“We?” Elena asked, as amazed as she was excited yet quickly trying to do the math in her head.
“Your father and I.” He smiled. “We’ve been cooking this up for the last few days. The two awards I received today come with generous bonuses, and what I can’t cover, Dad has offered to cover himself.”
“Really, Daddy?” Elena asked, her eyes welling with tears. “Is it true?”
“Absolutely, sweetheart,” Mr. Garcia said. “Marcus is right; you guys need a break. We all do. Am I right?”
He looked at his daughter, then at Marcus and the rest of the group. The entire party erupted in cheers and laughter and tears and hugs. Bill McDermott, moved by the moment, stood up and offered to cover everyone’s airfare. This triggered another round of whoops and cheers. Elena jumped out of her seat and threw her arms around Marcus and kissed him and cried while Lars did a hilarious happy dance as the rest of the restaurant’s patrons stared on in a mixture of amusement and disdain.
There was just one problem: Marcus Ryker would never make it to the cruise.
38
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 27, 2014.
That was a Thursday. The Caribbean cruise the Rykers had been planning for months was set to sail from Port Canaveral two days later.
Elena had surveyed everyone’s schedules and desires. She had meticulously researched the best cruise lines, hunted for the best prices, and kept each family briefed on every detail. Now everything was set. Eight deluxe rooms had been reserved and paid for. Sixteen round-trip first-class tickets had been bought—funded, as promised, by Bill McDermott. Elena had even designed and ordered matching T-shirts for everyone declaring them part of “The Ryker Reunion Cruise” and created a special Facebook page where they could upload and share photos and journal their memories.
Upon hearing the news that Marcus’s vacation leave had been canceled and that he was being ordered back to the White House immediately, Elena burst into tears. She didn’t want to hear about the president’s plans to head to Camp David for a crisis meeting with his national security team in less than an hour. She didn’t want to know that one of the agents on the PPD had been incapacitated with stomach flu and another had broken his ankle that afternoon in a training exercise. She wasn’t an insensitive person. She was as much a team player as any of the wives of any of the men on the detail. But there was a breaking point.
“I don’t care that they need you,” Elena said through her tears. “I need you. Lars needs you. Call your supervisor back and tell him you can’t go.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Marcus said calmly as he began changing into a suit and tie. “The president asked for me by name. I have to go.”
“No, you don’t, Marcus. You asked for time off. They approved it. That’s it, end of story.”
“Look, I know this is hard. And I’m sorry. But I took an oath.”
At that, Elena lost it. “You made an oath to me first, Marcus Ryker.”
She unleashed a torrent of pent-up resentment. She didn’t want to hear any more excuses or broken promises. If he loved her, he would pick up the phone, call the watch commander, insist he was taking his family on a long-planned and much-deserved vacation. If he really loved her, he would resign from the Secret Service altogether. Enough was enough. This wasn’t about the president. It was about their family. It was about their marriage, and it was time for him to choose.
Marcus tried to hold her, but she would have none of it. When he said he’d call her in a few hours when she’d cooled down, she picked up an empty vase and heaved it at his head. It missed and smashed against the wall.
Lars suddenly appeared in their bedroom doorway, ashen. Elena raced to his side and held him. “Lars and I are getting on that plane tomorrow,” she told Marcus, wiping her tears and trying her best to compose herself. “You’ll either be on the plane, or you won’t. It’s clearly too much to expect you to do anything to protect my feelings. But God help you, Marcus Ryker, if you won’t take your only son on a vacation you yourself promised in the first place.”
The anger in Elena’s eyes was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. She did not wait for his reply. She scooped up Lars, took him back to his room, and slammed the door behind her. Marcus heard her turn the lock. He asked her to come back out and talk, but she refused. He waited for several minutes, but she continued to sob. Marcus couldn’t bear the thought of leaving like this. But glancing at his watch, he finally concluded he had to go. He returned to the master bedroom, opened the safe in their closet, and retrieved his badge and service weapon. Then he grabbed the suitcase he always kept packed and headed for the kitchen. There he quickly scribbled a note of apology to Elena and a separate note for Lars.
Take care of your mom this week and have a great time, he wrote. Tell Grammie and Paw Paw and everyone else I love them, and I’m very sorry. I’ll see you soon, little man. I promise. Love, Daddy.
39
Marine One lifted off from the South Lawn and headed north.
Sitting behind the president was the SAIC—the special agent in charge—and three additional agents, including Marcus. Directly beside and across from the president sat the national security advisor and the White House chief of staff. Only then did Marcus learn just how much the crisis in Ukraine had worsened in recent hours.
Like his fellow agents and anyone else who was watching the news, Marcus knew that in December, some eight hundred thousand Ukrainians had taken to the streets of Kiev. The protesters had surrounded key government buildings and demanded the ouster of their president as a pro-Moscow puppet. He was bankrupting the economy, selling out Ukrainian sovereignty, and increasingly putting control of the country under the thumb of the Russians. As the bitter winds and heavy snows of January arrived, the crowds were no longer content to camp outside the government buildings. They surged forward, storming barricades erected by riot police and occupying city hall, parliament, the finance ministry, and more. Initially paralyzed by indecision, the government finally launched a counteroffensive in late February. They ordered the police to fire on the protesters using live ammunition and retake all public buildings. Within hours, seventy-seven people lay dead. Hundreds were wounded. Hundreds more had been arrested. But the images of the violence electrified an already-enraged populace. As rumors spread that President Luganov of Russia had ordered the killings of the protesters, and had allegedly done so from his luxury dacha on the Black Sea, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians poured into the streets, and the country seemed to be teetering on the brink of a full-blown civil war.
For at least two months now, Marcus had heard the American president and the secretary of state issue a series of weak statements. They had called for a restoration of calm and requested that “international law and the rights of the Ukrainian people be respected.” The president warned the Russians not to inflame the situation and called for the U.N. Security Council to pass a firm resolution. Not once, however, had they offered the Ukrainian people one bit of practical help or threatened any specific repercussions if Moscow did intervene directly.
Now Marcus was stunned to overhear the national security advisor say the Ukrainian president was missing. Unconfirmed reports suggested he had actually fled the capital with a small group of loyalists and was racing for the Russian border, hoping for asylum in Moscow. Yet what truly chilled Special Agent Ryker was hearing that just at the moment the Ukrainians might have driven the pro-Luganov puppet from office, Luganov appeared to have ordered the Russian military to invade the sovereign territory of yet another Russian neighbor. If this were true, how far would Luganov go? Was he just sending a message, or was he planning to go all the way to Kiev? To Marcus, the situation had the feel of the Russian invasion of Georgia all over again.