He lifts himself up, spins around to face them, his empty hands together, aimed at the two men.
They unload their rifles into his chest.
Chapter
121
In the subbasement, I open the door and stand at the threshold of the room where the vice president has been waiting. When she sees me, she gets to her feet.
“Mr. President,” she says with uncertainty more than anything else. Her eyes are ringed. She looks tired and stressed. She picks up a remote and mutes the flat-screen television on the wall. “I’ve been watching…”
Yes, the cable news. She’s been watching it not as the second-ranked official in the country but as an ordinary citizen. She seems diminished by that fact.
“Congratulations,” she says to me.
I don’t answer, just nod my head.
“It wasn’t me, sir,” she says.
I look over at the TV again, the constant updates on the Suliman virus and the keyword we discovered.
“I know,” I say.
She deflates with relief.
“Is your offer of resignation still good?” I ask.
She bows her head. “If you’d like my resignation, Mr. President, you’ll have it whenever you wish.”
“Is that what you want? To resign?”
“No, sir, it isn’t.” She looks up at me. “But if you don’t trust me…”
“What would you do if the roles were reversed?” I ask.
“I’d accept the resignation.”
Not what I expected. I fold my arms, lean against the threshold.
“I said no, Mr. President. I think you would already know that if you bugged my limousine.”
We didn’t. The FBI couldn’t get to it without tipping off her Secret Service detail. But she doesn’t know that.
“I want to hear it from you anyway,” I say.
“I told Lester I wouldn’t round up the twelve votes he needed in the Senate from our side. I said whatever else, that was simply a line I couldn’t cross. I…I learned something about myself, honestly.”
“That’s super, Kathy. But this isn’t a Dr. Phil episode. You were disloyal just taking that meeting.”
“Agreed, agreed.” She puts her hands together, then looks at me. “They didn’t ask me about Lester when I was polygraphed.”
“Because politics didn’t matter. Not then. Now that the crisis has passed, it matters very much to me whether I can trust my vice president.”
There’s nothing else she can say. She opens her hands. “Do you accept my resignation?”
“You’d stay until I could replace you?”
“Yes, sir, of course.” Her shoulders drop.
“Whom should I appoint?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath. “There are a few people who come to mind. But one above everyone else. It pains me to say it, actually. It pains me quite a lot. But if I were you, Mr. President, and if I could pick anyone…I’d choose Carolyn Brock.”
I shake my head. At least I wasn’t the only one.
“Kathy, your resignation is not accepted. Now get back to work.”
Chapter
122
Bach sways as she listens to the Saint Matthew Passion. She has no music or headphones—they have been confiscated—only her memories of the complementing choruses, the soprano solo with which she used to sing along. She imagines herself in the church in the eighteenth century, hearing it for the first time.
She is interrupted when the door to her cell opens.
The man who walks in is young, with sandy hair, dressed informally in a button-down shirt and jeans. He brings in a chair with him, places it near her bed, and sits down.
Bach sits up, back against the wall, feet dangling down. The chains remain around her wrists.
“My name is Randy,” he says. “I’m the guy who asks nicely. There are others who won’t.”
“I am…familiar with the tactic,” she says.
“And you’re…Catharina.”
She isn’t sure how they figured out her identity—probably the DNA sample they took. Maybe facial-recognition software, though she doubts it.
“That is your name, right? Catharina Dorothea Ninkovic. Catharina Dorothea—that was Johann Sebastian’s first daughter, right?”
She doesn’t respond. She picks up the paper cup and drinks the last of the water she’s been given.
“Let me ask you a question, Catharina. Do you think we’ll go easy on you because you’re pregnant?”
She shifts in her bed, a sheet of unforgiving steel.
“You tried to assassinate a president,” he says.
Her eyes narrow. “If I had wanted to assassinate a president,” she says, “he would be assassinated.”
Randy holds most of the cards here, and he enjoys it. He nods along, almost amused. “There are a lot of other countries that would like to have a conversation with you,” he says. “Some of them don’t have such a progressive view of human rights. Maybe we’ll transfer you to one of them. They can always send you back later—if there’s anything left of you to send back. How does that sound, Bach? You wanna roll the dice with the Ugandans? How about Nicaragua? The Jordanians are pretty hyped up to speak with you. They seem to think you put a bullet between the eyes of their security chief last year.”
She waits until he’s finished. Then she waits longer still.
“I will tell you whatever you want to know,” she says. “I have only a single demand.”
“You think you’re in a position to demand anything?”
“Whatever your name is—”
“Randy.”
“—you should be asking me what it is I want.”
He sits back in his chair. “Okay, Catharina. What do you want?”
“I know that I will remain in custody for the remainder of my life. I am under no…illusions about this.”
“That’s a good start.”
“I want my baby born healthy. I want her born in America, and I want her adopted by my brother.”
“Your brother,” says Randy.
He appeared from behind the house next door as she stood near the rubble of their home, as she touched the face of her beaten, slashed, dead mother tied to the tree.
“Is it true?” he said as he approached, his face tear-streaked, his body shivering. He took one look at her, at the rifle she held, at the sidearm tucked in her pants. “It is true, isn’t it? You killed them. You killed those soldiers!”
“I killed the soldiers who killed Papa.”
“And now they killed Mama!” he cried. “How could you do that?”
“I didn’t…I’m sorry…I—” She started toward him, her older brother, but he backed away, as if repelled.
“No,” he said. “Do not come near me. Ever. Ever!”
He turned and ran. He was faster. She chased after him, begging him to come back, calling out his name, but he disappeared.
She never saw him again.
For a time, she thought he hadn’t survived. But then she learned that the orphanage was able to transfer him out of Sarajevo. Boys had it easier than girls.
So many times she wanted to visit him. To speak to him. To hold him. She had to settle for listening to him.
“Wilhelm Friedemann Herzog,” says Randy. “A violinist living in Vienna. Took his adoptive Austrian family’s last name but kept his given first and middle names. He was named after Johann Sebastian’s first son. I’m sensing a pattern.”
She stares at him, in no particular hurry herself.
“Okay, you want your brother, Wilhelm, to adopt your kid.”
“And I want to transfer all my financial assets to him. And I want a lawyer who will draw up and approve all the necessary documents.”
“Uh-huh. You think your brother’s going to want your kid?”
She feels her eyes moisten at the question, one she has asked herself many times. This will be a jolt for Wil, no doubt. But he is a good man. Her child will be Wil’s blood, and Wil would not blame his infant niece for the sins of her mother. The fifteen million dollars will ensure that Delilah, and her new family, will be financially secure, too.
But most important, Delilah will never be alone.