“And then I passed yours.”
“Yes,” he says. “If nothing else, the fact that I pulled a gun on the president of the United States and nobody immediately shot me or arrested me—I knew you believed us and would work with us.”
I shake my head. “And then you contacted Nina?”
“I texted her. She was waiting for my signal to pull up to the stadium in her van.”
How close we came, right there.
Augie lets out a noise that sounds like laughter. “That was supposed to be the moment,” he says, looking ruefully off in the distance. “We would have all been together. I would have located the virus, you would have contacted the Georgian government, and she would have stopped the virus.”
Instead someone stopped Nina.
“I will get back to work, Mr. President.” He pushes himself off the couch. “I am sorry for my momentary—”
I push him back down. “We’re not done, Augie,” I say. “I want to know about Nina’s source. I want to know about the traitor in the White House.”
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I remain hovering over Augie, all but shining a bright light in his face. “You said by the time you met Nina in Baltimore three days ago, she was committed to a plan.”
He nods.
“Why? What happened between the time you split up in Algeria and the time you met in Baltimore? What did she do? Where did she go?”
“This I do not know.”
“That doesn’t wash, Augie.”
“I’m sorry? Wash?”
I lean in farther still, nearly nose to nose with him. “That doesn’t ring true to me. You two loved each other. You trusted each other. You needed each other.”
“What we needed was to keep our information separate,” he insists. “For our own protection. She could not know how to locate the virus, and I could not know how to disarm it. This way we both remained of value to you.”
“What did she tell you about her source?”
“I have answered this question more than once—”
“Answer it again.” I grab his shoulder. “And remember that the lives of hundreds of millions of people—”
“She did not tell me!” he spits, full of emotion, a high pitch to his voice. “She told me I would need to know the code word ‘Dark Ages,’ and I asked her how she could possibly know this, and she said it did not matter how, that it was better I did not know, that we were both safer that way.”
I stare at him, saying nothing, searching his face.
“Did I suspect she was in communication with someone of importance in Washington? Of course I did. I am not an imbecile. But that gave me comfort, not discomfort. It meant we had a credible chance of success. I trusted her. She was the smartest person I’d ever—”
He chokes up, unable to finish the sentence.
My phone buzzes. FBI Liz again. I can’t keep ignoring it.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “You want to honor her memory, Augie? Then do everything you can to stop that virus. Go. Now.”
He takes a deep breath and pushes himself off the couch. “I will,” he says.
Once Augie is out of earshot, I bring the phone to my ear. “Yes, Liz.”
“Mr. President,” she says. “The cell phones in Nina’s van.”
“Yes. Two of them, you said?”
“Yes, sir, one on her person, one found under the floorboard in the rear compartment.”
“Okay…”
“Sir, the one we found hidden in the rear of the van—we haven’t cracked it yet. But the phone that was in her pocket—we finally broke the code. There is an overseas text message that is particularly interesting. It took us a long time to track it, because it was scrambled over three continents—”
“Liz, Liz,” I say. “Cut to the chase.”
“We think we’ve found him, sir,” she says. “We think we’ve located Suliman Cindoruk.”
I suck in my breath.
A second chance, after Algeria.
“Mr. President?”
“I want him alive,” I say.
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77
Vice President Katherine Brandt sits quietly, her eyes downcast, taking it all in. Even over the computer screen, with its occasional fuzz, its sporadic image-jumping, she looks TV-ready, heavily made up from her appearance on Meet the Press, dressed in a smart red suit and a white blouse.
“That’s almost…” She looks up at me.
“Incomprehensible,” I say. “Yes. It’s far worse than we imagined. We have been able to secure our military, but other areas of federal government, and the private sector—the damage is going to be incalculable.”
“And Los Angeles…is a decoy.”
I shake my head. “That’s my best guess. It’s a smart plan. They want our tech superstars on the other side of the country, trying to solve the problem at the water-filtration plant. Then, when the virus detonates, we are cut off from them in every way—no Internet connectivity, no phones, no airplanes or trains. Our best people, stranded on the West Coast, thousands of miles away from us.”
“And I’m just learning all this that’s happening to our country, and everything you’re doing, even though I’m vice president of the United States. Because you don’t trust me. I’m one of the six you don’t trust.”
Her image is not sufficiently clear to gauge her reaction to all this. It wouldn’t be a good thing to learn that your boss, the commander in chief, thinks you might be a traitor.
“Mr. President, do you really think I would do such a thing?”
“Kathy, I wouldn’t have imagined, in a million years, that any of you would. Not you, not Sam, not Brendan, not Rod, not Dominick, not Erica. But one of you did.”
That’s it. Sam Haber of DHS. Brendan Mohan, national security adviser. Rodrigo Sanchez, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Defense secretary Dominick Dayton. And CIA director Erica Beatty. Plus the vice president. My circle of six, all under suspicion.
Katherine Brandt remains silent, still at attention but lost in concentration.
Alex walks in and slips me a note from Devin. It’s not a good note.
When I turn back to Kathy, she looks ready to tell me something. I have a good idea what it will be.
“Mr. President,” she says, “if I don’t have your trust, the only thing I can do is offer you my resignation.”
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In the tech war room, Devin looks up when he sees me. He taps Casey on the shoulder, and they leave the others—all wearing headsets or banging on computers—to speak with me. Dead laptop computers are piled up against the wall. On the whiteboard, various words and names and codes are scribbled: PETYA and NYETNA, SHAMOON and SCHNEIER ALG., DOD.
The room itself smells like coffee and tobacco and body odor. I’d offer to open a window if I were in a joking mood.
Casey gestures to a corner where a stack of laptop computers lines the wall, the boxes stacked so high that they almost reach the security camera peering down at us from the ceiling.
“All dead,” she says. “We’re trying everything. Nothing can kill this virus.”
“Seventy computers so far?”
“More or less,” she says. “And for every one we’re using here, the rest of our team at the Pentagon is using three or four. We’ve racked up close to three hundred computers.”
“The computers are…wiped clean?”
“Everything wiped,” says Devin. “As soon as we try to disarm it, the wiper virus goes off. Those laptops are no better than a pile of bricks now.” He sighs. “Can you get the other five hundred laptops?”
I turn to Alex and make the request. The Marines will get them over to us in no time. “Is five hundred enough?” I ask.
Casey smirks. “We don’t have five hundred ways to stop this thing. We’ve thought of just about everything we know already.”
“Augie’s not a help?”
“Oh, he’s brilliant,” says Devin. “The way he buried this thing inside the computer? I’ve never seen anything like it. But when it comes to actually disabling it? It’s not his specialty.”
I look at my watch. “It’s four o’clock, people. Start getting creative.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else you need from me?”
Casey says, “Any chance you can capture Suliman and bring him here?”
I pat her on the arm but don’t answer.
We’re working on it, I do not say.
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