Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

She could hear Stuart still munching. It must have been his sixth straight gherkin. ‘Bottom line, Maggie: I’m not sure there’s anything on those computers worth finding. Which means you need to find another way into this. I don’t know what that is, but you’re going to have to find it. If Forbes was murdered, you have to find out who did it. Every minute we can’t come up with an answer to that, someone else fills in the blank with Stephen Baker.’

‘There’s the woman who picked Forbes up.’

‘What, the stripper?’ The sound of mastication was appalling, even down the phone. ‘No point. If you’re right, that she was some kind of professional, then she’s not exactly going to have left her business card behind, is she?’

It was true. She had flitted into the Midnight Lounge, under the bullshit name of Georgia with, no doubt, the bullshit papers to match, and flitted right out again. If she had been smart enough to wipe her prints from Forbes’s house, it was unlikely Maggie was going to be able to find her.

‘Also,’ Stu continued while building up to a swallow. ‘If she was a hired gun then it’s not the gun we’re interested in, is it? It’s who did the hiring. That’s what we need to find out. Urgently. ’

‘I know.’ She wished he would stop telling her how much pressure she was under: she knew. Her mind had been churning with this and this alone for nearly nineteen unbroken hours.

‘And don’t forget, Maggie. We also need to know what bag of shit Forbes was about to tip over our heads.’

‘Right.’

‘And who else knows what’s inside that bag.’

‘Got it.’

‘Maggie?’ He sounded different, as if signalling a change in direction.

‘Yes, Stu?’

His voice was softer now, the voice of the early hours of the morning. ‘We’ve kind of given our lives up for this guy, haven’t we?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You and me. I have a wife and all, but I spend more time with CNN than I do with Nancy. And let’s face it, you’re married to the job.’

Maggie felt a sting of something like shame. Hadn’t Uri said exactly the same thing, that her devotion to the job had made their relationship impossible? They had fought and fought over that. Perhaps Uri was right, perhaps she had sacrificed their relationship for the sake of Stephen Baker. Which only made the current situation more unbearable. If the Baker presidency collapsed, it would all have been for nothing.

Stuart spoke again. ‘We can’t let this thing go down. Not like this. Not so early. He’s hardly had a chance to do any of the things we dreamed of, that you dreamed of. We haven’t saved the world yet, Maggie.’

Despite herself, Maggie smiled. Saving the world. She knew Stuart was teasing her, as he always had: the passionate idealistic woman among all those pragmatic, political men. But she also knew that even Stuart – cynical, poll-watching Stuart – only worked as hard as he did because he believed it too. That was the magic of Stephen Baker: he made idealism possible. When he spoke, changing the world was no longer some naïve adolescent dream, but something achievable and within reach. That was why he had been the first politician she had ever truly trusted. She would do anything – anything – in her power to stop those out to destroy him.

Injecting confidence into her voice, she said, ‘We’re not going to let it go down. We’re going to survive this. Just like we survived everything else. Remember, when Chester-’

‘This is different, Maggie. We both know it. In the morning, I’m going to start counting the votes. See if Franklin has enough of our guys – even potentially – to win this thing.’

‘And if he does?’

‘I was thinking of telling the President he should resign.’

‘Jesus Christ, Stuart.’

‘Don’t go nuts, Maggie. Think about what it would mean to fight on. Wading through all this shit. And what do the history books say then? That Baker was removed from office after less than two months. Better to leave with some dignity.’

‘Like Nixon you mean?’

‘Bad example. But then I think about us. You and me. We can’t let him do that, can we? If he goes, what’s left of us? Actually, you’ve got plenty. You’re smart and you’re beautiful.’

Maggie didn’t know what to say. She felt her eyes pricking, with real tears this time. She had talked about every point of the globe with Stuart Goldstein, every possible permutation of politics, domestic and foreign, yet he had never spoken like this before.

‘But me, Maggie. There wouldn’t be much left of me, would there? For twenty years, I’ve been Stuart Goldstein, the guy behind Stephen Baker. Without Baker, there’s no Goldstein. Who else is gonna hire a big fat Jewish guy who eats gherkins out the jar? Baker was the only one who never cared about all that stuff.’

She could hardly bear to listen. ‘Stuart, don’t. We’re going to come through-’

‘So what I’m trying to work out is, if I’m being selfish for wanting to fight this. If I’m doing it for my sake, not his. Maybe the best thing for him is if we let him walk away.’

‘Enough, Stu. Enough late-night maudlin talk. I can get that in Ireland.’ She wanted him to laugh but he didn’t.

‘You’re right. I know. I know. I’m just so tired, that’s all. We’ve worked so hard…’ His voice tailed off, exhausted, on the edge of defeat.

Maggie felt her heart swell. She had to do this for both of them: for all of them. ‘Go home, Stu: go home and get some rest. I’ll call you in the morning. Things will look better then, trust me.’

‘Good night, Maggie.’

She cut the connection and closed her eyes. What had she got herself into?

Washington, DC, Thursday March 23, 07.55

‘I love the smell of fresh bagels in the morning.’

Senator Rick Franklin and his Head of Legislative Affairs, Cindy Hughes, had just stepped out of the elevator onto the fifth floor of the building on L Street which, to the naked eye, looked like a regulation 1970s-built office block in Washington, DC. Functional and dull.

To those in the know, however, it was – for this hour every Thursday morning, at least – the epicentre of American conservatism. Or, as those on the inside would put it, ‘the movement’.

This was the Thursday Session, when the conference room of a single right-wing think-tank would host the activists, lobbyists, congressional staffers, movers and shakers who together represented Washington’s key ‘movement’ conservatives. At the back of the room, jugs of coffee and trays of fresh bagels alongside bowls of cream cheese. If you were fifteen minutes early, you’d load up a plate and take a seat. Any later than that and you’d be standing at the back or at the sides or spilling into the corridor. The Thursday Session was the American right’s hottest ticket.

When Franklin appeared something happened that he at least had never seen before: a spontaneous round of applause which soon turned into a standing ovation. He had been used to the red carpet treatment at the Thursday Session for at least a month, ever since he had won himself folk-hero status by heckling the President’s first speech to Congress. The media had hated it of course; the press back home were embarrassed: ‘Frankly, Mr Franklin, you’re a disgrace!’ ran one column in The Greenville News . But it had made Rick Franklin, once little noticed outside South Carolina, a star.

This, though, was different: a reception for a leader . He thought back to Cindy’s remark of last night, just before he spread her across his knee and before he telephoned the President to notify him of his imminent impeachment. And you, sir, will only just be started. Already his push to remove Baker had anointed him as de facto leader of the opposition. If he were to succeed, then in three short years’ time, surely he would be frontrunner for…