The next day, when Caelan returned to the White House, Sam noticed there
was something slightly different about her. Her stride was still timid, but
confidently timid, as if she accepted her timidity but still knew deep down
she was in control. He greeted her with a handshake. "Come on in," he
said.

"Thank you," Caelan said courteously as she sat down.

Sam found his way behind his desk, where he sat down. An awkward silence
followed before Sam finally said, "This is not the way I usually go about
writing. I mean, generally, I write with people I know-Toby or the other
speech writers. Rarely is there someone from outside the West Wing that
really helps me out on the speeches I write."

"Then why am I here?" Caelan said.

"Well, frankly, no one in the West Wing knows jack about Russia. I mean,
we know the generalities, but we have no resident expert on Russia. When we
don't have a resident expert, we go find one," Sam explained. "Your boss
and you are it."

"Well, how flattering," Caelan said.

"It's quite a privilege and a big responsibility," Sam continued. "I mean,
if you feed me misinformation, we could destroy all relations with Russia
and any chance the country has at a true and functional democracy."

Giving a quick, nervous laugh, Caelan said, "That's very reassuring."

"No, no," Sam quickly said. "I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Right," Caelan agreed, unconvinced. "I thought Josh was in charge of the
whole Russia thing-why are you stuck with all the grunt work on it?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, Josh doesn't write speeches for
parties-that's the kind of thing I do. And I'm his backup. And he's
already exceedingly busy trying to strongly suggest a new bill to be put on
the table in the House. He has other very important concerns that he has to
deal with. Therefore I, as his backup, am handling the minor details of the
Russian incident."

"Really. Don't you have other important things to do too?"

"Sometimes I pretend like I do, but when you get down to it, there is
nothing more important to me at this moment than sitting here, writing a
speech with an apparently wonderful and brilliant young woman who I have
just met."

Despite herself, Caelan's face turned a shade of red that contrasted with
her light complexion. It made Sam grin inwardly. "So, do you know off hand
of anything that would help me connect to the General. What sort of things
do the Russians want to hear?"

Recomposed, Caelan cleared her throat. With a swift movement, she shoved a
piece of hair behind her ear. "Flatter them. Don't start by telling them
what terrible shape their country is in. General Markov is a proud man, who
has never needed anyone to get where he wanted to go. He wants what's best
for his people because that's just how he is. But he really has to know why
what we're saying is the way to go."

"Boost his ego then slide in the important stuff?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, pretty much. But keep it short. We're going to have to have a
translator as it is since Markov doesn't speak English."

"He doesn't speak English?"

"No," Caelan said. "Not everyone in the world speaks English. That's a
very American attitude that we always seem to have."

"It's not that, it just seems like most political leaders generally know it
for communications purposes," Sam justified himself.

"Then why don't you know Russian for communications purposes?"

"That's different."

"How?" Sam opened his mouth to speak but found he didn't have a response.
Caelan grinned in victory. "Besides, General Markov is a military man.
He's never had a need to speak English."

Looking somewhat pathetic, Sam fiddled with his laptop computer. "I'm not
the stereotypical American," he defended himself like a child.

"I never said you were."

"You implied it."

"I'm sorry if I did," Caelan told him. "I just don't see how you can
expect people to know your language when you've made no effort to learn
theirs."

"I've got a lot of other things to do rather than spend my time learning a
billion languages. It sounds extraordinarily boring anyway. I mean,
someone who passes all their free time learning to speak a language that
practically no one else they meet in their everyday life will ever speak
needs to find something more productive to do with there time."

"Well, you just told me all I do is waste my time."

"You… study language?" Sam asked, hoping the answer would be no.

"Yes."

"So I take it you speak Russian?"

"Yes. And Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Greek and
several others, mostly smaller, lesser known dialects in Africa."

Sam swallowed, red creeping up his cheeks. "Well, I really know how to put
a foot in my mouth."

Sam was more than a little relieved when Josh came in the door. His face
brightened as he saw an opportunity to change the subject. "Josh," he said
quickly. Then he noticed Josh's grim expression. "Good news?"

Taking a deep breath, Josh said, "There was an assassination attempt on
Alexandr Kovac."

Caelan's mouth dropped open. "Is it the same group as before?"

"They think so," Josh said.

"Did they hit Kovac?" Caelan questioned.

"No. Just scared him and the crowd he was talking to."

"So what does this do to the situation?" Sam wondered.

"It makes all the stakes that much higher. The Russian people have been
screwed over time and time again. If they don't sense that they have
something stable leading them, they'll panic."

"Oh wonderful," Sam sighed.

"Well, I just thought I'd let you know," Josh said. "I'm going to go
quickly brief the President on where we're at with this. How's the speech
coming?"

"We actually haven't started it yet, but we have a good basis and it'll be
done by the end of the day," Sam assured him.

"Good," Josh said approvingly. Then he turned to Caelan. "Is everything
still smooth sailing with Markov coming by tomorrow night."

"As far as I know. He's on a plane right now," she said looking at her
watch. "It should be landing in about three hours."

"Great," Josh said. "I like to at least have some good news when I go in
there."

"It never seems to help though," Sam pointed out.

"Trust me," Josh said. "I know."

"To make you feel better," Caelan said before Josh could leave. "There's
almost no way we can go wrong with this dinner. But if it does go wrong,
all relations with Russia are probably permanently screwed. Markov is going
to be the next VP, and probably the President after Kovac's term is up. If
Markov hates what he hears tonight, he'll cut us off. This is a game of
roulette we're playing right now. There's only one bullet, but it only
takes one."

"How do we avoid it?" Sam asked.

"Not play the game at all."

Josh made a frustrated grunt. "But if you don't play, you never win."

Leaning back in her chair, Caelan said, "You're finally learning why you
play the game."

Josh stood uneasily outside the oval office. The office itself had ceased
to intimidate him long ago, but going in there updating the President would
never stop being nerve-racking. Jed Bartlet was the leader of the most
powerful nation in the world. He had a million things on his mind, and more
than enough stress for five lifetimes. Though it was necessary, the
President didn't really want Josh to come in there and tell him more
information that he had to store in his mind, keep straight, and worry
about.

Charlie came out and said, "He's all yours."

"What kind of mood is he in?"

"The typical," Charlie said. "You know how it is."

"I know," Josh whispered. "That's what I'm worried about."

Putting on his best face, Josh strode into the office with an air of
confidence that he had come to naturally walk. The President looked at him
vaguely interested. "So what's up?"

"Well, you know about the Russian incident," Josh began.

"Yes, somewhere I heard something about someone being shot and how it was
very, very bad. But you're here to tell me it's going to be okay, right?"

"Well… more or less…."

"No, Josh, that's not what I meant. I meant, you're handling the situation
so I don't have to worry excessively over it. Right?"

"We're currently handling the situation-that's true."

"So I don't have to worry?"

"We're hoping so, sir, but to tell you the truth, everything is on such
shaky ground it's hard to say. We've arranged a dinner with General
Markov-"

"Yes, they told me about that. Put it on the calendar and everything."

"Well, yes-"

"And so everything is going to work out just fine, and the Russian people
aren't going to panic and Markov is going to become an advocate for
democracy."

"We're-"

"No, Josh, you're not understanding this. I don't care what you have to
do, but you're going to make this situation work. Things will run smoothly
and calmly-so smooth and calm, that I won't even know about it. Do you
understand?"

Josh thought about it for a moment. "Yes sir," he finally said.

"Good. Now, you can go make sure that happens."

"Alright. Thank you, sir," Josh said, and turned and left.

~later~

"What's the weirdest language experience you've ever had?" Sam asked,
reclining in his chair. The speech was done and being proofed, and he and
Caelan were wasting time.

"You know, fluently spoken Russian actually sound frighteningly like
Klingon, you know from Star Trek," Caelan began. "So my friend Rochelle was
a complete Star Trek freak and her mom was throwing her a surprise party.
She made this entire skit for Star Trek characters and made me play the
Klingon."

"Really," Sam said, sincerely intrigued. "You know, I've only seen a
couple of episodes of Star Trek only because of my little sister who is
oddly infatuated with some aspect of the show. But in one of the episodes I
did see, there were Klingons. The curious thing was they were females, and
the cut of the clothing was strangely promiscuous."

"I know," Caelan reminisced. "I had to get fully into costume."

An image popped into Sam's head that he couldn't help but enjoy. "That's
something I would've paid to see."

Before Caelan could respond, her beeper went off. She looked at it
curiously. "I'm sorry, but can I use your phone?"

"Sure," Sam said.

"Thanks," she said distractedly. She picked it up and dialed out. "Hi,
April. You paged me. What's up?… uh-huh… he what?! Where's Gary? Okay,
no, I'll call Peter. Thanks."

She hung up and fell silent. After a contemplative moment, she finally
looked up at Sam, a pit growing in her stomach. "We have a problem," she
said.

"What?" Sam asked nervously, noting had the mood had radically swayed and
the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

Regretfully, she forced out the words. "General Markov's backing out of
the dinner."

TBC....