The President Is Missing: A Novel Read online

  I pour myself two more fingers of bourbon and throw the liquor down like a shot.

  “Are you okay, sir?”

  I set down the tumbler harder than I intended. “I’m pretty far from okay, Carrie. I couldn’t see ‘okay’ with a telescope right now. See, here’s the thing.”

  My jaw clenched, I come around the desk and lean against it.

  “You’re right that smart people do dumb things,” I say. “But Kathy would have to be certifiably insane to leak ‘Dark Ages’ to Nina and blow suspicion back in her direction. Her odds of being caught were way too high. She could have figured out another way to get Nina access to me. Something. Something better than that.”

  Carolyn’s eyebrows rise. She thinks it over but doesn’t seem to come to a resolution. “So…what is your point, sir?”

  “My point,” I say, “is that whoever leaked ‘Dark Ages’ to Nina wanted suspicion to blow back on my inner circle.”

  Carolyn’s face twists in confusion. “But who…would want suspicion thrown on them?” she asks. “And why?”

  Chapter

  117

  Oh, the why part isn’t that hard to grasp, is it? Or maybe it is.” I gesture with my hands, pacing around the Oval Office now. “I sure missed it. Who knows? Maybe I’m the dumbest son of a bitch to ever hold this office.”

  Or maybe the one thing I believe is in shortest supply in our capital—trust—is something that I have in too great a supply. Trust can blind. It blinded me.

  I pass the table by the couch, where Nina stood yesterday, looking at that picture of Lilly and me on the White House lawn, walking from Marine One.

  Carolyn, her brow furrowed, says, “I’m…not following, sir. I can’t imagine why anyone would want you to know there was a traitor.”

  Next to that picture, a photo of Carolyn and me on the night I was elected president, mugging for the camera, arms around each other. I pick up that photo and remember how giddy we felt, how overwhelmed, how blessed.

  Then I smash the picture down on the table, shattering the glass, splintering the frame.

  Carolyn nearly jumps out of her chair.

  “Then follow this,” I say as I stare into the splintered image of my chief of staff and me. “The leak blows suspicion back on the national security team. One person in the inner circle, someone with a particularly high rank—let’s say, vice president of the United States—gets blamed for it. She’s an easy target. She’s been disloyal. She’s been a pain in my ass, frankly. So of course she’s out. Gone. Resigned in disgrace. Maybe prosecuted, maybe not—but gone, that’s the point. Someone needs to take her place, though, right? Right? ” I snap.

  “Yes, sir,” Carolyn whispers.

  “Right! So who’s going to replace her? Well, how about the hero in the story? The person who came up with the keyword as the clock wound down? Someone who surely thinks she should have been vice president all along?”

  Carolyn Brock rises from her chair, staring at me, a deer in the headlights, her mouth open. No words, though. There are no words for this.

  “That last conference with the national security team as the clock wound down,” I say. “The ruse, you called it? It was a test. I wanted to see who would come up with the keyword. I knew one of you would.”

  I bring a hand to my face, pinch the bridge of my nose. “I prayed to God. I swear to you, on my wife’s grave, I prayed to God. Anybody but Carrie, I prayed.”

  Alex Trimble walks into the room with his deputy, Jacobson, standing at attention by the wall. The FBI director, Elizabeth Greenfield, enters the room next.

  “You were smart to the very end, Carrie,” I say. “You pushed us right to Nina’s hometown, all but delivering it to us without saying it yourself.”

  Carolyn’s wounded expression breaks. She blinks hard, looks off in memory. “You misspelled it on purpose,” she whispers.

  “And there you were to correct us,” I say. “Sukhumi with two u’s.”

  Carolyn’s eyes close.

  I nod at Liz Greenfield.

  “Carolyn Brock,” she says, “you’re under arrest for suspicion of violating the Espionage Act and conspiracy to commit treason. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”

  Chapter

  118

  Wait a second! Just wait!”

  Director Greenfield’s formality, her mention of arrest and reading of the Miranda rights, snaps a defense mechanism in Carolyn, who holds out her hands in a “stop” gesture.

  She turns to me. “Nina wanted to go home. It was logical. So I know how to spell the capital of an eastern European city and suddenly I’m a traitor? You can’t be…really, Mr. President, after everything we’ve been through—”

  “Don’t you dare,” I bark. “Nothing we’ve ‘been through’ gives you the right to do what you did.”

  “Please, Mr. President. Can we…can we just—the two of us talk? Two minutes. Can I at least have two minutes? Don’t I deserve at least that much?”

  Liz Greenfield starts to move toward Carolyn, but I raise a hand.

  “Give us two minutes. Count it out, Liz. One hundred and twenty seconds. That’s all she gets.”

  Liz looks at me. “Mr. President, that isn’t a good—”

  “One hundred and twenty seconds.” I point to the door. “Leave us. All of you.”

  I watch Carolyn as the Secret Service and FBI director walk out of the Oval Office. I can only imagine what’s racing through her mind. Her kids; her husband, Morty. A criminal prosecution. Disgrace. A way out of this somehow.

  “Go,” I say once we’re alone.

  Carolyn takes a deep breath, holding out her hands, as if framing a solution. “Think about what’s happened today. You saved our country. You’ve totally eliminated impeachment as a threat. Lester Rhodes will be sucking his thumb in a corner. Your poll numbers are going to soar through the roof now. You’ll have a mandate like you’ve never had. Think of what you can do over the next year and a half—the next five and a half years. Think of your place in history.”

  I nod. “But…”

  “But imagine what happens if you do this, sir. If you accuse me of this. If you publicly ruin me. You think I’ll just take my medicine like a compliant little girl?” She puts a hand on her chest, cocks her head, makes a face. “You think I won’t fight back? The search of the vice president’s office—how’d that turn out? Find anything good?”

  Well, the sorrowful, deer-in-the-headlights look is long gone. The gloves have come off. She’s thought all this through. Of course she has. She’s considered every angle. Carolyn Brock is nothing if not formidable.

  “You had twenty opportunities to plant that phone in her office,” I say. “Kathy wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave that phone behind a bookcase, for Christ’s sake. She would’ve broken it into a hundred pieces.”

  “Says you,” she responds. “My lawyers say something different. You put me on trial for treason, I put her on trial for treason. Look at what you have the chance to do right now, Mr. President.”

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  “Ohhh, yes, you do,” she responds, coming around the desk. “Because you want to do good things in this job. You don’t want what could be your greatest triumph to turn into a scandal. ‘Treason in the White House.’ Who was the traitor—the president’s closest adviser or the sitting vice president? Who cares? You picked both of us. Your judgment will be called into question. This tremendous, unprecedented success will turn into the worst thing that ever happened to you. Your feelings are hurt, Jon? Well, get the hell over it.”

  She walks up to me, her hands together as if in prayer. “Think of the country. Think of the people out there who need you to be a good president—hell, a great president.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “You do this to me,” she says, “your presidency is over.”

  Liz Greenfield enters the room again and looks at me.

  I l
ook at Carolyn.

  “Give us another two minutes, Liz,” I say.

  Chapter

  119

  My turn.

  “You’re going to plead guilty,” I tell Carolyn when we’re alone again. “My judgment will be criticized, as it should be, for hiring you. I’ll deal with that. That’s a political problem. I will not sweep this under the rug and have you step away quietly. And you will plead guilty.”

  “Mr. Pres—”

  “Secret Service agents died, Carrie. Nina is dead. I could have easily been killed. That’s not something we sweep under the rug in this country.”

  “Sir—”

  “You want to go to trial? Then you can explain how Nina could possibly have gotten that first note into Kathy Brandt’s hands when Nina was in Europe and Kathy was here in Washington. What, she sent it by e-mail? Dropped it in a FedEx package? None of that would get past our security. But you, a chief of staff, on the last leg of our European trip, in Seville? Nina could have walked into that hotel and handed it to you. You don’t think we have the CCTV footage? The Spanish government sent it over. That last day in Spain, a few hours before we left. Nina entering the hotel and leaving an hour later.”

  The flare in her eyes seems to dim.

  “And how long before we manage to intercept and decrypt the message you sent to Suliman Cindoruk?”

  She looks up at me with horror.

  “The FBI and Mossad are looking for it right now. You tipped him off, didn’t you? None of your plan would have worked if Nina had survived. If she lived, if Augie and I got in her van at the baseball stadium, she and I would have worked out a deal. I would’ve persuaded the Georgians to take her back, she would have given me the keyword, you wouldn’t have gotten to be the hero, and Kathy wouldn’t have gotten to be the goat. And who knows? Maybe Nina would’ve given you up after all.”

  Carolyn brings a hand to her face, her worst nightmare realized.

  “You’d know better than anyone how to get hold of Suliman. You’re the one who orchestrated that first call through our intermediaries in Turkey. You could’ve done it again. She told you everything, Carrie. I read the rest of the text messages. She laid out her whole timeline. Augie, the baseball stadium, the midnight detonation of the virus. She trusted you. She trusted you, Carrie, and you killed her.”

  That seems to be the poke in the wall that breaks the dam. Carolyn loses all composure, bursting into sobs, her entire body quaking.

  And I find myself, in the end, more sad than angry. She and I had been through so much together. She charted my path to the presidency, helped me navigate the land mines of Washington, sacrificed countless hours of sleep and time with her family to ensure that the Oval Office ran with maximum efficiency. She is the best chief of staff I could have ever dreamed of having.

  After a time, the tears stop. She shudders and wipes at her face. But her head still hangs low, shrouded by her hand. She can’t look me in the eye.

  “Stop acting like some garden-variety criminal suspect,” I say. “And do the right thing. This isn’t a courtroom. This is the Oval Office. How could you do this, Carrie?”

  “Says the man who gets to be president.”

  The words come from a voice I don’t recognize, a voice I’ve never heard, a part of Carolyn that has managed to elude me during our years together. Her head rises from her hands, and she looks at me squarely, her face twisted up in agony and bitterness in a way I’ve never seen before. “Says the man who didn’t see his political career tanked just for saying a dirty word on a live mike.”

  I never saw this. I missed the envy, the resentment, the bitterness building up inside her. It’s one of the hazards of this thing, running for president and then being president. It’s all about you. Every minute of every hour of every day, it’s what’s best for the candidate, what does the candidate need, how can we help the candidate, the only person whose name is on the ballot. Then, when you actually become president, it’s the same thing every day on steroids. Sure, we socialized. I got to know her family. But I missed this completely. She was good at her job. I actually thought she was proud of the good things we did, found the challenges exciting, enjoyed the work, and was fulfilled by it.

  “I don’t suppose…” She hiccups a bitter laugh. “I don’t suppose that offer of a pardon stands.” She seems embarrassed to even suggest it.

  How quickly she has plummeted. Walking into this room, expecting to be tapped as the new vice president, the hero of the hour, and now just praying that she can avoid prison.

  Liz Greenfield returns. This time, I wave her in.

  Carolyn offers no resistance as the FBI takes her into custody.

  Carolyn looks back in my direction as she is led out of the Oval Office, but she can’t quite bring herself to make eye contact with me.

  Chapter

  120

  No. No.”

  Suliman Cindoruk stares at his phone, reading the “breaking news” across website after website, variations of a single headline.

  “IT WOULD HAVE DESTROYED AMERICA”

  UNITED STATES THWARTS LETHAL CYBERATTACK

  UNITED STATES STOPS MAJOR CYBER VIRUS

  “SONS OF JIHAD” VIRUS TARGETING UNITED STATES FOILED

  Every one of the articles blasting news of a keyword—“Sukhumi”—that will stop the virus from activating.

  Sukhumi. No doubt now. It was Nina. She installed a password override.

  His head whips around to the window in the safe house. He sees the two soldiers, still sitting in their Jeep outside, awaiting their next instructions.

  But the people who brought him here won’t be waiting until midnight Eastern Standard Time to confirm the success or failure of the virus. Not if they’re reading the news.

  He removes his handgun, stuffed into his sock, still loaded with the single bullet.

  Then he finds a door leading to the backyard and the mountain. He tries the handle, but it’s bolted shut. He pulls on the single window, but it’s bolted closed, too. He looks around the sparsely furnished room and finds a small glass table. He hurls it against the window. He uses his gun to knock out the remaining jagged shards of glass.

  He hears the front door burst open. He jumps headfirst through the window, clutching his gun as a lifeline. He runs toward some trees, some foliage, that will provide cover in the predawn darkness.

  They call out after him, but he doesn’t stop. His foot hits something—a tree root—and he tumbles forward, losing his breath as he smacks the ground, stars dancing in his eyelids, the gun bouncing out of his hand.

  He yelps in pain as a bullet pierces the bottom of his shoe. He crawls forward to his right, and another bullet sprays leaves by his armpit. He pats his hand around but can’t find his gun.

  Their voices growing closer, shouting to him in a language he doesn’t know, warning him.

  He can’t find the gun with the single bullet that will end this. He knows now that he does have the courage to do it. He won’t be taken by them.

  But he can’t reach, or can’t locate, the weapon.

  He takes a breath and decides.

  He lifts himself up, spins around to face them, his empty hands together, aimed at the two men.

  They unload their rifles into his chest.

  Chapter

  121

  In the subbasement, I open the door and stand at the threshold of the room where the vice president has been waiting. When she sees me, she gets to her feet.

  “Mr. President,” she says with uncertainty more than anything else. Her eyes are ringed. She looks tired and stressed. She picks up a remote and mutes the flat-screen television on the wall. “I’ve been watching…”

  Yes, the cable news. She’s been watching it not as the second-ranked official in the country but as an ordinary citizen. She seems diminished by that fact.

  “Congratulations,” she says to me.

  I don’t answer, just nod my head.

  “It wasn’t me, sir,�
� she says.

  I look over at the TV again, the constant updates on the Suliman virus and the keyword we discovered.

  “I know,” I say.

  She deflates with relief.

  “Is your offer of resignation still good?” I ask.

  She bows her head. “If you’d like my resignation, Mr. President, you’ll have it whenever you wish.”

  “Is that what you want? To resign?”

  “No, sir, it isn’t.” She looks up at me. “But if you don’t trust me…”

  “What would you do if the roles were reversed?” I ask.

  “I’d accept the resignation.”

  Not what I expected. I fold my arms, lean against the threshold.

  “I said no, Mr. President. I think you would already know that if you bugged my limousine.”

  We didn’t. The FBI couldn’t get to it without tipping off her Secret Service detail. But she doesn’t know that.

  “I want to hear it from you anyway,” I say.

  “I told Lester I wouldn’t round up the twelve votes he needed in the Senate from our side. I said whatever else, that was simply a line I couldn’t cross. I…I learned something about myself, honestly.”

  “That’s super, Kathy. But this isn’t a Dr. Phil episode. You were disloyal just taking that meeting.”

  “Agreed, agreed.” She puts her hands together, then looks at me. “They didn’t ask me about Lester when I was polygraphed.”

  “Because politics didn’t matter. Not then. Now that the crisis has passed, it matters very much to me whether I can trust my vice president.”

  There’s nothing else she can say. She opens her hands. “Do you accept my resignation?”

  “You’d stay until I could replace you?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.” Her shoulders drop.

  “Whom should I appoint?” I ask.

  She takes a deep breath. “There are a few people who come to mind. But one above everyone else. It pains me to say it, actually. It pains me quite a lot. But if I were you, Mr. President, and if I could pick anyone…I’d choose Carolyn Brock.”