The President Is Missing: A Novel (34 page)

B
ach, sitting atop the stackable washer and dryer, pushes herself off and drops quietly to the floor of the dark room. She looks through the doorway. As she’d been told, the basement is not some maze of rooms but rather one long hallway with several rooms on each side and a staircase in the middle of the hallway on her left.

Behind her, from the open window, she hears something outside: the thump of a vessel landing, the commotion of commands being shouted, feet stomping the ground, men fanning out.

The helicopter again. Marines arriving, maybe Special Forces.

Footfalls. They are running. Running toward the open window—

She squats down, raising her weapon.

The men rush past and stop. One of them stops right near the window.

What are they—

Then she hears a voice: “West team, in position!”

West team
.

This is the west side of the cabin. The west team. There are presumably north, south, and east teams, too.

They have surrounded the perimeter.

In just that instant, she thinks of her mother, Delilah, and what she endured during those nightly visits from the soldiers, what she did for her children every night, placing her son and daughter in a room far away from the bedroom, inside the closet, cocooning them with the headphones she placed on their ears so they would listen to the Passacaglia or the Concerto for Two Violins, not the sounds emanating from the bedroom. “Listen only to the music,” she told Bach and her brother.

Bach steels herself and steps out of the room, into the threshold of the first room on the left. The war room, they call it.

She peeks in. A large white screen displaying the words:

Then a word typed into the box:
Nina Shinkuba

The word disappears. Another word:
nina shinkuba

The words keep coming, then disappearing:

The number to the side of the box—some kind of timer.

She springs into the room, her weapon out. Sweeps the room, seeing nothing. Quickly checks behind a file cabinet, a stack of boxes. Nobody hiding.

The room is empty. This is where he was supposed to be, but nobody’s here.

She looks back at the white screen, new words being typed:

She knows that name, of course, but not why it’s being typed on a screen.

She jumps at the buzzing sound, the movement of a phone as it vibrates on a wooden desk. The face of the phone reads
FBI Liz.

Then her eyes glance upward.

And for the first time, she notices the security camera looking down at her from the corner, the blinking red light leaving no doubt that it’s activated, watching her.

She shuffles to the right. The camera moves along with her.

A shiver runs through her.

She hears a noise from the laundry room, someone kicking at the window, trying to enter from the outside.

And urgent footfalls upstairs, so many men she can’t count, running to the door leading to the basement. The door swinging open.

More footfalls pummeling the staircase as the men rush down.

Bach moves to the door of the war room, locks it, and backs away, one step behind another, until she hits the far wall.

She unscrews the suppressor on her firearm.

She breathes in deeply, fights the banging pulse in her throat. Her vision now shrouded with warm tears.

She gently touches her stomach. “You are my beautiful gift,
draga,
” she whispers in her native tongue, her voice shaking. “I will always be with you.”

She unclasps her phone from her waist, unhooks the earphones that snake under her bodysuit up to her ears. “Here,
draga,
” she says to the child inside her. “Listen to this, my beautiful angel.”

She chooses the church cantata
Selig ist der Mann
. The tenderness of the strings, led by Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog’s violin; the delicate introduction of the vox Christi; the impassioned cries of the soprano.

She slides against the wall, down to the floor. She places the phone against her belly and turns up the volume.

“Listen only to the music,
draga,
” she says.

A
lex and I watch the feed from the war room on his handheld monitor as the assassin sinks to the floor, eyes closed, her camouflage-painted face seemingly at peace.

She puts the pistol under her chin. She puts her phone against her stomach.

“She knows she’s cornered,” I say.

“We’re all clear otherwise,” Alex says to me. “The rest of the downstairs and the rest of the cabin are clear. Just her. The go team is just outside her door, ready to storm it. Now it’s time for
us
to go, Mr. President.”

“We can’t go, Alex, we have to—”

“She could be wearing explosives, sir.”

“She’s wearing a skintight bodysuit.”

“She could be wearing it underneath. The phone might be a detonator. She’s holding it down low by her stomach. Why would she be doing that?”

I look at the screen again. She detached her headphones before placing the device against her stomach.

A memory of singing to Lilly, when she was inside Rachel’s swollen belly.

“We have to go right now, sir.” Alex grabs my arm. He’s going to drag me if I don’t go willingly.

Devin, Casey, and Augie are continuing to try to guess the keyword.

“How much time, Devin?”

“Twenty-two minutes.”

“Can you take that laptop onto Marine One? Will it work from there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then let’s go. Everyone.”

A team of Marines is standing on the other side of the door when Alex opens it. They escort us up the stairs, through the house, onto the balcony, down the stairs, and to the helipad, where Marine One awaits us. Alex all but mugs me as we go, Devin cradling the laptop as if it were a human infant.

“I need my phone,” I tell Alex as we hustle inside the helicopter. “Get us in the air, a safe distance, but keep us close. I need someone to bring me the phone.”

We get inside the copter, the familiarity of it a comfort, Devin dropping into a cream leather seat and going back to work on the keyboard.

“Just hit twenty minutes,” he says as Marine One lifts off the ground and angles over the trees, over the fire on the lake, the remnants of the boat the Viper wiped out.

As I look over Alex’s shoulder at the monitor in his hand, I call out to Devin. “Try ‘Sons of Jihad,’ ‘SOJ,’ variations of that. Maybe just ‘jihad.’”

“Yes, sir.”

On the monitor, the assassin remains motionless. The gun under her chin, the phone pressed against her stomach.

Against her womb.

Alex raises his radio. “Marines, the president is clear. Take the room.”

I take the radio from Alex. “This is President Duncan,” I say. “I want her alive if you can.”

S
he closes her eyes and hums to the music, nothing in the world but her developing child, Delilah, and the playful strings, the soulful chanting of the chorus.

Not the sound of the door busting open.

Not the orders of the soldiers to drop her weapon, to surrender.

The SIG still pressed under her chin, she watches the men fan out, assault weapons trained on her. They must have orders to take her alive. She’d already be dead if they did not.

They can’t hurt her now. She is at peace with her decision.

“This is the best I can do for you,
draga,
” she whispers.

She tosses the gun in front of her and comes forward, palms out, lying facedown on the carpet.

The Marines lift her in an instant, as if she were weightless, and rush her out of the room.

G
et us down on the ground!” I say to Alex. “I need that phone!”

“Not yet.” Alex raises his radio. “Tell me when she’s clear!” When she’s confirmed as not having explosives, he means, or when they’ve moved her far enough away to eliminate the threat to me.

The Marines quickly whisk her out of the room, one soldier holding each of her limbs, and disappear from the camera’s view.

“Anything?” I say to Devin, already knowing the answer.

“No on ‘SOJ’ and ‘jihad’ and their variations.”

“Try ‘Abkhazia’ or ‘Georgia,’” I say.

“How do you spell Abkhazia?”

“A-b-…I need to write. Where’s paper?
Where’s paper and a pen!
 ”

Casey shoves a small memo pad in my hand, gives me a pen. I write the word out and read it to him.

He types it in. “No on regular case…no all caps…no on all lowercase…”

“Add an
n
. ‘Abkhazian.’”

He does so. “No.”

“Are you sure you spelled it right?”

“I…think so.”

“You
think so
? Don’t just
think so,
Devin!” I’m pacing now, walking over to his computer screen to peek at the timer—

—and trying to remember anything that Nina told me, anything I saw in the text messages—

“All clear!” Alex calls out. “Let’s get this copter back on the ground!”

The pilot moves more quickly than I’ve ever experienced on Marine One, almost nose-diving downward and then righting the aircraft, gently touching down on the helipad we just left.

Agent Jacobson pops into the copter and hands me my phone.

I pull up the document, the transcript of the text messages, which I have yet to finish reading in the chaos of the last hour.

The phone buzzes in my hand.
FBI Liz,
says the caller ID.

“Liz,” I answer. “There’s no time, so make this quick.”

I
dial Carolyn, my chief of staff, with whom I’ve spoken dozens of times today, but it feels like ages since we last talked, what with everything that’s happened in the interim—the “play-dead” test run, the FBI unlocking Nina’s other phone, the attack on the cabin, the discovery of the stopper Nina installed along with the keyword.

“Mr. President! Thank God! I’ve been—”

“Listen, Carrie, listen. I don’t have time to explain. We have less than six minutes before the virus goes off.”

I hear Carolyn suck in her breath.

“There’s a keyword,” I continue. “Nina created a keyword to stop the virus. If we can figure out the keyword, we disable it across all systems. If we don’t, it detonates across all systems—it’s Dark Ages. I’ve tried everything with our tech experts. We’re down to simply guessing. I need the smartest people I know. I need our national security team. Get everyone together.”

“Everyone?”
she asks.
“Including the vice president?”

“Especially the vice president,” I say.

“Yes, sir.”

“It was her, Carrie. I’ll explain later. You should know, too. I just ordered a search of the vice president’s office in the West Wing. When the FBI shows up, someone will probably tell you. Just let them do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get everyone on the conference, and patch me in through Marine One, which is where I am now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do it now, Carrie. We’re at…five minutes.”

I
walk past Devin and Casey, who have all but collapsed in the plush leather chairs in the center cabin of Marine One, their expressions washed out, their hair matted with sweat, their eyes staring upward. They’ve been through a pressure cooker, and they’ve done everything they could. I don’t need them anymore. Now it’s up to me and the national security team.

And Augie, the closest connection we have to Nina.

I walk into the rear cabin and close the door behind me after letting Augie through. My hands are shaking as I lift the remote on the flat-screen TV and push the button, the faces of eight people immediately popping on—Liz, Carolyn, and the “circle of six.”

Augie sits in one of the leather chairs, the laptop in his lap, ready to type.

“Carolyn briefed you?” I say to my team on the television. “We have a keyword, and we have…”

I look at my phone, which has a timer of its own that I synced up with the virus’s timer.

“…four and a half minutes to figure it out. We tried every variation of her name, of Augie’s name, of Suliman Cindoruk’s name, of ‘Abkhazia’ and ‘Georgia’ and ‘Sons of Jihad.’ I need ideas, people, and I need them now.”

“What’s her birthday?”
asks the CIA director, Erica Beatty.

Liz, holding Nina’s dossier, answers:
“We believe it’s August 11, 1992.”

I point to Augie. “Try it. ‘August 11.’ ‘August 11, 1992,’ or ‘8-11-92.’”

“No,”
says Erica.
“Europeans would put the day before the month: ‘11-8-92.’”

“Right.” I turn to Augie, my heart kicking up. “Try it both ways, I guess.”

He types quickly, head down, brow furrowed in concentration. “No,” he says on the first try.

“No” on the second one.

“No” on the third one.

“No” on the fourth.

My eyes on Vice President Kathy Brandt, who so far has remained silent.

Then Kathy lifts her head.
“What about her family? Family names. Mother, father, siblings.”

“Liz?”

“Mother is Nadya, n-a-d-y-a, maiden name unknown. Father is Mikhail, m-i-k-h-a-i-l.”

“Try it, Augie, all variations—all caps, all lowercase, normal, whatever. Try their names together, too,” which of course means every combination of spacing and caps. Every guess has multiple permutations. Every permutation takes more time off the clock.

“Keep going while he types, people. Siblings are good. What about—”

I snap my fingers, interrupting myself. “Nina had a niece, right? Nina told me she was killed in a bombing. Nina caught shrapnel in her head. Do we know the niece’s name? Liz? Augie?”

“I don’t have that information,”
says Liz.

“The family names didn’t work,” says Augie. “I tried every combination.”

“What about the niece, Augie? Did she ever tell you about the niece?”

“I…believe her name started with an
r
…”

“Started with an
r
? I need more than ‘started with an
r
.’ Come on, people!”

“What moved her?”
asks Carolyn.
“What was most important to her?”

I look at Augie. “Freedom? Try that.”

Augie types it in, shakes his head.

“Her passport number,”
says the defense secretary, Dominick Dayton.

Liz has it. Augie types it in. No.

“Where was she born?”
asks Rod Sanchez, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“A pet—a dog or cat,”
says Sam Haber of Homeland Security.

“The name of the train station she blew up,”
says Brendan Mohan, national security adviser.

“How about ‘virus,’ ‘time bomb,’ ‘boom.’”

“Armageddon.”

“Dark Ages.”

“Your name, Mr. President.”

“USA. United States.”

All of them good ideas. All of them typed into the computer in their various iterations of all caps and the like.

All of them coming up empty.

As best I can see her, the vice president stares forward in steely concentration. What is going through that mind right now?

“She was on the run—isn’t that what we know?”
Carolyn again.

“Yes.”

“So can we work with that? What was most important to her?”

I look at Augie and nod my head.

“She wanted to go home,” says Augie.

“That’s right,” I say. “But we’ve tried that.”

“Maybe…Abkhazia’s on the Black Sea, right?”
says Carolyn.
“Did she miss the Black Sea? Anything like that?”

I point to Augie. “That’s good. Try ‘Black Sea,’ all variations.”

As Augie types, as everyone joins in with another idea, I watch only my vice president, the person I selected to be my running mate over many other people who gladly would have accepted, who would have loyally served me and this country.

She is stoic, but her eyes are moving around the room she’s in, within the operations center below the White House. I wish I could see her face better. I wish I could know if, at the very least, this is weighing on her.

“No on ‘Black Sea,’” says Augie.

More suggestions come:

“Amnesty.”

“Liberty.”

“Family.”

“But where is home, specifically?”
Carolyn asks.
“If that’s all she thought about, if that was her whole goal…what city is she from?”

“She’s right,” I say. “We should look at that. Where did she live, Augie? Where specifically? Or Liz. Anyone? Do we know where the hell she lived?”

Liz says,
“Her parents lived in the city of Sokhumi. It’s considered the capital of the Abkhazian republic.”

“Good. Spell it, Liz.”

“S-o-k-h-u-m-i.”

“Go, Augie—‘Sokhumi.’”

“Are you sure?”
Carolyn asks.

I check my phone, my heartbeat pounding in my throat.

Watching the vice president, her lips parting. She says something, but it’s drowned out by other suggestions being thrown out—

“Stop, everyone stop,” I say. “Kathy, what did you say?”

She seems to steel herself, surprised at my focus on her.
“I said, try ‘Lilly.’”

I deflate. I shouldn’t be surprised, but for some reason I am.

I point to Augie. “Do it. Try my daughter’s name.”

Augie types it in. Shakes his head. Tries it a different way, all caps. Shakes his head. Tries it another way—

“Mr. President,”
says Carolyn.
“Sokhumi can be spelled more than one way. When I was on the intelligence committee, I always saw it with two
u
’s, no
o
.”

I drop my head and close my eyes. That’s how I remember it being spelled, too.

“No on ‘Lilly,’” says Augie.

“S-
u
-k-h-u-m-i,” I tell him.

He types it in. The room goes silent.

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

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