Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

Again, possible. But what were the chances that a woman, who had just started working at the Midnight Lounge when Forbes got active, would go home with him on the very night he was about to strike his deadliest blow against the President, and then disappear immediately after his death – what were the chances that all that was a coincidence?

Besides, Maggie remembered Telegraph Tim saying that the only fingerprints they’d found at the house had belonged to Forbes. If she had just been an unhappy hooker, in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d have left her prints everywhere.

No, there was only one plausible explanation for why Georgia had disappeared – and it was the same explan ation for why she had appeared at the Midnight Lounge in the first place. It was a classic honeytrap – though with a lethal sting.

The police were wrong. Tim and all the other reporters were wrong.

Forbes had not killed himself, by accident or design.

Victor Forbes had been murdered.

From The Page, Thursday March 23, 00.03:

Impeachment!

Republicans to table articles of impeachment through House Judiciary Committee in the am accusing President Baker of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Opening step in a process aimed at making Baker the first president of the 21st century to be removed from office. Massive and developing story…

Twenty-two minutes later, from Politico.com’s Playbook column:

I’m hearing that Senator Rick Franklin placed a call to the White House in the last hour or so, notifying the President personally of his intention to proceed with impeachment. Call was a courtesy born ‘out of respect for the office of President.’ My source tells me that Stephen Baker ‘pleaded with Franklin’ not to do it, arguing in an emotional phone call that it was against all the rules of ‘natural justice’ to move against him so early in his presidency. It’s certainly a record, that’s for sure. Both Andrew Johnson in the 19th century and Bill Clinton in the 20th had their feet under the table for a good few years before they faced the mechanism that remains the Constitution’s nuclear weapon: impeachment. Baker has been there just 62 days.

It’s too late at night for me to file more than a few speculative thoughts about this, so here goes with two. First, this has only come about because of the death of Vic Forbes. Sure, that name won’t appear on the charge sheet when it comes before the House Judiciary Committee in the morning. Franklin and his pals in the House will make the Iranian Connection the heart of the legal case against the President. They will say that the selling of influence to an enemy power constitutes the relevant violation of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states: ‘The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High crimes and misdemeanors.’ But that’s the legal case. Make no mistake, the politics has the name Forbes all over it.

His death changed the political calculus in Washington. The rumors, the suspicion at the undeniably convenient timing of Forbes’s passing, all that has created bad atmospherics for Stephen Baker, a climate of suspicion where senior Republicans think they can accuse him of anything.

And, if Franklin is serious, he must reckon he can peel off enough conservative Democrats to make this thing pass. Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of Baker-skeptics among the Democrats who never liked the President – and all his idealistic talk of America showing an outstretched hand rather than a clenched fist to the world – anyway. If I were in the White House tonight, I’d be keeping a close eye on Dr Anthony Adams over at Defense.

Second, this will all move very fast. The Democratic majority is so slender, Republicans need only a couple of conservative Democrats to waver and the Judiciary Committee could agree to submit articles of impeachment for a vote of the entire House as soon as the start of next week. The clock is ticking on the Baker presidency. If there is even a shred of credible evidence that Forbes was indeed the victim of foul play, rather than a suicide, then the Baker presidency’s future will surely be measured in days…

New Orleans, Thursday March 23, 01.22 CST

Maggie was in the cab on the way back to the hotel, her breathing coming faster now, her mind racing through the implications. Only one question mattered, though the answer made her blood run cold.

Who would want Forbes dead?

In response, a single sentence kept repeating itself, a sentence she had repeatedly tried to banish.

I want him gone.

It was the most obvious explanation, the one that any cold-eyed observer would reach for. Cui bono? Wasn’t that the first question the analyst was meant to ask: who benefits? And who benefited more from the death of Victor Forbes than Stephen Baker?

For the fifth time in two minutes, she hit redial on Stuart’s number. Still busy. Situation grave , he had said. What the hell was happening over there?

They were driving past an empty plot. It looked like scrubland now but, given its location, it had almost certainly been a fully-inhabited residential block before the levees broke. There was a sign attached to the chickenwire fence, announcing a reconstruction project, with a photograph showing the gleaming faux-colonial houses that would arise on this spot. But it only made Maggie think how difficult it was going to be, breathing life into a city that had all but drowned.

Her BlackBerry, now set on silent, vibrated. She seized on it, thumbing the button frantically. ‘Stuart? Is that you?’

But there was only silence. The vibration had announced not a call but a message.

Stuart: Can’t get hold of you. Things insane here. Franklin and the Republicans launching impeachment proceedings against us in the morning. You have to get us something fast. Anything. Maggie, we’re depending on you. HE’S depending on you.

She felt her throat dry. Impeachment. It seemed that Forbes was going to achieve in death what he had set out to do at the end of his life – and bring down Stephen Baker.

The veins in her neck began to throb. How dare they? At long last, a truly decent, good man emerges from the swamp of politics, and what is their reaction? To tear him down, using the dirtiest, cheapest tricks imaginable. No wonder they couldn’t stand a giant like Stephen Baker. He exposed the rest of them for what they were: dwarves.

Her job was clear. She had to find something that would exonerate the President, proving that he had committed no crime. She needed to establish beyond all doubt that Forbes had taken his own life. That was her duty. Her duty to Stephen Baker. He’s depending on you.

And what had she done? The very opposite. She had found evidence that Franklin would seize on, suggesting the conspiracy crackpots were right. Forbes had been murdered.

Calm down . That fact alone did not necessarily implicate the President. Baker had allies, including those who would have seen Forbes as a threat to their own interests. What if one of them had decided to do Baker a favour – and take Forbes out?

Then she remembered the story Goldstein had pulled up at her kitchen table. ‘ The Baker presidency turns into The Godfather’. The stories had proliferated wildly since then, each one nudging ever closer to accusing Baker of murder.

Could that be it? Might someone have despatched Forbes not to help Baker but to damage him, by making him look like a mafia boss whose enemies mysteriously ended up dead? After all, what she had discovered at the Midnight Lounge wouldn’t stay secret forever. If she were right that Forbes had been murdered, it would only be a matter of time before that information became public knowledge. Even if the Republicans did not make an outright accusation of murder, they could use the suspicion of it to insist that the President of the United States had to be removed from office.