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  She stared at him for a moment longer, then turned and walked across the room to a window, giving up on the nine minutes, at least for now. “Maybe a little more time,” she said, not loud enough for him to hear.

  These worries about Hudson were not just her own. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution had been mentioned several times in the media. After the attack, it guaranteed the government could continue to run and power would be returned to Hudson, but now it might be used against him.

  Whenever the vice president and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

  Melissa had read his State of the Union speech. Hudson was smart enough to know how dangerous it would be if he announced his new-found pacifism. He could say a lot of things about changing the government and the world, but that was one secret he needed to keep at all cost.

  Still, she knew he might go off script. Ever since he’d “died,” Hudson had become unpredictable, even a little strange. Fitz had asked her if she could get Hudson to cut back on some of the philosophical ramblings during cabinet meetings, and many on the White House staff had found him in a kind of “thoughtful trance.” He explained to Melissa and Fitz that during those times, he was simply meditating.

  “Presidents don’t meditate,” Fitz had said.

  “I’m certain that if prior presidents had meditated, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now,” Hudson had calmly replied.

  Melissa noticed, not for the first time, that in spite of his beleaguered body, his eyes burned with a fire hotter than ever. At least there’s that, she thought, but Melissa didn’t know how to handle the “new” Hudson. She was too practical for all his “love and light” ideas. Yet one thing was clear; he had to stick to the message, and not try to use this speech to take the pressure off NorthBridge or China.

  “What did Vonner say about the speech?” Melissa asked.

  “He liked it,” Hudson said casually as he pulled on his sports coat.

  “Won’t you even wear a suit?” Melissa asked.

  “No.”

  “Have you told Vonner about your plan to oppose the war?”

  “No, but I’m sure he’s aware of my views. Vonner misses nothing. He’s probably listening to us right now,” Hudson said, waving a hand in the air. “Hi, Vonner, we’re still not sure if you’re friend or foe, but—”

  “Sometimes, it’s not about who’s good or bad,” Melissa began.

  “Really?” Hudson asked, checking his appearance in the mirror.

  “Come on, you know it’s rarely that simple. Someone can be bad for the right reasons, just as someone can be good for the wrong reasons,” she said tensely.

  Hudson smiled at his wife. He always liked how she could quickly sum up a complex issue.

  “Vonner may seem like a bad man,” Melissa continued, not returning the smile, “but his cause is good.”

  “Manipulating world events to keep the population controlled is a good cause?” he asked, recalling a long list of REMie MADE events, the acronym’s meaning, “Manipulate and Distract Everyone,” echoing in his head. How long have we been manipulated? Distracted? Too long.

  She sighed, frustrated. “No, but manipulating them for other reasons might—”

  “It depends on the reasons?”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter Thirty

  In the back of a limousine driving down K Street, in Washington, DC, a REMie, affectionately referred to as “the Shark,” and a powerful US senator discussed their dilemma.

  “The assassination attempt and his near-death experience have made the damn president more popular than ever,” the senator said.

  “If we can’t kill the president’s popularity,” the Shark replied, “we’ll just have to kill the president, for longer than nine minutes.”

  “Pound seems to have nine lives,” the senator muttered.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” the Shark said, smiling maliciously. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

  Tarka thought it was an odd place for a meeting, but she’d never been to the redwoods before, and Booker Lipton was an odd man, not to mention it would be better if Rex didn’t know about her receiving help from one of Vonner’s most bitter rivals. She knew Rex tracked her as best he could. However, his best was not equal to her abilities to vanish, which she did often for short stretches, while “in the field.”

  The towering trees hushed out the entire world, even the demons in her head. Raised in Greece until her parents were killed by terrorists, followed by six—or was it seven?—foster homes across Europe, Tarka had plenty of demons. Normally she kept them at bay by focusing on the mission, whatever it might be. Keeping a president alive against terrorists, amongst other threats, had done the job nicely for the past year. Today, though, the trees had taken over, and she couldn’t get over the realization of how much she loved them.

  “They take your breath away, don’t they?” Booker said as he stepped out from behind a huge trunk.

  Normally, surprising Tarka’s “hair-trigger” reflexes would have made her pull a weapon, or at least one of the seven martial arts disciplines she’d mastered would have kicked in, and Booker would be on the ground, most likely dead. Instead, the trees calmed her.

  “They certainly do,” Tarka replied. She suspected he had bodyguards stationed behind nearby trees, maybe even up in the high branches, protecting him, even if she hadn’t been one of the top assassins employed by his main nemesis. Booker Lipton, an African American with more money than anyone on the planet, had made countless enemies while accumulating his fortune. She doubted he went anywhere without some of his BLAXers—a private army rumored to be as large, and better trained and equipped, than those of most small countries.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Tarka added, shaking his hand.

  “Interesting that Vonner doesn’t know you asked for my help,” Booker said, amazed that the stunning woman in front of him was also a lethal killer.

  “All he cares about is getting the job done.”

  “Oh, I suspect Vonner cares about a great deal more than that.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  Booker nodded, regarding her carefully.

  “Is Rochelle Rogers alive?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Do you have her?”

  He seemed surprised by her question. “No.”

  “But you do know where she is?” Tarka asked, assuming he would not have taken the meeting if he had nothing to offer.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why haven’t you rescued her yourself?”

  “Why are you trying to find her?” Booker asked.

  Tarka smiled at his avoidance of the question. She was a fighter, not a negotiator, and Booker was both. She decided to stick to the point. “Will you tell me where Rochelle is?”

  “Perhaps,” Booker said, beginning to stroll down a narrow trail through lush ferns. “What are you offering?”

  “Nothing,” she said, following him as the trail wound among the giants.

  He stopped and looked at her, laughing. “Do you know who she is? That the president plans on pardoning her? That she apparently has some kind of dirt on your employer’s puppet president? That she killed—”

  “I know all that.”

  “She sounds like a valuable pawn in the game, doesn’t she?” Booker said, still smiling. “Yet you’re asking me to just hand her to you, to Vonner, a man who has never missed a chance to try to screw me over? In fact, he goes out of his way to cause me harm.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” Tarka had reasoned that if Booker knew where Rochelle was, and wanted he
r, he would already have her.

  “How big is your team?”

  “Big enough.”

  “Not for this mission.”

  “Where is she?” Tarka asked, trying to spot Booker’s people among the massive redwoods. She couldn’t see anything, but she could sense them.

  Booker shook his head. “You’re pretty damn sure I’m going to tell you.”

  “I am, because you want me to get her.”

  “True,” Booker said, starting to walk again. “And doesn’t that worry you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Yes, it does,” Booker mused.

  “Vonner wants her,” she said. “If you’re setting him up for something, Vonner’s a tough guy, he’ll deal with that. My job is to rescue her.”

  “Does the president know about this mission?”

  “I think you’re in a better position to know that answer,” she said.

  Booker nodded. “She’s being held on a tiny island in the Philippines.”

  “Which one?” Tarka asked. “There are more than seven thousand islands in the Philippines.”

  “Quite right,” Booker said, impressed with her knowledge. “It’s in the Mindanao group, but it’s unnamed.” He handed her a flash drive. “GPS coordinates and other pertinent details.”

  “Who’s holding her?”

  “That’s on the drive as well. A well-armed group. Seventeen men, four women. Concrete bunker at the center of the island. Heavy jungle canopy. You’ll see lots of photos.”

  She nodded. Everyone knew Booker had access to the best satellite imagery. His companies supplied the intelligence communities, including the NSA and CIA, with most of their high-tech equipment. “Anyone else on the island?”

  “No.”

  “Who pays the bills?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Booker asked, stopping again, this time to lean against a mammoth log.

  Tarka knew it was likely one of six or seven people, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Booker himself, but she went with the obvious. “Bastendorff?”

  Booker, impressed again, nodded slowly. “You be careful, Tarka,” he said, meeting her eyes. “You’re a smart woman, hopefully smart enough to know you’re not that smart. You may think I’m setting a trap for Vonner, but Bastendorff is the spider in this story. Try not to get caught in his web.”

  “I think there are many ‘spiders’ in this story.”

  Booker smiled. “True enough, but he’s the worst of them.” He paused. “The webs are everywhere.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Linh had been trying to get an appointment with the president for weeks. Even if his schedule hadn't been crushing, he hadn’t been ready to see her before now. The morning after Hudson delivered the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, he found himself walking in the trees on the White House South Lawn with the one person he believed knew of the Air Force one attack in advance.

  “I'm happy to see you, Mr. President,” Linh said.

  “I believe you. Really, I do,” Hudson replied. “Yet your actions say otherwise.”

  Her eyes squinted as her face expressed pain.

  “You knew it was coming.” He stared at her, trying to understand, trying to answer so many questions, trying to see into her thoughts, but all he saw were mysteries. “You knew I was about to be killed,” he said, his voice full of anguish. “Why didn't you warn me?”

  “How could I have known?”

  “Don't.” Hudson pointed a finger at her. “I have been through too much. You know that I know that you knew.” He lowered his hand, looked up at the sky, then back into her eyes. “So, please, tell me.”

  “I did try to warn you.”

  “Well, no offense, but you didn't do a very good job.”

  “You chose.”

  “I chose what?” Hudson looked at her incredulously. “To get killed?”

  “Yes, we all choose our paths, but that isn't what I was referring to,” Linh said. “I meant that you chose not to believe me, chose not to pursue it.”

  Hudson shook his head. What he really wanted was to shake her, to yell that he felt betrayed by her, that he needed her to tell him all that she knew, about everything, but he felt no right to do any of those things. “Then why are you here?” he finally asked, trying not to sound desperate.

  “I thought you might need to talk about it,” she said. Her face held a soft, tranquil serenity that nearly made him cry.

  Of course I want to talk to you. You’re the only person who would understand it. Ever since that horrible day, I've been waiting to see you again, to tell you what happened, to ask you so much!

  He stared at her, thinking all the wild thoughts that had been tormenting him. It was like having a conversation with just their eyes. It left him feeling at once invigorated, drained, and like he wanted to weep. “You know . . . What do you think I want to talk about?” he asked, not intending it to come out as the whisper it did.

  “The nine minutes.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. “I can't.” But it was all he wanted to do.

  “Why not?”

  He scanned the area, wanting to make sure no one was too close. He knew there were fifteen agents nearby, but he had faith in the Wizard’s SonicBlock. Fear of being overheard wasn’t the problem. “I'm afraid,” he said, ashamed.

  “Don't be.”

  “If I start, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop.”

  “It will be okay,” she said, never taking her eyes from his.

  “Not if it unravels me.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing?”

  “Yes,” he scoffed. “Maybe if I weren’t POTUS, I could . . . ”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I could explore dreams and rainbows, chase ghosts, wonder about fate, the meaning of life . . . and things beyond.”

  “You can.”

  “I can't,” he said, breaking her gaze for the first time. “I'm the president of the United States.”

  “Those are exactly the type of issues our leaders should be concerned about.”

  “Really? Haven't you ever heard about the separation of church and state?”

  “Church? You know this has nothing to do with religion.”

  He nodded, and was about to speak when he saw Fitz walking briskly across the South Lawn toward them. “Give me a second,” he said, jogging off to intercept Fitz.

  “Two-minute warning, Mr. President,” Fitz said while looking over Hudson's shoulder at Linh.

  Hudson recalled the top-secret video conference with the leaders of India, South Korea, and Japan. Although everything in his being now wanted to avoid war with China, preparations still had to be made. Separate calls with Russia and Pakistan would take place later in the day. “Can you give me three or four more minutes?”

  Fitz stared at him as if he were crazy. “War, international leaders—these things don't wait, especially for some controversy waiting to happen,” he said, nodding toward Linh, whom he'd previously called a high-class psychic, somehow making the word “psychic” sound more like “hooker”.

  “Do it anyway,” he said, heading back to Linh.

  “You’re out of time,” Linh said.

  “In more ways than one.”

  “Do you believe in destiny?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe, sometimes . . . ”

  “You should.”

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  “Whenever you need to talk . . . ” she offered.

  He nodded.

  “In the meantime, I have some news about your friend.”

  His first thought was of the Wizard, afraid he'd been the next victim of whoever was killing the people who’d been there that tragic night at the tire shop. Even when she said “Rochelle,” he was still confused.

  Linh looked around. “Rochelle is alive.”

  “Rochelle? She's alive?” Hudson expected himself to be elated at the news, but instead, a sick feeling
overtook him.

  “A man named Bastendorff has her.” She waited until Hudson caught her eyes before continuing. “Vonner is about to send one of his VC agents to attempt an “extraction”, I think they called it.”

  “Vonner knows where she is?” Hudson said, his voice rising.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Any other meeting he would have cancelled and called Vonner immediately to find out why he hadn’t been told Rochelle had been found. Hudson suspected they were never going to tell him, or were planning to use her against him.

  But the call would have to wait, because as much as he wanted to see Rochelle finally free, there had to be a world left for her to enjoy. War with China could make that impossible, and his video conference with the leaders of India, South Korea, and Japan might help prevent it.

  The countries were all on edge with China’s expansion and aggression in the area. However, war between the two biggest economies in the world—Japan was third, India seventh, and South Korea was also a big player—would destabilize not just the region, but the entire global financial system. He needed to calm their fears and get them onboard with his peace plan.

  Director of National Intelligence, David Covington, was waiting when the president returned to the Oval Office prior to the conference.

  “Mr. President, I have a report you need to hear before your call,” Covington said, swallowing the final remnants of a lemon Necco wafer.

  “Can’t it wait, David? We start in . . . ” He looked to Fitz.

  Fitz held up three fingers.

  “You have to delay for ten minutes,” Covington said after watching the exchange. “There’s a critical national security issue which directly relates to the conference you’re about to convene.”

  Hudson didn’t care for the man, but knew Covington understood the stakes, and wouldn’t make the request lightly. “Okay.”

  At the president’s assent, Fitz sprang into action, began speaking into his cell, and headed to his office. Redirecting three world leaders wasn’t fun, but it could be done.