The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  “Mr. Kearns, I’d like to discuss all my actions with you, but there are national security considerations that just don’t permit it. I know you know that, of course. But I also know it’s hard to pass up an easy cheap shot.”

  In the corner, Danny Akers has his hands up, signaling for a time-out.

  “Yeah, you know what? You’re right, Danny. It’s time. I’m done with this. This is over. We’re done.”

  I lash out and whack the microphone off the table. I knock over my chair as I get to my feet.

  “I get it, Carrie. It’s a bad idea to testify. They’ll tear me to pieces. I get it.”

  Carolyn Brock gets to her feet, straightens her suit. “Okay, everyone, thank you. Please give us the room now.”

  “The room” being the Roosevelt Room, across from the Oval Office. A good place to hold a meeting—or in this case, a mock committee hearing—because it contains both the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback as a Rough Rider and the Nobel Peace Prize he won for settling the war between Japan and Russia. There are no windows, and the doors are easy to secure.

  Everyone stands. My press secretary pulls off his bow tie, a nice little detail he threw in to complete his role as Congressman Kearns. He looks at me with an apology, but I wave him off. He was just playing his role, trying to show me the worst-case scenario if I go forward with my decision to testify next week before the select committee.

  One of my lawyers in the White House counsel’s office, today playing the role of Lester Rhodes, all the way down to a silver wig that makes him look more like Anderson Cooper than the House Speaker, shoots me a sheepish look, too, and I give him the same reassurance.

  As the room slowly empties, the adrenaline drains from me, leaving me exhausted and discouraged. One thing they never tell you about this job is how much it’s like your first roller-coaster ride—thrilling highs, lows lower than a snake’s belly.

  Then it’s just me, staring at the Rough Rider portrait above the fireplace and hearing footsteps as Carolyn, Danny, and Jenny gingerly approach the wounded animal in the cage.

  “‘Least flat-out shitty’ was my personal favorite,” Danny says, deadpan.

  Rachel always told me I swear too much. She said swearing shows a lack of creativity. I’m not so sure. When things get really tough, I can get pretty creative with my cussing.

  Anyway, Carolyn and my other close aides know I’m using this mock session as therapy. If they really can’t talk me out of testifying, at least they hope this will get the frustration, at its most colorful, out of my system, so I can focus on more presidential, profanity-free responses when it’s showtime.

  Jenny Brickman, with characteristic subtlety, says, “You’d have to be a complete horse’s ass to testify next week.”

  I nod at Jenny and Danny. “I need Carrie,” I say, the only one of them with the security clearance to speak with me right now.

  They leave us.

  “Anything new?” I ask Carolyn, just the two of us in the room now.

  She shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “It’s still happening tomorrow?”

  “As far as I know, Mr. President.” She nods in the direction where Jenny and Danny just left. “They’re right, you know. This hearing on Monday is a lose-lose.”

  “We’re done talking about the hearing, Carrie. I agreed to do this mock session. I gave you one hour. Now we’re done. We have more important things on our minds right now, don’t we?”

  “Yes, sir. The team is ready for the briefing, sir.”

  “I want to talk to Threat Response, then Burke, then the under secretary. In that order.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Carolyn leaves me. Alone in the room, I stare at the portrait of the first President Roosevelt and think. But I’m not thinking about the hearing on Monday.

  I’m thinking about whether we’ll still have a country on Monday.

  Chapter

  3

  As she emerges from the gate at Reagan National, she pauses a moment, ostensibly to look up at the signs for directions, but in fact she is enjoying the open-air space after the flight. She inhales deeply, pulls on the ginger candy in her mouth, the whimsical first movement of Violin Concerto no. 1, featuring Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog, playing softly in her earbuds.

  Look happy, they tell you. Happiness, they say, is the optimal emotion to project when under surveillance, the least likely to arouse suspicion. People who are smiling, who are content and pleased, if not laughing and joking, don’t look like a threat.

  She prefers sexy. It’s easier to pull off when alone, and it’s always seemed to work for her—the lopsided smile, the strut in her walk as she pulls her Bottega Veneta trolley behind her down the terminal. It’s a role like any other, a coat she puts on when necessary and sheds as soon as she’s done, but she can see it’s working: the men trying for eye contact, checking the cleavage she’s made sure to reveal, allowing just enough bounce in her girls to make it memorable. The women sizing up her entire five-foot-nine-inch frame with envy, from her knee-high chocolate leather boots to her flaming red hair, before checking their husbands to see what they think of the view.

  She will be memorable, no doubt, the tall, leggy, busty redhead, hiding in plain sight.

  She should be in the clear by now, walking through the terminal toward the taxis. If they recognized her, she would know by now. They wouldn’t have let her get this far. But she is not free and clear just yet, and she doesn’t let down her guard. Ever. The moment you lose focus, you make a mistake, said the man who put a rifle in her hands for the first time, some twenty-five years ago. Dispassionate and logical are the words she lives by. Always thinking, never showing.

  The walk is agonizing, but she only shows it in her wincing eyes, concealed by Ferragamo sunglasses. Her mouth retains its confident smirk.

  She makes it outside to the taxis, appreciating the fresh air but nauseated by the vehicle exhaust. Airport officials in uniforms are yelling at cab drivers and directing people into the cars. Parents are corralling whiny children and rolling luggage.

  She moves into the center aisle and looks for the vehicle with the license plate she has committed to memory, the roadrunner decal on the car’s side door. It’s not here yet. She closes her eyes a moment and keeps time with the strings playing through her earbuds, the andante movement, her favorite, at first rueful and longing and then calming, almost meditative.

  When her eyes open, the cab with the right license plate, with the roadrunner decal on the passenger door, has entered the queue of cars. She rolls her luggage over and gets inside. The overpowering odor of fast food brings her breakfast to her throat. She stifles it and sits back in the seat.

  She kills the music as the concerto is entering its final, frenzied movement, the allegro assai. She removes her earbuds, feeling naked without the reassuring accompaniment of the violins and cellos.

  “How is traffic today?” she asks in English, a midwestern accent.

  The driver’s eyes flash at her through the rearview mirror. The driver has surely been advised that she does not like people who fixate on her.

  Don’t stare at Bach.

  “Pretty good today,” he answers, measuring every word, uttering the all-clear code she was hoping to hear. She didn’t expect any complications this early on, but you never know.

  Now able to relax a moment, she crosses one leg and unzips her boot, then repeats with the other boot. She moans softly with the relief of freeing her feet from those boots and the four-inch lifts inside them. She stretches her toes and runs her thumb firmly under each arch, the closest she can come to a foot massage in the back of a cab.

  With any luck, she won’t need to be five feet nine inches for the rest of the trip; five feet five will do just fine. She unzips her carry-on, folds the Gucci boots inside it, and pulls out a pair of Nike court shoes.

  As the car pulls into thick traffic, she looks out the window to her r
ight, then glances to the left. She drops her head low, between her legs. When she reemerges, the red wig is in her lap, replaced with ink-black hair, pulled back mercilessly into a bun.

  “You feel…more like yourself now?” asks the driver.

  She doesn’t reply. She steadies a cold stare for him, but he doesn’t meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. He should know better.

  Bach doesn’t like small talk.

  And it’s been a long time since she’s “felt like herself,” as Americans would say. At most, she has an occasional window of relaxation. But the longer she stays in this line of work and the more times she reinvents herself—replacing one facade with another, sometimes lingering in shadow, sometimes hiding in plain sight—the less she remembers her true self or even the concept of having her own identity.

  That will change soon, a vow she has made to herself.

  Her wig and boots now changed out, her carry-on zipped up and resting next to her on the seat, she reaches down to the floor mat at her feet. Her fingers find the edges of the mat and lift, freeing it from its Velcro moorings.

  Beneath it, a carpeted floorboard with latches. She pops the latches on each side and lifts open the door.

  She sits up again, checking the speedometer to make sure the driver isn’t doing something stupid like speeding, to make sure that a police cruiser isn’t happening by at this moment.

  Then she bends down again, removing the hard-shell case from the floorboard compartment. She places her thumb on the seal. It takes only a moment for the thumbprint recognition to pop the seal open.

  Not that the people who have hired her would have any reason to mess with her equipment, but better safe than sorry.

  She opens the case for a quick inspection. “Hello, Anna,” she whispers, the name she has given it. Anna Magdalena is a thing of beauty, a matte-black semiautomatic rifle capable of firing five rounds in less than two seconds, capable of assembly and disassembly in less than three minutes with nothing but a screwdriver. There are newer models on the market, of course, but Anna Magdalena has never let her down, from any distance. Dozens of people could confirm its accuracy—theoretically—including a prosecutor in Bogotá, Colombia, who until seven months ago had a head atop his body and the leader of a rebel army in Darfur who eighteen months ago suddenly spilled his brains into the lamb stew on his lap.

  She has killed on every continent. She has assassinated generals, activists, politicians, and businessmen. She is known only by her gender and the classical-music composer she favors. And by her 100 percent kill rate.

  This will be your greatest challenge, Bach, said the man who hired her for this job.

  No, she replied, correcting him. This will be my greatest success.

  Friday,

  May 11

  Chapter

  4

  I wake with a start, staring into the darkness, fumbling for my phone. It’s just past four in the morning. I text Carolyn. Anything?

  Her response comes immediately; she’s not asleep. Nothing sir.

  I know better. Carolyn would’ve called me right away if something had happened. But she’s become accustomed to these early morning communications ever since we discovered what we were up against.

  I exhale and stretch my arms, letting out nervous energy. There’s no way I’ll go back to sleep. Today’s the day.

  I spend some time on the treadmill in the bedroom. I’ve never—not since my baseball days—lost the need to work up a good sweat, especially in this job. It’s like a massage before the stress of the day. When Rachel’s cancer returned, I had a treadmill installed in the bedroom so I could keep an eye on her even while exercising.

  Today it’s an easy stroll, not a run or even a brisk walk given my current physical condition, the relapse of my illness, which is the last thing I need right now.

  I brush my teeth and check my toothbrush when I’m done. Nothing on it but the slushy remnants of the gel. I do a wide smile in the mirror and check my gums.

  I strip off my clothes and turn around, look back at myself in the mirror. The bruising is mostly on my calves but is also on the backs of my upper thighs. It’s getting worse.

  After a shower, it’s time to read the President’s Daily Brief and hear about any late developments not covered in it. Then on to breakfast in the dining room. That was something Rachel and I used to do together. “The rest of the world can have you for the next sixteen hours,” she used to say. “I get you for breakfast.”

  And usually dinner. We made the time, though when Rachel was alive, we didn’t eat either meal in this dining room; we usually ate at the small table in the kitchen next door, a more intimate setting. Sometimes, when we really wanted to feel like normal people for a change, we’d cook for ourselves. Some of our best moments, in the time we shared here, were spent flipping pancakes or rolling pizza dough, just the two of us, as we did back home in North Carolina.

  I cut through the hard-boiled egg with my fork and look absently out the window at Blair House, across from Lafayette Park, the hum of the television serving as white noise in the background. The television is new since Rachel.

  I’m not sure why I bother with the news. It’s all about the impeachment, the networks trying to bend every story to fit this narrative.

  On MSNBC, a foreign-affairs correspondent is claiming that the Israeli government is transferring a high-profile Palestinian terrorist to another prison. Could this be part of some “deal” the president has cut with Suliman Cindoruk? Some deal involving Israel and a prisoner trade?

  CBS News is saying that I’m considering filling a vacancy at Agriculture with a southern senator from the opposing party. Is the president hoping to siphon off votes for removal by handing out cabinet appointments?

  I suppose if I turned on the Food Network right now, they’d be saying that when I let them visit the White House a month ago and told them my favorite vegetable is corn, I was secretly trying to curry favor with the senators from Iowa and Nebraska who are part of the bloc itching to remove me from office.

  Fox News, over the banner TURMOIL IN THE WHITE HOUSE, claims that my staff is sharply split on whether I should testify, the yes-testify crew led by the White House chief of staff, Carolyn Brock, the don’t-testify faction headed by the vice president, Katherine Brandt. “Plans are already under way, as a contingency,” says a reporter standing outside the White House right now, “to claim that the House hearings are a partisan charade to give the president an excuse to change his mind and refuse to attend.”

  On the Today show, a color-coded map shows the fifty-five senators in the opposing party as well as the senators from my party who are up for reelection and who might feel pressure to be part of the twelve defectors necessary to convict me at an impeachment trial.

  CNN says that my staff and I are calling in senators as early as this morning to lock them down as not-guilty votes in the impeachment trial.

  Good Morning America says that White House sources indicate that I’ve already decided not to run for reelection and that I will try to cut a deal with the House Speaker to spare me impeachment if I agree to a single term in office.

  Where do they get this crap? I have to admit it’s sensational. And sensational sells over factual every day.

  Still, the wall-to-wall impeachment speculation has been hard on my staff, most of whom don’t know what happened in Algeria or during my phone call to Suliman Cindoruk any more than Congress or the media or the American people do. But so far they’ve rallied while the White House is under assault, considering it a source of pride to stand together. They’ll never know how much that means to me.

  I punch a button on my phone. Rachel would kill me for having a phone at breakfast, too. “JoAnn, where’s Jenny?”

  “She’s here, sir. Do you want her?”

  “Please. Thank you.”

  Carolyn Brock walks in, the only person who would feel free to do so while I’m eating. I’ve never actually said that nobody else is allowed in.
It’s one of the many things a chief of staff does for you—streamlining, acting as a gatekeeper, being the hard-ass with staff so I don’t have to think about such matters.

  She is buttoned-up as always, a smart suit, dark hair pulled back, never letting her guard down while on camera. Her job, she has told me more than once, is not to make friends with the staff but to keep them organized, praise good work, and sweat the details so I can focus on the hard, big stuff.

  But that’s a dramatic understatement of her role. Nobody has a tougher job than the White House chief of staff. She does the little things, sure—the personnel issues and the scheduling. She’s also right there with me on the big things. She has to do it all because she’s also the go-to person for members of Congress, the cabinet, the interest groups, and the press. I don’t have a better surrogate. She does all that and keeps her ego in check. Just try to pay her a compliment. She brushes it away like a piece of lint on her impeccable suit.

  There was a time, not long ago, when people predicted that Carolyn Brock would one day be the Speaker of the House. She was a three-term congresswoman, a progressive who managed to win a conservative House district in southeastern Ohio and who moved swiftly up the ranks of House leadership. She was intelligent, personable, and telegenic, the political equivalent of a five-tool player. She became a hit on the fund-raiser circuit and built alliances that allowed her to move to the coveted position as head of our party’s political arm, the congressional campaign committee. She was barely forty years old and poised for the pinnacle of House leadership, if not higher office.

  Then 2010 came. Everyone knew it was going to be a brutal midterm election for our party. And the other side fielded a strong candidate, a former governor’s son. A week out, the race was a statistical tie.

  Five days before the election, while blowing off steam with her two closest aides over a bottle of wine at midnight, Carolyn made a derogatory comment about her opponent, who’d just released an ad viciously attacking Carolyn’s husband, a noted trial lawyer at the time. Her comment was caught on a live mike. Nobody knows who picked it up or how. Carolyn thought she was alone with her two aides in a closed restaurant.