Six months after the divorce was finalized, the world still moved to my timetable. Air Force One still waited on my command. World leaders still rose when I entered a room. The vast, intricate machinery of the American government still bent to the will of my signature. On the outside, nothing had changed. I was the most powerful man on the planet.
Inside, I was a ghost haunting the grandest house in the world.
The news came on a sterile autumn morning in Geneva. I was there for an international security summit, a two-day marathon of closed-door negotiations and public platitudes about global stability. I was operating on three hours of sleep and a litre of black coffee, my mind a numb haze of policy points and geopolitical posturing.
Simon delivered the intel with his usual stoicism, as
