The Chosen One

39

Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 10.05 PST

Maggie could hear a low hum, which she assumed was in her head. She had been dreaming so vividly, she had not only seen Uri’s face close to hers, she had felt the touch of his hand as he stroked her hair. But even then, as she smiled at his caresses, the hum had bothered her. It didn’t fit. And so she had made herself wake up, so that she could drive the noise away.

When she opened her eyes, she saw only a white wall. There were no lines she could make out, in fact nothing that could make her certain it was a wall rather than just empty space. Or maybe a cloud. The hum was still there, though.

She moved her head and felt a surge of pain at the base of her skull. She must have let out a noise – though it sounded as if it came from down the hall – because within a few moments a nurse had scurried into the room, filling up the white space that had once been a blank wall.

‘Well, good morning.’

Maggie heard the same down-the-hall voice answer, ‘Good morning.’ It sounded slurred and blurred.

‘Do you know where you are?’

Maggie tried to shake her head, sending more shooting pain up from her neck. She heard a yelp come out of her mouth.

‘OK. We should start at the beginning. What is your name?’

With vast effort, Maggie croaked, ‘Maggie Costello.’

The nurse – fair-haired and large-armed – checked her notes. ‘Good. That’s what we have too. Another few questions, I’m afraid. Who is the president of the United States?’

Before the answer came the feeling, a sudden onrush of memories and the emotions they aroused. She saw the den in the White House Residence, Sanchez, MacDonald, Stuart Goldstein. Stuart. She felt a stab of grief, the lead weight of realization that something awful had not been imagined or dreamed but was real. Only then did she see the face of Stephen Baker: still handsome but now etched with pain…

‘Don’t worry, he’s still very new. His name is Stephen Baker. How many states are there in the United States?’

‘Where am I?’

‘I’ll come to that. I just need to ask you these questions the instant you wake up. That’s our protocol. How many-’

‘Fifty.’

‘And what day of the week comes after-’

‘Stephen Baker is the president of the United States. He won last November with three hundred and thirty-nine electoral college votes, defeating Mark Chester in the general having beaten Dr Anthony Adams in the primary. The days of the week are Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In France they are, dimanche, lundi, mardi, mercredi, vendredi, jeudi et samedi. Now will you tell me where the hell I am, please?’

The nurse, whose eyes had widened, now let her face relax. She put her clipboard on the bed. ‘You’re at the Grays Harbor Community Hospital, Ms Costello. In Aberdeen, Washington. Now, I promise this is not another quiz question. Do you know why you are here?’

Maggie tried letting her head fall back into the pillow, but even that small movement made her wince. Once again, it was a feeling that came to her first, the tight grip on the steering wheel, her mouth dry with panic, the sight of those red lights getting nearer and nearer…

‘I was in a car accident. Something happened.’

‘That’s right. Last night.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Nearly sixteen hours ago. And you are very lucky to be alive, Ms Costello. The police officer who found you says the front of your car looked like it’d been through a trash compactor.’

‘A policeman found me?’

‘Yes, they’ll be coming later. They have some questions for you, too, I’m afraid.’

Maggie felt herself grimace.

‘For now, you just need to get some rest. Are there people you’d like us to contact?’

At that Maggie felt a different kind of pain, but no less sharp. ‘Um,’ she began, as a single face formed in her mind, a face she felt she had just seen.

‘A partner perhaps? A family member?’

‘Not just yet, thank you.’

‘But there may be people concerned-’

Maggie asked for some time to think and, then, for her phone. The nurse left the room only to return a second or two later, this time with a look – part baffled, part melancholy – that only added to Maggie’s confusion.

‘Are you sure you had your phone with you, Ms Costello?’

‘It’s Maggie,’ she said, still slurred. ‘And yes. It’s always on me. It would have been in my jacket. Or bag.’

‘We have an overnight bag. Also two earrings, one bottle of Allure perfume, one lip balm-’ She was scanning an inventory of some kind. ‘No phone.’

A suspicion began to grow, like a spreading stain.

‘What is that list you’re looking at?’ Now she was hearing the strangeness of her own voice. What ish that lisht…

‘It’s the police inventory. They have to do it for all NCA’s.’

Even raising an eyebrow in inquiry hurt, but the nurse got the message.

‘Non-conscious admissions.’

‘Oh. Do you have a small black notebook on that list?’

The nurse scanned it up and down, then turned it over, then back again.

‘No.’

Maggie felt a shudder pass across her skin. ‘A laptop? Wallet?’

The woman shook her head apologetically.

‘I need to make a telephone call. An urgent one.’

‘There’ll be plenty of time for that.’

‘No. Now.’

The nurse stepped forward and reached for Maggie’s hand. What she thought was a moment of tenderness was then revealed as something else. The main vein on her right hand was punctured by a cannula, a small tube attached in turn to a long, clear line. The nurse checked it, then produced a cuff to measure Maggie’s blood pressure, pressed an unseen button that made her right arm feel as if it had become instantly inflated, and popped a thermometer under her tongue. All in what seemed like a single moment.

‘I’m in bad shape, aren’t I?’ Maggie said, indecipherable through the thermometer.

‘You fell from a fast-moving car, so that would be a yes. You have a couple of broken ribs, but your legs and arms are intact. And we’ll keep checking that head of yours. Though, from what I heard earlier, you’d be on the Grays’ quiz team ahead of me. Try to get some rest.’

At last Maggie allowed the thought she had repressed to break surface. She could hear the voice that she had instantly found soothing.

Oh, don’t worry about that, dear.

The woman in the car park had seemed kind and genuine and Maggie had swallowed it all, obeying the instruction to stay in the driving seat while she fiddled with the engine – hidden by the hood and safely unseen. She had moved fast; a professional who knew exactly what she was doing.

A thoroughly efficient job, so deft that the woman, or her accomplice, must have followed Maggie onto the highway, watched her careen towards what they surely assumed was her death and then rushed to the car, opened it, stolen the key items and fled – all before the police or paramedics had got within a hundred yards of her.

That they had taken her phone, her computer and her notebook confirmed it. The President had been right. The moment those three letters – CIA – had been mentioned, he had been seized by what she had then regarded as excessive alarm. Talking of the plot against Kennedy, jumping to the conclusion that Stuart had not taken his own life – no matter how glum and melancholy he had been – telling her to watch herself, just in case. As so often, Stephen Baker grasped the reality of the situation faster and more fully than anyone.

He had been very clear: they faced a ruthless and determined adversary. Now she knew that they – whoever they were – were ruthless enough to kill.

A sudden flashback to last night: the car in front, getting closer, the brake lights bleeding bright red, the sight of those two heads in the back seat, two kids…

They were ready to kill more than just her. They had chosen a method – tampering with the brakes – that would almost certainly have led to the deaths of others.

She felt her body flood with rage. These people had murdered Stuart and had been ready to murder her, even if that meant killing two innocent children. She hated them with a loathing she could barely contain. She wanted to save Stephen Baker and his presidency, of course, now more than ever, given that it was under such cold-blooded assault. But she wanted something else, too: she wanted the people behind all this to pay for what they had done. She wanted revenge.

She could feel a trembling in her hands; it made the tube vibrate. Probably her body reacting to the sudden infusion of adrenalin her own fury had generated. Calm down, she told herself. Calm down.

As a diversionary tactic, she tried to think through exactly what information was in the hands of those who had tried to kill her. She tried to do it methodically, starting with her phone. The recent calls list was a disaster: it would immediately implicate the White House. It would reveal calls to Stuart’s direct line and to Sanchez. Also to a couple of cab companies in New Orleans and in DC, and to Nick du Caines. Maybe Uri.

The laptop didn’t contain much: she’d done next to nothing by email. But her notebook would have everything Schilling, the school principal, had told her. Whoever was holding it now would have all the information on Jackson/Forbes and the simmering, fraternal feud between him and the young Stephen Baker. If she was in a race against these people, she had just lost.

Or perhaps they already knew everything she had discovered, had known it for years. That brought her no relief. It just meant that they now knew that she knew. Maybe that was why she had become a target. She knew too much.

She looked around the room, the white walls suddenly revealed as a pale magnolia. A tentative wave of nausea began to rise in her throat. Why had the nurse not given her any water?

Now she was seized by a new alarm. How could she be sure this was a hospital? What if the CIA had simply spirited her away from the roadside and brought her to some closed hideaway, dressed up to look like a hospital when in reality it was anything but? This could be just a regular bedroom in one of their safe houses, with a few flickering machines brought in for effect…

She turned onto her side and, ignoring the pain now spreading across her chest, reached for the side table where there sat a chunky, beige phone. She grabbed for it, her hand flailing vainly. Still on her side, she pushed herself further towards the edge of the bed, the tenderness of her arms now revealed to her in sharp, searing sensations. She extended her arm once more and this time made contact.

The receiver was hers and she used the cord to reel in the rest of the phone. As she tugged at the spiral flex, she could hear the purr of a dial tone, a sound which offered some provisional reassurance. The base unit was now next to her on the bed, alongside her head. Too close to read it easily, she could see three printed lines identifying the institution and giving assorted numbers. The four words that counted were Grays Harbor Community Hospital.

So the nurse had not lied. Either that or this was a ruse too elaborate to be plausible. Occam’s Razor, Maggie. Occam’s Razor.

The dial tone was still in her ear. She pressed nine and immediately a computerized voice cut in:

We’re sorry, but you have no credit for calls on this line. To get credit, please contact your operator. You can pay by MasterCard, American Express…

Shit. Her wallet had been stolen, with everything inside it: cards, driver’s licence, everything. No phone, no computer, no money. And of course she couldn’t remember her credit card number. In modern America, she was as helpless as a toddler.

With great effort, she pressed zero on the phone’s keypad.

‘Operator, how may I direct your call?’

‘I need to make a collect call, please.’

‘Excuse me?’

She was still slurring. She tried again, this time giving the number: 1-202-456-1414.

The White House operator must have been expecting her call. ‘Miss Costello, is that you? I have instructions to put you straight through to the President.’

There was a delay, the perkiness of the hold music more absurd than ever. Finally a decisive click on the line.

‘Maggie? Where are you?’

‘It’s a long story. Are you sure I’m not interrupting you?’

‘Just a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. There’s trouble on the Pakistan border. You sound terrible. Has something happened?’

‘I think you were right, Mr President. About Stuart. Someone sabotaged my brakes last night. I think they were trying to kill me.’

‘Good God. Where are you now?’

‘Grays Harbor Hospital. Your home state.’

‘We’ve got to get you out of there. I’ll call the Governor. We can get you flown back to Washington, then-’

‘No, sir. With respect-’ wiv reshpect, ‘-I don’t think that’s a good idea. That will tie you to me, confirm that what I’m doing is for you.’

‘To hell with that, Maggie. It’s too late for-’

‘Besides, sir. I came here for a reason. There’s a lead I need to follow.’

‘In Aberdeen? What the hell has Aberdeen got to do with any of this?’

‘Robert Jackson, sir. You were at school with him.’

Maggie listened hard to the moment of silence that followed. Had Baker known that all along, the moment she had called him from the cemetery in New Orleans? If he had, why had he not said anything then? What was he hiding?

Finally he spoke. ‘Robert Jackson? Robert Andrew Jackson? From James Madison High: that was him?’

‘You didn’t recognize him when you saw him on TV?’

‘They barely looked like the same person. You sure?’

‘I’m sure, sir.’ Shure, shir.

‘I used to call him Andrew at school. That’s how I came to think of him. Andrew Jackson, like the president. I just didn’t make the connection. What on earth’s this all about, Maggie?’

‘I wish I knew, Mr President. But I intend to find out.’

‘They’re calling me back in, Maggie. What do you need?’

‘They stole my wallet and my phone.’

‘OK, Sanchez will send you everything.’

‘Thank you, sir. But make sure he leaves no trail. Stuart wouldn’t want you accused of running a slush fund, paying someone like me to poke around into Jackson’s past. Tell him to be careful.’

‘Maggie, it’s you who has to be careful. I can’t afford to lose another person I trust. There are too few of you left.’

‘Thank you, Mr President.’

She must have dozed off straight after the phone call, worn out by the effort of it, because nearly an hour had passed when she woke up. A handwritten telephone message had been left by her bedside from a Mr Doug of Dupont Circle. She smiled at Sanchez’s attempt at discretion.

The door creaked open. Maggie looked up, struggling to focus. She could see that a woman had entered, middle-aged but in the dark it was hard to make out her features.

‘What an unexpected surprise to see you again,’ she said. ‘There you are, dear.’

Dear.

Maggie created a fist, a futile gesture for a woman with two broken ribs and a tube in her arm, but it was a reflex, the result of the bolt of fear and rage that had just coursed through her.

Now the woman was coming nearer, approaching the bed. She had a syringe in her hand. Maggie recoiled.

‘No need to be scared, Maggie dear. No need to be scared at all. I have something that will make all the pain go away.’