The Day of the Donald (20 page)

A
s Victoria unbuttoned Jimmie’s pants, another wave of hesitation hit him. It had nothing to do with Cat or with the fact that Victoria Trump was married to the president. He knew that she was just using him to get back at her husband. She’d praised Jimmie’s “big hands,” but they both knew they were just average. To someone who’s starving, though, a crumb looks like a meal.

What was causing him to have second thoughts was the fact that
a White House sex scandal was unfolding before his very eyes . . . and he didn’t care.
This despite a story here just as salacious as anything he’d reported at the
Daily Blabber
. Although he’d never cared for politics, Donald J. Trump and the first lady were undoubtedly celebrities: Trump’s marital troubles with past wives had driven dirt sheet sales in the eighties and nineties. Who could forget his first wife confronting his mistress on the slopes in Colorado? The lengthy prenup battle with Marla Maples? Or the blink-and-you’ve-missed-it marriage to Megyn Kelly?

The story unzipping below Jimmie’s belt was
bigger
than all that. Even if he hadn’t been personally involved, the first couple were clearly having some sort of marital difficulties. Who knew how long Victoria and her husband been sleeping in separate
bedrooms? Jimmie should have felt something. Anything. Well, anything besides the hand massaging him, which he
definitely
felt.

But no. A Trump sex scandal was small boobies compared to the rising body count at the White House. As much as it pained Jimmie to admit, whatever conspiracy was unfolding around him outside of the Lincoln Bedroom ran far deeper than what was happening inside the Lincoln Bedroom.

He never thought he’d think that there could be anything bigger than a sex scandal. But he’d found one—one that excited his journalistic instincts. One that got his blood boiling. Lester Dorset . . . the dead SJW . . . Emma Blythe being poisoned . . . the threat of war with America’s closest ally . . . and the most powerful men and women in the world. Something big was brewing, something that dwarfed a little extramarital swapping of bodily fluids.

“I can’t do this,” Jimmie said, pulling away from Victoria. “I’m sorry.”

She frowned at him. “Is it your kidnapped girlfriend?”

He nodded solemnly. It was only partially about Cat—and she wasn’t his girlfriend—but, yeah. No reason to get Victoria involved in whatever nasty business was happening at the White House.

“I can help you,” she said. “I want to help you.”

He tucked his shirt in and buttoned his pants. “I can’t get out of here with the recorder. But you can probably just walk out with it.”

“If I leave, it will be suspicious. Donny doesn’t like it when I leave.”

A woman like Victoria didn’t deserve to be locked up on the third floor of the White House like some crazy aunt who’d lost her mind. No woman deserved that. Not even crazy aunts.
Victoria needed someone who cared about her . . . somebody who wouldn’t leave town to play golf all weekend while his wife and her amazing rack were stuck at home.

Jimmie gazed into her eyes and communicated all this with a single glance. She gazed back at him, letting him know she picked up what he was putting down.

He shot a glance at the window. The Rose Garden was directly below. If he exited the building through the rear employee entrance, he’d walk right past the flower garden on his way out. He’d be beyond the most invasive level of White House security at that point. All Victoria would have to do is toss the recorder out the window, and he’d catch it.

He glanced back at Victoria, who nodded. She understood his plan.

If things don’t work out with my girl, I’ll be back for you
, Jimmie told Victoria with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

You promise?
she asked with a narrowing of her eyes.

I promise
, he said with a flare of his nostrils.

He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. They both knew he was lying, but they kept playing the parts. Jimmie knew that not only was it what James Bond would do . . . it was also, he realized with some horror, what Trump would do.

After his plan went off without a hitch, Jimmie Bernwood set the potted plant out on his deck at the Watergate. It had been a long day, but it was going to be an even longer weekend. He finally dozed off around one in the morning. He slept well and dreamt of large-breasted women.

July 1, 2018, 7:56
PM

Saturday, September 1, 2018

J
immie Bernwood rose just after ten the next morning. He used the toilet and stretched his arms. He’d been up late at the White House, so he didn’t get his regular ten hours of sleep. Any other Saturday, he might have lounged around in bed until noon. Unfortunately, he had too much to do this weekend to prepare for the swap.

He’d decided that he would make a copy of the recordings. Not because of their content, but because he might need them down the line as evidence. He also needed to buy a gun. With Trump’s Affordable Arms Act, that would be relatively simple.

Jimmie toweled off his hands and—

He paused to stare in the mirror. There, on his forehead in black magic marker, was a message written across two lines: NOON. INT’L SPY MUSEUM. And running down the side of his cheek, as if someone had run out of space: OR SHE DIES.

Noon?! He couldn’t believe what an idiot he’d been. Why had he set the plant out last night and not waited a day or two? What a stupid mistake.

He spun the dial on the safe.

The recorder was inside, untouched.

Curious that the SJWs sneaked into his hotel room to deliver a message but hadn’t tried to force him into giving up the recorder. Why hadn’t they tortured him? Maybe they weren’t as villainous as they seemed . . . or maybe they just assumed Jimmie wouldn’t have been so stupid as to bring his bargaining chip with him back to the hotel.

Well, guess what, bad guys?
he thought.
I
am
that stupid
.

If they wanted to overestimate him, let them.

He glanced again at the clock. He had only a little over an hour and a half now to get to the International Spy Museum, which was at least a forty-minute bus ride away. No time to make a copy of the recordings. No time to pick up a gun for protection. He was heading into this thing with just his wits.

From past experience, those weren’t going to be enough.

He flipped on the television as he got dressed. Emma Blythe’s death should have been the lead story on CNN. Instead, the news network was running a story on gluten-free hip-hop. Nothing on Fox News, MSNBC, or the half a dozen other twenty-four-hour news channels either.

Someone was keeping her death quiet.

They couldn’t do it forever, of course—this wasn’t another Lester Dorset situation. Come Tuesday morning, the White House staff would be abuzz if she weren’t in her office by nine. Was her killer also doing the cover-up? Or did somebody within the White House or the US intelligence community know she was a spy and thus was keeping a lid on her assassination until the full depth of her espionage was known?

On his way out to catch the bus, he passed the stack of Trump books he’d amassed. Hadn’t had time to color them all just yet—maybe he never would, if he was gunned down
today in the mean streets of the nation’s capital. The book on top caught his eye, however:
Trump: The Art of the Deal: The Expanded Coloring Edition.

Maybe Jimmie didn’t have to go into his negotiation with the kidnappers unarmed after all.

T
he International Spy Museum was located ten blocks east of the White House. Jimmie had read about the museum in a guide to area attractions. The private museum supposedly featured “the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ever placed on public display.” The museum’s board of directors included past members of the CIA, FBI, NSA, and even the KGB. In a city that supposedly had ten thousand spies, there were bound to be a few hanging out at the Spy Museum just shooting the shit.
This
was the place the kidnappers wanted to meet?

It seemed that Jimmie wasn’t the only one who’d overestimated the opposition’s intelligence.
It’s your funeral, tough guys
, he thought as he paid the twenty-five bucks for entry.

The girl at the counter with the nose stud and pageboy haircut handed him his ticket. “Made it just in time,” she said. “Nobody’s going to die.”

His heart stopped. “Excuse me?”

“The reminder on your face,” she said. “Noon? You’ve got twelve minutes.”

Of course. In his rush to get out the door, he’d forgotten to scrub the message from his face. The girl had read the backward message. Probably one of the skills you learned on the first day at a place like this.

“Is there a restroom I can use to wash it off?” Jimmie asked. “My roommate’s always drawing shit on my face.”

“Might be time for a new roommate.”

“At least it wasn’t a huge cock this time,” he said, a little louder than he probably should have, what with all the children around. Because it was a Saturday, the families were out in full force. A father in the next line shot him a look of disapproval, which was absolutely warranted.

“My roommate, uh, is always drawing chickens,” Jimmie explained, loudly and to nobody in particular. “Cocks, as everybody is well aware, are male chickens. That’s what I’m talking about—not cocks as in male genitals—”

“Please stop talking,” the girl behind the ticket counter said.

Jimmie headed down the hall. He’d nearly made a scene back there—not good, if he was trying to keep a low profile. The last thing he wanted to do was get tossed out of the museum and risk making the kidnappers think he’d bailed on them. Then what would happen to Cat?

After he washed the marker off, he realized he still had a few minutes to kill before noon. Plenty of time to do his morning business, which he’d skipped to get here on time.

All three stalls were open. Every time he encountered a choice of stalls at a public restroom, he had to do some quick mental gymnastics to determine which had the least germs. He wasn’t phobic about germs or anything, but he wasn’t a fool. It was automatically assumed that, in Western countries, most people would go for the stall farthest to the left. Stall #1. So he should pick stall #2 or #3. Except most people
knew
that most people would pick stall #1, so they would also go for the second or third stall . . . meaning that stall #1 would actually be the
cleanest of the three. However, most people would run through the same calculation in their minds, leading them to choose stall #1 over the others because of its presumed cleanliness . . . meaning that, in the end, stall #1 would get the most traffic and have the most germs.

Jimmie chose the second stall as he always ended up doing. The third stall had never been in play, because everybody knew that the farthest stall to the right was the one where people went when they needed the most privacy—to shoot up drugs or drop a bomb.

He plopped himself down on the seat and opened the museum brochure he’d picked up at the gate. Somebody sat down in the stall to his right. Jimmie could see the man’s white penny loafers under the divider. The man coughed. This confirmed Jimmie’s impression that stall #1 was nothing but a germ farm.

He returned his attention to the brochure. According to the map, there were three floors at the museum. The permanent exhibits included “School for Spies” and “The Secret History of History” and apparently included interactive elements such as adopting your own spy name. Neat. There were a couple of different special exhibits going on right now, too, including one he wouldn’t have minded checking out on the Bond girls. But one temporary exhibit in particular grabbed his eye: “Ten Years of
Taken
.”

So that was why the kidnappers had chosen this as a meeting place. They wanted to mock his false bravado. They were in for a little surprise, though. He’d spent the bus ride over here boning up on his Trump negotiation tactics. He was ready for war.