The Chosen One (3 page)

Now, nearly two years later, the President was reaching for a red plastic lunch box with one hand and opening the fridge with the other. ‘So what’s it to be, junior? Apple or pear?’

‘Can’t I have candy?’

‘No, young man, you cannot. Apple or pear?’

‘Apple.’

Stephen Baker wheeled around, an expression of deep seriousness on his face. ‘That’s not so you can use it to play baseball, is it?’

The boy smiled. ‘No, Dad.’

‘Josh.’

‘I promise.’

The President put the fruit into the box, clipped the top shut then placed it in his boy’s hand. Then he bent to kiss his son on the top of his head. Maggie noticed that he shut his eyes as he did it, as if in a moment of grateful prayer. Or just to savour the smell of Josh’s hair.

‘OK, young man, scram.’

Just then, Kimberley Baker came in, clutching a bag bulging
with gym gear. Blonde and pretty as a peach in her college days, she was now usually described as ‘rounded’ or, by the less kind, ‘plump’. Magazines had obsessed about her weight when her husband first announced, the celebrity press zooming in on cellulite patches or a close-up of her rear-end in an ill-advised trouser-suit. She had gone on daytime TV, told how she had gained weight when Katie was born and how she had tried multiple diets – ‘including all the nutty ones!’ – to take the pounds off, but failed each time. Now, she said, she was comfortable with who she was and had decided to devote her energies to something more worthwhile than her waist size. The women in the audience had stood and cheered their approval, the host had hugged her and, within a day or two, she was declared a role model for female empowerment.

No less important, the political cognoscenti had decided that Kimberley Baker was an enormous asset to her husband. Female voters, in particular, had long been sceptical of Barbie doll, Stepford political wives; they liked what it said about

Stephen Baker that his wife was a real, rather than arti ficially flawless, woman. That she was from Georgia, thereby connecting him with the vote-rich South, was an added bonus.

The Bakers could not say they were used to life in the White House, even if Tara MacDonald had already briefed
People
magazine that they were loving it. But Kimberley was certainly making an effort, chiefly for the children’s sake. She had been worried about it from the start, anxious about an eight-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl entering the most vulnerable time in their young lives in front of the gaze of the entire world. She remembered her own adolescence as one long stretch of blushing embarrassment: the notion of enduring that with a battery of cameras permanently in your face, scrutinizing your clothes and your hair
and relaying those images around the globe, seemed truly unbearable. During the campaign, Stephen Baker always got a laugh when he joked that the only two people who truly wanted him to lose the election were his opponent and his wife.

Now Kimberley was fussing over both Josh and her shy, gauche, pretty teenage daughter, bundling them out of the door and into the hands of a casually-dressed, twenty-something woman who looked like an au pair. In fact, she was Zoe Galfano, one of a Secret Service detail whose sole duty was the protection of the Baker children.

‘Maggie, something to drink? Coffee, hot tea, juice?’

‘No thanks, Mr President. I’m fine.’ The phrase still snagged in her throat on its way out, but there was no getting around it. Everyone addressed him the same way, including his closest advisors and oldest friends, at least inside the White House. He had realized early on in the job that if he asked some people to call him by his first name, then those to whom he had not made the same offer would

feel offended. He’d end up telling everyone, ‘Call me Stephen,’ and that was too casual. Better to keep it formal – and consistent.

He checked his watch. ‘I want to talk about Africa. I saw your paper. The killing’s starting up again in Sudan; there’s hundreds of thousands at risk in Darfur. I want you to work up an option.’

Maggie’s mind started revving hard. Magnus Longley was all but certain to take her job away, and yet here was the President offering the opportunity she had always dreamed of. The timing was perverse – and painful. But she felt a rush of the same optimism that had always got her into trouble – and also got things done. She took a deep breath. Perhaps, somehow, the whole Asshole Adams debacle would melt away.

‘An option, for action?’ she asked.

Baker was about to reply when a head popped around the doorframe. Stu Goldstein, Chief Counselor to the President: the man who had masterminded the election campaign, the man who occupied the most coveted real estate in the White House, the room next door to the Oval Office. The veteran of New York City political combat who stored a million and one facts about the politics of the United States in a phenomenal brain atop a wheezing, morbidly obese body.

‘Mr President. We need to go across to the Roosevelt Room. You’re signing VAW in two minutes.’ A small turn of the head. ‘Hi Maggie.’

Baker took his jacket off the back of a kitchen chair and swung his arms into it. ‘Walk with me.’

The instant he began moving she could see the Secret Service agents alter their posture, one whispering into his lapel, ‘Firefly is on the move.’
Firefly,
the codename allocated to Baker by the Secret Service. The bloggers had been kept busy for a week, deconstructing the hidden meaning of that one.

‘What kind of options are you after, Mr President?’

‘I want something that will get the job done. There’s an area the size of France that’s become a killing field. No one can police that on the ground.’ As they walked, a pair of agents hovered close by, three paces behind.

‘So you’re talking about the air?’

He looked Maggie in the eye, fixing her in that cool, deep green. Now she understood.

‘Are you suggesting we equip the African Union with US helicopters, Mr President? Enough of them to monitor the entire Darfur region from the sky?’

‘It’s like you always said, Maggie. The bad guys get away with it because they think no one’s looking. And no one
is
looking.’

She spoke slowly, thinking it through. ‘But if the AU had state-of-the-art Apaches, with full surveillance technology – night vision, infra-red, high-definition cameras – then we could see exactly who’s doing what and when. There’d be no place to hide. We could see who was torching villages and killing civilians.’

‘Not “we”, Maggie. The African Union.’

‘And if people know they’re being watched—’

‘They behave.’

Maggie could feel her heart racing. This was what anyone who had seen the massacres in Darfur had been praying for for years: the ‘eye in the sky’ that might stop the killing. But the African Union had always lacked the wherewithal to make it happen: they didn’t have the helicopters to monitor the ground below, and so the killers had been free to slaughter with impunity. Now here was the American President vowing to give them the tools the dead and dying had been crying out for. The spark of excitement was turning into a flame – until she remembered that she was about to lose her job.

‘We only have very narrow majorities in the House and Senate, sir. Do you think—’

He smiled, the wide, bright smile of a confident man. ‘That’s my job, Maggie. You give me some options.’

By now they had arrived in the West Wing, standing in the corridor just outside the Roosevelt Room. An aide tried and failed to hand him a text, another stepped forward and reminded him who was in the front row and needed to be acknowledged. A third leaned forward and applied four precise dabs of face powder for the sake of the TV cameras. Someone asked if he was ready and he nodded.

The double doors were opened and an unseen tenor voice bellowed out the words that were simultaneously thrilling and wholly familiar.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!’

Washington, DC, Monday March 20, 08.55

She watched as a packed Roosevelt Room rose to its feet, adults acting like schoolchildren, standing to attention at the sight of the man in charge. Everyone did that, wherever he went. She was almost used to it.

They were applauding him now, a room full of some of the most senior politicians in the country. Most were smiling wide, satisfied smiles. Sprinkled among them were a few faces she did not recognize. Women, though not dressed in the brightly-coloured, tailored suits favoured by their Washington sisters. It took Maggie a moment to work out who they were. Of course. The victims. An occasion like this was not complete without victims.

She tried to sneak in discreetly, in the tail of the entourage, but still she caught the eye of Tara MacDonald, which registered surprise and irritation, noting that Maggie had entered the room with the President.

Crisply, as the applause was still subsiding, Stephen Baker began directing those in the first row to gather behind him. Knowing the drill, they formed a semi-circle, standing as he sat at the desk. Maggie identified the key players: majority
and minority leaders from the Senate, whips and committee chairs from the House, along with the two lead sponsors of the bill from both chambers. Closest to him was Bradford Williams, solemn and distinguished: the former congressman whose selection to be the first African-American vice president had been notched up as yet another one of Stephen Baker’s historic breakthroughs.

‘My fellow Americans,’ the President began, setting off the loud clatter of two hundred cameras, a pandemonium of motors and bulbs. ‘Today we gather to see the new Violence Against Women Act signed into law. I’m proud to sign it. I’m proud to be here with the men and women who voted for it. Above all, I’m proud to be at the side of those women whose courage in speaking out made this law happen. Without their honesty, without their bravery, America would not have acted. But today we act.’

There was more applause. Maggie smiled to herself as she noticed there was not so much as a note on the table, let alone a fully-scripted speech. The President was speaking off the top of his head.

‘We act for women like Donna Moreno, whose husband beat her so badly she was hospitalized for two months. We act for women like Christine Swenson, who had to fight seven years of police indifference before she could see the man who raped her convicted and jailed. They are both here in the White House today – and we welcome them. But we act for those who are not here.’

Maggie glanced at the people she had joined, lined up against the far wall nearest the door, the traditional zone occupied by the senior aides to the President. It was a curious bit of choreography. On the one hand, it signalled their status as mere staff, serving at the pleasure of the President. They stood like butlers, hovering several paces away from the
dining table, awaiting instructions. Everyone else was allowed to sit: even the press corps.

And yet, to be among this group was a mark of the highest possible status in Washington. It said you were close to the President, even one of the indispensables who needed to be ‘in the room’. While the invited guests sat bolt upright, their suits pressed and their hair fixed for their big day at the White House, the staffers slumped against the wall, their ties loose, as if this were no more than another day at the office. Maggie looked at the Press Secretary, Doug Sanchez, young and good-looking enough to have caught the interest of the celeb magazines: he had his head down, barely paying attention to proceedings, scrolling instead through a message on his iPhone. Aware he was being watched, he looked up and smiled at Maggie, nodding in the direction of the President and then back at her, with a lascivious raise of the eyebrows. Translation:
I saw you and him arrive together…

‘For the women who have been attacked and not believed, even by the law-enforcement officers who should have protected them,’ the President was saying now. ‘For the wives who have been made prisoners in their own home. For the daughters who have had to fear their own fathers. Each of them is a heroine and – from today – they will have the law on their side.’

More applause as President Stephen Baker reached for the first of a set of pens fanned out on the desk before him. He signed his name, then reached for another pen to date the document, then several more to initial each page.

‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s done.’

The guests were on their feet again, the cameras clacking noisily. The President had come around in front of his desk to shake hands with those who had come to witness the moment. There were double-clasps with the congressional
leaders, a hand placed on the forearm to convey extra warmth, hugs with the leaders of the key national women’s organizations and then a more hesitant, careful extension of the hand to the first of the ‘victims’ carefully selected by the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Suddenly the cameras began to whirr more insistently so that the room was lit by the strobe of a hundred flashbulbs. Several journalists were on their feet, craning to see over the photographers. Maggie could only just glimpse the source of their interest. Christine Swenson had placed her arms around the President’s shoulders and was resting her cheek on his chest. Tears flowed down her face. ‘Thank you,’ she was saying, over and over. ‘Thank you for believing me.’

‘If that isn’t leading Katie Couric tonight, I’m David Duke.’ It was Tara MacDonald, hardly glancing up from her BlackBerry

Maggie couldn’t take her eyes off Swenson, sobbing with gratitude. Only as an afterthought did she look at the President. He had placed his arm around the woman, enveloping her in a fatherly hug – even though he was at least a decade younger than she was.

Eventually the embrace broke up, the President handing Swenson a handkerchief so that she could dry her eyes.

Now he was handing a pen each to Donna, Christine and the congressional bigwigs. It was a White House tradition, one of dozens to have acquired the status of a religious rite: the President would sign a bill with multiple pens, so that he would have at least a dozen to present as souvenirs. Each one could be said to be ‘the very pen President Baker used to sign the…’

Aides were now beginning to nudge the President towards the lectern, to take questions from the press. He put out a restraining hand, signalling that he was not quite ready. He carried on speaking to the women who were huddled around
him, one or two of them holding up camera-phones to get a snap of the man up close. He was standing, listening intently.

Maggie could hear the woman who had his attention. ‘…he took his belt off and began whipping my boy like he was a horse. What makes a man behave like that, Mr President? To his own son?’

The President shook his head in weary disbelief. Phil, the ‘body man’, placed his hand on Baker’s shoulder once again: the gesture that said,
we really must wind this up
. But the boss ignored him. Instead, he used his height to reach over the immediate circle of women who were surrounding him, searching for the hand of one of those who had held back. Maggie had noticed her already: unlike the others, she had been too shy to introduce herself. Ordinarily, those were the people who missed out; they never got their moment with the President. But Stephen Baker had noticed her, just as he always did.

It took Tara MacDonald to impose some discipline. She strode over to the huddle and addressed not the President but the women. ‘Ladies, if you could all take your seats,’ she said in the kind of commanding voice used to bringing hush to a church. ‘The President needs to take some questions.’

This was an innovation, one that Baker himself had insisted upon. Traditionally, presidents made themselves available to the press only rarely, doing occasional, set-piece press conferences. The rest of the time, reporters might try to hurl a question but it would usually die in the air, victim to the President’s selective deafness.

Baker promised to be different. If he did a public event, it would now end with a few minutes of light interrogation. The Washington punditocracy gave this fresh, transparent approach a life expectancy of about a fortnight: Baker would soon realize he’d made a rod for his own back and quit.

‘Terry, what you got?’

‘Mr President, congratulations on signing the Violence Against Women Act.’

‘Thanks.’ He flashed the wide signature smile.

‘But some people are saying this might be the first and last legislative achievement of the Baker presidency. This was the one thing you and Congress could agree on. After this, isn’t it going to be gridlock all the way?’

‘No, Terry, and I’ll tell you why.’

Maggie watched as the President went into a now-familiar riff, explaining that though his majorities in the House and Senate were narrow, there were plenty of people of goodwill who wanted to make progress for the sake of the American people.

He then took another question, this time on diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. Maggie felt a surge of anxiety, a leftover from the election campaign when it had been her job to make sure he didn’t stumble on the subject of foreign policy. No need for her to worry about that now.

Sanchez leaned in to say, ‘This will be the last question.’

Baker called on MSNBC.

‘Mr President, I’m sorry to come to a subject that might be awkward. Did you deceive the American people during the election campaign, by failing to reveal a key aspect of your own medical history – specifically the fact that you had once received treatment for a psychiatric disorder?’