The Chosen One

44

Washington, DC, Sunday March 26, 08.41

‘That you, Senator?’

‘It is.’

‘Honour to be speaking with you, sir. Sorry to be calling you at home on the weekend. Caught you before heading off to church?’

‘You have.’ Rick Franklin took advantage of the recline mechanism on his chair, surveyed the view he enjoyed from this sixth-floor apartment in the Watergate and marvelled at the absurdity of Washington etiquette. Elected office always ensured formal deference, even from those who so clearly wielded greater power. So the two-bit chief executive of a nothing town would be hailed as Mr Mayor by the anchor of Good Morning America, even though on every measure of influence the genuflector outranked the genuflectee.

It wasn’t quite like that with Matt Nylind and Rick Franklin. Franklin was not only a senator, but one who had made the political weather for the last, turbulent week. Still, Nylind’s Thursday Session made him a genuine force in this town. In the business of political influence they were at least equals. Yet here was Nylind, touching the forelock.

‘I have quite a few items, Senator, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Banking bill. Coming up soon. Democrats are foaming at the mouth on that one. Reckon they’ve got the numbers.’

‘In the House?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘To reach two hundred and eighteen?’

‘So they say.’

‘What about Delaney?’

‘Yeah, even “Delay” Delaney.’

‘But he’s from Delaware.’

‘Primary challenge.’

‘Right,’ said Franklin, wondering if there was any question he could ask to which Nylind would not know the immediate answer. ‘So this means-’

‘-that we need to switch to the Senate.’

‘You mean, wreck the bill there so that it voids whatever comes out of the House.’

‘Wouldn’t put it quite like that, sir. Prefer to say that a strong pro-growth Prosperity for America bill needs to come out of the body that looks to America’s long-term interests. That’s what the American people expect.’

It was part of Nylind’s genius, this. He never crafted so much as a tactic, let alone a policy, without framing the language in which it would be sold. Thanks to him, a Democratic proposal to levy the wealthiest Americans in order to fund expanded healthcare coverage became known as ‘the sick tax’ – and promptly fell to defeat. ‘Define the terms, define the battlefield.’ That’s what Nylind had said then and since, with the rest of the Republican party and the wider conservative movement – from the editorial board of the Weekly Standard to the production offices of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck – hanging on his every word.

‘I hear you,’ Franklin said. ‘But, as I know you know, I am not the ranking Republican on the Senate banking committee. Shouldn’t you be talking to Gerritsen?’

‘How can I put this, Senator? Whatever the formal hierarchy might be, the movement regards you as the lead man on this. Our representative, if you like.’

If Nylind was aiming to flatter, he had succeeded. Franklin couldn’t dispute the premise: Ted Gerritsen was one of the last remaining liberal Republicans in the Senate if not the planet. An old Maine ‘moderate’, beloved by official Washington and the press corps, he was from the era when the Republican base was the country club, not the megachurch. He couldn’t get enough of Stephen Baker – who had carried Gerritsen’s state the previous November – and there had been a rumour that he was in line for one of Baker’s ‘spirit of bipartisanship’ cabinet posts. Maybe Commerce or Trade Rep. Either way, it was no surprise that Nylind regarded him as utterly unreliable.

‘I’d need some back-up,’ Franklin said after leaving the statutory two-second pause required in Washington in order to be deemed ‘thoughtful’, a crucial piece of reputational armour.

‘You got it.’

‘Serious back-up. My staff have never led on a bill this size before.’

‘We got it all. Economists, lawyers, number-crunchers. Heck, we’ve even got a bill drafted!’

‘Oh, yeah? Where’d that come from?’

‘Well, as you know, sir, there are a lot of people in this town who have a direct interest in ensuring that Congress gets this issue right. They see the wisdom in sharing resources.’

Translation, thought Franklin: banking industry lobbyists have drafted the bill. He remembered that man who spoke at the last Thursday Session.

‘OK. Well, let’s fix a meeting. Cindy from my office and whoever you recommend from yours.’

‘Good to know, Senator. Good to know. Next item: some of us feel we might be losing momentum on the impeachment project.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We still don’t have our Democrats on House Judiciary.’

‘That’s not my fault!’ Franklin shot back, instantly regretting the defensiveness of his tone, as if he were a pupil summoned to the principal’s office to account for himself. In a bid to assert his authority, he took his voice down half an octave. ‘That has to be a matter for the House leadership. That surely is their responsibility.’

‘Agreed, sir. But for that to happen, they need more.’

‘More? You saw the Post story today,’ he said, referring to an investigative piece on the Iranian Connection which had appeared on the front of the Washington Post that morning, setting out – in wonderfully mind-numbing detail – the chain of funds, offshore accounts and shell companies in the Caymans through which cash might, conceivably, have been funnelled from Tehran to the Baker for President campaign.

Franklin had immediately had Cindy email it to everyone who mattered, including Nylind. It was perfect. The abundance of numbers, dates and tedious minutiae made the charges look credible and serious, even if no one could be bothered to read the small print.

‘Sure, but I’m not talking about that,’ said Nylind. ‘I meant more on Forbes.’

‘But we don’t have any hard evidence on that, Matt. You and I would both dearly love to have something concrete implicating the President in Forbes’s death. But until we do, allegations about Forbes cannot be part of the case for impeachment. Right now the “high crimes and misdemeanours” referred to in the articles of impeachment relate only to the Iranian Connection. That’s all we got.’

‘Technically, that’s true, Senator. But only technically. Forbes is the mood music. He’s the soundtrack for the impeachment.’

‘You mean, how he died?’

‘And what beans he was about to spill. Both.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Franklin, adopting the superior tone of the man in the know, ‘it seems someone may be at work cleaning up all that mess. A dustbuster.’

‘That’s what I hear too, Senator.’

‘That’s what you hear?’

‘There’s not much that goes on that I don’t know about. And let’s face it, sir, you wouldn’t be talking to me now if that wasn’t true.’

Franklin felt uneasy. How was this possible? He had told no one, bar Cindy, about that Costello woman. He was holding on to that particular nugget, confidentially provided on a private and secure phone line by Governor Orville Tett, so that it could be deployed at the moment of maximum effectiveness. Yet here was Nylind hinting that he knew about it already.

Now Franklin felt an additional tremor of panic. There’s not much that goes on that I don’t know about. Was this some kind of threat? Did Nylind know about him and Cindy? Did ‘the movement’ know about every action, every dumb indiscretion, every sexual encounter, that occurred even within its own ranks? At this moment, hearing Nylind’s even, unflappable breathing down the phone, he was terrified that the answer was yes.

‘So let’s be candid with each other. What exactly is it you’re hearing?’

‘I have very few details.’

Irritated now, resentful that this, this activist was as well informed as he was, if not better, Franklin did not so much raise his voice as enhance it, adding some heft as he demanded, ‘Why don’t you tell me what details you do have?’

‘I’m not playing games with you, sir. We really don’t know much.’

‘I understand that. Now, I repeat. What is the little you do know?’

‘There seems to be some kind of lone, intelligence-gathering operation. By a woman formerly on the National Security team at the White House.’

Shit. So he really did know.

‘Our worry is that she might be standing between us and our storyline.’

‘Our storyline?’

‘Yes, sir. On Forbes. If she’s cleaning up all the mess, that hurts us with the impeachment push. We need that stuff, sir, and she’s getting in our way.’

The ‘sir’ thing was needling Franklin more than ever now. He had a strong urge to get Cindy in here. Best way to drain off some of the aggression he was feeling. Like sugar into alcohol, he found his anger could turn seamlessly into lust – and it certainly beat an hour of circuit-training in the Capitol Hill gym.

‘So what is it you’re asking me to do, Matt?’ Matt. Put him in his place.

‘I suppose I’m suggesting you keep on doing what you’re doing – but more so. Whatever resources you and other colleagues have deployed so far, we need to step it up a gear. We need to get ahead of this thing. Take radical action if necessary.’

He should only know, Franklin thought to himself. But all he said was, ‘OK. Was there something else?’

‘Oh yes, some good news. Christian Coalition are planning a new push, ahead of the next fundraising cycle. Their theme is the True American Family. They want to highlight a few beacons of family values. Some from sport – that great golf guy – some from music, and one or two from politics. I suggested you and your wife and your three sons were a perfect example of the True American Family. They are very excited about this.’

‘Wow,’ said Franklin, tepidly, thinking only of Cindy in her eyepatch underwear, bent over his desk. ‘That’s great.’

‘This will give you a major fundraising advantage, sir.’

‘I know it.’

‘You see, Senator, the Movement not only taketh. It giveth too.’

‘I appreciate it, Matt. I really do.’

Franklin hung up and rubbed at his temples. Everything about the phone call suggested progress. He was to be entrusted with a key ideological task on the banking bill; he was seen as the lead player in the Forbes business and now he was to be held up as a poster boy for family values. It all spelled career gold. Iowa and New Hampshire were not much more than three years away.

And yet, something nagged at him. It was not just Nylind’s apparent omniscience, it was his manner – as if he were the general and Franklin a subordinate, expected to take instruction. What else to make of the attempt at withholding information, the unstated hint that this was beyond Franklin’s level? Above his paygrade, as they said in these parts. Maybe that was how it always was between the operatives and the horseflesh, but Nylind was worse than most at disguising the fact.

Franklin gazed at his power wall, the collection of framed photographs to his right. A few showed visiting foreign leaders whose names he could barely remember, there to suggest a national security expertise he did not have. Another of him with the US commander in Iraq, included for the same reason and to underscore his patriotism. And, in the centre, a smiling handshake with the last Republican president. He loved that photograph.

He needed to get to work right away. But first there was that itch to deal with.

He reached for his phone, found the last text message he had received and hit reply.

Master requires his little lady, forthwith and without delay.