The Chosen One

TEN

Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 14.26

‘Aren’t people going to talk?’

‘What? About you and me?’

‘Yes. Me, in here.’

‘Something tells me, Maggie, that people worked out long ago there’s not a chance of that happening: you’re not my type.’ And with that, a smile spread across the large, flushed, wobbling face of Stuart Goldstein, the first smile Maggie had seen in what felt like weeks but was actually less than thirty-six hours.

At his request, she had gone straight to his office as soon as she had returned from the raid on the Maryland house. He had had to put her on the visitors list at the bloody tourists’ entrance at Fifteenth and Hamilton Place; she had had to show her passport to gain admission to the White House.

‘I mean it, Stu. People will be suspicious.’

‘Maggie, right now we have seven senators calling for an independent counsel to investigate the President for “alleged financial links” to fucking Tehran. People in this building have got other things to worry about than your employment arrangements.’

Maggie bowed her head in a ‘you’re the boss’ gesture and continued her report back: the Secret Service was conducting an urgent trace on the dumb terminal they had discovered in Bethesda. They had so far narrowed down the location of the master computer to the south-eastern United States, but could not be more specific.

They were waiting for the TV to deliver what it had promised. Fifteen minutes earlier, Goldstein had had a call from a contact inside MSNBC warning him that the network was about to air a live interview with the source of its two recent stories on Stephen Baker. The partial identification in the blogosphere had given way to a full ID, once the collective investigative might of the internet had got to work.

The source had been named as Vic Forbes of New Orleans, Louisiana. Stu had immediately put one of his best researchers onto it: he knew he was in a race against both the media and the Republicans to know everything about Forbes that could be known. And then to define him. Crank, attack dog, dopehead. Whatever would shatter his credibility.

‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ Maggie said, while the TV cut to a weather forecast. ‘The shrink thing. How come that didn’t come out before?’

‘I still haven’t quite figured that out. Not to my own satisfaction.’

‘Do you think the others knew and didn’t use it?’

‘No way. Adams and Rodriguez were trying to kill him in the primaries. And Chester in the general. They all had oppo research digging away, night after night, climbing all over his past. And the media, working twenty-four/seven.’

‘What about you? Did you know?’

‘Come on, Maggie. You’re my favourite Irishman and all that, but I can’t get into my personal relationship with him.’

‘So you did know.’

Goldstein smiled enigmatically, an expression which was accompanied by a counterpoint of snorting, as the exhalation that would normally have exited from his mouth re-routed via his nose. He really was monumentally unfit. ‘Whether I did or did not is not the important thing here. What matters is how the fuck did this Vic Forbes find out?’

‘Maybe he spoke to the shrink?’

‘Difficult. He died fifteen years ago.’

‘There would have been records. Papers.’

‘Nuh-uh. None.’

‘Bills?’

‘Put it this way, yours truly did not come down with the first shower of rain. I am used to the dirtiest dirty tricks. You don’t get to be a councilman in New York unless you know how to rip a guy’s heart out with your teeth. I made sure in Baker’s first race that the enemy couldn’t dig up any surprises.’

‘Because you had dug them up first.’

‘Exactly. Wielded the spade myself.’ He held up his hands, the effort of which once again altered the rhythm of his breathing. ‘Then I did it again for the governor’s race.’

‘With professional help this time, I bet.’

‘You’re damn right. I had two of Seattle’s finest – ex-cops actually – investigate Stephen Baker as if they were determined to convict him of a felony. Find out everything. Go through his phone bills, house deeds, mortgage payments, bank accounts, college transcripts. They hacked into his emails and tapped his phone for all I know. Spoke to everyone, interviewed old girlfriends, made sure there were no old boyfriends. If there was a wall Stephen Baker had pissed against, they went to sniff it. Then I did it all over again before he announced for President.’

‘Before?’

‘Oh yes. Not much point doing it afterwards, is there?’

‘And did they find anything?’

‘You know everything they found. So does the American people.’

Maggie smiled at the realization of it. ‘Of course. The big “I experimented with drugs” admission. Getting stoned rebranded as a science project. Experimented, my arse.’

‘Sure, it’s bullshit. But it worked, didn’t it? Once you get it out there, you get to define yourself—’

‘—before they define you. What about Iran?’

‘Well, that couldn’t come up during the campaign ‘cause it hadn’t happened yet. That took some serious digging. Somehow Forbes knew what we didn’t know ourselves.’

‘You didn’t know Jim Hodges was Hossein Najafi?’

Goldstein jerked his head back, as if affronted. ‘Listen Maggie. Even my booba, may she rest in peace, knows that you don’t take money from fucking I-ran! Of course we didn’t know.’

‘Were we set up? Someone sent Hodges in here to embarrass us?’

‘Maybe. Maybe the Iranians did it. Make Baker look like an asshole. Right now, though, the only thing that bothers me about Hodges is how Forbes knew about him. And about the shrink.’ He stared at the TV. ‘I want to know who this bastard is.’

In the end, she was disappointed. Vic Forbes did not look like a monster or a pantomime villain. In truth, his face, as he stared dead-on at the camera, conducting a satellite interview from a studio in New Orleans, was forgettable. It was lean, like one of the whippets her grandfather’s friends used to keep in Dublin. His nose seemed to be pinched, too thin at the bridge. He was bald, save for some slight grey at the temples, which had Maggie put his age at around fifty, though it was perfectly possible that he had looked the same way when he was thirty.

If she had guessed how this scene would have played out, she would have imagined embarrassment would at least feature in it somewhere. Maybe shame was too much to ask for in this day and age, but you’d think a man who had anonymously smeared the President would at least have the courtesy to seem uncomfortable, even if he couldn’t bring himself to squirm in his chair.

But Forbes was having none of it. Maggie watched mesmerized as he batted away a series of questions as if he’d been doing this all his life.

Describing himself as a ‘researcher’, he insisted he was aligned with ‘no party and no faction’, a phrase that, to Maggie’s ears at least, reeked of pomposity.

‘I am a truth-teller, if you will,’ he said. ‘I had this information – this truth – and I felt guilty that I wasn’t sharing it with the American people. It’s an old-fashioned phrase, but I believe they have a right to know. They have a right to know who their president really is.’

‘But how did you get it?’ the interviewer asked. ‘Surely the American people have a right to know that too, don’t they?’

Maggie felt her own fist clench, involuntarily. Come on.

‘Well, Natalie,’ he began.

Good, thought Maggie. He seemed flustered.

‘The thing is . . . Look, in an ideal world . . .’

Maggie glanced at Stuart, who was as transfixed as she was, hoping that they were witnessing the unravelling of Vic Forbes on live television.

‘The point I would make, Natalie, is to ask you this: would you reveal your sources, if your network had broken a story like this without my help? Of course you wouldn’t.’ Maggie felt the air deflate out of her. ‘And nor would anyone ask you. That’s a basic principle of journalism.’

‘Yes, but you’re not a journalist, are you, you scumbag bastard!’ Stuart hurled an empty Styrofoam cup at the TV.

The same sentence ran through Maggie’s head, on a repeat loop: Who is this guy?

Stuart’s phone rang. He stabbed at it, putting it on speaker. ‘Hey, Zoe, whaddya got?’

Maggie heard the agent’s voice, stiff and correct. ‘It’s still very early in our inquiries, Mr Goldstein.’

‘I know that. And I also know that electronic data of this kind is complex and searches can take several weeks—’ his voice was rising, ‘—and that it’s impossible to be certain, I know all of that, Zoe. But I need to know. WHAT. HAVE. YOU. GOT?’

The sound of shuffled papers was finally followed by an intake of breath.

‘OK, Mr Goldstein. Our preliminary investigation—’

‘Zoe.’

‘New Orleans. We think the person who sent that message to Katie Baker’s Facebook page was white, male, extremely adept with computer technology and from New Orleans, Louisiana, sir.’

He hung up, shooting one eye at Maggie, the other on the TV.

‘So, Stu, he’s the same guy, right?’

‘Confirmed,’ Goldstein said, staring at the screen, watching Forbes perform. ‘How come this guy’s so good? All that BS about “the people’s right to know”. Where did that come from? He looks like shit; he’s sweating. But he’s impressive. He’s careful. He’s like a goddamn politician.’

Without taking his eye off the screen, he reached for the remote and hit pause. (A set-top box, allowing the pausing and rewinding of live TV, was now an essential tool of the trade: it meant never having to miss an enemy gaffe again.) He rewound and watched the last minute again.

‘What are you looking for?’ Maggie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘But I’ll know it when I see it.’

There he went again, more guff about his ‘duty’ to lay out the facts before the American people. He couldn’t play judge and jury, but people should know he was serious and the President should know he was serious.

But on this second viewing Goldstein was not listening. He was looking. And now he saw what he had glimpsed so fleetingly. Maggie could see it too. A movement of the eye, still looking at the camera but no longer as if trying to meet the gaze of the unseen interviewer: he was, instead, looking into the audience. More than that, he seemed to be addressing someone specific.

The President should know I’m serious.

Goldstein hit pause once more, freezing Vic Forbes at the moment he lifted his eyes, the signal that he was speaking to an audience of one.

The President should know I’m serious. Deadly serious.

ELEVEN

Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 18.15

For the third time in two days, Maggie was in the White House Residence. ‘Maybe I should get myself sacked more often,’ she had said to Stuart. ‘It seems to be a good career move.’

This was an emergency meeting, called by the President. He wasn’t pacing this time; his exterior, at least, was calm and cool. He had chosen one of the wooden chairs, allowing him to stay upright even if everyone else would be forced to slump on a sofa.

Maggie looked around the room, five of them had been called here – Goldstein, her, Tara MacDonald, Doug Sanchez, and Larry Katzman, the pollster.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Baker said, steadily. ‘This is not a White House meeting, which is why we’re gathering in my home. You’ll notice my Chief of Staff is not here. This is a discussion among my campaign team. Old friends.’ He attempted a smile. ‘Some of you work in the White House. Some of you don’t.’

Maggie stared at her feet.

‘I need your advice,’ he went on. ‘This presidency is under sustained assault. We knew it would happen one day. But not as soon as this.’ He paused. ‘Stuart, remind us what we know.’

‘Thank you, Mr President.’ Stuart Goldstein cleared his throat and moved to the edge of the sofa he was on so that he could have a line of eye contact with everyone in the room.

He looked horribly uncomfortable. Maggie always felt for Stuart in casual situations. His body was not designed for it. He needed a suit and a hard chair, preferably on the other side of a desk. In casual clothes, or on a couch, he was lost.

‘Vic Forbes, from New Orleans, Louisiana, supplied MSNBC with two stories in the course of little more than a single news cycle. Both of these stories were calculated to cause maximum damage and both required deep investigative skills. Or inside knowledge.’

Maggie saw Tara MacDonald shift in her seat.

‘At the same time, he has made an indirect, but personal contact with the White House.’

Now both MacDonald and Sanchez sat to attention.

‘Last night someone posing as a friend of Katie Baker’s sent her a message via Facebook.’

There was a gasp.

Stuart went on. ‘This message effectively claimed responsibility for both the first MSNBC story and, in advance, the second. He said it would come in the morning and it did. He also made a very direct and personal threat against the President.’

There was a pause. All eyes were on Baker, who eventually spoke. ‘Tell them what he said, Stuart. His exact words.’

Goldstein cleared his throat. Maggie noticed that he looked nervous. Was that because he was not used to addressing a large group, like this one? No. As Maggie watched, a hint of colour appeared at the top of Goldstein’s cheeks, and she realized the source of his awkwardness. He was straying, however indirectly, into a wholly alien realm. Talking about Katie Baker and her friend Alexis, discussing live chat on Facebook, forced Stuart Goldstein – married to a fellow political consultant but without children – to enter the world of family life, of fathers and daughters, of vulnerable teenage girls, a world, in short, utterly remote from his own.

He began to read. ‘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.‘

Tara MacDonald gasped, suddenly looking like the mother of four that she was, an angry and protective matriarch, as she shook her head and muttered, ‘That poor child.’ In an instant the fury that had been brewing inside the White House ever since the psychiatrist story first broke had a focus: loathing for this man who had not only sought to derail the Baker presidency in its infancy but had dared to prey on a child.

Stuart continued. ‘Secret Service traced the communication to a house in Bethesda, Maryland. They raided the property. The computer was there, but not the person. Turns out the machine was a dumb terminal. Guy was operating it remotely. Eventually he was traced to New Orleans.’

‘So he’s the same guy? Forbes?’ Sanchez, his voice urgent, as if that was all he needed to get his coat on, head out and find the man himself.

‘Yep.’

There was a subtle movement in seats, as people braced themselves for the meat of the discussion: what do we do now?

Stuart held up a fleshy finger. ‘There’s one more thing. Agent Galfano did some extra probing, based on the computer IP address in New Orleans. She examined the data records of the so-called liberal blogger who so ingeniously hacked into MSNBC’s emails, thereby revealing their source.’

One step ahead as always, Tara MacDonald shook her head. ‘Don’t tell me. New Orleans.’

‘Yep. Forbes.’

Sanchez whistled in apparent admiration. ‘The guy outed himself.’

A noise like a door opening out on a snowstorm came through the room. Anyone hearing it for the first time would have been puzzled. But these veterans of eighteen months on the road together were used to the sound of Stuart Goldstein sighing. ‘Seems so,’ he said.

Sanchez crinkled his forehead, in a way that recalled the precociously bright teenager he had obviously been all of seven or eight years ago. ‘Why the fuck would he do that?’

Now Maggie spoke. ‘So that we’d listen to him.’ All heads turned to her, including, she noticed, the President’s. ‘He knew what we’d do. He knew we’d trace his message to Katie. He wanted to be certain that once we’d found him, we’d know he was for real. He wanted us to match him up to the MSNBC source.’

Stuart came in behind her. ‘First rule of blackmail. It’s not enough to have the goods. Your target has to know you’ve got the goods.’

Baker decided he had heard enough. ‘Thank you, Stuart. Everyone, that is the background to the decision we need to make this evening. Who wants to go first?’

Tara MacDonald didn’t wait for the customary polite silence. ‘I wanna be clear what exactly it is we’re talking about here? Are we discussing negotiating with a blackmailer?’

Neither Baker nor Goldstein said anything.

‘Because that’s a whole world of pain we’re entering if we go there. I mean, do we really think something like this could ever stay secret? I don’t mean whatever shit this guy’s holding, I mean the fact that we talked to him. Do we really think that’s going to stay underground? Uh-uh.’

Sanchez fiddled with his watch. ‘Doesn’t it depend a little on what we think the guy might have?’

Maggie felt the air suck out of the room. You had to admire the balls of the guy, the fearlessness of youth and all that. But there was only one person who could answer that question and you didn’t want to be the one to ask him.

There was, to everyone’s relief, a knock on the door. A butler, probably seventy years old. ‘Sir, I have an urgent note from the Press Office. For Mrs MacDonald.’

Baker beckoned the man forward; he walked in stiffly and presented the piece of paper to her. She pulled on the glasses that hung around her neck on a chain and read rapidly. Then she cleared her throat. ‘Forbes has just released a statement. Most networks are only quoting it in part, but apparently there’s a full version on Drudge. It reads as follows. “I want to make clear that the further information I hold on Stephen Baker does not relate to the way his campaign was funded nor to the state of his health.”’

Maggie realized she was holding her breath. So was everyone else. MacDonald kept reading.

‘“It’s about his past. An aspect of his past that I think will shock many Americans. An aspect of his past that the President has not shared with the nation. An aspect of his past he may not even have shared with his own family.”’

Maggie felt a new mood enter the room. It was a sensation she dimly recalled from her teenage years at home in Dublin. She could picture her younger self, sitting on the couch beside her sister Liz, cringing as a vaguely sexual scene appeared on the TV; her father getting up out of his chair, fumbling to change the channel. That was the sensation she could feel spreading over her and, surely, everyone else in this room: embarrassment. Sheer, hot-faced, look-away embarrassment.

What mortifying secret might the President have kept from his own wife? No one could bring themselves to look at him.

Maggie stole a glance at Stuart: he too was avoiding Baker’s gaze. But she could see that Stuart Goldstein’s embarrassment was already compounded by something that shook him much more: political panic.

How much more of this could this new presidency take? Here was a committed assassin, somehow armed with weapons-grade dirt, determined to destroy Baker. He had already landed two direct hits and now, it seemed, he was preparing for a third. Surely there would be a fourth. And a fifth. The confidence of Vic Forbes – swaggering even in this written statement – suggested he would not rest until he had finished the job. And Baker was no more.

Her voice dry, Tara spoke again. ‘There’s one last paragraph. “I do not plan on providing the full details today. I just wanted the American people to be aware that I have them. I wanted everyone following this story, especially those following it real close, to know I have them.”’

The gall of it was stunning. Vic Forbes was using a combination of live television and the internet to present a blackmail demand to the President of the United States.

Stuart did not let the silence linger. ‘Like I said, this is an attempt to destroy the President. Ideas for what we should do, people.’

Tara MacDonald spoke first. ‘I say we do a Letterman. We go to the police and then we go on TV. We expose Forbes for what he is, a cheap scumbag felon.’

Larry Katzman, the pollster, piped up. ‘I worry about that. Initial response can be positive, but there’s great volatility. Once you go public with something like this, it kind of gives people free rein—’

‘They can say what the hell they like about you,’ added Sanchez, clearly making the effort to substitute one four-letter word for the other he had in mind. ‘Makes it legitimate. Remember, David Letterman could only make his move because he fessed up to whatever the blackmailer had. Got in his retaliation first.’