“I don’t care,” I say.
“Ohhh, yes, you do,” she responds, coming around the desk. “Because you want to do good things in this job. You don’t want what could be your greatest triumph to turn into a scandal. ‘Treason in the White House.’ Who was the traitor—the president’s closest adviser or the sitting vice president? Who cares? You picked both of us. Your judgment will be called into question. This tremendous, unprecedented success will turn into the worst thing that ever happened to you. Your feelings are hurt, Jon? Well, get the hell over it.”
She walks up to me, her hands together as if in prayer. “Think of the country. Think of the people out there who need you to be a good president—hell, a great president.”
I don’t say anything.
“You do this to me,” she says, “your presidency is over.”
Liz Greenfield enters the room again and looks at me.
I look at Carolyn.
“Give us another two minutes, Liz,” I say.
Chapter
119
My turn.
“You’re going to plead guilty,” I tell Carolyn when we’re alone again. “My judgment will be criticized, as it should be, for hiring you. I’ll deal with that. That’s a political problem. I will not sweep this under the rug and have you step away quietly. And you will plead guilty.”
“Mr. Pres—”
“Secret Service agents died, Carrie. Nina is dead. I could have easily been killed. That’s not something we sweep under the rug in this country.”
“Sir—”
“You want to go to trial? Then you can explain how Nina could possibly have gotten that first note into Kathy Brandt’s hands when Nina was in Europe and Kathy was here in Washington. What, she sent it by e-mail? Dropped it in a FedEx package? None of that would get past our security. But you, a chief of staff, on the last leg of our European trip, in Seville? Nina could have walked into that hotel and handed it to you. You don’t think we have the CCTV footage? The Spanish government sent it over. That last day in Spain, a few hours before we left. Nina entering the hotel and leaving an hour later.”
The flare in her eyes seems to dim.
“And how long before we manage to intercept and decrypt the message you sent to Suliman Cindoruk?”
She looks up at me with horror.
“The FBI and Mossad are looking for it right now. You tipped him off, didn’t you? None of your plan would have worked if Nina had survived. If she lived, if Augie and I got in her van at the baseball stadium, she and I would have worked out a deal. I would’ve persuaded the Georgians to take her back, she would have given me the keyword, you wouldn’t have gotten to be the hero, and Kathy wouldn’t have gotten to be the goat. And who knows? Maybe Nina would’ve given you up after all.”
Carolyn brings a hand to her face, her worst nightmare realized.
“You’d know better than anyone how to get hold of Suliman. You’re the one who orchestrated that first call through our intermediaries in Turkey. You could’ve done it again. She told you everything, Carrie. I read the rest of the text messages. She laid out her whole timeline. Augie, the baseball stadium, the midnight detonation of the virus. She trusted you. She trusted you, Carrie, and you killed her.”
That seems to be the poke in the wall that breaks the dam. Carolyn loses all composure, bursting into sobs, her entire body quaking.
And I find myself, in the end, more sad than angry. She and I had been through so much together. She charted my path to the presidency, helped me navigate the land mines of Washington, sacrificed countless hours of sleep and time with her family to ensure that the Oval Office ran with maximum efficiency. She is the best chief of staff I could have ever dreamed of having.
After a time, the tears stop. She shudders and wipes at her face. But her head still hangs low, shrouded by her hand. She can’t look me in the eye.
“Stop acting like some garden-variety criminal suspect,” I say. “And do the right thing. This isn’t a courtroom. This is the Oval Office. How could you do this, Carrie?”
“Says the man who gets to be president.”
The words come from a voice I don’t recognize, a voice I’ve never heard, a part of Carolyn that has managed to elude me during our years together. Her head rises from her hands, and she looks at me squarely, her face twisted up in agony and bitterness in a way I’ve never seen before. “Says the man who didn’t see his political career tanked just for saying a dirty word on a live mike.”
I never saw this. I missed the envy, the resentment, the bitterness building up inside her. It’s one of the hazards of this thing, running for president and then being president. It’s all about you. Every minute of every hour of every day, it’s what’s best for the candidate, what does the candidate need, how can we help the candidate, the only person whose name is on the ballot. Then, when you actually become president, it’s the same thing every day on steroids. Sure, we socialized. I got to know her family. But I missed this completely. She was good at her job. I actually thought she was proud of the good things we did, found the challenges exciting, enjoyed the work, and was fulfilled by it.
“I don’t suppose…” She hiccups a bitter laugh. “I don’t suppose that offer of a pardon stands.” She seems embarrassed to even suggest it.
How quickly she has plummeted. Walking into this room, expecting to be tapped as the new vice president, the hero of the hour, and now just praying that she can avoid prison.
Liz Greenfield returns. This time, I wave her in.
Carolyn offers no resistance as the FBI takes her into custody.
Carolyn looks back in my direction as she is led out of the Oval Office, but she can’t quite bring herself to make eye contact with me.
Chapter
120
No. No.”
Suliman Cindoruk stares at his phone, reading the “breaking news” across website after website, variations of a single headline.
“IT WOULD HAVE DESTROYED AMERICA”
UNITED STATES THWARTS LETHAL CYBERATTACK
UNITED STATES STOPS MAJOR CYBER VIRUS
“SONS OF JIHAD” VIRUS TARGETING UNITED STATES FOILED
Every one of the articles blasting news of a keyword—“Sukhumi”—that will stop the virus from activating.
Sukhumi. No doubt now. It was Nina. She installed a password override.
His head whips around to the window in the safe house. He sees the two soldiers, still sitting in their Jeep outside, awaiting their next instructions.
But the people who brought him here won’t be waiting until midnight Eastern Standard Time to confirm the success or failure of the virus. Not if they’re reading the news.
He removes his handgun, stuffed into his sock, still loaded with the single bullet.
Then he finds a door leading to the backyard and the mountain. He tries the handle, but it’s bolted shut. He pulls on the single window, but it’s bolted closed, too. He looks around the sparsely furnished room and finds a small glass table. He hurls it against the window. He uses his gun to knock out the remaining jagged shards of glass.
He hears the front door burst open. He jumps headfirst through the window, clutching his gun as a lifeline. He runs toward some trees, some foliage, that will provide cover in the predawn darkness.
They call out after him, but he doesn’t stop. His foot hits something—a tree root—and he tumbles forward, losing his breath as he smacks the ground, stars dancing in his eyelids, the gun bouncing out of his hand.
He yelps in pain as a bullet pierces the bottom of his shoe. He crawls forward to his right, and another bullet sprays leaves by his armpit. He pats his hand around but can’t find his gun.
Their voices growing closer, shouting to him in a language he doesn’t know, warning him.
He can’t find the gun with the single bullet that will end this. He knows now that he does have the courage to do it. He won’t be taken by them.
But he can’t reach, or can’t locate, the weapon.
He takes a breath and decides.