The President Is Missing: A Novel (20 page)

I
head to the basement, to a room on the east end, where the owner of this cabin, with the help of the CIA, was good enough to install a soundproof door and set up secure communications lines for my use when I visit. This communications room is several doors down from the war room, on the west side of the basement, where Augie, Devin, and Casey are set up.

I close the door and plug the secure line into my laptop and pull up the triumvirate of Carolyn Brock, Liz Greenfield, and Sam Haber of Homeland Security on a three-way split screen.

“Talk to me,” I say. “Hurry.”

“Sir, on the same block as the defense contractor’s plant was a private health laboratory that was in a partnership with the state of California and our CDC.”

“The Centers for Disease Control,” I say.

“Correct, sir. Within the CDC, we have a Laboratory Response Network. It—essentially, we have about two hundred laboratories around the country designed as first responders to biological and chemical terrorism.”

A cold wave passes through my chest.

“The largest member of the Laboratory Response Network in the greater Los Angeles area was next door to the defense contractor’s plant. It was decimated in the fire, sir.”

I close my eyes. “Are you telling me that the primary lab charged with responding to a bioterrorism attack in LA was just burned to the ground?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Holy shit.” I rub my temples.

“Yes, sir. That about sums it up.”

“And what, exactly, does that lab do? Or
did
it do?”

“It was the first to diagnose,”
he says.
“The first to treat. Diagnosis being the most critical aspect. Understanding what, exactly, our citizens have been exposed to is the first order of business for first responders. You can’t treat the patient if you don’t know what you’re treating.”

Nobody speaks for a moment.

“Are we looking at a biological attack on Los Angeles?” I ask.

“Well, sir, we’re making that assumption right now. We’re in touch with the local authorities.”

“Okay, Sam—do we have protocols in place to divert CDC operations around the country?”

“We’re doing it right now, sir. We’re mobilizing resources from other cities on the West Coast.
”

A predictable response. What the terrorists would expect. Is this a head fake? Are they feinting toward LA so we’ll move everything on the West Coast there, then hit another spot like Seattle or San Francisco while our guard is down?

I throw up my hands. “Why do I feel like we’re chasing our goddamn tails here, people?”

“Because it always feels that way, sir,”
says Sam.
“It’s what we do. We play defense against invisible opponents. We try to smoke them out. We try to predict what they might do. We hope it never happens but try to be as ready as possible if it does.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn’t.”

“Sir, we’re on this. We’ll do everything we can.”

I run my fingers through my hair. “Get to it, Sam. Keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.”

The screen adjusts to show just Carolyn and Liz as Sam signs off.

“Any more good news?” I ask. “A hurricane on the East Coast? Tornadoes? An oil spill? Is a goddamn volcano erupting somewhere?”

“One thing, sir,”
says Liz.
“About the gas explosion.”

“Something new?”

She cocks her head.
“More like something old,”
she says.

Liz fills me in. And I didn’t think I could feel any worse.

Ten minutes later, I open the thick door and leave the communications room as Alex approaches me. He nods to me.

“They just reached the security perimeter up the road,” says Alex. “The Israeli prime minister has arrived.”

T
he delegation for the Israeli prime minister, Noya Baram, arrives as planned: one advance car that arrived earlier and now two armored SUVs, one carrying a security detail that will leave once she has safely arrived and the other carrying the prime minister herself.

Noya emerges from the SUV wearing sunglasses, a jacket, and slacks. She looks up at the sky for a moment, as if to confirm that it’s still there. It’s one of those days.

Noya is sixty-four, with gray dominating her shoulder-length hair and dark eyes that can be both fierce and engaging. She is one of the most fearless people I’ve ever known.

She called me the night I was elected president. She asked if she could call me Jonny, which nobody in my life had ever done. Surprised, off balance, giddy from the win, I said, “Sure you can!” She’s called me that ever since.

“Jonny,” she says to me now, removing her sunglasses and kissing both my cheeks. With her hands clasped over mine, a tight smile on her face, she says, “You look like someone who could use a friend right now.”

“I certainly could.”

“You know that Israel will never leave your side.”

“I do know that,” I say. “And my gratitude knows no bounds, Noya.”

“David has been helpful?”

“Very.”

I reached out to Noya when I discovered the leak in my national security team. I didn’t know whom I could trust and whom I couldn’t, so I was forced to outsource some of my reconnaissance work to the Mossad, dealing directly with David Guralnick, its director.

Noya and I have had disagreements over the two-state solution and settlements on the West Bank, but when it comes to the things that bring us together today, there is no daylight between our positions. A safe and stable United States means a safe and stable Israel. They have every reason to help us and no reason not to.

And they have the finest cybersecurity experts in the world. They play defense better than anybody. Two of them have arrived with Noya and will join Augie and my people.

“I am the first to arrive?”

“You are, Noya, you are. And I wouldn’t mind a word with you before the others get here. If I had time to give you a tour—”

“What—a tour?” She waves her hand. “It’s a cabin. I’ve seen cabins before.”

We walk past the cabin into the yard. She acknowledges the black tent.

We walk toward the woods, the trees thirty feet high, the wildflowers yellow and violet, following the stone path to the lake. Alex Trimble follows from behind, speaking into his radio.

I tell her everything she doesn’t already know, which isn’t very much.

“What we have heard about so far,” she says, “did not sound like plans for a biological attack in a major city.”

“I agree. But maybe the idea is to destroy our ability to respond, then introduce some biological pathogen. That would include destroying physical buildings and our technological infrastructure.”

“True, true,” she says.

“The gas pipeline explosion could be telling,” I say.

“How so?”

“Some computer virus—some malware—caused a disruption,” I say. “We just confirmed it a few minutes ago. The virus prompted a forced increase in pressure that caused the explosion.”

“Yes? And?”

I let out air and stop, turn to her. “Noya, in 1982, we did the same thing to the Soviets.”

“Ah. You sabotaged one of their pipelines?”

“My FBI director just told me. Reagan learned that the Soviets were trying to steal some industrial software,” I say. “So he decided to let them steal it. But we tampered with it first. We booby-trapped it. So when the Soviets stole it and used it, it caused a tremendous explosion in the Siberian pipeline. Our people said that the satellite imagery showed one of the biggest explosions they’d ever seen.”

She laughs, in spite of the circumstances. “Reagan,” she says, shaking her head. “I had not heard this story. But it sounds just like him.” She angles her head, looks up at me. “This is ancient history, though.”

“Yes and no,” I say. “We learned that a number of people were disciplined for the mistake. It was a huge embarrassment for the Kremlin. A lot of people were punished. Some went to prison for life. We never knew all the details. But one of the KGB agents who was never heard from again was named Viktor Chernokev.”

Her smile disappears. “The Russian president’s father.”

“The Russian president’s father.”

She nods knowingly. “I knew his father was KGB. I didn’t know how he died. Or why.”

She chews on her lip, something she always does when she concentrates.

“So…what are you going to do with this information, Jonny?”

“Mr. President—excuse me, sir. Excuse me, Madam Prime Minister.”

I turn to Alex. “What is it, Alex?”

“Sir,” he says, “the German chancellor is arriving.”

J
uergen Richter, the German chancellor, steps out of his SUV looking like something out of British royalty in his pin-striped three-piece suit. He has a slight paunch, but he has the height—six feet four—and the perfect posture to carry it off.

His long, regal face lights up when he sees Noya Baram. He bows at the waist in exaggerated fashion, which she waves off with a laugh. Then they embrace. She’s more than a foot shorter than he is, so she rises up and he leans down so they can exchange kisses.

I offer my hand, and he accepts it, clasping my shoulder with the other hand, the large hand of a former basketball player for Germany in the 1992 Olympics. “Mr. President,” he says. “Always these difficult situations, we meet.”

The last time I saw Juergen was at Rachel’s funeral.

“How is your wife, Mr. Chancellor?” I ask. His wife now has cancer, too, and is getting treatment in the United States.

“Ah, she is a strong woman, Mr. President, thank you for your concern. She has never lost a battle. Certainly none with me.” He looks over at Noya for a laugh, which she gives him. Juergen is one of those larger-than-life personalities, always trying for humor. His need to shine has bought him trouble more than once in interviews and press conferences, where he’s been known to make an occasional off-color remark, but his voters seem to appreciate his freewheeling style.

“I appreciate your coming,” I say.

“When one friend has a problem, another friend helps,” he says.

True. But the principal reason I invited him is to convince him that the problem is not only my country’s but his—and all of NATO’s—too.

I show him around the grounds briefly, but my phone is buzzing before long. I excuse myself from the group and answer the phone. Three minutes later, I’m back downstairs, communicating by laptop on the secure line.

Again, it’s the same three people involved. Carolyn and Liz, whom I trust, and Sam Haber, who has to be involved in homeland security issues, and whom I would really like to believe I can trust, too.

Sam Haber was a case officer in the CIA thirty years ago who returned to Minnesota and was elected to Congress. He ran for governor, lost, and managed to get an appointment as one of the CIA’s deputy directors. My predecessor appointed him secretary of DHS, and he was given high marks. He lobbied me to be CIA director, but I chose Erica Beatty for that post and asked him to stay on at DHS. I was pleasantly surprised when he agreed. Most of us thought he’d serve in a sort of interim capacity, bridging administrations before moving on to something else. But he’s lasted more than two years in the job, and if he’s unhappy, he hasn’t made that known to anyone.

Sam’s eyes are in a nearly permanent squint, his forehead always etched in wrinkles below the ever-present crew cut. Everything about him is intense. It’s not a bad trait in a secretary of homeland security.

“Where exactly did it happen?” I ask.

“It’s in a small town outside Los Angeles proper,”
says Sam.
“
It’s the largest water treatment plant in California. It pumps more than half a billion gallons of water a day, mostly into LA County and Orange County.”

“So what happened?”

“Sir, after the explosion at the private biological lab, we were in touch with state and local officials, focusing on critical public infrastructure—gas, electricity, commuter rail—but most urgently on water lines.”

Makes sense. The most obvious target among public utilities for a biological attack. You introduce a biological pathogen into the water, it spreads faster than wildfire.

“The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and members of DHS and EPA conducted an emergency inspection and discovered the breach.”

“Explain the breach,” I say. “In English.”

“They hacked into the computer software, sir. They managed to alter the settings on the chemical applicators. But they also disabled the alert functions that would normally detect anomalies in the purification process.”

“So dirty water that was supposed to be passing through a chemical application wasn’t receiving that chemical application, and the alert functions in the system, designed to detect that very problem…”

“Weren’t detecting. Sir, that’s correct. The good news is that we caught it quickly. We caught it within an hour of the cyberintrusion. The untreated water was still in the finished-water reservoirs.”

“No tainted water left the plant?”

“Sir, that’s correct. Nothing had passed into the water mains yet.”

“Did the water contain any biological pathogens? Anything like that?”

“Sir, we don’t know at this point. Our rapid-response team in that area—”

“The lab you’d normally use burned down four hours ago.”

“Sir, that’s correct.”

“Sam, I need your full attention here.” I lean forward toward the screen. “You can tell me with 100 percent confidence—no tainted water was sent to the citizens of LA or Orange Counties.”

“Sir, that’s correct. This was the only plant they breached. And we can pinpoint precisely when the cyber event occurred, when the chemical-applicator software and detection systems were compromised. There is no physical way that any untreated water left the plant.”

I release a breath. “Okay. Well, that’s something, at least. Well done, Sam.”

“Yes, sir, a good team effort. But the news isn’t all good, sir.”

“Of course it isn’t. Why in the hell would we expect only good news?” I wave off my tantrum. “Tell me the bad news, Sam.”

“The bad news is that none of our technicians has ever seen a cyberattack like this. They’ve been unable so far to reengage the chemical applicators.”

“They can’t fix it?”

“Exactly, sir. For all practical purposes, the primary water treatment plant serving Los Angeles County and Orange County is closed for business.”

“Okay, well—surely there are other plants.”

“Yes, sir, most certainly, but there is no practical way to compensate for the loss for very long. And sir, I’m concerned that the hacking isn’t over yet. What if they hit another plant around LA, too? We’re watching closely now, of course. We’ll shut down any affected system and prevent untreated water from reaching the water mains.”

“But you’d have to shut the plant down, too,” I say.

“Yes, sir. We could have multiple water treatment plants shut down at once.”

“What are you telling me, Sam? We could have a massive water shortage in Los Angeles?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, sir.”

“How many people are we talking about? Los Angeles and Orange Counties?”

“Fourteen million, sir.”

“Oh, Jesus.” I put my hand over my mouth.

“We’re not just talking about hot showers and lawn sprinklers,”
he says.
“We’re talking about potable water. We’re talking about hospitals and surgery wards and first responders.”

“So, what—this will be Flint, Michigan, all over again?”

“It will be Flint, Michigan,”
says Sam,
“multiplied by a factor of one hundred forty.”