When she was eleven years old, Shanelle had come home crying one day from school. Her grandfather, Grandpa Joe Greenfield, asked her what was wrong, and she had said, “Grandpa Joe, everybody hates me!”

̶ghtttttt t‡0;Kiddo,” Grandpa Joe said, “your problem is you’re a smarty-pants. Nobody likes a smarty-pants. The secret, you want to be liked, you gotta be a mensch.”

This was the first time Shanelle could recall having heard the word. “What’s a mensch, Grandpa Joe?”

“Boiled down? He’s your unpretentious guy who gives a shit about other people. He don’t dress too snappy. He don’t make people feel dumb. He don’t make ’em feel funny-looking. He don’t ever make ’em feel small. He asks ’em how they’re doing. Then when they tell him, he listens. Just do that, and you can get away with murder.” Moidah, that was the way Grandpa Joe pronounced it. He winked and pulled a silver dollar out of her ear. “See? I should know.”

Shanelle had never forgotten the lesson.

As far as the world could see, she had become a mensch at age eleven. But, in her heart, she was still a smarty-pants. Which was why, although she would never admit it, she loved doing a dog-and-pony show. Because it was one of the few things in her life where she could just be a straight-up smarty-pants and people would thank her for it.

Her visitor was a spare, spiderlike man, Captain Fred Steele, the liaison for the District of Columbia Police Department. Steele was responsible for securing and monitoring the outermost perimeter, roughly five square miles, during the State of the Union address. Although there would be only limited coordination between his agency and the Secret Service, Shanelle had invited him here to get an overview of their protocols. She led the visitor through a full-body scanner, past two Secret Service agents, and through a pair of heavy oak doors into the House Chamber.

“The presidential security operation,” Special Agent Klotz said, “provided by the United States Secret Service, is the largest, most thorough, most expensive, and most extensively trained executive protection detail anywhere. Other than the inauguration of a president, no single event consumes a greater share of the attention and resources of the Secret Service than the State of the Union address. Not only is the president in attendance, but so is the entire top layer of the United States government. Other than one so-called ‘designated survivor’—a member of the president’s cabinet, who is holed up in a secure location outside Washington, DC—all the rest of the top players in the government attend the speech, including virtually the entire House and Senate, the entire Supreme Court, and the cabinet.”

They strolled up the aisle toward the podium where the president would deliver his speech to the nation in less than twenty-four hours.

“The president’s speech, mandated by custom as well as by the Constitution, is given every year, except for the year of a president’s inauguration, in the House chambers of the US Capitol.”

Captain Steele eyed the large room. She sensed he was considering how a terrorist might use the terrain of the semicircular arrangement of the room to kill the president.

“To give you a sense of what we do to protect POTUS, I’ll describe the various security rings. First of all, we surround the principal with a team whose job is to protect his person and the immediate space around him. That interior circle is manned exclusively by Secret Service personnel. Next we maintain a secondary ="0ce ring to control and monitor the surrounding crowd, constantly scanning the venue for potential threats. Again, that’s all Secret Service—although in this facility there’s some assistance from the Capitol Police. Finally, we maintain a third security ring, which protects the grounds, the surrounding buildings, vehicles, perimeter entry and egress. Ideally, that ring is roughly half a mile in diameter. For the State of the Union address, it’s even larger. Which is why we’re enlisting the resources of your department along with FBI, Capitol Police—not to mention Air Force and FAA elements to monitor and control the airspace around the Capitol. Plus, while I can’t get into specifics, one might presume there is a standby tactical force from, say, Delta or the SEALs or the FBI’s HRT unit.

“Now, my modest little area of expertise is facilities. In a perfect world, I’d have torn this place down and built it from the ground up. Blast walls, air locks, filtration systems, cameras, sally ports. That’s my little fantasy, you know, putting them all in a bunker. But unfortunately, I live in the real world. My job is made a little trickier because the US Capitol was designed in the late eighteenth century, without a shred of concern for security. It’s been redesigned and rebuilt four or five times since. It’s not commonly known, but there are secret passages, underground spaces that were bricked over a century ago, spaces behind walls, unused vents. From a security perspective, it’s a complete nightmare.

“So we just have to grind it out. We work our way through every aspect of this building. Structural, mechanical, the electrical and plumbing and heating systems. Every bit of it has to be examined and reexamined. Visually inspected if possible. If not, then using a number of imaging technologies.”

“What about sweeping for bombs?” the visitor asked. “What are the protocols for controlling access?”

This is a heavily trafficked public facility, so there are limits. That puts the pressure on us to conduct intense screenings and scans during the twenty-four hours prior to the speech. That’s what we’re doing now.” She pointed to a man waving a wandlike device over the rear wall of the building. “We use all the standard technologies: nonlinear junction detectors, chemical sampling devices, Geiger counters, IR scanners. We use RF detectors to search for two-way comms, bugs, and so on. We also jam all cell phone traffic on the mall. No calls in or out during the speech as well as during the arrival and departure of POTUS and the other principals. And for identifying bombs and other explosive material, sniffer dogs are still our best tool.”

“How do you control access?”

“Every person who passes through any door or checkpoint has been vetted and is on a master list. Plus, they all need to pass through full-body scans.”

“Even dignitaries?”

“Everyone.”

“What about mechanical failures, electrical problems, things of that nature?”

“There is a vetted list of federal employees who’ve been precleared to handle any infrastructure emergencies we might encounter. As a backup for more serious problems, contractors for all mechanical systems and subsystems maintain a list of on-call employees, all of them vetted and on standby. We have their pictures, fingerprints, and other pertinent informaint, ftion in the system so we can ID them if we need them. Electrical, plumbing, pipe fitters, heat and air, elevators, masonry, carpentry, roofing, even contractors for the subway system going from the Russell Senate Office Building to the Capitol. Same with fire and rescue personnel.”

“How many agents total?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the exact number. But north of five hundred when you include all the duties involved, including comms, electronic countermeasures, transport, EPD, countersnipers, dog handlers, perimeter, tactical standby, logistics, civilian employees and so on. And when you add in Capitol Police, DC Metro, FBI, military . . .”

“Now I know what’s causing the deficit,” Captain Steele said.

Agent Klotz smiled. “Our counterparts in other countries think it’s overkill. But I can tell you that even with all this, I won’t sleep for twelve seconds tonight.”

Her cell phone rang, and she excused herself. Her husband was defrosting one of the six meals Shanelle had cooked on Sunday night and left for him and their daughters in the freezer, but he didn’t know how long to cook it.