Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

‘He’s saying the American people have the right to raise questions. No more than that.’

‘Beck?’

‘Good. He interviewed an expert on murder cases that were faked to look like suicide.’

‘So you think this could stick? If I’m to make this move, our folks have to be dead certain that Stephen Baker had Vic Forbes killed.’

Obligingly, Cindy turned around, giving him a chance to see her from behind, and bent over to retrieve a piece of paper from her briefcase – taking rather longer to do so than was strictly necessary.

‘We don’t have many allies down there, not after-’ She paused, reluctant to say the word that had inflicted such damage on Republicans. ‘After Katrina. Governor Tett is ours, obviously, but he’s surrounded by Democrats. Especially in New Orleans itself.’

‘Journalists?’

‘The good news is that the National Enquirer is sniffing around.’

‘That is good news.’

‘If there’s something to find, they’ll find it.’

He looked out of the window, contemplating the long sweep of twinkling lights that was the American capital. He watched the slow red winking at the top of the Washington monument.

‘You do realize how serious this is, don’t you, Cindy?’

‘I do.’

‘This is the big one. It’s the bunker-buster. If we get it right, Baker will be finished.’

‘And you, sir, will only just be started.’ She fluttered her eyelashes again, signalling a return to character. ‘Strike me hard if I’m wrong.’

That was it, the surge of lust was now too great to resist. Senator Rick Franklin glanced down at the portrait on his desk, the one that showed him and his four children smiling warmly at the lens, while his wife of eighteen years gazed adoringly up at him: the full Nancy Reagan, as that particular pose was known in the political communications industry. He turned the picture face down, so that it lay flat against the wood, right next to the discreet statuette he had received when he was anointed a ‘Hero of the American Family’ by the Christian Coalition.

He looked at his watch. If they were quick, there was time.

‘Now, Cindy, I am about to follow the rules of this house and administer the punishment that you deserve. First, is the outer door of the office locked in the usual fashion?’

‘It is, sir.’

‘Second, are you wearing that underwear that you know tempts your master?’

‘The one sir calls “the eyepatch”?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m ashamed to say I am.’

They were practised enough, the Senator and his aide, that they could run through the whole ritual – all the way to climax (his) – in a matter of minutes.

Once it was done, he felt ready to make the move that he knew would define his career and might well alter the course of American history. He zipped up his fly, buckled his belt and nodded that Cindy, now straightening her stockings, should stay.

He dialled the number Cindy had put in front of him, the first move in a sequence that he had never had to follow before; heard the operator answer and realized, with a rush of adrenalin, the import of what he was about to do.

‘This is Senator Rick Franklin. I need to speak to the President of the United States.’

New Orleans, Wednesday March 22, 23.45 CST

The device she had found had been burning a hole in Maggie’s pocket for the best part of an hour. Lewis Rigby had insisted they bury the hatchet with a drink. No hard feelings and all that.

Throughout their conversation, though her eyes didn’t waver, Maggie did not listen to a word the grubby little hack was saying. Instead all her brainpower was channelled into her fingertips, as she turned the object she had snatched from Forbes’s suit pocket over and over in her own.

It was round and flat, a disc; and yet it had buzzed. It was too thin to be a cellphone, even a novelty one. There were no buttons, nor one of those clam-shell flaps that might conceal them. A moment of panic seized her, one she hoped Rigby did not glimpse as she pretended to be fascinated by the story of how exactly he had come to tap the cellphone of the former mayor of Atlanta just in time to hear him call the Hot Guys chat line.

What if she had been half-right? What if the buzzing sound had indeed come from the wardrobe, and from the suits, but she had reached into the wrong pocket? What if she had had the chance to grab Vic Forbes’s cellphone, only to come away with a flipping bar coaster or whatever this piece of crap was?

They finally got back to the Monteleone where she made her excuses, though not before running into a crestfallen Tim, who gently asked whether her headache had cleared.

‘My what?’

‘Your headache.’

Christ, she’d completely forgotten. That had been her explanation for leaving the bar, hoping Tim wouldn’t notice that Rigby was waiting for her just outside. ‘Oh, yes. Right as rain. Thanks for asking.’

‘So perhaps you’ll join me for that nightcap we missed out on?’

She checked her watch: gone midnight. ‘You know I’ve had a long day, Tim. Flight down and all that. Would you hate me if I had an early night?’

Of course he wouldn’t, he insisted, his words brimming with the caring solicitude of an English gentleman, even as his eyes wondered if, since she was taking to her bed, she might want some company.

Once upstairs, having shaken him off and closed the door behind her, she plunged into her pocket and pulled the thing out. Fucking hell, if it wasn’t actually a poxy coaster after all. From the bloody ‘Midnight Lounge, S Claiborne Street’.

She threw it on the bed, convinced that she had screwed up royally. What the hell was she doing here? She was an analyst of international relations, a diplomat for Christ’s sake, and here she was, fannying around pretending to be a journalist, playing at being Sherlock bleeding Holmes. And she was crap at it. Somewhere in that house – in that cupboard – was Forbes’s BlackBerry, bursting with the information that would answer every one of the questions that would save Baker, and she had missed it, passing over the magic lamp and reaching for the wooden spoon instead. She could curse-

There it was again. The buzz. The coaster was buzzing.

She picked it up and stared at it. At last she smiled. So that was what this was. She hadn’t seen one of these things in years. Not really the style of the kind of places she dined in these days. Not very Washington.

But maybe joints like the Midnight Lounge in New Orleans still went in for handing customers a pager while they waited for a table. Get a drink at the bar; when the pager buzzes, you can be seated. She wondered how the police could have missed it: but perhaps it would only have started going off again late in the evening, as the Midnight Lounge reopened for business.

And if it was still buzzing now, its batteries still alive, did that not suggest Forbes had picked it up recently, maybe even very recently?

She glanced at the bed, with its enticing offer of rest after an exhausting day that was already eighteen long hours old, and then back to the coaster.

She was damned if she knew how she would explain her miraculous resurgence of energy if she ran into Telegraph Tim, but she’d just hope to bloody well avoid him. Mind made up, she went downstairs, stepped outside and hailed a cab. ‘Midnight Lounge on South Claiborne Street please. As quick as you can.’

In her haste, she didn’t notice the man watching from the other side of the street. The same man who had seen her arrive from the airport, step out with that British journalist and then return with another person entirely – male, Caucasian, one hundred eighty pounds, five feet eleven – to the Forbes residence. Nor did she notice this man flag down a second cab, so that he could follow her into the New Orleans night.