The Chosen One

63

Washington, DC, Monday March 27, 20.16

The car hummed along sleekly, gliding down George Washington Memorial Parkway with its view of the Potomac, now glittering in the moonlight. They had taken away her phone, so she couldn’t call ahead. She would have to turn up at the visitors’ entrance to the White House and explain herself.

As they had untied her, she had considered delivering a delayed, but richly-deserved response to her imprisonment, hoiking up a big ball of spit and launching it into Waugh’s face, but had baulked at the futility of it. Whatever small satisfaction it would have provided, the meat-heads would have paid her back with interest.

Besides, Waugh had not let her go without a warning. Standing on the tarmac in the corner of Reagan National Airport that was reserved for private jets, waiting to step into one of the two glistening limos that had pulled up just a few yards from the aircraft, he said, ‘Maggie, I haven’t been chairman of our little fraternity for very long. There are some of my colleagues – in Frankfurt or London or Dubai – who will say I should have been firmer with you some time ago. But I’m trusting you to live up to your reputation: to achieve better terms than I could. That’s why I told you everything. So that Baker doesn’t nurture any delusions about defying our will. I trust you to convey what I have said so that he understands he has no choice in this matter.

‘And if there are any heroics, he will pay and you will pay. Severely. And so will those you love.’ He had fixed her then with those chilly eyes, holding the look for two, three, four seconds. ‘I don’t think you doubt that we can do it. So God speed – and don’t disappoint me.’ With that, he stepped into the Lincoln and drove away, leaving her with just one of the bodyguards for company. She cast a quick, sideways glance at the man. Could she outrun him? He was muscle-bound, meaty; she had broken ribs and was utterly out of condition. He’d catch her in no time. She was going to have to be cleverer than that, and bide her time.

The guard then looked left and right before speaking into his lapel: ‘The Principal has departed. Repeat, the Principal has departed.’

That tiny moment stayed with Maggie as they took the 14th Street exit off I-395 and headed into downtown Washington. The Principal. Roger Waugh had his own secret service detail as well as his own version of Air Force One on which she had just taken an involuntary ride. This man for whom no one had ever voted and whom hardly anyone had ever seen, conducted himself as if he were the true power in the land, with the elected President of the United States a mere puppet whose strings occasionally became tangled and needed straightening out.

The dread thought weighing on Maggie as she saw the familiar landmarks emerge from the dusk was that when it came to the true balance of power in this country and the world, Waugh had spoken the truth.

She yawned, long and hard. She wanted desperately to fall into a deep sleep, one that might clear her head, allowing her to make a fresh start on this strange, awful riddle, to find time to think, talk to Uri and make a plan.

Uri.

Waugh had been explicit, leaving his warning hanging so that there could be no doubt. You will pay, he had said, and so will those you love. They had been at JFK: they must have seen her with Uri. The thought of that chilled her.

They had not hesitated to kill Stuart and Nick, when faced with the mere prospect of a disruption to their plans. How much more determined would they be faced with total exposure? And yet she was able to hold that threat over them: they had handed her that weapon. But that was what so few people understood about information. It was indeed a weapon – a sword whose blade was double-edged.

They were here now. The bodyguard nodded at her, nudging her to get out and complete the task she had been set by his boss ‘the Principal’.

She got out at 15th and Hamilton Place and looked upward, seeing the two red lights at the pinnacle of the Washington Monument, blinking in the moonlight. She remembered looking upward at that cool, solid needle after completing her very first day’s work at the White House. She had allowed herself to wonder if they were about to make history, if one day there might even be a Baker Monument in this town. She shook her head in disbelief that that was little more than two months ago.

She approached the White House security station, the low-ceilinged cabin wide enough to accommodate two scanning machines and an airport-style arch, through which all visitors had to pass. A guard, young and with a soldier’s buzzcut, beckoned her to open the glass door and enter. She began her explanation, that she was Maggie Costello, former official of the White House and that Doug Sanchez was expecting her. They scanned their list of scheduled appointments and shook their heads. Reluctantly, feeling like a traitor who had slipped into her former comrades’ barracks only to poison them in their sleep, she told the guard on duty to call Sanchez’s office.

While she waited she tried to digest all she had heard in that short, vile flight. The scale and comprehensiveness of their operation was breathtaking. They had thought of everything, not just paying hush money to Pamela Everett’s grief-stricken parents, but getting a United States senator to pose with young Baker so that he would have a perfect alibi, printed and published in the local newspaper. They had taken the time to remove the relevant page of The Daily World from the archive in Aberdeen, such was their determination to leave no trace.

A moment she had forgotten floated back into her mind: Principal Schilling telling her that he had sent the Baker file to his presidential library, but had noticed that it was ‘unusually thin’. Now she knew why.

‘Maggie! Is that you?’ It was Sanchez, looking as if he had lost ten pounds in weight and had had only ten hours of sleep in the several days since she had last seen him. He moved past the security equipment and, having approached warily, now opened his arms for a hug. Maggie let him hold her, hating herself for what she was about to do. She could feel her eyes tingling: she was just so exhausted.

‘So what’s this, you go off the grid in the Pacific North-West and change your whole look?’ Sanchez said, as he walked her into the lobby, then turned left towards the Press Secretary’s office.

Maggie kept her head down as she walked, hoping not to make eye contact with anyone she knew, hoping she wouldn’t have to talk to, or explain herself, to anyone. She wouldn’t know where to begin. Inevitably she glimpsed the one person she least wanted to see: the silver-haired Chief of Staff, Magnus Longley, slipping out of one corridor and into another, a portfolio tucked under his arm. She shuddered at the sight of him. He spotted her too. Taking a second to confirm that, despite her new look, it was indeed her, he shot her a glare that clearly said, ‘What are you doing here? I thought I fired you.’

‘So what the hell happened, Maggie?’ Sanchez, drawing back her attention.

‘It’s such a long story, Doug. And the only person I can tell it to right now is the President. I’m sorry.’

He gave her a long, compassionate look which left her feeling more guilty than ever. Then he nodded, suggested Maggie take a seat in his office and embarked on the short stroll down the corridor to the President’s personal secretary.

Maggie looked at the TV, tuned to MSNBC. She had been here only a few days ago, but now it felt like a different lifetime. The juvenile egghead from the New Republic was on:

‘…I think the word of the hour is “exit strategy”. I’ve been talking to House whips and they say the numbers are just not there on Judiciary for the Republicans to move forward with this thing. Democrats are closing ranks behind the President and those two crucial waverers are no longer wavering. So, as I say, I think the pressure is now on the Republicans to find a way out of this without losing too much face.’

The interviewer was nodding: ‘And what’s turned things around for the President?’

‘Well, the implosion of Senator Wilson is certainly a factor…’

Maggie sighed, knowing that everyone in this building would be jubilant at that news, believing it to be a rare stroke of good fortune. Believing that Baker’s lucky streak had at last been restored.

But all she could think of was Waugh’s smirking face.

Sanchez appeared in the doorway. ‘He’s ready for you now.’