The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  0:10

  0:09

  Augie’s fingers lift off the keypad. He raises his hands as he watches the monitor.

  0:04

  0:03

  “The keyword has been accepted,” he says. “The virus is disabled.”

  Chapter

  112

  Casey, now in the rear chamber with me, holding the laptop in her hands, says, “We’ve confirmed that the ‘stop’ command was transmitted throughout the system. The virus is stopped. Everywhere.”

  “What about the computers and other devices that are offline right now, without Internet access?” I ask. “They didn’t get the ‘stop’ message.”

  “Then they didn’t get the ‘execute’ message, either,” says Devin. “And now they never will. It’s on a permanent ‘stop’ message.”

  “But all the same,” says Casey, “I’m not letting this laptop out of my sight. I’m going to watch that screen like a hawk.”

  I take one of the deepest breaths I’ve ever taken, sweet, delicious oxygen. “So not a single device will be hurt by this virus?”

  “Correct, sir.”

  And just to be sure, just on the off chance that the Suliman virus comes back to life, Homeland Security is blasting out the keyword “Sukhumi” through a rapid-response system created by various executive orders signed either by me or my predecessor as part of an enhanced system to combat industrial cyberterrorism. Basically, we can blast out information to a designated recipient, a point person at each company, at any hour of the day or night. Every Internet service provider, every state and local government, every member of every industrial sector—banks, hospitals, insurance companies, manufacturers, as many small businesses as we have persuaded to sign up: within the next few seconds, all of them will receive this keyword.

  The keyword will also be blasted out over our Emergency Alert System, hitting every television, coming to every computer and smartphone.

  I nod, straighten up, feel unexpected emotion rise within me. I look out the window of Marine One into a sky of rainbow sherbet as the sun sets on Saturday.

  We didn’t lose our country.

  The financial markets, people’s savings and 401(k)s, insurance records, hospitals, public utilities will be spared. The lights will stay on. Mutual-fund balances and savings accounts will still reflect people’s life savings. Welfare and pension payments will not be interrupted. Escalators and elevators will work. Planes won’t be grounded. Food won’t spoil. Water will remain potable. No major economic depression. No chaos. No looting and rioting.

  We’ve avoided Dark Ages.

  I walk into the main cabin, where I find Alex.

  “Mr. President,” he says, “we’re approaching the White House.”

  My phone buzzes. Liz. “Mr. President, they found it in the vice president’s office.”

  “The phone,” I say.

  “Yes, sir, the companion phone to Nina’s.”

  “Thank you, Liz. Meet me at the White House. And Liz?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring your handcuffs,” I say.

  Chapter

  113

  Suliman Cindoruk sits in the small safe house they put him in, at the base of Mount Medvednica, staring at his phone, as if staring at it will make it change.

  Virus disabled

  First the “virus suspended” message he got, only moments after congratulating himself on decimating the United States while riding in the Jeep. And less than half an hour later, this. He continues to stare at it, as if doing so will prompt it to change once more.

  How? The virus was bulletproof. They were sure of it. Augie—Augie was just a hacker in the end. He couldn’t have figured this out.

  Nina, he decides. Nina must have done something to sabotage it—

  A brisk knock on the door, and it opens. One of the soldiers walks in, holding a basket of food—a baguette, cheese, a large bottle of water.

  “How long am I here?” Suli asks.

  The man looks at him. “I am told four more hours.”

  Four more hours. That would equate roughly with midnight, Eastern Standard Time—the moment the virus was timed to go off if the Americans hadn’t prompted an early activation.

  They’re waiting for the virus to succeed before they transport him to his destination. He glances at his phone again.

  Virus disabled

  “There is…problem?” the soldier asks.

  “No, no,” he says. “No problem.”

  Chapter

  114

  I take the stairs down from Marine One, saluting the Marine. Holding my salute longer than usual. God bless the Marines.

  Carolyn is standing there, awaiting me. “Congratulations, Mr. President,” she says.

  “You, too, Carrie. We have a lot to discuss, but I need a minute.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I break into a jog, something close to a full sprint, until I reach my destination.

  “Dad, oh, my God…”

  Lilly springs off her bed, the book in her lap spilling to the floor of her room. She is in my arms before she can finish the sentence.

  “You’re okay,” she whispers into my shoulder as I stroke her hair. “I was so worried, Dad. I was so sure that something bad was going to happen. I thought I was going to lose you, too…”

  Her body trembles as I hold her, as I tell her, “I’m here, I’m fine,” over and over again, smelling her unique smell, feeling her warmth. I am here, and I’m finer than I’ve been in a very long time. So grateful, so full of love.

  Everything else washes away. There is so much more to do, but right this moment, everything else is nothing, blurring into a fog, and all that matters is my beautiful, talented, sweet girl.

  “I still miss her,” she whispers. “I miss her more than ever.”

  I do, too. So much it feels like I’ll burst. I want her here right now, to celebrate, to hold me close, to crack a joke and knock me down a few pegs before I get too big a head.

  “She’s always with us,” I say. “She was with me today.”

  I draw back, hold her away from me, wipe a tear from her face. The face looking back at me looks more like Rachel than ever.

  “I have to go be president now,” I say.

  Chapter

  115

  I sit, relieved and exhausted, on the couch in the Oval Office. I still can’t believe it’s over.

  Of course, it’s not really over. In some ways, the hardest part is yet to come.

  Sitting next to me is Danny, who brought me a glass of bourbon—the drink he owes me after he failed the coin check. He’s not saying much, knowing that I need to decelerate from everything. He’s just here to be here.

  The vice president is still in the operations center, still inside that room under guard. She doesn’t know why. Nobody’s told her why. She’s probably sweating right now.

  That’s okay. Let her sweat.

  Sam Haber has been updating me constantly. The adage “no news is good news” has never felt truer. The virus is disabled. No surprises, no dramatic, sudden restarting of the virus. But we have people watching for it, hovering over computers like protective parents.

  The cable news networks are talking about nothing but the Suliman virus. They’re all running a banner at the top of the screen saying KEYWORD: SUKHUMI.

  “I have some unfinished business,” I say to Danny. “I need to kick you out.”

  “Sure.” He pushes himself off the couch. “By the way, I plan to take full credit for all of this. That pep talk I gave you was the difference.”

  “No question.”

  “That’s how I’m going to remember it, anyway.”

  “You do that, Daniel. You do that.”

  I let my smile linger as Danny takes his exit. Then I push the button on my phone and tell my secretary, JoAnn, that I’ll see Carolyn.

  Carolyn pops in. She looks frazzled, but then again, we all do. Nobody slept last night, and the stress of the last twent
y-four hours…all things considered, Carolyn looks better than most of us.

  “Director Greenfield’s out there,” she says.

  “I know. I asked her to wait. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “All right, sir.”

  She walks in and takes a seat in one of the chairs opposite the couch.

  “You did it, Carrie,” I say. “You’re the one who solved it.”

  “You did this, Mr. President, not me.”

  Well, that’s the way this works. The buck stops with the president both ways, for better or worse. If my team scores a victory, it’s the president who gets the credit. But we both know who figured out the keyword.

  I blow out air, my nerves still jangled.

  “I screwed up, Carrie,” I say. “Picking Kathy Brandt for a running mate.”

  She doesn’t rush to disagree. “The politics made sense, sir.”

  “That’s why I did it. For political reasons. I shouldn’t have.”

  Again, she doesn’t fight me.

  “I should have picked a running mate based on merit. And I think we both know who I would have picked if it were based on merit. The smartest person I’ve ever met. The most disciplined. The most talented.”

  Her face blushes. Always deflecting the credit, the attention.

  “Instead I gave you the toughest job in Washington. The most thankless.”

  She waves me off, uncomfortable with the praise, her blush deepening. “It’s an honor to serve you, Mr. President, in whatever capacity you decide.”

  I take one last sip, a healthy gulp, of the bourbon remaining in my glass and set down the tumbler.

  “May I ask, sir—what are you going to do with the vice president?”

  “What do you think I should do with her?”

  She kicks that around, her head bobbing from side to side.

  “For the good of the country,” she says, “I wouldn’t prosecute her. I’d find a quiet way out. I’d demand her resignation, let her make some excuse, and I wouldn’t tell anybody what she did. I’d close the whole thing quietly. Right now, the American people are hearing that a talented national security team, at your direction, saved us from a massive disaster. No one’s talking about a traitor or betrayal. It’s a positive story, a cautionary tale, but with a happy ending. We should keep it that way.”

  I’ve considered that. “The thing is,” I say, “before I do that, I want to know why.”

  “Why she did it, sir?”

  “She wasn’t bribed. She wasn’t being extorted. She didn’t want to destroy our country. It wasn’t even her idea. It was Nina’s and Augie’s idea.”

  “How do we know that for certain?” she asks.

  “Oh, right,” I say. “You don’t know about the phone.”

  “The phone, sir?”

  “Yeah, in the chaos of it all at the end, the FBI unlocked the second phone they found in Nina’s van. They unearthed a bunch of text messages. Texts exchanged between Nina and our Benedict Arnold.”

  “Oh, God,” she says. “No, I didn’t know.”

  I wave my hand. “Nina and Augie got caught up in something bigger than they ever intended it to be. When they realized the massive devastation they were about to unleash, they split away from Suliman. They sent us the peekaboo to wake us up to the problem and then came here to make a deal: if we get amnesty from the Georgian republic for Nina, she disarms the virus.

  “Our traitor—our Benedict Arnold? She was just the intermediary. She’s just the one they contacted. This wasn’t some plot she cooked up. She was trying to persuade Nina to surrender to an American embassy. She was asking Nina how to disable the virus.”

  “But she didn’t tell the rest of us,” says Carolyn.

  “Right. I think, from what I’ve read, she felt like the longer she communicated with Nina and didn’t tell anyone else, the deeper a hole she dug. So she wanted to be left out of the direct line of communication. She gave Nina the code word ‘Dark Ages’ so Nina could get in touch with me directly—through Lilly—and I’d take her seriously.”

  “That…makes some amount of sense, I suppose,” Carolyn offers.

  “But that’s the thing—it doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Because the moment Nina communicates ‘Dark Ages’ to me, I know that I have a Judas in my inner circle. She has to know I’ll move heaven and earth to find the traitor. She was one of eight suspects.”

  Carolyn nods, thinking it over.

  “Why would she do that, Carrie? Why would she invite that kind of suspicion? Kathy Brandt is a lot of things, but she ain’t dumb.”

  Carolyn opens her hands. “Sometimes…smart people do dumb things?”

  Truer words were never spoken.

  “Let me show you something,” I say.

  I reach for a folder bearing the insignia FBI. I had Liz Greenfield print out two copies of the transcript of the text messages. I hand Carolyn the transcript of the first three days—last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the first days that I read.

  “Read those,” I say, “and tell me how ‘dumb’ our traitor is.”

  Chapter

  116

  You’re right.” Carolyn’s chin rises, having read all three days’ worth of transcripts. “This wasn’t something she cooked up on her own. But…this can’t be all the transcripts. This ends on Sunday, with her promising to give Nina the code word.”

  “Right, there’s more.” I hand her the next sheet. “Here’s Monday, May 7. Just six days ago. The day Nina whispered ‘Dark Ages’ into Lilly’s ear.”

  Carolyn takes the transcript and starts to read it. I read along with my copy.

  Monday, May 7

  U/C: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

  Nina: Location unknown

  ** All times Eastern Standard Time **

  Nina (7:43 AM): I made it to Paris. I came here even though you still haven’t given me the code word!! R U going to or not? I think someone was following me last night. Suli’s trying to kill me u know

  U/C (7:58 AM): I’ve thought about this a lot overnight, and I think if we’re going to trust each other, we have to really trust each other. And that means you have to tell me how to stop the virus.

  Nina (7:59 AM): Been there, done that. Uh…NO!!! how many times do I have to say it?? Can u spell leverage?!?

  U/C (8:06 AM): You said yourself you’re in danger. What if you don’t make it here? What if something happens to you? Then we can’t stop this virus.

  Nina (8:11 AM): The minute I tell you how to stop the virus, I’m nothing to you. It’s my only leverage.

  U/C (8:15 AM): Don’t you understand this by now? I can’t reveal that we’ve talked. How could I explain that I know how to stop the virus without revealing that I’ve been talking with you the last few days? The moment I reveal that, I’m toast. I have to resign. Prison, probably.

  Nina (8:17 AM): If that’s true then why do u need to know? If u will never use it??

  U/C (8:22 AM): Because if something happens to you and there’s no other way to stop the virus, then I’ll do it. To save our country. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. But that’s a last, last, last-case scenario. I’d much rather that you just come in and meet with POTUS and handle it yourself and leave me out of it.

  Nina (8:25 AM): No way not gonna do it

  U/C (8:28 AM): Then good bye and good luck. Trust me or forget it.

  A long pause follows, a good three hours. Then:

  Nina (11:43 AM): I’m here at Sorbonne. I see POTUS’s daughter. Tell me the code word or I walk away 4ever

  U/C (11:49 AM): Tell me how to stop the virus and I’ll give you the code word. Otherwise, don’t contact me again.

  Nina (12:09 PM): There will be chance to type in keyword before detonation. Window of 30 minutes. Type in that word and virus goes bye bye. If you screw me on this lady I will tell everyone who you are I swear to god

  U/C (12:13 PM): I’m not going to screw you over. I want you to succeed! We want the same thing.

  U/
C (12:16 PM): Look, I know you’re taking a big risk. So am I. I know how scared you are. I’m terrified! We’re in this together, kiddo.

  Carrot and stick. She manipulated Nina. She realized that Nina was feeling serious pressure and needed her more than she needed Nina. Nina was a highly skilled cyberterrorist, an elite code writer, but she was no match for someone accustomed to high-level negotiations on the world stage. It came nearly ten minutes later:

  Nina (12:25 PM): The keyword is Sukhumi.

  U/C (12:26 PM): The code word is Dark Ages.

  Carolyn looks up from the page.

  “She knew,” she says. “She’s known the keyword since Monday.”

  I don’t say anything. I wish I had more bourbon, but Dr. Lane would probably scold me for having even one glass.

  “But—hang on. When did you read this, Mr. President?”

  “That page—the Monday page? I didn’t read that until I got on Marine One, after the Marines got my phone back.”

  She looks away, putting it together. “So…that last conference we did, when you were on Marine One, when we got everyone together to brainstorm over the keyword, as the clock was ticking down…”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I already knew the keyword. Devin had already typed it in. The crisis was already over. Devin and Casey were half passed out from exhaustion and relief while I was in the rear compartment with Augie, talking to all of you.”

  Carolyn stares at me.

  “You’d already disabled the virus?”

  “Yes, Carrie.”

  “So that whole thing with the ticking clock, and everyone throwing out suggestions for the keyword…that was a ruse?”

  “Something like that.” I push myself off the couch, my legs unsteady, the heat rising to my face. For the last several hours, I’ve been on a roller coaster of worry, relief, and gratitude.

  But right now, I’m just pissed off.

  I walk over to the Resolute desk, looking at the photos of Rachel, of Lilly, of my parents, of the Duncan family and the Brock family at Camp David, Carolyn’s kids wearing goofy sailor hats.