To Kill the President

by Sam Bourne

  So Maggie hurried herself past that instinct and forced herself instead to examine the content, to pay attention to what this man was actually saying and to take it seriously.

  Many say we can do nothing about terror. They are WRONG!!!!

  Terror. That was the key word. They were going to spin this as a terrorist attack. Not as the deranged act of a single, damaged man but as the work of a sinister enemy. Oh and here was a follow-up, tweeted a minute later.

  An attack on the President is an attack on the United States! THIS WILL NOT STAND!!

  And then another:

  We will be holding a major news conference to discuss the ACTION we will take against America’s enemies, at home and abroad!

  Now she saw it, and it was as if the sky had instantly darkened. McNamara always said it: never let a good crisis go to waste. And he wasn’t going to waste this one. Instead, he was going to jujitsu it, turning this attack to his advantage. God only knew what he had in mind. Would he try to pretend that Hernandez was secretly working for the North Koreans? The very idea was absurd, laughable and lacking all evidence – which meant, yes, he might very well try that.

  Or would the President use it to ramp up his war on migrants? He and McNamara would like nothing more than some bogus security pretext to accelerate the deportations. Naturally, it would make no sense: Hernandez was not an illegal immigrant but a US citizen, born in the US. But that wouldn’t stop them. They would twist the logic to show that the attempt on the President’s life demonstrated exactly why they had to widen the net to include native-born Americans like Hernandez. She could imagine the words McNamara would draft for his boss. Somehow foreign enemies have exploited our generosity – and our welcome – by breeding a new generation of terrorists right here, in our neighbourhoods, in our towns and in our communities. This new generation may look and sound like Americans on the outside, but they carry evil intent in their hearts …

  Or Muslims. The ban could always be contracted or expanded in scope. She remembered the text exchange between McNamara and Richard. I almost want to do the whole yellow star thing – yellow crescents, anyone? – just to see them pee their pants. Didn’t you say the boss was up for it?

  The thought made her heart sink. How many Muslims were there in America? A little over three million? No more than one per cent of the population, give or take. Yet McNamara had managed to terrify his party’s base into believing that Muslims posed an existential threat to the country, every last one of them concealing a suicide vest beneath their clothes, if not an ancient scimitar, ready to be pulled out at any moment to slice the head off an unsuspecting infidel.

  Maggie was not naïve: she knew that jihadist terror was real. She had been at the last president’s side as he dealt with it. But that threat had consisted of a few thousand hardcore fanatics at the very most, not an entire community of millions. To turn on all of them, to make every Muslim child, every Muslim grandmother, an enemy – this was madness. And dangerous madness. Surely the world had seen where that kind of hate led. Surely Americans didn’t need to learn that lesson all over again?

  Now she wondered: did the President even believe all this anti-Muslim hate himself? Did McNamara? Or was it just convenient for them to make Muslims a whipping boy whose beating could serve as a handy distraction while the White House got on with stealing people’s most basic freedoms? It could be conviction or it could be cynicism. What was unnerving was that she couldn’t tell which was worse.

  She thought again of the message she had seen on that glowing screen in the dead of night: yellow crescents, anyone?

  To think those words had been written by her own lover of the last few months. It felt as if everything around her, everything she touched, was mysterious and confusing and Richard was no different. She had called him in that moment of desperation, just minutes before the President was shot, and the truth was, she had been glad to hear his voice. But that exchange of messages between him and McNamara. Beside the insult to her, what on earth did it say about him? How deep was he in with these people?

  She looked around the apartment which they had never formally shared but which had been their … safe harbour. Or at least that was how it had felt. She’d been wrong, of course, but at the time it seemed this was their place of retreat from the lunacies of the new administration. After another insane day at the office, they’d flee to these rooms to vent, to trade atrocities (as they called them), to laugh at the maniacs they now worked for. And to console each other through touch, through smell, through their skin and their fingertips and their tongues. Here they came to hold each other and to make urgent, necessary love.

  Though love was the wrong word. For him, even lust might be stretching it. He might not have felt even that. It might only have ever been a task for him, an instruction from Crawford McNamara that had to be followed. His prime purpose had doubtless been the acquisition of information – and Maggie had provided it. She had told him about Kassian and Bruton’s late-night conversation with Frankel and he had surely passed on that vital nugget to his handler, his pimp: McNamara.

  She felt angry at both of them, of course. But it was nothing next to the fury she directed at herself. She was not a child any more. How could she have been so pitifully naïve? She who, in her professional life, was meant to be a good judge of character, a shrewd reader of situations. She thought back to the moments she and Richard had shared together – the long January walk down the Mall in the snow, the visit to Mount Vernon at the first breath of spring, the long Saturday night that had turned into Sunday morning, both of them too full of desire to sleep.

  Or maybe he had been faking the whole thing, even the sex. Maybe it had only ever been an acting job for him: every touch, every endearment no more than a stage direction. Those moments when his eyes had been on fire with what she thought was appetite for her, perhaps he had merely been excited at some new confidence she had accidentally let slip. Maybe his biggest thrill of the night came when she looked the other way and he could finally pull out his phone and report back to McNamara.

  And to think of the disdain he must have felt when she confessed her fears about this presidency. She thought she was sharing her deepest anxiety with a kindred spirit; but he saw her as nothing more than a whining ‘libtard’, a bleeding-heart lover of blacks and Jews and Muslims and all the people he hated. She shuddered again.

  Now, she looked at her own phone. The voice she wanted to hear belonged to Stuart Goldstein, an adult who would calm her nerves and force her to weigh the evidence and think things through. She thought about it, about making contact, and kept the phone in her hand, staring at the screen for a few seconds, barely noticing that, after a broken, restless night, her eyelids were sinking lower and that she was drifting into an exhausted, shell-shocked sleep.

  Maggie woke with a start some twenty minutes later. It took her a while to understand that the buzzing noise that had inserted itself into her dream was, in fact, coming from downstairs. She got herself up and to the intercom, but there was silence. No one there.

  A second later, three firm knocks on the door. She looked through the spyhole: Richard. Maybe it was the sleepiness, but for a moment she genuinely wondered if he or McNamara or both of them had somehow hacked into her head, if it was her earlier thought of Richard that had summoned him here. She opened the door.

  ‘Well, it’s all kicking off at Sixteen Hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,’ he said, speaking as he walked in. The words were the same he might have used on any visit over the last few months. But the voice was different. As cold and flat as steel.

  ‘I can imagine,’ Maggie said, holding back.

  ‘No, Maggie. I’m not sure you can imagine. I’m not sure you have the faintest idea.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of what you’ve unleashed.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. You, my love.’

  Richard threw off his jacket – linen, cobalt blue, one that would have been very fashionable fi
ve years earlier and therefore counted as achingly on-trend in Washington – and took his regular place on the sofa. He rolled up the sleeves of his white, cotton shirt. The sight of his forearms sent a familiar erotic pulse through Maggie’s nervous system, dispatched before her conscious brain had a chance to send it back. She wondered if he’d run here.

  Still standing, still near the front door, she watched him and then said quietly, ‘What’s happened, Richard?’

  ‘Well – with thanks to you,’ a phrase he punctuated with a nod of his head, ‘Mac’s made his move on Kassian and Bruton. You should have heard him describe it. He was magnificent. Turned them over like a pair of Texas steaks.’

  Christ, Maggie thought. Now he was even talking like McNamara. ‘Turned them over? For what?’

  ‘For plotting to kill the President, of course.’

  ‘But, I don’t—’

  ‘We don’t even need to think about them any more. Put a fork in them: they’re done.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Treason. High crimes and misdemeanours. Attempted assassination. One of them. All of them.’ He was grinning. ‘I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.’

  ‘But this makes no sense. What possible evidence is there against them?’

  ‘You.’ Richard smiled. ‘You, Maggie. You’re the evidence.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You were looking into those two, investigating them, convinced that they were planning to kill the President. And guess what? Someone tried to kill the President. QED.’

  ‘That’s not proof! That’s—’

  ‘What? A coincidence? Come on, Maggie. You called me, and God knows who else, saying “It’s about to happen! Any minute now!” And you were right, Maggie. It did happen, right on cue.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean—’

  ‘Enjoy it, Maggie. For once in your life, just enjoy it. In this town, that’s the greatest success anybody can ever have. “Correctly forecasted the future.” People kill to have that on their résumé.’

  ‘But I didn’t say it was Kassian and Bruton who were behind it.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d go in and see McNamara and demand a promotion. You could go back on the NSC. Do foreign policy, maybe the Middle—’

  ‘I didn’t say it was Kassian and Bruton. I never mentioned them.’

  ‘Who cares? You said an assassination attempt was imminent. That’s what—’

  ‘No, Richard. You said, specifically, that I was the evidence against Kassian and Bruton. But I never mentioned them to anybody.’

  A look of calculation, like a thousand tiny wheels turning, passed across his face. ‘Well, you told me that’s who you were looking at. Right here, in this apartment.’

  ‘No, I told you I was looking at them in connection with Jeffrey Frankel. Because of the meeting they’d had with him the night before his death.’

  She stared at Richard. She heard his lips make a tiny clicking sound; his mouth was drying. ‘So that must have been it,’ he said. ‘You were suspicious of them and then you were talking about an assassination, so McNamara must have put two and two together.’

  ‘No, Richard.’ Her voice was rising, getting louder as she began to see the outline of what had happened. ‘No, no, no, no. That doesn’t add up. Not at all. I mentioned the Frankel thing to you, but not to McNamara. And the first time I so much as breathed a word about assassination to a living soul was when I made those phone calls – including to you – minutes before the President was shot. And yet, by some kind of fucking miracle, everyone was prepared for it. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, for Christ’s sake. They knew it was coming.’

  ‘Now you’re getting hysterical. It’s not—’

  She stepped forward, so that she was close enough to point a finger in his face. ‘Don’t you dare call me hysterical, you misogynist bastard.’ Her Irish accent was gaining strength. ‘I am thinking perfectly clearly, thank you very much. And here’s what I’m thinking right now. That the only way they could possibly have known of my suspicions regarding Bob Kassian and Jim Bruton would be if you had told them. You’re the only one I told.’

  ‘Maggie, please. Listen, the whole—’

  ‘No, you listen. You didn’t just give them that little morsel, did you? No, no, that wouldn’t have been enough. Because someone had to have been listening to my phone calls, or hacking my messages or something for McNamara to know what I was onto. That’s the only way they could have—’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean, you two-faced fucking snake.’

  ‘Maggie! What the hell is—’

  ‘I think you hacked into my computer or my phone or something – and handed over every last piece of information to your pathetic little locker-room buddy, Crawford McNamara.’ A thought struck her. ‘Jesus, that’s how they knew about Liz’s boiler. You told them, didn’t you? You told them. They were children, you evil bastard. They could have been killed.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with that.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. They hacked into my sister’s heating system and nearly—’

  ‘Hacked? Did you say, hacked? First, I didn’t even have to hack you, Maggie. You left it all on a fucking notepad. You wrote it down in black and white: Kassian, Bruton, assassination, the whole deal.’

  Now she remembered it. Those jottings in the middle of the night, left by her bedside. She’d been so shaken by what followed, she’d forgotten they were ever there.

  Richard was not letting up. ‘And you talking to me about hacking phones? That’s rich. I mean you’re the world authority on hacking, aren’t you, Maggie?’

  Maggie hesitated. Now Richard was facing her, pushing his chest forward, intruding into her space.

  ‘Eh? I can’t hear you, Mags. Cat got that silver Irish tongue of yours? Or you lost for words because you don’t want to admit that, while I slept in your bed, you broke into my phone? Had a good rummage in my Notes file, didn’t you? So that when I checked it the next morning, that document was suddenly top of the pile. “Last opened: 5.33am”. Which was when I was sound asleep. Bit fucking obvious, Maggie.’

  ‘Don’t even think about claiming the moral high ground, Richard Parris. The things you said to that man. About me. About us.’

  ‘Oh, save me the convent school bullshit, Maggie. You’ve been around this place long enough to know how it works. And if you don’t, you damn well should by now.’

  ‘Go on, Richard. Tell me how it works. Enlighten me.’

  ‘You don’t want me to do that, Maggie.’

  ‘No, Richard. I really do.’ She folded her arms and stood across from him, waiting.

  ‘All right, Maggie.’ He took a step back. ‘The only thing people want around here is power. That’s right. Not love. Not friendship. Not “making the world a better place”. Power. That’s what I want, that’s what Mac wants and that – though you’re never big enough to admit it – is what you want.’

  ‘Oh, don’t—’

  ‘Your sister’s right, Maggie. You’re always standing there on your pedestal, with your halo, your résumé packed with good works in Africa and the fucking Middle East, but look at you. You’re still here. In Washington, DC. Clinging onto your precious job in the White House because even the smell of it gets you hot: power. You can’t let go of it.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Freud. I really—’

  ‘And the way you get power is the same as everyone else. Information. That’s the currency. So sure, I took a picture of your notepad while you were in the shower, just like I kept an eye on your texts and emails when I could. I was keeping McNamara in the loop. I’ve been doing it since we started sleeping together. But, newsflash: you did exactly the fucking same. You’re no better than me. You’re no better than any of us.’

  Maggie spoke quietly. ‘Actually, Richard, I think there’s a very big difference. I was investigating the killing of an innocent man. Dr Jeffrey Frankel
was killed because he got in someone’s way.’

  ‘The someone being Bob Kassian and Jim Bruton.’

  ‘Maybe. When you read my messages and emails, that’s all you saw. Me doing my job. But what I saw you say to McNamara: I mean, Jesus, Richard. The way you talked about women. About Muslims. I couldn’t believe—’

  ‘Welcome to the twenty-first century, Maggie. You need to keep up.’

  ‘You say that because he talks like that. The President. But he’s the only one who can get away with it. The big charismatic TV star. God knows how it’s happened, but it has: different rules apply to him. But McNamara? You? If that stuff ever got out, can you imagine? McNamara would be finished. He’d be too toxic, even for this place. And as for a little Nazi lowlife like you, you’d be done. Like a Texas steak.’

  Richard’s handsome features curled into an expression she hadn’t seen before, a snarl of pure loathing. ‘You bitch,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’ He took a half pace back and pulled himself up to his full height. ‘Because I know, Maggie my love, that we will always protect each other.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’ Richard sighed. ‘Do you want me to spell it out to you? Maggie’s dirty little secret.’

  She felt herself pale.

  ‘Oh, don’t look so alarmed, darling. Your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘Richard.’

  ‘I mean it. You will never tell anyone what you saw on my phone the other night because you know that, if you did, I would only have to pick up the phone to … who should it be? The Times? The Post? Who would hate you most? NPR? MSNBC? Maybe the Guardian. Or Mother Jones. They’d all run it very big. “Revealed: The Woman who—”’

  ‘You’d have no proof.’

  ‘But I know you, Maggie. You wouldn’t deny it. Because it’s the truth. And St Margaret of Costello is the last person left in Washington who still believes in telling the truth.’ He raised his fingers in the three-fingered salute of the devoted girl Scout. ‘Bless.’