Washington, D. C., Saturday…

Yet he couldn't really fault Fulton for thinking him incapable of maintaining a relationship, with a woman or otherwise. He never had time for intimate relationships, not even with the President's family and friends. He worked between ten and sixteen hours every day, seven days a week. That was why the whole scandal was absurd.

Pierce decided his initial feelings were correct. He had left the Oval Office feeling buoyed by the President's confidence in him on one hand, yet scared on the other hand by what an effective slander job the woman was mounting. It was a big waste of his time and he didn't have a lot extra to waste. Moreover, he didn't understand it, and when he didn't understand something, he got annoyed.

With a brain fart born out of desperation, he had considered holding a press conference in order to tell everyone that none of what was appearing in the media was true and, even if it was, he had a right to his private life. Cold logic won the day, however. There was time later to go before the media wolves, when he was better prepared. He needed know the facts first.

In fact, as Fulton had suggested, with the people under his command, it didn't take long to cobble enough facts together to shoot holes in the woman's story. Apparently he had never been at the places in the photographs at the time the media said he was. As near as the FBI could tell, all the pictures were expertly doctored, using techniques as good as any of the high-tech special graphics labs out in Hollywood, techniques that could even take a still shot of a man and make him walk or run. They usually required a model, a wire figure, or even some other person doing the action, an e-frame to hang the pixels on. So it was probable that some other man had been there with Ms. Romano and Pierce's image had been substituted for his. The FBI's take on it was that someone was trying to discredit the conscience of the Fulton administration and, in the process, attack Fulton.