The President Is Missing(116)

I nod. “But…”

“But imagine what happens if you do this, sir. If you accuse me of this. If you publicly ruin me. You think I’ll just take my medicine like a compliant little girl?” She puts a hand on her chest, cocks her head, makes a face. “You think I won’t fight back? The search of the vice president’s office—how’d that turn out? Find anything good?”

Well, the sorrowful, deer-in-the-headlights look is long gone. The gloves have come off. She’s thought all this through. Of course she has. She’s considered every angle. Carolyn Brock is nothing if not formidable.

“You had twenty opportunities to plant that phone in her office,” I say. “Kathy wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave that phone behind a bookcase, for Christ’s sake. She would’ve broken it into a hundred pieces.”

“Says you,” she responds. “My lawyers say something different. You put me on trial for treason, I put her on trial for treason. Look at what you have the chance to do right now, Mr. President.”

“I don’t care,” I say.

“Ohhh, yes, you do,” she responds, coming around the desk. “Because you want to do good things in this job. You don’t want what could be your greatest triumph to turn into a scandal. ‘Treason in the White House.’ Who was the traitor—the president’s closest adviser or the sitting vice president? Who cares? You picked both of us. Your judgment will be called into question. This tremendous, unprecedented success will turn into the worst thing that ever happened to you. Your feelings are hurt, Jon? Well, get the hell over it.”

She walks up to me, her hands together as if in prayer. “Think of the country. Think of the people out there who need you to be a good president—hell, a great president.”

I don’t say anything.

“You do this to me,” she says, “your presidency is over.”

Liz Greenfield enters the room again and looks at me.

I look at Carolyn.

“Give us another two minutes, Liz,” I say.





Chapter

119



My turn.

“You’re going to plead guilty,” I tell Carolyn when we’re alone again. “My judgment will be criticized, as it should be, for hiring you. I’ll deal with that. That’s a political problem. I will not sweep this under the rug and have you step away quietly. And you will plead guilty.”

“Mr. Pres—”

“Secret Service agents died, Carrie. Nina is dead. I could have easily been killed. That’s not something we sweep under the rug in this country.”

“Sir—”

“You want to go to trial? Then you can explain how Nina could possibly have gotten that first note into Kathy Brandt’s hands when Nina was in Europe and Kathy was here in Washington. What, she sent it by e-mail? Dropped it in a FedEx package? None of that would get past our security. But you, a chief of staff, on the last leg of our European trip, in Seville? Nina could have walked into that hotel and handed it to you. You don’t think we have the CCTV footage? The Spanish government sent it over. That last day in Spain, a few hours before we left. Nina entering the hotel and leaving an hour later.”

The flare in her eyes seems to dim.

“And how long before we manage to intercept and decrypt the message you sent to Suliman Cindoruk?”

She looks up at me with horror.

“The FBI and Mossad are looking for it right now. You tipped him off, didn’t you? None of your plan would have worked if Nina had survived. If she lived, if Augie and I got in her van at the baseball stadium, she and I would have worked out a deal. I would’ve persuaded the Georgians to take her back, she would have given me the keyword, you wouldn’t have gotten to be the hero, and Kathy wouldn’t have gotten to be the goat. And who knows? Maybe Nina would’ve given you up after all.”

Carolyn brings a hand to her face, her worst nightmare realized.

“You’d know better than anyone how to get hold of Suliman. You’re the one who orchestrated that first call through our intermediaries in Turkey. You could’ve done it again. She told you everything, Carrie. I read the rest of the text messages. She laid out her whole timeline. Augie, the baseball stadium, the midnight detonation of the virus. She trusted you. She trusted you, Carrie, and you killed her.”

That seems to be the poke in the wall that breaks the dam. Carolyn loses all composure, bursting into sobs, her entire body quaking.

And I find myself, in the end, more sad than angry. She and I had been through so much together. She charted my path to the presidency, helped me navigate the land mines of Washington, sacrificed countless hours of sleep and time with her family to ensure that the Oval Office ran with maximum efficiency. She is the best chief of staff I could have ever dreamed of having.

After a time, the tears stop. She shudders and wipes at her face. But her head still hangs low, shrouded by her hand. She can’t look me in the eye.

“Stop acting like some garden-variety criminal suspect,” I say. “And do the right thing. This isn’t a courtroom. This is the Oval Office. How could you do this, Carrie?”

“Says the man who gets to be president.”

The words come from a voice I don’t recognize, a voice I’ve never heard, a part of Carolyn that has managed to elude me during our years together. Her head rises from her hands, and she looks at me squarely, her face twisted up in agony and bitterness in a way I’ve never seen before. “Says the man who didn’t see his political career tanked just for saying a dirty word on a live mike.”