The Chosen One Read online

  Euphemism, that was the key. No word that would be flagged automatically by the authorities and their word-hunt programs.

  Hope you’re well, big guy. Question for you. If our friends at the Company were planning to take a little working vacation in the Big Easy, what would be their best initial destination? Am assuming Louis Armstrong International too crowded etc. What would you advise?

  He’d got a reply within four minutes.

  No one but tourists uses Louis. They’d go for a place they Knew.

  Neat. Just that capital K was enough. He called up the Federal Aviation Administration database, waiting for the right page to load before typing the word KNEW. Instantly the four letters were recognized as the call sign for Lakefront airport, located, he discovered, just ‘four nautical miles north-east of the central business district of New Orleans’.

  He went to the airport’s website to find a photo of a rather lovely structure, complete with original art-deco terminal and a sculpture out front: Fountain of the Winds.

  He read the spec: general aviation, with special provision for charter and private flights. That would be ideal for a black op, Judd decided. There was even a history of occasional military use: plausible that some of the CIA guys had used it before.

  He glanced down at the dates Nick had given him, then keyed in the details he needed to call up the flight plans for aircraft that had used Lakefront in that period. He narrowed it down by selecting ‘In’ rather than ‘In and Out’. Whether the CIA had flown a plane out of Lakefront after Forbes’s death could wait. Right now he needed to see if they had flown in.

  As he expected a long, long list of N-numbers appeared. One by one, using nothing more elaborate than the basic search function on his internet browser, he checked to see if any of those numbers also appeared on the list of thirty-three planes he and his fellow spotters, along with various peace activists and reporters like du Caines, had determined constituted the fleet leased by the CIA for its covert work, dominated by, but not confined to, extraordinary renditions.

  Not one.

  He would have to go the long way round. He decided to call his buddy Martin, whose greatest asset was that he was not burdened by even the meagre domestic obligations that sat on Judd’s shoulders. Martin had no kids, no wife and, so far as he could tell, no friends save for Judd himself.

  As always, Martin answered on the first ring. Judd walked him through the problem and they agreed to split the list. Judd would check the midnight Sunday to noon Wednesday flights into Lakefront – looking for any numbers that carried the telltale hallmarks – and Martin would do the same for the second half of the week, from noon Wednesday to Sunday midnight. ‘First one to find it gets free beer for a night.’

  ‘Done.’

  That had been close to 6pm. It was now shortly after eleven, long after his wife had gone to bed – slamming the door, asking why he didn’t just stick his dick into the computer’s disk drive, he obviously loved it so much – that he felt the first nibble on the end of the line.

  Every other N-number traced back to a regular commercial air operator: licensed, well-known, all-colour website, the full deal. But here was one, N4808P, owned by Premier Air Executive Services, an operator based in Maryland, whose site gave only the sparest of details – and named no executives.

  Judd headed to the registry of company records. The entry for Premier Air offered three listed officers. A further search on these three men yielded a pattern Judd had seen several times before. Their social security numbers – all fully retrievable online – had been issued when they were over the age of fifty. He wouldn’t have known about such things before, but the rendition saga had taught Judd that when a social security number is given to someone in their fifties, that someone is creating a new and fake identity.

  But the company records contained one more curious fact about the provenance of Premier Air Executive Services, one that surprised him and which, he guessed, would particularly interest Nick du Caines. He reached for his phone.

  39

  Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 10.05 PST

  Maggie could hear a low hum, which she assumed was in her head. She had been dreaming so vividly, she had not only seen Uri’s face close to hers, she had felt the touch of his hand as he stroked her hair. But even then, as she smiled at his caresses, the hum had bothered her. It didn’t fit. And so she had made herself wake up, so that she could drive the noise away.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw only a white wall. There were no lines she could make out, in fact nothing that could make her certain it was a wall rather than just empty space. Or maybe a cloud. The hum was still there, though.

  She moved her head and felt a surge of pain at the base of her skull. She must have let out a noise – though it sounded as if it came from down the hall – because within a few moments a nurse had scurried into the room, filling up the white space that had once been a blank wall.

  ‘Well, good morning.’

  Maggie heard the same down-the-hall voice answer, ‘Good morning.’ It sounded slurred and blurred.

  ‘Do you know where you are?’

  Maggie tried to shake her head, sending more shooting pain up from her neck. She heard a yelp come out of her mouth.

  ‘OK. We should start at the beginning. What is your name?’

  With vast effort, Maggie croaked, ‘Maggie Costello.’

  The nurse – fair-haired and large-armed – checked her notes. ‘Good. That’s what we have too. Another few questions, I’m afraid. Who is the president of the United States?’

  Before the answer came the feeling, a sudden onrush of memories and the emotions they aroused. She saw the den in the White House Residence, Sanchez, MacDonald, Stuart Goldstein. Stuart. She felt a stab of grief, the lead weight of realization that something awful had not been imagined or dreamed but was real. Only then did she see the face of Stephen Baker: still handsome but now etched with pain…

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s still very new. His name is Stephen Baker. How many states are there in the United States?’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘I’ll come to that. I just need to ask you these questions the instant you wake up. That’s our protocol. How many-’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘And what day of the week comes after-’

  ‘Stephen Baker is the president of the United States. He won last November with three hundred and thirty-nine electoral college votes, defeating Mark Chester in the general having beaten Dr Anthony Adams in the primary. The days of the week are Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In France they are, dimanche, lundi, mardi, mercredi, vendredi, jeudi et samedi. Now will you tell me where the hell I am, please?’

  The nurse, whose eyes had widened, now let her face relax. She put her clipboard on the bed. ‘You’re at the Grays Harbor Community Hospital, Ms Costello. In Aberdeen, Washington. Now, I promise this is not another quiz question. Do you know why you are here?’

  Maggie tried letting her head fall back into the pillow, but even that small movement made her wince. Once again, it was a feeling that came to her first, the tight grip on the steering wheel, her mouth dry with panic, the sight of those red lights getting nearer and nearer…

  ‘I was in a car accident. Something happened.’

  ‘That’s right. Last night.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Nearly sixteen hours ago. And you are very lucky to be alive, Ms Costello. The police officer who found you says the front of your car looked like it’d been through a trash compactor.’

  ‘A policeman found me?’

  ‘Yes, they’ll be coming later. They have some questions for you, too, I’m afraid.’

  Maggie felt herself grimace.

  ‘For now, you just need to get some rest. Are there people you’d like us to contact?’

  At that Maggie felt a different kind of pain, but no less sharp. ‘Um,’ she began, as a single face formed in her mind, a face she felt she had just seen.
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  ‘A partner perhaps? A family member?’

  ‘Not just yet, thank you.’

  ‘But there may be people concerned-’

  Maggie asked for some time to think and, then, for her phone. The nurse left the room only to return a second or two later, this time with a look – part baffled, part melancholy – that only added to Maggie’s confusion.

  ‘Are you sure you had your phone with you, Ms Costello?’

  ‘It’s Maggie,’ she said, still slurred. ‘And yes. It’s always on me. It would have been in my jacket. Or bag.’

  ‘We have an overnight bag. Also two earrings, one bottle of Allure perfume, one lip balm-’ She was scanning an inventory of some kind. ‘No phone.’

  A suspicion began to grow, like a spreading stain.

  ‘What is that list you’re looking at?’ Now she was hearing the strangeness of her own voice. What ish that lisht…

  ‘It’s the police inventory. They have to do it for all NCA’s.’

  Even raising an eyebrow in inquiry hurt, but the nurse got the message.

  ‘Non-conscious admissions.’

  ‘Oh. Do you have a small black notebook on that list?’

  The nurse scanned it up and down, then turned it over, then back again.

  ‘No.’

  Maggie felt a shudder pass across her skin. ‘A laptop? Wallet?’

  The woman shook her head apologetically.

  ‘I need to make a telephone call. An urgent one.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time for that.’

  ‘No. Now.’

  The nurse stepped forward and reached for Maggie’s hand. What she thought was a moment of tenderness was then revealed as something else. The main vein on her right hand was punctured by a cannula, a small tube attached in turn to a long, clear line. The nurse checked it, then produced a cuff to measure Maggie’s blood pressure, pressed an unseen button that made her right arm feel as if it had become instantly inflated, and popped a thermometer under her tongue. All in what seemed like a single moment.

  ‘I’m in bad shape, aren’t I?’ Maggie said, indecipherable through the thermometer.

  ‘You fell from a fast-moving car, so that would be a yes. You have a couple of broken ribs, but your legs and arms are intact. And we’ll keep checking that head of yours. Though, from what I heard earlier, you’d be on the Grays’ quiz team ahead of me. Try to get some rest.’

  At last Maggie allowed the thought she had repressed to break surface. She could hear the voice that she had instantly found soothing.

  Oh, don’t worry about that, dear.

  The woman in the car park had seemed kind and genuine and Maggie had swallowed it all, obeying the instruction to stay in the driving seat while she fiddled with the engine – hidden by the hood and safely unseen. She had moved fast; a professional who knew exactly what she was doing.

  A thoroughly efficient job, so deft that the woman, or her accomplice, must have followed Maggie onto the highway, watched her careen towards what they surely assumed was her death and then rushed to the car, opened it, stolen the key items and fled – all before the police or paramedics had got within a hundred yards of her.

  That they had taken her phone, her computer and her notebook confirmed it. The President had been right. The moment those three letters – CIA – had been mentioned, he had been seized by what she had then regarded as excessive alarm. Talking of the plot against Kennedy, jumping to the conclusion that Stuart had not taken his own life – no matter how glum and melancholy he had been – telling her to watch herself, just in case. As so often, Stephen Baker grasped the reality of the situation faster and more fully than anyone.

  He had been very clear: they faced a ruthless and determined adversary. Now she knew that they – whoever they were – were ruthless enough to kill.

  A sudden flashback to last night: the car in front, getting closer, the brake lights bleeding bright red, the sight of those two heads in the back seat, two kids…

  They were ready to kill more than just her. They had chosen a method – tampering with the brakes – that would almost certainly have led to the deaths of others.

  She felt her body flood with rage. These people had murdered Stuart and had been ready to murder her, even if that meant killing two innocent children. She hated them with a loathing she could barely contain. She wanted to save Stephen Baker and his presidency, of course, now more than ever, given that it was under such cold-blooded assault. But she wanted something else, too: she wanted the people behind all this to pay for what they had done. She wanted revenge.

  She could feel a trembling in her hands; it made the tube vibrate. Probably her body reacting to the sudden infusion of adrenalin her own fury had generated. Calm down, she told herself. Calm down.

  As a diversionary tactic, she tried to think through exactly what information was in the hands of those who had tried to kill her. She tried to do it methodically, starting with her phone. The recent calls list was a disaster: it would immediately implicate the White House. It would reveal calls to Stuart’s direct line and to Sanchez. Also to a couple of cab companies in New Orleans and in DC, and to Nick du Caines. Maybe Uri.

  The laptop didn’t contain much: she’d done next to nothing by email. But her notebook would have everything Schilling, the school principal, had told her. Whoever was holding it now would have all the information on Jackson/Forbes and the simmering, fraternal feud between him and the young Stephen Baker. If she was in a race against these people, she had just lost.

  Or perhaps they already knew everything she had discovered, had known it for years. That brought her no relief. It just meant that they now knew that she knew. Maybe that was why she had become a target. She knew too much.

  She looked around the room, the white walls suddenly revealed as a pale magnolia. A tentative wave of nausea began to rise in her throat. Why had the nurse not given her any water?

  Now she was seized by a new alarm. How could she be sure this was a hospital? What if the CIA had simply spirited her away from the roadside and brought her to some closed hideaway, dressed up to look like a hospital when in reality it was anything but? This could be just a regular bedroom in one of their safe houses, with a few flickering machines brought in for effect…

  She turned onto her side and, ignoring the pain now spreading across her chest, reached for the side table where there sat a chunky, beige phone. She grabbed for it, her hand flailing vainly. Still on her side, she pushed herself further towards the edge of the bed, the tenderness of her arms now revealed to her in sharp, searing sensations. She extended her arm once more and this time made contact.

  The receiver was hers and she used the cord to reel in the rest of the phone. As she tugged at the spiral flex, she could hear the purr of a dial tone, a sound which offered some provisional reassurance. The base unit was now next to her on the bed, alongside her head. Too close to read it easily, she could see three printed lines identifying the institution and giving assorted numbers. The four words that counted were Grays Harbor Community Hospital.

  So the nurse had not lied. Either that or this was a ruse too elaborate to be plausible. Occam’s Razor, Maggie. Occam’s Razor.

  The dial tone was still in her ear. She pressed nine and immediately a computerized voice cut in:

  We’re sorry, but you have no credit for calls on this line. To get credit, please contact your operator. You can pay by MasterCard, American Express…

  Shit. Her wallet had been stolen, with everything inside it: cards, driver’s licence, everything. No phone, no computer, no money. And of course she couldn’t remember her credit card number. In modern America, she was as helpless as a toddler.

  With great effort, she pressed zero on the phone’s keypad.

  ‘Operator, how may I direct your call?’

  ‘I need to make a collect call, please.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She was still slurring. She tried again, this time giving the number: 1-202-456-14
14.

  The White House operator must have been expecting her call. ‘Miss Costello, is that you? I have instructions to put you straight through to the President.’

  There was a delay, the perkiness of the hold music more absurd than ever. Finally a decisive click on the line.

  ‘Maggie? Where are you?’

  ‘It’s a long story. Are you sure I’m not interrupting you?’

  ‘Just a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. There’s trouble on the Pakistan border. You sound terrible. Has something happened?’

  ‘I think you were right, Mr President. About Stuart. Someone sabotaged my brakes last night. I think they were trying to kill me.’

  ‘Good God. Where are you now?’

  ‘Grays Harbor Hospital. Your home state.’

  ‘We’ve got to get you out of there. I’ll call the Governor. We can get you flown back to Washington, then-’

  ‘No, sir. With respect-’ wiv reshpect, ‘-I don’t think that’s a good idea. That will tie you to me, confirm that what I’m doing is for you.’

  ‘To hell with that, Maggie. It’s too late for-’

  ‘Besides, sir. I came here for a reason. There’s a lead I need to follow.’

  ‘In Aberdeen? What the hell has Aberdeen got to do with any of this?’

  ‘Robert Jackson, sir. You were at school with him.’

  Maggie listened hard to the moment of silence that followed. Had Baker known that all along, the moment she had called him from the cemetery in New Orleans? If he had, why had he not said anything then? What was he hiding?

  Finally he spoke. ‘Robert Jackson? Robert Andrew Jackson? From James Madison High: that was him?’

  ‘You didn’t recognize him when you saw him on TV?’