OK, BARBARA, IT’LL be just like last time. You and the president will have concealed earpieces in your off-camera ears. We’ll feed the live mix to both of you. If the producer wants to talk to you, he’ll either cut the live feed, or tone it down and talk over it. Which would you prefer?”

     Barbara Walters was her normal calm, collected self. “I’ll only be three feet away from him. You can cut the feed entirely,” she said.

     “All righty,” the audio tech said annoyingly. He glanced at the producer, who threw him a finger cue. “We go live in three, two …“ The last one was a silent index finger, accompanied by a silent exaggerated mouthing of the number one.

     “Good evening. I’m Barbara Walters. We’re coming to you live from the White House, where the president has graciously granted us an exclusive, unscripted interview for the next thirty minutes.” She turned her face to the president and said, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

     “My pleasure, Barbara.”

     “Mr. President, are you happy with what you’ve accomplished so far, this far into your first term?” Walters leaned forward into her signature pose -- elbow resting on knee.

     “Well, yes and no, Barbara. Every president has a list of things he or she would like to accomplish during their first term.

     “At the top of my list … I’ve … wa … “

     The president had a puzzled look on his face. His mouth was open, like he was going to say something, but nothing intelligent came out.

     The network switched to a close-up of Walters, looking intently at the president, showing no sign of alarm.

     The president shook his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears. He closed his mouth, raised a finger, as if to say just a minute, then nodded to the producer. The red light came back on on the camera directly facing him.

     He smiled and said, “As I was saying, at the top of my list has always been … cru … fo … “

     His mouth was open again, as if frozen in time.

     Quickly he gave the universally understood “cut” sign, as if he was cutting his own throat with his index finger. Unfortunately, being live, all of the estimated thirty million viewers saw it.

     Walters, in close-up, said, “We seem to be having some technical difficulties. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back.”

     Immediately the president was surrounded by Secret Service. He held up one hand. “I’m OK. I’m fine. I just couldn’t speak.”

     The president’s personal physician was asking him to say "ahhh."

     Someone was helping him off with his suit coat and was rolling up his sleeve to take his blood pressure.

     Someone else was already taking his pulse.

     “I’m telling you, there’s nothing wrong with me!” He was beginning to get upset.

     “We’d better run an EKG and an MRI just to be sure,” his doctor said.

     Needless to say, the interview was over.

     Tidwell said, “Secure this room. Nobody and nothing leaves unless it’s cleared through me!”

     The network technicians were not allowed to touch anything.

     The president and his detail were already heading down to the bunker below the White House, where a complete medical suite was on the same floor as the command center.

     NSA hardware guys started dismantling cameras and mixer boards for the second time that day. This time, they were checking manufacture pictures and schematics.

     “I don’t know why you didn’t see this before,” Tom Wilcox, the audio tech that had talked with Walters, said. Without touching anything, he pointed to an integrate circuit soldered to the board.

     “This isn’t right,” he said. “It looks like a digital delay chip that probably also incorporates the functions of the chip that was there before.

     "See this little white wire soldered to one of the legs? Look. The other end solders to nowhere. I’d bet a box of donuts it’s an antenna that lets someone remotely trigger the delay,” he said.

     Tidwell asked, “What good would that do?”

     "It’s only a guess,” Wilcox said, “but I remember seeing a news story a few months back about some Japanese guy who invented a speech-stopper.”

     “A speech-stopper?” Tidwell echoed. “What’s that?”

     “Presumably, if you hear yourself on a one-fifth-second delay, it confuses the speech center of the brain and you can’t talk,” Wilcox said.

     “You’re shittin’ me,” Tidwell said

     “That’s what this little chip does. It delays sound digitally. If we knew how to trigger it, we could see by how much,” Wilcox postulated.

     “And that’s exactly what the president did. He stopped talking,” Wilcox offered.

     “How’d it get there?” Tidwell asked.

     “Someone would have had to unsolder the old one and solder this new one in its place. It’s in the right place to only delay sound to the president’s earpiece, so somehow, whoever did this knew how we set up for a live shoot.”

     Wilcox could see Tidwell sizing him up as the probable culprit based, no doubt, on that time-honored scientific axiom: “The one who smelt it, dealt it.”

     “Send it to the lab,” Tidwell ordered, waving one of his own men over.

     “And you,” he said -- looking straight at Wilcox’s name tag -- “Wilcox? I’ll need to know how to reach you 24/7.”