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The first time Conrad Dalton ran for president, Russell had no idea if he would win but he had worked for a lot of candidates and none of them came close to being the real deal like Conrad did. If that meant that the Dalton campaign refused to fight dirty and sling mud at his opponents because of principles, making Russell's life more difficult in the process, well, at least the challenge was noble in its purpose.
Besides, Conrad had something no other candidate in the Republican primaries had — a real shot at California's 55 electoral votes and flipping the staunchly blue state that was dealing with a case of buyer's remorse after electing his opponent in the special gubernatorial race two years ago. The party didn't like outsiders, but they understood electoral math.
At the very least, it was rewarding to be as fiercely loyal to someone as he was to Conrad because he genuinely believed that his candidate would lead America in the right direction.
But the politics of campaigning and governing still differed, a fact that Russell was sharply reminded of as the election loomed and the Dalton campaign started discussing potential cabinet nominees.
They had good names for Treasury, Commerce, and a handful other positions, but when they got to State, Russell found himself caught off guard by Conrad's response, something that generally did not happen to him.
"Not them," Conrad said with a dismissive wave. "I want to bring in someone fresh."
Russell, prepared to point out why the names of senators and career diplomats he had suggested were good choices, frowned. He didn't like where the conversation was heading. He did not like fresh, whatever that meant.
That was when he first heard of her.
"I have someone in mind, actually. She's ex-CIA — the best I've ever trained — and currently teaching political science at UVA." he said with a tinge of pride.
"Really, sir, you want to pick a college professor with no political experience?" Russell almost said but held his tongue at the last moment. It had taken not a small amount of wrangling to earn party support for someone like Conrad who had never held elected office and he didn't want to imagine the party's reaction to hearing that another outsider was taking the prestigious job. Yet he knew that it was the wrong time to dispute who Conrad may or may not nominate because they were leading in Pennsylvania by the slimmest of margins and they needed to ramp up their ground game in the home stretch—
Conrad's old star pupil and potential future Secretary of State (whose name he didn't know and didn't bother asking) slipped his mind within the day as he hurried about running the campaign and overseeing their final get-out-the-vote effort.
Two weeks later, AP called that they had gotten some 310 electoral votes and overnight Russell went from hatchet man to incoming White House Chief of Staff. Decades of hard work starting from the Seneca County commissioner race — his first race — internship in Senec county commissioner and then finally, there he was, working in the White House. Finally, his focus could pivot to Conrad's — President-elect Dalton's — administration and his cabinet nominations.
"We did it, sir. We did it," he said, his voice uncharacteristically exhausted. Conrad gave him a small smile and patted him heavily on the shoulder. "That's right, Russell. We did it."
"Bess says, congratulate the old man for me, won't you," Lydia said from Conrad's other side. "Well," Conrad chuckled, "message received."
"I'm surprised she's up this late, it's already two in the morning. Usually, she stops replying around midnight," Lydia mused.
"Bess has a PhD in political science and lectures about contemporary politics at UVA. I'm not surprised," Conrad replied before calls from donors distracted him.
Currently teaching political science at UVA. Russell recalled what the president-elect had said about his choice for Secretary of State and why it would be problematic. He sighed. In all likelihood, his first act as incoming White House Chief of Staff would be to talk Conrad out of his decision regarding the most important cabinet position. But not yet, not tonight. Tonight was for celebrating.
It was when Conrad brought up his old protégée again two days after the election that Russell saw the need to intervene.
They were meeting with DCI Munsey as part of transition planning when Conrad brought it up. "By the way Andrew, what's your opinion on bringing Bess in as the Secretary of State?" he asked.
Munsey had seemed surprised by the pick, but pleasantly so. Impressed, almost.
"Elizabeth? Solid choice, sir," Munsey had said with a brief smile. Conrad had nodded in agreement with a small smirk. "Look out, world," he remarked before heading off with the transition team.
Of course, the party had unsurprisingly opposed it on resolute terms. Even some who had supported Conrad found his suggestion akin to rubbing salt in the wound, the idea that none of their politicians were good enough to take the White House or run the State Department. As much as Russell appreciated Conrad's detachment from the usual Washington bullshit that bogged down so many other politicians, he recognized that it was not wise to appoint another Washington outsider for the job.
And while he didn't approve of the sleek, polished politician that was Senator Marsh, he was one of the well-liked establishment candidates who withdrew from the primaries with grace and stumped for Conrad. His record was clean too — prominent lawyer from a wealthy family turned senator with almost two decades of experience under his belt, the latter half on the Senate Foreign Relations committee. So Russell sat down with his boss and systematically laid out why choosing his former protégée would be a bad idea and why Vincent Marsh was the better option. Party politics triumphed foreign policy and in the end, Conrad nominated the man for Secretary of State.
Her name only came up a couple of times over the next year and a half, mostly in wistful tones when Conrad found himself thoroughly unimpressed by Vincent Marsh, once in anger after the speechwriter Mahoney approached Russell. Even he found himself wondering if the White House would be on better terms with their own State Department if Conrad had had his way. At least as a former protégée, she would work well with Conrad even if Russell didn't think she was suited for the job.
…
The first time Russell actually met her was two days after Marsh had died.
The morning after Marsh's plane went down, Conrad spent just about a couple of minutes grieving for his late Secretary of State and moved on immediately. "Elizabeth McCord," he said as Russell was about to leave the Oval Office, apropos of nothing. "Sir?" he had asked, caught off guard by the abrupt change in topic. They had just gone over the details in the Coast Guard report.
"I'm nominating her to replace Marsh," Conrad said. By now, Russell knew his tone well enough not to dispute the decision. Still, he hesitated.
"Do you want to consult party leadership on this?" he had asked tentatively. Conrad snorted. "We tried that the last time. Aren't you sick of strong-arming State into decisions yet?"
There was nothing much he could say to that. "I'll set up a call, sir," he conceded.
"Just inform her that I'll be dropping by," Conrad instructed, paying no attention to the amount of rescheduling it would take to clear 4 hours out of his schedule so that he could go visit a horse farm just outside of Charlottesville. Russell frowned. Her accepting the job would alter the balance of power in the White House and by god, Russell hated it when the president took anyone else's advice over his because they didn't have to clean up the mess the way he did if things went wrong.
The next day, the president informed him with much satisfaction that McCord had agreed to take the job. Russell frowned harder because he had spent the previous night skimming through her publications and Christ, Washington would crush the woman, her ethics and principles. To put someone so morally upright in a job full of, well, political maneuvers was surely a mistake.
But Russell served at the pleasure of the President so he had Lucy reach out to McCord and set up a meeting the next day at an ungodly 6AM because the President's schedule was packed to make up for the previous day's detour, and if it meant that she had to get on the road before dawn to make it to DC in time, well, Russell was never one to deny himself a little schadenfreude.
The woman showed up the next day on the early side of timely, bright-eyed, ready to dig in, and a pretty blonde and Russell added 'will face sexism' to his running list of reasons why her nomination would be a bad idea, along with the fact that half the senators on the Foreign Relations Committee didn't like Dalton but had liked Marsh and they could pose a problem for her confirmation hearing, that she had no experience on the Hill and in politics in general, and that she had taken some public stances in op-eds that could come back to haunt her, sooner or later.
"Conrad," she greeted as Russell led her into the Oval Office and oh, that's another reason why this was a bad idea. Her direct links to the president could undermine his role as gatekeeper and well, Russell preferred to work in a system, the system he had climbed over the years and carefully maintained.
She did have a sharp mind though, that much was apparent some three sentences into their meeting with Conrad. On top of that, she had a solid background in dealing with classified Middle Eastern affairs which made her more relevant than Marsh in handling Iran, so Russell excused himself to prepare for her nomination.
He didn't meet with her much after that, concentrating on the ongoings in the State Department itself and growing increasingly convinced that much as he disapproved of McCord, they needed someone other than Acting Secretary Cushing, who carried an air of self-importance without having actual knowledge of how to handle diplomatic crises.
Yet despite finding her woefully inadequate for the job, Russell had to admit that McCord fared well under pressure. He had watched her confirmation hearing anxiously because attention like that could break someone unused to public life, both through the intense scrutiny of senators assessing a nominee aiming to succeed a well-liked former colleague and the media attention on every aspect of her life. Thankfully, McCord remained poised without the slimy, overly polished vibe that Marsh used to have, even when some of the questions turned hostile and prod at her heavily classified CIA history.
Miraculously, her nomination sailed through the Senate. He counted it as a win for the Administration.
Besides, Russell knew that this was for the better. Two months ago, he had been bracing himself for an ugly primary race for Conrad's second term, but with Marsh out of the picture and replaced with someone loyal to the President, there was less of a concern that the White House would be torn apart by the elections.
Now, of course, he needed to start hazing the new Secretary of State and remind her that she was now a member of the cabinet, not Conrad's old friend.
…
The first time he came face to face with the force of nature that McCord could be was during her second week on the job.
There had been some press coverage about the two American kids in Syria but it was in the middle of that morning's New York Times and hadn't even made cable news. By this point in the Syrian conflict, most of the country had already been desensitized to news coming out of the Middle East unless it was major, a fallen city in Syria or Iraq or a terrorist attack on Western soil. No, front page news was dominated by McCord's new outfit and haircut, and fine, he had to hand it to her to use sexism to her advantage because no one would pay the slightest of attention if a male senator got a trim and a new suit.
The next morning he reached his office right as his phone pinged with a news alert.
'BREAKING: Damascus releases American teens, arrived at JFK Airport.'
There was a link for more photos and a longer article on AP, showing the Cole brothers kissing the tarmac and surrounded by their tearful parents, then a caption noting that this was one of the first things that Secretary McCord has done since taking office two weeks ago.
What the hell, Russell thought.
McCord had cut him out entirely, he realized, trying to taper off the simmering anger. Sure, whatever backchanneling she did worked but for God's sake, he should have been consulted on a move so risky.
He spun around and headed for the State Department without so much as taking a seat in his office and went straight to the seventh floor, eyes still glued to his Blackberry.
"Sir, she's not in yet," her assistant Moran said, half rising as though to stop him. "If you could just take a seat in her waiting area-"
Russell brushed past the pesky assistant — he's the White House Chief of Staff, he didn't do waiting areas — and entered her office that was, true to Moran's words, empty.
Fine, he thought. He could wait. There was housekeeping to be done and warnings to be issued. If he had to delay his morning meetings, he would. Besides, she had to be coming in soon.
"I didn't realize we had an appointment."
McCord was calm, as though nothing had happened. Russell was too, coldly so.
"You want to tell me how those kids got released?"
She didn't, but she didn't beat around the bush either which threw him for a moment. Candor wasn't a Washington trait.
The woman was good, he had to admit. Not many could pull off a rescue in such a short time and successfully keep it under wraps, and even fewer would have persisted after being overruled by the president.
Still, if she wanted to undermine his authority and pit herself against him, Russell was ready.
…
The first time Russell met the CIA spy in Elizabeth that Conrad had trained was months into her term, right after he unsuspectingly swallowed her bait and confronted her in her office. He might even feel embarrassed by how swiftly he fell into her trap if it wasn't for the fact that she was a trained spy.
Oh, he had known for some time that she could draw up operations that were truly quite cunning after what she did to that Moldovan general, which was a high compliment coming from him. He had been impressed by her ploy and thought it was quite fitting for her to bring the rogue general to his end, given his vile, sexist attack on her on Twitter.
But this? This was a whole different ball game — a lengthy and quiet side investigation of treason at the highest level, masked by an unfaltering facade of normalcy, flying under the radar even in Washington (he didn't know that was possible anymore). It was terrifying.
As she laid out exactly how and why she no longer suspected him, Russell's disgust that she suspected him of assassinating Marsh turned into a mixture of confusion and horror.
"My God, all this time," he said slowly, "how could you just...go about your business?"
Elizabeth shrugged. "That's what I was trained for."
Twelve years of working under Conrad as an analyst and a spy and the end product was a Secretary of State who could uncover a conspiracy to kill her predecessor that no one else had even suspected. There was, after all, a reason for Conrad's unwavering determination to bring her into his administration.
There was a glint in her eyes as she walked him through her investigation. Icy, like the blue of her eyes, but stronger — steely. For someone who appeared so warm and welcoming, McCord was one hell of a strategist, like a benign chess master who could wipe the floor with her opponent without losing the smile.
"So what do we do now?" he asked at last, his glass refilled and emptied twice.
"I'm having a friend at Langley run facial recognition on our Marie Porter, currently that's our only lead."
"If that doesn't work?"
"We'll see what we can do to track the other signatories." At his unconvinced look, she added, "It's fine. I know what I'm doing."
At that moment, Russell agreed.
…
The first time he encountered her selfless side, the Elizabeth who had signed up for a thankless, unglamorous job fresh out of school, was after she came back from visiting Munsey in his confinement.
"He didn't bite," she admitted, her tone seeped in exhaustion but not quite defeat.
"He'd rather go down with the ship than save his skin?" Conrad asked with a frown that had taken up residence over the past few days.
"He thinks I forged the brain scans," she elaborated.
"To be fair, we did. Not like we could have gotten the hospital to disclose them without drawing attention to Alinejad," Russell acknowledged.
"So what's our next step? We can't get anything out of Munsey or Alinejad which means we still have nothing to offer to the Iranians," Conrad snapped.
"We can trick it out of him," Elizabeth suggested.
"How? He's the CIA director, he knows tricks," Russell demanded.
She shrugged. "We loosen his reins and see what he does. His priority right now should be to get in touch with his co-conspirators, so we'll listen in and track them."
"Then what, send the Iranians a cable telling them to watch out? Without substantial intel, they'll never buy it, not quickly enough to prevent the coup anyway."
"You could offer me up with the intel," Elizabeth said quietly.
A beat of silence, then— "What?"
"I mean it, sir. Send me to Iran as a messenger. Should be dramatic enough to convey our sincerity."
"Are you insane," Russell almost said, but held his tongue at the president's contemplative look. "It puts your life at risk," Conrad said slowly.
"Wouldn't be my first time in the Middle East in the middle of a conflict, sir."
"First time as a high-profile target, though."
"We can keep it low profile, just two guys from my detail and an unmarked SUV. I'll head straight to Javani's and he'll take things to Shiraz."
"That's—"
"Are we seriously considering this?" Russell interrupted, his voice going up an octave. He received two solemn looks in return, one resolute and the other cautious.
"Four men from your detail," Conrad said finally, "and updates every hour. You leave first thing tomorrow morning, we'll give the coup conspirators as little time as possible to regroup."
Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Elizabeth," he called after her as they left the Oval Office. "How sure are you that Javani will trust you?"
Elizabeth exhaled loudly. "Depending on how much intel we have to offer, 40 to 50%."
"That's not very high."
"You got any better ideas?" she quirked her head, her voice wry. "If not, I need to go and convince my husband not to barricade me in tomorrow morning."
Which was not all that unlikely, based on what Russell knew about the man and their marriage.
"Go, go, and," he paused, "good luck, Elizabeth."
The next time he spoke to her, she was already in Iran and there was a chance that Munsey had brought forward the date of the coup. They could only bet on Shiraz mobilizing before the coup conspirators.
If not, then, well, Russell didn't really want to think about that, and he really didn't want to search for a third Secretary of State.
Two hours later, he was forced to start thinking about it.
Fred Cole was never far from the Secretary, and if Fred Cole was killed...the scenarios for Elizabeth were not reassuring.
But if she wasn't with her detail, then where exactly was she? With Javani's detail, right after the man himself had been murdered? Or worse, with rebel forces as leverage?
It took more than 12 hours for that mystery to be solved.
A diplomatic cable came in late that night and Russell took a moment to just breathe, before running over to the Oval Office.
"She's alive," he said, breathless with relief and the spurt of adrenaline. "Bess is fine."
He put Nadine in charge of contacting Dr. McCord while he focused on setting up a national address for POTUS, admitting to unauthorized American involvement in the coup attempt. The news was going to blow up the next morning but POTUS had a point — this was too major to hide.
A longer report came in a few hours later from the Marines tasked with picking her up.
'Sec State reported being found by the late Minister Javani's security team and transported to the nearest bunker. Reported conversation with Shiraz four hours ago. No life-threatening injuries but will require medical treatment.
Body of DS Agent Cole successfully retrieved; to be transported back.'
He arranged for her to be taken to their military hospital in Landstuhl before rereading the report.
She's alive, he had told the president just hours ago.
She's alive, he had to remind himself while looking over the details of her sacrifice.
…
The first time he saw Elizabeth as a friend, not just a friendly colleague, was sometime after she came back from Iran.
It was nothing significant, really, but it became one of the things that came to mind when he thought of Bess the person, not Elizabeth the colleague.
There was yet another one of those fundraising dinners like the one they had last week, which ended up spiraling into a crisis involving a suicidal religious cult and a congressman being held hostage. Elizabeth had made a quip that if no one killed themselves over the course of the dinner then it would be a smashing success and Russell was quite sure she wasn't entirely joking — after all, the woman had to watch a fanatic hold a knife to her husband's throat half a world away just the previous week. With the bar set astonishingly low for the evening, Russell settled in for a few hours of mingling with the wealthy important individuals present, of which there seemed to be a limitless supply in Washington.
He was completely in his element, shaking hands with potential future donors and political allies and this was one of those dinners where he found himself in high demand, in part because he was toting around the Secretary of State. By rough estimations, about one in three guests wanted to thank America's newest hero for her trip to Iran last month which gave him an excellent opening to shamelessly promote the Dalton Administration.
In fact, the evening was going so smoothly that the cynic in him should have cautious because one thing led to another and suddenly, the senator from Ohio was laughing and clapping him on the shoulder, asking if he wanted to go fishing someday—
And Russell jerked back as the word 'fishing' registered at the same time that he thought his hometown in Northern Ohio and the memories flooded in — his brother clapping him on the back — going up to the river on a fishing trip — the screech of metal on metal that tasted like blood on his tongue as the truck came out of nowhere, the headlights illuminating Kenny's face like a scene out of a horror film except that this was reality, this was his reality — I'm sorry, son, but he's gone — then Elizabeth was partially blocking him from the senator's view, talking about how she loved fly fishing and of course she would love to go with him someday and could he please get in touch with her assistant—
He glanced over at her after the senator had wandered away, as someone who Russell vaguely remembered ran a hedge fund approached them, but apart from a gentle touch on the elbow, she gave no indication that she was aware of what she had just done for him.
Then the hedge fund manager had reached them and Russell slipped back into his charming mode and the moment was gone, until later that evening when the mingling was dwindling.
He took two glasses of champagne from the nearest server. "Nice work with the guests tonight," he said, handing her a glass.
Elizabeth exhaled loudly. "Never thought I'd like smiling and looking pretty better than talking. I knew there was a reason I steered clear of politics," she remarked flatly, throwing back her drink.
"At least the evening passed smoothly enough," he said, swirling the liquor in his glass without quite drinking it.
Elizabeth tilted her head. "For the most part." She sighed and plucked the drink out of his hand. "Go home, Russell," she chided while downing his drink too. "I know I'm leaving."
Not wanting to be caught without his tag team given the amount he'd already drunk, Russell left soon after Elizabeth had cleared out. He woke up the next day to a mild headache, a chastising Carol, and memories that got fuzzier as the night went on, but he remembered fishing and Elizabeth's timely rescue.
But Russell being Russell would never actually thank her for it, so instead he stole a fry the next time he was in her office to make up for the champagne she took from him at the end of that night.
…
And he would never admit to it, but for the first time in a long while, Russell genuinely considered setting aside political expediency and getting the White House involved if the senate investigation were to go awry, and damn was he glad when Elizabeth was cleared because christ, they've come one hell of a long way.