She looks away, putting it together. “So…that last conference we did, when you were on Marine One, when we got everyone together to brainstorm over the keyword, as the clock was ticking down…”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I already knew the keyword. Devin had already typed it in. The crisis was already over. Devin and Casey were half passed out from exhaustion and relief while I was in the rear compartment with Augie, talking to all of you.”
Carolyn stares at me.
“You’d already disabled the virus?”
“Yes, Carrie.”
“So that whole thing with the ticking clock, and everyone throwing out suggestions for the keyword…that was a ruse?”
“Something like that.” I push myself off the couch, my legs unsteady, the heat rising to my face. For the last several hours, I’ve been on a roller coaster of worry, relief, and gratitude.
But right now, I’m just pissed off.
I walk over to the Resolute desk, looking at the photos of Rachel, of Lilly, of my parents, of the Duncan family and the Brock family at Camp David, Carolyn’s kids wearing goofy sailor hats.
I pour myself two more fingers of bourbon and throw the liquor down like a shot.
“Are you okay, sir?”
I set down the tumbler harder than I intended. “I’m pretty far from okay, Carrie. I couldn’t see ‘okay’ with a telescope right now. See, here’s the thing.”
My jaw clenched, I come around the desk and lean against it.
“You’re right that smart people do dumb things,” I say. “But Kathy would have to be certifiably insane to leak ‘Dark Ages’ to Nina and blow suspicion back in her direction. Her odds of being caught were way too high. She could have figured out another way to get Nina access to me. Something. Something better than that.”
Carolyn’s eyebrows rise. She thinks it over but doesn’t seem to come to a resolution. “So…what is your point, sir?”
“My point,” I say, “is that whoever leaked ‘Dark Ages’ to Nina wanted suspicion to blow back on my inner circle.”
Carolyn’s face twists in confusion. “But who…would want suspicion thrown on them?” she asks. “And why?”
Chapter
117
Oh, the why part isn’t that hard to grasp, is it? Or maybe it is.” I gesture with my hands, pacing around the Oval Office now. “I sure missed it. Who knows? Maybe I’m the dumbest son of a bitch to ever hold this office.”
Or maybe the one thing I believe is in shortest supply in our capital—trust—is something that I have in too great a supply. Trust can blind. It blinded me.
I pass the table by the couch, where Nina stood yesterday, looking at that picture of Lilly and me on the White House lawn, walking from Marine One.
Carolyn, her brow furrowed, says, “I’m…not following, sir. I can’t imagine why anyone would want you to know there was a traitor.”
Next to that picture, a photo of Carolyn and me on the night I was elected president, mugging for the camera, arms around each other. I pick up that photo and remember how giddy we felt, how overwhelmed, how blessed.
Then I smash the picture down on the table, shattering the glass, splintering the frame.
Carolyn nearly jumps out of her chair.
“Then follow this,” I say as I stare into the splintered image of my chief of staff and me. “The leak blows suspicion back on the national security team. One person in the inner circle, someone with a particularly high rank—let’s say, vice president of the United States—gets blamed for it. She’s an easy target. She’s been disloyal. She’s been a pain in my ass, frankly. So of course she’s out. Gone. Resigned in disgrace. Maybe prosecuted, maybe not—but gone, that’s the point. Someone needs to take her place, though, right? Right??” I snap.
“Yes, sir,” Carolyn whispers.
“Right! So who’s going to replace her? Well, how about the hero in the story? The person who came up with the keyword as the clock wound down? Someone who surely thinks she should have been vice president all along?”
Carolyn Brock rises from her chair, staring at me, a deer in the headlights, her mouth open. No words, though. There are no words for this.
“That last conference with the national security team as the clock wound down,” I say. “The ruse, you called it? It was a test. I wanted to see who would come up with the keyword. I knew one of you would.”
I bring a hand to my face, pinch the bridge of my nose. “I prayed to God. I swear to you, on my wife’s grave, I prayed to God. Anybody but Carrie, I prayed.”
Alex Trimble walks into the room with his deputy, Jacobson, standing at attention by the wall. The FBI director, Elizabeth Greenfield, enters the room next.
“You were smart to the very end, Carrie,” I say. “You pushed us right to Nina’s hometown, all but delivering it to us without saying it yourself.”
Carolyn’s wounded expression breaks. She blinks hard, looks off in memory. “You misspelled it on purpose,” she whispers.
“And there you were to correct us,” I say. “Sukhumi with two u’s.”
Carolyn’s eyes close.
I nod at Liz Greenfield.
“Carolyn Brock,” she says, “you’re under arrest for suspicion of violating the Espionage Act and conspiracy to commit treason. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you…”
Chapter
118
Wait a second! Just wait!”
Director Greenfield’s formality, her mention of arrest and reading of the Miranda rights, snaps a defense mechanism in Carolyn, who holds out her hands in a “stop” gesture.
She turns to me. “Nina wanted to go home. It was logical. So I know how to spell the capital of an eastern European city and suddenly I’m a traitor? You can’t be…really, Mr. President, after everything we’ve been through—”
“Don’t you dare,” I bark. “Nothing we’ve ‘been through’ gives you the right to do what you did.”
“Please, Mr. President. Can we…can we just—the two of us talk? Two minutes. Can I at least have two minutes? Don’t I deserve at least that much?”
Liz Greenfield starts to move toward Carolyn, but I raise a hand.
“Give us two minutes. Count it out, Liz. One hundred and twenty seconds. That’s all she gets.”
Liz looks at me. “Mr. President, that isn’t a good—”
“One hundred and twenty seconds.” I point to the door. “Leave us. All of you.”
I watch Carolyn as the Secret Service and FBI director walk out of the Oval Office. I can only imagine what’s racing through her mind. Her kids; her husband, Morty. A criminal prosecution. Disgrace. A way out of this somehow.
“Go,” I say once we’re alone.
Carolyn takes a deep breath, holding out her hands, as if framing a solution. “Think about what’s happened today. You saved our country. You’ve totally eliminated impeachment as a threat. Lester Rhodes will be sucking his thumb in a corner. Your poll numbers are going to soar through the roof now. You’ll have a mandate like you’ve never had. Think of what you can do over the next year and a half—the next five and a half years. Think of your place in history.”
I nod. “But…”
“But imagine what happens if you do this, sir. If you accuse me of this. If you publicly ruin me. You think I’ll just take my medicine like a compliant little girl?” She puts a hand on her chest, cocks her head, makes a face. “You think I won’t fight back? The search of the vice president’s office—how’d that turn out? Find anything good?”
Well, the sorrowful, deer-in-the-headlights look is long gone. The gloves have come off. She’s thought all this through. Of course she has. She’s considered every angle. Carolyn Brock is nothing if not formidable.
“You had twenty opportunities to plant that phone in her office,” I say. “Kathy wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave that phone behind a bookcase, for Christ’s sake. She would’ve broken it into a hundred pieces.”
“Says you,” she responds. “My lawyers say something different. You put me on trial for treason, I put her on trial for treason. Look at what you have the chance to do right now, Mr. President.”