DEATH OF A PRESIDENT

12:02 MARCH 12, 2054 (GMT-5) >>> SÃO PAULO TO JFK
He knew the land beneath him carried scars, but when observed from such a height those scars appeared to vanish. The geometric partitions of farmland, the crowns of pure snow on distant mountains, the rebuilt cities studding the vague horizon, all of it evidence of how the nation had seemed to heal itself. It was as if the events of 20 years past had never occurred. Those events—that war—had driven him from this place, but he’d decided to return, to the nation of his birth, to his true home. That morning, once on board his Gulfstream, he’d asked the pilot about their planned route north into JFK. From the flight console a holographic scene sprang into view. Their route had them passing over Florida. He’d asked if they might divert west a bit, over Galveston. “Whatever you say, Dr. Chowdhury,” the pilot had answered. “It’s your plane.”
The flight out of São Paulo was the final leg of a farewell tour that had begun nearly a month before, in New Delhi, as Chowdhury had hop-scotched between the headquarters of his many portfolio companies. He had relinquished his long-held position as chairman of the Tandava Group to enter a self-imposed retirement. Peace, quiet. He had wanted to reenter the United States through Galveston, to see for himself all that a people could rebuild. When they’d flown over the Gulf of Mexico, he could see the freighters lined up to enter the port, like a message written in a string of Morse code. Breaking waves ribboned the coastline in white. When they crossed over the beach, and American soil was beneath him, his sense of relief was palpable; he was a mariner who had found his shore.
For the rest of the flight from Galveston to New York, Sandy Chowdhury remained fixed in his seat, his face framed in the aircraft’s porthole as he considered the country unspooling beneath him. There was, he thought, an innocence to the United States, one it perennially reclaimed despite its past—despite its wars, disease, and even crimes against its own citizens. In America you could forget, and if you could forget you could again be innocent: this was America’s promise, the reason Chowdhury had returned. He felt a slight lurch in his stomach and a tightness in his chest as the plane bled altitude on its approach into JFK.
Chowdhury wasn’t returning to America for only sentimental reasons. Before departing, he had installed his daughter, Ashni, as his successor at the Tandava Group, placing her at the helm of the private equity empire he’d created, with its hundreds of billions of dollars under management. There were now practical considerations to attend to. Life had dealt Chowdhury a weak heart. He was dying.
12:14 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
The White House
This was her last chance. That was the message the White House chief of staff delivered to Marine Major Julia Hunt, who stood at attention, heels hinged together, flagpole-straight, having placed herself at 6 feet and center in front of his desk. Her boss, Retired Admiral John “Bunt” Hendrickson, sat with one palm kneading the front of his bald head as if warding off a migraine. Hunt had once again stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She’d fulfilled a request for an intelligence assessment that should have remained unfulfilled. That assessment, titled “Advances in Remote Gene Editing Among State and Non-State Actors,” never should have left Langley, let alone the White House.
“I don’t care that he’s the vice chair of the committee,” said Hendrickson, speaking to Hunt as if she were an obstinate child, a tone that felt familiar to them both. In addition to being Hunt’s boss, Hendrickson was also her godfather, and had been a steady—if not always steadying—presence throughout Julia’s life. “I need to know this won’t happen again, that you understand what you did wrong.”
“It won’t happen again, sir,” she said.
“But do you understand what you did wrong?”
She struggled to look him directly in the eye. Her gaze instead fell over his shoulder, where the news was streaming live on his computer screen. Hendrickson was familiar with this posture of avoidance. Since Julia’s adoption at 9 by his old friend Sarah Hunt, Hendrickson had been a mainstay, the person Sarah called when Julia broke curfew, mouthed off to a teacher, or, on one occasion, accused her adoptive mother of being the one responsible for her parents’ deaths two decades before, in San Diego, where they—along with thousands of other migrant workers—had vanished in a flash of nuclear light, leaving no trace.
Hendrickson repeated his question. He wanted an assurance that Julia understood what she had done wrong. Except that Julia knew she’d done nothing wrong. Senator Nat Shriver was vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, or SSCI, which everyone in DC pronounced “sissy.” Shriver had a right to read the report.
12:16 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
The Ritz‑Carlton, Tysons Corner
Lily Bao sat on the edge of the mattress, buttoning her white silk blouse. One at a time, she picked the scattered pillows off the floor. She made the bed, retucking the swirl of mussed sheets into neat hospital corners, flattening out the duvet. She’d learned to do this as a girl in Newport, helping her mother, who’d worked as a maid in dingy hotels when they’d first immigrated to the US. No matter how wealthy Lily became, she always made the bed herself.
He had just left—she so rarely said his name; it was as if he existed in her life only as a pronoun. They’d gotten less than an hour together, a working lunch, as he’d referred to it in his text the night before. It had been, admittedly, one of many such “lunches,” always in a hotel room that she booked. She didn’t mind. She understood his constraints, even though he was single. Like a sailor married to the sea, he was married to his profession, which was politics, and just as a sailor both loves and fears the sea, he loved and feared the people he served, and so kept his relationships out of view. Because who knew how his enemies could use her against him?
Nat Shriver had plenty of enemies. She’d known this about him before she’d known anything else. A great-grandnephew of Maria Shriver, he was equal parts Shriver, Schwarzenegger, and Kennedy … also equal parts California and Massachusetts. He was everything to everyone, a best friend, a worst enemy. The only thing he wasn’t was boring, neutral; it didn’t matter who you were, you had an opinion about Nat Shriver. This senator who a growing number of Americans believed might eliminate the tyranny of one-party rule.
He was also, to Lily Bao’s great surprise, her lover.
12:17 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
São Paulo to JFK
As Chowdhury gazed vacantly out the window, the flight attendant, a middle-aged, heavily lipsticked brunette who appeared to be from another era of air travel, placed her hand on his arm, startling him, so that he felt a slight tremor in his chest. “My apologies,” she said. “Is there anything I can get you before we land?” He asked for some water. Beads of sweat had begun to gather on his forehead, and before he could calm himself with a sip, he felt a minor and not entirely unpleasant vibration in his left wrist, the work of a cardiologist in New Delhi who had installed a serotonin dispenser near his radial artery. Chowdhury took a couple of deep breaths, sipped his water, and turned on the news.
The US president, Ángel Castro, appeared onscreen before a crowd. Square-jawed, with a pompadour of thick black hair, which had hardly grayed in his 10 years in office, Castro stood at a dais with a flotilla of gray-hulled warships behind him at anchor. The chyron read: Twentieth Anniversary of Wén Rui Incident Commemorated in San Diego. It was no coincidence that Chowdhury had chosen today to return to the United States. What surprised him was that the president had decided to mark the anniversary as well. Castro had never before, in the three terms of his administration, wrapped himself in the events of that disastrous war.
Today’s speech was a striking departure. “Reinvention is the soul of our nation,” Castro began. “Only the American people could elect a president named Hussein and then two generations later elect another named Castro …” This was a familiar laugh line. He delivered some well-worn tropes about the country rising out of the ashes of war to overcome social unrest and economic dysfunction, before coming to the crux of his remarks: “We’ve gathered here today to commemorate a dark hour. For too long, those events have resided in a shroud of silence when they should instead stand as a source of national pride, akin to a Pearl Harbor, a September 11, a moment of tragedy that births an eventual triumph.”
Castro gripped both sides of the dais, its front emblazoned with the seal of the president of the United States, as he extolled the virtues of those whose “sacrifices are woven into the firmament of our nation,” mentioning names familiar to Chowdhury: Rear Admiral Sarah Hunt, Commander Jane Morris, Major Chris “Wedge” Mitchell. Praising the sacrifices made in a bygone war would be of little note for a president, except that Castro had distinguished his political career by disparaging the people behind the calamity that had begun on this day. His sudden reversal left Chowdhury wondering what Castro was playing at. A fourth term, he assumed, which would require shoring up his coalition. The veterans of that war made up a sizable bloc that Castro had neglected.
This clinging to power had begun to erode Castro’s popularity. His supporters in the American Dream Party—the self-proclaimed Dreamers—claimed he was the most consequential president since Washington, but his opposition in the Democratic-Republican Party had countered with the line, “Because he can’t leave Washington, he will never be Washington.” When faced with criticism, Castro and his allies often pointed to the country’s still-precarious recovery as an excuse for “stable leadership.” He seemed on the cusp of trotting out that alarmist excuse again today. “Although we’ve descended the mountain of catastrophe,” he said, raising his hand like a preacher with his Bible, “we still walk in the foothills of decline …”
Foothills of decline … Jesus, who writes this crap? thought Chowdhury. He laughed and noticed the flight attendant standing behind him. She had stopped in her tracks. Stone-faced, she was watching the president intently. “You think he’ll run for a fourth term?” Chowdhury asked over his shoulder.
“Who knows?” said the flight attendant. Her jaw was clenched.
Castro leaned deeply over the dais, his elbows nearly resting on its surface. “We honor the veterans of this war and their families,” he said. “The bitter devastation of that conflict …”—his voice trailed off; he coughed and then reached for a glass of water in mid-sentence, as if he’d caught a frog in his throat—“has forced them to live in the shadows of our society for too long …”
Castro paused. Chowdhury could see sweat beading against the president’s forehead.
The Gulfstream was descending sharply now. The flight attendant still stood in the aisle. Chowdhury asked her opinion of the speech.
“My opinion?” she asked, a hint of indignation in her voice. She folded her arms across her chest. She spoke to the screen. “My big brother was killed with the Seventh Fleet at Mischief Reef … 20 years ago …” she said, as if she herself could not believe the passage of time. Then she stopped and lifted her hand slightly, as if the memories had come so thick and fast she might have to brush them away from her face. “He was 19.”
Castro continued with his remarks, but his voice had become weaker, his face noticeably redder. He was struggling to finish. “Which is why today … I wish to announce … that …”
“My brother’s body never came back,” the flight attendant said, her voice sounding distant and dreamlike, as though she were somewhere else. Castro reached for his glass of water and descended into another coughing fit. “My opinion?” she asked again. “I hope our president chokes up there.”
12:18 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
The White House
Julia Hunt couldn’t bring herself to concede to her godfather that she’d done anything wrong. Even though he was a Democratic-Republican, Shriver had the authority and clearances to read the intelligence assessment.
Julia was muscular and petite, with a sweep of black hair cut short as a boy’s. In Quantico they’d called her Napoleon, a nickname that had followed her throughout the Corps in her career as an intelligence officer, which had been promising but for one unfortunate incident. When a colonel named Dozer, her superior at the barracks at 8th and I Streets, had observed her at-times chilly demeanor, he’d lecherously remarked that she might “do better” if she lightened up and got herself a boyfriend. They’d been drinking in the officers’ club and Hunt had responded by breaking his jaw with a beer mug swept off the bar top. Hendrickson had managed to get that incident swept under the rug, and he’d brought Julia onto his personal staff, where he could keep an eye on her. Brilliant though she was, it was a decision he was increasingly beginning to regret.
“It isn’t that simple,” Hendrickson said to his goddaughter. “You’re assuming that Shriver will abide by the rules—”
“Sir, it’s just—”
“I’m not finished,” Hendrickson shot back.
As he continued to enumerate the many problems Julia had caused him, she shifted her gaze ever so slightly to the screen behind him. The president was giving a speech in San Diego, but he was bent over at an odd angle, coughing, and struggling to finish his sentences. His face appeared red, as if he’d quickly blown up a bunch of balloons. Then he toppled forward from the dais, clutching his chest.
Julia gestured toward the news playing behind Hendrickson. “Sir—” she said.
Hendrickson would not be interrupted. “… The intel on remote gene editing in that briefing is highly sensitive and remains single-source, but do you think Shriver will mention that when he leaks it to the—”
“Sir …” she said again. Now the president wasn’t moving. The Secret Service had rushed the stage, forming a dark-suited canopy over his body.
“Goddammit, Julia, will you just listen to me! I don’t care that Shriver has the clearances. You don’t show up to a basketball game wearing your football pads. You have to play by the rules of the game you’re in—”
“Uncle Bunt!”
This got his attention. Hendrickson swiveled around in his chair, just in time to see the Secret Service agents hoisting the president from the stage and out of view of the cameras.
12:20 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
The Ritz‑Carlton, Tysons Corner
Just before Shriver rushed out the door, he told Lily that he loved her. He was struggling with his tie when he’d said it, the knot not quite coming together in his hands. She always liked to watch him dress. He’d seemed nervous throughout their hour together, something she’d at first attributed to an intelligence assessment he’d mentioned, one he had convinced a junior staffer at the White House to share with him. “When you were at the Tandava Group,” he’d said, “did you ever come across anyone doing work on remote gene editing?”
They weren’t even in bed yet when he’d asked, so she’d been brief with her answer. Lily had, in only the past two years, broken out on her own into private equity, but before that she’d risen through the ranks at the Tandava Group managing a merry-go-round of its portfolio companies, several of which had, in one way or another, been developing remote gene editing. This holy grail of biotech promised that, with the ease of a software update, entire populations could be made resistant to any number of the ubiquitous plagues that had tyrannized this globally integrated 21st century, to say nothing of its other potential applications. Although she knew the scientific terrain and a few of the players who had come close, to her knowledge no one had yet achieved such a breakthrough. She’d told him as much as they slipped beneath the sheets.
But an hour later, when he said that he loved her as he stood half-dressed in front of the mirror, his eyes had lightened as a smile raised a stubborn line on his mouth. It was as if by making this confession a burden had been lifted. She had stepped naked in front of him, grasping the two ends of his red tie in her hands. He reached his hand tentatively for her hip, but Lily pushed it away. He was a politician, and a successful one, so by definition a skilled manipulator. Perhaps she did love him, but he had the capacity to deceive her. She couldn’t admit similar feelings to him, whether she had them or not. At least not yet. She simply said, “I know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah,” she answered, pulling the running end of his tie through its loop and cinching it into a perfect half Windsor. “I know.”
He kissed her on the mouth, and she kissed him back. Then he left. As she dressed, she replayed the scene in her mind. I know … I know … I know …
The words kept rattling around.
The only thing she really knew was that she didn’t know anything. She sat on the edge of the perfectly made bed and turned on the news.
12:57 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
JFK International Airport
The pilot stepped into the back of the plane while it auto-taxied toward the arrivals terminal. Chowdhury skimmed the news on his headsUp, which emanated from a bracelet he wore. When the cardiologist in New Delhi had implanted the serotonin dispenser in his wrist, he’d told Chowdhury that he could also install a microchip that would project a headsUp on his retina, if he wanted—that way Chowdhury could avoid wearing the bracelet. Chowdhury had a hard time reconciling himself to the idea of implanting any more technology into his body. When he mentioned his reluctance to Ashni, she’d told her father that many of her friends were getting the chip in their wrist. “Who wants to wear that ugly bracelet all the time,” she’d said, “and you have to have a headsUp. You can’t function without one. It’s practically an extension of your body anyway, so why not pop that microchip in your wrist? Microchips, molecules, it’s all the same.”
Maybe so, thought Chowdhury.
Aside from the social media accounts of several notorious Truthers, who insisted the president had suffered a major health crisis, the general media consensus was that Castro was fine and resting comfortably at his hotel after suffering what the hastily assembled experts agreed was “exhaustion,” the result of an overaggressive travel schedule. “He pushes himself too hard in the job …” said one expert. Another observed, “His hands-on leadership style, while benefiting the American people, could impinge on his health …” That soft sycophancy was everywhere these days, a far cry from Chowdhury’s time in the White House, when the media was quick to inflate even the most benign misstep into a full-blown constitutional crisis.
The pilot stepped back into the cabin. He offered the typical pleasantries, confirming that Chowdhury’s car and driver awaited him outside the terminal. The pilot did apologize for one inconvenience: The private arrivals terminal for VIPs, with its separate customs and immigration services, was currently closed. “They just announced it, sir. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to taxi into the commercial terminal.”
Chowdhury didn’t mind. It was equally fast. Unlike the old days, with the endless immigration lines and platoons of Homeland Security agents stamping passports, the commercial terminal now required you to simply step onto an auto-walk, which trundled you through a concourse the length of a couple football fields. Signs lined the concourse, gentle but insistent reminders to watch the screens, which imaged your face. Advances in quantum computing and facial recognition had made passports obsolete. A one-way mirror ran the entire length of the auto-walk. Armed Homeland Security agents lingered behind it, out of view.
Today, though, the agents were out in plain sight. On high alert, they paced the length of the auto-walk, wearing body armor and gripping assault rifles with gloved hands. Chowdhury couldn’t recall ever seeing such robust security at immigration. It was as if they were looking for someone.
Chowdhury inadvertently made eye contact with one barrel-chested agent, his gaze concealed behind aerodynamically shaped sunglasses. He stepped over to Chowdhury, his palm on the grip of his assault rifle. “Sir,” he snapped, “eyes up on the screen.”
13:22 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
The White House
The sharp drilling sound of the old-fashioned telephone rang in Hendrickson’s office. Despite multiple and redundant systems of secure communication, he preferred to discuss the most sensitive matters over his red line, a technology not meaningfully updated since the 20th century. Julia Hunt continued to watch the news while the secretary of press, Karen Slake, the only cabinet-level official who maintained a West Wing office, hurried into Hendrickson’s office and stood beside his desk. Nearly 6 feet tall, she leaned down to try to hear as Hendrickson received the latest from the White House physician in San Diego.
“Uh-huh … uh-huh …” Hendrickson paused. “So he’s stable.”
The White House physician responded at some length. Hendrickson gave a thumbs-up to Slake. She told him to ask how long it would be until they could get the president on camera so people could see he was OK. Hendrickson muffled his palm over the receiver. “Do you really need to know that right now?” he asked. The man had just suffered a near-catastrophic heart attack, according to his physician.
“Yes,” said Slake, pressing down on the word. “I do.”
So Hendrickson asked. From the volume of the expletive-laden response that spilled out of the receiver, Slake didn’t need to be told what the White House physician’s medical opinion was on holding a press event.
After Hendrickson hung up, Slake explained her contingency plan. Her team at the federal government’s recently established Department of Press had already pulled footage, which they were in the process of selectively editing, digitally altering, and feeding to social networks and legacy news media. They had, quite swiftly, begun an algorithmic scrub of any narrative of the president suffering a health emergency, burying those stories. Slake said she could do one better: within a few hours—with the aid of a few loyal evening news anchors—they could overwhelm any conflicting narratives and reduce today’s incident to little more than the president stumbling at the lectern after delivering a rousing speech on the anniversary of the Wén Rui Incident. Slake had already called Homeland Security, asking them to push her any interesting information about detentions at the border, anyone suspicious that they might have pulled from the immigration lines, so that Slake could amplify those stories as a way to deflect from the current crisis—terrorism and immigrant criminality being reliable distractions.
Hendrickson listened patiently. “But what if he dies?”
“If who dies?” answered Slake.
“Castro … the president … what if the White House physician is wrong … what if people find out you’re just feeding them a story … ?”
Slake stared back at him vacantly, tilting her head to the side as though she’d been asked to solve for x and now had to solve for y. “Well …” she began, in a bit of a false start. She found her footing. “If that happens, we simply tell them another story.”
A phone rang, this time the old-style encrypted smartphone that Julia Hunt carried for work. When she glanced down at the caller ID, the color went out of her face.
“You going to take that?” her godfather asked.
Hunt held up her phone so Hendrickson and Slake could see who was calling: Senator Nat Shriver.
13:26 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
JFK International Airport
“Sir,” snapped a woman’s voice from behind him, “we’re going to have to ask you to step off here.”
Chowdhury turned around. He’d nearly traversed the auto-walk. He could see the daylight of the arrivals terminal ahead, the twin automatic doors opening and closing as travelers passed through immigration. He had kept his eyes fixed on the screens above as they played the news and scanned his face. Why was he being asked to step off the auto-walk? He felt harassed, and at this point in his life he felt like someone who shouldn’t have to suffer such harassment.
“Is there a problem, Officer?” he asked.
A compact immigration officer, built solid as a gymnast, with small, cruel eyes, held open an exit gate. “No problem, sir,” she said. The auto-walk had come to a halt. “But you need to come with me.”
“I have several appointments in the city,” Chowdhury said. Which wasn’t untrue. He was hoping to meet with his cardiologist that evening, a house call at his suite in the Carlyle, where he’d be staying until his apartment on an upper floor was finished; however, as he said this, he realized his tone was haughty and clearly did him no favors. One of her colleagues, a powerlifter to her gymnast, approached them, asking if there was a problem.
“No,” said Chowdhury. “No problem, I just need to get into the city.” Behind him the other passengers on the auto-walk crossed their arms and shifted their feet. A few sighed impatiently.
“Exit here, sir,” said the woman more forcefully. The heel of one palm shifted onto her belt, which held handcuffs and pepper spray. Chowdhury was escorted around the two-way mirror and into an interrogation room. As the door was shut behind him, he heard the news continue to drone from the screens above the auto-walk: one of the anchors was discussing reports of an uptick in security incidents at the border.
13:42 March 12, 2054 (GMT‑5)
Capitol Hill
Julia Hunt had taken Shriver’s call while Hendrickson and Slake hovered over her shoulder. Shriver had asked Hunt to come to his office in the Capitol for a meeting. She knew her godfather didn’t quite trust her to handle a meeting with Shriver on her own, but he couldn’t afford to step away from his desk, not in the middle of this crisis. And so he’d told Hunt to go.
On her way out the door, Hunt glimpsed the vice president, the third who’d served under Castro, as he came up on a video call with Slake and her godfather. An elementary school math teacher turned politician named Smith, this vice president was forgettable by design. Smith was so forgettable that Castro’s last campaign had distributed an internal memo that the administration would simply be known as the Castro administration, not the Castro-Smith administration. Hunt was glad to avoid the call.
Outside, she stepped into an auto-taxi beyond the last barrier of White House security and spoke her destination into its self-navigation system. Hunt’s mother had told her that when she was a child, traffic passed directly in front of the White House, and you could drive the entire length of Independence and Constitution Avenues, right up to the Capitol, without passing a single checkpoint. The city had since become difficult to navigate, with road closures and new, not particularly thought-out security protocols interrupting the flow of the city as Pierre Charles L’Enfant had envisioned it more than 250 years before.
The gridlock felt to Hunt like a fitting metaphor. Castro’s consolidation of power after his victory in 2044 had led to a decade of single-party rule that he’d codified with sweeping electoral reforms at the federal and state levels, as well as ushering three new states—DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico—into the Union.
The Democratic and Republican Parties, which had been bleeding members for years, had proven a weak opposition. What remained of these two legacy popu...