The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2018 by James Patterson and William Jefferson Clinton

  Author photograph by David Burnett

  Cover design by Mario J. Pulice; photograph by Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-41271-1

  E3-20180509-PC-DA

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Thursday, May 10 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Friday, May 11 Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Saturday in America Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Sunday Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Monday Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Find out more about The President Is Missing

  Special thanks to Robert Barnett, our lawyer and our friend, who brought us together on this book, advised, cajoled, and occasionally cracked the whip.

  Thanks as well to David Ellis, always patient, always wise, who stuck with us through the research, our first and second outlines, and the many, many drafts. This would not be the story it is without David’s help and inspiration.

  To Hillary Clinton, who has lived with and worked against this threat and the consequences of unheeded warnings, for her constant encouragement and reminders to keep it real.

  To Sue Solie Patterson, who has learned the art of criticizing and encouraging, often in the same breath.

  To Mary Jordan, who keeps her head screwed on while everyone around her is losing theirs.

  To Deneen Howell and Michael O’Connor, who keep us all on contract, on schedule, and on the mark.

  To Tina Flournoy and Steve Rinehart, for helping the novice partner hold up his end of the deal.

  And to the men and women of the United States Secret Service and all others in law enforcement, the military, intelligence, and diplomacy, who devote their lives to keeping the rest of us safe and secure.

  Thursday,

  May 10

  Chapter

  1

  The House Select Committee will come to order…”

  The sharks are circling, their nostrils twitching at the scent of blood. Thirteen of them, to be exact, eight from the opposition party and five from mine, sharks against whom I’ve been preparing defenses with lawyers and advisers. I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how prepared you are, there are few defenses that work against predators. At some point, there’s nothing you can do but jump in and fight back.

  Don’t do it, my chief of staff, Carol
yn Brock, pleaded again last night, as she has so many times. You can’t go anywhere near that committee hearing, sir. You have everything to lose and nothing to gain.

  You can’t answer their questions, sir.

  It will be the end of your presidency.

  I scan the thirteen faces opposite me, seated in a long row, a modern-day Spanish Inquisition. The silver-haired man in the center, behind the nameplate MR. RHODES, clears his throat.

  Lester Rhodes, the Speaker of the House, normally doesn’t participate in committee hearings, but he has made an exception for this select committee, which he has stacked with members of Congress on his side of the aisle whose principal goal in life seems to be stopping my agenda and destroying me, politically and personally. Savagery in the quest for power is older than the Bible, but some of my opponents really hate my guts. They don’t just want to run me out of office. They won’t be satisfied unless I’m sent to prison, drawn and quartered, and erased from the history books. Hell, if they had their way, they’d probably burn down my house in North Carolina and spit on my wife’s grave.

  I uncurl the gooseneck stem of the microphone so that it is taut, fully extended, as close to me as possible. I don’t want to lean forward to speak while the committee members sit up straight in their high-backed leather chairs like kings and queens on thrones. Leaning forward would make me look weak, subservient—a subliminal message that I’m at their mercy.

  I am alone at my chair. No aides, no lawyers, no notes. The American people are not going to see me exchanging hushed whispers with an attorney, my hand over the microphone, removing it to testify that I have no specific recollection of that, Congressman. I’m not hiding. I shouldn’t have to be here, and I sure as hell don’t want to be here, but here I am. Just me. The president of the United States, facing a mob of accusers.

  In the corner of the room, the triumvirate of my top aides sits in observation: the chief of staff, Carolyn Brock; Danny Akers, my oldest friend and White House counsel; and Jenny Brickman, my deputy chief of staff and senior political adviser. All of them stoic, stone-faced, worried. Not one of them wanted me to do this. It was their unanimous conclusion that I was making the biggest mistake of my presidency.

  But I’m here. It’s time. We’ll see if they were right.

  “Mr. President.”

  “Mr. Speaker.” Technically, in this context, I should probably call him Mr. Chairman, but there are a lot of things I could call him that I won’t.

  This could begin any number of ways. A self-congratulatory speech by the Speaker disguised as a question. Some light introductory setup questions. But I’ve seen enough video of Lester Rhodes questioning witnesses before he was Speaker, back when he was a middling congressman on the House Oversight Committee, to know that he has a penchant for opening strong, going straight for the jugular, throwing off the witness. He knows—in fact, after 1988, when Michael Dukakis botched the first debate question about the death penalty, everyone knows—that if you blow the opener, nobody remembers anything else.

  Will the Speaker follow that same plan of attack with a sitting president?

  Of course he will.

  “President Duncan,” he begins. “Since when are we in the business of protecting terrorists?”

  “We aren’t,” I say so quickly that I almost talk over him, because you can’t give a question like that oxygen. “And we never will be. Not while I’m president.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Did he really just say that? The heat rises to my face. Not one minute in, and he’s already under my skin.

  “Mr. Speaker,” I say. “If I said it, I meant it. Let’s be clear about that from the start. We are not in the business of protecting terrorists.”

  He pauses after that reminder. “Well, Mr. President, maybe we are parsing words here. Do you consider the Sons of Jihad to be a terrorist organization?”

  “Of course.” My aides said not to say of course; it can sound pompous and condescending unless it’s delivered just right.

  “And that group has received support from Russia, has it not?”

  I nod. “Russia has given support to the SOJ from time to time, yes. We’ve condemned their support of the SOJ and other terrorist organizations.”

  “The Sons of Jihad has committed acts of terror on three different continents, is that correct?”

  “That’s an accurate summary, yes.”

  “They’re responsible for the deaths of thousands of people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Including Americans?”

  “Yes.”

  “The explosions at the Bellwood Arms Hotel in Brussels that killed fifty-seven people, including a delegation of state legislators from California? The hacking of the air-traffic control system in the republic of Georgia that brought down three airplanes, one of them carrying the Georgian ambassador to the United States?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Both of those acts occurred before I was president, but yes, the Sons of Jihad has claimed responsibility for both incidents—”

  “Okay, then let’s talk about since you’ve been president. Isn’t it true that just a few months ago, the Sons of Jihad was responsible for hacking into Israeli military systems and publicly releasing classified information on Israeli covert operatives and troop movements?”

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s true.”

  “And far closer to home, here in North America,” he says. “Just last week. Friday, the fourth of May. Didn’t the Sons of Jihad commit yet another act of terror when it hacked into the computers controlling Toronto’s subway system and shut it down, causing a derailment that killed seventeen people, injured dozens more, and left thousands of people stranded in darkness for hours?”

  He’s right that the SOJ was responsible for that one, too. And his casualty count is accurate. But to the SOJ, that wasn’t an act of terror.

  That was a test run.

  “Four of the people who died in Toronto were Americans, correct?”

  “That’s correct,” I say. “The Sons of Jihad did not claim responsibility for that act, but we believe it was responsible.”

  He nods, looks at his notes. “The leader of the Sons of Jihad, Mr. President. That’s a man named Suliman Cindoruk, correct?”

  Here we go.

  “Yes, Suliman Cindoruk is the leader of the SOJ,” I say.

  “The most dangerous and prolific cyberterrorist in the world, correct?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “A Turkish-born Muslim, is he not?”

  “He’s Turkish-born, but he’s not Muslim,” I say. “He is a secular extreme nationalist who opposes the influence of the West in central and southeastern Europe. The ‘jihad’ he’s waging has nothing to do with religion.”

  “So you say.”

  “So says every intelligence assessment I’ve ever seen,” I say. “You’ve read them, too, Mr. Speaker. If you want to turn this into an Islamophobic rant, go ahead, but it’s not going to make our country any safer.”

  He manages to crack a wry smile. “At any rate, he’s the most wanted terrorist in the world, isn’t he?”

  “We want to capture him,” I say. “We want to capture any terrorist who tries to harm our country.”

  He pauses. He’s debating whether to ask me again: Are you sure about that? If he does, it will take all the willpower I can summon not to knock over this table and take him by the throat.

  “Just to be clear, then,” he says. “The United States wants to capture Suliman Cindoruk.”

  “There’s no need to clarify that,” I snap. “There’s never been any confusion about that. Never. We’ve been hunting Suliman Cindoruk for a decade. We won’t stop until we catch him. Is that clear enough for you?”

  “Well, Mr. President, with all due respect—”

  “No,” I interrupt. “When you begin a question by saying ‘with all due respect,’ it means you’re about to say something that doesn’t show any respect. You can think whatever you want,
Mr. Speaker, but you should show respect—if not for me then for all the other people who dedicate their lives to stopping terrorism and keeping our country safe. We aren’t perfect, and we never will be. But we will never stop doing our best.”

  Then I wave at him dismissively. “Go ahead and ask your question.”

  My pulse banging, I take a breath and glance at my trio of advisers. Jenny, my political adviser, is nodding; she has always wanted me to be more aggressive with our new Speaker of the House. Danny shows nothing. Carolyn, my levelheaded chief of staff, is leaning forward, elbows on her knees, her hands pitched in a temple under her chin. If they were Olympic judges, Jenny would give me a 9 for that outburst, but Carolyn would have me under a 5.

  “I won’t have my patriotism questioned, Mr. President,” says my silver-haired adversary. “The American people have grave concerns about what happened in Algeria last week, and we haven’t even gotten into that yet. The American people have every right to know whose side you’re on.”

  “Whose side I’m on?” I come forward with a start, nearly knocking the base of the microphone off the table. “I’m on the side of the American people, that’s whose side I’m on.”

  “Mr. Pres—”

  “I’m on the side of the people who work around the clock to keep our country safe. The ones who aren’t thinking about optics or which way the political winds are blowing. The ones who don’t seek credit for their successes and can’t defend themselves when they’re criticized. That’s whose side I’m on.”

  “President Duncan, I strongly support the men and women who fight every day to keep our nation safe,” he says. “This isn’t about them. This is about you, sir. This is no game we’re playing here. I take no pleasure in this.”

  Under other circumstances, I’d laugh. Lester Rhodes has been looking forward to the select committee hearing more than a college boy looks forward to his twenty-first birthday.

  This whole thing is for show. Speaker Rhodes has engineered this committee so that there is only one real outcome—a finding of presidential misconduct sufficient to refer the matter to the House Judiciary Committee for impeachment proceedings. The eight members of Congress on his side are all in safe congressional districts, gerrymandered so cartoonishly that they could probably drop their pants in the middle of the hearing, start sucking their thumbs, and not only would they be reelected in two years, they would also run unopposed.