The President Is Missing(13)

“Let’s do a protein treatment,” she says.

“What—now?”

“Yes, now.”

“The last time I did that I couldn’t string a sentence together for the better part of a day. That’s a nonstarter, Doc. Not today.”

She stops, the swab in her hand trailing down to my knuckles.

“Then a steroid infusion.”

“No. The pills mess with my head enough.”

Her head angles slightly as she considers her response. I’m not the usual patient, after all. Most patients do whatever their doctors tell them. Most patients are not leaders of the free world.

She goes back to prepping my arm, frowning deeply, until she has the needle poised. “Mr. President,” she says in a tone I heard my grade-school teachers use, “you can tell anyone else in the world what to do. But you can’t order your body around.”

“Doc, I—”

“You’re at risk of internal bleeding,” she says. “Bleeding in the brain. You could have a stroke. Whatever it is you’re dealing with, it can’t be worth that risk.”

She looks me in the eye. I don’t respond. Which in itself is a response.

“It’s something that bad?” she whispers. She shakes her head, waves her hand. “Don’t. I—I know you can’t tell me.”

Yes, it’s something that bad. And the attack could come an hour from now or later today. It could have happened twenty seconds ago, and Carolyn could be rushing in to tell me about it right now.

I can’t be out of commission for even an hour, much less several. I can’t risk it.

“It has to wait,” I say. “A couple of days, probably.”

A bit rattled by what she doesn’t know, Deb just nods and plunges the needle into my arm.

“I’ll double the steroids,” I say, which means it will feel like I’ve drunk four beers instead of two. It’s a line I have to straddle. I can’t be out of commission, but I have to stay alive.

She finishes in silence, packing away the blood draw in her bag and getting ready to leave. “You have your job, and I have mine,” she says. “I’ll get the labs back within two hours. But we both know your count is cratering.”

“Yes, we do.”

She stops at the doorway and turns to me. “You don’t have a couple of days, Mr. President,” she says. “You might not even have one.”





Chapter

6



Today, and only today, they will celebrate.

He must give them that. His small team has worked day and night, with purpose and devotion and with great success. Everyone needs a break.

The wind off the river lifts his hair. He pulls on his cigarette, the orange tip glowing in the dim early evening air. He savors the view from the penthouse terrace overlooking the river Spree, the city bustling across the water—the East Side Gallery, the entertainment center. The Mercedes-Benz Arena is hosting a concert tonight. He doesn’t recognize the group’s name, but the muted sounds, audible even from across the river, tell him that the music involves heavy guitar and a thumping bass. This part of Berlin has changed considerably since he was last here, a mere four years ago.

He turns back to look inside the penthouse, 160 square meters, with four bedrooms and a designer open-plan kitchen where his team is laughing and gesturing, pouring Champagne and probably already halfway drunk. The four of them, all geniuses in their own right, none of them over the age of twenty-five, some of them probably still virgins.

Elmurod, his stomach hanging over his belt, his beard unkempt, wearing an insipid blue hat that reads VET WWIII. Mahmad, already with his shirt off, showing off his decidedly unimpressive biceps in a mock bodybuilder pose. All four of them turn toward the door, and Elmurod goes to answer it. When the door opens, eight women walk in, all wearing teased-up hair and skintight dresses, all with bodies of centerfolds, all paid princely sums to show his team the night of their lives.

He steps carefully along the terrace, wary of the heat and pressure sensors—deactivated right now, of course—rigged to detonate the entire terrace should anything heavier than a bird land on it. It set him back nearly a million euros, these precautions.

But what’s one million euros when you’re about to earn a hundred million?

One of the prostitutes, an Asian who can’t be over twenty, with boobs that can’t be real, with a sudden interest in him that can’t be sincere, approaches him as he walks back into the penthouse and slides the door shut.

“Wie lautet dein name?” she asks. What is your name?

He smiles. She is just flirting, playing a part. She doesn’t care what he tells her.

But there are people who would pay anything, or do anything, to know the answer to her question. And just once, he’d like to let down his guard and answer the question truthfully.

I am Suliman Cindoruk, he’d like to say. And I’m about to reboot the world.





Chapter

7



I close the folder on my desk after reviewing the various items that my White House counsel, Danny Akers, and his staff have prepared for me in consultation with the attorney general.

A draft executive order declaring martial law throughout the nation and a legal memorandum exploring the constitutionality of doing so.