The President Is Missing: A Novel (21 page)

B
ut not immediately,”
says Carolyn.
“Not today.”

“Not today, but soon. LA County alone is bigger than many states in population, and this is its biggest supplier of clean water. We’ll have a crisis starting today. Not Flint, Michigan, not yet—but a real true-blue crisis.”

“Mobilize FEMA,” I say.

“Already done, sir.”

“We can have a federal disaster declaration.”

“Already have it written for you, sir.”

“But you have something else in mind.”

“Yes, sir. Fixing the problem, sir.”

That’s what I thought he was going to say.

“Sir, you know as well as I do that there are many very good, highly competent individuals under our umbrella when it comes to cyberdefense. But it looks like very good and highly competent isn’t going to cut it today in Los Angeles. Our people there are telling us they’ve never seen a virus like this. They don’t know what to do.”

“You need the best.”

“Yes, sir. We need the threat-response team you assembled.”

“Devin Wittmer and Casey Alvarez are with me, Sam.”

Sam doesn’t immediately reply. I’m keeping him in the dark. We both know that. I have a source telling me today is the day for the attack, but I haven’t identified the source to him. That’s unusual. And on top of that, now I’m telling him what he probably already figured out for himself—that our country’s two most elite cybersecurity experts are with me in an undisclosed location. None of this makes any sense to him. He’s the secretary of homeland security—of all people in the world, why wouldn’t I tell him?

“Sir, if we can’t have Wittmer and Alvarez, at least send part of the team.”

I rub my face, think it over.

“This is Dark Ages, sir. There’s no chance this is a coincidence. This is the beginning. Where it ends, I don’t know. The rest of the water plants? The electrical grid? Are they going to open the dams? We need them in Los Angeles. We got lucky once today. I don’t want to count on luck again.”

I get out of my chair, feeling claustrophobic down here. Pacing helps me. Gets the juices flowing. I need them all flowing in the direction of the best possible decision.

The gas explosion…the decimated biological lab…the tampering at the water lab.

Wait a minute. Wait just a—

“
Was
it luck?” I ask.

“Finding the malfunction in the water purification plant? I don’t know what else I’d call it. It could have been days before they caught this. This was a highly sophisticated hacking.”

“And it’s only because of the destruction of the bioterrorism-response laboratory that we thought to manually check the control functions at that water plant.”

“Correct, sir. It was an obvious first-step precaution to take.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s my point.”

“I’m not following, sir.”

“Sam, if you were the terrorists, what order would you do things in? Would you contaminate the water supply first or blow up the lab first?”

“I…well, if I—”

“I’ll tell you what
I’d
do if I were the terrorists,” I go on. “I’d contaminate the water supply first. It wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. Maybe within hours, maybe within days. And
then
I’d blow up the lab. Because if you blow up the lab first…if you blow up a lab dedicated to emergency biological-terror response first…”

“You show your hand,”
says Carolyn.
“You know the first thing the federal government will do is check things like the water supply.”

“Which is exactly what we did,” I say.

“They showed their hand,”
Sam mumbles, as much to himself as to us, thinking it over.

“They
deliberately
showed their hand,” I say. “They tipped us off. They wanted us to go inspect all the water plants. They wanted us to find the cyberintrusion.”

Sam says,
“I don’t see how that helps—”

“Maybe they don’t want to poison the water in Los Angeles. Maybe they just want us to
think
they do. They want us to send the best, the most elite cybersecurity experts in the nation to LA, to the other side of the country, so that our pants are at our ankles when the virus strikes.”

I put my hands on top of my head, work it over again.

“We’re taking an awfully big risk in making that assumption, sir.”

I start pacing again. “Liz, you have any thoughts here?”

She looks surprised that I’m asking.
“You want to know what I’d do?”

“Yes, Liz. You went to one of those Ivy League schools, didn’t you? What would you do?”

“I—Los Angeles is a major metropolitan area. I wouldn’t risk it. I’d send the team to LA to fix that system.”

I nod. “Carolyn?”

“Sir, I understand your logic, but I have to agree with Sam and Liz. Imagine if it ever came out that you decided not to send—”

“No!” I shout, pointing at the computer screen. “No politics today. No worrying about what might come out later. This is the whole freakin’ show, people. Every decision I make today is a risk. We are on the high wire without a net. I make the wrong decision, either way, and we’re screwed. There’s no safe play here. There’s only a right play and a wrong play.”

“Send some of the team, then,”
Carolyn says.
“Not Devin and Casey, but some of the threat-response team at the Pentagon.”

“That team was put together as a cohesive unit,” I say. “You can’t cut a bicycle in half and still expect it to work. No—it’s all or nothing. Do we send them to LA or don’t we?”

The room is silent.

Sam says,
“Send them to LA.”

“Send them,”
says Carolyn.

“I agree,”
Liz chimes in.

Three highly intelligent people, all voting the same way. How much of their decision is based on reason and how much on fear?

They’re right. The smart money says send ’em.

My gut says otherwise.

So what’s it going to be, Mr. President?

“The team stays put for now,” I say. “Los Angeles is a decoy.”

S
aturday morning, 6:52 a.m. The limousine is parked on 13th Street Northwest by the curb.

Vice President Katherine Brandt sits in the back of the limo, her stomach churning, but not from hunger.

Her cover is airtight: every Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., she and her husband have a standing reservation for omelets just around the corner on G Street Northwest at Blake’s Café. They have a table ready for her, and by now her order is assumed—egg whites with feta cheese and tomatoes, extra-crispy hash browns.

So she has every reason to be here right now. Nobody would say otherwise if she were ever confronted.

Her husband, thank goodness, is out of town, another golfing trip. Or maybe it’s fishing. She loses track. It was easier when they lived in Massachusetts and she was gone during the week when she was in the Senate. Living together in Washington has been hard on them. She loves him, and they still have good times together, but he has no interest in politics, hates Washington, and has nothing to do since he sold his business. It’s put a strain on their relationship and makes it harder for her to put in her standard twelve-hour days. In this case, well-timed absences do make the heart grow fonder.

How is he going to like being First Husband?

We may find out sooner rather than later. Let’s see how the next half hour goes.

Next to her, filling in for her husband as a breakfast partner: her chief of staff, Peter Evian. He holds out his phone, showing her the time:
6:56
.

She gives him a quick nod.

“Madam Vice President,” he says, loud enough for the agents in front to hear, “since we have a few minutes before our reservation, would you mind if I made a personal call?”

“Not at all, Pete. Go right ahead.”

“I’ll just step out.”

“Take your time.”

And she knows, for appearance’s sake, that Peter will do just that—he will call his mother and have a nice long documented phone call with her.

Peter leaves the car and walks up 13th Street with his phone to his ear just as a group of three joggers turns the corner from G Street Northwest and moves past him toward the vice president’s limo.

The joggers slow as they near the vice-presidential motorcade. The man in the front of the pack, far older and less fit than his two partners, looks at the limo and seems to mention something to the others. They slow to a walk and engage with the Secret Service agents standing at their posts by her vehicle.

“Madam Vice President,” says her driver, tapping his ear, “the Speaker of the House is right out there. One of those joggers.”

“Lester Rhodes? You’re kidding,” she says, trying not to overdo her show of surprise.

“He wants to say a quick hello.”

“I’d sooner set my hair on fire,” she says.

The agent doesn’t laugh. He turns his head, waiting for more. “Shall I tell him—”

“Well, I can’t very well refuse him, can I? Tell him to come in.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He speaks into his earpiece.

“Give us privacy, Jay. I wouldn’t want you and Eric to get burned by any fireworks.”

This time the agent chuckles appropriately. “Yes, ma’am.”

Never hurts to be careful. Secret Service agents are subject to subpoena just like anyone else. So are the Capitol Police guarding the Speaker. Everyone would tell the same story under oath now, if it ever came to that. It was all a coincidence. The Speaker just happened to jog by while the vice president was waiting for the café to open.

The two agents in the front seat leave the limousine. The smell of sweat and body odor sweeps into the car as Lester Rhodes pops into the back, next to Katherine. “Madam Vice President, just wanted to say hello!”

The door closes behind him. Just the two of them inside the car.

Lester doesn’t look great in running gear. He needs to lose three or four inches in the midsection, and someone should have told him to wear longer running shorts. At least he’s wearing a hat—slate blue, with
US CAPITOL POLICE
in red stenciling—so she doesn’t have to look at that dopey perfectly sharp part he makes in his silver hair.

He lifts his hat and wipes his forehead with a sweatband. This idiot is wearing a sweatband.

Correction. He’s no idiot. He’s a ruthless tactician who orchestrated the takeover of the House, who knows his members better than they know themselves, who plays a long political game, who never forgets anyone who crosses him, however slight the insult or disrespect, who moves the pieces of the chessboard only after careful deliberation.

He turns to her, his lethal blue eyes reduced to a squint. “Kathy.”

“Lester. Be brief.”

“I have the votes in the House,” he says. “The House is wrapped up like a bow. Is that brief enough?”

One of the things she has learned over the years is the art of not responding too quickly. It buys you time and makes you seem more deliberative.

“Don’t act so uninterested, Kathy. If you weren’t interested, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

She allows his point. “What about the Senate?” she asks.

His shoulders rise. “You’re the president of the Senate, not me.”

She smirks. “But your party controls it.”

“You get twelve on your side, I guarantee my fifty-five will vote to convict.”

The vice president adjusts in her seat to face him squarely. “And why are you telling me this, Mr. Speaker?”

“Because I don’t have to pull this trigger.” He sits back in the seat, settles in. “I don’t have to impeach him. I could just let him twist in the wind, wounded and ineffective. He’s dead in the water, Kathy. He won’t be reelected. I’ll own him for the next two years. So why would I impeach him and watch the Senate remove him from office and give the voters a fresh face like you to run against?”

That possibility had occurred to her—that the president was of more use to Lester Rhodes wounded than gone. “Because you’ll be immortalized in your party for removing a president, that’s why,” she says.

“Maybe so.” He seems to relish that thought. “But there are more important things.”

“There’s something more important to you than being Speaker for life?”

Lester helps himself to a bottle of water in the side compartment, screws off the top, takes a big swallow, then smacks his lips with satisfaction. “One thing is more important, yes,” he says.

She opens her hands. “Do tell.”

A wide smile crosses his face, then disappears.

“It’s something President Duncan would never do,” he says. “But President Brandt, in her infinite wisdom, might.”

T
here’s going to be a vacancy on the Court,” says Lester.

“Oh?” She hadn’t heard that. You never know with these justices, most of whom stay in their seats until they’re well into their eighties. “Who?”

He turns and looks at her, his eyes narrowing, a poker face.
Deciding,
she thinks.
Deciding whether to tell me
.

“Whitman got some very bad news from his doctor a week ago,” he says.

“Justice Whitman is…”

“It was bad news,” he says. “Voluntarily or otherwise, he won’t make it through this presidential term. He’s being urged to step down right now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says.

“Are you?” A wry smile creeps across his face. “Anyway, do you know what hasn’t happened in a long time? There’s been no midwesterner on the Supreme Court since John Paul Stevens. Nobody from a federal court like…oh, like the Seventh Circuit. The heartland.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. If memory serves her, that court covers federal cases from Illinois, Wisconsin…

…and Indiana, Lester’s home state.

Of course.

“Who, Lester?”

“The former attorney general of Indiana,” he says. “Female. Moderate. Well respected. Got nearly unanimous approval from the Senate four years ago for the appeals court, including your vote. Good and young—forty-three years old—so that’s good legacy building. She could sit on the court for thirty years. She’s from my side of the aisle, but she’ll vote your way on the issues your people seem to care about.”

The vice president’s mouth drops open. She leans into him.

“Jesus, Lester,” she says. “You want me to put your daughter on the Supreme Court?”

She tries to remember what she knows about Lester’s daughter. Married with a few kids. Harvard undergrad, Harvard law. She worked in Washington, moved back home to Indiana, and ran for attorney general as a moderate counterweight to her father’s fire-and-brimstone politics. Everyone assumed the next step was the governorship, but then she went wonky and took an appointment to the federal appeals court.

And yes, then Senator Katherine Brandt voted yes on her nomination to the appeals court. The report on her was that she was nothing like her father—if anything she veered in the other direction, party affiliation notwithstanding. Smart and sensible.

Lester frames a newspaper headline with his hands. “Bipartisan, bipartisan, bipartisan,” he says. “A new day after the gridlock of the Duncan administration. She’ll be confirmed easily. I can guarantee the senators on my side, and your side will be happy. She’s pro-choice, Kathy, which seems to be all your people care about.”

It…might not be so crazy.

“You’ll start your presidency with a big win. Hell, you play this right, Kathy, you could serve nearly ten years in office.”

The vice president looks out the window. She remembers that rush when she first announced, when she was the favorite, when she could see it, feel it, taste it.

“Otherwise,” says Lester, “you won’t serve one day. I’ll keep Duncan in office, he’ll get crushed in the reelection, and you’ll be at a dead end.”

He’s probably right about the next election. She wouldn’t be at a dead end, as he’s saying, but it would be an uphill battle to run four years later as a former vice president who lost a reelection bid.

“And you’re okay,” she says, “with my serving two and a half terms as president?”

The Speaker of the House slides toward the door, reaches for the handle. “What the hell do
I
care who the president is?”

She shakes her head, bemused but not particularly surprised.

“You gotta get those twelve votes in the Senate, though,” he says, wagging a finger.

“And I suppose you have an idea how I would do that.”

Speaker Rhodes moves his hand off the door handle. “As a matter of fact, Madam Vice President, I do.”