The President Is Missing(63)

A predictable response. What the terrorists would expect. Is this a head fake? Are they feinting toward LA so we’ll move everything on the West Coast there, then hit another spot like Seattle or San Francisco while our guard is down?

I throw up my hands. “Why do I feel like we’re chasing our goddamn tails here, people?”

“Because it always feels that way, sir,” says Sam. “It’s what we do. We play defense against invisible opponents. We try to smoke them out. We try to predict what they might do. We hope it never happens but try to be as ready as possible if it does.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn’t.”

“Sir, we’re on this. We’ll do everything we can.”

I run my fingers through my hair. “Get to it, Sam. Keep me updated.”

“Yes, sir.”

The screen adjusts to show just Carolyn and Liz as Sam signs off.

“Any more good news?” I ask. “A hurricane on the East Coast? Tornadoes? An oil spill? Is a goddamn volcano erupting somewhere?”

“One thing, sir,” says Liz. “About the gas explosion.”

“Something new?”

She cocks her head. “More like something old,” she says.

Liz fills me in. And I didn’t think I could feel any worse.

Ten minutes later, I open the thick door and leave the communications room as Alex approaches me. He nods to me.

“They just reached the security perimeter up the road,” says Alex. “The Israeli prime minister has arrived.”





Chapter

51



The delegation for the Israeli prime minister, Noya Baram, arrives as planned: one advance car that arrived earlier and now two armored SUVs, one carrying a security detail that will leave once she has safely arrived and the other carrying the prime minister herself.

Noya emerges from the SUV wearing sunglasses, a jacket, and slacks. She looks up at the sky for a moment, as if to confirm that it’s still there. It’s one of those days.

Noya is sixty-four, with gray dominating her shoulder-length hair and dark eyes that can be both fierce and engaging. She is one of the most fearless people I’ve ever known.

She called me the night I was elected president. She asked if she could call me Jonny, which nobody in my life had ever done. Surprised, off balance, giddy from the win, I said, “Sure you can!” She’s called me that ever since.

“Jonny,” she says to me now, removing her sunglasses and kissing both my cheeks. With her hands clasped over mine, a tight smile on her face, she says, “You look like someone who could use a friend right now.”

“I certainly could.”

“You know that Israel will never leave your side.”

“I do know that,” I say. “And my gratitude knows no bounds, Noya.”

“David has been helpful?”

“Very.”

I reached out to Noya when I discovered the leak in my national security team. I didn’t know whom I could trust and whom I couldn’t, so I was forced to outsource some of my reconnaissance work to the Mossad, dealing directly with David Guralnick, its director.

Noya and I have had disagreements over the two-state solution and settlements on the West Bank, but when it comes to the things that bring us together today, there is no daylight between our positions. A safe and stable United States means a safe and stable Israel. They have every reason to help us and no reason not to.

And they have the finest cybersecurity experts in the world. They play defense better than anybody. Two of them have arrived with Noya and will join Augie and my people.

“I am the first to arrive?”

“You are, Noya, you are. And I wouldn’t mind a word with you before the others get here. If I had time to give you a tour—”

“What—a tour?” She waves her hand. “It’s a cabin. I’ve seen cabins before.”

We walk past the cabin into the yard. She acknowledges the black tent.

We walk toward the woods, the trees thirty feet high, the wildflowers yellow and violet, following the stone path to the lake. Alex Trimble follows from behind, speaking into his radio.

I tell her everything she doesn’t already know, which isn’t very much.

“What we have heard about so far,” she says, “did not sound like plans for a biological attack in a major city.”

“I agree. But maybe the idea is to destroy our ability to respond, then introduce some biological pathogen. That would include destroying physical buildings and our technological infrastructure.”

“True, true,” she says.

“The gas pipeline explosion could be telling,” I say.

“How so?”

“Some computer virus—some malware—caused a disruption,” I say. “We just confirmed it a few minutes ago. The virus prompted a forced increase in pressure that caused the explosion.”

“Yes? And?”

I let out air and stop, turn to her. “Noya, in 1982, we did the same thing to the Soviets.”

“Ah. You sabotaged one of their pipelines?”

“My FBI director just told me. Reagan learned that the Soviets were trying to steal some industrial software,” I say. “So he decided to let them steal it. But we tampered with it first. We booby-trapped it. So when the Soviets stole it and used it, it caused a tremendous explosion in the Siberian pipeline. Our people said that the satellite imagery showed one of the biggest explosions they’d ever seen.”