The President Is Missing(54)

“Mr. President,” he says, “the Sons of Jihad is not a…democracy. This kind of information Suli would not have shared with me. I can only tell you two things. One, obviously, is that Suli knows that Nina and I broke away from him, and he clearly tracked us somehow to the United States.”

“Obviously,” I say.

“And the second thing,” he says, “is that as far as I am aware, Suli’s capabilities are limited to computers. He is formidable. He can do considerable damage, as you well know. But he does not have at his disposal trained mercenaries.”

I put my hand against the wall. “Meaning…”

“Meaning he is working with someone else,” says Augie. “A nation-state, some country that wishes to bring the United States to its knees.”

“And one that compromised someone in my inner circle,” I add.





Chapter

41



Okay, Augie, next question,” I say. “What does Suliman want? He must want something. Or they—whoever’s working with him. What do they want?”

Augie cocks his head. “Why do you say this?”

“Why do I say that? Well, why else would they have shown us the virus in advance?” I put out my hand. “Augie, two weeks ago, a virus suddenly popped up on our systems inside the Pentagon. It appeared, then it disappeared. You know this. You said it to me yourself at the baseball stadium. It suddenly appeared and then just as suddenly disappeared”—I snap my fingers—“like that.”

“A peekaboo.”

“A peekaboo, yes, that’s what my experts called it. A peekaboo. Without any warning, without triggering any of our state-of-the-art security alerts, suddenly this virus flashed all over our internal Defense Department systems then disappeared just as quickly, without a trace. That’s how this whole thing started. We called it Dark Ages and formed a task force. Our best cyberspecialists have been working around the clock trying to find it, trying to stop it, but they can’t.”

Augie nods. “And it terrifies you.”

“Of course it does.”

“Because it infiltrated your system without any warning and evaporated into thin air just as quickly. You realize that it might come back again, or it might never have left. And you have no idea what it’s capable of doing to your systems.”

“All those things, yes,” I say. “But there was a reason for this sneak preview, this peekaboo. If whoever did this simply wanted to take down our systems, they would’ve just done it. They wouldn’t have warned us first. You only warn someone first if you want something, if you’re going to make a ransom demand.”

“Ransomware,” he says. “Yes, I understand your reasoning. When you saw the warning, you expected it to be followed by a demand of some kind.”

“Right.”

“Ah, so this—this is why you made that phone call to Suli.” Augie nods. “To ask him what his demand was.”

“Yes. He was trying to get my attention. So I let him know he did. I wanted to hear his demand without directly asking him for it, without intimating that the United States would give in to blackmail.”

“But he did not give you a demand.”

“No, he didn’t,” I say. “He played coy. He seemed…at a loss for words. Like he hadn’t expected my call. Oh, he made disparaging comments about my country, the usual type of stuff—but no demand. No acknowledgment of the peekaboo. So all I could do was threaten him. I told him that if his virus hurt our country, I’d come after him with every resource I could muster.”

“It must have seemed like…an odd conversation.”

“It was,” I said in agreement. “My tech people were certain this was the work of the SOJ. And they said the peekaboo was no glitch; it was intentional. So where was the ransom demand? Why would he go to the trouble of the peekaboo without demanding anything?”

Augie nods. “And then Nina came along. You thought she was going to deliver the ransom demand.”

“I did. You or Nina. So?” I throw up my hands, exasperation getting the better of me. “Where the hell is the goddamn ransom demand?”

Augie draws a deep breath. “There is not going to be a ransom demand,” he says.

“There’s—why not? Then why’d they send the warning?”

“Mr. President, the Sons of Jihad did not send that peekaboo,” he says. “And whoever may be sponsoring the Sons of Jihad did not send it, either.”

I stare at him. It takes me a moment. Eventually I get there.

“You sent it,” I say.

“Nina and I, yes. To warn you,” he says. “So you could start preparing mitigation protocols. And so that when Nina and I contacted you, you would take us seriously. Suliman knew nothing of this. The last thing he would ever do is give you an early warning of this virus.”

I work this over. Augie and Nina sent the early warning to us two weeks ago. And then, more than a week later, Nina found Lilly in Paris and whispered the magic words to her.

They came to warn me. To help me.

That’s the good news.

The bad news? That means that Suliman Cindoruk and the foreign agent who is behind him never wanted the United States to know about it in advance.