Читать книгу To Kill the President: The most explosive thriller of the year - Sam Bourne - Страница 9

Washington, DC, Monday, 7.02pm

Maggie was home at seven pm. Unheard of, at least under the previous president. Back then, Maggie regarded eighteen-hour days as the norm. That felt a long time ago.

Ideally, she wanted to flop into bed, pull the duvet over her head and not come out for a week. Pathetic, she knew, to have her priorities so out of whack. So right, she said to herself, when your main problem was that the free world was led by a bigoted sociopath – let alone one you worked for – that was somehow bearable. But seeing your boyfriend smile at another woman, suddenly that is too much? What kind of person are you, Maggie Costello?

This was not a new question. She was used to interrogating herself this way and almost always in these circumstances. ‘Boyfriend trouble’, as Eleanor at work put it, making Maggie feel fifteen years old. ‘Heartache’ had been her mother’s preferred term.

The consensus among her friends – and family – was that Maggie was a bad picker, that she chose men who were either absurdly unsuitable or transparently unavailable. There had certainly been several in that first category. She thought fleetingly of Edward, her first Washington boyfriend and a certifiable control freak. How funny: they had lived together, yet now she hardly thought of him.

There were a few in the second category too: relationships doomed from the start. She thought back to her much younger self, working for an NGO in the Congo, part of a team charged with brokering a ceasefire. She had become involved with a leader of one of the armed factions, hopelessly compromising her status as a mediator. That mistake had cost her dear. The affair had been charged and intense, of course, but it was obvious now – and surely obvious then – that it could never have worked.

But then she thought of Uri, the man she had met in Jerusalem, who had followed her here. Nothing unsuitable about him. He was gorgeous, clever, loving. And he had been available too. He had wanted to settle down, to have a family. It had been Maggie who had been unavailable, too restless to fix on one place or one person. It had been Maggie who had said no. Just bad timing with that one, she told herself.

She had made it to the bed when the phone rang. Shit. She had told Richard to meet her back here for Chinese. What if that was him? She didn’t want to see him, but she was pleased he wanted to come. Or maybe not. She had no idea.

She looked down at her phone. Not Richard. But her sister.

‘Hi, Liz.’

There was a pause and then, ‘Oh, Maggie.’

‘What? What is it? Has something happened to the kids? Are they OK?’

‘Yes,’ her sister sniffed. ‘They’re fine. It’s not them.’

Truth be told, Maggie was not yet used to having her sister phone like this. Not used to her being in the same timezone. But Liz’s husband had been offered a job in Atlanta two years ago and so they’d left Dublin. ‘Now that Ma’s gone,’ Liz had said, ‘it makes sense, don’t you think?’ Maggie had agreed of course, but she wasn’t convinced. Having the Atlantic Ocean between her and her closest relatives had worked pretty well until now: why mess with a winning formula?

‘So what is it? Is it you? Are you ill?’

‘No. Nothing like that. Do you remember I told you about that girl in my class?’

‘Which one?’ Maggie had moved to the kitchen, where she was opening and closing cupboard doors, looking for a serviceable bottle of whisky. She didn’t want any of that hipster shite Richard claimed to like.

‘Mia.’

‘The one who was raped?’

‘Yes. Really lovely girl. Quiet, but smart. Thoughtful.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, she got pregnant.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yes. And she wanted an abortion. She thought about it. She had counselling. And she was, like, “There is no way I can have this baby.”’

‘Course.’

‘But guess what? Thanks to the Supreme fucking Court, there is no way within six hundred miles of here that she could get an abortion.’

‘Oh no.’ Maggie found a bottle of Laphroaig behind the tins of peeled tomatoes, several of them with pre 9/11 use-by dates. She poured herself a glass.

‘No exceptions, remember? Not even for rape or incest. Maybe for “life of the mother”. She’s been getting counselling, seeing doctors, trying to establish that her life is in danger.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘And she just can’t find two doctors who will agree to say it, to say her life is in danger.’

‘Why? How difficult can—’

‘I was pleading with the principal, saying we have to do something. I went to the police. No one would listen. And Mia’s saying, “I can feel this thing growing inside me. Because of him. I can’t bear it, Miss Costello. I can’t bear it.”’

Maggie felt the dread rising. She knocked back the glass. And poured herself another. ‘Go on.’

‘I made a plan. I thought, I’m going to raise the money and put her on a plane to Canada. Or maybe Cuba or something. But I’ll get her out of here and we’ll do it. I was going to see her parents tonight, to arrange it.’

‘What happened?’

At that, her younger sister let out the most awful howl. And then there was an explosion of snot and tears. Maggie knew. But she waited for her sister to say the words.

‘This morning. She wasn’t in school.’ More sobbing. ‘And I was worried. I had this feeling, you know?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then this afternoon …’ Liz was struggling to get the words out. ‘This afternoon, after school, Mia’s sister went home. And she’s only twelve, this girl. She gets home. And she finds … she finds …’

Maggie waited in dread for the inevitable.

‘… her hanging there. Her own sister.’

And there it was. Maggie felt her gut contract. ‘Oh, Liz, I’m so sorry. That’s so terrible.’

‘I can’t believe it, Mags. It’s so cruel.’

‘It is.’

‘I mean what is wrong with this country? It’s so fucked up.’ Liz blew her nose and regrouped. ‘Because of a decision by one vote on the Supreme fucking Court, a beautiful, bright, kind girl is dead. Dead.’

Maggie knew what was coming.

‘And how did that one vote get there? Eh, Maggie? How did it get there?’

‘I know.’

‘It got there because this President put it there, didn’t he, appointing that medieval bastard to be a Supreme Court judge. That’s how.’

‘Liz—’

‘I cannot believe you work for that evil man, Maggie. I just cannot believe it.’

‘It’s not as simple—’

‘My own sister! My own, high-and-mighty, save-the-world, help-the poor, end-all-the-wars sister, Saint fucking Maggie Costello is actually working for this man. Serving this evil man.’

‘It’s not like I—’

‘I don’t want to hear it, Maggie. Mia is dead and you’re helping the man who killed her. End of.’

And with that the line went dead. Maggie, who had been standing throughout, slumped into a chair. Not for the first time she reflected that the bitterest arguments come when you know you’re wrong and your opponent’s right. And, right on cue, the hard knot of guilt tightened inside her – becoming harder than Liz could possibly have imagined.

Before it had time to break the surface, there was a buzz from downstairs. Richard.

Until Liz called, Maggie had told herself she wanted to be alone. Now, though, the idea of a diversion appealed. And, without admitting it to herself, she welcomed the opportunity to balance the scales: she knew Richard would insist that what she was doing was no crime, that there was right on her side too. She did not believe it, not really. But it would be good to hear it.

She answered the door and, to her own surprise, Maggie did not let him speak, kissing him long and deep instead. He was taller than she was, with a head of thick, dark hair, cut in a retro style that meant he could have passed for a 1940s movie star. He’d recently shaved off the beard, which Maggie regretted – she thought it made him look French and intellectual – as an act of deference to the new regime. Richard said he’d heard the President regarded men with facial hair as ‘unreliable’.

He responded to her kiss, dropping his bag to the floor. He pushed her backwards, towards the bedroom. Taking the lead, she unbuckled his belt and pulled off his clothes, enjoying the sight and touch and taste of his skin. She wanted to devour as much of him as she could take. Her need was hungry. And urgent.

They didn’t really start talking till long after nine, arranged on the sofa, both of them wearing a loose combination of underwear, sweatpants and pyjamas, with assorted cartons of Chinese takeout on the table in front of them. It was raining softly outside, the TV was on. It felt cosy.

Maggie told him about her phone call with Liz. He nodded sympathetically while she was telling the story, then held her when she reached the end. For a while they stayed like that, in silence.

After a while, they traded the odd nugget of workplace gossip. He’d heard there’d been some tantrum in the middle of the night: the speculation in the office was that the President and the First Lady had had another screaming match. She was hardly ever around; the staff called her ‘the invisible woman’. But that didn’t stop her and the President having the most vicious fight on the phone. According to Richard, last night’s had reached a whole new level. ‘It was full-on nuclear,’ he said.

Maggie listened, but her heart was not fully in it. Professional duty meant she had to hold back. She could not discuss the material she had glimpsed that day, supplied to her by Crawford McNamara’s assistant. What he had called ‘bimbo eruptions’ amounted to a pattern of behaviour by the President that would have had lesser men disciplined for sexual harassment or charged with sexual assault. A cleaner in the Residence had complained to her manager that the President had manoeuvred her into a guest bathroom and groped her between the legs. The manager had spelled out to the cleaner – no doubt at length and in detail – the seriousness of such a charge and the dire consequences if her allegation turned out to be false. Unsurprisingly, the woman had declined to take the matter any further.

Physically less intrusive, but actually more shocking, was the very discreet note that had been sent by the Dutch embassy and passed on to the White House via the State Department. It said the government of the Netherlands would not be making any formal complaint at this stage, but it wished it to be noted that the ambassador believed the President had kissed her inappropriately at a recent diplomatic reception, causing her humiliation and distress. It said that several witnesses had been present who would be willing to verify her version of events, so that it would be ‘wise to accept her complaint in good grace and to ensure nothing like it happened again’.

Maggie had been astonished by the sheer cheek of it. She could imagine the reaction of her old mentor, Stuart Goldstein. The chutzpah of the man is beyond belief, he’d have said. To do such a thing not just with a domestic servant, whose word he could brutally dismiss – such were the realities of Washington’s society – but with a foreign ambassador, and with people watching!

What made this worse was that even if this incident were to be made public, there was no guarantee it would inflict that much damage on him, still less destroy his presidency. Revelations about his conduct just as damning had emerged during the campaign. People like Maggie had made the mistake then of thinking they would be terminal to his candidacy. They had proved to be nothing of the sort. So why would this be any different? She suspected the Dutch knew as much, and that was one reason why they had kept their objection muted.

So she held back, listening to Richard’s chatter, chipping in now and then, the two of them talking about nothing, tiptoeing around both of the big subjects on Maggie’s mind.

Eventually, as relaxed as she could manage it, Maggie said, ‘Did I see you come out of the Oval today? Big step up.’

‘It’s true. Second best thing to happen to me today.’ He stroked her thigh, held her gaze. She felt her face grow hot. Had she misinterpreted what she had seen? It wouldn’t be the first time.

‘How come?’

‘Frank’s not around. They needed someone from Commerce liaison to sit in.’

‘To sit in on what?’

‘Come on, Mags. Ground rules, remember. Chinese wall. Even here.’

Maggie picked at a stray noodle on her plate. ‘You mean, you discussed something that may be of interest to the White House legal office? Should I be alerting the ethics team?’

‘Maggie!’

And then, as relaxed and as offhand as she could, ‘I saw the daughter was also there.’

‘Yeah, she sort of dropped by.’

‘Oh, was she not there for the whole meeting?’

‘You know, I can’t remember, honestly.’ Maggie watched Richard’s throat, always a giveaway.

He swallowed.

‘Well, she was either there at the start or she wasn’t.’

‘Is this an interview? Should you be reading me my rights?’

‘Sorry.’ Maggie got up to get water from the kitchen. She shouted from there, her tone striving for nonchalance. ‘So what’s she like then?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who. You seemed kind of friendly.’

‘Well, it’s like everyone says. She’s very charming.’

‘Très charmante.’

‘Exactly.’

Maggie resumed her place on the couch. She wanted to ask what the two of them had been looking at on their phones, but restrained herself. She didn’t want to sound like a stalker. ‘Attractive, too.’

He smiled, leaned over and began tickling Maggie’s sides. Then he kissed her. ‘Maggie Costello, I do believe you’re jealous.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ Maggie laughed. ‘Nothing of the sort. The very idea …’

‘You sure?’ he said, reaching for the remote.

‘I’m sure. If only because the last thing in the world I’d want is to have that man as my father.’

‘Are we back on that again?’

‘Did I tell you what McNamara asked me to do today?’

‘Hold on.’ Richard had tuned to CNN. Above a ‘Breaking News’ caption was a live shot of protesters in Florida, clashing with men in uniform. He turned up the volume.

… escalated in the last hour or so. As you know, Kelly, officers of the new United States Deportation Force have been deployed across the state, part of the first phase of rounding up undocumented migrants. The USDF have come here in very big numbers and they’re armed. But as you can see, they’re meeting stiff resistance. Locals here in Miami have formed a human chain, insisting that they will not let the USDF pass. But you can see around me, Kelly, the officers are wielding nightsticks and they’re – hold on, whoa – they’re beating two men right in front of me. Press! We’re press! I’m sorry, Kelly, I don’t know if you can still hear me. Dave, our cameraman, is down. I’m just gonna keep … We’re press! CNN!… The USDF men are charging into this crowd now. They seem to be smashing the heads of anyone and everyone in their way. People are screaming and running and trying to get away. There are children here, Kelly …

Richard turned the TV off.

They were silent for a while until Maggie said, ‘“I cannot believe you work for that evil man.” That’s what Liz said.’

‘Look,’ Richard replied. ‘We’ve been over this. We can either be like everyone else in this country, sitting on the sofa, watching the news and doing nothing. Or we can stay where we are right now. On the inside. Where we can make a difference.’

She had clung to that line, parroting it to herself for months. She felt it more keenly than anyone could possibly know. She of all people needed it to be true. How else was she to make amends?

‘But what difference are we actually making, Richard? I mean, look.’

She grabbed the remote and turned the TV back on. It looked like a full-blown riot. A few of the protesters had started burning tyres. In the corner of the screen, she could see a USDF officer clubbing a man who lay unmoving on the ground.

Maggie stood up. ‘This is not right, Richard. Something’s going to crack, very soon. I can feel it.’