To Kill the President

by Sam Bourne

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind, Mac?’ Bruton, still trying to regain the initiative.

  ‘You’re right. I ought to get this off my chest.’ He was back on the move again, pacing around his office. ‘You vant I tell you about mein childhood, ya? Maybe a little bit of psychoanalysis will feel therapeutic, ya?’

  ‘Mac. Please.’

  ‘Well, put it this way. I have what you might call Loyalty to the President Syndrome. Do you know what that is? No, I didn’t think so. But I got a real bad case. So I’m kind of obsessed with looking out for his best interests. And right now, he’s in a hospital bed in Virginia having endured an attempt on his life.’

  ‘We know that,’ Kassian said quietly.

  ‘And we know who did it.’ Bruton again, jumping into the gap. ‘Jorge Hernandez. He shot the President and killed himself straight afterwards.’

  McNamara nodded. ‘Yep. That’s right. Everyone’s seen the Facebook posts. And the threatening letters to the President. The crazy guy house. We’ve got the full Nutcracker Suite on this guy.’

  ‘And presumably the Secret Service had been on high alert because of all that,’ said Kassian. ‘Which is how the President came to be wearing body armour.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ McNamara said, back at his desk. Except now he paid no attention to the TV screen. He was looking only at them. ‘And that’s what the public is definitely going to believe. But I’m not talking about the public. I’m talking about me. And I’m talking about the President. What should we believe?’

  Kassian replied, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean that I have good reason to believe that poor Mr Hernandez – a terminally ill, lonely man with few friends and no family – was not such a lone wolf after all.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mac?’

  ‘What I’m saying, Jim, is that I think you and Bob here made Curious Jorge the fall guy for your own little plan.’ He raised his hand again. ‘Don’t play all innocent with me, gentlemen. You’ll only embarrass yourselves.’

  He shot a glance over at the TV, now showing – once again – a sequence of still photographs taken by police from the inside of Hernandez’s home. Inset was a mugshot. The caption read: Inside the Mind of an Assassin.

  ‘I gotta tell ya,’ McNamara smiled. ‘The news guys are killing themselves right now. This was meant to be their first day off since Christmas. One of them texted me: “We literally cannot get a break with you guys in the White House.”’

  Kassian did not smile. He was seeing the pit open up.

  ‘Anyway, here’s what we know. We know that you went to see the presidential physician on Monday night. And the next morning, that man was found dead.’

  Bruton was indignant. ‘Those two events are completely unrelated!’

  ‘If you say so, Mr Secretary. I’m just setting out what I know. Remember, I’m not a lawyer either.’ He smiled again. ‘We also know that an event was added late to the presidential schedule. You, Bob,’ pointing at him, ‘are one of the very few people with the power to do that. This event just so happened to be added on Wednesday morning, barely twenty-four hours after Dr Frankel “killed himself”.’ He made quote marks in the air. ‘Almost like Plan A didn’t work out, so you turned to Plan B.’

  ‘What on earth—’

  ‘Let me finish. And guess where this event is? It’s at a location essentially controlled by your department, Mr Secretary. Not difficult for you – for the two of you – to work out the guest list, the format, the staging, for that one. And, once you have, also not difficult for you to share the key details with your man with the gun, whoever that is. Am I right?’

  ‘I gotta tell you, my friend: you are sounding a little, you know, nutty.’ Bruton, still trying to keep it informal, light. ‘I mean, I know you made a lot of money out of these wacky conspiracy theories, but this is getting a little crazy. Like you’re drinking your own Kool-Aid. You don’t want to be doing that, not in this town. ’Cause people are pissing in the Kool-Aid all the time.’

  ‘OK. Maybe this is sounding like a bit of a stretch. And let’s not even think about the fact that a guy like that – desperate, broke, terminally ill – would be very easy to pay off for a job like this. You’d just have to promise to look after what little family he had once he was gone. Nice big veteran’s pension, that wouldn’t be too hard for – I don’t know – the Secretary of Defense to arrange, now would it? But let’s not even go there. No need to go there.

  ‘You wanna know why? OK, here goes. Minutes before the shot rings out, guess who’s dialling every number in this place – including mine – and leaving frantic messages? One Maggie Costello. Trusted, shit-hot, smart-as-a-whip servant of this White House and these United States. And guess what she says? You know what, you don’t have to guess. Here we go.’

  He made a few keystrokes on his computer and then the room filled with Maggie’s voice, panting and desperate: Mac, this is Maggie. I know this sounds crazy but I believe an attack is imminent. On the President. Any minute now. An assassination attempt. You’ve got to get him to pull out. Please.

  McNamara was smiling. ‘That message was left at 4.06pm today. That’s five minutes before a crazed vet – a maverick, rogue, lone individual crackpot – fires into the chest of the President. I mean, that’s something else, isn’t it?’

  Kassian could feel himself paling. He didn’t want to look at Bruton, worried that even a sideways glance would look like the gesture of a guilty man. But he sensed, somewhere in his peripheral vision, that the older man, his commanding officer, had swallowed hard.

  ‘And this is the thing, guys. We know that Costello was pursuing only one line of inquiry after Frankel’s death.’ McNamara paused, shifting his gaze from Kassian to Bruton and back again. He was enjoying this. ‘That’s right. The only people she was looking at were … you.’

  There was silence in the room. A hundred different sentences went through Kassian’s head – You’ve got no proof of anything; It’s all circumstantial; No one would believe a word of what you’ve said – but all of them sounded like an admission of guilt. So he said nothing.

  Now Bruton spoke, with the quiet calm that Kassian remembered from those days in the field, under desert skies, facing their own deaths. ‘Mac, you need to take a breath. Neither Bob nor I were anywhere near the Marines memorial yesterday. Law enforcement have the weapon. They have the prints. They have the ballistics. They have the full life history of this man Hernandez. If you try to suggest that we were guilty of this crime, people will think you’ve lost your mind. You won’t destroy us. You will destroy yourself.’

  McNamara was grinning now. ‘You finished? You have? Pity. I was enjoying that. You’re good at it. No wonder every liberal in this town wants to suck your dick. The acceptable face of an unacceptable administration. Who was that, Time?’

  ‘Newsweek.’

  ‘Newsweek. My mistake. But I can see the appeal. You’re smooth. Silky smooth. Smooth as the ass on those whores they say the boss likes to bang, you know, the young ones? Bob knows what I’m talking about. “Barely legal.” How old’s your daughter, Bob? The one at Sidwell Friends?’

  Kassian winced. ‘You’re being disgusting.’

  ‘Anyway. You’re real smooth, both of you. But bear in mind. I haven’t even spoken to Costello yet. I haven’t heard what it was she’d uncovered about you two that convinced her – correctly – that the President was about to get whacked. But whatever it was, if it was good enough to allow her to make a one hundred per cent accurate prediction about the future, then I’m damn sure it’ll be good enough to serve as the basis of an indictment.’

  ‘This isn’t the campaign, Mac.’ It was Kassian. ‘You can’t just lie through your teeth, and when the press call you on it, say, “They’re the liberal media, you can’t trust them.” This is the law. This is about the courts. They’re not into your post-truth bullshit.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that, Bob. Onc
e I’ve drained all that info out of Maggie Costello – once I have suckled on the breast of the Irish milkmaid – I’ll have plenty for the courts. You just watch.’ Now he was tapping away at his computer keyboard again. ‘And oh look. Here’s the answer to my legal quiz. So according to the United States Code, assassination of the President of the United States, when charged as murder in the first degree, brings with it a sentence of life imprisonment or death. But, it’s true, your little plan didn’t work out, so we’re talking about attempted murder, which would only mean twenty years in a federal prison.’ McNamara turned away from the screen and pretended to wipe the imaginary sweat from his brow. ‘Phew, right?

  ‘Ah, but hold on.’ He was back at the keyboard. ‘What’s this? Plotting to remove a president by force, especially when you’ve taken the oath, counts as an act of treason against the United States. Jeez. I mean, I bet that’s how public opinion would see it, don’t you think, once we got ’em all riled up? And the judges wouldn’t want to stand in the way of that, would they? Not when Fox and Breitbart and, you know, us are calling them “enemies of the people”. They won’t like that. So let’s see how treason works.’

  A few more keystrokes and then a look of mock concern. ‘Oh dear, guys. This doesn’t look so good. It seems that under Title Eighteen of the United States Code, section one hundred and fifteen, “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death.” I mean that is not good. Death.’ He extended his lips in an expression of distaste. ‘Nasty. And look, even if they don’t actually put you in the chair, or give you a lethal injection, or however it is they do it these days, it seems they can ruin your life anyway. You “shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined … and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States”.’

  He turned his chair to face them, the eyes in his bald head shining with intelligence and satisfaction. ‘And before you say the obvious – that you were acting out of “patriotism” and never consorted with any enemies of the United States or some other horseshit – just think for a moment about how this will look. That’s what matters here. Trust me, plotting to assassinate the President of the United States will look like treason to most Americans.’

  ‘You’re getting way ahead of yourself here, Mac. Way ahead of yourself.’

  ‘Am I, Jim? Am I? Because I disrespectfully disagree. I think it only looks that way to you because you are so far behind. I mean isn’t it painful to you, that feeling? To be so out of step with everyone else – not just here, in the White House, but in the country, in the world? Everything’s changing so fast and there’s you two – holdouts from the old era, the ancien regime, as they’d say in your Ivy League schools—’

  ‘You went to Yale and Harvard, Mac,’ Kassian said, but McNamara was too excited to listen.

  ‘—still insisting on the old ways of doing things, watching from the window in your white powdered wigs, looking aghast at the mob below through your opera glasses. You stand there from on high, whining about “norms” and “ethics” and “standards” and you might as well be talking about sundials and carrier pigeons. The world has moved on, my friends. It’s moved on and left you for dust. And the painful thing – the tragic thing – is that you don’t even realize it.

  ‘You still think it’s all about rules and facts and data and reason and science and all those things you built your lives and your careers on. But none of that matters any more. That world is gone.

  ‘And you know who gets it, don’t you? You know who got it before any of us, even though he’s older than both of you? Hell, he’s older than me. But he understands it. Not in here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘He doesn’t understand anything in there. Not really. He gets it here, in his guts. And he gets it here.’ McNamara pointed towards his groin. ‘In his balls. In his dick, that’s where he feels it. Just like all of them, out there.’ He gestured at the window, at the great America beyond. ‘That’s why it’s so crazy you ever worked for him in the first place. You’ve never understood him the way the folks out there understand him and the way he understands them. You never felt the thrill of it.

  ‘You never understood that this man says what you’d say if your mouth didn’t check with your brain first. He’s the bit of you that would say to your friend – “I really want to fuck your wife in the ass” – but doesn’t because it’s “not done”, it’s not right, it’s not politically correct. But guess what: he says it anyway. Black men: they’re scary, they commit crime and you’d rather not live next door to one. Hispanics: they’re lazy and they cheat. Jews: rich, cunning and you can’t trust them. Gays: what they do to each other is sick and unnatural and the idea of them “marrying” each other is a complete joke. Women between the ages of sixteen and seventy: you’d fuck most of ’em, in the right light, and the ones you wouldn’t, you’d rather not hear another word out of their fat, ugly mouths, thank you very much. Scratch that: women between the ages of thirteen and seventy-five. Gotta make room for Jane Fonda and those cute little twins from America’s Got Talent. Wouldn’t want to miss them out.

  ‘Are you hearing me yet? Are you beginning to understand? The President is every white man in America with the filter taken off. Maybe not you guys, but the rest of us. And that’s why they voted for him. Because he’s who they would be, if they could get away with it. He makes billions, pays no tax, never pays his bills, dumps his wives as soon as they sag even a teeny bit and marries a younger model – literally! – he insults everyone who gets in his way, says whatever he damn well likes and he only gets richer and stronger.

  ‘Gentlemen, don’t you see? He’s our national id, unbound and unleashed. He’s the toddler within every one of us, allowed to run free. “I want to eat that, I want to hit that, I want to fuck that, I want to own that. I want, I want, I want.” And you know what? Everything he wants, wants, wants he gets, gets, gets. It’s beautiful.

  ‘So of course, they voted for him. He’s like a fantasy. He’s a dream come true. He’s like America when it started, when white dudes could ride around this country on horseback, shooting Indians and screwing the squaws, taking whatever land they liked and dragging along some negro on the end of a rope to do the dirty work. I mean, who wouldn’t want that, if they could get away with it? It’s what we were raised on, boys like me, when we went to the movies on Saturday mornings. Cowboys weren’t gay or “Latino” or female or gender-fucking-fluid. They were white and they were male and they were on top. That was their destiny. And now, after all these years, along comes this guy and he says, “Damn right. That’s how it should be. And that’s how it will be again. I’m gonna give you your job back and give you your self-respect back and I’m gonna put you back where you belong – back on top.”’ McNamara began crooning: ‘A-number-one, top of the heap, king of the hill.

  ‘Top of the heap, guys. Where you can look down on everyone who was always meant to be below you. Starting with the women and the blacks and the gays and “the Latino community” and “the disabled community” and all the others who’ve been whining so long they’ve made you apologize simply for getting up in the morning and being a straight white guy. Well, fuck that. No more apologizing. We’re back where we belong.”’ McNamara’s eyes were burning and the veins in his neck were throbbing.

  ‘That’s his message. And I don’t think you guys even heard it. You’ve listened to all the nannies and the mommies telling you to behave, to listen to all sides, to remember to be “inclusive”, to respect “diversity” and all that other crap, for so long that you couldn’t even pick up the signal. It was like you were there in the field, twiddling the dial and you weren’t even on the right wavelength. Imagine that. A pair of military men too. So filled with Geneva Conventions and human rights and UN Declarations and all the rest that your dicks have shrunk into little acorns. What once were mighty oaks! God help
us.

  ‘But the folks, out there. They heard it. Loud and clear. They understood what he was saying. And they loved it so much, they made him President. And it was them, Mr Secretary and Mr Chief of Staff, you betrayed with your conspiracy to murder the man they voted for. Sure, treason is defined as an act against the United States, rather than the President, but those people decided to make this man – this man you despise – the embodiment of the United States for four years. He’s the head of government and the head of state. And you wanted to kill him. You are guilty as charged. You are traitors – and you should pay with your lives.’

  The silence that followed seemed to vibrate and hum, the way your ears ring after a loud concert. Bruton felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus; the wind seemed to have escaped him. He had kept up his guard for most of the time McNamara had been speaking, a sceptical smile playing at the edges of his mouth, as if he was amused and bewildered by McNamara’s performance rather than alarmed by it. But in the closing stretch something closer to fear seemed to have infected him, spreading through his bloodstream.

  Kassian understood. He felt it too. He had begun to glimpse the outline of the mountain that stood before them, a silhouette in the darkness and a daunting one. He tried to regroup, to strip away the rhetoric, the compelling persuasive power of what McNamara was saying and to focus. But he was struggling. Because he feared that on one point, if on no other, this wild-eyed man might well be right.

  43

  The White House, Friday, 8.24pm

  The Chief of Staff could see how it might play out. The facts and the evidence were surely with him and Bruton; there was not enough concrete proof to make a legal case against them. The pair of them had been careful, meticulously so, to ensure that there would not be. Garcia would take his secrets to the grave. He was trained in discretion. And his loyalty was total.