Only a few newspapers were able to print. Piece by piece, the bricks of modernity were being substracted.
Tildy waited, wrapped in the shawl and looking at the family photos of the former chief of staff still on the shelf behind the desk. She knew that one of the children in the pictures had died. She supposed that all group photos would be looked at that way in the future: who lived through it, who did not.
The chief returned and motioned Tildy into the Oval Office.
The president was staring out the window, a legal pad in hand. The office was bare. The presence of the previous occupant had been wiped clean; even the desk had been swapped out. This one was the Theodore Roosevelt. “Tildy,” the president said softly, indicating the gold couches. They sat down, facing each other. “So?”
“Russians.”
The president nodded. “They’ve got the capability.”
“How many systems are down?”
“It’s spotty, but maybe half the country is without electricity. Texas is okay, they’re on their own grid. Water systems, gas, here and there, are real problems. Viruses took out most of the internet. Data in the Cloud wiped out. Private industry wrecked. Stock market closed. We were already in the worst depression since the thirties. I don’t know when or how we’re going to get everybody back to work. It’s a comprehensive mess.”
“What’s your top concern?” she asked.
“I’m really worried about our nuclear utilities. I’ve got a report that the safety mechanisms have been defeated at the Bellefonte plant in Alabama. We haven’t heard yet from other facilities. Grand Coulee Dam is fully open, flooding everything downstream. Could be other dams as well. People will drown. Houses are blowing up because of overcapacity in the gas lines. Hospitals are without power. They sure picked a helluva time to pull the switch.”
“What are we going to do about it, Mr. President?”
“We’ll have to respond. But it’s going to take us days to get it sorted out, get some kind of secure communication going so I can speak to my commanders.”
“What if they launch before that?”
“Our emergency systems are in good enough shape that we can easily counterattack. We can take Russia off the map. But is that what we want to do? And to be honest, we can’t do anything till we get the GPS back online. We’re in great peril.” Tildy saw that he had started making a list on the legal pad. Nuclear strike was at the top.
She had learned enough about dealing with powerful men that she waited to be asked. The president was agonizing and looking for answers. She had never really respected him, but she saw him now as an intensely moral man with an awesome responsibility he had never hoped to shoulder—to take revenge and possibly kill more people with a single decision than any individual in human history. His first presidential act.
Finally: “What do you think I should do?”
“Do you have the capacity to shut down Russia’s utilities?” she asked.
“Not as totally as they’ve done to us. I’m afraid it would make us look weak. Putin has the advantage of having a system that is not as dependent on high tech as ours.”
“Then there’s the flu.”
“You think he’s behind that, too?”
“There seems to be more immunity to Kongoli in Russia than elsewhere. It suggests that they may have had a vaccine prepared for this virus before they released it upon the world.”
The president stared at Tildy, his jaw slightly open. Then he shook his head. “I do believe in evil. But could they stoop to this? Is Satan loose in the world?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“We also have to think of the future. I don’t know how long it will be before societies get back to where we were. Estimate I’m hearing is that the world population is down maybe 7 percent. It’s impossible to measure the economic impact, but let’s say in our own country we’re at maybe 40 percent of our GNP. We’ve entered a new era already. Do we dare take the next step?”
Tildy knew Putin. He was always testing the limits, expanding the boundaries, setting traps. The takedown of the grid had been years in the planning. This was his chance to catch America on its heels, and he wasn’t going to let that go to waste. This was payback for humiliating him in Iran. The game that the stone-faced Russian leader was playing was built on many levels of deception and deniability, but an American response was required.