Chapter 2: Swearing-In, East Room, 11:47 A.M.

The flight from Vienna took nine hours with the layover, and Hayden spent most of it in the particular suspension of a man who has agreed to feel nothing until he can afford to.

They had routed him through Dulles instead of Reagan, which was the kind of logistical courtesy that came with the territory now — a territory he had spent eight years studying from a comfortable remove and would now be required to inhabit. A woman from the State Department's protocol office met him at the gate. She had his name on a card, which struck him as unnecessary and also precisely correct. He was that now. A name on a card. A grief to be managed.

She did not express condolences, which he appreciated more than she could have known.