The President Is Missing(69)

Chancellor Juergen Richter sits with his one aide, a fair-haired young man named Dieter Kohl, the head of Germany’s BND, its international intelligence service. Prime Minister Noya Baram brought her chief of staff, a stout, formal, older man who once served as a general in the Israeli army.

We’re trying to keep this meeting a secret, which means we had to keep it small. One leader and one aide each, plus their technical gurus. This isn’t 1942, when FDR and Churchill met secretly at a spot just off the Intracoastal Waterway, in southern Florida, for a series of war conferences. They ate at a great restaurant called Cap’s Place and sent the owner letters of appreciation, which are now the treasures of an eatery otherwise known for its seafood, Key lime pie, and 1940s atmosphere.

Nowadays, with an emboldened and ravenous press, the Internet and social media, all eyes on world leaders day and night, it is exceptionally difficult for any of us to move about incognito. The only thing in our favor is security: given terrorism threats these days, we are able to keep the specifics of our travel plans under wraps.

Noya Baram is attending a conference tomorrow in Manhattan and said she was using Saturday to visit family in the United States. Considering she has a daughter who lives in Boston, a brother outside Chicago, and a grandchild completing her freshman year at Columbia, her alibi is plausible. Whether it will hold up is another story.

Chancellor Richter used his wife’s cancer as a cover, moving up a scheduled trip to Sloan Kettering to yesterday, Friday. Their stated plan is to spend the weekend in New York City with friends.

“Excuse me,” I say to the group gathered in the cabin’s living room as my phone buzzes. “I have to take this call. It’s—it’s one of those days.”

I wish I had an aide with me, too, but I need Carolyn at the White House, and there isn’t anybody else I can trust.

I move onto the deck overlooking the woods. The Secret Service is taking the lead, but there is a small contingent of German and Israeli agents in the yard and spread out around the property.

“Mr. President,” says Liz Greenfield. “The girl, Nina. Her fingerprints came back. Her name is Nina Shinkuba. We don’t have much of a dossier on her, but we think she was born almost twenty-six years ago in the Abkhazia region of the republic of Georgia.”

“The separatist territory,” I say. “The disputed territory.” The Russians backed Abkhazia’s claim of autonomy from Georgia. The 2008 war between Russia and Georgia was fought over it, at least ostensibly.

“Yes, sir. Nina Shinkuba was suspected by the Georgian government of bombing a train station on the Georgian side of the disputed border in 2008. There was a series of attacks on both sides of the border before the war broke out between Abkhazia and Georgia.”

Which became the war between Russia and Georgia.

“She was a separatist?”

“Apparently. The republic of Georgia calls her a terrorist.”

“So that would put her in the category of anti-Western,” I say. “Would it also make her pro-Russian?”

“The Russians were with them. The Russians and Abkhazians fought on the same side of that war. It’s a logical inference.”

But not an automatic one.

“Should we reach out to the Georgians to see what else we can learn about her?”

“Hold that thought,” I say. “I want to ask someone else first.”





Chapter

57



I only knew her as Nina,” says Augie, haggard from his work in the basement, rubbing his eyes as we stand together in the cabin’s living room.

“No last name. That didn’t strike you as odd? You fell in love with a woman and you didn’t know her last name?”

He lets out a sigh. “I knew she had a past she was escaping. I did not know the details. I did not care.”

I watch him, but he doesn’t say more, doesn’t seem to be struggling to explain himself any more than that.

“She was an Abkhazian separatist,” I say. “They worked with the Russians.”

“So you have said. If she was…sympathetic to Russia, it was never something she shared with me. You have always known, Mr. President, that the Sons of Jihad attacked Western institutions. We oppose the influence of the West in southeastern Europe. Of course, this is consistent with the Russian agenda. But this does not mean that we work for the Russians. My understanding is that, yes, Suliman has accepted money from the Russians in the past, but he no longer needs their money.”

“He sells his services to the highest bidder,” I say.

“He does whatever he wants. Not always for money. He answers to no man but himself.”

That’s how our intelligence has understood it, too.

“That’s how Nina was injured,” I say. “That shrapnel in her head. She said a missile struck close to a church. It was the Georgians. It must have been.”

Augie’s eyes trail away, looking off into the distance, filling with tears. “Does it really matter?” he whispers.

“It matters if she was working with the Russians, Augie. If I can figure out who’s behind this, I have more options at my disposal.”

Augie nods, still looking off in the distance. “Threats. Deterrence. Mr. President,” he says, “if we cannot stop this virus, your threats will be empty. Your attempts at deterrence will mean nothing.”