The President Is Missing(96)

“Okay. So…” I lean forward.

“Sir, if we disconnect everything from the Internet…we disconnect everything from the Internet. If we order every Internet service provider in the country to shut off…”

“Then everything reliant on the Internet would shut down.”

“We’d be doing their work for them, sir.”

“And we’d be doing that not even knowing if it would be successful, sir,” says Devin. “For all we know, each virus has its own internal timer, independent of the Internet. The individual viruses might not be communicating with one another. We just don’t know.”

“Okay.” I spin my hands around each other. “Keep going. Keep thinking. What about…what happens to the wiper virus after it’s done wiping?”

Devin opens his hands. “After it’s done, the computer’s crashed. Once the core operating files are overwritten, the computer crashes forever.”

“But what happens to the virus?”

Casey shrugs. “What happens to a cancer cell after the host body dies?”

“So you’re saying the virus dies when the computer dies?”

“I…” Casey looks at Devin, then Augie. “Everything dies.”

“Well, what if the computer crashed but you reinstalled the operating software and booted the computer back up? Would the virus be right there waiting for us again? Or would it be dead? Or asleep forever, at least?”

Devin thinks about that for a second. “It wouldn’t matter, sir. The files you care about are already overwritten, gone forever.”

“Could we—I don’t suppose we could just turn off all our computers and wait for the time to pass?”

“No, sir.”

I step back and look at all three of them, Casey, Devin, and Augie. “Back to work. Be creative. Turn everything upside down. Find. A. Way.”

I storm out of the room, nearly running into Alex in the process, and head to the communications room.

It will be my last chance. My Hail Mary.





Chapter

89



My circle of six, all appearing before me on the computer screen. One of these six individuals—Brendan Mohan, NSA head; Rodrigo Sanchez, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Dominick Dayton, secretary of defense; Erica Beatty, CIA director; Sam Haber, secretary of homeland security; and Vice President Katherine Brandt—one of them…

“A traitor?” says Sam Haber, breaking the silence.

“It had to be one of you,” I say.

I can’t deny a certain relief, having finally spilled it. For the last four days I’ve known that there was someone on the inside working with our enemy. It’s colored my every interaction with this group. It feels good to finally reveal the truth to them.

“So here’s where we are,” I say. “Whoever you are, I don’t know why you did it. Money, I suppose, because I can’t bring myself to believe that any of you, who have devoted your lives to public service, would hate this country so much that you’d want to see it go down in flames.

“Maybe you got in over your head. Maybe you thought this was some garden-variety hack. Some theft of sensitive information or something. You didn’t realize that you’d be unleashing the hounds of hell on our country. And by the time you did realize it, it was too late to turn back. I could believe that. I could believe that you didn’t intend for things to get this bad.”

What I’m saying must be true. I can’t believe that our traitor really wants to destroy our country. He or she may have been compromised somehow with blackmail, or may have succumbed to good old-fashioned bribery, but I just can’t believe that one of these six people is secretly an agent of a foreign government who wants to destroy the United States.

But even if I’m wrong, I want the traitor to think I’m seeing things this way. I’m trying to give him or her an out.

“But none of that matters now,” I continue. “What matters is stopping this virus before it detonates and wreaks its havoc. So I’m going to do something I never thought I’d do.”

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have no other choice.

“Whoever you are, if you step forward and help me stop the virus, I’ll pardon you for all the crimes you’ve committed.”

I search the faces of the six as I say these words, but the screens are too small to note any particular reaction.

“Whoever you are, the other five of you are witnesses to what I’ve just said. I will pardon you of all your crimes if you cooperate with me, if you help me stop the virus and tell me who is behind this.

“And I will classify the information. You will resign your position and leave the country immediately and never come back. Nobody will know why you left. Nobody will know what you did. If you received money from our enemy, you can keep it. You will leave this country, and you’ll never be allowed back in. But you’ll have your freedom. Which is one hell of a lot more than you deserve.

“If you don’t come forward now, know this: you will not get away with it. I will not rest until we figure out who is responsible. You will be prosecuted and convicted of so many crimes I couldn’t list them all. But one of them will be treason against the United States. You will be sentenced to death.”