The Chosen One
The TV announced a news alert. The network that had broken the story now confirmed that it had documentary evidence of Stephen Baker’s past treatment for depression. ‘MSNBC is satisfied these papers are genuine,’ the anchor declared with the portentous baritone Maggie guessed was usually reserved for presidential assassinations.
So it was true. Maggie sat back in her chair. Until now, she realized, she had held back her reaction, unsure what, exactly, she was meant to be reacting to. Now she no longer had that excuse.
She wanted to be like that blogger, full of compassion and apparently unfazed by the prospect of a president with a history of mental illness. She knew that should be her attitude, too, just as she knew she should eat organic food. But she couldn’t quite persuade herself to feel it.
Besides, she had the same attitude as the ‘folks’ Stuart had talked about. It wasn’t the crime – being depressed was surely no crime – it was the cover-up. If medical disclosure meant anything, it should have meant levelling with the electorate.
But that wasn’t quite it, either. Maggie knew it would have been risky, verging on suicidal, for a candidate to start blubbering about his time on the psychiatrist’s couch in the middle of a presidential election – especially when his opponent had allowed him to skip the details. She knew why he hadn’t been able to come clean with the voters. But that didn’t soothe the nagging sensation she felt somewhere between her brain and her gut. For a fleeting second, the sensation formed itself into a sentence: he should have come clean with her.
She tried to push the feeling away, clicking again on the refresh button on the New York Times website, not taking in a word she read. It was, she knew, ridiculous to regard this as a personal betrayal. There had been many people far more senior than her on the campaign team; Stephen Baker was under no obligation to share the stories of his past with her. He had told her no lies. It was not as if she had ever asked the question.
And yet the nagging feeling was still there. She had jacked in her job and gone to work for him nearly eighteen months ago, in those days when his staff could fit into a minivan and the pundits said he might be a realistic prospect in the presidential cycle after next. They had run up tens of thousands of air miles together. She had eaten in his home, played with his son and daughter and chatted with his wife. She had put her faith in him. And so had the country.
The Breaking News ident was flashing again on the TV. Maggie reached for the volume control. ‘This word just into us here at CNN: the President is to make an emergency statement.’
At Sanchez’s invitation, she watched it in the press room, fighting hard not to put her hands to her face and peer through splayed fingers, the way she used to watch teatime science fiction as a child.
‘My fellow Americans,’ he began, his voice steady, his face calm and businesslike. ‘I am not here to deny what you heard today. I am here to tell you what happened. With the frankness and candour that I should have shown earlier.
‘Long ago, in my early twenties, I hit a difficult patch in my life. I have not spoken about it before because the source of my unhappiness involved another person.
‘As you know, my mother died a few months back – in the very last week of the campaign, as it happens – so perhaps now it can be told. Though even now, as I brace myself to say these words, I tremble at the thought that I might be dishonouring her memory. But you need to hear the truth.
‘When I was a teenager, I suspected my mother was an alcoholic. It took me some time to reach that conclusion. When you’re thirteen years old and your mother sinks some vodka into her orange juice at breakfast, you don’t always notice. And if you do notice, you don’t always know that that’s not normal. That that’s not how all moms behave. But by the time I was in college, I knew for certain.
‘Once I was making my own way in the world, this knowledge began to eat away at me. Was I fated to follow in her path? To stumble the way she had stumbled? Would I too become an addict of alcohol?
‘I was laid low by these thoughts. And, yes, eventually I sought professional help. The help of a psychiatrist, among other folks. I wanted to know if my destiny had already been determined, if it was written in my genes.
‘Eventually I came out of what the poets call this “slough of despond”. But it was not the doctors who lifted me from that dark place. My mother, on hearing that I had sought help, was shaken out of her own disease. You might say it was a wake-up call. She woke up, joined AA and got sober. When she died last October, she was proud to say that she had gone twenty-four years, eight months and nineteen days without a drink. It was a great achievement. I’m as proud of her for that as she was of me for getting to the brink of the presidency. But it was private. And I chose to honour that.
‘Perhaps that was a mistake. But now I hope you understand. Why I needed the help in the first place and why I did not rush to tell you, the American people, all about it. I cannot know how you will react to this news. But I am taking the risk that you will respond as so many American families do when they are confronted with news that disappoints. With the generosity of spirit that made us – and makes us still – a great nation. Thank you.’
Maggie stood, staring, barely daring to breathe. In the silence, she heard the sound of a single pair of hands clapping. Then another and then several more, until there was loud, sustained applause. She was sure she heard Tara MacDonald give a single whoop.
Sanchez passed her his iPhone, already open at the Sullivan blog. She only had to read the first sentence: Stephen Baker has just reminded the American people why they chose him to be their president last fall.
‘OK, people,’ Tara yelled, silencing the last few claps of applause. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet. Fox and the others are going to be yakking all night about “the questions that still need to be answered”. We need to be ready.’ She shot a glare at Maggie and Sanchez standing together. ‘We don’t need to be talking to each other, we need to be talking to the American people. I want a list handed to me no more than ten minutes from now, giving the names of surrogates ready to be in front of a camera heaping praise on President Stephen Baker for being brave, for being honest and for being a devoted son. Any questions?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Good. Now get to it.’
Maggie decided to take the hint and leave, mouthing a thank you to Sanchez. Tara MacDonald was right to be cautious, but Maggie had lived in America long enough to know that the public would like what they had seen. They would not turf out a new, young president for the crime of loving his mother and worrying about the inheritance she might have passed to her son.
She was right, too. The cable networks were kind, hosting discussions about whether alcoholism was hereditary and on the usefulness of therapy. For a few blessed hours, authors of books with titles like Please Mommy, Stop and Talking Makes It Better replaced the usual political talking heads. Almost all spoke with compassion for Stephen Baker, though Rush Limbaugh had apparently taken to his microphone an hour after the President’s personal statement to ask his listeners, ‘Do we really want a whack-job with his finger on the button?’
The consensus in the White House was that Baker had dodged a bullet. Indeed, the relief lasted all the way until the next day. Except in the Baker household. Where it was about to vanish in the cruellest way possible.
FIVE
Washington, DC, Monday March 20, 19.16
Jen, those new sneakers are COOL!
Katie Baker read the messages on her new friend Jennifer’s Facebook wall and was all set to add her own. But her fingers hesitated over the keyboard. Back in Olympia, she would have hammered out a dozen messages by now but here it was so different. Her mom had told her she had to be triple careful. ‘Remember, sweetie: no names, no pictures.’
No pictures? That was so harsh! Everyone posted photos on their Facebook page but here – in fact, ever since November – she was told she couldn’t. ‘You can put up pictures, honey,’ Mom had said. ‘Just none that show you, your brother or any of your closest friends. Nothing that identifies you.’
Her brother? Like that was ever going to happen. She didn’t mind keeping that annoying jerk out of her pictures. But her friends? Why did she have to be the one who was different?
Oh, yes. Because her father was President of the United States, that’s why. Which was cool, no doubt. She had already met several of her favourite stars and she had been in People magazine – though in that picture she’d had to hold hands with her brother. Yeeuch!
Someone had sent a new message, which popped up on Jen’s wall.
I heard that Brandon invited you to the Zygotes show at the 9.30. Does that mean you two are like going out?!!
She began typing. OMG, Jen! If that is true, I am so jealous! I love the Zygotes!
She wondered if that gave away too much detail. The 9.30 hardly counted as giving away a place, did it? So the 9.30 Club was in Washington, DC. Was there anyone in the world who didn’t know that thirteen-year-old Katie Baker lived in Washington, DC?
She clicked out of Jen’s and back to her own Facebook page. What she saw when she got there made her frown.
Kimberley Baker was preparing supper, doing her best to keep things normal. Partly for her husband’s sake, mainly for her kids. Politically, the President of the United States might have survived what had happened today but she was not so sure how Stephen Baker would cope.
The most private thing about him was now public property. When they were going out it had been the last revelation he had made to her. Only once they had been together many months did he tell her about his mother’s alcoholism and the treatment he had sought. Once he had spilled everything, and she had responded with a long, tight hug, he had asked her to marry him. And now he had had to expose the secret he had guarded so zealously, on national television. She knew how much he would hate that.
Still, he was a strong man; he would survive. But what about Katie and Josh? To her surprise the kids had seemed to be doing OK. They had started school, made some friends; Katie had even been to her first DC slumber party. Of course, Kimberley had questioned the motives of both Jennifer, the classmate who had been so eager to make Katie her BF, and her equally keen parents. Kimberley didn’t need to open the Washington Post to know that the Bakers were now deemed the hottest social property in the city and any contact, even vicarious, was a major trophy.
She had wondered if this morning’s revelation would see all that come crashing down. She didn’t care about herself; she wouldn’t mind if she never went to another Washington party. But she couldn’t bear to imagine what her children might be put through. Stephen had agreed they would maintain the no-newspapers rule they had observed back west. Nor was it any kind of sacrifice to ban cable TV. And the staff were wonderful, never mentioning a thing.
But, she knew, that was not where the danger lurked. It was school, specifically the meanness of other children, that frightened her. She knew how cruel they could be. Yes, most of the pupils at the school they had chosen would be fawning over Katie and Josh, but it would only take one rebel, one troublemaker who saw there was sport to be had in teasing the daughter of the President of the United States. And what ammunition any would-be playground tormentor had just been handed. Psychiatric treatment.
And yet the children had said nothing about it. They had come home, picked up from the school gate by Zoe, the Secret Service agent masquerading as an au pair – albeit one who drove an armour-plated minivan with blacked-out windows – and bounded up the stairs as if nothing were out of the ordinary. In Josh’s case, Kimberley Baker knew that meant all had been well. Her son couldn’t hide anything, even if he wanted to.
But Katie offered no such assurance. Was her silence proof that nothing had happened, that she had survived the day without mockery – or evidence that she had suffered an indignity so great it could not be expressed?
There was a message from her friend Alexis.
Hi K, hope you’re feeling OK this evening. Sorry today was so hard. You seemed to be coping really well though. You’re one tough chick!
Katie Baker read it again, checking the name. It was definitely from Alexis, but it made no sense. Alexis hadn’t been at school today. She’d got that bug that was going round. How would Alexis know how she’d been coping?
She typed out a reply.
I don’t understand! Aren’t you in bed with that yukky bug thing?!!
Katie clicked open another window: tour dates for the band Emily and Hannah had said were the hot group of the year. She was about to hit the preview to hear some of their music when she heard a light knock on the door.
Her agent, Zoe, poked her head round the door, taking care to stay outside her room. ‘Your mom says it’s time you came down for dinner.’
‘’Kay. Be right there.’
The door shut and Katie closed the tab open to the band’s website. She was about to close down Facebook when she heard the message alert announcing Alexis’s reply. She glanced back towards the door. It would only take a minute.
The First Lady looked over at her husband, now chopping garlic for a tomato sauce. He was sitting on a stool tucked up against the breakfast bar, both tie and shoes off. Whenever she regretted her husband’s choice of career – which was often – Kimberley Baker fell back on this consolation. She had deployed the same line when he was Governor, too. As he had put it in at least three dozen interviews, before flashing that million-kilowatt smile, ‘At least I get to live above the shop.’
So she tried to savour this little scene of domesticity – the four of them having an evening meal together – and pretend that the National Security Advisor was not waiting just along the corridor.
Actually, it was still just the three of them. Katie had not yet come down despite Zoe’s summons. Kimberley decided she’d had it with relaying messages via the Secret Service agent, and was poised to shout with the full force of her lungs for her daughter to come to the table – and to hell with the dozens of officials and staff who would hear her screeching – when the door swung open.
‘Ah, good evening, young lady,’ said the President, his eyes still focused on his painstakingly slow work at the chopping board. He didn’t see what his wife saw: their thirteen-year-old daughter standing there with every last drop of blood drained from her face.
‘Katie, what is it?’ Kimberley cried. ‘Katie!’
The girl was staring straight ahead. Her mother grabbed her by her shoulders, trying to shake a response out of her.
‘What’s happened? What’s HAPPENED!’
Instinctively, Stephen Baker looked to the door. Had there been some kind of attack, had an intruder broken into the White House Residence? Zoe, having quietly entered the room behind her charge, read the President’s expression. She shook her head. We’ve seen nothing.
When he spoke, his voice conveyed the same steady calm that voters had warmed to even before he was elected. He knelt down so that he could look his daughter in the eye. ‘Was it something on the computer?’
She nodded.
‘One of your friends, saying something mean?’
‘I thought it was. At first.’
The President and his wife looked at each other.
‘What did they say?’
‘I don’t want to tell you.’
The President stood up and gestured towards Zoe. Swiftly, she left the room, returning a matter of seconds later holding an open laptop computer, its shell a blaze of tie-dye style, psychedelic swirls. Teen chic.
Kimberley took the machine from Zoe and looked at the screen. It was her daughter’s Facebook page. Katie had begged to be allowed to keep it and her parents had eventually relented, reluctantly and with strict conditions. No photographs of herself or anyone else who might identify her. No real names. No contact details. And an IP address arranged through the White House comms department that would reveal only the United States as her place of residence, with no town or city specified. Only her closest friends from back home in Olympia, with perhaps a few more added this week in DC, knew that Sunshine12 was in fact the daughter of the American President.
Stephen Baker scanned the screen, searching among the multiple open windows, banner ads and thumbnail photos for what had so distressed his daughter.
And then he found it. A message from one of Katie’s schoolfriends: Alexis. He’d heard the name mentioned a few times.
No, I’m not in bed. I’m not really sick. And I’m not really Alexis either, to be honest. But I am sorry about your Dad. Must have been such a shock to find out about his past medical problems. Did he ever tell you about that when he sat at the end of your bed, stroking your hair and telling you a bedtime story? Did he tell you Grandma was a pisshead and he had to go to the head doctor because he was a mental case? My apologies for spilling the beans. Ooops. Silly me. But I wonder if you would be a doll and take a message to him from me. Thanks, sweetie. Tell him I have more stories to tell. The next one comes tomorrow morning. And if that doesn’t smash his pretty little head into a thousand pieces, I promise you this – the one after that will. Make no mistake: I mean to destroy him.
SIX
Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 05.59
Maggie got the call before 6am: Goldstein, sounding caffeinated. ‘Put on MSNBC. Now.’
She fumbled for the remote, down at the side of the bed. It wasn’t there. She reached across to the blank, empty space that made up the other half of the bed and found it marooned there, stabbed at the buttons until finally the screen fired up into a too-bright light.
‘It’s an ad for car insurance, Stu.’
‘Wait. We got a heads-up.’
There was the portentous sound of a station ident, a whizzy graphic and then the morning anchor, all glossy lips and improbably static hair. The image over her shoulder showed the President, the words strapped across the bottom of the screen: Breaking News.
‘Papers seen by MSNBC suggest Stephen Baker received campaign contributions that came, indirectly, from the government of Iran. Details are still sketchy but such a donation would constitute a serious violation of federal law, which prohibits candidates from receiving contributions from any foreign source, still less a government hostile to the United States. Live now to . . .’
Iran? What on earth did Stephen Baker have to do with Iran? They could not be serious. Something truly bizarre was going on here. Bizarre and sinister. Two bombshells in twenty-four hours. She knew every one of her White House colleagues would be asking the same question: ‘What the hell is going on?’
She could hear Goldstein barking an instruction to someone outside his office.
‘What the hell is this, Stu?’
‘You’ve probably got some Irish word for it, Maggie.’
‘For what?’
‘For when someone sets out to fuck you in the ass and stab you in the heart, all at the same time. What’s that in Gaelic?’
‘You think this is part of some plan?’
‘Two stories, two days running, on the same network. That doesn’t happen by accident, sweetheart. That means they have a leaker. A source.’ Goldstein paused just long enough to let out a wheeze. ‘Someone, in other words, who’s out to destroy this presidency.’
‘But these stories have got nothing to do with each other. They’re twenty-five years apart.’
‘Which proves it’s organized. Some well-resourced outfit, with enough money to do serious oppo.’
‘Stuart,’ Maggie said, now out of the bed and walking towards the shower. ‘I’m glad you called but why me? Shouldn’t you be speaking to Tara and—’
‘Did that thirty minutes ago. Iran. You’re our Middle East gal, remember. Need you to think about the angles. If this does not turn out to be bullshit, then who might have done this at that end? Government or rogue? And why now? What game are they— Shit.’
Goldstein’s cellphone rang, the first notes of the theme from The Godfather, the movie loved by all political obsessives. ‘This is how power works, Maggie,’ he had said when the film was screened on a return flight from California. ‘Watch and learn.’
He must have put the call on speaker because she could hear a voice, high-strung and rattled, at the other end. She couldn’t make out all the words but she could hear the urgency.
‘. . . a doorstep at the Capitol, demanding a special prosecutor.’
Stuart’s response was instant and ferocious. ‘That prick. Was he on his own or with colleagues?’
The voice: ‘One other. Vincenzi. You know, bipartisan bullshit: one Republican, one Democrat.’
‘Assholes.’
Maggie tried to say goodbye, but it was clear Stuart was not listening. He was absorbed in this new conversation, apparently unaware that he was still holding the receiver. All she could do was hang up. Or stay on the line and eavesdrop . . .
Stuart spoke again, a sound like a faulty air conditioner coming from his chest. ‘What did he say he wants? An independent counsel or a special prosecutor? What were his exact words?’
Maggie could hear a muffled sound, which she took to be the luckless official, whoever it was, squirming under the fire of Goldstein’s interrogation.
Stuart was off again. ‘I’ll tell you what difference it makes. Special prosecutors no longer exist. They were abolished. The only reason a person would start talking about special prosecutors is if they were either a moron – which the senator from Connecticut is not – or if they wanted to make a point.’
More muffled sound.
‘The point being that the words special prosecutor have a very particular sound in this town. The sound of Archibald Cox. Don’t tell me – sheesh. Am I the oldest freaking person in this White House? Archibald Cox? Watergate?’
Maggie tried to catch his attention. ‘Stuart? Stuart!’ But it was too late. She hung up.
They had now, she understood, entered a new realm of seriousness. If a Democrat was calling for an independent counsel to investigate a Democratic president, there was no way he could fight it. It was no longer ‘partisan’: now it was above party politics. Baker would have to agree. In the space of a few weeks he had gone from St Stephen – the coverline on a British magazine story about the new president – to Richard Nixon, under investigation.
Maggie felt as if she were standing on the deck of a ship taking on water. They had all been so euphoric that unseasonably warm evening in November when Baker had won. She’d been caught up in it, accepting the ribbing from Stu and Doug Sanchez, as they mocked her earlier pessimism. ‘Oh ye of little faith, Costello, who said it would never happen,’ Sanchez had said as he embraced her, maintaining the hug a moment or two longer than necessary, his hands brushing her bottom in a way that was not quite accidental. More than ten years her junior, he had a nerve, that boy. But it was that kind of night.
She had tranquillized her doubts, allowed herself to believe that this time it would be different. Her own experience told her that politics was bound to end in failure. She had seen it when she worked for the United Nations, where even the most elementary, obvious truths – ‘These people are dying and need help!’ – could get tangled up in turf wars, rivalries, bureaucratic indecision, vanity and, that most decisive of categories, ‘interests’. So often she had felt – she stopped saying the words, knowing that to utter them out loud made you a hippy, a naïf who could be ignored – that something must be done. And so often it had not been.