Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

May God find a way to remove this man, so that Muslims may see the true face of America once more.

God is great and he hates confusion. May peace and God’s mercy be upon you.

New Orleans, Wednesday March 22, 18.15 CST

The billboards on Interstate 10 told her she was in a different country, a universe away from the buttoned-up pieties of the capital. One sign promoted a gun show, the next a burlesque club with a slogan that made Maggie smile: Ten beautiful girls and one ugly one!

‘This your first time in N’Awlins?’

Maggie nodded, not wanting to get into conversation with the cab driver just yet: she wanted to keep looking out of the window. She needed to think.

‘’At’s a pity,’ he replied, ignoring her attempt at aloofness. ‘Shoulda been here before Katrina. Not the same place no more.’

She surrendered: ‘Were you here the whole time?’

‘I stayed till I saw the water rise so high my church was drownin’. I went to Atlanta. My ma refused to leave. She ended up one of those bodies you saw on the evening news. Floating.’

‘Oh my God, I am sorry.’

‘Nothing for you to be sorry for, ma’am. You ain’t the government. Not your fault. You doing the right thing, coming back to N’Awlins. We need all the visitors we can get.’

She had asked for the French Quarter, to be as close as she could get to Forbes. It also made for useful cover. She could be a tourist from Dublin too naïve to know anywhere else to stay. Or she could be a journalist.

It was a plaintive message on the machine from Nick du Caines, the dissolute New York-based correspondent of a much-loved, if ailing, British Sunday newspaper that had given her the idea. She had sat through enough of his anecdotes to know he treated his press card as if it were a magic ticket, granting admission to every ride at the fair. If Nick was to be believed, there was no one and nowhere to whom a journalist could not gain access.

If Nick was to be believed, that is. Part of his charm, if you didn’t count the wreckage of his personal life and the complexion battered by three decades of ‘experimentation’ with vodka, whisky and every kind of drug the pharmaceutical industries – legal and illegal – had managed to generate, was the grey zone he inhabited when it came to the truth. Or la veracité , as he would doubtless refer to it, resorting to his comedy French accent whenever he wanted to skirt round a topic that might be awkward. (‘Mags, it’s late, you’re gorgeous, I am full of ardeur , so what about a little liaison, dangereuse or otherwise?’)

She had tried calling him as soon as she left home for New Orleans. While she raced around packing a bag, she called Nick’s cellphone at least three times. No point trying the office: he had sublet that to the correspondent from Danish television – ‘All on the QT, if you don’t mind, Mags: London would not be best pleased’ – preferring to work from home. Though that, Maggie suspected, was a laughable euphemism: from what she could divine, Nick du Caines didn’t work during the week at all, instead building himself up to a fever which crested on Friday night as, in a sweat, he spewed out thousands of words, hammering away at his keyboard until dawn on Saturday – just making the lunchtime deadline in London.

So where the august correspondent would be at this hour of a midweek morning was anybody’s guess. Though you’d get good odds for the bed of a lonely, ex-pat European – the wife of the Belgian ambassador, perhaps, or that dark-eyed Kosovar who had worked for du Caines as a translator during the Balkan wars and somehow ended up in DC in his wake several years later.

No luck on the way to Reagan Airport, but there was a sign of life when she touched down at Louis Armstrong International: a busy signal. Now, just as her cab was navigating its way down streets with improbable names like Abundance, Cupid and Desire, she finally got through.

‘Mags! My long-lost comrade! What the hell is happening at the White House? Seems like the place is falling apart. Just heard on the old bush telegraph about your unwanted au revoir from there. Sounds like you got out just in time. Bastards, though, for firing you. Or “letting you go” as the tossers in HR would no doubt phrase it. Is there anything your Uncle Nick can do?’

‘Well, actually-’

‘Perhaps a brief tale in the paper, setting the record straight? You know, “The New McCarthyism that lost Baker his best diplomat”, that kind of thing? I love “New McCarthyism” stories: the posh papers’ version of “political correctness gone mad”. Might fight for space this week, though, what with-’

‘Nick-’

‘Still, any port in a storm. Things are terrible on the paper, threatened with a bloody-’

‘Nick!’

The cab driver turned round, a look of hurt on his face. Maggie pointed at the phone and mouthed an apology. Sure that she now had Nick’s silence, she lowered her voice. ‘Nick, there’s something I need.’

‘I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to hear those words, Mags my love. Shall I come over at eight? Or right now? I love the afternoons.’

‘Not that, Nick. I need some advice.’

‘OK.’

‘About being a journalist. I can’t tell you much about it yet, but I promise when I can you’ll get it first.’

‘A story?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh bless your little Irish heart. What is it you need to know?’

For the next ten minutes, Nick du Caines proceeded to teach the core elements of a crash course in journalism’s black arts. They agreed that she would be Liz Costello of the Irish Times : if anyone were to be mischievous enough to check up on her via Google – ‘A loathsome practice, but increasingly common these days,’ lamented Nick – then they would at least find something. The fact that the Costello byline would be attached to witty reports on Dublin nightlife would be a problem, but a surmountable one.

‘Say you’re comparing the two scenes for a long article for the magazine,’ Nick advised, before exciting himself with another thought. ‘Say you’re writing it for the travel section: a post-Katrina piece, “Return to New Orleans”. They’ll be so grateful they won’t care if you don’t have a press card.’

‘And why don’t I have a press card?’

‘Say you were mugged. That’ll make them even more desperate to make you love them.’

‘Won’t they start asking me for details? Taking witness statements, all that crap?’

‘Good point. Say it happened in DC. You’re applying for a new one. In the meantime, any questions, they’re to call your bureau chief in Washington, one Nicholas du Caines.’

‘What if they Google you?’

‘They never do. Name’s too difficult. And remember you never write, you file. It’s never an article, it’s a piece. And don’t save anything onto the machine. My laptop was once crushed under a motorbike by some hairy biker: lost a three-thousand-word feature on the new Hell’s Angels. Those memory sticks are fucking useless too. Save everything online, Mags. In the ether.’ He sighed. ‘New Orleans, eh? It’ll be a riot.’

Nick warned her that the city would be swarming with journalists after the Forbes death: ‘I’d be there myself if it wasn’t for the fact that the foreign desk is even more broke than I am.’ She was to head for the hotel where all the reporters would be staying. There’s always one, he explained. He promised that the second he had rung off, he would call his mate from the Telegraph and find out the name. Within two minutes, there was a buzz on her BlackBerry: The Monteleone. Demand a room that doesn’t look over the street. Bloody loud at night.