The President's Daughter Read online

  Asim grasps the Russian-made pistol.

  Up in the bright blue sky of these mountains, a falcon appears, riding the morning thermals.

  The blond-haired man pauses at the cave entrance, turns and waves and shouts at the blond woman below him, and she waves back at him. The man steps into the cave, ducking his head, and when his eyes adjust to the darkness, he smiles and says, “As-salaam ’alaykum, my cousin.”

  To his cousin Faraj, Asim says, “Wa ’alaykum as-salaam.”

  The man sits cross-legged beside him.

  A few minutes of silence pass.

  Asim says, “Who is the whore with you?”

  “A student from Denmark. I met her at a club in Tripoli. She is backpacking across here and into Tunisia, looking at Roman ruins. I told her there were remote ruins hidden in these mountains, and she agreed to come on a trip with me. I used the fine words I learned at college upon her. It was easy.”

  “And she believed you?” Asim asks.

  Faraj touches his long, fair hair. “She’s a young stupid woman. She’ll believe anything.”

  Remembering his own life as a student, Asim nods in acknowledgment.

  Faraj says, “Cousin, when can I dye my hair back to brown? I feel like an ’ahmaq, a fool.”

  “When I say so,” he says. “That colored hair and that whore are keeping you alive while you walk through these mountains. No American operating a drone will think two blond-haired hikers are enemies to be tracked or killed.”

  “Yes, cousin.”

  “But you did do well, choosing that whore to go with you. Quite smart.”

  “Thank you, cousin.”

  Asim sits quietly for a while longer, and Faraj says, “Pardon me, cousin, but…is that Ali, behind us?”

  “Yes,” Asim says.

  “He’s dead.”

  Asim says, “He brought me the news of my Layla and our three girls. He couldn’t answer any of my questions. I asked about Layla and then Amina, Zara, and Fatima. He could not answer. He became…angry at my questioning.”

  His voice chokes for just a second.

  Strength, he thinks. Oh, Allah, give me strength.

  He says, “I could not stand for that. I cut his throat.”

  Faraj says, “I understand, cousin.”

  Gaining strength—my thanks, Allah—Asim says, “Tell me what you can.”

  “The Americans came in six hours ago. It seems our fighters were warned. A battle ensued. The main building containing munitions and supplies for our upcoming Tripoli action exploded. Your women…they were later laid out beside the building, with shrouds.” Faraj spits out the cave’s entrance. “Like the dogs were trying to pay respect.”

  Asim clasps his hands together. “When a day or two has passed, go back and make an inspection, bury our dead, mark the graves of my wife and girls. Someday I shall visit them, inshallah.”

  A woman’s voice carries up the thin mountain air. “The whore becomes impatient, cousin,” Faraj says. “I need to leave. Can I be of any other help?”

  “The American president—Keating. He has a daughter, does he not?”

  “He does.”

  “I will think upon that.”

  “Do you—”

  “No, not now,” Asim says. “We need to be patient.”

  Faraj stands up, reaches down, and pulls up Asim’s right hand, which he kisses. “I mourn for your women, Asim.”

  “Thank you, cousin,” he says. “They are…were a blessing and a joy to me.”

  Asim stops talking. His throat is constricted.

  Faraj heads to the cave entrance. “Shall I kill the whore now?”

  “No,” Asim says. “It’s not her time. Killing her will raise questions, concerns. But when you reach home, you may return your hair to your natural color, Faraj. You have served me well.”

  “As you wish, cousin.”

  Faraj leaves and Asim waits, not bothering to watch him return to the woman student, who should pray to her God with deep thanks for the rest of her life, because she came oh so close to being sent to her heaven today.

  He waits.

  The smell from Ali is growing stronger. At some point he will need to leave.

  But not now.

  His family, his wife, his girls. All gone. Allah has willed it, but still…

  The ache burns inside of him.

  He watches the falcon at play, moving so slowly and innocently, but hunting and hunting, being so patient to strike at the right time.

  Asim prays for such patience.

  Chapter

  15

  Inauguration Day

  The Oval Office

  I can sense the tension from Samantha this morning as a group of photographers take the very last shot of President Matthew Keating and his adorable family, about four hours from when I become former president Matthew Keating. My left arm is around her and my right arm is around our daughter, Melanie, and while Mel’s shoulder feels like it belongs to a typical teen girl waiting to squirm away from dear old Dad, my wife’s shoulder feels like it’s been carved out of granite.

  Then one of my assistants from the White House press office raises her hand and says, “Thank you, thank you very much, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us,” and she does the gallant job of moving the press pool out of the Oval Office, doing a fair imitation of herding cats.

  It’s supposed to be photos only, but for decades the White House press corps has prided itself on pushing the boundaries and stretching the rules as much as possible, and this historic day is no exception.

  “Mr. President, did you leave a note in the Resolute desk for the president-elect?”

  “Any final thoughts on the last day of your administration?”

  “How do you feel about being the only president in American history to lose reelection to his vice president?”

  Samantha’s hard shoulder tenses up even more, and I keep a fixed smile on my face as the gaggle is pushed through, past the Secret Service agent, and the slightly curved door is closed behind them, leaving just the three of us.

  Mel moves away and says, “Jeesh, I thought they’d never leave. They just couldn’t pass up one more chance to be assholes.”

  She’s wearing a green dress and a soft yellow jacket, and her blond hair—which is usually a frizzy mess—is nicely styled for this historic day. A set of eyeglasses with clear acrylic frames outlines her pale blue eyes, which, unfortunately, are doubly affected: with myopia and astigmatism.

  “Mom, Dad, all right if I give my room one last visit before we go?”

  “Looking for any lost treasures?” I ask.

  A little roll of the eyes. “Dad, please, yeah, I’m looking for my favorite Barbie doll.”

  “The one with the kung fu grip or the matched set of Colt revolvers?”

  Another, larger roll of her eyes. “Dad…okay, I’ll see you both in a bit.”

  Samantha gives a knowing smile to our teen daughter. “No tricks or funny stuff today, okay? We’ve got a tight schedule.”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “And if you can, find those eyeglasses you lost last month.”

  “Mom!” Mel protests. “You make it sound like I lost them on purpose.”

  With a smile, my wife says, “Go, then. Just don’t be late.”

  Mel leaves the Oval Office, passing by the Secret Service agent on guard, who whispers into the microphone in his shirt cuff—probably saying, “Hope is en route to the family quarters”—and I take a breath, trying to ease the tight band constricting my chest. It’s been a grim and rotten six months since Vice President Pamela Barnes defeated me at our party’s convention in Chicago and I graciously conceded and urged the party to unite behind her.

  Ever since Chicago, I’ve felt like I’ve been serving a jail sentence. After the convention ended, I was a lame duck and couldn’t accomplish much of anything while she went on the campaign trail. She never asked for my help, so I spent too much time reliving the primaries. Though I narrowly
won the total vote, she swept the caucuses and won more superdelegates and won the nomination fair and square.

  Under the shrewd guidance of her ruthless husband, she used the failed Libyan operation and my honest account of it to make me look both too weak and too warlike. It was a neat trick, playing well to the political press and to younger voters always looking for something new.

  I should have been able to figure out how to win anyway, but I couldn’t. Unfortunately, I went into a tough presidential campaign with more experience as a Navy SEAL in battles overseas than in political wars at home. And I was still angry about it, so angry I was tempted a couple of times to resign and let her have the damn office before she rode to victory in the November election.

  But I couldn’t do it. No current or former SEAL would ever give up before the job is done. And no president should, either.

  Samantha lets out a sigh. She has on a burgundy dress and her black hair is styled luxuriously. Around her neck is a simple gold chain. She’s a beautiful woman who captured me when we first met near San Diego, where I was training and she was a Stanford graduate student in anthropology researching pre-Columbian Native American settlements.

  Her tanned skin is flawless, and I’ve gently teased her over the years that she had both the looks and brains to have been a model, and she’s always said no, her nose was too large. And I’ve always sweetly disagreed.

  “You think we can trust Mel to come back in time?” she asks.

  “She never likes to be left behind,” I say. “So I’ll say yes.”

  Samantha asks, “How much longer?”

  I check my watch. “About five minutes before we have to shove off.”

  “Can you do something for me?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’m still the president for another four hours. You want me to bomb Albania?”

  “Can you make it the tenure committee at Stanford?” she asks, familiar steel showing through her smile for an old grudge that my dear wife will never, ever forget.

  “Give me the GPS coordinates and they’re yours,” I say.

  She takes my hand and together we have a seat on one of the two matching cream-colored couches, and I think of all the people I’ve hosted here in the Oval Office over the years—from the prime minister of Israel to a Girl Scout delegation including the top Girl Scout cookie sellers in the nation—and I say, “I suppose in my official role I can’t order you to change your mind.”

  She strokes my hand. “You couldn’t even do that when you were in the Navy, Matt. But good try.”

  “When?” I ask.

  “Sooner than I thought,” she says. “Boston University promised me the midyear opening in their archaeology department, and it came through this morning. Full professor. It starts within a week. And I’ve accepted.”

  Lots of thoughts come to the fore, but I choose the easy path, saying, “Congratulations. I know that means a lot to you. And you’ll do a great job.”

  “They also said that you could—”

  “Thanks, but still not interested,” I say. My smart, educated wife’s sharp mind is earning her professorship and research opportunities. I’m not about to take some real instructor’s place to lead seminars about politics or democracy or some other damn thing.

  Sam is heading to Boston, and I’m heading to a remote New Hampshire lakeside home. She is calling due a bill I had prepared in our short White House term, always saying while I was president that someday she’d make her schedule and time her own, and Sam, being the smart woman that she is, is doing just that. Setting her own place in the world.

  I slide my hand over hers and give it a squeeze. “The media is going to love the news of my taking this BU position,” Samantha says. “A First Lady who never really fits in abandons her husband and child to go off and dig in dirt when his term ends.”

  “To hell with them,” I say.

  “Oh, they had a point, Matt,” she says. “We both know I never really fit here in DC, fulfilling the traditional roles of traditional First Ladies. But the prospect of running more negative stories will make them rub their hands in glee.”

  “Tell them you’re heading to Oak Island,” I say. “That might shut them up…except for the History Channel. They’ll think your project is more important than being First Lady.”

  She squeezes my hand back. “If I’m lucky.” Samantha takes a long look around the Oval Office and says, “Forgive me, Matt, but I’ve never liked this place, this office. Seeing you at work here…it was like you were a museum docent, playing a part.”

  “According to my party delegates, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it,” I say. “Still, it was a hell of a ride, Sam, wasn’t it?”

  Samantha kisses me on the cheek. “You promised me adventure and travel after we got married, Matt, but never this.”

  “That’s your man, under-promising and over-delivering.”

  “You also promised that you would make history, and that I would discover history. My part didn’t quite work out.”

  It surely didn’t. Lots of schools offered Samantha teaching positions after she abruptly became First Lady, but she turned them all down for one good reason: they wanted her title and publicity, and didn’t want to give her the opportunity to do real academic work.

  Samantha says, “Think you’re facing a hard adjustment to being former president Keating?”

  “Won’t miss the 3 a.m. phone calls,” I say.

  She stands up. “Oh, I think at some point you’ll miss it, Matt. Not being in charge. Seeing the news coming out of here in the upcoming months and thinking, I could do a better job. But I won’t miss being First Lady Samantha Keating. No offense to all those official visits I’ve done over the years, but I’m looking forward to getting back to teaching and getting my hands dirty.”

  The curved door to the Oval Office opens. My chief of staff, Jack Lyon, pokes his head in. “Mr. President, Mrs. Keating, it’s time.”

  She starts walking ahead of me. “It certainly is.”

  We go ahead, and I know what the Secret Service agent at the door is whispering—“Harbor and Harp are moving”—and as we go out into the hallway, I take Samantha’s hand and whisper in her ear, and she laughs out loud, and I know that Jack Lyon and other members of my nearby staff are wondering what I’ve just said.

  They’ll never know.

  But Samantha does.

  There’s still time to take care of that tenure committee.

  Chapter

  16

  Manchester Airport, New Hampshire

  Ten hours later I’m now former president Matthew Keating, a one-term president known to history as the first to lose my job against an insurgent vice president. While she and her husband are enjoying themselves, dancing at one of the ten or so inaugural balls in the District of Columbia, I’m standing in the opening of a remote hangar at Manchester Airport in New Hampshire, watching January snow flurries whip across the near runway. The lights are blurred yellow from the snowflakes. Samantha is a few yards away, checking her iPhone. Several of my die-hard New Hampshire supporters have shown up with welcome signs.

  Mel is at the other end of the hangar, bundled in a blue down jacket, getting coffee from two New Hampshire state troopers and a young female Secret Service agent. She’s trying to smile and laugh it up with the three law enforcement officers, but it’s just an act. I don’t think she’s used to the fact that Dad and Mom—while not officially separating—are going to lead separate lives for the foreseeable future. My plan is to unwind after these brutal years in the Oval Office, and Sam’s is to go back to her first love: teaching and doing research. Just temporary, we say to each other and to Mel, and I hope we’re right.

  With Samantha checking her iPhone and Mel getting coffee, I’m standing by myself, with one Secret Service agent behind me and another one on station by the door. Adjusting to my new status is going to take a while, I know, but one thing has remained: my constant Secret Service protection, which for the rest of my life wi
ll be at my side, along with my code name—Harbor.

  But I’m not missing one individual: the male or female officer who had been at my side since the day I was sworn in, the one carrying the heavy thick satchel known as the football, with the codes and communications devices that gave me that horrible power to launch nuclear weapons.

  During my term, that burden gave me lots of nightmares, riding shotgun with those harsh and loud dreams of my combat missions when I was in the teams.

  That officer slipped away at about noon today to take Pamela Barnes’s side, and the new president can have him.

  Samantha looks up from her iPhone and says, “It’s all set, then.”

  “Is it, then?” I ask.

  She smiles. “I meant my condo in Boston. The lights and heat are on.”

  Samantha walks over to me, looking out at the snow. It seems to be coming down heavier. A while ago, our Air Force transport—no longer Air Force One, of course—took off ahead of the arriving snow.

  I’m at a loss for words. What to say at a moment like this?

  Ask her to change her mind?

  No.

  Not that she’s now about to regain her former life as a college professor and archaeologist, the life she had while I was in the teams and later Congress. But then came that awful day of President Martin Lovering’s passing, when his deputy chief of staff and a local US Court of Appeals judge carrying his Bible abruptly entered my office at the Old Executive Office Building and changed her life along with mine.

  Once Samantha has made up her mind, a mere mortal like me is powerless to change it.

  Besides, as much as I hate to admit it, she’s right.

  It’s her time.

  Samantha says, “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you’ve got better driving conditions than I do,” I say. “Mostly highway to Boston—lucky you.”

  “You can come along for the ride.”

  I say, “I’ll take a rain check. Or snow check.”

  It’s her time, but it’s also mine. There’s a rural retreat waiting for me and I’m so looking forward to the absence of cities and tall buildings and bright lights. The quiet will be a blessed change.