Garrett Thorne walked into the Oval Office not as a nervous bureaucrat, but as a general returning from a successful campaign. The weight of his earlier anxiety had been replaced by the electric confidence of a man who had faced down the enemy and watched them break.
"Sir," he said, his voice resonating with a newfound energy. "They weren't just surprised. They were paralyzed. The committee adjourned in disarray. Connolly's office isn't taking any press calls."
"You did well, Garrett," the President said with a calm nod. "You held the line under fire."
"It wasn't my line, it was yours," Thorne admitted freely. "I was just the one holding the rifle. I… I underestimated the strategy. That will not happen again. You have my full support."
He had not just won the hearing; he had won the unwavering loyalty of his Treasury Secretary. Another piece on the board had been turned. Miles Vance, watching the exchange, felt a surge of pride in his administration. They had taken on the most powerful lobby in the city and won a stunning, public victory.
But in a sleek glass office on K Street, the war was just beginning.
Arthur Kenwood paced the length of his office, the cityscape of Washington spread out beneath him like a map of his personal dominion. He was on a secure conference call with the CEOs of the three largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and their fury was palpable.
"What the hell was that, Arthur?" one CEO demanded. "Munich Re? That's proprietary data. How did the White House get it? Are we being wiretapped?"
"It doesn't matter how they got it," Kenwood snapped, his voice a low, dangerous growl. He had spent the last hour making his own calls. "What matters is that they have it. The narrative has shifted. We can no longer fight the premise of this bill. Publicly fighting against 'pandemic preparedness' is suicide. The President has successfully wrapped himself in the flag and a lab coat. We cannot attack him there."
"So what do you suggest?" another CEO asked. "We just roll over and let him nationalize our supply chains?"
A cold, thin smile touched Kenwood's lips. "Of course not," he said. "We are not going to fight his bill. We are going to help him write it."
There was a confused silence on the line.
"We will applaud his bold leadership," Kenwood continued, laying out the new strategy. "We will offer our full cooperation. Our army of lawyers and policy experts will descend on Capitol Hill to help the committees 'get the details right.' We will load the bill with so many technical exemptions, so many complex subsidy structures, and so many regulatory hurdles for new domestic startups that it becomes nothing more than a government-funded fortification of our own monopolies. We will make it so complex, only we can navigate it. He wants to build a fortress? Fine. We'll make sure we're the only ones who get the keys."
Later that evening, the Oval Office was quiet. The adrenaline of the day had settled, leaving behind a new, more complex set of questions. Miles stood before the Resolute Desk, his mind finally able to focus on the question that had been burning behind his eyes all afternoon.
"Sir," he began carefully, "that Munich Re report. It was… remarkably specific. I made some quiet inquiries. The CIA had no record of it. Neither did the NSA. It was a piece of intelligence that, by all accounts, we should not have possessed. Forgive me for asking, but how did we know?"
The President looked up from his reading. He saw the genuine, fearful curiosity in his Chief of Staff's eyes. This was a dangerous moment. The mystique he was building required a foundation of plausibility, not impossible magic.
"There are more listening posts than the CIA, Miles," he said, his voice even and calm. "And some of the most sensitive information in the world isn't about troop movements. It's about money. The right source in the global financial markets can tell you more than a dozen spies." He let the vague explanation hang in the air, an answer that was not an answer. "What matters is that we knew which question to ask, when no one else even knew a question existed. The source is irrelevant. The result is what matters."
It was a gentle but firm boundary. Miles, understanding the implicit command to stand down, nodded slowly. "Yes, sir."
"Now," the President continued, shifting seamlessly back to the offensive. "Our victory today was temporary. Kenwood is too smart to fight a battle he's already lost. He won't try to kill the bill anymore."
"What will he do?" Miles asked.
"He'll try to embrace it," he predicted. "He will offer his 'help' to ensure it's written properly. Our next fight isn't in a public hearing room. It's in the fine print. We have to draft a piece of legislation so simple and so ironclad that there are no loopholes for his army of lawyers to crawl through."
As he spoke, Miles's tablet pinged with a priority news alert. He glanced down at it, and his face went slack with disbelief.
"Sir," he said, looking up from the screen. "You were right."
He turned the tablet around. It displayed a press release, issued just moments before.
"PhRMA Applauds President's Bold Leadership on Supply Chain Security," the headline read.
Miles read the first line aloud. "A spokesperson for the organization has announced they are offering their 'full and enthusiastic cooperation and expertise' to Congress to help craft the President's landmark Patriot Push legislation."
The President looked at the press release on the screen, his expression unreadable for a moment before a look of dark amusement settled in his eyes. He turned to his shaken Chief of Staff.
"So," he said quietly. "The barbarians are no longer at the gates. Now they're at the door, dressed as architects, and asking for the blueprints."