“The president said that. He said you can’t tell me.”
“The order wasn’t specific to you, of course, ma’am.”
“But it includes me.”
“I can’t give you the information you want, Madam Vice President.”
The vice president slams her hands down on the table, pushes herself out of her chair. “Since when,” she says after a moment, “does the president go into hiding from us?”
Carolyn stands, too, and they stare at each other again. She doesn’t expect Carolyn to respond, and Carolyn doesn’t disappoint her. Most people would wilt under the gaze, under the discomfort of silence, but Brandt is pretty sure that Carolyn will stare back at her all night if that’s what it takes.
“Is there anything else, Madam Vice President?” That same cool efficiency in her voice, which only unnerves the vice president all the more.
“Why are we on lockdown?” she asks.
“The violence last night,” says Carolyn. “Just a precau—”
“No,” she says. “The violence last night was an FBI and Secret Service investigation, right? A counterfeiting investigation? That’s what was announced publicly, at least.”
The chief of staff doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. That story always sounded bogus to Brandt.
“That violence—it might require a brief lockdown initially,” she continues. “A few minutes, an hour, while we sort it all out. But I’ve been down here all night. Am I supposed to remain down here?”
“For the time being, yes, ma’am.”
She walks toward Carolyn and stops just short. “Then don’t tell me it’s because of the violence in the capital last night. Tell me why we’re really on lockdown. Tell me why we’re in a continuity-of-government protocol. Tell me why the president fears for his life right now.”
Carolyn blinks hard a few times but otherwise remains stoic. “Ma’am, I was given a direct order by the president for a lockdown, for COG protocol. It’s not my place to question that order. It’s not my place to ask why. And it’s not—” She looks away, curls her lips inside her mouth.
“And it’s not my place, either—is that what you were going to say, Carolyn?”
Carolyn turns and looks her in the eye. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what I was going to say.”
The vice president slowly nods, doing a slow burn.
“Is this about impeachment?” she asks, though she couldn’t imagine how.
“No, ma’am.”
“Is this a matter of national security?”
Carolyn doesn’t answer, makes a point of remaining still.
“Is this about Dark Ages?”
Carolyn flinches but doesn’t, won’t, answer that question.
“Well, Ms. Brock,” she says, “I may not be president—”
Yet.
“—but I am the vice president. I don’t take orders from you. And I haven’t heard a lockdown order from the president. He knows how to reach me. I’m in the phone book. Anytime he wants to ring me and tell me what the hell is going on.”
She turns and heads for the door.
“Where are you going?” Carolyn asks, her voice different, stronger, less deferential.
“Where do you think I’m going? I have a full day. Including an interview with Meet the Press, whose first question I’m sure will be ‘Where’s the president?’”
And more important, and before that: the meeting she scheduled last night, after receiving the phone call in her personal residence. It could be one of the most interesting meetings of her life.
“You aren’t leaving the operations center.”
The vice president stops at the doorway. She turns to face the White House chief of staff, who just spoke to her in a way that nobody ever has since the election—since long before that, actually. “Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said.” The chief of staff is done, apparently, with any semblance of deference. “The president wants you in the operations center.”
“And you hear me, you unelected flunky. I only take orders from the president. Until I hear from him, I’ll be in my office in the West Wing.”
She walks out of the room into the hallway, where her chief of staff, Peter Evian, looks up from his phone.
“What’s happening?” he asks, keeping pace with her.
“I’ll tell you what’s not happening,” she says. “I’m not going down with this ship.”
Chapter
45
The calm before the storm.
The calm, that is, not for him but for them, for his people, his small crew of computer geniuses, who’ve spent the last twelve hours living the good life. Fondling women who normally would never bother to glance in their direction, who screwed them ten different ways, showed them delights they’d never experienced in their young lives. Drinking Champagne from bottles that typically reach the lips of only the world’s elite. Feasting on a smorgasbord of caviar and paté and lobster and filet mignon.
They are sleeping now, all of them, the last of them retiring only an hour ago. None of them will be up before noon. None of them will be of any use today.
That’s okay. They’ve done their part.
Suliman Cindoruk sits on the penthouse terrace, cigarette burning between his fingers, smartphones and laptops and coffee on the table next to him, pulling apart a croissant as he lifts his face into the morning sunlight.
Enjoy this tranquil morning, he reminds himself. Because when the sun rises over the river Spree this time tomorrow, there will be no peace.
He puts his breakfast to the side. He can’t find peace himself. Can’t bring himself to eat, the acid swimming in his stomach.
He pulls over his laptop, refreshes the screen, scrolls through the top news online.
The lead story: the aborted plot to assassinate King Saad ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia and the dozens of arrests and detentions of suspects in its wake. The possible motives, according to the newswires and the supposedly “informed” pundits who fill the cable channels: The new king’s pro-democracy reforms. His liberalization of women’s rights. His hard-line stance against Iran. Saudi involvement in the civil war in Yemen.
Story number two: the events in Washington last night, the firefight and explosion on the bridge, the shoot-out at the stadium, the temporary lockdown of the White House. Not terrorism, the federal authorities said. No, it was all part of a counterfeiting investigation conducted jointly by the FBI and the Treasury Department. So far, the media seems to be buying it, only a few hours into the story.
And the blackout at the stadium immediately preceding the shoot-out—a coincidence? Yes, say the federal authorities. Just mere happenstance that a stadium full of people, and everyone within a quarter-mile radius, happened to experience a massive power outage just a heartbeat or two before federal agents and counterfeiters lit up Capitol Street as if they were reenacting the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
President Duncan must know that this ludicrous story will not hold forever. But he probably doesn’t care. The president is just buying time.
But he doesn’t know how much time he has.
One of Suli’s phones buzzes. The burner. The text message traveled around the globe before reaching him, through anonymous proxies, pinging remote servers in a dozen different countries. Someone trying to trace the text message would land anywhere from Sydney, Australia, to Nairobi, Kenya, to Montevideo, Uruguay.
Confirm we are on schedule, the message reads.
He smirks. As if they even know what the schedule is.
He writes back: Confirm Alpha is dead.
“Alpha,” meaning Nina.
In all the stories online about the violence last night at the baseball stadium, the shoot-out and explosion on the bridge between the capital and Virginia, there was no mention of a dead woman.