The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  So the next best thing I could do—the only thing I could do, helpless as I was—was lie perfectly still and hope that when the Iraqis arrived to claim their prize, they’d think I was already—

  Wait.

  I grab Noya’s arm. She jumps in surprise.

  Without another word to her, I rush down the stairs to the war room. Casey almost jumps out of her chair when she sees me, the look on my face.

  “What?” she asks.

  “We can’t kill this thing,” I say. “And we can’t clean up its damage afterward.”

  “Right…”

  “What if we tricked it?” I ask.

  “Tricked it—”

  “You said when you delete files, they become inactive, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the virus only overwrites active files, right? That’s what you said.”

  “Yes. So…”

  “So?” I rush over to Casey, grab her by the shoulders.

  “What if we play dead?” I say.

  Chapter

  91

  Play dead,” says Casey, repeating my words. “We destroy the data before the virus can destroy it?”

  “Well—I’m going by what you told me,” I say. “You said when files are deleted, they aren’t really deleted. They’re just marked as deleted. They don’t disappear forever, but they become inactive.”

  She nods.

  “And you told me the virus only overwrites active files,” I continue. “So it won’t overwrite inactive, marked-as-deleted files.”

  Augie, standing near the smartboard now, wags a finger. “You are suggesting we delete all active files on the computer.”

  “Yes,” I say. “When it’s time for the virus to activate, it opens its eyes and sees no active files to delete. It’s like—well, here: it’s like the virus is an assassin, an assassin whose job is to walk into a room and shoot everyone inside. But when he gets inside, everyone’s already dead. Or so he thinks. So he never pulls out his gun. He just turns around and leaves, because his work was already done for him.”

  “So we mark every active file as deleted,” says Casey. “Then the virus activates. It doesn’t do anything, because it sees no active files to overwrite.”

  She looks at Devin, who seems skeptical. “And then what?” he asks. “At some point we have to recover those files, right? I mean, that’s the whole point—to save those files, to save all that data. So when we recover them, when we unmark them and make them active again—the virus just overwrites them then. It happens later instead of sooner, but it still happens. We’re just delaying the inevitable.”

  I look around at everyone in the room, unwilling to let this go. I have the tiniest fraction of their knowledge, but the more I interact with them, the more I think that might be an advantage. They are way too engulfed in the trees to see the forest.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “After the virus does its job, are we sure it doesn’t go back to sleep, or die, or whatever? I asked you that before, and you responded by asking what happens to a cancer cell after the host body dies. Use my analogy instead. The assassin walks into the room, ready to kill everybody, and finds them all dead. Does the assassin leave, thinking his job is already accomplished? Or does he wait around forever, just in case someone wakes up?”

  Casey, thinking it over, starts nodding. “He’s right,” she says to Devin. “We don’t know. In every model we’ve run, the virus overwrote the core operating files and killed the computer. We’ve never asked ourselves what happens to the virus afterward. We’ve never run a model where the computer survives afterward. We can’t say for certain the virus would remain active.”

  “But why wouldn’t it remain active?” asks Devin. “I can’t imagine Nina would’ve programmed the Suliman virus to stop at any point. Would she?”

  All eyes turn to Augie, his hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes in a focused squint, peering off into some point in the present or the past. I can all but hear the tick of the clock. I want to grab him and shake him. But he’s working this through. When his mouth opens, everyone in the room seems to lean toward him.

  “I think your plan is possible,” he says. “Certainly worth trying on a trial run.”

  I check my watch. Eighteen minutes have passed since I made my offer of a pardon. No attempts to contact me.

  Why not? It’s the deal of a lifetime.

  “Let’s run a test right now,” says Casey.

  Devin folds his arms, not looking convinced.

  “What?” I ask him.

  “This isn’t going to work,” he says. “And we’re wasting time we don’t have.”

  Chapter

  92

  A group of scraggly, frumpy, frazzled computer experts stares at the smartboard in the room as Devin completes his preparations for the test run.

  “Okay,” says Devin, hovering over the keyboard of one of the test computers. “Every single file on this computer has been marked as deleted. Even the core operating files.”

  “You can delete the core operating files and still run the computer?”

  “Normally, no,” he says. “But what we did was—”

  “Never mind. I don’t care,” I say. “So…let’s do it. Activate the virus.”

  “I’ll delete the virus, which should activate it.”

  I turn to the smartboard as Devin performs one of the few things that even a dinosaur like me could do—clicking on the Suliman.exe file and hitting Delete.

  Nothing happens.

  “Okay, it resisted my deletion,” says Devin. “It’s triggered the activation process.”

  “Devin—”

  “The virus is active, Mr. President,” says Casey, translating. “The assassin has entered the room.”

  A series of files pops up on the screen, just like the random files they showed me before, a series of boxes, the properties in a group of descending rows for each file.

  “It’s not overwriting them,” says Casey.

  The assassin hasn’t found anyone to kill yet. So far so good.

  I turn to Casey. “You said it took about twenty minutes to look for all the files. So we have twenty—”

  “No,” she says. “I said it took twenty minutes to overwrite them all, one by one. But it finds them much quicker. It—”

  “Here.” Devin works the keyboard, popping up an image of the Suliman virus.

  Completing scan…

  62%

  She’s right. It’s moving much faster.

  70 percent…80 percent…

  I close my eyes, open them, look at the smartboard:

  Scan completed

  Number of files located: 0

  “Okay,” says Devin. “So it didn’t overwrite anything. Not a single file affected.”

  “Now let’s see if the assassin will leave the room, mission accomplished,” I say.

  Augie, who has remained quiet in the corner, tapping his foot, hand cupping chin, chimes in. “We should delete the virus now—again—now that it has performed its function. It might not resist.”

  “Or it might reactivate it,” says Devin. “Wake it back up,” he says to me.

  “If that happens,” says Augie, “then we will run the model again but not delete it.”

  I’m suddenly realizing why every move they make has consequences, why every tactic they’ve employed is subject to multiple iterations—why it was necessary to have so many test computers, so many trials.

  Devin says, “We should do it my way first. There’s a better chance of the virus coexisting with the—”

  An argument erupts in the room, in multiple languages. Everyone has an opinion. I raise my hand and shout above the din. “Hey! Hey! Do it Augie’s way,” I say. “Delete the virus again, see what happens.” I nod at Devin. “Do it.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  On the smartscreen, I watch Devin move the cursor over the only active file in the entire computer, the Suliman.exe virus. Then he hits Delete.

  The icon dis
appears.

  A collective exhalation of air escapes from the room as the world’s foremost cyberops experts gasp in wonder at the empty screen.

  “Holy shit!” Casey blurts out. “You know how many times we’ve tried to erase that stupid thing?”

  “About five hundred?”

  “That is literally the first time that’s happened.”

  “The wicked witch is dead?” Devin says. He furiously works the computer, the computer screen changing so fast I can’t look at it. “The wicked witch is dead!”

  I temper my enthusiasm, suppress a wave of relief. We’re not there yet.

  “Recover all the other files,” says Casey. “Let’s see if the assassin really has left the room.”

  “Okay, recovering all marked-as-deleted files,” says Devin, his finger strokes like little animal chirps as he feverishly works to recover the files. “Except the virus, of course.”

  I turn away, unable to look. The room is silent.

  I glance at my phone to check the time. Twenty-eight minutes have passed since I made the offer of a pardon. Nobody has called. I don’t understand it. I didn’t expect anyone to confess on the spot, of course. No doubt it would be a big moment, admitting to something like this, a monumental thing, the biggest moment in a person’s life. They’d need a few minutes to consider it.

  But consider it they would: the tremendous chance of being caught committing treason against America and the horrific consequences it would bring—prison, disgrace, ruin for the family. And here I’m offering a free pass, as free a pass as I could possibly offer—not just avoiding prison or the death penalty but avoiding infamy, too. I promised to keep this classified. Nobody would ever know what the traitor did. If they got paid off, which presumably they did, they could keep the money, too.

  No prison, no disgrace, no forfeiture—why would anyone turn down that offer? Does no one believe me?

  “Mr. President,” says Devin.

  I turn to him. He nods to the screen. A bunch of files are pulled up, their properties listed in those descending rows.

  “No zeros,” I say.

  “No zeros,” says Devin. “The files are recovered and active, and the virus isn’t touching them!”

  “Yes!” Casey punches a fist in the air. “We tricked the freakin’ virus!” Everyone is hugging, high-fiving, releasing hours of frustration.

  “See? I knew this was a good idea,” Devin jokes.

  And my phone buzzes in my hand.

  “Get ready to do this for real!” I shout at Devin, at Casey, at all of them. “Get set up on the Pentagon server.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “How long, guys? Minutes?”

  “A few minutes,” says Casey. “Maybe twenty, thirty? It will take us some time—”

  “Hurry. If I’m not standing here when you’re ready, find me.”

  Then I leave the room to answer my phone.

  It’s been twenty-nine minutes since I offered the pardon. Whoever it is used nearly every second of the thirty minutes.

  I remove my phone from my pocket and look at the face, the caller ID.

  FBI Liz, it reads.

  Chapter

  93

  In the hallway outside the war room, I answer a call from someone I had already ruled out of suspicion—

  “Mr. President?”

  “Director Greenfield,” I say.

  “We just unlocked Nina’s second phone,” she says. “The one we found in the back of the van.”

  “That’s great, right?”

  “Let’s hope. We’re downloading everything right now. We’ll have it for you soon.”

  Why would Nina have two phones? I have no idea.

  “There has to be something good on that phone, Liz.”

  “It’s certainly possible, sir.”

  “There has to be,” I say, looking at my watch. Thirty-one minutes have now passed. My offer of a pardon has expired, without a word from anyone.

  Chapter

  94

  High up in the white pine tree, Bach listens and waits, the scope of the rifle trained on the rear of the house through the branches.

  Where is it? she wonders. Where is the helicopter?

  She missed her chance. That was him, she is certain now—the scrawny, scraggly-haired man who passed into the cabin after the president. Had she even a few more seconds to confirm, that man would be dead now and she would be on a plane.

  But Ranko’s words during that summer, those three months that he taught her: a missed shot is far worse than no shot.

  Caution was the better play. He might have come back out sometime over the last several hours, giving her another chance. The fact that he did not, that he has not reemerged from the cabin, does not render her decision at the time unreasonable or even wrong.

  Playing gently through her earbuds is the Gavotte in D Major, performed by Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog some twelve years ago, a tutorial for Suzuki students. It is by no means her favorite of Johann Sebastian’s work: truth be told, she never particularly cared for the piece and would rather hear it played with a full ensemble than as a violin solo.

  But she cannot let go of the piece. She remembers playing it on her mother’s violin, at first so choppy and awkward, ripening with time, maturing from a series of notes to something graceful and moving. Her mother hovering over her, gently instructing her, correcting every stroke. Bow distribution!…Now big!…First one’s strong—strong, little, little…do it again…balance your bow, draga…slow down your fingers, but not the bow—not the bow! Here, draga, let me show you.

  Her mother taking the violin herself, playing the gavotte from memory, her confidence and passion, losing herself in the music, shutting out the bombs and artillery fire outside, the house safe within the gentle spell of the music.

  Her brother, so much more talented on the violin, not only because he is two years older, with two more years’ instruction, but also because it came so effortlessly to him, as if it were an extension of him and not a separate musical instrument, as if producing beautiful music was as natural as speaking or breathing.

  For him, a violin. For her, a rifle.

  Yes, a rifle. One last time.

  She checks her watch. It’s time. It’s past time.

  Why has nothing happened?

  Where is the helicopter?

  Chapter

  95

  I can’t thank you enough,” I say to Chancellor Juergen Richter.

  “Well, I am most disappointed by our failure in Berlin.”

  “It wasn’t your failure. He knew you were coming.” Then I add, using his first name, a rare thing with him, a man of such formality, “Juergen, your influence on NATO will be critical, if it comes to that.”

  “Yes.” He gives a grave nod. He knows that this is the principal reason I brought him here, to look him squarely in the eye and make sure that our NATO partners will stand with the United States should a military conflict become necessary. Article 5, the commitment of NATO itself, will be tested as never before if the traditional roles are reversed and the world’s greatest superpower is the one that needs assistance in what could easily turn into World War III.

  “Noya.” I give her a long hug, enjoying the comfort of her warm embrace.

  “I could stay, Jonny,” she whispers in my ear.

  I pull back. “No. It’s already past seven. I’ve already kept you longer than I planned. If this…happens…if the worst…I don’t want to be responsible for your safety. And you’ll want to be back home anyway.”

  She doesn’t argue. She knows I’m right. If this virus activates and does the worst of what we fear, the reverberations will be felt around the world. These leaders will want to be home when that happens.

  “My experts could stay,” she offers.

  I shake my head. “They’ve done all they can do. My people are doing their work on the Pentagon server now, and we have to keep that work internal, as you can imagine.”

  “Of course.�
��

  I shrug. “Besides, this is it, Noya. This is our last chance to stop the virus.”

  She takes my hand in hers, wrapping her delicate, wrinkled hands around mine. “Israel has no greater friend,” she says. “And I have no greater friend.”

  The best decision I made was bringing Noya here today. Without my aides here with me, I felt her presence and guidance to be a comfort beyond description. But in the end, no number of aides or advice can change the fact that this all comes down to me. This is happening on my watch. This is my responsibility.

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” I say, shaking the hand of Ivan Volkov.

  “Mr. President, I trust that our experts have been of assistance.”

  “They have, yes. Please convey my gratitude to President Chernokev.”

  As far as my people can tell, the Russian techs were on the up-and-up. At a minimum, Casey and Devin saw no signs that they were trying to sabotage the process. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have withheld something. There’s no way to know.

  “My experts tell me that your plan to stop this virus could be successful,” says Volkov. “We are most hopeful this is so.”

  I wait for the trace of a smirk, a sense of irony, from the stone-faced, cold-blooded man.

  “Everyone should be hopeful,” I say. “Because if we’re hurt, everyone’s hurt. But the people responsible for this should be the most worried, Mr. Prime Minister. Because the United States will retaliate against anyone responsible. And I’m assured by our NATO allies that they will stand with us.”

  He nods, the furrowed brow, the look of deep concern. “In the coming days,” he says, “leaders will have to make decisions deliberately and cautiously.”

  “In the coming days,” I say, “we will find out who are America’s friends and who are America’s enemies. Nobody will want to be an enemy.”

  With that, Volkov takes his leave.

  The three leaders, their aides, and their computer experts walk down the back stairs.