The President's Daughter

by James Patterson

  Chapter

  63

  Family quarters

  The White House

  Among the several things that President Pamela Barnes hates about her job is knowing that her time is never really her own, that other people have demands upon her, and that at any minute or hour of the day or night, she will have to respond to some emerging crisis or disaster.

  For years her predecessors ran TV advertisements during election season that claimed that they would have what it takes to answer the phone at three in the morning in case of an emergency, but the honest truth is that she’s never been awakened by a phone call during the night.

  Like now: it’s just a gentle knock on the bedroom door, with a subsequent, louder knock. She switches on a bedside lamp and says, “Come in. I’m awake.”

  After her inauguration, Barnes made it clear to her husband, Richard, that her staff should never delay in waking her up in case something of national importance was occurring. She was remembering an observation from a famed New York Times columnist who quoted a White House aide as saying, “You can’t be fired for waking the president; you can only be fired for not waking him.”

  Or her.

  A familiar figure slides into the room from the corridor, where a Secret Service agent has apparently accompanied Felicia Taft, deputy chief of staff.

  “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” Taft says.

  Barnes’s chief of staff is deep asleep next to her, a pillow over his head. She’s often gently teased Richard that he could sleep through an earthquake, to which he has jokingly replied, “Never been an earthquake in Florida as long as I’ve been around, so we’ll never know, will we?”

  She gets out of bed, puts on her old blue terry cloth robe, which has traveled many miles and years with her.

  “Is it news about Mel Keating?” she asks.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What is it?”

  Taft says, “Ma’am, the watch officers in the Situation Room have received word that Al Jazeera will be releasing a statement from Asim Al-Asheed within the hour. The deputy national security advisor is on her way there now.”

  Barnes slides her feet into soft leather sandals and says, “I’ll be there shortly as well.”

  Taft goes out, softly closing the door behind her, and Barnes leans over the bed, shakes her husband and chief of staff awake.

  He coughs, grunts, and sits up, bare-chested, wearing only a pair of blue pajama bottoms. “What’s up, Pamela?”

  “Get up, get dressed,” she says. “Time to earn your salary. Asim Al-Asheed is going to announce something in the next hour. We need to get down to the Situation Room.”

  Richard yawns, scratches at the back of his head. “Do we know what he’s going to say?”

  “Something horrible and bloody,” she says.

  He moves to get out of bed. “For sure?”

  Barnes says, “An educated guess. What, you think he’s going to give up Mel Keating because he likes her, and is going to forgive all? Come along, Richard. No time to waste.”

  Chapter

  64

  Saunders Hotel

  Arlington, Virginia

  The suite is crowded again, with FBI director Lisa Blair and three more FBI agents, and they’ve set up another television screen, which has a direct feed coming in from Al Jazeera, in Doha, Qatar. The suite’s own set is tuned to CNN. Even at this ungodly hour, Lisa is wearing a DC power suit—dark slacks and jacket, white blouse—and her hair is perfectly styled.

  Samantha is on the edge of the bed, staring, hands clasped tightly in her lap, and I catch her attention, and the look in her eyes is haunted, both seeing me and staring a thousand yards away. I’ve seen that look before, on fellow team members or Army soldiers or Marines in the field who’ve been out too long and have seen way too much.

  When that look comes to someone’s eyes, he or she is perilously close to collapse.

  I hug her but it’s like hugging a store mannequin.

  I step back and Lisa checks the time, and says, “Our FBI liaison in Doha tells us that it’s a video message, dropped off by a courier. Flash drive or thumb drive. We’re trying to track down the courier but…”

  Her voice trails off.

  Sure. I know what she’s about to say. Any American law enforcement agency in a foreign country works under tremendous limitations, trailed by the host country’s intelligence agencies, not able to proceed with an investigation without the cooperation of the locals, and not able to work quickly or respond to developments.

  Like fighting with ropes of taffy covering one’s arms and legs.

  The feed coming into the two television screens is the same, though the CNN feed is just a few seconds behind the one coming from Al Jazeera.

  I sit down next to Samantha, hug her waist, and she slightly leans into me as we both wait.

  The male Al Jazeera anchor is well-dressed, with black hair and a mustache. He’s speaking fast, face lit up with the excitement of reporting a breaking story.

  “Can we have the sound, please?” I ask. “From Al Jazeera?”

  One of the male FBI agents obliges and steps back.

  Others in the room include Secret Service agent David Stahl and my chief of staff, Maddie Perry, who’s clasping a Bible to her chest and looks like she hasn’t slept in two days. The chaos and the fear I’m feeling is intermingled with affection for this smart and strong-willed woman. She could have gone anywhere in the Barnes Administration or private industry but decided to follow me from the White House into exile.

  In a crisp voice, the television announcer says, “We will now air the video supplied to us by Asim Al-Asheed. We have not reviewed this video because of its timeliness and newsworthiness. You and our valued viewers will be seeing this for the very first time.”

  The screen cuts away from the anchor desk, and there’s a blue screen, bursts of lines of static, and the picture becomes clear.

  A rough rock face, some moss and tiny plants at its base, which leads out to a rock ledge.

  Asim Al-Asheed walks into the frame, seen from his waist up; he’s wearing a black T-shirt and a smile on his face. He looks sharper, harder, deadlier without his beard.

  He nods. “As-salam alaykom, Matthew Keating, Samantha Keating, President Pamela Barnes, and all who are viewing this. I apologize that this is not a…what you call a live feed but a recording, from several hours ago, after we departed the home of Mr. Macomber in your White Mountains, and here we are, in these mountains still. My thanks to Mr. Macomber for his unwitting hospitality, and my apologies for what happened to his home. I am sure the proper authorities will compensate him for the damages caused by your FBI.”

  The suite is quiet. Sam is firm against my side, my arm still around her waist.

  Asim says, “And why have we come to this, Matthew Keating? A simple answer, for it is all due to your actions two years past, when you killed my wife Layla Al-Asheed and my sweet daughters, Amina, Zara, and Fatima. I am a jihadist, a warrior of Allah, and I knew it was my fate to die on the battlefield. But my wife? My daughters? They were innocents, and you killed them. Their blood is on your hands. Their blood will be on your hands until you die.”

  A long pause. It’s like he’s staring right at me.

  “Here we are. According to the great lawgiver Hammurabi and the laws of the holy prophet Moses, and the laws of Islam, I am due compensation. I am due reparation. I am due…justice. I asked for all this, and I was ignored, I was mocked, and yesterday morning, armed men attempted to kill me.”

  He looks to his side for a second, like something is interrupting him, and he says, “And is what I asked for so unreasonable? I asked for a sum much less than what you pay for one of your F-22 Raptor aircraft. Is your daughter’s life not worth the cost of one of your aircraft that bombs and strafes innocents?”

  He smiles wider. The bastard knows he’s making a point that will be accepted by many people here and around the world.

  “I asked fo
r the release of three of my comrades in arms,” he says. “I know the excuse for not letting them go. ‘This government does not negotiate with terrorists.’ Oh, please. The United States government negotiates with terrorists whenever it suits their needs, their desires. The United States counts as allies governments who do the same as I do, only on a much larger scale. Ask yourself, then, Matthew Keating: Why is it that your government does not desire your daughter’s release?”

  Samantha is trembling against me, like we’re in the middle of a blizzard with the heat off in our room.

  “Finally,” he says, “I asked for a slip of paper, a promise from President Pamela Barnes to ensure my safety. A reasonable request, I’m sure you understand, and a fair exchange for your daughter’s safety. But what was her answer? Armed men trying to kill me and my cousin Faraj.”

  Asim shakes his head. “According to laws and tradition that I learned while growing up, all I sought was simple justice. And that was not offered to me. Alas, Matthew Keating, this is what I am forced to offer in return.”

  The next few seconds brutally bring me back to my first nighttime parachute jump while I was in SEAL training. My first half dozen jumps took place in the daylight, when I could see the landscape below me, the other parachutists, the distant horizon and overhead blue sky and clouds. But on that windy night, departing from a four-engine C-130 Hercules, I was stepping out into the darkness, into the unknown, hoping and trusting in my training and my equipment.

  Now there is no trust—in anything.

  Just blindly again stepping out into the unforgiving darkness.

  For the camera slowly pulls back, revealing Asim Al-Asheed, and on her knees beside him is our daughter, Mel Keating, eyes wide with fright behind her eyeglasses, arms bound tightly behind her.

  Chapter

  65

  East 33rd Street

  New York, New York

  In his home office in the Great Bay Condominiums, Jiang Lijun of the Chinese Ministry of State Security is smoking a Zhonghua cigarette and watching the scene videotaped from somewhere in the American White Mountains unfold before him on a small wall-mounted television set. The office is modest and has no windows, for Jiang doesn’t want the surveillance cameras and snoopers out there keeping track of his activities. A light switching on at this hour of the morning would send a note of concern among the CIA that something is up with the Chinese.

  Which is true.

  A few minutes ago, his wristwatch vibrated, waking him, and in the darkness, he got out of bed without waking his wife, Zhen, or their daughter, Li Na. In his office he picked up the secure phone that connected him to the mission, which is only two blocks away, and the night-duty officer said, “You’re advised to turn on one of the American cable channels, Comrade Jiang.”

  He takes another puff from his cigarette. His office has shelves of books, mostly historical and political works about the United States and China, and there is no computer terminal here to be hacked or filing cabinets to be pried open. Half of the floors in this building are owned by the mission to house its diplomats and staff, and Jiang uses this room for thinking, reading, and contemplation.

  On the television set is a crisp video of Asim Al-Asheed, speaking clearly and confidently into the camera.

  “…I asked for a sum much less than what you pay for one of your F-22 Raptor aircraft. Is your daughter’s life not worth the cost of one of your aircraft that bombs and strafes innocents?”

  Not a bad question, Jiang thinks, sitting comfortably in blue cotton pajamas topped with a red silk robe that once belonged to Father.

  The man on the television is speaking plainly and truthfully, and Jiang has to admire how he holds himself. His words are powerful, and at any time and place, Asim Al-Asheed could have become a prominent political leader in his world, or, as Jiang knows, a medical doctor, the man’s original dream and desire.

  But he chose the bloody path of a terrorist, and even though there are millions of bèn dàn—stupid eggs—here and abroad who are now thinking kindly of him, Jiang remembers another Asim Al-Asheed.

  Four years ago.

  In a dusty, windswept collection of huts and dirt roads laughingly called a village in southern Libya, Jiang was tasked with overseeing the construction of a vital oil pipeline in this district, but the equipment supplied by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation had been sabotaged, and oil workers hired from Georgia had been threatened and chased away.

  The tribe that lived in this village and others in the area refused to cooperate with the pipeline’s construction, even with the promise of money and laborer jobs for their men.

  The pipeline was a month overdue.

  And Jiang was told to fix it. No detailed orders, no suggestions, no recommendations.

  Just fix it.

  Jiang stood next to a battered yellow Toyota pickup truck with two personal guards from a Pakistan contract force that had accompanied him from Tripoli, and they watched as Asim Al-Asheed convinced the tribe to stop its actions against the pipeline project. A half dozen other pickup trucks were parked in a semicircle.

  Gunshots. Shouts. A scream. Al-Asheed and his collection of fighters herded eight men and women into the dirt area in front of the parked trucks. They were forced to kneel. A crowd of about fifty villagers was clustered together, held in place by Asim’s armed men. A number of young boys and girls were brought forward, and then Asim went down the line of kneeling men and women and shot each one of them in the back of the head.

  The women villagers screamed and lamented in an Arabic singsong that chilled Jiang, and when a satisfied Asim Al-Asheed came up to Jiang, he said, “You will have no more problems in this village.”

  Jiang asked, “Why did you force the children to watch you?”

  Asim looked surprised to be asked such a question. “Because they will remember forever what happened here, and will tell their children, and their children’s children, of what happens when you oppose Asim Al-Asheed and your great and powerful China.”

  On his desk are day-old copies of Reference News, People’s Daily, and The Global Times, flown in each day from Beijing. It’s always good to keep abreast of what’s going on back home, not rely on stories filed on the Internet, which could be reedited or disappeared in seconds. Jiang’s phone is next to the newspapers, and a screen lights up, meaning an incoming call. He picks up the receiver. “Yes?”

  His boss, Li Baodong, breathes heavily into the phone and says, “Your boy is speaking well on the television, isn’t he?”

  Jiang bristles at the tone of Li’s voice, thinks, One day, you fat man, you’ll get what you deserve, and I’ll be in your chair.

  Though when the time comes, I’ll make sure to order a new one, for I don’t want to sit where your fat sweaty ass has been over the years.

  Jiang says, “He does have his talents.”

  “And stupidity and stubbornness as well,” Li says. “A pity you could not convince him to release the president’s daughter…ah, look, there she is now.”

  Not a pity, Jiang thinks. Not a pity at all.

  Li says, “What will the hún dàn do next?”

  With satisfaction, Jiang sees motion on the television screen.

  “I think we’re about to find out, Comrade Li,” he says, leaning back in his chair.

  Chapter

  66

  White House Situation Room

  President Pamela Barnes yawns and desperately wants a cup of coffee but knows better, realizing that a shot of caffeine right now will result in her never getting back to sleep. She has on gray sweatpants and an orange long-sleeved Florida Gators T-shirt, and Richard is next to her, with Deputy National Security Advisor Sarah Palumbo on her other side.

  Up on the main screen is an anchor for Al Jazeera, in Qatar, and Barnes glumly thinks that most of her predecessors went months without being shepherded into the Situation Room, and here she is now, in this basement area, two days in a row.

  Richard says,
“Aw, shit, there’s the bastard.”

  Pamela looks at the smug and arrogant face of Asim Al-Asheed, who is standing in front of a blank stone formation somewhere in the White Mountains. Asim speaks fluently and forcefully in good English about justice and money and the cost of an F-22.

  Barnes says, “Sarah, is there anything we can get from this, about where he is, how this footage got to Al Jazeera?”

  Her deputy national security advisor says, “I’m afraid not much, ma’am. Unfortunately, he’s good at his tradecraft. If this message was recorded some hours ago, then he has moved on to somewhere else. I would guess that he recorded this message onto a thumb drive or flash drive, gave it to some trusted courier, who in turn emailed it to another courier in Qatar, who hand-delivered it to Al Jazeera’s studios.”

  Richard mutters, “Goddamn studio should have been taken out by accident years ago. Damn terrorist supporters. Royal pain in the ass, they are.”

  Barnes says to Sarah, “What’s the read on Asim Al-Asheed? He seems so…controlled.”

  On the screen, Asim is now talking about her own actions, and she wishes that the useless military out there had his GPS coordinates down cold because even though she’s always been opposed to extrajudicial drone killing, she would be so tempted to drop a Hellfire missile into that man’s face.

  “Ma’am,” Deputy National Security Advisor Palumbo says, “the latest analysis we’ve received from psychologists on contract with the CIA is that Asim Al-Asheed is a classic narcissistic sociopath, who had a troubled and poverty-stricken childhood and who is now constantly seeking attention and reaffirmation of his importance.”

  Barnes asks, “Meaning?”

  Palumbo says, “He loves the attention. Loves the spotlight. He doesn’t want it to end. They predicted that if he were to make another appearance following the ransom deadline’s expiration, he would add additional conditions, additional requests, to show off his importance and special nature. Keep his face and name in the news.”