The President Is Missing: A Novel (37 page)

I
n 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.”

I shake my head. At least I wasn’t the only one.

“Kathy, your resignation is not accepted. Now get back to work.”

B
ach sways as she listens to the
Saint Matthew Passion
. She has no music or headphones—they have been confiscated—only her memories of the complementing choruses, the soprano solo with which she used to sing along. She imagines herself in the church in the eighteenth century, hearing it for the first time.

She is interrupted when the door to her cell opens.

The man who walks in is young, with sandy hair, dressed informally in a button-down shirt and jeans. He brings in a chair with him, places it near her bed, and sits down.

Bach sits up, back against the wall, feet dangling down. The chains remain around her wrists.

“My name is Randy,” he says. “I’m the guy who asks nicely. There are others who won’t.”

“I am…familiar with the tactic,” she says.

“And you’re…Catharina.”

She isn’t sure how they figured out her identity—probably the DNA sample they took. Maybe facial-recognition software, though she doubts it.

“That
is
your name, right? Catharina Dorothea Ninkovic. Catharina Dorothea—that was Johann Sebastian’s first daughter, right?”

She doesn’t respond. She picks up the paper cup and drinks the last of the water she’s been given.

“Let me ask you a question, Catharina. Do you think we’ll go easy on you because you’re pregnant?”

She shifts in her bed, a sheet of unforgiving steel.

“You tried to assassinate a president,” he says.

Her eyes narrow. “If I had wanted to assassinate a president,” she says, “he would be assassinated.”

Randy holds most of the cards here, and he enjoys it. He nods along, almost amused. “There are a lot of other countries that would like to have a conversation with you,” he says. “Some of them don’t have such a progressive view of human rights. Maybe we’ll transfer you to one of them. They can always send you back later—if there’s anything left of you to send back. How does that sound, Bach? You wanna roll the dice with the Ugandans? How about Nicaragua? The Jordanians are pretty hyped up to speak with you. They seem to think you put a bullet between the eyes of their security chief last year.”

She waits until he’s finished. Then she waits longer still.

“I will tell you whatever you want to know,” she says. “I have only a single demand.”

“You think you’re in a position to demand anything?”

“Whatever your name is—”

“Randy.”

“—you should be asking me what it is I want.”

He sits back in his chair. “Okay, Catharina. What do you want?”

“I know that I will remain in custody for the remainder of my life. I am under no…illusions about this.”

“That’s a good start.”

“I want my baby born healthy. I want her born in America, and I want her adopted by my brother.”

“Your brother,” says Randy.

He appeared from behind the house next door as she stood near the rubble of their home, as she touched the face of her beaten, slashed, dead mother tied to the tree.

“Is it true?” he said as he approached, his face tear-streaked, his body shivering. He took one look at her, at the rifle she held, at the sidearm tucked in her pants. “It
is
true, isn’t it? You killed them. You killed those soldiers!”

“I killed the soldiers who killed Papa.”

“And now they killed Mama!” he cried. “How could you do that?”

“I didn’t…I’m sorry…I—” She started toward him, her older brother, but he backed away, as if repelled.

“No,” he said. “Do not come near me. Ever. Ever!”

He turned and ran. He was faster. She chased after him, begging him to come back, calling out his name, but he disappeared.

She never saw him again.

For a time, she thought he hadn’t survived. But then she learned that the orphanage was able to transfer him out of Sarajevo. Boys had it easier than girls.

So many times she wanted to visit him. To speak to him. To hold him. She had to settle for listening to him.

“Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog,” says Randy. “A violinist living in Vienna. Took his adoptive Austrian family’s last name but kept his given first and middle names. He was named after Johann Sebastian’s first son. I’m sensing a pattern.”

She stares at him, in no particular hurry herself.

“Okay, you want your brother, Wilhelm, to adopt your kid.”

“And I want to transfer all my financial assets to him. And I want a lawyer who will draw up and approve all the necessary documents.”

“Uh-huh. You think your brother’s going to want your kid?”

She feels her eyes moisten at the question, one she has asked herself many times. This will be a jolt for Wil, no doubt. But he is a good man. Her child will be Wil’s blood, and Wil would not blame his infant niece for the sins of her mother. The fifteen million dollars will ensure that Delilah, and her new family, will be financially secure, too.

But most important, Delilah will never be alone.

Randy shakes his head. “See, the problem here is that you’re talking to me as if you have leverage—”

“I can give you information on dozens of international incidents over the last decade. Assassinations of numerous public officials. I can tell you who hired me for each job. I will assist your investigations. I will testify before whatever tribunals. I will do all this as long as my child is born in America and adopted by my brother. I will tell you about every job I’ve ever carried out.”

Randy is still playing his role as the man with the upper hand, but she can see a change in his expression.

“Including
this
job,” she says.

I
walk through the east door of the Oval Office into the Rose Garden, Augie alongside me. It’s muggy outside at this late hour, a threat of rain in the air.

Rachel and I used to stroll through the garden every night after dinner. It was on one of those strolls that she told me that the cancer had returned.

“I’m not sure I ever properly thanked you,” I tell him.

“No need,” he says.

“What are you going to do now, Augie?”

His shoulders rise. “This I do not know. We—Nina and I—we talked of nothing but returning to Sukhumi.”

That word again. That word is
trending,
as they say, on the Internet right now. I will see that word in my nightmares.

“The thing that is funny,” he says, “is that we knew our plan might be unsuccessful. We knew Suliman would send someone after us. We didn’t know what you would do. There were so many…”

“Variables.”

“Yes, variables. And yet we always spoke as if it was going to happen. She talked of the home she wanted to purchase, a half mile from her parents, not far from the sea. She talked of the names she would give our children someday.”

I hear the emotion in his voice. His eyes shine with tears.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “You could stay here,” I say. “Work for us.”

His mouth twists. “I have no…immigration status. I’ve not…”

I stop and turn to him. “I might be able to help out with that part,” I say. “I know a few people.”

He smiles. “Yes, of course, but—”

“Augie, I can’t let this happen again. We got lucky this time. We need more than luck going forward. We need to be far more prepared than we were. I need people like you. I need
you
.”

He looks away, out over the garden, the roses and daffodils and hyacinths. Rachel knew every kind of flower in this garden by name. I only know them as beautiful. More beautiful, right now, than ever.

“America,” he says, as if considering it. “I did rather enjoy the baseball contest.”

It’s the first real laugh I’ve had in a very long time. “Baseball
game,
” I say.

Y
our Highness,” I say into the phone to King Saad ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia as I sit at my desk in the Oval Office. I raise a mug of coffee to my lips. I don’t ordinarily drink coffee in the afternoon, but after two hours of sleep and the Friday and Saturday we just had, ordinary is long gone.

“Mr. President,”
he says.
“It seems as if you’ve had an eventful few days.”

“As have you. How are you doing?”

“I suppose an American would say that I escaped by the skin of my teeth. But in my case, it is almost literally true. I am fortunate that the plot was uncovered before they could carry out an attempt on my life. I am blessed. Order has been restored in our kingdom.”

“Ordinarily,” I say, “I would have called you directly after hearing of the plot. Under the circumstances—”

“There is no need to explain, Mr. President. I fully understand. You’ve been briefed, I take it, about my reason for calling.”

“My CIA director told me, yes.”

“Yes. As you know, Mr. President, the Saudi royal family is a large and diverse one.”

That’s an understatement. The House of Saud numbers in the thousands and has many branches. Most family members have little or no influence and simply receive fat checks from oil revenue. But even among the core group of leaders, numbering somewhere around two thousand, there are branches and hierarchies. And, as there is in any family and any political hierarchy, there is plenty of resentment and jealousy. When Saab ibn Saud jumped over a lot of heads to become the next king, there was more than enough of both to fuel and fund the scheme that brought us all to the edge of disaster.

 “The members who attempted the coup have been…discontented with my rule.”

“Congratulations, Your Majesty, for your massive understatement and for catching the conspirators.”

“It is to my great embarrassment that such plans were able to blossom and flourish without my knowledge. Right under my nose, as you would say, and I was unaware of it. It was a lapse in our intelligence that, I can assure you, will be corrected.”

I know the feeling of missing something that’s right under your nose. “What exactly was their plan? What did they want?”

“A return to a different time,”
he says.
“A world without a dominant America and thus a dominant Israel. They wanted to rule the Saudi kingdom and rule the Middle East. Their intent, as I understand it, was not to destroy America so much as weaken it to the point where it was no longer a superpower. A return to different times, as I said. Regional dominance. No global superpower.”

“We’d have so many of our own problems that we wouldn’t bother with the Middle East—that was the thinking?”

“However unrealistic, yes. This is an accurate description of their motives.”

I’m not sure how unrealistic it was. It almost happened. I keep thinking the unthinkable—what would have happened had Nina not installed the stopper, the keyword to disable the virus? Or, for that matter, if she hadn’t given us the peekaboo to tip us off in advance? What if there hadn’t been a Nina and an Augie? We would never have known it was coming. Dark Ages would have become a reality. We would have been crippled.

Crippled, not killed. But crippled would have been enough, from their perspective. We would have been far too concerned with our troubles at home to worry much about the rest of the world.

They didn’t want to destroy us. They didn’t want to wipe us off the face of the earth. They just wanted to knock us down enough to force our withdrawal from their part of the world.

“We have been successful in our interrogation of the subjects,”
says the king.

The Saudis permit a little more leeway in their “interrogation” techniques than we do. “They’re talking?”

“Of course,”
he says, as if it were obvious.
“And naturally we will make all this information available to you.”

“I appreciate that.”

“In summary, Mr. President, the members of this splinter group in the royal family paid the terrorist organization, the Sons of Jihad, a tremendous sum of money to destroy the American infrastructure. This included, apparently, hiring an assassin to eliminate members of the Sons of Jihad who had defected from the group.”

“Yes. We have the assassin in custody.”

“And is she cooperating with the investigation?”

“Yes,” I say. “We’ve reached an understanding with her.”

“Then you may know what I am going to say next.”

“Perhaps so, Your Highness. But I’d like to hear it from you anyway.”