The Chosen One

14

Washington, DC, Wednesday March 22, 06.37

Maggie kept staring at the screen, which showed a residential street in New Orleans, a row of timber-clad houses in light blues and greens, with the one clearest in vision now behind yellow and black tape. Even from here, the words were in focus: Police Line Do Not Cross.

She clicked channels: same street, different angle. With a reporter doing a stand-up. She could hear Stuart breathing heavily into the phone, waiting for her to speak. She turned up the volume on the TV.

‘…few details at this hour, Tom. What sources are telling this network unofficially is that the circumstances in which Mr Forbes was found were-’ and here the reporter made a great show of looking down and checking his notebook, ‘-bizarre.’

‘Bizarre?’ echoed Maggie.

‘Let me in and I’ll tell you.’

‘You’re here?’

‘Cab just pulled up.’

Now she needed to absorb the strangeness both of what she had just heard on the television and the notion of Stuart Goldstein in her apartment building. Whatever affinity she felt for him as a colleague, she would never have described him as a friend. He hadn’t been to her place, she hadn’t been to his; that line had never been crossed.

‘You’re here,’ she said again, uselessly. ‘Can you give me five minutes?’

‘Two.’

Under the duvet, she was wearing only a man’s T-shirt – white, large and bearing the name of an Israeli basketball team. It had belonged to Uri, though she had never worn it while they were together. But last night she had dug it out, smelling it before putting it on, even though she knew the scent of him had been washed away long ago.

As she rushed to pull on a pair of jeans and to find a sweater, grateful that Stuart would take longer than most to get into her building, into the elevator and out again, she kept one ear on the intriguing tale tumbling out of the TV.

‘…we’re not able to disclose all the circumstances of Mr Forbes’s death at this time, Dan, and that’s not only because some of our sources are speaking only on background. It’s also because this is a family network and it’s still early on in the day.’

What were they talking about? What on earth had happened to Vic Forbes that they couldn’t give the details? Last night she and the rest of the band of brothers who had got Stephen Baker elected President had sat there facing a series of brick walls. There had been no good options. Whichever path they took, Vic Forbes with his bald head and his thin, bland, smiling face had stood there blocking their escape.

And now he was gone, helpfully magicked away and just in the nick of time.

She heard the knock on the door and the unmistakable sound of Stuart Goldstein’s breathless panting outside. She did a last scope of the apartment, scanning for potential embarrassment. Now that she had closed the door to her bedroom, the place looked tidy enough. One of the advantages of Washington hours: you were barely home long enough to make the place a mess.

But still, and even in just that brief glimpse, she had seen something that had made her not quite embarrassed – no dirty laundry on the floor – but ever so slightly ashamed. In that short, stabbing second she experienced the apartment as if through the eyes of another.

She had seen that it was elegant, located in the much-admired art-deco grandeur of the Kennedy-Warren building, and stylishly furnished, with a sprinkling of items that hinted at her past life of constant and exotic travel. But she had also seen that it was, however subtly, empty. That it was, visible to the naked eye, the home of a person alone. And, her eye falling on the crisping leaves of a dying ficus, one without the nurturing ability even to keep a houseplant alive.

‘Stuart,’ she said, stepping back with a sweep of the hand in the exaggerated manner of a butler ushering him inside – a small piece of theatre designed chiefly to avoid any confusion over whether there would be a kiss on the cheek or handshake. The issue had never arisen at work or during the campaign. But they had never visited each other at home before.

She headed straight for the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, though Stuart told her not to: ‘I’ve had so much coffee, I’m schvitzing. He had clearly been up for several hours. When had Forbes died? How long had Stu known? She tamped down the ground beans: he might not need it, but she certainly did.

He joined her in the kitchen, impatient to get on with things, pulling out a chair tucked into the small kitchen table and lowering himself into it. The fixedness of his gaze told Maggie to do the same.

Their faces now just a few inches apart, the words raced out of him. ‘Forbes was found hanged in his bedroom in New Orleans.’

She knew this already. ‘Right…’

Stuart lowered his voice. ‘He was wearing women’s underwear. Stockings, garters, the whole deal. With an orange stuffed into his mouth.’

‘A what?’

‘A segment of orange. Apparently it’s used to disguise the taste of amyl nitrate. It’s bitter, so you bite on an orange as a chaser.’

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’

‘He was wearing stockings?’

‘Yes. It’s still unofficial, but that’s what the police are saying.’

‘Jesus.’ Maggie stood up so that she could pace.

‘The police say it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. Couples strangle each other for kicks. Guys who are alone hang themselves. Starving the oxygen to the brain gives you a rush. “Auto-erotic asphyxiation” they call it.’

‘I may be a convent girl, Stuart, but I’m not a bloody nun. I know about that.’ The expression on his face made her rush to qualify. ‘I mean, I’ve heard about it. Christ.’ There was a pause. ‘And what was the orange for again?’

‘Hide the taste of the amyl nitrate. Which apparently adds to the ride.’ He made a shrug which said, what do I know from such things? ‘One theory is that Forbes was getting off on the success of his little project. Making contact with the President, interviews on cable TV. Seems like he was aroused.’

‘Is that what the police are saying?’

‘No. All they know is that he’d been in the news during the last forty-eight hours, as the source for a couple of stories damaging to the President. Remember, no one else knows what we know. Do you have any cereal?’

‘What?’

‘Breakfast cereal.’

Maggie passed him a box of Cheerios. He immediately plunged a hand deep inside and fed himself a large mouthful.

Neither of them had said what she knew he and everyone else in the White House must be feeling – what, for that matter, she was feeling. Ordinarily, she would have resisted saying it. She would have known that, as a White House staffer, it was unwise even to voice such a sentiment to a colleague, lest it get out. But to hell with that. She was now Maggie Costello, independent citizen. She could say whatever she liked. ‘Solves a problem, though, doesn’t it, Stu?’

‘I was worried you’d say that.’

‘Worried? Why?’

‘Because if you’re saying that, so will plenty of other folks. In fact, they’ve already started.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Blogs. Wingnuts mainly. But that’s how it always starts. On the margins, then spreads inward.’

‘They’re claiming Baker had something to do with this?’

Goldstein reached into the pocket of his triple-extra-large jacket and pulled out his iPhone. A few stabs at the screen, followed by a swipe or two, and he was reading. ‘“It was Napoleon who said he wanted generals who were neither courageous nor brilliant, but lucky. Seems as if Stephen Baker is one of life’s lucky generals. Just when he was on the precipice, staring into the abyss, guess what happens? That’s right: the guy who was going to push him over the edge wakes up dead in New Orleans. Love him or hate him, you’ve got to admit it, this Prez has someone up there who likes him. Though they do always say, you make your own luck…”’

‘So?’

‘Come on, Maggie. “You make your own luck”? We know where this is heading.’ Goldstein’s phone vibrated in his hand. He stared at it, then held it up so that Maggie could see the screen. ‘Another one.’

Maggie stepped forward, leaning over to stare at the tiny screen. An email from Doug Sanchez. No message, just a grab from another political website, not quite mainstream but well-known. Its headline: ‘The Baker presidency turns into The Godfather: key tormentor now sleeping with the fishes.’

Goldstein let his weight fall back into the seat which, being a modest Crate & Barrel kitchen number, was fighting a losing battle to contain it. ‘I’d say we’re twenty-four hours away from an outright accusation of murder.’

Maggie said nothing. She understood perfectly: Stuart was right to anticipate this reaction to Forbes’s death and right to want to get ahead of it. He did not seem to feel any of the relief that had washed over her the instant she saw the news. Instead, he seemed just as troubled as he had been when Forbes had hacked his way onto Katie Baker’s Facebook page, announcing his intention to destroy the Baker presidency.

She poured herself a coffee, then returned to the table.

‘We had seven senators calling for an independent counsel before this broke. It won’t just be Rick fucking Franklin talking about a special prosecutor now, you mark my words,’ he said bitterly. He fed himself another fistful of Cheerios.

‘I see.’

‘It’s all about context. That’s politics, Maggie. Context. Normally the only people who would give two shits about Vic Forbes swinging from a noose with his dick in his hand would be right-wing nutcases who think the Federal Reserve is a European plot to destroy America. But as of two days ago we’re in a different context.’

‘Thanks to Forbes.’

‘Ironically, yes. Thanks to him, people who used to trust the President now don’t. They think he might be crazy and in the pay of the ayatollahs. So now they’ll be ready to believe he is capable-’

‘-of murder.’

Stuart looked at her hard. ‘You heard what he said last night.’

Maggie hesitated. Of course she had heard what Stephen Baker had said last night, but had – she now realized – made an instant decision to push the memory of it out of her mind.

‘Do I need to remind you?’

‘You don’t need to remind me,’ she said in little more than a whisper.

‘“I want him gone.” That’s what he said.’

‘I heard it.’

‘Well, if you heard it, then so did everyone else in that room.’

‘Jesus, Stuart, you think someone in the team is going to leak this?’ The very word – team – stirred a brief but bittersweet sensation of nostalgia. White House personnel were known as ‘the staff’, but the group of veterans from the campaign had always been and were still known to each other as ‘the team’. She might have been dumped from the former but she would always be part of the latter. Magnus Longley couldn’t take that away from her.

‘I see two scenarios, Maggie, and they both stink of shit. First scenario, and I admit this stinks even worse than the other, is that someone tells their best pal at the Times that “you’ll never guess what the President said”…’

‘No one would do that.’

‘Not even deliberately. Just chatting, shooting the breeze. You know what DC is like: people talk. They can’t help themselves.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have gathered the team. Not if you don’t trust them.’

‘If it had been up to me, we wouldn’t have.’

At this, Maggie couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. Stuart Goldstein usually observed the discipline of a Tudor courtier, dutifully deferential to the protocol of collective responsibility: he would defend any decision of the king as if it were his own. Maggie had never before heard him reveal a disagreement between himself and Stephen Baker, at least one which did not end in the eventual vindication of the President, offered as self-deprecatory evidence of the almost supernatural judgment of the man they all worked for. (‘I told him, you don’t need to visit in person. Do it by phone. But he insisted. And you know what? He was right.’)

But this was different. And even though it hardly amounted to lacerating criticism, Maggie noted it as a sign that the tectonic plates were shifting somehow; that this crisis was real.

‘If that happens, Maggie, if it gets out that he said those words a matter of hours before Forbes was found dead, then…’ His voice trailed off, as if the thought was too awful even to voice out loud.

‘So what’s the other scenario?’

‘That no one leaks. But that the President’s most senior aides, his most trusted counsellors, do what you did: file away what you heard in some corner of the brain, where it never quite goes away. That some little piece of them will be thinking, “That was funny. Baker said he wanted Forbes gone and look, hey fucking presto, Forbes was gone the very next morning.”’

‘But if they don’t say anything, then-’

‘Then it’s still a disaster!’ Stuart pounded the table again. His usually cheerful, gnome-like countenance was gone, transformed by sorrow or anger, Maggie couldn’t quite tell which. ‘Maggie, do you know how long a presidential term is? In days?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘It’s fourteen hundred and sixty days. Do you know how many days we’ve had? Sixty-one. That’s all. Can you imagine if he has to stagger on for fourteen hundred fucking days without the trust of his most senior advisors? If they think what you were thinking, the moment you heard the news just now?’

Maggie stared into her coffee, reluctant to meet Stuart’s gaze – chiefly because she could not deny what he had just said.

‘We have to know the truth, Maggie. Everything. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to rebut all the lies and the conspiracy theories that are building and spreading right now.’ He gestured towards his iPhone, as if it held a lethal virus that was growing with every second. ‘We need to get the facts, Maggie. The full story. Otherwise the Stephen Baker presidency is going down.’

Maggie held his gaze and then, in a new tone, brisk and businesslike, she began working through the questions to be answered.

‘First, you need to know if it was a suicide. Then you need to know if Forbes was alone.’

‘Does this look like the work of a lone gunman to you, Maggie? Think of the scale of the operation. The depth of the research. The media savviness. The unmanned computer in Maryland, relayed to New Orleans. All that would have taken time and money. Resources.’

‘So you need to know if he was part of a team. If he was, the threat is still there.’

‘Right. Who are they? Is this Republican dirty tricks? Foreign? Someone we haven’t thought of?’

‘And what is this nuclear secret he was about to drop?’

Goldstein pointed his finger directly at Maggie, a charades gesture she had come to love: he deployed it during their discussions-cum-tutorials, the sign that she had asked precisely the right question or made the key point. ‘What indeed? What exactly do they have on Stephen Baker that convinced Forbes that he could blackmail the President of the United States?’

And, Maggie thought, could have made the President of the United States consider paying up. For that, surely, was what lay behind last night’s meeting: Baker would not have summoned them all unless he had been actually considering acceding to Forbes’s demands.

Her mind was whirring now, rattling through multiple questions, each one of which spawned dozens more – forming a vast, elaborate labyrinth that she could visualize. A decisiontree, the management gurus called it, depicting one question as it split off into two branches – yes and no – which themselves split off again and again. Most people would probably be terrified by the sight of such a thing, but Maggie revelled in the complexity of it. The diplomatic negotiations which had dominated her recent professional life worked the same way: you had to consider each path the parties might take, and then work out which tributaries and detours might lead off each path, always looking for the dead ends. But before any of that there was one large fork in the road.

‘You’ve got a lot of work to do,’ she said.

‘What do you mean “you”? I don’t like this “you”. It’s “we”, Maggie. You, me and Stephen Baker.’

‘Do I have to remind you again, Stuart? I was fired.’

‘And do I have to remind you that I already said that’s an advantage? Distance. Besides, you do this for him, there’s no way the President is not going to bring you back. He wants you to do that Africa thing.’ He took another plunge into the cereal box.

Maggie watched him munch, looking at her, waiting for an answer. She realized that she felt a twinge of disappointment at his last remark, dangling the carrot of a return to her old job. If she were going to help, it wouldn’t be for that reason, for herself. It would be because she believed in Stephen Baker, believed in what he was trying to do, had believed him, in truth, from that very first car ride across the vast empty spaces of Iowa. She couldn’t stand by and watch his presidency destroyed by some cheap dirty tricks campaign. Too much was at stake.

‘OK,’ she said, finally. ‘You’d better go. I need to leave now.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Where do you think? I’m not going to get any answers here, Stu. I’m going to New Orleans.’