The Chosen One (6 page)

Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 07.33

Baker had insisted they meet in the Residence: him, her and Stuart. Maggie called Goldstein immediately and explained that she’d just been fired. ‘I’ve got to surrender my pass by twelve noon, for Christ’s sake!’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘That means we’ve got a few hours.’

‘Is that meant to be funny?’

‘No. And Maggie? Come to my office first. I need to give you a heads-up before we go in.’

She was there twenty minutes later. Stuart was tearing his way through a memo, his eyes red and agitated. He looked awful.

She spoke from the doorway. ‘Is that the file on the Iranian?’

He didn’t look up but kept his eyes fixed on the document on his desk. ‘Known in this country as Jim Hodges, resident in the state of Texas.’

‘He’s a US citizen! So then we’re off the hook. The whole point is—’

‘But he’s also Hossein Najafi, citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who just happens to be a veteran of the
Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, better known as the Revolutionary Guard.’

‘But he gave the donation as Jim Hodges. How was anyone to know that he was really—’

‘Because we’re meant to check these things!’ Now Goldstein was looking up, his voice raised, his eyes bugging out with rage. ‘We’re the fucking White House.
He’s
the fucking President of the United States. He sends people into wars. To die. He’s meant to know who he meets, for Christ’s—’

‘He
met
him?’

‘Yes! Some fundraiser. During the transition.’

‘So there’ll be a photograph.’

Stuart’s reply came in a quieter voice. ‘Yes.’

‘And people will ask why we didn’t have the basic intel to know we were letting an Iranian spy get close to the President-Elect.’

‘Yes.’ Stuart spread his hands across the table and let his head fall onto them. ‘And why—’

‘—on earth the Iranians would want to give money to Stephen Baker.’

‘You could make the ad now.’ He picked his head up and did a mock voiceover. ‘“The Ayatollahs like Stephen Baker so much they gave him cash. In secret. Is Baker working for you – or them?”’

‘It’s a nightmare,’ Maggie agreed.

‘But that’s not why he wants to see you. Us. Not completely, anyway.’

‘Why, then?’

Stuart hauled himself upright and told Maggie about the message sent to Katie Baker via Facebook. He reached for a piece of paper to read the final paragraph:
And if that doesn’t smash his pretty little head into a thousand pieces, I promise you this – the one after that will. Make no mistake: I mean to destroy him.

‘Jesus.’

‘Oh yes.’ Stuart checked his watch. ‘He wants us over there right now.’

Inside the Residence, the difference in mood from the previous morning was palpable. Kimberley Baker had taken the children to school early – the White House breakfast event she was chairing on cervical cancer awareness would just have to start without her – so that they could be out of that atmosphere. She spent the journey repeating what she had said last night, over and over: reassuring Katie that Daddy was going to be fine, that the police would find and punish whoever sent that horrible message and she would make sure there would be no more of them.

The President was in the kitchen again, but this time he was pacing. Maggie had seen Stephen Baker receive all kinds of bad news during the campaign and, on all but a handful of occasions, he had remained calm, almost preternaturally so. He would keep his voice down, when others would raise theirs; he would be forgiving when any other candidate would be demanding instant revenge; he would stay seated when the rest would be leaping to their feet. But now he was pacing.

‘Thank you both for coming.’ He nodded towards two chairs but remained standing. ‘Maggie, I take it you now have the full picture?’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

‘And you know why you’re here?’

‘Not entirely, sir.’

‘The crank who wrote that message to my daughter. He warned there would be another big story “tomorrow morning”. And there was. Which means he’s no crank.’

Goldstein now spoke. ‘Or at the very least he’s a crank who knows how to hack computers. He must have identified the White House IP address, and worked backwards from there,
searching teenage websites for a match. Then hacked into this girl’s—’

‘Alexis,’ the President added.

‘Right. Into her account. Smart.’

To her surprise, the President suddenly turned and fixed Maggie with his deep green gaze. Though this time, the steadiness was gone. He looked hunted. ‘You should have seen my daughter, Maggie. She looked terrified.’

‘It’s horrible.’

‘I always promised Kim that whatever happened we’d keep the kids out of it.’

Stuart replied. ‘And you have, sir.’

‘Until now, Stu. Until now.’

Both Maggie and Goldstein remained silent, while Baker resumed his pacing. Finally, she felt she had to speak.

‘Sorry, Mr President. I’m not sure I’m completely clear on what needs to be done here. On what you want us to do.’

Baker looked to Stuart and nodded, giving Goldstein the cue to answer on his behalf.

‘This has to be handled extremely carefully, Maggie. We need to know who this man who contacted Katie is. If he really is the source of these stories and is determined to reveal more, we need to identify him. Fast.’

‘Can’t the Secret Service help? He made a direct threat against you.’

Once again Baker said nothing, looking to Stuart.

‘The agent assigned to Katie is running a trace.’

‘Good,’ said Maggie. ‘So we’ll see what she finds out.’

Now the President spoke. ‘I need someone I trust involved, Maggie.’

‘You can trust the Secret Service.’

‘They will investigate the threat to my
life
.’

Stuart leaned forward. ‘But this is not just a physical threat, is it? This is political. Someone is out to destroy this
presidency. Two leaks, carefully timed for maximum impact. And threatening another.’

Maggie nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Which is why we need our own person on it. Someone who cares. Someone who has the resources to do, you know, unusual work.’

‘What do you mean,
unusual
?’

‘Come on, Maggie. We know what you did in Jerusalem. Put it this way, you weren’t just drafting position papers, were you?’

‘But I don’t even work for you any more!’ It had come out louder and angrier than she had planned. The intensity of her outburst surprised even her.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ the President said quietly.

‘Longley runs his own show, you know that, Maggie.’ Stuart paused, then brightened. ‘But it doesn’t mean you can’t help. If anything, it’s better. You have distance. Arm’s-length.’ ‘Deniability, you mean. You can disown me.’ She was staring hard at him.

The President drew himself up to full height and let his eyes bore into her. ‘I need you, Maggie. There is so much we hoped to achieve. Together. To do that, I need to stay in this office. And that means finding this man, whoever he is.’

She held his gaze for a long second or two in which she thought of the conversation they had had in this same place twenty-four hours earlier. She thought of the barely-started options paper for Darfur on her computer, of the helicopters that this president was ready to send and the lives they would save. She pictured a Darfuri village about to be torched to the ground and the militiamen on horseback poised to set it ablaze; she saw them reining in their animals and turning around, because they had heard the sound of choppers in the sky that told them they would be seen and caught. She thought of all
that and the certainty that nobody other than Stephen Baker would lift a finger to help those villagers.

‘All right,’ she said, still looking directly into the deep green of his eyes. ‘We find him. Then what?’

Stuart answered. ‘We see what he wants. We ask what—’

The President wheeled round to address his closest advisor directly. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting I engage in dialogue with a
blackmailer
—’

‘Not you. Nowhere near you. A million miles from you.’

‘You mean you?’

‘Not even me. Or at least not a me that anyone could identify as me.’

‘No way.’

‘He said he has one more story that will—’

‘Well, I’m not going to authorize any such thing. And you know better than to ask.’

Stuart gestured an apology, heaved himself up out of his chair, muttering a ‘one, two, three’ under his breath as he undertook the necessary exertion. Maggie followed his lead and headed for the door.

I’m not going to authorize any such thing.
Both Maggie and Stuart knew what that meant. They had been given their orders. Deniability, the lubricant of high-level politics. The message had been clear. Do whatever you have to do. Just make sure it has nothing to do with me.

As they walked back to the West Wing, Maggie turned to Stuart. ‘We better start drawing up a list.’

‘A list of what?’

‘Of everybody who wants to drive Stephen Baker from office.’

Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 09.16

In the office of the junior senator from the great state of South Carolina, they liked to pride themselves on the knowledge that a visitor had only to cross the threshold to feel as if he had stepped inside the Old South. The receptionist on duty was usually blonde, under thirty, wearing a floral print and always ready with a welcoming smile, a ‘Yes sir’ or a ‘Yes ma’am’. Nearly always a ‘Yes sir’. Outside that door, they could offer no guarantees. You entered the swamp that was Washington, DC at your own risk. But here, once you were a guest of Senator Rick Franklin, you were south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The visitor, once he’d helped himself to the pitcher of iced water in the waiting area, would notice more than the Southern smiles. His eye would be caught first, perhaps, by the bronze plaque above the reception desk depicting the Ten Commandments, as if etched on two tablets of stone. Not for Senator Franklin the niceties of separating Church and State in a public building.

Then, if he were especially vigilant, he would spot the TV monitor tuned not to CNN or MSNBC, as would be the case
in most Democrats’ offices, nor even Fox News, as in most Republicans’, but to the Christian Broadcasting Network. Midterm elections might be nineteen months away, but there was fundraising to be done – and it paid to give the folks the right impression.

That was the outer area. Once a visitor had pierced the perimeter, and entered the private office of the Senator himself, he would get a rather earthier glimpse of the realities of political life. In here, it was Fox or MSNBC, usually the latter. ‘Know thine enemy,’ Franklin would say.

In the last twenty-four hours, however, it had hardly felt like an enemy. The network, usually pilloried in Franklin mailings as news for arugula-munching liberals, had been making the weather on the Baker presidency; and for those on Franklin’s side of the aisle it had felt like sunshine. Some of his colleagues had simply sat back and enjoyed the show. First, St Stephen of Olympia revealed as some kind of wacko, in need of treatment. The joy of it was that story still had some distance to run. What kind of treatment exactly? Were electric shocks involved? Was he ever an inpatient? Was there a ‘facility’ that might be photographed, complete with exterior shots of a building reminiscent of the Cuckoo’s Nest, that could run on a loop on Fox?

Senator Franklin could feel the saliva welling as he imagined the meat still to be picked off that particular bone.

And this morning the Iranian Connection. Iron law of scandal: gotta have a good name. ‘The Iranian Connection’ did the job perfectly. Exotic and dramatic, like a movie, but with the added threat of somewhere dark and scary. Sure the details were obscure, the experts unintelligible bald guys captioned on TV as ‘forensic accountants’, but that only made it better. The liberal editorial boards could sweat through their tieless shirts explaining that there was ‘no case to answer’, but that wouldn’t wash with the folks. Oh no. They
would see a blizzard of numbers and laws and rules – and they would conclude that, whatever the fine print might say, Mr Perfect President was no longer as pure as the driven snow.

Which is why he had got on the phone to his Democratic colleague within minutes of the story breaking. Calling for an independent counsel was the no-risk move. If the investi gation found nothing, then Franklin could claim to have performed a public service, getting to the bottom of baseless rumours. If it found something, then bingo! And, in between, day after day of stories full of mind-numbing detail on campaign finance law and on the horror show that was the Iranian regime. The mere fact that these subjects were raised in the same breath as Stephen Baker would generate a quite perfect stench of scandal. Voters would be forced to conclude, as they had so many times before, ‘Ain’t no smoke without fire.’

He knew Vincenzi would be a reliable ally. Sure, he was a Dino – Democrat in Name Only – and sure, everyone knew he couldn’t stand Baker, but Vincenzi’s presence at his side would give Franklin the lofty, bipartisan patina the media could never resist. ‘This is above party politics,’ they had both said in their statements. The press always lapped up that shit.

As for the phrase ‘special prosecutor’, that particular bolt of inspiration had only come to him as he headed over to the hastily arranged press availability. The nerds would say it was inaccurate, but they’d be too late. The poison arrow would already be in flight.

So Senator Franklin felt able to hum ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ as he straightened the blotter on his desk and moved the paperweight – the one that, if you looked closely, revealed a Confederate flag preserved as if in amber inside the thick glass. Things were going according to plan.

He carried on humming even as there was a gentle rap on the door. Cindy, his Head of Legislative Affairs, coming in with a smile he hadn’t seen since the night he was elected more than four years ago. It always gave him pleasure watching her move, her rear end tightly contained in a skirt that was never any lower than the knee. But now there was a spring in her step that gave him an extra pulse of enjoyment.

‘I can see you come bearing glad tidings, sweetheart.’

‘I do, sir, I do.’

They played these games, the Southern gentleman and the demure young lady, with dialogue sub-
Gone With the Wind
– but only when the political or personal weather was clement.

‘Pray tell.’

‘I do declare, Senator,’ she said with a girlish flutter that, even though he’d seen it a hundred times, still sent electricity to his groin, ‘that the source of MSNBC’s recent tales of woe has been – what’s the word –
outed
.’

‘Outed? Already? What the hell’s happened?’ The game was over. Too important for games.

‘Daily Kos. They’ve named him. Seems some liberal hacker broke into the MSNBC system and found the emails between their Washington bureau and the leaker. Then went ahead and named him on his own website. Kos picked it up.’

‘You sure the White House weren’t behind this?’

‘Can’t be sure. But Kos are adamant that it was some ultra-liberal crazy outraged his beloved Baker was being slammed. Seems to add up.’

‘And what have they found about him?’

‘The hacker?’

‘No! Fuck him. The leaker.’

‘All they have so far is that he’s late forties, white and from New Orleans.’