Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

The President was about to make a live address to the nation, carried on all stations. A pit began to grow in Maggie’s stomach. They had discussed so many options, she realized she didn’t know which one he was going to choose. Would he fold, announcing a delay in the banking legislation, a move that would at least buy some time to take Waugh on? Would he perhaps opt for the other, riskier scenario she had put forward: that he veto the bill as Waugh had requested, only then to embark on a covert effort to find the congressional votes needed to override his veto and pass the bill into law anyway?

If he did that, defying the blackmail of AitkenBruce and the others, she would have to admire his courage, but it would spell disaster for her – and for Uri. And, given the tentacles of these people, maybe even for Liz and Calum and her mother, too. You will pay and so will those you love .

Yet she knew it was wrong to think of her own safety, her own needs, when something so much larger was at stake. Sure, if Baker caved she and Uri and her family would be off the hook, but what would that mean for the country? Waugh would have neutered Baker, he would have destroyed him. Everything he had planned to do – for America and beyond – would be in ruins.

What was he going to do? She realized she had no idea – and the knot was hardening in her stomach.

And suddenly, there he was, at his desk, the stars and stripes behind him.

‘My fellow Americans. You have all been through quite a week. I apologize for my part in those events. I promised to bring a spirit of calm to Washington, to lower the temperature of our politics, and these last seven or eight days have been anything but calm.’ He flashed that Klieg-light smile of his and Maggie felt her heart contract.

‘Last night I finally discovered the true explanation for a chain of events that began with the shocking and hurtful revelations made by the late Mr Vic Forbes about my personal past and my political funding arrangements. These events went on to include unfounded rumours linking me to his death; calls for my impeachment and the apparent suicide of my own closest advisor and best friend, the much-cherished Stuart Goldstein.’ He looked down at the table, seemed to gird himself, and carried on.

‘The details of all this and much else will come out in due course, and there will be consequences for those involved. But let me speak about something for which I alone am responsible.

‘As you know, I spent my late teenage years in a small town called Aberdeen, Washington. It was a place where even if everyone didn’t know your name, they all knew your business.’ He smiled a rueful smile. ‘People there worked hard, with their hands, and were as honest as the day was long.

‘I went off to college but I always came back for the vacations. I’d get a job, usually in the lumber yards, to pay my way. And it was during one of those vacations that I met a girl by the name of Pamela Everett. She was very sweet, she was very beautiful and if you could ever persuade her to sing for you, you’d swear you’d been given a little glimpse of heaven. And though we were too young to get married or engaged, I loved her very much and she knew it. We would stay up till late, imagining our future together.

‘Well, one night we were in a hotel together, asleep in each other’s arms. In the early hours, I suddenly woke up to see smoke seeping under the door of our room. I could feel the heat and I could smell the flames. It was a terrible, terrifying smell that I have never forgotten. I shook Pamela – but I did not stay long enough to see if she was fully awake. In the panic of that moment, I rushed out and saved myself. And though I told the firefighters she was there, I did not go back to save her. In the end, it was too late and Pamela Everett died that night.

‘What happened was the mistake of a frightened young man and not a day goes by when I do not think of it. I should have been honest about this terrible truth a long, long time ago – but I never said a word about it. Not even to those closest to me.

‘I’m telling you this now not because I’m seeking your forgiveness. What I did was so wrong, I don’t think I deserve that – not for a long time. I’m telling you because I have discovered that a handful of men – men who hide in the shadows, trying to influence the fate of our republic without ever exposing themselves to the daylight – have known about that grave mistake of mine for many years. And now they are using it to blackmail me.’

Maggie gasped with disbelief. They hadn’t discussed this .

‘They want me to abandon a key part of my programme – a programme you, the American people, voted for in your tens of millions last fall – in return for their silence. They believed that faced with that choice, I would save my own hide rather than do what’s right for this country I love.

‘Well, these men – who spend their lives calculating profit and loss, nickels and dimes – do not understand that you cannot put a price on the workings of the human heart or the human conscience. They calculated wrong. I know I did a dreadful thing and I intend to pay for my actions. That is why I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Williams will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.

‘I know you will show him the kindness and grace you showed me. And I hope that good fortune – true good fortune – shines upon him.

‘May God bless his presidency. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America – and the precious, fragile world we all share.’

Washington, DC, Tuesday March 28, 11.07

Maggie sat, her palms flat against both sides of her face, shaking her head over and over. She wanted the correspondent gabbing on the TV to shut up, but she couldn’t move. She was frozen, not so much by shock as disappointment. In truth, it was more than that: it was a feeling she had had at the hands of two other men over the course of her life. It was heartbreak.

So that explained the assignment Baker had given her. He had asked her to draft a short summary of Bradford Williams’s career, as personal as she could make it: ‘triumphs and tragedies’, he had said. Exhausted, she had asked Uri to do it for her, to apply to Williams’s life the same laser focus he had brought to bear on Baker during the research for his film. Knowing how close to collapse Maggie was, he had worked on it all night.

She had feared this was the reason Baker had asked for such a paper; of course she had. But that made it no less awful to hear out loud. He had resigned. He had sacrificed everything he had worked for his entire life.

And then, a guiltier thought. Baker had defied AitkenBruce – and that meant she would pay. She and those she loved.

Twenty minutes later the phone rang. A female voice, level and calm: ‘Please hold for the President.’

There was a click, then another and then: ‘Maggie, I’m sorry.’

‘So am I, Mr President. And there are lots of people who feel the way I do right now, all over the world. Was there no other way?’

‘I thought about it, Maggie, I really did. I talked about it with Kim. But I couldn’t see it. Remember, no one is indispensable, Maggie. Not even me.’

‘But what about everything we believed in? Everything we worked for?’

‘Williams believes in all that, too. Truly he does. He’s a good man, Maggie. The work will go on.’ There was a pause. ‘He and I are already collaborating on the first order of business.’

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘A file detailing the evidence that links AitkenBruce and the other banks to the deaths of Forbes, Stuart and Nick du Caines – and maybe many other deaths too. Lawyers at the Department of Justice and the FBI are already on the case. They’re talking to Interpol.’