I do an internet search on David Sullivan and click on one of the images. I expected him to be extremely tall like his son, but evidently Conner Sullivan got that from his mother’s side. David Sullivan is closer to my size. He has gray-blue eyes not unlike my own. The President has similar eyes, and that isn’t where the similarities with his father end. Both have the same wavy brown hair and square jaw.

I click on his bio and read it.

He was born in San Francisco in 1938. He attended Cal Tech — the same University as Sidney Ewen — graduating with a degree in chemistry. He was recruited into the CIA in 1950, working in the Technical Services Staff, the same area where Sidney Ewen got his start.

I remember back to what Sidney said, “I didn’t know the ins and outs of the program. I had no idea who your mom was working with.”

My ass.

David Sullivan married wife Angela in 1959. Three years later, they would have their only child.

Conner Sullivan.

The future President of the United States of America.

In 1980, David Sullivan went to Afghanistan to teach interrogation techniques to the Mujahedeen.

He disappeared on April 13, 1981.

He escaped three years later.

Back in the US, he was considered a national war hero and decided he wanted to run for public office. He entered the Virginia Senate race and won a seat that November in a landslide, a seat he would hold for almost two decades.

In September of 2001, David Sullivan and his wife were visiting New York on business before heading to the Hamptons for their annual fall getaway. The couple was eating breakfast at Windows on the World, a restaurant located on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when a plane flew into the building, killing the couple and sixty-nine other patrons.

“Shit,” I say out loud.

I didn’t know there was a restaurant in the World Trade Center. All those people sitting down for breakfast. All those morning meetings over coffee and a scone.

All of them dead.

And Conner Sullivan’s parents were two of them.

My dad walks around the corner.

I suppose I look somewhat perplexed and he asks, “You okay?”

“Did you know President Sullivan’s parents were killed in 9/11?”

He nods. “Of course. The President was a city councilman at the time and he used — well, didn’t use, that’s probably the wrong word — let’s just say his parents’ deaths definitely put him in the spotlight, even more so than as a senator’s son, and that was probably part of the reason he was elected governor the following year.”

“I don’t know how I could have missed that when I read his bio.”