The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  “Here you guys go.” Morty hands each of us a towel. “Are you ready for Carrie, Mr. President? Just tap this button right here.” He points at a mouse by the computer.

  “One second. Is there someplace my friend could go?” I ask, meaning Augie. I haven’t introduced him to Morty, and Morty hasn’t asked for an introduction. He knows better.

  “The rec room,” says Morty. “The large open space by the stairs.”

  “Great. Go with him,” I say to Jacobson.

  The two of them leave the room. Morty nods to me. “Carrie said you’d want a change of clothes.”

  “That would be great.” The bag I’d carried with me, including clothes for Saturday, was left behind in the car I’d parked in the baseball stadium lot.

  “Will do. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be praying for you, Mr. President.”

  I look at him questioningly. Those are strong words. This has been unorthodox, no doubt, my showing up incognito this way. He’s a bright guy, but I know Carolyn doesn’t share classified information with him.

  He leans into me. “I’ve known Carrie for eighteen years,” he says. “I’ve seen her lose a congressional election. I’ve seen her when she miscarried, when I nearly died from a myocardial infarction, and when we lost Jenny in a shopping mall in Alexandria for two hours. I’ve seen her with her back against the wall; I’ve seen her concerned; I’ve seen her worried. But before tonight, I’ve never seen her terrified.”

  I don’t say anything to that. I can’t. He knows that.

  He extends his hand. “Whatever it is, I’m betting on the two of you.”

  I shake his hand. “All the same,” I say, “go ahead and say those prayers.”

  Chapter

  38

  I close the door to Carolyn’s basement office, enclosing myself in soundproofed walls, and sit at the desk. I pick up the computer mouse. When I do, the computer changes from a black screen to fuzz, then a somewhat clear screen split in two.

  “Hello, Mr. President,” says Carolyn Brock, speaking from the White House.

  “Hello, Mr. President,” says Elizabeth Greenfield, acting FBI director, on the second half of the split screen. Liz became the acting director after her predecessor died in office ten days ago from an aneurysm. I’ve nominated her for the permanent position, too. By every measure, she’s the best person for the job—former agent, federal prosecutor, head of the criminal division at Justice, respected by everyone as nonpartisan and a straight arrow.

  The strike against her, which I don’t consider a strike at all, is that more than a decade ago, she joined protests against the invasion of Iraq, so some of the hawks in the Senate have suggested she lacks patriotism, presumably forgetting that peaceful protest is one of the most admirable forms of patriotism.

  They also said I just wanted to be the first president to appoint an African American woman to run the FBI.

  “Tell me about the bridge,” I say, “and Nationals Park.”

  “We have very, very little from the ballpark. It’s early, of course, but the blackout erased any visuals, and the rain has washed away most of the forensics. If men were killed outside the stadium, we have no trace of it. If they left behind any forensic evidence of their existence, it might be days before we find it. And the likelihood is low.”

  “And the sniper?”

  “The sniper. The vehicle was removed by Secret Service, but we have the bullets fired into the sidewalk and the stadium wall, so we can make out a decent angle. From what we can gather, it looks like the sniper was shooting from the roof of an apartment building across the street from the stadium, a building called the Camden South Capitol. We didn’t find anyone up there, of course, but the problem is we didn’t find anything, period. So the sniper did a good job of cleaning up. And of course there’s the rain.”

  “Right.”

  “Mr. President, if they set up in that building, we will figure out who they are. It would have required advance planning. Access. Stolen uniforms, probably. Internal cameras. Facial recognition. We have ways. But you’re telling me there’s no time.”

  “Not much, no.”

  “We’re working as quickly as we can, sir. I just can’t promise you we’ll have answers within hours.”

  “Try. And the woman?” I ask, referring to Augie’s partner.

  “Nina, yes. The Secret Service just turned over the vehicle and the body. We’ll have her fingerprints and DNA within minutes, and we’ll run them. We’ll trace the car, everything.”

  “Good.”

  “What about the bridge?” asks Carolyn.

  “The bridge is still a work in progress,” says Liz. “The fire is out. We’ve removed the four dead subjects from the pedestrian path and are running their vitals through the database. The ones inside the truck will be harder, but we’re working on it. But Mr. President, even if we can learn their identities, whoever hired these people wouldn’t leave a trail behind. There will be cutouts. Intermediaries. We can probably trace it back eventually, but not, I don’t think—”

  “Not within a matter of hours. I understand. It’s still worth the effort. And do it discreetly.”

  “You want me to keep Secretary Haber in the dark about this?”

  Liz is still new to the job, so she doesn’t consider herself on a first-name basis with the other members of my national security team, including Sam Haber, from Homeland Security.

  “Sam can know that you’re tracking these people. He’d expect that, at any rate. But don’t report your findings to anybody but me or Carolyn. If he asks—if anyone else asks—your answer is, ‘We don’t have anything yet.’ Okay?”

  “Mr. President, may I speak freely?”

  “Always, Liz. I’d be upset with you if you didn’t.” There is nothing I value more in subordinates than their willingness to tell me I’m wrong, to challenge me, to sharpen my decision making. Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.

  “Why, sir? Why wouldn’t we coordinate this as openly as possible? We’re more effective if one hand talks to the other. If 9/11 taught us anything, it’s that.”

  I look at Carolyn’s face on the split screen. She shrugs in response, agreeing with me that it’s worth telling the acting director.

  “The code word ‘Dark Ages,’ Liz. Only eight people in the world know that code word besides me. It’s never been written down, on my order. It’s never been repeated, outside our circle, on my order. Right?”

  “Yes, of course, sir.”

  “Even the task force of technicians trying to locate and neutralize the virus, the Imminent Threat Response Team—not even they know ‘Dark Ages,’ right?”

  “Correct, sir. Only the eight of us and you.”

  “One of those eight people leaked it to the Sons of Jihad,” I say.

  A pause as the acting director takes that in.

  “Which means,” I say, “that the person did more than leak.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Four days ago,” I say, “Monday, a woman whispered those words into my daughter’s ear in Paris, to relay to me. That woman is Nina—the one shot at the stadium by the sniper.”

  “My God.”

  “She approached my daughter and told her to say ‘Dark Ages’ to me and to tell me that I was running out of time and that she’d meet me Friday night.”

  The acting director’s chin rises slightly as she processes the information.

  “Mr. President…I’m one of those eight,” she says. “How do you rule me out?”

  Good for her. “Before I tapped you as acting director, ten days ago, you weren’t in the loop. Whatever outside actor is doing this to us, whoever among our eight is helping them—this would have taken time to develop. It wouldn’t happen overnight.”

  “So I’m not the traitor,” she says, “because I wouldn’t have had time.”

  “The timing rules you out, yes. So besides you, Carolyn, and me, that leaves six people, Liz. Six people w
ho could be our Benedict Arnold.”

  “Have you considered that one of those six might have told a spouse or friend who sold the information? They’d be violating your directive of confidentiality, but still…”

  “I have considered that, yes. But whoever’s betraying us did more than leak a code word. They’re a part of this. Nobody’s spouse or friend would have the kind of access and resources to do that. They’d need the government official.”

  “So it’s one of our six.”

  “It’s one of our six,” I say in agreement. “So you understand, Liz, that you’re the only one we can fully trust.”

  Chapter

  39

  When I finish with Acting Director Greenfield, Carolyn tells me my next call is ready.

  A moment later, after some fuzz and screen garble, the image of a man, thick-necked and deadly serious, with a manicured beard and bald head, comes onto the screen. The bags underneath his eyes are a testament not to his age but to the week he’s had.

  “Mr.…President,” he says. His English is perfect, his foreign accent almost imperceptible.

  “David, good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you as well, Mr. President. Given the events of the last few hours, that statement is more than a mere pleasantry.”

  True enough. “The woman is dead, David. Did you know that?”

  “It is what we assumed.”

  “But the man is with me,” I say. “He calls himself Augie.”

  “He told you his name is Augie?”

  “He did. Is that the truth? Did you get a shot of his face?”

  After I received the ticket to the Nationals game from Nina, I called David and told him where I’d be sitting in the left-field stands. He had to scramble, but his team got tickets to the game and positioned themselves so they could get an image of Augie’s face that they could run through facial-recognition software.

  “We were able to get a reliable image, yes, in spite of the baseball cap he wore. We believe that the person sitting next to you at the baseball game is Augustas Koslenko. Born in 1996 in Sloviansk, in the Donetsk province, in eastern Ukraine.”

  “Donetsk? That’s interesting.”

  “We thought so as well. His mother is Lithuanian. His father is Ukrainian, a laborer in a machine factory. No political affiliation or activism that we know of.”

  “What about Augie himself?”

  “He left Ukraine in middle school. He was a mathematics prodigy, a genius. He attended boarding school in eastern Turkey on a scholarship. We believe—we assume that this is where he met Suliman Cindoruk. Before then, we know of nothing he did or said in the way of activism of any kind.”

  “But he’s the real article, you’re saying. He was part of the Sons of Jihad.”

  “Yes, Mr. President. But I am not confident I would use the past tense.”

  I’m not, either. I’m not confident of anything when it comes to Augie. I don’t know what he wants or why he’s doing this. Now, at least, I know he gave me his real name, but if he’s as smart as we think he is, he probably figured I’d learn his identity anyway. And if his whole basis for legitimacy is that he was affiliated with the Sons of Jihad, he’d want me to know his name, he’d want me to confirm that fact. So I’m no further than I was before with Augie.

  “He said he had a falling-out with the SOJ.”

  “He said. You’ve obviously considered the possibility that he is still in their employ? That he is doing their bidding?”

  I shrug. “Sure, of course, but—to what end? He could have killed me at the stadium.”

  “True.”

  “And somebody wants him dead.”

  “Apparently so. Or they want you to believe that, Mr. President.”

  “Well, David—if that’s a fake, it’s a pretty damn good fake. I don’t know how much your people saw outside the stadium, and I assume you didn’t see anything on the bridge. They weren’t pretending. We could have easily died either time.”

  “I do not doubt what you are saying, Mr. President. I only offer the thought that you should remain open to other possibilities. In my experience, these individuals are brilliant tacticians. We must constantly reassess our position and thinking.”

  It’s a good reminder.

  “Tell me what you’re hearing out there,” I say.

  David is quiet for a moment, measuring his words. “We are hearing talk of America being brought to its knees. We are hearing doomsday prophecies. The end of days. We often hear such things in generic chatter from the jihadists, of course—that the Great Satan’s day will come, the time is near—but…”

  “But what?”

  “But we have never heard a firm date placed on such things. And what we are hearing now is that it will happen tomorrow. Saturday, they are saying.”

  I take a breath. Saturday is less than two hours away.

  “Who’s behind this, David?” I ask.

  “We cannot know for sure, Mr. President. Suliman Cindoruk answers to no official state actor, as you know. We are hearing a multitude of suspects. The usual suspects, I suppose you would say. ISIS. North Korea. China. My country. Even your country—they say the event will be propaganda, a self-created crisis to justify military retaliation, typical conspiracy-theory nonsense.”

  “Your best guess?” I say. But I’m relatively sure I know the answer. The tactical spread of chatter, the communication of clandestine information that in fact was intended all along to be overheard by intelligence intercepts. Counterespionage at its most devious, tradecraft at its finest. It bears the mark of one country over all others.

  David Guralnick, the director of Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—Mossad—takes a deep breath. For dramatic measure, the screen cuts in and out before his face becomes clear again.

  “Our best guess is Russia,” he says.

  Chapter

  40

  I click off the transmission with the director of Mossad and gather my thoughts before I talk to Augie. There are many ways to play this, but I have no time for subtlety.

  Saturday, David said. Ninety minutes away.

  I push myself out of the chair and turn for the door when a wave of vertigo strikes me, like someone is playing spin the bottle with my internal compass. I grab hold of the desk for balance and measure my breaths. I reach into my pocket for my pills. I need my pills.

  But my pills are gone. There are no more in my pocket, and the rest were left behind in the bag, in the sedan in the stadium parking lot.

  “Damn it.” I dial Carolyn on my phone. “Carrie, I need more steroids. I don’t have any more at the White House, and I lost the bottle I had. Call Dr. Lane. Maybe she has some ex—”

  “I’ll make it happen, Mr. President.”

  “Great.” I click off and leave the soundproofed office, walking carefully down the hall toward the rec room, near the staircase. Augie is sitting on the couch, looking to all appearances like an ordinary scraggly teenager lounging in front of the television.

  But he’s neither a teenager nor ordinary.

  The mounted television he’s watching is set to cable news, coverage of the assassination attempt on King Saad ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and the growing unrest in Honduras.

  “Augie,” I say. “Stand up.”

  He does what I ask, facing me.

  “Who attacked us?” I ask.

  He pushes his hair out of his face, shrugs. “I do not know.”

  “Do better than that. Let’s start with who sent you. You said you no longer see eye to eye with Suliman Cindoruk and the Sons of Jihad.”

  “Yes, that is true. I do not.”

  “So who sent you?”

  “Nobody sent us. We came of our own will.”

  “Why?”

  “Is it not obvious?”

  I grab a fistful of his shirt. “Augie, a lot of people died tonight. Including someone you cared about and two Secret Service agents I cared about, men who left young families behind
. So start answering my—”

  “We came to stop it,” he says, breaking free of my grip.

  “To stop Dark Ages? But—why?”

  He shakes his head, hiccups a bitter chuckle. “Do you mean, what do I stand to gain? What is…in it for me?”

  “That’s what I mean,” I say. “You didn’t want to tell me before. Tell me now. What does a kid from Donetsk want from the United States?”

  Augie draws back, surprised for only a moment. Not that surprised at all, really. “That did not take long.”

  “Are you part of the pro-Russian camp or the pro-Ukraine camp? They have lots of both in Donetsk, last I checked.”

  “Yes? And when was the last time you checked, Mr. President?” His face changing color, fuming. “When it suited your purposes, that’s when. This,” he says, shaking his finger at me, “this is the difference between you and me. I want nothing from you, that’s what I want. I want…to not destroy a nation full of millions of people. Is that not enough?”

  Is it that simple? That Augie and his partner were simply trying to do the right thing? These days, it’s never your first instinct to believe that.

  I’m not sure I do now, either. I don’t know what to believe.

  “But you created Dark Ages,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “Suli, Nina, and I created it. But Nina was the real inspiration, the driving force. Without her, we never could have created it. I helped with the coding and particularly with the implementation.”

  “Nina? That’s her real name?”

  “Yes.”

  “They created it, and you infiltrated our systems.”

  “More or less, yes.”

  “And you can stop it?”