The Chosen One Read online

  Waugh said nothing.

  Maggie pressed on. ‘And you did all that to save Stephen Baker?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We needed to keep him in post. So that he would veto the bill.’

  ‘Why didn’t you save yourself the bother, and just let Chester win?’

  ‘Could have done that. Trouble was, our main asset there was the love-child. We weren’t confident that that was sufficiently proprietary – that it was going to remain exclusive. Too many moving parts, too many people sniffing around. Rumours had been circulating for years. With Baker, the Pamela information was hermetically-sealed. No one knew.’

  ‘Except Forbes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So you sent a team into New Orleans, brought them out by private jet. You’re like your very own CIA.’

  Waugh pretended to look offended again. ‘I like to think our quality control is rather superior to theirs.’

  ‘It wasn’t such a smart plan, though, was it?’ Maggie persisted, beating back the discomfort. ‘You bumped off Forbes and the next minute, the whole blogosphere’s lighting up with claims that Baker’s Tony Soprano.’

  ‘Call it the law of unintended consequences.’

  ‘He’s facing impeachment!’

  ‘I think you’ll find things are back on track now.’

  ‘You mean, the-’ She shook her head, too numbed to complete the sentence. So even this latest boost to Baker, the story of the Republican senator and the pneumatic lobbyist, had come from Waugh and his pals. They were behind everything. Maybe even that demo on Sunday, that had seemed to come out of nowhere. At that, Maggie’s fatigue and pain was replaced by a sudden onrush of anger. ‘So why Stuart? And why Nick? Why did you have to kill them?’

  ‘Now, now, Maggie. Don’t play the hysterical woman. You can do better than that. With Stuart, we were left with no choice. Not after that phone call you had with him.’

  ‘Me? What phone call?’

  ‘The one where Goldstein – you know, “the man the President listens to more than any other” – threatened to urge Baker to resign. “Better to leave with some dignity,” he said. No, no, no. We could not have that. Not until the banking bill was dead and buried.’

  ‘So you killed him?’

  ‘The coroner’s report says he took his own life.’

  A nauseating wave of guilt passed over her, as she imagined, yet again, Stuart lying dead in Rock Creek Park. She had been ready to believe he had taken his own life – just as this fucker, Waugh, had wanted her to. She flexed her muscles against the restraints, but the plastic ties cut into her flesh, allowing her no movement. Waugh was right to have bound her: if she could, she would have smashed her fist right into his face. How would that be for ‘playing the hysterical woman’?

  ‘As for Nick,’ he continued. ‘I’m afraid that was your fault. You involved him. He found out about this-’ he gestured at the smooth, noiseless interior of the jet, ‘-and New Orleans. The line that led you to us. We couldn’t risk him publishing that in a newspaper. No way.’

  ‘So why not me?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I asked you before and you didn’t answer me. Why not kill me? I know that you wanted to because, like I said, you tried.’

  Waugh gave her the hint of a smile. It was chilling. ‘I repeat, we’ve come to realize, Maggie my dear, that you’re more useful to us alive than dead. At least for the time being.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Because you’re going to work for us. Negotiate the deal. Isn’t that your forte? Maggie Costello the great negotiator? Besides, we know you’re close to Baker; you’re one of the few people he trusts. All that “integrity” you both share.’ He released a smile, short and nasty. ‘In ten minutes this plane will land in Washington, DC – and you’re going to see the President.’

  63

  Washington, DC, Monday March 27, 20.16

  The car hummed along sleekly, gliding down George Washington Memorial Parkway with its view of the Potomac, now glittering in the moonlight. They had taken away her phone, so she couldn’t call ahead. She would have to turn up at the visitors’ entrance to the White House and explain herself.

  As they had untied her, she had considered delivering a delayed, but richly-deserved response to her imprisonment, hoiking up a big ball of spit and launching it into Waugh’s face, but had baulked at the futility of it. Whatever small satisfaction it would have provided, the meat-heads would have paid her back with interest.

  Besides, Waugh had not let her go without a warning. Standing on the tarmac in the corner of Reagan National Airport that was reserved for private jets, waiting to step into one of the two glistening limos that had pulled up just a few yards from the aircraft, he said, ‘Maggie, I haven’t been chairman of our little fraternity for very long. There are some of my colleagues – in Frankfurt or London or Dubai – who will say I should have been firmer with you some time ago. But I’m trusting you to live up to your reputation: to achieve better terms than I could. That’s why I told you everything. So that Baker doesn’t nurture any delusions about defying our will. I trust you to convey what I have said so that he understands he has no choice in this matter.

  ‘And if there are any heroics, he will pay and you will pay. Severely. And so will those you love.’ He had fixed her then with those chilly eyes, holding the look for two, three, four seconds. ‘I don’t think you doubt that we can do it. So God speed – and don’t disappoint me.’ With that, he stepped into the Lincoln and drove away, leaving her with just one of the bodyguards for company. She cast a quick, sideways glance at the man. Could she outrun him? He was muscle-bound, meaty; she had broken ribs and was utterly out of condition. He’d catch her in no time. She was going to have to be cleverer than that, and bide her time.

  The guard then looked left and right before speaking into his lapel: ‘The Principal has departed. Repeat, the Principal has departed.’

  That tiny moment stayed with Maggie as they took the 14th Street exit off I-395 and headed into downtown Washington. The Principal. Roger Waugh had his own secret service detail as well as his own version of Air Force One on which she had just taken an involuntary ride. This man for whom no one had ever voted and whom hardly anyone had ever seen, conducted himself as if he were the true power in the land, with the elected President of the United States a mere puppet whose strings occasionally became tangled and needed straightening out.

  The dread thought weighing on Maggie as she saw the familiar landmarks emerge from the dusk was that when it came to the true balance of power in this country and the world, Waugh had spoken the truth.

  She yawned, long and hard. She wanted desperately to fall into a deep sleep, one that might clear her head, allowing her to make a fresh start on this strange, awful riddle, to find time to think, talk to Uri and make a plan.

  Uri.

  Waugh had been explicit, leaving his warning hanging so that there could be no doubt. You will pay, he had said, and so will those you love. They had been at JFK: they must have seen her with Uri. The thought of that chilled her.

  They had not hesitated to kill Stuart and Nick, when faced with the mere prospect of a disruption to their plans. How much more determined would they be faced with total exposure? And yet she was able to hold that threat over them: they had handed her that weapon. But that was what so few people understood about information. It was indeed a weapon – a sword whose blade was double-edged.

  They were here now. The bodyguard nodded at her, nudging her to get out and complete the task she had been set by his boss ‘the Principal’.

  She got out at 15th and Hamilton Place and looked upward, seeing the two red lights at the pinnacle of the Washington Monument, blinking in the moonlight. She remembered looking upward at that cool, solid needle after completing her very first day’s work at the White House. She had allowed herself to wonder if they were about to make history, if one day there might even be a Baker Monument in this town.
She shook her head in disbelief that that was little more than two months ago.

  She approached the White House security station, the low-ceilinged cabin wide enough to accommodate two scanning machines and an airport-style arch, through which all visitors had to pass. A guard, young and with a soldier’s buzzcut, beckoned her to open the glass door and enter. She began her explanation, that she was Maggie Costello, former official of the White House and that Doug Sanchez was expecting her. They scanned their list of scheduled appointments and shook their heads. Reluctantly, feeling like a traitor who had slipped into her former comrades’ barracks only to poison them in their sleep, she told the guard on duty to call Sanchez’s office.

  While she waited she tried to digest all she had heard in that short, vile flight. The scale and comprehensiveness of their operation was breathtaking. They had thought of everything, not just paying hush money to Pamela Everett’s grief-stricken parents, but getting a United States senator to pose with young Baker so that he would have a perfect alibi, printed and published in the local newspaper. They had taken the time to remove the relevant page of The Daily World from the archive in Aberdeen, such was their determination to leave no trace.

  A moment she had forgotten floated back into her mind: Principal Schilling telling her that he had sent the Baker file to his presidential library, but had noticed that it was ‘unusually thin’. Now she knew why.

  ‘Maggie! Is that you?’ It was Sanchez, looking as if he had lost ten pounds in weight and had had only ten hours of sleep in the several days since she had last seen him. He moved past the security equipment and, having approached warily, now opened his arms for a hug. Maggie let him hold her, hating herself for what she was about to do. She could feel her eyes tingling: she was just so exhausted.

  ‘So what’s this, you go off the grid in the Pacific North-West and change your whole look?’ Sanchez said, as he walked her into the lobby, then turned left towards the Press Secretary’s office.

  Maggie kept her head down as she walked, hoping not to make eye contact with anyone she knew, hoping she wouldn’t have to talk to, or explain herself, to anyone. She wouldn’t know where to begin. Inevitably she glimpsed the one person she least wanted to see: the silver-haired Chief of Staff, Magnus Longley, slipping out of one corridor and into another, a portfolio tucked under his arm. She shuddered at the sight of him. He spotted her too. Taking a second to confirm that, despite her new look, it was indeed her, he shot her a glare that clearly said, ‘What are you doing here? I thought I fired you.’

  ‘So what the hell happened, Maggie?’ Sanchez, drawing back her attention.

  ‘It’s such a long story, Doug. And the only person I can tell it to right now is the President. I’m sorry.’

  He gave her a long, compassionate look which left her feeling more guilty than ever. Then he nodded, suggested Maggie take a seat in his office and embarked on the short stroll down the corridor to the President’s personal secretary.

  Maggie looked at the TV, tuned to MSNBC. She had been here only a few days ago, but now it felt like a different lifetime. The juvenile egghead from the New Republic was on:

  ‘…I think the word of the hour is “exit strategy”. I’ve been talking to House whips and they say the numbers are just not there on Judiciary for the Republicans to move forward with this thing. Democrats are closing ranks behind the President and those two crucial waverers are no longer wavering. So, as I say, I think the pressure is now on the Republicans to find a way out of this without losing too much face.’

  The interviewer was nodding: ‘And what’s turned things around for the President?’

  ‘Well, the implosion of Senator Wilson is certainly a factor…’

  Maggie sighed, knowing that everyone in this building would be jubilant at that news, believing it to be a rare stroke of good fortune. Believing that Baker’s lucky streak had at last been restored.

  But all she could think of was Waugh’s smirking face.

  Sanchez appeared in the doorway. ‘He’s ready for you now.’

  64

  Washington, DC, Tuesday March 28, 10.58

  Somehow, despite herself, Maggie had had a decent night’s sleep. Baker had only given her one assignment and that she had promptly delegated to Uri. He had agreed to do it on the strict understanding that she went straight home to bed.

  Her meeting with Baker had been awkward, no doubt about it. Trapped behind his desk in the Oval, he had blanched when she finally uttered Pamela Everett’s name, the blood seeming to drain out of his face as she watched. He had shaken his head, murmuring that this was what he had feared – what he had always feared. He began to explain, to tell Maggie what had happened that night and then he had stopped himself. ‘This is something Kim deserves to hear first.’

  He glanced up at Maggie and she could see from his eyes alone that condemnation from her was unnecessary, no matter how much she wanted to express it: he was judging himself harshly enough.

  He had then picked up the telephone on his desk and asked that all his meetings be cancelled until further notice, all calls held unless it was a matter of national emergency.

  He had sat and listened in growing disbelief as she told him what Waugh had told her: that he, Stephen Baker, had been spotted as a teenager, marked out for great things – that he had been their chosen one. She explained how Waugh and his predecessors had smoothed Baker’s path, removing the obstacles in his way one by one. Growing ever more pale, he said quietly, more to himself than to her, ‘My whole career has been a sham.’

  Then she spelled out Waugh’s ultimatum: veto the banking bill or he would tell all. It pained her to have to say it, to be acting – even against her will – as the agent of those men. But she regarded it as her duty and, through a feat of determination, forced herself to assess and walk through each option that faced him. She wanted to put aside the shock of the moment and speak practically. She wanted, in other words, to do what Stuart had trained her to do.

  He nodded and probed at the right places, responding as she sought to approach the problem from all angles, answering when she asked what level of support the banking legislation commanded in Congress, giving a view on how public opinion might respond. He even allowed her to present possible compromises that might be offered to the other side which, years of service as a negotiator had taught her, could always be found if the will was there.

  He listened to it all but Maggie knew he was indulging her. His heart was not in it; his heart was not even in the room. At the end of the meeting, he simply nodded and said he had a decision to make.

  They parted with a handshake, the President thanking Maggie for her ‘remarkable’ service. His last words to her were, ‘I know I’ve let you down. But I will find a way to make this right.’

  And now Sanchez was on the phone, telling Maggie to switch on the TV.

  ‘Which channel?’

  ‘Any of them.’

  The President was about to make a live address to the nation, carried on all stations. A pit began to grow in Maggie’s stomach. They had discussed so many options, she realized she didn’t know which one he was going to choose. Would he fold, announcing a delay in the banking legislation, a move that would at least buy some time to take Waugh on? Would he perhaps opt for the other, riskier scenario she had put forward: that he veto the bill as Waugh had requested, only then to embark on a covert effort to find the congressional votes needed to override his veto and pass the bill into law anyway?

  If he did that, defying the blackmail of AitkenBruce and the others, she would have to admire his courage, but it would spell disaster for her – and for Uri. And, given the tentacles of these people, maybe even for Liz and Calum and her mother, too. You will pay and so will those you love.

  Yet she knew it was wrong to think of her own safety, her own needs, when something so much larger was at stake. Sure, if Baker caved she and Uri and her family would be off the hook, but what would that mean for the country? Waugh would have n
eutered Baker, he would have destroyed him. Everything he had planned to do – for America and beyond – would be in ruins.

  What was he going to do? She realized she had no idea – and the knot was hardening in her stomach.

  And suddenly, there he was, at his desk, the stars and stripes behind him.

  ‘My fellow Americans. You have all been through quite a week. I apologize for my part in those events. I promised to bring a spirit of calm to Washington, to lower the temperature of our politics, and these last seven or eight days have been anything but calm.’ He flashed that Klieg-light smile of his and Maggie felt her heart contract.

  ‘Last night I finally discovered the true explanation for a chain of events that began with the shocking and hurtful revelations made by the late Mr Vic Forbes about my personal past and my political funding arrangements. These events went on to include unfounded rumours linking me to his death; calls for my impeachment and the apparent suicide of my own closest advisor and best friend, the much-cherished Stuart Goldstein.’ He looked down at the table, seemed to gird himself, and carried on.

  ‘The details of all this and much else will come out in due course, and there will be consequences for those involved. But let me speak about something for which I alone am responsible.

  ‘As you know, I spent my late teenage years in a small town called Aberdeen, Washington. It was a place where even if everyone didn’t know your name, they all knew your business.’ He smiled a rueful smile. ‘People there worked hard, with their hands, and were as honest as the day was long.

  ‘I went off to college but I always came back for the vacations. I’d get a job, usually in the lumber yards, to pay my way. And it was during one of those vacations that I met a girl by the name of Pamela Everett. She was very sweet, she was very beautiful and if you could ever persuade her to sing for you, you’d swear you’d been given a little glimpse of heaven. And though we were too young to get married or engaged, I loved her very much and she knew it. We would stay up till late, imagining our future together.