I return to the Oval Office with Carolyn as the clock slowly, agonizingly approaches five. We are silent. A lot of working men and women look forward to five o’clock on Friday because it signals the end of the work week, some much-needed relaxation and time with family.
But for the last four days, Carolyn and I have been waiting and planning for this particular hour of this particular day not knowing whether it’s the beginning of something, the end of something, or both.
It was last Monday, just after noon, when I received the phone call on my personal cell. Carolyn and I were grabbing turkey sandwiches in the kitchen. We already knew we were facing an imminent threat. We didn’t understand the scope or magnitude of it. We had no idea how to stop it. Our mission in Algeria had already failed in spectacular fashion for all the world to see. Suliman Cindoruk remained on the loose. My entire national security team had been subpoenaed to testify the following day, Tuesday, before the House Select Committee.
But when I put down my sandwich and answered that call in the kitchen, everything changed. The dynamic was completely upended. For the first time, I had the tiniest sliver of hope. But I was also more scared than ever.
“Five p.m. Eastern time, Friday, May the eleventh,” I was told.
So as the time approaches five o’clock on Friday, May 11, I am no longer thinking about the seven innocent children in the Republic of Yemen who are dead under a pile of ash and rubble based on a decision I made.
Now I’m wondering what in the hell is about to happen to our country and how I can best deal with it.
“Where is she?” I mumble.
“It’s not quite five, sir. She’ll be here.”
“You don’t know that,” I say as I pace. “You can’t know that. Call down.”
Before she can, her phone buzzes. She answers. “Yes, Alex…she—all right…she’s alone?…yes…that’s fine, do what you need to do…yes, but be quick about it.”
She puts away her phone and looks at me.
“She’s here,” I say.
“Yes, sir, she’s here. They’re searching her.”
I look out the window, up at the bruised sky, threatening rain. “What is she going to say, Carrie?”
“I wish I knew, sir. I will be monitoring.”
The instruction delivered to me was a one-on-one meeting, no exceptions. So I will be alone, physically, in the Oval Office with my guest. But Carolyn will be watching from a monitor in the Roosevelt Room.
I bounce on my toes, not knowing what to do with my hands. My stomach is in full-scale revolt. “God, I haven’t been this nervous since…” I can’t finish the sentence. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous.”
“You don’t show it, sir.”
I nod. “Neither do you.” Carolyn never shows weakness. It’s not her way. And it’s a comfort right now, because she’s the only one I can count on.
She’s the only person in the US government, besides me, who knows about this meeting.
Carolyn leaves. I stand by my desk and wait for JoAnn to open the door for my visitor.
After what feels like an endless slog of time, the clock moving in slow motion, JoAnn opens the door. “Mr. President,” she says.
I nod. This is it.
“Show her in,” I say.
Chapter
13
The girl enters the room wearing work boots, torn jeans, and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt bearing the word PRINCETON. She is waif-thin, with a long neck, prominent cheekbones, and narrow eyes spread apart in a way that suggests eastern Europe. Her hair is in one of those styles I’ve never understood, the right side of her head shaved in a military buzz cut with longer hair hanging over it, down to her bony shoulders.
A cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker.
She scans the room, but not the way most people who enter the Oval Office do. First-time visitors soak it all in, eagerly devour all the portraits and knickknacks, marvel at the presidential seal, the Resolute desk.
Not her. What I see in her eyes, behind the impenetrable wall of her face, is pure loathing. Hatred of me, this office, everything it stands for.
But she’s tense, too, on alert—wondering if someone will jump her, handcuff her, throw a hood over her head.
She fits the physical description I received. She gave the name at the gate that we expected. It’s her. But I have to confirm, regardless.
“Say the words,” I tell her.
She raises her eyebrows. She can’t be surprised.
“Say it.”
She rolls her eyes.
“‘Dark Ages,’” she says, curling her r’s, as if the words were poison on her tongue. Her accent is heavily eastern European.
“How do you know those words?”
She shakes her head, clucks her tongue. There will be no answer to my question.
“Your…Secret Service…does not like me,” she says. Doze not like me.
“You were setting off the metal detectors.”
“I do that…always. The…what is your word? The bomb frag—the—”
“Shrapnel,” I say. “Parts of a bomb. From an explosion.”
“This, yes,” she says, tapping her forehead. “They told me that two…centimeters to the right…and I would not have woken up.”
She curls a thumb into the belt loop of her jeans. There is defiance in her eyes, a challenge.
“Would you like to know…what I did to deserve it?”
I’m going to guess it had something to do with some military strike ordered by an American president—maybe me—in some faraway land. But I know next to nothing about this woman. I don’t know her real name or where she’s from. I don’t know her motivation or her plan. After first making contact with me—indirectly—four days ago, on Monday, she fell off the map, and despite my considerable efforts to learn more about her, I failed. I don’t know anything about her for certain.
But I am reasonably sure that this young woman holds the fate of the free world in her hands.
“I was walking my…cousin…to mass when the missile hit,” she says.
I shove my hands in my pockets. “You’re safe here,” I say.
Her eyes drift up and away, enlarging them, a beautiful copper color. It makes her look even younger. Less of the hardened image she’s trying to project and more the scared kid she must be, underneath it all.
She should be scared. I hope she’s scared. I sure as hell am, but I’m not going to show it any more than she will.
“No,” she says. “I do not think.” I donut zink.
“I promise.”
She blinks her eyes heavily, looks away with disdain. “The American president promises.” She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and produces an envelope, tattered and folded in half. She straightens it and places it on the table next to the couch.
“My partner does not know what I know,” she says. “Only I do. I did not write it down.” She taps the right side of her head. “It is in here only.”
Her secret, she means. She didn’t put it on a computer we could hack or in an e-mail we could intercept. She is storing it in one place only, a place that not even our sophisticated technology can penetrate—her mind.
“And I do not know what my partner knows,” she says.
Right. She has separated herself from her partner. Each of them, she is telling me, holds part of the puzzle. Each of them is indispensable.
“I need both of you,” I say. “I understand. Your message on Monday was clear about that.”
“And you will be alone tonight,” she says.
“Yes. Your message was clear on that, too.”
She nods, as if we have settled something.
“How do you know ‘Dark Ages’?” I ask again.
Her eyes turn down. From the table by the couch, she picks up a photograph of my daughter and me walking from Marine One toward the White House.
“I remember the first time I saw a helicopter,” she says. “I was a young girl. It was on the television. There was a hotel in Dubai that was opening. The Mari-Poseidon, it was called. This…majestic hotel on the waters of the Persian Gulf. It had a heli—a heli…pad?”