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We’ve both had a lot of ups and downs. We both have demanding jobs – she probably has the most demanding job in the entire world.”
“Do you love her the way you loved Mom?”
Luke looked at Gunner then. He shook his head slowly. “I will never love anyone the way I loved your mom. Except for you. I love you just as much.”
He nodded at the truth of what he had just said. Whatever he and Susan had, and it was great, and it was important – it wasn’t the same as what he and Becca once had. He imagined that Susan could say something similar about herself and Pierre. Leave it to a thirteen-year-old boy to clarify all that for him.
On the TV screen, Susan stepped to the microphones.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
12:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
The Press Briefing Room
The White House, Washington, DC
“Good afternoon,” Susan said. “I don’t have a lot of information for you, so I’m going to keep my remarks brief.”
She stood at the podium. She looked out at about fifty reporters and about as many cameras and microphones, which she knew would bring her face and her words to nearly every corner of the globe. She had long ago stopped worrying about that.
For a brief moment, she let her gaze wander the room. It was a bleak winter morning. People did not look like they wanted to be here. Neither did she. The news was bad, and she didn’t want to be the one to deliver it. But the situation demanded leadership, and so…
“As you all know, about four a.m. our time, and eleven a.m. local time, a chartered plane crashed on its approach to the Sharm El Sheikh airport in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt. On board were United States Congressman Jack Butterfield of Texas, as well as other close friends of ours, including Sir Marshall Dennis of the United Kingdom, and the Egyptian Consul-General to London, Ahmet Anwar. A total of eighty-three people died on board that plane, including twenty-seven Americans, as well as people from ten other countries. There were no survivors.”
Susan paused. Cameras whirred and clicked in the quiet.
“Video surveillance footage from the airport, as well as our own satellite data, have now confirmed what many of us suspected all along – the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile fired from the surrounding mountains. We condemn in no uncertain terms this cowardly attack on innocent people, and we stand united with the international community in our resolve to defeat the agents of terror.”
Already the reporters were gabbling and muttering, readying themselves to shout questions at her. This, even though they had been informed beforehand that she was taking no questions.
“We offer our sincere condolences to the families of the victims. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.”
Susan’s breath caught in her throat. For a moment, she surprised herself by fighting back tears. She thought she had gotten past this sort of thing, that she had become so hardened by tragedy, it didn’t reach her emotions anymore. But she was wrong. The crash of that plane, the loss experienced by the families of those on board, triggered something in her – the losses of so many people these past several years, her own losses, and her fears of more.
A sudden image came to her – that of her daughter Michaela, held by gunmen, tied up and secured to a catwalk nearly fifty stories above Los Angeles. She shook that away. It was replaced by the briefest, most fleeting image of an explosion underground, a big steel door blowing outward, and flames engulfing the big Secret Service man walking just in front of her – the Mount Weather disaster.
Everyone in the room was staring at her now.
She stopped following the prepared speech and wandered off script. “In a very real sense, we don’t just stand with you, we are you. This isn’t to minimize anyone’s personal pain, but we’ve all been through the wringer in recent years. We’ve lost family, we’ve lost friends – I’ve lost some of my very best friends on Earth – and we’ve lost the feeling of a secure and sane world that we once had. But we’re going to get that feeling back, and we’re going to pass it on to our kids and grandkids. These terrorist atrocities are going to stop!”
Despite themselves, some of the reporters and TV crew people began to clap.
“We do not yet know who the perpetrators of this attack were. But I promise everyone in this room, and everyone around the world, that we will find out, and when we do, we will act swiftly to bring them to justice. I also reiterate to you that we are working hard, together with our many allies and friends, to create a world where incidents like this do not happen.”
There was near-silence now. She was beginning to repeat herself. That’s what you get for veering away from the prepared remarks.
A heavyset, bearded man in the front row raised a meaty hand. Susan did not acknowledge it, but he spoke anyway. “When you say ‘bring them to justice,’” he said, “do you mean a court of law?”
Susan knew the reporter well, but at the moment, his name escaped her. It was that type of day. “When we know more, you will know more,” she said.
A flood of questions came. Everyone was talking at once, and Susan could barely differentiate one word from the next. Her Secret Service detail began to hustle her from the stage. She leaned into the microphone one last time.
“Thank you,” she said.
She moved through the heavy green door to stage right, big bodies flanking her on every side. Kat Lopez stood in the corridor, holding a clipboard. Their eyes met.
Susan shook her head. “I thought that went rather well,” she said.
CHAPTER NINE
7:31 p.m. West Africa Time (1:31 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Millennium Koko Gentlemen’s Club
Lagos, Nigeria
“Right on time, just like I said.”
Crazy Eddie sat with three of his men at a round table in a plush VIP section on the second story of the upscale club. Through a glass partition, he could watch the action down on the floor. It never stopped. Though it was just early evening, there were three girls on stage, all nude except for high-heeled shoes, all working the poles.
Good, strong girls, he knew them to be. Acrobats. Athletes. Eddie had been living here at the club in the overnight suites for months, and he believed he had sampled just about every girl who worked in the place. Black girls from here in Nigeria and neighboring countries, white girls from Russia and Eastern Europe, Asian girls from Cambodia and Thailand – Eddie loved them all.
Lights flashed in purple, soft blue, and orange. Heavy bass pumped, but Eddie felt it more than heard it – the glass wall did a good job of canceling the sound. Down below, another group of men had just entered the club – half a dozen men wearing white and blue kaftans with matching pants, and kufis on their heads. They all wore heavy beards, almost comically so, as if the beards were fakes glued to their faces.
They were speaking with the two large bouncers at the door, but everything seemed to be in order. Eddie had already paid their way in – no need for a three-thousand-naira entry fee to be a deal breaker, or to result in a sudden massacre.
“Ready, boys?” Eddie said. “Let’s be ready to welcome our guests. Watch their clothes. Watch for guns.”
Eddie raised a hand and snapped his fingers, gesturing for the two waiters standing by the door to bring the champagne out. It was Eddie’s way of being funny. His guests were Salafi Muslims and would never dream of drinking alcohol. Indeed, they would probably enjoy murdering people who did.
And the naked girls? Dancing? That brought the whole thing to another level. Just holding this meeting here at the club was another way of being funny. Eddie being Eddie, was what some people called it.
The visitors were coming up the red carpeted stairs now and Eddie could see