“She’s involved. Yes.”
“Then I trust that we’ll soon have an answer to who would’ve killed him. The sooner I can tell his supporters the truth about what happened to him, the better it will be.”
For him, Nick thought. He wanted the heat turned down, but he lied as easily as he breathed, and Nick had no doubt he did order the man’s murder and was doing damage control after the situation caused an international incident with the United States.
“I understand your now-ex-vice president was a friend of his?”
“Yes.”
“I find that to be extremely unsettling. Are you aiding the opposition movement while telling the world you’re not in the business of regime changes in other sovereign nations?”
“We’re not aiding the opposition. Ivanov was a longtime personal friend of the former vice president. Her interactions were not sanctioned by me or my government.”
“And you didn’t know any of this?” His little chuckle had a menacing edge to it. “How interesting.”
“Her actions in no way represent the position of my government.”
“She was your vice president. How can you say that?”
“Because she had no directive from me or anyone else in my government to participate in the opposition movement. Whatever she was doing was unsanctioned.”
“I’ve been told she was actively involved in the opposition movement, and yet you claim to have had no knowledge of that. With your country’s sophisticated intelligence-gathering capabilities, I find that to be preposterous.”
“As do I, Mr. President. As I said, they knew how to keep their communications off official channels, which is why their relationship wasn’t discovered sooner. But regardless of what she was doing, you have my word that there is no official effort underway on the part of the United States to try to overthrow your government, and her actions are being thoroughly investigated.”
“Your word… Isn’t that so quaint?”
“Call it what you will, but it’s the truth.”
“Another quaint concept. Truth…”
“Not in my world.” Nick had had about enough of Petrov at this point. “We’ll be in touch with more information as soon as we have it. In the meantime, I expect you to allow the bombers to be tried here. Four Americans were killed. They deserve justice.”
“I’ll be back to you on that shortly.”
“I’ll be waiting to hear.”
“Have a good day.”
“You as well.”
The second the connection ended, Nick exhaled. “Well, that was fun. When can we do that again?”
“You handled him as well as you could, Mr. President,” Graham said.
“He’s such a goddamned liar. Of course he ordered him killed.”
“Do you think he ordered the bombing, too?”
“No,” Nick said, “none of the rest of it was at his command or it wouldn’t have been bungled so badly. When he knocks people off, he does it surgically. There was nothing surgical about this. Thank you, everyone.”
The others stood as Nick got up and left the Situation Room with Terry and Graham.
“That was excruciating,” Nick said as they returned to the Oval Office. “Everything he said about Gretchen was true. What if we’d caught his second-in-command hanging out with someone actively trying to get rid of me? What would we say about it?”
“The same thing he did,” Graham said. “He has every good reason to be suspicious.”
“Fucking Gretchen,” Nick muttered under his breath. “This is a fine mess she’s gotten us into. I want an update on what’s happening with her.”
