The President Is Missing(66)

I get out of my chair, feeling claustrophobic down here. Pacing helps me. Gets the juices flowing. I need them all flowing in the direction of the best possible decision.

The gas explosion…the decimated biological lab…the tampering at the water lab.

Wait a minute. Wait just a—

“Was it luck?” I ask.

“Finding the malfunction in the water purification plant? I don’t know what else I’d call it. It could have been days before they caught this. This was a highly sophisticated hacking.”

“And it’s only because of the destruction of the bioterrorism-response laboratory that we thought to manually check the control functions at that water plant.”

“Correct, sir. It was an obvious first-step precaution to take.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s my point.”

“I’m not following, sir.”

“Sam, if you were the terrorists, what order would you do things in? Would you contaminate the water supply first or blow up the lab first?”

“I…well, if I—”

“I’ll tell you what I’d do if I were the terrorists,” I go on. “I’d contaminate the water supply first. It wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. Maybe within hours, maybe within days. And then I’d blow up the lab. Because if you blow up the lab first…if you blow up a lab dedicated to emergency biological-terror response first…”

“You show your hand,” says Carolyn. “You know the first thing the federal government will do is check things like the water supply.”

“Which is exactly what we did,” I say.

“They showed their hand,” Sam mumbles, as much to himself as to us, thinking it over.

“They deliberately showed their hand,” I say. “They tipped us off. They wanted us to go inspect all the water plants. They wanted us to find the cyberintrusion.”

Sam says, “I don’t see how that helps—”

“Maybe they don’t want to poison the water in Los Angeles. Maybe they just want us to think they do. They want us to send the best, the most elite cybersecurity experts in the nation to LA, to the other side of the country, so that our pants are at our ankles when the virus strikes.”

I put my hands on top of my head, work it over again.

“We’re taking an awfully big risk in making that assumption, sir.”

I start pacing again. “Liz, you have any thoughts here?”

She looks surprised that I’m asking. “You want to know what I’d do?”

“Yes, Liz. You went to one of those Ivy League schools, didn’t you? What would you do?”

“I—Los Angeles is a major metropolitan area. I wouldn’t risk it. I’d send the team to LA to fix that system.”

I nod. “Carolyn?”

“Sir, I understand your logic, but I have to agree with Sam and Liz. Imagine if it ever came out that you decided not to send—”

“No!” I shout, pointing at the computer screen. “No politics today. No worrying about what might come out later. This is the whole freakin’ show, people. Every decision I make today is a risk. We are on the high wire without a net. I make the wrong decision, either way, and we’re screwed. There’s no safe play here. There’s only a right play and a wrong play.”

“Send some of the team, then,” Carolyn says. “Not Devin and Casey, but some of the threat-response team at the Pentagon.”

“That team was put together as a cohesive unit,” I say. “You can’t cut a bicycle in half and still expect it to work. No—it’s all or nothing. Do we send them to LA or don’t we?”

The room is silent.

Sam says, “Send them to LA.”

“Send them,” says Carolyn.

“I agree,” Liz chimes in.

Three highly intelligent people, all voting the same way. How much of their decision is based on reason and how much on fear?

They’re right. The smart money says send ’em.

My gut says otherwise.

So what’s it going to be, Mr. President?

“The team stays put for now,” I say. “Los Angeles is a decoy.”





Chapter

54



Saturday morning, 6:52 a.m. The limousine is parked on 13th Street Northwest by the curb.

Vice President Katherine Brandt sits in the back of the limo, her stomach churning, but not from hunger.

Her cover is airtight: every Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., she and her husband have a standing reservation for omelets just around the corner on G Street Northwest at Blake’s Café. They have a table ready for her, and by now her order is assumed—egg whites with feta cheese and tomatoes, extra-crispy hash browns.

So she has every reason to be here right now. Nobody would say otherwise if she were ever confronted.

Her husband, thank goodness, is out of town, another golfing trip. Or maybe it’s fishing. She loses track. It was easier when they lived in Massachusetts and she was gone during the week when she was in the Senate. Living together in Washington has been hard on them. She loves him, and they still have good times together, but he has no interest in politics, hates Washington, and has nothing to do since he sold his business. It’s put a strain on their relationship and makes it harder for her to put in her standard twelve-hour days. In this case, well-timed absences do make the heart grow fonder.