Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller Read online

  If the people have to get back to their cities their government should lead by getting back to its city, Washington. Bruce and I must stay apart so that one bomb can’t get us both, but beyond that, this government has to go back to work in the capital. This morning I‘ll tell Bart to make the arrangements. We’ll sleep tonight in the White House!

  Paternity! Sweet Jesus, what am I going to do with that information? Aaron and Scott got the drift that I didn’t want them to rush through the analysis, and that should delay the official determination another twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours. But it’s coming at me like a freight train, and it can’t and shouldn’t be kept secret.

  Suddenly it hit him: Suppose North Korea had not only made the bomb; suppose North Korea had also made the attack?

  ***

  Low lights came up. Kim sat in his chair, alone in his theater.

  He’d spent hours watching scenes of the devastation and President Martin’s speech and news conference. He’d heard the president say, “we will find out how they got the bomb they used” and that America would deal with both those who carried out the attack and those who enabled it.

  The devastation pleased him, and Martin’s threat felt hollow.

  As he had before taking the Arab’s money, Kim assessed Martin’s options. If the Americans attempted invasion—unlikely with the memory of Iraq so fresh—his fine army would bleed them far worse than al-Qaeda had. One frozen winter would be enough to send them crawling away, but it wouldn’t even take that! If he simply threatened to use his missiles on Seoul and Tokyo, South Korea and Japan would force them to withdraw.

  If they blockaded or imposed sanctions, he would get around them as Saddam had done. This was another way his creative genius would enable his triumph. He would flood the world with videos of his people’s suffering, and America would have to back down.

  Since Kim attached no value to lives other than his own, the issue for him was him. And the only way the Americans could actually harm him was with a nuclear strike.

  In his mind’s eye, Kim saw again the destruction his small bomb had created. He imagined how Pyongyang, his city, filled with statues and monuments to him and his father, would look after a much larger American nuke had done its work.

  The Americans would find out the bomb was one of his. Kim felt an unfamiliar emotion: fear.

  But then he saw, as if reading a screenplay, that he and his dear people would be protected from American reprisal by American doubters. American blogs showed that large numbers of them would always disbelieve their government. Kim thought for a minute of the film that Michael Moore would make and smiled; it would be even better than Fahrenheit 9/11!

  Martin would order a nuclear attack only if he possessed undeniable proof of the bomb’s origin—and only then if he could also stomach killing thousands of Kim’s people, enraging the Chinese and South Koreans, and creating even more chaos among Americans. No. Everything in the man’s life history shouted that he wouldn’t. Kim knew there was no such thing as undeniable proof.

  When the second bomb exploded, it would bring the Americans to their knees. It would also strip them of their allies. No nation would risk helping them for fear of drawing the Arabs’ rage on themselves.

  Kim decided to watch One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest—he had always liked Jack Nicholson’s work.

  ***

  “A penny for your thoughts,” said Ella softly from right behind him. She molded herself to Rick’s back, reaching her arms around his waist and leaning her forehead into the nape of his neck, hugging him gently. With a guilty start he flicked away the cigarette then squeezed both her hands in his; he slowly unwrapped her arms and turned to face her.

  “I was just thinking about getting us and the country back to work,” he said. “The longer we hunker down, the worse it gets. Locking down our cities makes things go to hell for the economy much faster than anything we might gain against the bombers by doing it. What do you think it will take to get people back to their lives?”

  “Setting an example and leveling with them,” she said, and then: “Rick, what are the odds of more bombs?”

  “I don’t know, but if I ask myself, how many bombs these people—whoever they are—could have, logic says not many. Whether they bought them, stole them, or built them, there are so many constraints . . . limited bomb-making capacity, limited cash, and, I’ve got to believe, few sources, few nations that would be willing, or are so lax, that they would part with, or lose control of, more than a handful of nukes.”

  “So, worst case, we’re looking at . . .”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two or three more bombs.”

  “Two or three more cities is what that means.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can the country take that?”

  “Depends a lot on which cities. If they were New York, Washington, and LA . . .”

  “So, we don’t try to defend everywhere. We defend the most critical cities.”

  “Try selling that to Congress and the press and the bloggers!”

  Ella looked at him sharply. “Well, Rick, you may have to do just exactly that! Remember what you said about running an open, straight-talking administration?”

  “Yeah. But I had in mind explaining the sacrifices necessary to make Social Security solvent, not trying to sell the idea that, depending on where you live, you may be expendable.”

  “Well, remember how England stood up under the blitz. They didn’t try to defend every city as if it were London. Churchill sold that. Get the speech writers working on it!”

  “Sir, it’s six o’clock.”

  Rick and Ella knew that voice. It belonged to the president’s valet, and with it their day began.

  Chapter 13

  Creech Air Force Base, near Las Vegas

  Steve Nguyen was far gone toward death by radiation by the time Rick and Ella arrived at his stretcher. He had experienced several bouts of spontaneous bleeding, evidence of which was on his clothing, ears, nose, and the corners of his mouth. From somewhere in the morphine-induced haze that guarded him from most of the pain of his disintegrating body, Nguyen sensed a presence. He forced open his encrusted eyelids.

  Rick was nearly overwhelmed by the smells: feces, infection, urine, vomit. As Rick and Ella paused beside Nguyen, he recognized them. “Mr. President!” Looking toward the hoarse, garbled, gurgling voice, they saw a man with red blotches and oozing patches on his skin and ulcerated, infected lip sores. He had pulled himself up on one elbow.

  “They killed my family, my wife, my two little girls . . .” A rasping breath. “They killed me, too.” Nguyen suddenly reached across his body and upwards, the motion tearing an IV needle out of his forearm, and grabbed the president’s leg. As others reached for the man, Rick shook his head. He felt the strength in Nguyen’s grip. “Find them. Punish them for what they did here. Promise me. Promise me!”

  The president squatted beside the stretcher, his throat constricted, eyes prickling. Why? Why? Nothing this country has done, no American policy, however misguided, justifies killing these people. I do not grant you the right to kill us! I will not accept this!

  For the first time since the bombing—in fact, the first in a very long time—Rick Martin felt emotion that he did not shunt to that separate place he’d constructed early in his life, when he resolved never to expose his feelings, never to risk allowing another to savage his unprotected emotional flesh.

  “What’s your name?” said the president, biting his lip.

  “Steve . . . Nguyen.”

  “What are the names of your family?”

  “Cindy my wife . . . Rachel who was three and . . . Carol . . . five.”

  “I promise you, Steve Nguyen. I promise!”

  Nguyen winced, stiffened, and pulled himself upward, his muscles straining. Bleeding lips working, he shouted, “Don’t let us down, Mr. President!” He let go of Rick’s leg and slumped back down on the stretcher, hemorrhaging again in scarlet streams, his ra
diation-ravaged blood now without the platelets needed to clot.

  Rick knelt, frozen, gazing at the dying man and smelling his suppurating sores.

  Don’t let us down . . . he holds me responsible for the outcome of all this. For bringing some sort of justice and closure and, yes, benefit out of this horror. He believes that’s the president’s job, my job. Well, I do, too, Steve!

  Rick squeezed the dying man’s hand, looked into Ella’s eyes, and rose. They continued their journey through the dreadful landscape. When the first troops had arrived, Steve Nguyen and other survivors inhabited a scene like those recorded by American Civil War photographer Matthew Brady: the ground was carpeted with the wounded and dead. Survivors took precedence; the dead were left where they had dropped. Soldiers walked among them, giving water, rigging what shelter they could, injecting morphine from their battle dressing packs. These were paratroopers; they traveled light and slept rough and had few tents to offer. Very few survivors had shelter from the merciless sun.

  By the day of the president’s unannounced arrival, the soldiers and a steady stream of volunteers had filled every building and hangar at Creech with the injured. Their numbers, while overwhelming to those caring for them, were far, far fewer than the numbers of survivors remaining without shelter around the no-go perimeter. Even the fortunate ones at Creech were in grim circumstances. Most lay or sat on the tile or concrete floors in the squalor of festering wounds, overflowing waste, and head-to-toe crowding.

  As word of the Martins’ presence rippled through the base, a crowd gathered. Sam Yu, face like stone, moved alongside Rick as he paused at another stretcher. “Mr. President, you should speak to the survivors and the soldiers. I’ll pull something together.” Rick nodded and moved toward the next victim, his concentration broken only for a moment.

  About forty-five minutes later, Rick and Ella climbed up onto the bed of a truck. Rick held a bullhorn and looked out over hundreds of people, the number growing as those able to walk streamed from all directions.

  Wilson, leading the presidential protective detail, climbed up and took position about five steps—or one step and a dive—to the president’s left. He was angry and jumpy; his eyes scanned ceaselessly for an expression or a movement revealing a shooter.

  He felt like a plastic ball in a bingo caller’s hopper. One of these days, count on it, somebody’s going to shoot at a president again. When that happens, the agent whose ball had dropped from the hopper was either going to take the bullet or spend the rest of his life questioning his reaction in the instant that contained his entire reason for being. Wilson’s stomach churned.

  As he stood a few feet away, danger never entered the president’s mind. What should I tell them? What can I tell them? To give himself a few more moments to consider Sam’s hastily written words, he said, “Let’s begin with a silent prayer for those who’ve been killed and those who are struggling to survive.”

  The president broke the silence: “The first thought I think we all have is what a monstrous tragedy this is. All the lives destroyed. All of us—federal, state, and local governments—will help. And I’m sure you join me now in thanking all the medics and soldiers and volunteers for their unceasing work to comfort and heal.”

  During the applause that followed, Martin looked around, seeing many people were without shelter. “We will improve conditions here as rapidly as humanly possible! I especially want you to know that hundreds of thousands of your fellow Americans are volunteering themselves, their tents and campers and vans, their homes, all of their individual talents, to help you.

  “Ella and I are here because we want to be with you, to see and hear and try to understand and absorb the enormity of what you’ve suffered. What we have experienced today will be with us always and will drive us as we tackle all that’s required to protect America, to rebuild, to bring the murderers to justice, and to reduce the dangers to mankind from nuclear weapons. The memory of your courage, your kindness, your skill, and above all your fierce urgency will drive us and sustain us when we tire.

  “Right now we want to be with as many of you as possible in the few minutes before we must return to Washington.”

  Rick hopped down, took Ella’s hand, and waded into the crowd. Wilson and other agents formed a scrum in a doomed attempt to keep space between the presidential couple and the surging crowd.

  The Martins were engulfed in humanity. Voices from all directions. People reaching out to shake Rick’s hand, to touch his shoulder, some sobbing, others grimly silent. Every one of them needs something from me, Rick thought, but I have nothing left.

  “Mr. President!”

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. President!”

  “Mr. President, why . . . why?”

  Suddenly he found himself pressed close to a thin woman whose face was framed by tangled shoulder-length grey hair. “President Martin!” she said in a voice that he heard with singular clarity amidst the hubbub. “My daughter was killed in Iraq. My husband and our grandchildren were killed here. Don’t let this be an excuse for more killing! Don’t give in to the ones who tell you to bomb, or invade. War isn’t the answer to this. Find another way. There’s got to be another way!”

  The woman’s eyes lanced Rick, impaling him with their intensity. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I’ll find another way!” Wilson shouldered between them, alarmed by the woman’s passion and her position, pushing up against his president. She disappeared from Rick’s view but not from his mind.

  Chapter 14

  As the air force Gulfstream V climbed, the president sat in the forward cabin, eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap. He was glad he’d insisted this be a quick, unannounced visit without journalists because he had no good answers for the questions they would be asking right now. Well, the questions won’t go away, so you’d better use this flight to get some answers.

  Rick opened his eyes and saw Ella watching him. His look asked her to speak.

  “My God! That was something from hell. How are they ever going to get everybody under shelter? Conditions are so awful!”

  “Yeah, I know. Let’s see what Bart and Sam think.” Unbuckling, Rick rose, opened the cabin door, and said, “Bart, Sam, come join us.”

  “OK, how do we manage this?” said the president after they were seated. “It’s gonna stay on TV, twenty-four seven. It’ll play as Katrina all over again.

  “Sam?”

  “We don’t try to spin it. We don’t try to soften it. We couldn’t if we tried! We emphasize the scale and the suddenness. We blunt the comparison to Katrina with the facts of how much bigger this is. We come up with metrics that show progress. We give examples of the ingenuity and dedication and heroism of the victims and the responders. We highlight the volunteers. And as soon as we can, we get them to focus on your initiatives to make the country and the world safer.”

  Which I haven’t figured out yet, Rick thought.

  Guarini leaned toward him. “I agree, Mr. President. And I think that principle—get it all out there—is our communications strategy going forward. It’s what you promised in the campaign and it’s the best we have. You pledged to keep the American people in the loop. That’s one of the places Bush and Rogers got it wrong. They let the reality perceived by ordinary Americans get way out of line with the reality they perceived.”

  “Yeah, but how can openness work, since the reality that I perceive right now, and that I’m betting you perceive, is uncertainty and fear of another attack!” Rick’s voice rose. “We don’t have any idea how they blew up Las Vegas, who they are, and whether they have another bomb, or two or three!”

  Sam and Bart exchanged wide-eyed glances, acknowledging Martin’s panic. Guarini was especially surprised because Rick Martin was not a let-your-hair-down guy. Even with Guarini, the man almost never let his emotions into the room. Early in their alliance and friendship, Bart believed Martin was simply ultra-cautious and that he, Bart, had not yet earned his full confidence. Later he realized that Rick was al
ways in his head, weighing evidence, choosing his words, thinking things all the way through.

  Guarini broke their strained silence. “Mr. President, we can be pretty sure that the how was loading the bomb in an SUV or truck and driving into Las Vegas. We also can be pretty sure that they are al-Qaeda or a group with similar motivations and roots. I’m betting that after DOE has analyzed the debris we’ll know if the bomb was homemade or was assembled by experienced nuclear engineers. That’ll give us a handle on who helped them do it.”

  Guiltily, Rick wondered if he should remain silent about Paternity.

  “So, Mr. President, we’re not clueless. I think that—actually—our biggest challenge is how to deal with what we’re pretty sure of.”

  Even without knowing about Paternity, Bart, you’ve certainly got that right! thought Rick

  “Yeah, you’re right, Bart. And it’s not only the how, but also who. A moment ago, Sam referred to my initiatives to make the country safer and to get better control of the world’s nukes. Today those initiatives are just sound bites. We haven’t had time to work on them. I’m thinking maybe I should pull back from recovery and internal security in order to develop and work those initiatives.”

  “Relief, recovery, and internal security are huge jobs and they have more daily impact on Americans than diplomacy!” said Yu. “Your administration can’t appear to be leaving people to the bureaucrats. Remember Katrina!”

  Rick’s eyes widened, looking toward something beyond the cabin wall. Then he grinned. “How about putting Bruce Griffith in charge of all that?”

  “Which takes him out of the main loop in our diplomatic and military responses. I like that!” said Guarini. “Of course, he probably won’t like it, for the same reason.”

  “I can convince him it’s in the country’s best interest, because it is. Bruce is a patriot; he’ll be able to see that this job has to be broken into two pieces and that the president is the one to be working with other governments. He’ll also be able to see that, if he does it well, having this piece of the action will make him look presidential.”