The Chosen One Read online

  Since then, Uri had been working flat-out finishing the film. She had spent some time with him in New York, and he had come down to DC for a few last-minute interviews. And now it was completed, he had needed to be in Washington for a dinner with PBS executives to discuss transmission dates. He had suggested they meet for a drink straight afterwards.

  She was about to go to the bathroom to sort out her hair, now grown back to its familiar colour and length, when she saw him walk in. Those eyes – at once those of a strong, brave man and a haunted boy – melted her the way they always had. He sat down next to her at the corner table she had been zealously keeping as her own since she had arrived nearly twenty minutes earlier. But when she tried to kiss him on the lips, he offered her his cheek. That alone gave her a small shiver of anxiety.

  ‘So, well done on Toronto!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘This film is going to be massive, Uri, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Who knows, it might go down in history as the one successful achievement of the Baker presidency.’

  ‘Don’t forget “Action for Sudan”. The helicopters.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Your legacy, Maggie.’

  She nodded, felt a fleeting stab of guilt at what she hadn’t told him, then ordered drinks. Another whisky for her, a beer for him.

  He took a swig straight from the bottle, then said, ‘Maggie, we should talk.’

  ‘That sounds ominous.’

  ‘Hear me out.’

  ‘That sounds even worse.’

  ‘Just listen. Remember that night on the beach in Santorini, when we’d finally settled in and we went for a walk by the sea? There was a full moon.’

  ‘Of course I remember.’ She felt her throat turn dry.

  ‘I had a whole speech prepared that night. I was going to tell you that I couldn’t bear being apart – which I couldn’t – and that we’re meant to be together. I was going to say that life is so short and so precious, and in life we all have to choose. At some point we just have to choose.’

  Maggie nodded but said nothing.

  ‘I’d made my choice. I was going to say, “I want you, Maggie. You’re the one I choose.”’

  She reached for his hand, but he moved it away.

  ‘That’s what I was going to say. I had it all planned out.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Her own voice sounded distant to her. She sensed what was coming.

  ‘You know what happened. You were itching to get away from the moment we got there.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’

  ‘You’re always so restless, Maggie. You start a job at the White House – a good job – and then, before you know it, you’re jetting around the country, dodging killers in New Orleans and the north-west and-’

  ‘That was an insane, crazy week, Uri.’

  ‘It’s always insane and crazy with you, Maggie. Something always happens. When we met in Jerusalem you were fleeing for your life. And then suddenly, here, you were doing the same thing all over again.’

  ‘Come on, that’s just a coincidence. When-’

  ‘Is it though, Maggie? Really? Because I’m not sure I believe in coincidences any more.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that it can’t just be fate or bad luck or coincidence that always leaves you dead-centre in the middle of a shit-storm.’

  ‘So what do you think it is, Professor Guttman?’

  ‘I think you like it.’

  ‘Have you been talking to my sister?’

  ‘I mean it, Maggie. I think on some level you enjoy it. You need it.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake-’

  ‘It keeps happening. You try to come back, settle into a normal life, have a job that would have you sitting at a desk and keeping regular hours and then something always goes wrong.’

  ‘I was fired, Uri!’

  ‘For calling the Defense Secretary an asshole! Who writes that on an email, unless they want to sabotage everything they’ve got? And it worked too. The next minute – boom – you’re off nearly getting killed.’

  ‘Someone was out to destroy the President! And in case you didn’t notice, Uri, they succeeded.’ Her voice was getting louder: people were staring.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s not a good cause, Maggie. I’m just asking why it always has to be you.’

  ‘A good cause? A good cause?’ Now her blood was rising. ‘Do you not know the first thing about me?’

  ‘I know what you once told me.’

  ‘And what was that, Dr Freud?’

  Plenty of others would have risen to her sarcasm, but Uri kept his voice low and even. ‘You said that even though the place was a dump, and there were people dying all around you, and you went to sleep to the sound of sniper fire, you were never happier than when you were in Africa.’

  ‘That was bloody years ago. I was young.’

  ‘I saw it myself, Maggie. In Jerusalem. You were that close to death every day and you know what? You were loving it. You even said it. “I’ve never felt more alive.”’

  It was true. Maggie remembered it. Quieter now, she said, ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying I want you, Maggie. But I also want a life. To live in one place. To have children.’

  ‘But I want that too!’ She was looking at him now, her eyes reddening. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Maggie, I’m not sure you know what you want. But I know you’ll always want something else more. To save the world – or at least not stay in one place long enough to get bored. It’s happened too many times.’

  The urge to fight back was draining away. She couldn’t say anything to change his mind, just as she could never say anything to persuade Liz. Which was because, although she had tried so hard for so long not to admit it, she knew there was an element of truth in what they were saying. Even at the worst moments, whether driven off the road in Aberdeen or coming face to face with Roger Waugh, she had felt the adrenalin thumping around her system. She was doing what she was good at and she was doing it for a good reason. What Uri said was true: she had felt alive.

  She looked at him, his eyes dark and intense, his face unmoving. He had tried hard to be with her and she had wanted so much to be with him. They had tried to make it work in several cities and several different ways, full-time and part-time, working and on vacation – and they had driven into the same roadblock every time. It was just as Liz had told her in one of their countless blow-outs, though Liz had been more savage than Uri would ever be. ‘An adrenalin junkie with a Messiah complex’, that was Liz’s latest formulation to describe her sister. Maggie had slammed the phone down, telling Liz she could fuck right off, but the line had stuck. Partly because it was such a good soundbite, and partly because it sounded like a judge handing down a life sentence.

  She could feel the tears building up, but she desperately didn’t want to cry: not here. Looking away, she scanned the faces around her and a sudden loathing welled up inside – for the bar, its occupants, for Washington. She couldn’t bear to stay in this city a day longer. She had been deceiving herself as much as Uri pretending that she could make it work here.

  For a brief moment she remembered the call she had received – but not mentioned to Uri – from President Williams’s Chief of Staff, offering her the job of co-ordinator of the Action for Sudan plan. She could accept it on one condition: that she be on the ground, in Africa.

  She had been pushing the thought of that offer away, as if it were a guilty treat she was not meant to open. She could see that now. Perhaps they were right about her, Liz and Uri; maybe they knew her better than she knew herself.

  She turned to him, forcing the tears back inside. ‘You know what, Uri? I do need to know that what I’m doing matters. And yes, I do go out of my mind if I get within a hundred yards of clocking into a bloody office. And let’s say you’re right and I do get off on the thrill of danger. Let’s say al
l that’s true. Is it such a crime, Uri? Really? Is it such a crime to have seen such terrible things in such terrible places that I want to use every ounce of energy I’ve got to make things better? You can call it a Messiah complex if you want to-’

  ‘I never said anything about-’

  ‘-but this is who I am. And I’m sick of apologizing for it. To you, to my sister, to Magnus fucking Longley. I don’t want to be on the couch, I don’t want to be analysed. I’ve learned how to cope with danger, I’ve learned how to solve problems that apparently freak out everyone around me, and I’m good at it.’

  He moved to speak but she held up her hand. ‘I can’t be like these people, Uri.’ She gestured at the lobbyists, lawyers and legislative aides in their Banana Republic uniforms. ‘I can’t keep pedaling away on my little hamster’s wheel, chasing the next promotion, never breaking the rules, never thinking of anywhere else in the entire world except this tiny little city.’

  She looked into his eyes. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be with you, I really did. But I can’t be someone else, Uri. It’s taken me a long time to see it, but this is who I am. I’m sorry.’

  She leaned across the table to kiss him long and hard on the lips. And then she stood up, quickly gathered her things and strode towards the door before the tears could fall.

  Epilogue

  That same night…

  Senator Rick Franklin of South Carolina put aside the memo he had just received, detailing the results of a poll commissioned by CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which asked likely Republican voters how they rated a series of leading party figures. To his team’s delight, he had come in second, just behind the party’s rock star former vice presidential candidate who always topped these surveys, if only on the grounds of instant name recognition.

  He knew how this had happened. Even if most of the country had been distraught at Stephen Baker’s removal from office – prompting vigil-like scenes at the White House, as thousands of supporters gathered outside, holding candles and singing old protest songs – among the hardcore American right it was a day of celebration and Rick Franklin was rapidly hailed as its hero. He was the man whose persistence had driven Baker from office. The Weekly Standard, the pundits on Fox, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page – they were all as one, anointing Senator Franklin as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to take on the unelected President Bradford Williams in the election that was now little more than three years away.

  His supporters were ecstatic; so was his wife. Only he felt a knot of anxiety at all this presidential talk.

  He had seen Baker having to confess to those misjudgments from his past. They had broken him. And wasn’t he, Rick Franklin – family man, poster boy of the Christian right – just as vulnerable? His affair with Cindy had gone on for nearly two years; there was nothing they hadn’t tried, some of it illegal in several states. He would be destroyed.

  It was a good thing she was away for the week, at that conference in Colorado. She would enjoy herself and, when she was back, he would tell her it had to end. She would understand that it was for the best. His mind was made up.

  Perhaps twenty minutes later, there was a call from Charleston.

  ‘Senator, it’s Brian.’ One of his lowlier aides, sounding anxious, his voice wobbling as if he were a high school girl at prizegiving.

  ‘What is it, Brian? Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘It’s Cindy, sir. We’ve just had a call from-’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s dead, sir. In a skiing accident.’

  Franklin felt his heart thumping. Was he about to have a heart-attack? He put down the receiver slowly and carefully and took several deep breaths. He told himself this pain in his chest was grief and, in part, it was. He’d been very fond of Cindy: she was a lovely girl, with a body shaped by the Lord’s own hand…

  But there was more to that tension in his chest than sorrow. A thought was brewing. Was this Providence stepping into the affairs of men, acting to remove the last serious obstacle between him and the White House? Could this have been the work of the same beneficent God who had lent a helping hand at so many other awkward times in his career?

  Rick Franklin spent the afternoon making dutiful calls, to Cindy’s parents and to his staffers, offering to deliver a eulogy at the memorial service. But in between, he stole another look at that memo and those poll numbers.

  They really were very encouraging.

  In amongst all the calls was one he hadn’t expected. It came from that veteran creature of Washington, Magnus Longley, the man who’d served as Baker’s Chief of Staff and been around longer than the Lincoln Memorial.

  ‘To what do I owe this pleasure, Mr Longley?’

  ‘Senator, I just heard about the loss of your very talented Head of Legislative Affairs.’

  ‘You are on the ball, Mr Longley: that hasn’t even been announced yet, just immediate family and friends.’

  ‘I believe I was among the first to know.’ A long pause. He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, my condolences. I was hoping that we might have a conversation.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. I-’

  ‘Let me begin by saying – and this may surprise you – that my colleagues and I hold you in the highest possible regard, Senator Franklin.

  ‘We always have.’

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I have been assisted by friends generous enough to share their wisdom with me. Richard Adams, John Arlidge, Andy Beckett, Laura Blumenfeld, Jay Carney, Steve Coombe, Tom Cordiner and Monique El-Faizy all deserve to be singled out.

  For the fifth book in a row, Jonathan Cummings proved himself an indefatigable sleuth for the elusive fact: working with him is only ever a pleasure. At HarperCollins Jane Johnson – ably backed once again by Sarah Hodgson – was tireless, even keeping the same lunatic hours as I did as she guided this book towards its birth. She was not just meticulous, but sensitive and shrewd. I consider myself lucky to have her as my editor. A word too about Jonny Geller: he’s often referred to these days as a ‘super-agent’. What fewer people know is that he is a super friend, a constant source of advice, encouragement and understanding.

  Finally, my wife Sarah, along with my sons, Jacob and Sam, had their patience tested by this book, as so often before. It kept me from them for more hours than any of us would have wanted. But Sarah was never anything other than full of love, offering just the right word of support at just the right moment. Every day I feel glad that I chose her – and that she chose me.

  Jonathan Freedland, March 2010

  About the Author

  Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland, an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. He has written a weekly column for the Guardian since 1997, having previously served as the paper’s Washington correspondent. He has covered five US presidential elections, including Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008.

  In the annual What the Papers Say Awards of 2002 Jonathan Freedland was named Columnist of the Year, and in 2008 he won the David Watt Prize for Journalism. His first novel, The Righteous Men, was a Richard and Judy Summer Read and a Number 1 bestseller. His next two novels, The Last Testament and The Final Reckoning, were both top five bestsellers. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

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