by Saul Herzog
“I’m sorry, Doris,” he said.
She said nothing.
“I’m just stressed.”
He sat up and swung his feet over the side of the bed.
“Will you forgive me?”
Still no answer.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to go out to the balcony,” he said.
He crossed the room to the humidor he kept by his dressing table and fumbled in the dark for a cigar.
“Ingram. You’re smoking?” his wife said, turning on the lamp.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Whatever is the matter?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Heavy is the head,” she said.
He looked at her and nodded sadly.
“We talked about the cigars,” she said.
He nodded but took one from the humidor anyway. He snipped it in the guillotine of his cigar cutter before remembering it had been a gift from Roth. It was made of gold and whalebone and had belonged to the captain of one of Nantucket’s most renowned whalers.
“They’re trying to turn me against Levi Roth,” he blurted.
She stood immediately. “Ingram.”
“I know.”
“He’s your…”.
“I know he is.”
“You and he.”
“I know, Doris.”
She came over and put her arms around him. He let out a long sigh.
“Ingram Montgomery,” she said into his ear, “you told me a long time ago to let you know if this place ever threatened to steer you off course.”
He nodded.
“There are a lot of dangerous people in this city.”
“I know, Doris.”
“It’s a swamp, Ingram. You don’t forget that.”
“I’m reminded of it every day.”
“There have been moments when you thought you weren’t up to the task of running this country. Of protecting it.”
He nodded again. This was one of those times if there’d ever been one.
“But no matter what you’ve faced,” Doris said, “whatever storms and tempests and rocky shores you’ve sailed, Levi Roth has always, always been by your side.”
He nodded.
“That man,” she said, “he’s the watcher on the wall, Ingram.”
“I know it, Doris.”
“Only you know the things he’s done. The sacrifices he’s made. The monsters he’s faced.”
Ingram nodded.
“Whatever they’re telling you in the briefings, Ingram, whatever evidence they’re bringing, whatever their spies are coming back with, you look at it very carefully.”
“I do, dear.”
“You look very long and very hard at any messenger who brings you ill news of Levi Roth.”
“I know,” Ingram said, “but if the news is coming from multiple directions, all saying the same thing, I can’t let personal loyalty blind me to the facts.”
“What facts?”
“It’s one of his men, one of his assets.”
“One asset?”
“His best operative.”
“What of him?”
“Everything we’re seeing tells us this asset has gone off the rails. He’s a rogue agent. No question about it. He’s maybe even plotting to attack us.”
“Treason?”
“Treason,” Ingram said gravely.
“Well,” Doris said, “if it’s the asset who’s doing it, that indicts him, not Roth.”
“But Roth defends him. He’s so adamant. I can’t get him to accept that this is one apple that’s threatening to rot the entire tree.”
“Well,” Doris said, “it seems to me his crime is misplaced loyalty.”
Ingram nodded. He looked at his wife. He was a lucky man to have her counsel and he knew it. “If it’s misplaced loyalty he’s guilty of,” he said, “I don’t want to be guilty of the same sin.”
Doris looked at him sadly. “Many a great man has been pulled down by his loyalty to lesser men,” she said.
Ingram knew that was true. He’d just witnessed it before his own eyes in the Roosevelt room. Roth seemed determined to be torn down by Spector, and let everything he’d spent his life building get torn down in the process.
There was a knock on the door.
“Who could that be?” Ingram said, looking at his watch.
“Sir,” a voice said from outside, “we need to get you and the first lady to the bunker immediately. Something’s happened.”
48
The bunker, known officially as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, was a hardened facility deep beneath the White House’s East Wing. It could withstand direct nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional attack while allowing the president to maintain full control of all government branches.
He and Doris had been brought down and shown around when they first took up residence, and Ingram remembered hoping he would never have to see the place in anger.
As he stood in the steel-plated elevator, his wife’s hand in his, he realized that this night was going to be the defining moment of his presidency.
It was what he’d be remembered for.
What he’d go down in posterity for.
He couldn’t afford to waver. He couldn’t allow old friendships to cloud his judgment. He had to act decisively.
He looked at the four secret service agents and wondered if any of them knew more than he did about what was going on.
“I’m sorry about this, dear,” he said to Doris.
She shook her head as if to say it wasn’t his fault.
When they reached the bunker, Doris was escorted to the residential quarters, and he was taken down a hundred-yard corridor to a formidable-looking steel blast door.
Standing by the door was his Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, and the Defense Secretary.
“Ready, sir?” the Defense Secretary said.
“Where’s the Vice President?”
“He was at a campaign event in Florida last night, sir. He’s safe.”
“Can someone please tell me what in God’s name is going on.”
Military personnel went through the process of unlocking the blast door, all twenty-five tons of which slid open on its hinges as smoothly as the door of a small safe.
Beyond the door was a fully operational military command center, complete with satellite relay control and nuclear launch capability. The equipment was still booting up, coming to life with the distinctive hum of the new generation of quantum computers recently delivered by IBM.
The space was compact, and while some personnel already stood at their posts, many were still en route.
On the main screen were live conferencing links to the emergency centers at the Pentagon, Langley, and Fort Meade. People were rushing around at all three centers, getting to their posts with hastily grabbed cups of Starbucks coffee in their hands.
In short, it was chaos.
When Sandra Shrader walked into the Fort Meade center, Ingram thought she looked like she’d been throwing up. Her face was white as a sheet, and her hand was shaking so badly she had trouble holding her coffee.
“Will someone tell me what the hell’s going on before I blow a fuse,” the president said to the screen.
“Sir,” Sandra said, her voice trembling, “there’s been an attack.”
“What attack?” the president demanded.
“The United States Embassy in Moscow, sir,” she said. “It’s been destroyed.”
Ingram’s mind went blank. It was surreal. Who would dare do such a thing? He looked around the room at the assembled representatives of the nation’s highest offices.
This was it.
This was the real deal.
Not a drill.
The time had come for all of them to show what they were made of.
“Sir,” Sandra said, clearing her throat, “And the United States Embassy in Beijing.”
Ingram looked at her. “Come again?” he said.<
br />
In her frail, choked up voice, she said again, “And the United States Embassy in Beijing.”
“What about the United States Embassy in Beijing?” he said, as the horror slowly dawned on him of what she was saying.
“Sir, the attack, it’s against the United States embassies in Moscow and Beijing. Simultaneously.”
“Simultaneously?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Against both embassies?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Good lord.”
He had to hold on to the side of the table to steady himself.
His chief of staff rushed forward. “Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine, damn it,” Ingram said, waving him away.
He stood and looked at the faces of his advisors. The effect was the same on everyone.
Absolute silence.
Not a word from anyone. No one even dared move.
The moment stretched for ten, twenty seconds.
It was for Ingram to break the spell.
“I see,” he said, attempting to sound as presidential as he could.
On the screens before him, he had the Pentagon, Fort Meade, and the Site R continuity of government facility at Raven Rock.
What he did not see was a live link to the CIA.
“Where’s Langley?” he said.
“Sir,” Sandra said, and then, instead of speaking, she put her hand in front of her face and doubled over. The terrible sound of her vomiting filled the speakers.
The president looked around at his staff awkwardly.
One of Sandra’s assistants came to her aid.
“Can we put Fort Meade on mute, for God’s sake?” the president said.
The sound was cut, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Elliot Schlesinger, jumped in.
“Sir,” he said, “on a code red from NSA, the CIA has not been looped in on this emergency signal.”
“What code red?” the president barked. “I want Levi Roth on this call immediately.”
“Of course, sir,” Schlesinger said, “but you may want to see something first.”
Schlesinger signaled to someone off-camera, and a fresh feed came up on the screen.
“Sir, this is from directly outside the embassy in Moscow.”
“What am I looking at?”
“That’s the Garden Ring, sir. Morning traffic. From the timestamp, you can see it was taken just a few minutes ago.”
The footage showed a man coming out of a hotel and opening fire on the embassy security, killing several guards.
“Is that...” the president said, not daring to finish his sentence.
“Yes, sir,” Schlesinger said. “Identity has been confirmed. The attacker is Lance Spector.”
The president felt as if the wind had just been knocked out of him. He’d been standing in front of the screens, and he pulled up a seat and sat down.
“I see,” he said.
“Sir, it appears NSA concerns about an infiltration within the CIA are credible.”
“So you’re saying?”
“There’s cause for concern, sir.”
The president nodded slowly. He turned to the Fort Meade screen and made sure Sandra was done throwing up her breakfast.
“Sandra?” he said.
She looked no better than she had before.
“We’re still analyzing, sir.”
The president gritted his teeth. He didn’t know what was going on, but the NSA had concerns about Spector the night before, and he’d done nothing about it. Now the Pentagon had footage of him killing embassy security minutes before an attack.
“All right,” he said.
“All right, what, sir?” Schlesinger said.
“Bring him in.”
“Bring him in, sir?”
“Bring in Roth. Get him in custody. And issue a kill order against Lance Spector.”
49
Sandra thought she was having a panic attack. The second the president killed the video, she ran from the control room to the nearest washroom and locked herself in a stall.
She dropped to her knees and began retching violently.
“Are you all right in there?” someone said from the next stall, but Sandra couldn’t answer.
When she finally came out, her eyes were full of tears, and her makeup was so messed up she looked like a raccoon.
A junior member of the secretarial staff, a girl everyone seemed to like, was standing by the vanity with a clump of paper towel in her hand.
“Director Shrader,” she said, handing her the paper.
“Thank you.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m just…” she said, and then, “something I ate, I think.”
“I know you’re in the middle of a crisis,” the girl said. “I can’t begin to imagine the stress you’re under.”
Sandra turned and looked at her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh,” she said, embarrassed that she’d overstepped a boundary, “the bombings. I thought maybe I could offer…”.
“The bombings?”
“Yes, ma’am. The embassy bombings.”
“I see,” Sandra said.
She ran the cold water and washed her face. The girl stood there awkwardly, watching her.
“Haven’t you got somewhere to be?” Sandra said.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, escaping the room as quickly as she could.
The moment she left, Sandra burst into tears. She tried to stop, she knew people would be able to tell she’d been crying, and that could raise suspicions. She had to pull herself together.
But she was afraid she was losing her mind.
For a second, she’d actually thought the girl had been talking about Lizzie.
She was so worried about her daughter that she couldn’t think straight. And now the nation was in crisis, and people would be looking to her to perform. And she wouldn’t be able.
Her daughter was in the hands of Russian psychopaths.
It was beginning to sink in that she might never see her again.
And whoever had her had lied to her. They’d used her. They’d told her to undermine the president’s trust in Roth, and then used the opportunity to launch the most deadly and dastardly attacks on US sovereignty since 9/11.
What was she going to do?
When the investigators came in later and tried to unravel this clusterfuck, how would she ever explain her actions?
She knew there was a very real chance she might spend the rest of her life in federal prison.
And Lizzie.
She still wasn’t back.
Someone entered the washroom, but when they saw Sandra, the state she was in, they apologized and backed away.
She knew she had to get her act together and get cleaned up before she created a scene.
She rewashed her face, applied her makeup as best she could, and went back to her office.
A large television on the wall showed cable news footage of both attacks over and over, on an infinite loop. There were so many angles. So much footage.
One showed cell phone footage from a tourist in Beijing outside the US. Someone was waving at the camera, and then a shockwave, like something out of a science fiction movie, blasted the scene, flattening the person and sending a cloud into the sky far in the distance.
“Good lord,” she said to herself.
“Are you feeling better, ma’am,” Peggy said, placing a hand on Sandra’s shoulder.
Sandra wasn’t feeling better. That explosion, the explosion in Russia, all those casualties, it was her fault and she knew it. She’d lied to the president. She’d distracted him from the real issue.
And she would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life.
Her phone rang. It was an unknown number.
Her heart sank.
She knew it was the Russians, and something told her they weren’t calling to tell her where to pick up Lizzie.
<
br /> She shut the office door, locked it, and muted the television.
“What is it?” she said.
“Sandra,” the voice said, “is that any way to speak to an old friend?”
Sandra felt like throwing up again. She glanced at the waste paper basket as her stomach did backflips.
“You lied to me,” she said.
“Lied to you? Sandra, I’m offended.”
“You said you were going after Roth.”
“We are going after Roth.”
“Embassies...” she stopped herself and lowered her voice, “Embassies are going up in smoke all over the world.”
“That’s precisely why we’re calling, Sandra. You need to warn the president he has a rat in his house.”
“A rat in his house? Is this some sort of joke?”
“What could possibly be funny about this situation, Sandra?”
She went to the window and shut the privacy blind. “I’m the fucking rat, you piece of shit. I’m the one who did this.”
“Now, now, Sandra. You need to calm down. We’re getting Lizzie ready to come home and we can’t have her mother in a panic when she arrives.”
Sandra shut her eyes. She refused to let this bastard get the better of her. She refused to cry.
“Lizzie?” she said.
“She’ll be home before you know it, Sandra. But you need to make clear to the president that you have solid intelligence regarding these attacks.”
“Like the intelligence you gave me about Clarice Snow?”
“Intelligence that proves Lance Spector is a traitor, and that he’s the one behind these attacks.”
“I don’t even know if the president is still listening to me,” Sandra said.
“Oh, he’ll listen. He’s listened so far, hasn’t he?”
Sandra felt dizzy. This was a nightmare. She thought about what it would take to smash the window of her office and jump out to her death.
“Why are you doing this?” she said.
“Warning you of traitors? Because we don’t want war to break out between our countries. Russia could gain nothing from that.”
“Then why attack us?”
“Don’t concern yourself with the big picture, Sandra. Just do as you’re told.”
“Where’s Lizzie?”
“She’s close.”
“I want to speak to her.”
“First, I need one more little favor.”
