The President Is Missing(76)

I gesture down to the backyard. He nods, and we start to walk into the backyard. “The tent, yes,” he says. “Appropriate for this conversation.”

The black tent has no door, no zipper, only heavy overlapping flaps on the front. I put my hands together and slide them through, divide the flaps and enter, as Prime Minister Volkov follows.

Inside, all outside light is blocked out, the only illumination provided by artificial kerosene lamps in the corners. A small wooden table and chairs have been set up, as if a picnic were planned, but I make no move for them. For this conversation, just the two of us—just me and a man reported to be responsible for the savage butchering of innocent civilians, a man representing a country that may well be behind this terrifying attack on my country—I prefer to stand.

“President Chernokev has been quite alarmed at your provocative military actions of the last thirty-six hours,” he says. With his thick accent, the words drip from his tongue, particularly provocative.

“Just training missions,” I say.

A sour smile passes and fades from his lips. “Training missions,” he says, the words bitter on his tongue. “Just as in 2014.”

In 2014, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States sent two B-2 stealth bombers to Europe for “training missions.” The message was clear enough.

“Just like that, yes,” I say.

“But far more extensive,” he says. “The movement of aircraft carriers and nuclear-armed submarines into the North Sea. Your stealth aircraft exercises over Germany. And of course the joint military exercises in Latvia and Poland.”

Two former Warsaw Pact countries, now members of NATO. One of them, Latvia, sharing a border with Russia, and the other, Poland, not far away, on Belarus’s southwestern flank.

“Including a simulated nuclear strike,” he adds.

“Russia has done the same thing recently,” I note.

“Not within fifty miles of your borders.” His jaw muscles clench, squaring off his face. There is a challenge in his words, but there is fear, too.

The fear is real. Neither of us wants war. Neither of us will win. The question is always, how far are we willing to be pushed? That’s why we must be so careful about drawing lines in the sand. If those lines are crossed and we do nothing, we lose credibility. If they are crossed and we respond—well, that response is the war that neither of us wants.

“Mr. Prime Minister,” I say, “you know the reason I invited you. The virus.”

He blinks, his thick eyebrows bend, as if surprised at the segue. But that’s a feint. He knows one thing follows the other.

“We discovered the presence of the virus about two weeks ago,” I say. “And when we did, the first thing that occurred to us was our vulnerability to a military attack. If the virus were to disable our military effectiveness, we would be open to an attack. So, Mr. Prime Minister, we immediately did two things.

“The first thing we did was re-create our continental systems, here at home. We basically started over. Call it reinventing the wheel, reverse engineering, whatever you like. We’ve rebuilt our operational systems, disconnected from any device that could possibly be infected by the virus. New servers, new computers—everything new.

“We started with the things that matter the most—our strategic-defense systems, our nuclear fleet—and made sure that they were re-created free of any virus. And then we went from there. I’m happy to report, Mr. Prime Minister, that we have successfully completed that operation. It took us every second of these two weeks, but we did it. We have rebuilt our entire military operational infrastructure in the continental United States. We built those systems the first time around, after all, so it wasn’t as hard as you might think to re-create them.”

Volkov is stoic, taking this in. He doesn’t trust me any more than I trust him. We didn’t publicize any of this work. Our re-creation of our military infrastructure was done, for obvious reasons, in utter secrecy. From his perspective, I might be bluffing. He can’t confirm anything I’ve just told him.

So now we’re going to talk about something he can confirm.

“The second thing we did, simultaneously,” I say, “was make sure we disconnected our overseas military infrastructure from anything stateside. The same kind of reverse engineering. The long and short of it is, any computerized systems in our European arsenal that depended on our continental infrastructure—well, we replaced them with new systems. We made them independent. We wanted to make sure that, if all our systems in the United States crashed, if all our computers went kaput…”

Something seems to dim in Volkov’s eyes. He blinks and looks away, but then quickly returns his eyes to mine.

“We wanted to make sure, Mr. Prime Minister,” I say, “that even if someone utterly and completely destroyed our stateside military operational systems, we were armed and ready with our European resources—that we were prepared to respond militarily against any nation responsible for the virus. Or any nation that had the ridiculous idea that it could take advantage of the United States during that difficult time by, say, attacking us.

“So clearly, these European training exercises were necessary,” I say. “And the good news is, they have all been successful. You probably already know that.”

The color in his face changes. He does know that. The Russians, obviously, closely followed our training exercises. But he’s not going to give me the satisfaction of acknowledging that fact.