The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

Noya Baram and I stand on the dock looking at the lake, the midday sun gaining ground in the sky, its beams reflecting off the shimmering water, the serenity and beauty of the scene grotesquely contrasted with the feeling of impending doom taking up residence in my gut. Not since Kennedy stared down Khrushchev over the missiles in Cuba has our nation been this close to world war.

  I’ve done it now. I’ve drawn the line in the sand. Now they know our military structure is operational, the virus notwithstanding. And now they know that if they planted this virus and it detonates, the United States will consider it a first strike and respond accordingly.

  One of my Secret Service agents stands near the dock with one member each of the security details from Germany and Israel. About fifty yards from the shore, three men sit in a gray twenty-five-foot motorboat, two of them lazily holding fishing rods for show, though they are not there to catch largemouth bass or catfish. All three are Secret Service—men without young children, at my insistence. Their boat is a Defender-class “Charlie” boat used by Homeland Security and the Coast Guard, this one recently taken out of rotation at Guantánamo Bay and snatched up by Secret Service. Now it looks pretty much like an ordinary motorboat, but that’s because it’s impossible to tell that its updated hull is armored and bulletproof. The agents have thrown tarps over the machine guns mounted on the port and starboard sides by the cabin as well as the .50-caliber machine gun on the bow.

  They are on a small bay of water that feeds into the larger man-made reservoir, staying close to the narrow opening that protects this private bay from the rest of the lake.

  I look back up the trail toward the cabin, toward the black tent on the lawn. “Volkov has been in and out of that tent so many times you’d think he was going for a merit badge.”

  For the last three hours, Volkov has been repeatedly summoned by Moscow for more phone calls, sending him back into the tent.

  “It means he believed you,” Noya says.

  “Oh, they believe we’re capable of a counterstrike,” I say. “Those training exercises left no doubt. Do they believe I’ll actually do it? That’s another question.”

  Instinctively I brush my hand against the wallet in my pocket, which holds the nuclear codes.

  Noya turns and looks at me. “Do you believe you’ll do it?”

  That’s the million-dollar question. “What would you do, Noya?”

  She moans. “Imagine if the virus detonates,” she says. “Economic collapse, panic, mass hysteria. In the midst of that, do you send troops to Russia? Do you launch nuclear missiles at Moscow?”

  “They’d respond in kind,” I say.

  “Yes. So not only are you facing unprecedented domestic problems, but millions of Americans are also exposed to nuclear radiation. Could your nation survive all that at once?”

  I put my hands on my knees. An old habit, when I’m nervous, from my days on the baseball mound.

  “But the flip side of the coin,” she says, “is how do you not respond? What will become of the United States if there is no retaliation? You must retaliate in some way, yes?”

  I find a stone in the grass, pick it up, and hurl it into the lake. I had a live fastball. It occurs to me that if I hadn’t trashed my shoulder falling out of a Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq, I wouldn’t be here right now.

  “The United States will retaliate,” I say. “There’s no scenario in which we don’t retaliate.”

  She says, “Your Joint Chiefs prefer a conventional war, I assume.”

  Of course they do. A nuclear war is a lose-lose proposition. You only launch if you have no choice, because the other side launched first. That’s why nobody has triggered that option. Mutually assured destruction has worked for a reason.

  “But a ground invasion of Russia?” she says. “Even if your NATO allies join in, it will be long and bloody.”

  “We’d win,” I say. “Eventually. But then what would Chernokev do? He’d use nuclear weapons, that’s what he’d do. If his back was against the wall? If he was going to be ousted? He’d have nothing to lose. He cares more about his own ass than his people.”

  “So you’re right back at a nuclear holocaust.”

  “Right. We lose thousands of men and women on the Russian battlefield, and then he launches nukes anyway.”

  Noya is quiet. What can she say?

  “Okay, well.” I throw up my hands. “None of that is an option. The only option is stopping that goddamn virus and not having to make that decision.”

  “And you’ve done what you can, Jonny. You’ve given Russia every reason to want to help you.”

  I rub my face with my hands, as if I can cleanse away the stress. “Well, that was the point of my threat.” I gesture up the path, toward the cabin. “Volkov’s still in the black tent, communicating back home. I hope they’re taking the message seriously.”

  “Assuming it’s Russia,” she reminds me. “We don’t know this for certain. How is China responding to the Japanese exercises?”

  We just did essentially the same thing in Japan that we did in Europe, the air exercises and the nuclear simulation.

  “Beijing wasn’t happy,” I say. “My defense secretary basically read from the same script. He told them we were testing new technology, independent of our continental systems. He didn’t mention the virus, but if China’s behind it, they got the message.”

  “They’re probably concerned about what Pyongyang is thinking.”

  Yes, we can expect more fire-and-brimstone language from the North Korean dictator.

  Noya grips my arm. “If it’s any consolation, I would not do anything differently from what you’ve done. You’ve fortified your military capabilities, you’ve demonstrated those fortified capabilities for all the world to see, you’ve issued an ultimatum to Volkov, and you’ve assembled the best minds you can possibly gather together to stop this virus.”

  “You have no idea how consoling that is,” I say as we turn and begin the walk up the path toward the cabin.

  “Then believe in the plan,” she says.

  We approach the black tent in the backyard, where the Russian security detail remains, standing at attention. Then the men step back, and Prime Minister Volkov emerges from the tent, fixing his tie, nodding at his men.

  “If he leaves now,” I whisper to Noya, “we’ll have the answer to our question.”

  “He’ll make an excuse. He’ll say he’s leaving to protest your military exercises off their border.”

  Right. But the stated reason won’t matter. If the Russians leave now, after the threat I’ve issued, there will be no doubt that they’re behind this.

  Volkov turns and sees us approach.

  “Mr. President, Madam Prime Minister.” Seeing Noya for the first time, he greets her with a handshake, all formality.

  Then he looks at me. I don’t say anything. It’s his move.

  “President Chernokev assures you, Mr. President, that Russia remains committed to helping you prevent this horrific virus from detonating.” He gestures to the cabin. “Shall we head inside?” he says.

  Chapter

  64

  Plan B.

  This is it. Her last job. Her last kill. And then she will be done, wealthy and free to raise her unborn daughter somewhere far away from all this. Her daughter will know love. She will know happiness. War and violence will be something she reads about in books or hears about on the news.

  She checks her watch. It’s almost time.

  She squints up at the afternoon sun. The morning sickness is there as always, aggravated by the gentle rocking of the boat on the lake, but her adrenaline overwhelms it. She has no time for nausea right now.

  She glances over at the other team members on the boat, ridiculous as they look with their hats and fishing poles. They’ve kept their distance after she killed two of their comrades. That’s fine with her. In all likelihood, their role in the mission is over now anyway, other than giving her a ride.

  She may need to reconsider her
opinion of men now. Studies say that children with two parents are happier, healthier, more well adjusted. So maybe she’ll marry. It’s hard to imagine. She’s simply never felt the need for a man.

  Sex? Sex to her was a price to be paid. A price to be paid by her mother to the Serbian soldiers for allowing her and her two children to remain in their home after they killed her father, officially because she was Christian, not Muslim, like her husband, but in reality because of her beauty and willingness, for her children’s sake, to satisfy the soldiers’ needs on demand on a nightly basis. Sex was the price Bach paid for the bread and rice she would steal in the marketplace on those evenings when she couldn’t escape the soldiers’ ambush. Sex was the price to be paid to get close to Ranko, the Serbian soldier who agreed to teach her how to fire a rifle from long range.

  And of course it was the price to be paid for having a child of her own. The man who impregnated her, Geoffrey, was a good man, a man she chose deliberately for that purpose after careful research. Brains: a radiologist who studied here in the States, at Yale. Musical ability: played the cello. Athletic: played rugby in college. Handsome, with good bone structure. No history of cancer or mental illness in his immediate family. His parents were still alive, in their eighties. She slept with him no more than three times a week to maximize his potency. She stuck around until she got a positive test result, then left Melbourne without another word. He never knew her real name.

  “Is time,” says one of the men, tapping his watch.

  Bach hikes the oxygen tank onto her back. Piles on her other bag. Slings her rifle, Anna Magdalena, protected in its case, over her shoulder.

  She puts on the mask, adjusts it, and nods at the rest of her team, giving each of them one last look. When this is over, she wonders, will they in fact transport her back to the extraction point? Or will they try to kill her once she’s performed the mission, once she is no longer useful to them?

  The latter, probably. Something she will deal with when the time comes.

  She falls backward off the boat, into the lake water.

  Chapter

  65

  Inside the communications room, I am talking to my CIA director, Erica Beatty. Danny always calls her spooky, not as a pun on her career-long allegiance to the agency but because of her poker-face demeanor and the dark circles under her hooded eyes. I know she’s seen and done a lot, he has said, and who knows what the East Germans really did to her in captivity, but damn, I can’t shake the image of her brewing potions in a boiling cauldron inside her gingerbread house.

  Spooky, yes. But she’s my spook. And she knows more about Russia than anyone with a pulse.

  She’s also one of the six people who could have leaked “Dark Ages.”

  “So what does he do, Erica?”

  She nods her head, digesting everything I’ve told her. “Mr. President, this is not Chernokev’s style,” she says. “He is ruthless, yes, but not reckless. Of course he would be interested in causing great damage to our country, but the risk is too high. If Russia is implicated in this, he knows we will retaliate with great force. I don’t see him taking this chance.”

  “But answer my question,” I say. “If he is behind this virus, and now he sees that we have restored our military capabilities, what does he do?”

  “He abandons his plan,” she says. “The risk is far greater to him now, because no matter how paralyzed we might be at home, we could still strike him. But Mr. President, I do not see Russian fingerprints on this.”

  My phone buzzes: C. Brock.

  “I have to run, Erica.”

  “Are you near the computer?” Carolyn asks when I answer the phone.

  Moments later, my computer screen is split between Carolyn Brock, at the White House, and a video, currently frozen on an image of Tony Winters, the host of Meet the Press, his hair expertly coiffed, his tie knotted perfectly, his hands raised and mouth pursed in midspeech.

  “They completed it a half hour ago,” says Carolyn. “They’re going to start running excerpts this morning. Full interview runs tomorrow morning.”

  I nod. The video starts to play.

  Winters, caught in midsentence: “—vernight reports that the president is missing, that not even his aides know where he is. Madam Vice President, is the president missing?”

  Kathy nods, as if expecting the question, her expression somber. I’d have expected mirth, as in, What a ridiculous question. She raises a hand and brings it down like a hatchet. “Tony, the president is working day and night for the people of this country, to bring back jobs, to keep America safe, to provide tax relief to the middle class.”

  “But has he gone missing?”

  “Tony—”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She smiles politely. Finally. “Tony, I don’t keep tabs on the president of the United States. But I can only assume that he is surrounded by aides and Secret Service at all times.”

  “The reports say even his aides don’t know where he is.”

  She opens her hands. “I’m not going to respond to speculation.”

  “Reports suggest that the president is getting away from Washington and preparing for his testimony this week before the House Select Committee. Others suggest that his blood disease has flared up again and he’s in treatment.”

  The vice president shakes her head.

  “Here,” says Carolyn. “Right here.”

  “Tony,” says Kathy, “I’m sure his critics would love to paint the picture of a president having a nervous breakdown, hiding under his covers, or fleeing the capital in a panic. But that’s not the case. Whether I know his precise whereabouts at this moment or not, I know that he is in full control of the government. And that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.”

  The clip ends. I sit back in my chair.

  Carolyn explodes. “His critics would love to paint the picture of a nervous breakdown and hiding under his covers? Fleeing in panic? She just painted that picture! A nervous breakdown? Are you kidding me?”

  “This is why you called me?” I ask.

  “That sound bite will run all day. Everyone’s going to pick it up. The Sunday papers will lead with it.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “None of those overnight reports said anything about a nervous breakdown or fleeing in—”

  “Carrie.”

  “Mr. President, this was calculated. She’s no rookie. She knew she was going to be asked the question. She had that response—”

  “Carrie! I get it, okay? She did it on purpose. She stabbed me in the back. She’s distancing herself from me. I don’t care! Do you hear me? I. Don’t. Care!”

  “We have to respond. It’s a problem.”

  “There’s only one problem right now, Carrie. Have you heard? It’s the one that might bring our country to its knees any minute now. We have”—I look at my watch; it’s just past 2:00 p.m.—“about ten hours before ‘Saturday in America’ comes to an end, and any time between now and then, our country could go up in flames. So as much as I appreciate your loyalty, keep your eye on the prize. Got it?”

  Carolyn bows her head, chastened. “Yes, sir, I apologize. And I’m sorry I let her leave the operations center. She refused to listen. I couldn’t very well order Secret Service to detain her.”

  I breathe out, try to calm down. “That’s on her, not you.”

  Politics aside, is Kathy’s disloyalty significant? Kathy is, after all, one of the six people I haven’t ruled out of suspicion.

  If I’d died last night, she’d be president right now.

  “Carrie, get hold of her,” I say. “Tell her I want her back in the operations center in the subbasement. Tell her that when she gets there, I’ll call her.”

  Chapter

  66

  Bach positions herself on the seacraft, gripping the arms, much as a child would hold a kickboard when learning to swim. Except those kickboards aren’t propelled by twin jet thrusters.

  She pushes t
he green button on the left arm and aims the vehicle downward, plunging below the surface of the lake until she evens out at thirty feet below the surface. She pushes the button to accelerate the thrusters until she’s moving at ten kilometers per hour through the murky water. She has a fair distance to travel. She is at the eastern end of this huge body of water.

  “Boat to your north,” says the voice in her earbud. “Veer south. Left. Veer left.”

  She sees the boat on the surface of the water, but not before her team did, with their GPS and radar capabilities on the boat.

  She veers left, thrusting through the foggy green water, the weeds and fish. The GPS on her console shows her the destination with a blinking green dot, and the number below ticks off her distance.

  1800 m…

  1500 m…

  “Water skier from the right. Hold. Hold.”

  She sees the boat above her, to her right, its engine chopping at the water, followed by the skimming of the water by the skier.

  She doesn’t stop. She’s well below them. She guns the watercraft and speeds past them, beneath them.

  She’ll have to get herself one of these toys.

  1100 m…

  She slows the watercraft. The lake bottoms out at fifty meters at its deepest, but as she gets close to shore, the land rises up sharply to the water, and the last thing she needs is to slam into the earth.

  “Hold. Hold. Stay down. Stay down. Sentry. Sentry.”

  She comes to an abrupt halt nine hundred meters from the shore and doesn’t move in the water, nearly losing her grip on the watercraft, allowing herself to drift lower in the lake. A member of the security detail—US Secret Service or the Germans or Israelis—must be in the woods near the shore, looking around.

  There can’t be very many of them patrolling the woods. It would require hundreds of people to secure more than a thousand acres of heavy woods, and their security details are light.

  Last night—of course the agents walked the entire acreage, swept it thoroughly, before the president arrived.

  But now they can’t afford to patrol the woods. Most of the security will be around or inside the cabin, with a few at the dock and a few in the backyard, where the woods end.