choice? For you? For anybody?"

He sighs. "I've been saying that kind of thing to myself since the day I joined this administration. It's like, every day I've been calculating -- is the good still outweighing the harm? Until recently I thought it was; maybe only marginally, but that was good enough. But not with this. It's just ... it's over the line. It's the one thing I can't accept."

Sam loves the language of law. It has always been soothing to him; clear, precise and beautiful.

Precision is important, it is a form of truth. And when he studies the Genocide Convention -- when he puts the particularity of one situation out of his mind and concentrates on the legal principle -- he can see that the drafters were not precise. In fact, it is hard for him to see how the idea of binding obligation arose in the first place. It is a more accurate, more truthful reading of the Convention to see it as a enabling measure, dependent largely on the later actions of national legislatures.

The opinion he will write, then, is not, in itself, a lie; indeed, it is more true, more technically true at least, than what Toby has been saying. It is not a nice truth, it is not what the truth should be. But he is sure in his heart, at least, that he is not offending against the high clear justice of legal precedent. He has to remember that part, and not the other.

"You're really leaving the White House."

"I am."

"Are you going to talk?"

He hesitates. "Yes. I am."

"We're going to be enemies."

"I guess so. After tomorrow."

It was almost another lifetime, when they had been lovers. They had been so young, things had been so different, she hardly ever thinks about it now. But when he puts his hand on top of hers, it is the familiarity, as much as anything else, that makes her twine her fingers around his. This is the way the evening will go, then.

"Don't go to work tomorrow."

"I have to."

"Call in sick. Just tomorrow. Just one day."

"We're only putting it off."

"I know. I know. But they're going to have a fix tomorrow. I have an idea what it'll be, and it'll be awful. I just don't want ... Let Henry do it. Just this one thing."

"They'll know perfectly well I'm not sick."

"They can't do anything to you. You've done everything they wanted you to do."

"Yeah. I suppose I have."

"Just for one day. Please."

In Kigali, the peacekeepers are shooting dogs. They cannot, under the provisions of their mandate, shoot people, so there is not a problem with wasting ammunition. They cannot bear the sight of the dogs any longer. The dogs in Rwanda are sleek and fat, these days, and fight in the streets over human corpses.

When the UNAMIR commander empties an entire magazine into a stray dog, he understands for the first time that he is going mad.

They kneel on Toby's bed, take their clothes off slowly. They make love with infinite carefulness, perfect attention. It seems to him weirdly familiar; and he remembers the last night he and Andrea spent together, after they had decided on the divorce, when they had touched each other with this same exaggerated compassion, this same smothered pain.

Neither of them sleeps afterwards. They lie in the dark, in silence. Eventually Toby gets up and goes into the kitchen. A few minutes later he comes back and hands her a cup of tea, still without speaking. They sit on the bed together and watch the sky lighten.

"I suppose they'll want it fixed for the morning news."

"No shit."

"I will miss you."

"Yeah."

She calls the office from the bathroom, on her cell phone. For some reason she doesn't want to tell this lie in front of him, though it is a small lie, comparatively. Leo makes it quite clear that he knows she doesn't have stomach flu, and that he will let her get away with it. Once.

She puts on her clothes, walks into the living room and turns on the television. They watch stock market fluctuations for a while before the morning news comes on.

" ... interview with acting chief of communications, Sam Seaborn."

"That was fast," says Toby.

Sam's face appears.

"I wonder why it isn't Henry," muses CJ. "They have a legal thing, maybe?"

"I presume."

"If there's any particular magic to calling it genocide, then we're certainly prepared to use that term," Sam is saying. "But where we have a problem with what the press has been putting forward is this, well, misunderstanding of the nature of the Genocide Convention. In fact, by no means is a binding obligation involved ..."

"Told you it would be awful," says Toby.

"It could be worse."

"It could get worse. Listen."

" ... also can't dismiss," Sam is saying, "the danger of the United States wading into a situation of very deep-rooted historical hatreds, and evidence that atrocities have been committed by both sides ..."

Toby picks up a book and throws it at the television. "You little shit, Sam," he says. But there is not much active anger in his voice, only exhaustion. "Well, CJ, there's what you're going to be defending. Both sides equally guilty, blah blah. Hope you have fun with it."

"I do draw lines, Toby. I don't draw them where you do. But there are things I won't do."

"Yeah? You'll find out."

They watch an item about a bus crash -- watch to the end of this cycle of news, which concludes, as the news must, with an animal story; in this case, of all things, a heroic baby hippo which in some obscure manner rescued a child.

"I should go."

"Yeah. I guess you should."

She turns in the doorway. "I don't suppose we'll talk to each other again."

"Not directly. I wouldn't think."

"Well. Good luck, Toby."

When she has left, he closes his eyes, and lies on the sofa without moving for a long time.

Walking into the communications bullpen the next morning is a bit like colliding with an iceberg -- the cold wall of tension that vibrates from everyone in the room. The first thing she sees is Josh, in Toby's office, putting things into a box.

"Toby asked me to clean out his desk," he tells her without looking at her. "He didn't want to come in again."

A few feet away, Sam is shrugging nervously at Bonnie and Ginger, who seem to be forming some kind of united front against him. "... really, really not my idea," he is saying, tugging at one of his cuffs. "I mean, I came in yesterday morning and Leo ... See, I totally agree that it's premature. And I'm sure it's only temporary. And if you want me to convey your concern to Leo, I absolutely will do that." Ginger narrows her eyes.

CJ walks up to him, feeling as if she might be rescuing a small animal. "Hey, Sam."

"Hey, CJ," he says, his face moving with tentative relief. "Could we, like, talk? In my office?" She nods. As soon as they are inside, he shuts the door and sits down at his desk, rubbing his temples with his fingers.

"This was not a good idea of Leo's. Not to mention that I don't even want the job. But aside from that it's just too soon. I mean, it is. Isn't it? Everybody's still dealing with Toby being gone, and suddenly I'm supposed to be replacing him, and, you know, the grounds for resentment here are obvious. Hell, I would resent me." He looks sidelong, hopefully, at CJ. "You don't think I lobbied for this or anything, do you? Because some people do. Think that. And it didn't even enter my mind." His hands move from his temples, he fidgets with a pen. "You know, Toby really went out of his way to make people dislike him, but nobody did. Everybody liked him. I
liked him."

"Actually," says CJ, "I'd rather leave the whole subject of Toby to one side right now." Sam lets out a huge breath, and his shoulders relax, until she gets to her next sentence. "Where did you get this business about atrocities on both sides, anyway?"

He looks at her with hurt eyes. "I did some reading that night ... some papers I got from State. Based on what I read, it seemed fair."

"Well, I've been doing some reading all month. And whatever position State's taking, we're not doing moral equivalency here, okay? You might want to get some more background on this." She recalls that Sam is, in a strict sense, now her boss. This thought seems so bizarre that she dismisses it immediately. Obviously it hasn't even occurred to Sam himself.

"I'm sorry, CJ. You know I've hardly touched it until now. It's not ... it's really not within the proper scope of what we do, and, honestly, it was something I just didn't want to deal with. I'm happy to take some guidance from you on this. Though, if we're lucky, it won't come up again."

"I wouldn't count on that. In fact, you should probably get up to speed as fast as you can." She turns to leave, but Sam gestures her back again. "CJ?"

"Yeah?"

"I just wanted to say something ... and I don't want to seem presumptuous here, but ... I think this issue has got way too tied up in ... personal things. I mean, people treating it like it was -- their personal property. I don't think that's useful ... I don't think it's healthy. It's not even ... it's a long way away."

"It is. It's quite a distance, here to Rwanda. Couldn't get there on an overnight bus."

"Um. Yeah. And actually ..." He pauses, purses his lips, "See, I don't want to put myself in that same position. But ... I could claim to have a real personal investment, if I wanted to. I had a friend at law school who was Rwandan. Really nice guy. And I know he's back there now, and he may be dead. I do think about that. But my point is, when I'm at work, I have to put that out of my mind. I have to approach this objectively. And it would be better ... if everyone tried to do the same."

"Right. I'll make sure to put all human emotions out of my mind from now on." Sam winces. "Okay. Sorry, Sam, that was a cheap shot. I take your point. I'll keep it under consideration."

"I haven't told anyone else about my friend, you know. If you could ..."

"In confidence. Sure."

She has almost two days of peace. The press moves on from Rwanda as quickly as she had thought they would. She can talk about education, about the economy. She even feels cheerful talking about the First Lady's wardrobe.

On Friday morning Toby's first opinion piece shows up in the newspapers.

*Damn*, she thinks, reading it as she walks to her car. *He is good at this. But what the hell, I'm good at this too*. She has a momentary image of them as figures in a video game, whacking each other with swords.

"I will not," he writes near the end of the piece, "attempt to defend all the actions of the RPF as they regain territory. They do have a partisan interest, and there is reasonable evidence that they have committed war crimes, though perhaps no more than any advancing army in history. But the one fact we cannot evade is that, alone among every force in the world, the RPF took seriously their obligation under the Genocide Convention, and moved to stop the slaughter. For this alone, we must all be ashamed."

She walks into the press room and calls on Katie -- it's irrelevant, really, who she calls on. "CJ, do you have any comment on Toby Ziegler's article in the Post today?"

"You know what, Katie? Somehow I knew those would be the first words out of your mouth." She smiles, cool. "Let me say this. I'm not going to underestimate the research Toby's done on this issue. And obviously it's something he has very passionate feelings about." *Good. Introduce the implication of bias quickly*. "But this administration isn't here to wage crusades. We're not here to race around the world imposing our ideas about what should be done. We try to look at these problems, to consider them with concern and with caution, and to see where we can make interventions that will be constructive and appropriate. And you know that we're doing that. If you want more details, I'm going to have to refer you to State again."

"Mr Ziegler seems to have some very damning information -- about intercepts, about Security Council negotiations ..."

"I told you, Katie, if you want details, talk to State. But I'd also ask you to keep in mind that Toby left this administration just a few days ago, and frankly not under the best circumstances. So you could say that he has his reasons for, well, selecting the evidence that would put us in the worst possible light."

*That's a dirty move.*

*It's a dirty world.*

Hands go up again, they move to another issue.

So it goes on. She's fine. The subject returns, drops, returns. People keep dying. Governments, including her own, do or do not make certain decisions. She's fine. She has not quite had to say anything she cannot live with. She's very tense, but then, she is often very tense. She jogs, she rides her exercise bicycle. She's all right.

Sam is working on a speech about drugs sentencing policies when the phone rings, and he hears an astonishing voice at the other end.

"Patrice! I never expected ... Are you okay? Are you still in ..."

"No, Sam. I'm in Zaire. I left, I had to get out." He makes a soft desperate sound. "Oh God, Sam, it's terrible there. Just ... everybody
killing everybody. So much hating of each other. I had to get out, I was in danger."

"Of course." Sam pushes his papers to one side. "I'm so glad to hear that you're safe."

"For now, at least. I wish I could be further away. I'm just not sure where to go."

"Oh, Patrice, I can't imagine that any country would turn you away, not under these conditions."

"I wonder. Do you think ... no."

"What?"

"Do you think the United States is a possibility? I have such fond memories."

"I'm sure it is. I'm sure it's possible." He imagines Patrice at the other end, a refugee, someone he can help in a concrete way. "Go to the Embassy there. Get the papers. And listen ..." he barely hesitates, "if you think it will help in any way, use my name."

"I can do that?"

He should attach conditions at this point. He should make it clear that when he says "use my name", he means to use it in informal conversations, passing references to officials. But can you be stingy with a friend when they need you that badly? "If you think it'll help at any time. Of course. And hey ... call me when you get into the country, man!"

"You bet I will, Sam. Thank you so much."

He hangs up the phone with a feeling of lightness, the sense that he has finally been useful, that he has paid off some part of a vaguely understood debt.

--------------------------------

Toby looks awful on tv, she notes with relief as she watches the broadcast in her office. He mumbles and fidgets, makes insufficient eye contact. He looks like a lonely and slightly pathetic middle-aged man. This is good. She can beat him on tv any day.

"Of course," he gestures awkwardly, "all this is becoming increasingly irrelevant in a certain sense. One of the pressing issues now is the behaviour of the French troops in the *Zone Turquoise* .."

He's introducing terms the viewers haven't even heard yet, without explaining them. And his French pronunciation is not great, either. Good, good. She taps a pencil swiftly on her desk, trying to ignore the headache building up behind her eyes.

"... actually applying themselves most energetically towards evacuating the genocidaires rather than protecting the victims."

"Let me read you," says the host, "a quote from White House spokesperson CJ Cregg. Ms Cregg said yesterday that "imperfect solutions are better than none at all, and *Opération Turquoise*, despite early concerns that the French had vested interests, has played a very constructive role in the situation." I take it you disagree with her. Is she wrong? Is she lying?"

He shifts in the chair. "Well. I don't want to call CJ's integrity into question. I guess ..." he shrugs, "it's most likely that she just isn't
fully briefed on this aspect."

A small explosion goes off in CJ's head, and she finds herself on her feet.

"*I hate you!*" she screams at Toby's image on the screen. "Call me a liar if you want! Never, never call me stupid!"

Her hand is on the phone, dialing his number, before she thinks about it; but as she waits for his voice-mail -- furious at him, furious at herself because her eyes are prickling with tears -- she knows that this is part of the deal, that they both understood this would happen. That they would use everything they know about each other, the painful spots, the weak places. They are players, and this is how the game works.

"Point," she says to his voice-mail. "Not set. Not match."

"Mr Seaborn. It's Philip Hollings from INS. I'm calling in connection with Patrice Ngeze."

"Oh yes. Of course."

Hollings seems very cautious. He speaks with precision, as if he and Sam already have an understanding about something. It is not that Sam doesn't notice this. He is trained to notice things like this. It isn't that he doesn't notice.

"You know that Mr Ngeze has applied for landed immigrant status in the United States."

"I knew he planned to do that, yes."

"So you would ... recommend him, if someone were to ask you?"

It's not that he couldn't figure this out, if he wanted.

For the first time, probably the first time ever, Sam shuts down a line ofthought. He slams an iron door in front of a reasonable deduction.

"In my experience, he's a very good man. And of course he has legaltraining. I don't think there would be any difficulty in his finding
employment. If anyone were to ask me, yes, that's what I'd say."

"Of course. Well, thank you, Mr Seaborn. That's really all I needed to hear from you."

One day the RPF enters Kigali, and the race over the border begins. A million people stream into Zaire, carrying with them just about everything in the country that can be carried. Except the dead bodies, of course. At the Security Council, the Rwandan Ambassador is replaced, almost overnight, by someone representing a new government. The next day, cholera hits the camps in Zaire.

She is on top of it all quickly. Much more quickly, she realizes, than the press. She even tries to clarify it for them, to explain that these people in Zaire are not the potential victims of the genocide, that a good number of them are the killers themselves. The clarification seems not to sink in very well. Anyway, people are dying in those camps, dying horrible feverish deaths, and not all of them are killers. The US can send aid, it can do that. It takes only three days for US troops to get into Zaire and start distributing water. At least that amounts to doing something.

A covert State operative phones from Goma and dictates a list of the light and heavy weaponry that is being carried over the border -- tanks, artillery, car after car full of guns. This she does not release to the press. Things are confusing enough as it is.

"The camps are being organized into miniature replicas of the Hutu Power state," says Toby in an interview. "They're moving in whole arsenals of weapons. They're treating the humanitarian agencies like hotel room service. These camps are violating any number of items of international humanitarian law. I have no doubt that if they threatened to withhold aid until the civilians and the combatants were separated, this could be done quickly. But the longer we wait, the harder that separation is going to be. And I have no doubt that the White House could confirm everything I've said, if they cared to do it."

She sits in her office, looking at pictures of dead bodies in Zaire, and it occurs to her that she could, if she wanted, go to confession. It would be someone to talk to, and at least it would be secure. She has enough faith left in the Church to believe that the priest would not immediately run off to the newspapers. It might even be a change for him, a distraction from the dozens of Catholic adolescents confessing to impure thoughts.

On the other hand, once you boil it down to the essentials, her confession wouldn't be all that interesting. *Forgive me, Father. I told lies. Well, I didn't exactly tell lies. I used misleading words.* It seems a bit crazy, really; an adult woman who's been away from the Church for more than twenty years, coming back to confess to fibbing. He probably wouldn't even believe that this was what weighed on her conscience. If priests were anything like she remembered, he'd be much more interested in fornication and birth control.

When Josh knocks on her door, she's in the middle of a debate with herself about whether sleeping with George seven years ago was adultery on her part, or only on his. She's never quite got the rules straight on that, but she's pretty sure it was only fornication on her part. Particularly as he didn't tell her about his wife until later.

"You busy?" asks Josh, poking his head around her door.

"Just musing on mortal versus venial sin," she says briskly. "Can I help you with something?"

"I just thought you might want to see the statement from Justice about that anti-trust thing. I know it doesn't compare for interest with mortal sin."

"It doesn't even compare with venial sin, Joshua, but I'll read it anyway."

A few days later, she finds herself walking by a church in her neighbourhood. It's Saturday night, and she thinks again that she might go in. It's a stupid idea, but she has nothing else to do at the moment.

For a moment, as she walks up the steps, she feels humbled, serious. As if there is something she can do that is adequate to the events.

When she opens the door, she sees a man with a guitar sitting in front of a few pews of worshippers. They are singing in enthusiastic, if wavering, voices:

We thank you for the sunshine
And for the summer showers
And most of all, Oh Lord Our God,
We thank you for the flowers.

CJ imagines bodies floating down the river, and walks back out the door.

Summer ends. And Rwanda fades, as these things do fade, from everyone's minds. There are the camps in Goma, problems closing the camps, there is the new government in Kigali, and CJ does keep an eye on all these things, but the press doesn't care any more; and if the press doesn't care, there is nothing she must or can do.

Toby is no longer in the newspapers or on television. According to Josh -- to whom he evidently talks once in a while -- he is looking for a university job. It doesn't seem like this will be a problem for him. Sam does not, to his relief, continue to be Director of Communications; Leo hires someone else, a man named Paul Elliott, a decent, competent and frankly tedious man.

You would almost think it was over.

Sam is working late, no one else left in the communications office. He likes it -- the darkness, the silence -- his office floating in quiet
space. When he hears the knock at his door, he assumes it will be Leo, and the sight of Toby standing there makes him blink for a second. Then he sees the visitor's pass around Toby's neck, the security guard hovering in the background.

"I want you to know," says Toby softly, "that I could destroy you. And I'm not going to. But someone will." He holds out a large padded envelope. "You need to look at this right now."

Sam doesn't reach for the envelope. "What the hell is this, Toby? What are you ... I mean, come in, damnit. Sit down."

"No, listen to me. I can't do that. Just take this envelope. It's about your friend. Ngeze. You have to know this."

"Know what? Toby?" There is a dull burn gathering in his chest. He doesn't know what is in the envelope, but if he takes it in his hand, everything will change.

But he does have to know. He reaches for it.

"I'm doing my best for you, Sam. When this comes out, don't think that it was me. It won't be me." He starts to walk away.

"So -- what?" Sam gestures towards him. "You're just gonna get in your Batmobile and disappear?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Toby." He takes a step towards the doorway. "Just come in. Talk to me. We could go out someplace, have a drink ..." He is startled by the raw longing that flashes across Toby's face.

"No. No, I really can't." He turns back into the dark corridor, the security guard at his shoulder.

At dawn Sam is sitting at his desk, the contents of the envelope spread in front of him. There is a cassette tape, Patrice's voice giving a speech, overwrought, dramatic. There is a small stack of papers which is said to be a translation of the speech.

*The man you do not kill today, he will kill you tomorrow. We must have unity and solidarity. Let what is smoldering erupt. If blood must be spilled, then let it be.*

There are two photographs of Patrice on a podium, in the Hutu Power colours. In one of the photos, he is holding up a machete, demonstrating something to the crowd.

*If they will not leave by themselves, we can show them a way to leave. They can leave by way of the Nyabarongo River.*

She comes into her office in the morning and finds a small piece of paper on her desk. It says simply *Hi*, and it's signed *Toby Ziegler*. He has written his full name. As if she might have forgotten who he is, as if lots of people named Toby leave notes in her office in the middle of the night. She is momentarily so undone by this that she doesn't think about why Toby was in the White House. Just as it begins to form in her mind as a question, Sam is in her doorway, his eyes black hollows.

"And has he made any contact with you at all since he arrived in the country?"

"No," whispers Sam, hunched over on her couch. "Only that one call from Zaire."

"Okay. Make sure he doesn't. Screen your calls. I know it sounds hard, but we have to insulate you from him. There can't be anything, anything at all."

Sam rubs his face. "But, God, CJ ... I mean ... do you really think this is true?"

"That's just entirely not the issue, Sam."

"It's the issue for me!" He stands up, shuffles through the papers again. "We don't even know if this is an accurate translation And there's ambiguity in the wording, he never ... there's nowhere he actually ... I mean, he doesn't say, go and kill them. It's ... imagery can be misunderstood ... possibly ..." He falls back to the couch. "Oh, damn, he was my *friend*. I have to know what this means."

CJ sits beside him, rests a hand on his shoulder. "We can take it to State. Very quietly. We can verify the translation, get their take on it. But right now, you must forget that you know this, and you must not speak to him."

Sam's hands move nervously over his legs. "Here's the thing, if he was ...one of the ... I mean, he called me before the RPF arrived in Kigali, he was already ... It doesn't make sense, does it, that he would be trying to leave that early?"

CJ thinks of the date he has given her for the phone call. She remembers that she had known, by then, that the RPF would win. The troop movements were not hard to read. She remembers what Toby had said about *Opération Turquoise* evacuating the killers. She sighs. "You're right, Sam. It's all really hard to sort out. We just don't know about him. But until we do, keep yourself clear. Okay?"

Sam nods, stands, walks towards the door.

"Sam. Wait." She frowns, turning a pencil in her hand. "Did you ever tell Toby about this man? Cause you said to me that ..."

"No," says Sam. "No, you're the only person I told."

"Then how did he know that you're his friend?"

It frightens her, the way she can always find him. How she knows he will be walking down the street towards his apartment building just at this hour of the night, a book under his arm.

"What have you got on him?" she asks.

He looks at her under the streetlight and thinks, *This is unbreakable.* Whatever happens here, not a day will pass that they do not think of each other somehow.

"Nothing that I'm going to use," he says.

"But someone will."

He shrugs. "I don't know if anyone else has it."

"If they don't, they'll get it."

"You never know."

"You have to tell me what it is."

He glances down, then up again, straight at her. "Maybe it's better if you don't know."

"That's never better. Don't be an idiot."

He keeps looking at her, that long articulate gaze she has always answered.

"Ngeze's a genocidaire?" she asks.

"No question about that."

"But that's not enough to implicate Sam, not on its own."

He purses his lips. "I have this piece of paper ... but the thing is ... if I give it to you, you're going to be all tied up in this."

"Oh, like I'm not already."

"Well, so far not ..." he clears his throat, "not in a way that I can't bear."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" she explodes. "I have a *job* to do! You have critical information! If you don't want to give it to me because you want to undermine me, undermine Sam, that's ... goddamn it, that's all right. You're a player, so you play. I don't hold it against you. But if you're going to hang Sam out to dry so that you can preserve some moral image of me ... that's just crap, Toby. That's just ... some pretend thing you have. Do *not* make this be about me."

He thinks, *I need to sit down*, but there is nothing nearby, not a doorstep or a tree planter.

"You implied that I was stupid," she says. This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but now that she has started she may as well go on.

He makes a sound which could be a kind of laugh. "Would you rather I implied you were a liar?"

"Yes. And you know it."

"I always thought that was ridiculous." Their eyes are still engaged, this whole alternate conversation going on there. "We know all about being smart and devious. Don't you sometimes think it would be better if we were stupid and honest?"

"No," says CJ.

He exhales heavily. "Okay. Fair enough." He shifts his feet and breaks the gaze, glances around at the busy cross-street, the pedestrians walking by the corner. "Look, obviously I can't give you the paper right now. And this is probably not the best time or place to talk about it. I can ... it will find its way to you, all right? A day, maybe two. Now, will you please let me go home?"

She walks quickly towards the corner, towards the lights.

But it is all a waste, as it turns out. Early the next morning, before anything else can happen, Arthur stops Sam on the steps. He has a cameraman with him. And if she were there she would push them away, get Sam inside, make sure it didn't happen, but of course she isn't there. Sam stops. At the moment when he turns to face Arthur he doesn't believe in games. He still believes in truth.

"Mr Seaborn," says Arthur. "I'd like to talk to you about Patrice Ngeze."

Someone takes a step in a field at Nyarubuye, and walks on bones.

Someone turns a page, files a paper.

Snow is coming to Washington soon, but it is not snowing yet.

You believe in truth. You believe that there is a single thing called truth. You believe that it can be known.

Two men are talking on a flight of concrete steps.

"The man you do not kill today, he will kill you tomorrow? You think that wording is ambiguous?"

"It's a hypothetical," says Sam, sweat on the back of his neck, but still calm. "Let me be clear, Arthur. I can't comment on the meaning or the authenticity of this, and clearly it needs to be investigated. I can only say that I knew Mr Ngeze some years ago, and from my knowledge of him, he wasn't capable of these things."

"Are you aware that a group of human rights organizations is seeking an international arrest warrant for Mr Ngeze?"

"No. That hasn't been brought to my attention."

"Are you aware that this morning on CNN, the sole survivor of a massacre in a church in northeastern Rwanda identified Mr Ngeze as one of the participants in the killing?"

Sam closes his eyes for a moment. There are things in his life that have hurt worse than this. But not very many. "No," he says slowly. "I have not been made aware of that until now. I have to remind you again, I knew Mr Ngeze some years ago. Obviously, time has passed."

Carol is at her door. "CJ. Adele just told me that Arthur is talking to Sam on the steps. With a camera. He ..."

She is already in the hallway, pulling on her coat. But the West Wing is a big place. It will take her several minutes to get through the hallways, even at a near-run. It will take too long.

"And have you had any recent contact with Mr Ngeze?"

Now he hesitates. "I may have spoken to him briefly."

"You may? You mean to say you can't recall? You take a lot of phone calls from Rwanda?"

"Okay. I did. I spoke to him when he was in Zaire. It was a very brief conversation. He made me aware that he would be applying to the US consulate."

"Did you make any promises to him at that time?"

"Promises? What are you talking about, Arthur?"

"Promises. Commitments. Offers of assistance."

*Use my name.*

"I would have to say -- nothing beyond an expression of friendship. Based on our past acquaintance."

"An expression of friendship."

"In a general way."

"In a general way." Arthur hands him a piece of paper. "Would you take a look at this, Mr Seaborn?"

He doesn't need to look at it to know.

Maybe he knew all along.

*Use my name.*

*If someone were to ask you.*

It is an application to the INS. Under "guarantor", Patrice has written "Samuel N. Seaborn".

"Is that your name, Mr Seaborn?"

He looks at the paper for a long time. He seems to be standing on the steps, in the early winter chill, for hours. Years. Arthur vanishing down a tunnel of silence.

It is not exactly a lie, what he is going to say. It is not quite a lie. But it is not the truth.

"This is a surprise to me," says Sam at last. "This is ... this is a surprise to me."

It is not the truth, not the high truth of precision, not the truth of clear language. It is a legal maneuvre, the side of the law he has always hated, the side of the law where meaning slides away in uncertain words.

"So you didn't give Mr Ngeze permission to use your name in this way."

"Well, that would be an abuse of my position, wouldn't it?" The wind seems so terribly cold. "It wouldn't be ... it wouldn't be acceptable at all. So -- I couldn't do that, could I?"

"But wouldn't the INS normally phone the listed guarantor for confirmation?"

"That would be the normal procedure."

"And you're saying you didn't get that call?"

He didn't wear gloves this morning. The tips of his fingers hurt. "No. The INS never called to say that he had listed me as a guarantor."

*If someone were to ask you.* Speaking as if they already had an understanding.

"Well, that's odd, isn't it? How do you explain that?"

"How do you explain it, Arthur? Maybe your piece of paper isn't authentic. And this interview is over."

CJ is coming out the door. He brushes past her without even looking at her. Ignoring the voices behind him, he walks through the hallways to his office, closes the door, and quietly rests his head in his hands. He will not be dramatic about this. It will be managed, he will not lose his job, he will not be disgraced. It is only the end of what he has called his life.

When Toby knocks on her apartment door, in the late February snow, she finds that she is not at all surprised. No more than she was when she found him in her back yard in California years ago. It was warm then, and sunny.

"I didn't leak that paper to Arthur," he says, standing in the doorway, brushing snow from his shoulders.

"I never thought so."

"I don't know who did."

"Like I said. Somebody always does." She stands with her arms folded, but she is not angry, not very tense. "I never did moral equivalency, is what I didn't do."

"That's true. I noticed that."

"See, that was my thing. I know you hate what I did, but I always said there was right and wrong. Although I feel like there's a lot more wrong than right, most days."

"It's that Catholic thing. Deep down you still believe in original sin."

"Very possibly."

He leans against the doorframe, and they wait.

"How's Sam?" he asks at last.

"Not good. He's been very depressed. I worry about him, but ..." she shrugs, then adds, "You know you shouldn't be here."

"Why? It's a dead story," says Toby.

"It's still twitching a bit. Someone sees you here, it could be a thing."

"Nah. It's dead."

They wait a while longer, looking at each other, puddles forming around his boots.

"I was just watching tv," she says. "You want to come in?"

"Sure."

On the television, two elephants are walking through a field. "See, I was trying to watch the news, but it's like this whole mini-documentary on these two elephants."

"You've got some kind of wildlife theme happening." They sit on the couch, at some distance from each other.

"It's because there's a recession coming," she says. "The networks think they can distract the public with large mammals."

"We go to work every day with large mammals, we need to see them on television as well?"

The elephants begin to nuzzle their heads together.

"Is this like elephants in love or what?"

"Well, that's an interesting thing," says CJ, "cause in fact they're both girls. So the narrator keeps telling us they're just really, really good friends. But I have my doubts."

The elephants are wandering into the sunset, their trunks entwined.

"Their names are Jessica and Samantha," CJ adds.

"And how many minutes of your life have Jessica and Samantha consumed at this point?"

"Give them a break. They're nice elephants."

"I'm sure."

"They bent the bars of their cages so they could be closer together."

"Oh stop, you'll make me cry."

"You're a bitter man, Toby."

"Damn straight."

He picks up her newspaper and starts to flip through it, and this is all right. For the moment, this is something which is okay.

-END-

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