To Kill the President Read online

  ‘Rosemary doesn’t like it,’ he said, gesturing towards the music. ‘But it helps me relax. As do these.’ He held up a set of worry beads, the kind you might pick up in any souk in Baghdad or Damascus. ‘I think we have that part of the world in common.’

  Maggie nodded, but she was not going to be diverted. The music was unsettling; she had to talk over it. ‘What was so urgent that you needed to see Dr Frankel at home on Monday night? Why couldn’t it wait till the next morning?’ She chose to hold back, for now, what she knew of the incident in the Situation Room.

  ‘Maggie, do you mind if I ask you a question?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Why are you still working here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I mean, you were a loyalist to the previous incumbent. Everyone knows that. One of his most trusted counsellors. Everyone assumed you’d leave. But you’re still here.’

  ‘Look, if you want to give me my annual appraisal, then today might not be—’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you stayed. Real glad. We need people of your calibre on this team. There are so many people who are …’ The sentence drifted away.

  ‘Why did you both go together, you and Mr Bruton?’

  ‘I mean, this President. You don’t believe in him, do you? You can’t. I’ve read your résumé. You’re the last person who’d want to serve him.’

  ‘You arrived, unannounced, at nine thirty pm. Why no advance phone call? What was so urgent that it had to be done then, that night, and in person?’

  ‘I think you’re a patriot for your adopted country. But I don’t see you as a natural supporter of the—’

  Maggie cut him off. ‘Let’s just say, I believe in the office of the presidency. I serve that. For as long as I believe I can do some good. Now, to my question. Did you get what you wanted, Mr Kassian? Did you get what you came for?’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Or did Dr Frankel say no? To your scheme, to you and Bruton? Did he refuse to go along with it?’

  ‘You don’t understand at all.’

  ‘Help me understand then. Tell me what happened.’ She wondered if she could be heard over the music. It was getting louder.

  ‘I can’t tell you anything, Maggie. Except that I was as surprised – and as alarmed – by Dr Frankel’s death as you were. Perhaps more so. The same goes for Jim.’

  ‘So you—’

  ‘Had nothing to do with it. Of course we didn’t.’ He was examining his fingers. He looked glum, weighed down by whatever it was he was not saying.

  Maggie fell silent. She had a sense that he was about to say more, that he wanted to say more, maybe even to unburden himself.

  He looked up and met her gaze. ‘There are things at work here that are far bigger than even you realize. The smartest play might be to walk away. Stand back, see what happens. You can always investigate afterwards.’ He smiled. ‘Washington is a town built on a swamp, I’m sure you know that. Maybe it’s best to walk around this one, rather than wading right in. Do you know what I mean, Maggie?’

  He stood up, as if to signal that the meeting was over and it was time for her to leave. But he had one last thing to say. ‘Love of country takes many forms, Maggie. Like I said, I think you love your country. But your country might not always love you back.’

  30

  Holkham Beach, Norfolk, England, 9.10am, eleven days earlier

  Was there a more perfect spot in all the world? He had travelled through much of it and had yet to find somewhere that moved him the way this place did. The beach, so wide and, when the tide was out, so deep you could barely glimpse the water’s edge on the far horizon. The dunes, ever changing, remoulding themselves into new shapes for each day. And, above, a vast sky, a canvas of pure blues and glowing oranges. Through some trick, when the rest of the country, including villages just a few miles away from here, was suffocating under dishwater skies, this beach was favoured with a clarity of light. It was as if England wanted to give a good account of itself just before it yielded to the North Sea, like a sailor’s girl wearing her Sunday best before waving farewell at the shore.

  Only here did Anthony Vale ever think such thoughts. The rest of the week, his head was full of cases and meetings and clients and precedents and billing hours. On the train down on Friday night, it was no better: he was still reviewing papers, typing emails on his laptop or, on those occasions when he couldn’t get a seat – no first class on the London train to King’s Lynn – thumbing them out on his phone. Saturday was lovely, of course. A lie-in, time spent cooking lunch, while Matthew played the piano. Perfect. But truth be told, it was only by the time Sunday came around that he had properly unwound. Specifically the Sunday morning walk with the dog: this moment was, for him, the summit. At last, he could notice the sky, smell the sea and, if he closed his eyes, he could see something other than his caseload.

  Buddy was tugging at his trouser leg, making that little pleading sound Anthony could hardly resist. Funny how things worked out. He would have been the last person anyone in their circle – himself included – would have expected to become a dog lover. Buddy had been Matthew’s idea. One weekend he put Anthony in the car, and started driving without revealing the destination. He had assumed they were going to the Union Chapel or perhaps the Wigmore Hall for a recital. Instead they pitched up at Battersea Dogs Home. One look at that little West Highland white terrier and Anthony was molten; Matthew didn’t even have to make a case. Anthony was sold.

  He put the ball in the thrower, pulled his arm back and watched it fly far into the distance. Buddy hared off, his eagerness to please as delightful and heartbreaking as ever. These little moments would re-charge him for the week ahead.

  And it would be quite a week. In court, starting tomorrow, he would do battle with the most high-powered legal team he had ever faced. Certainly the most expensive. All representing surely the most formidable client he or any other British lawyer had taken on. Oh, of course, everyone insisted that the High Court would treat this like any other case, without fear or favour. But no one seriously believed that.

  Officially, the point of law at stake was clear: had the government followed its own processes and acted lawfully in barring the complainant from taking full ownership of a business in which it already owned the lion’s share? Was the government right to say it was not in the public interest for this US-based company, for this man, to control so much of the UK market that it would – he would – in effect enjoy a monopoly?

  And when he said ‘the government’, that too was hardly straightforward. True, the Competition and Markets Authority had issued its recommendation that the takeover be blocked and that advice had been accepted by the relevant government department. But that was before the complainant had ascended to his, ahem, position of influence. Now that he was there, different parts of government took different views. The law was a delicate thing and no one wanted to be seen to be meddling in the judicial process – heaven forfend – but several well-informed columnists had already reported that the Foreign Office and, most likely, Downing Street itself would not be too unhappy if their colleagues in the Department for Business were to suffer a reverse in the courts. A few red faces in Whitehall were a price worth paying to keep things sweet with the Americans. By which they meant one American – and his family – in particular.

  Buddy was back with the ball and hungry for his reward. Anthony bent down and stroked him all over, rubbing his ears especially, just as he liked. ‘Such a good boy,’ he said, hoping that with every word, and every stroke, he was compensating for the hurt and neglect this wonderful, blameless creature had endured at the start of his life. He tossed the ball once more.

  So tomorrow’s case was daunting, on any measure. And yet Anthony refused to feel overwhelmed. He had prepared thoroughly. He knew what arguments to make, what weaknesses in his opponent to exploit. He had only failed in one area and it was the usual one. Matthew always said it, ‘You’ve got to learn to d
elegate!’ It was a bad defect, he was willing to admit it. The entire case was located in his head. His colleagues knew bits of it, but only he could see the whole. In a thousand-piece jigsaw, each member of the team held maybe a hundred or so pieces. Only he held the box with the picture.

  Whatever had happened to that dog? Buddy would normally have raced back by now. Doubtless, he had got distracted by another ball, or another dog, sniffing around with his usual unrestrained curiosity. Sweet, silly old thing.

  He scanned the horizon. A group of walkers; a father and son trying to launch a kite. Ah, there he … no, different breed.

  ‘Buddy! Come on, buddy.’ He always felt ridiculous doing this, too aware of his own voice, of the absurdity of the endearments he, Matthew and Buddy shared. Fine indoors, but not for public consumption.

  ‘Buddy, come on, fella. Where are you?’

  He heard a yap, which made him turn sharply to his left. There, by the dunes, was a man struggling to hold a white terrier by the collar. Surely that couldn’t …

  Anthony walked faster, his gaze fixed on the animal at the man’s hand. The colouring was the same, but it didn’t make sense. Who was this man?

  Now, just as he came within a hundred yards or so, he got a clearer view. The man stepped back, so that Anthony assumed Buddy was about to come bounding towards him. And the dog did separate from the man, creating daylight between them. But only for a second. Because it was clear that though, yes, that was indeed Buddy – he was now on a leash.

  ‘Excuse me, that’s my dog,’ Anthony heard himself say.

  Perhaps the man was not near enough to hear, because he ignored Anthony, turning his back to the sea and walking briskly in the direction of the woods.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Anthony shouted. The man in front did not turn back and started jogging towards the trees, with Buddy in tow. Anthony could see the dog was reluctant, and Buddy was a strong animal, yet he was getting dragged along, which meant this man must be pulling on that leash with serious force.

  Now Anthony broke into a run. ‘Hey, you there. That’s my dog. Give me back my dog!’

  Was this man deaf? He didn’t so much as turn around. Now anger mixed with concern turned into adrenalin, injecting itself straight into Anthony’s bloodstream. How dare this man – dressed in black and with a beanie hat low on his head, even on this spring morning – steal his beloved Buddy?

  Anthony scrambled across the sand, through the long grasses and finally felt the ground harden as he went among the trees and bushes. He looked around, worried he’d lost them. But then he heard that sound, a low, anguished keening he recognized. Buddy.

  He ran towards the noise, but there was a dip which made him stumble. He put out his hand, which landed on a clump of thistles. Shit.

  He got to his feet, disoriented. Buddy was in pain, he was sure of it. He wasn’t sure which way to turn. He listened for the dog again, almost wanting to hear that awful whine, but there was only an empty quiet.

  ‘Buddy!’ And then, unbothered by who could hear and what they would think of the way he and Matthew spoke to their dog, and what that said about them, he called out, ‘Don’t worry, Buddy. Daddy’s here.’

  And then, thank God, he felt a tug on the bottom of his trouser leg and he looked down and there, God bless his little face, was Buddy and as Anthony instinctively reached down to touch the dog’s ears, searching for the source of his pain, noticing that one of his legs was hanging limply, he felt something he didn’t understand – more like a sound than a feeling, a thick thud at the back of his head, where the skull meets the neck.

  He fell forward, almost landing on top of Buddy, so that the last scent in his nostrils, as the second, confirming blow came and Anthony Vale slipped into unconsciousness and death, was the warm, wet aroma of the animal he loved.

  31

  Washington, DC, Thursday, 10.40am

  Maggie’s head was throbbing: from the coffee, from the exhaustion, from her meeting with Kassian, from what she’d seen on Richard’s phone, from what he’d said, from what Kassian had said, from the fact that an assassination plot seemed to be unfolding before her eyes, in real time, and that she had no idea how to stop it.

  Kassian had threatened her, albeit in the nicest possible way: your country might not always love you back. And so had Richard: Tread carefully, Maggie. One White House employee was already dead, and Kassian had done nothing to convince her that Dr Jeffrey Frankel had not paid the price for standing in the way of the Chief of Staff and his commanding officer, Jim Bruton.

  She got into her car, wishing she could see the one man she reckoned might be able to untangle this mess. Stuart Goldstein had played the central role in pulling her off the diplomatic track after the Jerusalem episode and recruiting her to work as a foreign policy adviser for his client, then a little-known state governor who, within eighteen months, would become President. They had been such an unlikely duo, she and Stuart: he a wheezing, morbidly obese, middle-aged Jew from Brooklyn, wise to the cynical complexities of politics and therefore all human affairs, she an Irish Catholic girl barely out of her twenties brimming with beauty pageant platitudes about making the world a better place (or so her earlier self seemed to her now). And yet they had clicked, bonded chiefly by their loyalty to the president they served. She heard herself sigh at the memory of that feeling.

  She had barely got onto the E Street Expressway when the phone rang. The name of the caller was displayed on the dashboard: Liz. Nightmare timing, when she needed so desperately to think, but when else would she have half an hour to speak to her sister? She felt for the phone symbol on the steering wheel and pressed it.

  ‘Hi Liz. How’re you going?’

  ‘I got fired, Maggie.’

  ‘You? Fired? But you’re the best fucking teacher in the world. Why would they fire you?’

  ‘You know that court case, in Oklahoma?’

  ‘What court case?’ Maggie had the strong sense of her brain as a computer that was overloaded, unable to process any more information. If she could have displayed a spinning wheel, she would have.

  ‘The one with the school board. The Supreme Court.’

  ‘Oh, that. Sure, the creationism thing. What about it?’

  ‘So there’s a new school board here. And because of the Court ruling, they’ve decided: all schools have to teach creationism as science. We can teach evolution, but only as an “alternative theory” – that’s the actual term they use, can you believe it? And so the head – or the principal or whatever these people fucking call it – he comes to all of us today, the whole science department, and says, “This is how it’s going to be” and – this is what kills me, Maggie – they only go and fucking agree. Can you believe that? All these science teachers sit there nodding, like this is OK. But it’s not OK. No way. This is science. It’s reason. It’s not faith. That’s what I’ve been telling the kids, this is not just—’

  ‘Whoa, Liz. Take a breath. Are you saying you resigned?’

  ‘It’s not like some creed. Like, “I believe the earth is round and you believe the earth is flat and that’s cool, because we’re all entitled to our own beliefs and our own traditions.” Fuck that.’

  ‘You weren’t fired. You resigned on principle.’

  ‘I’m not going to pretend to these children that Adam and Eve is fucking science. It’s not. OK? It might be a sweet story, but it’s no more science than Father bloody Christmas.’

  ‘So you refused. You took a stand.’

  ‘If I wanted to be a Sunday school teacher, I’d have stayed in Ireland at that bloody convent. I thought: what would Maggie do? She’d tell them to fuck right off. So that’s what I did.’

  ‘You told the school principal to fuck off?’

  ‘Well, I told him I was hired to teach science. If he wanted someone to teach fairytales, then he needed to look elsewhere.’

  ‘Oh right.’

  ‘And then I told him to fuck off.’

  ‘Wow.’ Maggie turned
off the I-66 and onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway. ‘You’re amazing.’

  ‘Not really. You’d have done the same in my position.’

  The words hung in the air just a second too long. ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  Liz began to answer, but Maggie could barely hear her. The air-conditioning had somehow come on and the fan was blowing full blast. Maggie stabbed at the buttons but nothing seemed to work.

  ‘Maggie? Are you there?’

  ‘Liz, I can’t hear you! Let me just … I’ll call you back.’

  But before Liz had a chance to reply, the call dropped out. Maggie would have assumed it was no more than a loss of signal but, a second later, the car radio came on. It was pumping out an ear-splitting noise at full volume: the dashboard display told her the radio was tuned into Sirius XM’s metal station and that the ‘song’ was ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ by Cannibal Corpses.

  She reached for the knob and turned it, but it made no difference. The sound, so violent it made the car shake, would not be dimmed. Maggie twisted the knob again and pushed the power button, but it made no difference. She now hit every button she could. Nothing helped. Randomly, and aware of the gesture’s uselessness, she screamed.

  Only one thing seemed to have worked. She had managed to lower the rear window on the passenger side. But still the cold air was blasting directly into her on its maximum setting, chilling the sweat on her back.

  Through all this, Maggie drove at seventy miles per hour. Other cars sped past her, utterly unaware of what was happening. She pushed the hazard lights button at the centre of the dashboard, but that too did nothing. Only now did she have an inkling of what was happening – and the realization terrified her.

  She signalled to change lanes, but of course the signalling did not work. And, just as she was about to make her move, a thick spray of soapy fluid covered the windscreen, clouding her view. The music – wild, discordant, screeching – seemed now to be inside her head as well as the car. She could hear no other sounds, not her car nor any others. She felt as if she had been deprived of at least two of her senses, suddenly rendered temporarily blind and functionally deaf.