The President Is Missing(61)

We land effortlessly in a spot designed for helicopter landing, a square of open land among the vast woodlands of southwestern Virginia. We’re in the middle of an estate owned by a friend of mine, a venture capitalist who, by his own admission, doesn’t know a damn thing about what he calls “computer-technical stuff” but recognized a winner when he smelled it, investing millions in a start-up software company and turning those millions into billions. This is his getaway, his place to fish on the lake or hunt deer when he’s not in Manhattan or Silicon Valley. More than a thousand acres of Virginia pines and wildflowers, hunting and boating, long hikes and campfires. Lilly and I came here a few weekends after Rachel’s death, sitting on the pontoon, taking long walks, trying to find the secret to coping with loss.

“We’re the first ones here, right?” I ask Alex.

“Yes, sir.”

Good. I want at least a few minutes first, to put some pieces in place and clean myself up a bit. There is no room for error now.

In the next few hours, we could be altering world history for generations.

South of our landing spot there are paths leading to the boat dock, but otherwise all you can see is dense woodlands. North of us is a cabin built more than a decade ago out of white pine logs, the color of the wood having turned over the years from yellow-brown to a darker orange that almost matches the sky at dawn.

One of the best things about this place, particularly from Alex’s perspective, is its lack of accessibility. There is no way to enter this property from the south or west, because it is protected by a thirty-foot-high electric fence fitted with sensors and cameras. The east side of the property abuts a massive lake, which is guarded by Secret Service agents standing on the dock. And to access the property by car, you have to find an unmarked gravel road off the county highway, then turn down a dirt road barricaded by Secret Service vehicles.

I insisted on light protection, because this location must remain secret. What is about to happen has to remain completely confidential. And the Secret Service tends to stand out when it’s in full force—it’s intended to stand out. We’ve struck a good balance between secure and inconspicuous.

I walk on unsteady legs up the slight incline, carrying the IV stand in my hand because the wheels do not comfortably roll across the thick grass. The air out here is so different, so fresh and clean and sweet with the scent of wildflowers, that I am tempted to forget for the moment that the world may be on the brink of catastrophe.

On one side of the open lawn, a tent has been set up, all black. If not for the color, and the fact that a drape covers all sides, it would look like any other tent set up for an outdoor party. Instead it is a tent set up to allow private conversations, either in person or electronic, to occur in utter seclusion, jamming out all other signals, any attempts at eavesdropping.

There are going to be a lot of critical and confidential conversations today.

The agents have the cabin open. Inside, the rustic theme has been retained to a large extent—some wildlife trophies mounted on the walls, pictures hung in pine frames, a carved-out canoe serving as a bookcase.

A man and woman stand at attention as I enter, taking note of the IV in my arm but saying nothing. The man is Devin Wittmer, age forty-three, looking like a college professor—a sport jacket and trousers, dress shirt open at the collar, his long hair brushed back, some gray peppering the beard covering his thin face—otherwise youthful in appearance but with bags under his eyes that reflect the stress he’s endured over the last two weeks.

The woman is Casey Alvarez, age thirty-seven, slightly taller than Devin and with a bit more of a corporate-America look—her ink-black hair pulled back, red eyeglasses, a blouse and black pants.

Devin and Casey are the cochairs of the Imminent Threat Response Team, part of a task force I assembled after the virus we dubbed Dark Ages made its cameo peekaboo appearance on Pentagon servers two weeks ago. I told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost.

We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA.

Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits.

But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them.

“Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups.