The Chosen One Read online

  It was Maggie who eventually broke the embrace, stepping back to take a good look at him. ‘This is so crazy. Now they can see you.’

  ‘I can take care of myself, Maggie. It’s you we need to worry about.’

  She smiled, childishly pleased that he hadn’t let go of her hand. ‘So what couldn’t wait that you had to rush over here like a manyak?’

  ‘I told you, Maggie, that word doesn’t mean what you think it means. But your Hebrew accent is getting better. I’m impressed.’ He smiled. ‘It’s better than your haircut anyway.’

  ‘Uri.’

  He sat on the stool next to hers, so that they were both facing the observation window. ‘You know the Baker film I’m making? I’ve come across something – I don’t know – odd.’

  ‘What kind of odd?’

  ‘Maggie, do you know how Stephen Baker became Governor?’

  ‘Uri, I’d love to get into this, but I’m really under the-’

  ‘Just listen, Maggie. How Baker became Governor. Do you know?’

  ‘I know he won big.’

  ‘Very big. Massive, in fact. Ran against a total nobody who hadn’t lived in the state for twenty years.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You know why? Because the Republican opponent he was meant to face imploded three months before election day. During the campaign his divorce papers suddenly surfaced; showed he had a thing about watching his wife have sex with other men. He would hide in a closet, filming it with a video camera.’

  ‘I really don’t see-’

  ‘But that’s not all. Baker was never even expected to be the Democratic candidate. Everyone thought he’d lose the primary. He was up against a really popular mayor of Seattle. Except someone produced a tape of the mayor talking on the phone, saying there were too many “chinks and spics” in the city. Baker just glided to the nomination.’

  ‘Where’s this going, Uri?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems that – until all this impeachment stuff – somebody up there really liked Stephen Baker. Liked him a lot.’

  There was a time when that would have been enough to make Maggie tell Uri to piss off. When they were going out, Baker had been a constant source of tension: Uri pointing out flaws in his speeches, little missteps in his tactics, Maggie always getting defensive. It seemed ridiculous now, but Maggie had long suspected that Uri had become jealous of this other man in her life – and took every opportunity to do him down.

  Now, though, she was ready to hear anything that might help explain the bizarre and lethal chain of events that had unfolded this last week. Not that she could yet work out how this fitted in. ‘Uri, I have to leave here any minute now. If I need to reach you, where will you be?’

  ‘In the edit suite. I can’t get any work done at home at the moment. My sister’s visiting from Tel Aviv – she’s decided her mission in life is to clean every surface of my apartment.’

  A different cog in Maggie’s mind started turning. ‘Your sister?’ So that had been the woman Maggie had heard in the background on that call to the New York apartment. Not a new lover after all. She felt a knot deep inside her – one she had only been dimly aware of until this moment – begin to loosen and unravel.

  ‘Are you sure I can’t come with you, wherever you’re going? I might even be useful. I have some experience you know.’ He did a little mime suggesting a man of action.

  ‘I know, Uri. And I’m really grateful. But I’ve drawn too many people into this mess already.’

  She could see that he wanted to insist, but stopped himself, aware that he was in no position to do so. ‘OK. But take care of yourself, Maggie.’ They were standing now, close together, with the same hesitation they felt when they would part at Penn Station on a Sunday night before she headed down to Washington. ‘I mean it. Do it for me, if not for you.’ He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. Then he turned and walked away. She watched for several long seconds, wondering if he would turn around. But he didn’t.

  An announcement came over the tannoy, prompting her to look at her watch: she really would have to leave right now if she was to get to Teterboro in time. But she had the guilty, nagging sensation of something she was meant to do, some task left incomplete. She was about to switch off the computer when it came to her: Liz.

  Her sister had sent that text hours ago: Call me urgently. Something strange is happening, when Maggie had still been at the airport in Idaho. But then, straight afterwards, there had been that message from Sanchez about the police and she had put everything else out of her mind.

  She picked out one of the unused, disposable phones and dialled Liz’s number.

  ‘Christ, thank God Almighty.’

  ‘Liz, what is it?’

  ‘Jesus, when I hadn’t heard from you, I thought maybe-’

  ‘I’m OK. Liz, calm down.’ She could hear her sister’s breaths coming quickly, as if she were about to cry.

  ‘You may be able to handle all this, Maggie, but I’m not sure we can. Not if something happened to you. Ma and me-’

  ‘You haven’t told her anything!’

  ‘Course I haven’t.’ A loud sniff. ‘But Jesus, Maggie, you had me worried.’ Now the contagion seemed to have spread, as the phone was filled by the noise of a child sobbing. ‘Oh, it’s OK, Calum pet. Mummy’s OK.’ There was rustling and more sniffing. ‘There you go, love. Oh look, Peppa Pig’s on.’

  ‘Liz, I can call another time.’

  ‘No! You’ve got to see this.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Get your computer out, get online.’

  ‘Hang on. I haven’t any time, I’ve-’

  ‘This won’t take a second.’

  ‘Liz, this better be…’ She opened the laptop and waited as it came back to life. ‘All right, it’s on.’

  ‘OK, go to the Freenet page where…You know what, forget it. I’ve still got remote access, I’ll do it.’

  Maggie watched as the cursor moved, apparently by magic, around her screen. From the internet browser it directed itself to the Freenet and from there to the eerie, unsmiling portrait that constituted victorforbes.gov. Maggie could see that Liz was typing in the password – the twelve letters of ‘Stephen Baker’ rendered as asterisks – that transformed that image into the page that glistened with just a single date. March 15, a quarter-century ago.

  Now, though, only a vestige of the original image was visible. It appeared to be slowly fading away on the screen, as square by square it was replaced by another.

  On an electronic post-it which Liz had somehow thrown up on the screen, the cursor began typing. Look very carefully.

  Before her eyes, a photograph was materializing. It was old, grainy and black-and-white but it looked vaguely familiar.

  As the pixels filled out, each one becoming more defined, Maggie saw what she was looking at. It was a newspaper shot of the Meredith Hotel, the night it all but burned to the ground. And there in the foreground were the guests, milling around on the street in a state of semi-dress, most in pyjamas or bathrobes.

  Another message from Liz: Do you see who I see?

  Maggie looked closely at the picture whose resolution was improving with each second. A cluster of three people were in sharpest focus, their faces wearing the panicked expressions of those caught up in a disaster. And now, with a shudder, she recognized him.

  There, hugging himself against the cold night, watching the Meredith Hotel burn down was the man whose face Maggie, along with the entire American people and now the world, had come to know. Younger, unlined but undeniably the same person.

  She was looking at Stephen Baker.

  59

  From TPM Muckraker posted at 16.45, Monday March 27:

  You’ve gotta love this. With the exquisite timing of the damned, one of the President’s key tormentors has just suffered what you might call an ethics malfunction. Sen. Rusty Wilson was all set to play the role of Grand Inquisitor alongside Rick Franklin had the impeachment proceedin
gs against President Baker moved from the House to the Senate. Something tells us Republicans will be revising those plans now.

  For Sen. Wilson has just been on the sharp end of a rather unfortunate leak: to wit, the transcripts of every text and email exchange, and every phone conversation, between himself and a thirty-seven-year-old pharmaceutical industry lobbyist from his state who, as luck would have it, is a chesty blonde among whose qualifications for such a policy-intensive job include past service as a waitress at Hooters. The transcripts reveal the senator as a breathy and demanding lover, one prepared to see the sick people of his state pay over-the-odds for prescription drugs, if that would ensure the continuing loyalty of his young mistress.

  Maybe this is why they call Republicans the Grand Old Party. Or should that be HOP? Because they certainly seem to be having a Helluva Party.

  Be interesting to see if Baker’s persecutors on House Judiciary feel as eager as they were twelve hours ago to keep up their moralistic crusade against the President. Or maybe they should check their scripture. Can TPM Muckraker recommend Matthew 7:3? ‘And why behold you the mote that is in your brother’s eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?’

  Too early to say Baker’s out of the woods, but folks in the White House may be breathing a little easier just now…

  60

  Teterboro Airport, New Jersey, Monday March 27, 18.42

  For the best part of forty minutes Maggie had sat on the edge of the rear passenger seat, willing the cab driver – turbaned and listening to the BBC World Service – to go faster. He had given her a series of disapproving looks, as if her angst were so much cigarette smoke fugging up his cab. Taking out her compact, she could see why. She looked appalling, like some kind of strung-out addict, pale and drawn and raw around the eyes; hardly a suitable guise for the next stage in her plan. She repaired as much of the damage as she was able to, brushing the unfamiliar hairstyle into some kind of order, applying dabs of concealer, mascara, a touch of lipstick. All it succeeded in doing was papering over the cracks, but it was the best she could manage.

  For the rest of the journey she had alternated glances over her shoulder, checking to see if they were being followed, with long spells spent staring at the photograph which she had kept up on her now-offline computer screen. She tried to look at it from different angles, to see if there was any way that the lean, handsome young man in the picture was not Stephen Baker.

  She had tried and she had failed.

  Could it have been doctored? You could do anything these days on Photoshop. But even as she grasped at that straw, she knew that Forbes would not have gone to such lengths to protect a bogus photograph. This was his ‘blanket’, the insurance policy designed to protect his life. The photo must be real.

  And yet, she had seen the picture cherished for so long by Anne Everett, the clipping from The Daily World showing young Baker in Washington, DC, on the other side of the continent, on the very same day as the hotel fire. It made no sense.

  Eventually the cab passed a sign for the General Aviation building and Maggie jumped out, thrusting a wad of bills into the driver’s hand. She looked at her watch: the plane was due to take off in fourteen minutes.

  She did her best to straighten herself out and to walk tall. She needed to look like the kind of woman who knew her way around a private airfield for the highest-paying corporate customer.

  She strode up to the reception desk. ‘I’m afraid this is very urgent. I’m here for the AitkenBruce flight to Washington that leaves in a few minutes? I have some important documents to deliver to them.’

  ‘Are they flying out of nineteen or twenty-four today?’

  ‘You know, they didn’t say. Could you check for me?’

  The woman tapped away at her computer. ‘It’s runway nineteen. I’ll let them know you’re here.’

  Maggie turned around and headed for the door, the voice of the receptionist calling after her: ‘Miss! Excuse me! Someone’s coming to meet you here. You’re not to go out there. Miss!’

  As she walked headlong into the wind, vicious in this flat expanse of asphalt, it was a struggle to maintain her confident, head-up-shoulders-back stride. Eventually she broke into a jog. She passed a sign for Runway 1 and, a full five minutes later, Runway 6. It was no good. There was just too much ground to cover. Her sides heaved: her battered ribs complained. She looked at her watch. Six minutes to take-off. She was never going to make it. But she had to: she was perhaps the only obstacle standing between Roger Waugh and Stephen Baker; the only one who could unravel the mystery that tied them together. Taking a deep breath, she drove herself into a faster jog, cursing all the damage that cigarettes and her own bloody-minded refusal ever to visit a gym had done to her poor lungs.

  Finally, she saw a marker indicating that she was at Runway 19. Three minutes to take-off. She stood where she was, near three parked, golfcart-style airport buggies, and looked straight ahead.

  Before her, separated by a grass strip perhaps seventy yards wide, was the sleek body of a Gulfstream jet. The top half was painted white, with a long curve of black just below the seven passenger portholes. At the rear, flanking the tail, were the mighty jet engines, already revving up. The noise was so loud she could feel it vibrating through her breastbone.

  Parked just alongside the open cabin door and the descended staircase was a vehicle no less elegant, a black Lincoln Town Car. That surely confirmed she had come to the right place. She was now in no doubt that that plane belonged to AitkenBruce and that inside that car sat its chairman and chief executive, Roger Waugh.

  What was she to do now? Should she just stride up to the car, waving a sheaf of fictitious papers? Even if that worked, then what? She had come this far and yet now, so close, she was uncertain.

  Unbidden, a question popped into her mind: What would Stuart say? She was just forming an answer when she felt the sudden and tight grip of a hand on each of her upper arms. A half-second later, there was a hand over her mouth and then – darkness.

  61

  Teterboro Airport, New Jersey, Monday March 27, 19.01

  ‘Now tell me this isn’t the way to travel.’ The accent was New York, the manner self-satisfied. He spoke again, rapidly, as if he had forgotten something. ‘Forgive me. Where are my manners? Guys, you can take all that stuff off now.’

  As the black hood was lifted off her face, light seemed to flood into her eyes. She heard a muffled sound of protest: her own. Now one of the two bodyguards who had dragged her onboard the plane sharply pulled back the strip of duct tape that had sealed her mouth, so that her first audible sound was a howl. It was mixed with a gasp of relief, for now she was able to gobble whole greedy gulps of air – rather than relying on tiny sniffs of the stale oxygen inside that hood.

  ‘Nice to see you, Miss Costello. Welcome aboard. We’ll be taking off any moment. I don’t need to tell you to fasten your seatbelt.’

  At that, Maggie tried to move only to realize that she was tied to the armrests at the side of her chair, her elbows and wrists pinned so flat it was if she were a nervous flier tightly clinging to the furniture. Her legs would not move either: they were tied to each other.

  She could feel the plane straightening on the runway. Now it began picking up speed, the noise increasing. It was taking off. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re taking me? This is kidnapping. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Come on, Maggie. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot.’ He looked down at her shackled leg. ‘No pun intended.’

  Maggie stared at this man directly opposite her, his face corresponding with the picture she had looked up of Roger Waugh. He was bald, with small, mischievous eyes wearing, to her surprise, a rumpled suit and a tie of drab blue. If you didn’t know it already, you would never guess that this was the boss of the largest banking group in the world.

  The interior of this jet would have given a clue, though. She was facing Waugh, nestled in a wide seat clad entirely in soft,
cream leather. Between them was a table, in smooth, polished oak. They appeared to be the only two passengers, save for two middle-aged men with meaty necks in crisp suits: the security detail. The same men, she assumed, who had grabbed her from the tarmac outside.

  ‘You’ve got a funny idea of kidnapping, Maggie. There’s a full bar on this plane, with a selection of Château Mouton Rothschild which you can drink from Baccarat crystal glasses. The carpets alone cost more than your apartment. And if you fancy a snooze – or, rather, if I fancy a snooze – I can go into the cabin where there’s a double bed and rest my head on any one of four pillows which – you’re gonna love this, Maggie – are made entirely from Hermès scarves.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a shite how rich you are: you’ve kidnapped me.’ Maggie heard the Irish in her accent, a sure sign she was under stress.

  ‘I like to think of it as a meeting. You clearly didn’t come to that armpit in New Jersey to admire the scenery: you wanted to see me.’

  Maggie’s brain was spinning. Perhaps it was lack of oxygen; or the sheer shock of the situation. She needed to get a grip. ‘How do you know what I wanted? How the hell do you know who I am?’

  His eyes were disturbingly piercing, though you didn’t notice that at first glance. They seemed to bore right into her. ‘Oh come on, Maggie. You don’t get to be me if you don’t know what’s going on. We’ve been following you, every step of the way. New Orleans, Aberdeen, Coeur d’Alene, JFK this afternoon. Don’t disappoint me: you knew we were there, right?’

  Maggie thought of the man across the street from the Midnight Lounge; the headlights in the distance on the way to see Anne Everett. She hadn’t been paranoid: her instincts had been right all along.

  ‘So why didn’t you just kill me, like you killed Stuart Goldstein and Nick du Caines? It’s not like you didn’t try.’