Presidents' Day

by Seth Margolis

  Julian noted with some frustration that Lightstone’s pitch-perfect enunciation of Laurent Boymond—“Lore-unh Bouy-monh” made him sound effete and out of touch, while Fortune’s fastidious pronunciation of the two Latin American countries made him sound like a man of the people. So much about Lightstone was just plain wrong, and yet he had seemed, and still seemed, like the best bet. The senator had a lot of work to do to educate the country about a place that few Americans had ever heard of. And he’d have to find a way to get the senator more animated about the topic. If Lightstone couldn’t get excited about the plight of Kamalian dissidents, how would the general population?

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 25

  Chapter 20

  There were nearly four million people in Kamalia, half of them in Villeneuve, the capital. But as Sophie DuVal navigated the narrow streets on the outskirts of the city toward the house of Rémy Manselle, she worried that she might be recognized, even behind the dusty windows of her Renault, even with a black silk scarf tied around her head. Kamalia was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business. In New York City, where she’d lived for five years, anonymity was easily acquired, even during her modeling days, when her image had appeared on innumerable magazine covers, even for a black woman who moved in largely white circles. In Kamalia she blended in more readily, a tall black woman in a country of tall black people, yet she felt watched at every turn. She’d grown accustomed to attracting attention from the years with Matthew—whites always stood out in Kamalia, but a white man and a black woman together might as well have had a spotlight trained on them. Even with Matthew gone she felt watched. There was a pervasive watchfulness about Kamalians—the result, she suspected, of centuries of tribal warfare, seventy-five years of colonial rule, a brief period of democratic self-government, and then the current regime. The person passing you in the street might be just a neighbor or visitor, he might be a spy of Le Père, or he might be an important person in the next regime, whenever that arrived. In Kamalia, paranoia was a survival mechanism.

  Rémy Manselle lived in one of the poorest parts of Villeneuve, which was saying something. Stucco houses lined the unpaved roads; though very small and only one story high, they looked in danger of collapsing. Shutters were closed against the midday sun, adding a deeper shade of gloom to the neighborhood. Rémy’s house was no better or worse than its neighbors, but it had one amenity, a rare one, that made it a perfect place for Sophie’s mission: a garage. As arranged, the garage door was open when she pulled up. She drove the Renault inside, got out, and shut the door. She left the garage through the back and banged on a wooden door at the rear of the house. A few moments later it opened.

  “What time is it?” Rémy looked and sounded groggy.

  “Almost noon.” She tried not to sound censorious but feared her disapproval had come through.

  He glanced skyward, as if to confirm the time. “I forgot to set the alarm,” he said, and waved her inside.

  “Don’t you think we should unload first?” She had a trunk full of AK-74s in the garage.

  “Coffee first. Come in.”

  She watched him make coffee in the tiny kitchen of the tiny house, heating a small saucepan of water on the propane stove and then pouring the water into a mug that he’d emptied of yesterday’s dregs. He dropped in two teaspoons of instant coffee. “Want some?”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered, with big, soulful eyes and flaring cheekbones that made him look both reflective and proud. She’d known him slightly at college, when half the girls at the Polytechnique, the only institution of higher learning in Kamalia, had been in love with him. Later he worked for Amalgamated Cobalt, the company Matthew ran, representing employees on the management board. Julian Mellow had bought the company on a bet that cobalt prices would rise as the worldwide economy improved and in particular as military spending in the Middle East increased, once the United States had vastly reduced its presence—and influence—there. Cobalt, a byproduct of nickel, Kamalia’s primary natural resource, was used in high-temperature applications like jet engines and in high-abrasion-resistant steels. Julian had been right about the price of cobalt but not about the political situation in Kamalia. When the government nationalized Amalgamated, Julian lost his investment and his son, and Rémy Manselle was fired. She’d lost touch with him, but they’d reconnected later, on the circuit of covert meetings of antigovernment dissidents that had formed two years ago. Every so often he made it clear to Sophie that his considerable charms were hers for the asking, and she always politely turned him down, to his profound amazement.

  “Did you hear the news from America?” he asked between gulps of coffee. “One of the candidates for president actually mentioned us in a speech.”

  “Le Front Populaire?”

  He scoffed. “Kamalia. He used Kamalia as an example of the kind of repressive regime that America should not associate with.”

  “Well, that’s something. Most Americans have never heard of us.”

  “This could be very important. A candidate for president interested in Kamalia. Perhaps we are not as isolated as we think.” Sophie didn’t have the heart to point out to him that, given that it was only January, the candidate had to be running for the Republican nomination. She’d lived in the United States long enough to know that there were invariably many candidates for a party’s nomination, and that the more they spoke about something as obscure as repression in Kamalia, the less likely it was that they would be elected.

  “Our cause is known throughout the world,” she said. “As for America, we already have at least one friend there.”

  He nodded, drained the mug, and led her back to the garage, where he pulled aside a large, square, wooden plank on the floor, revealing a concrete staircase. “We’ll keep the guns in the cave des vins, where they can age in a cool, dark environment.” Together they unloaded the car and brought the cases of AK-47s into the cellar.

  “When will we have enough?” Sophie asked. Cases of rifles and boxes of ammunition were already stacked along two of the walls.

  “We have almost one hundred people on our side, dedicated people, and many thousands more, a hundred thousand, perhaps, who will support us once we begin. But if we don’t have the necessary arms, we are doomed.”

  “But we have at least a hundred rifles, and enough ammunition to kill the entire government six times over. Not that we are planning to do that,” she added quickly.

  Rémy shot her a look that was hard to read before climbing the steps to get the next load. Sometimes she wondered if what really animated him wasn’t idealism or even politics but a primal urge for blood revenge.

  “Every day another political prisoner is tortured or killed. Every day we wait is a death sentence for someone.”

  “And if we move too soon, it will be a death sentence on us.”

  “How will you know when the time is right?”

  “The Council will decide.”

  The Council was six people, including Rémy and herself. In procuring the weapons and serving as the public face for the opposition, Sophie risked more than any of them, yet she’d had to fight to get invited onto the Council. Kamalia was a resolutely patriarchal society; even revolutionaries had little tolerance for a woman’s voice. Democracy first, then feminism, she told herself at least ten times a day.

  “They don’t let me into the prison to meet with our comrades any more. The other day, for the twelfth time at least, I tried to see Roger. I bribed a guard to get inside but I never made it past the warden’s office. I sense that things are getting worse, not better.”

  “Be patient, Sophie,” he said in a patronizing voice, as if she were eager for a baking cake to be done. “I am crossing the border tomorrow night for reinforcements. That’s progress, right?”

  Reinforcements—cash from America, smuggled back across the border, used to buy weapons. Sometimes she feared the whole effort had become an end in itself, a se
lf-perpetuating means of generating cash in a poverty-stricken country. Perhaps Kamalia would be better served if they just distributed the money to the hungry and sick.

  “I suppose it is.”

  “He must have loved you very much,” Rémy said, his eyes roving slowly down her body, as if to confirm what Matthew Mellow had seen. “His father, too, to continue to send so much money two years after Matthew’s death.”

  “His murder,” she said sharply. “And the father couldn’t care less about me. He never approved of our relationship, in fact I think it embarrassed him. He wants revenge against the Boymond regime, that’s all. I’m a convenient channel for that, nothing more.”

  He’d never called after Matthew’s murder. Two men had broken into their home in Villeneuve and shot Matthew in the head while he slept in their bed next to her. She awoke at the muffled pops of the silenced guns to find them leering at her, making no effort to disguise their identities. Don’t worry, pretty lady, we were told to spare you. They began rooting through her drawers and jewelry box, taking anything of value, to make the murder look like a robbery, or perhaps just to secure a small bonus for their labors—there would be no investigation. And sure enough, the local paper and even the international press covered the incident as a robbery, typical of the anarchy in that godawful part of the world. She’d written to Julian Mellow with the truth but had not heard back.

  Until she’d begun to make a name for herself as a dissident. He’d contacted her, by phone, a year after Matthew’s murder, when she’d been on a rare trip out of the country, to Paris, trying, without success, to raise funds for the insurgency. His voice had been clipped and unemotional. Whatever you need, just ask. He did not inquire about the circumstances of the murder, whether his son had suffered, how she was doing. She hadn’t asked how he’d known she was in Paris, though she was gratified that he hadn’t risked calling her in Kamalia. She wondered if the loss of the company, one of a hundred he controlled, wasn’t the most painful loss of all. But she’d taken him up on his offer, enlisting Rémy to move back and forth across the border to retrieve the funds.

  “Who is it you see when you pick up the money?” she asked him.

  “A manager at a bank, no one of significance. I sign a few papers, he hands me the bills. I don’t think Julian Mellow has ever set foot in Africa, if that’s what you mean. Except for a safari, perhaps.” He grinned.

  “Of course he hasn’t. I just want to know how this works.”

  “That is not really your concern,” he said, again with an infuriatingly patronizing tone.

  “I risk my life for the cause. Of course it’s my concern. I started this movement two years ago. Now I am kept in the dark about the financial arrangements, talked to like a schoolgirl. I could get on a plane tomorrow for New York or Paris and spare myself this crap.”

  “But you know we need you here, in Kamalia.”

  Did they? She’d created something that now had a life of its own, a life that didn’t depend on her. The last coup, the one that had ended with Le Père in power, had been accomplished with fewer than fifty well-armed men. Power in Kamalia was pathetically easy to take, and equally easy to lose. She doubted that Julian Mellow would stop the flow of money if she left. It wasn’t about her. It never had been. But her influence in the Front rested on her connection to Julian Mellow; she must not squander that.

  “Julian Mellow is concerned that things are not moving forward,” she lied. She had never talked to him about plans and logistics, nor did he inquire. When the movement needed money she placed a classified ad in Aujourd’hui, Kamalia’s only newspaper, a disgraceful organ for the Boymond regime. “Seeking employment. Household work, child minding, light cooking.” Those exact words, followed by a made-up phone number whose first five digits represented the amount of US dollars she was requesting. He’d never quibbled over that number, which she’d increased over time. “He wants to see some sort of return on his investment.”

  “Tell him he will see a return soon enough,” Rémy said as he opened the garage door. As she backed her car out he knocked on the driver’s window, which she rolled down. “Tell Julian Mellow we are risking our lives to avenge his son. Tell him that.”

  MONDAY, JANUARY 26

  Chapter 21

  “Rooney picked Stephen Delsiner as his running mate.”

  Marcella Lightstone put aside Trollope’s Barchester Towers and glanced up at her husband from the fireside wing chair. They’d finished their dinner and retired to the library of their Georgetown townhouse. Harry was home to vote on an appropriations bill; otherwise he spent all of his time in New Hampshire. The petty intrigues in Barchester, sparked by the appointment of a new bishop, seemed an apt guide to the current presidential campaign. Though the players talked about big issues—God and morality in Trollope, the economy and healthcare in Washington—the driving force was far more personal: jealousy, suspicion, ambition.

  “Delsiner will deliver Missouri in the primary,” she said. “Two terms as governor, one as senator.”

  “I don’t approve of selecting a running mate before winning the nomination. It’s grandstanding.” He took the poker from its stand next to the fireplace and prodded a burning log. “The entire party should have a say in who is chosen.”

  “That’s naïve, Harry. Do you really think Gabe Rooney cares about principle? He wants the Republican nomination and he knows that with Delsiner on his side he’ll have a better shot. He’ll look like a winner, and the Republicans want a winner more than anything else.”

  “I still disapprove.”

  She sighed. In Trollope, Harry wouldn’t stand a chance. In life, he had her, and that had made all the difference. And now he had Julian Mellow.

  “We need a strategy for dealing with this,” she said. “We could pick our own running mate, but that might look derivative. In any case, the best man has been taken. Perhaps you could take a principled stand, along the lines of what you just said…the party needs to build consensus on a running mate, the presumption of choosing before the first primary has taken place, blah, blah, blah.”

  His expression of paralyzed indignation made her want to throw the Trollope at him. And the desultory fire had not benefited from his ministrations.

  “You can’t just stand by and do nothing, Harry. Rooney already has momentum on his side, he’s already taken Iowa, though not decisively, and he has a ten-point lead in the New Hampshire polls. Now, with this, he’ll get all the media coverage he wants, plus his campaign will have two people making appearances in the time left before New Hampshire. Then in South Carolina…”

  “I’ll prepare some remarks.”

  “Call Fred,” she said. Fred Moran was Harry’s campaign director. As with vice presidential prospects, the best guy had been taken by Rooney. Moran had run several successful Senate races, but never anything on the national level. Still, he’d been the best available.

  “It’s ten at night.”

  “Tell him I want a strategy, not just a speech. I want a full message platform around this issue, mapped to every demographic in New Hampshire and beyond.”

  “He’s my campaign manager, I think he knows what he has to do.”

  “But you’re the candidate.”

  “Am I?” Their eyes locked for a moment. Harry still didn’t realize that she knew about Julian Mellow. Some instinct told her that she should keep this to herself, that her influence with Harry would wane once he realized that she knew the shoddy underpinnings of his “principled” campaign.

  “You’re the candidate and you need to set the direction of the campaign, not Fred. Call him.”

  He hesitated just a moment. “I have an early flight to Nashua tomorrow morning. Will you be accompanying me?”

  “No.”

  He seemed about to pursue this, then shrugged and left the room. She waited to hear his footsteps on the staircase and picked up the phone.

  “It’s Marcella. Have you heard the news about Rooney and Stephen Dels
iner?”

  “I have.” Julian sounded untroubled, infuriatingly so.

  “A brilliant move.” She tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “A preemptive strike. He was already the frontrunner, now he looks like the one man who has at least a prayer of winning in the general election. They like winners in New Hampshire.”

  “Perhaps Delsiner isn’t the asset to the campaign that he appears to be.”

  “Missouri is a swing state and a key primary, even the garbage men in New Hampshire know that, and they want someone who—”

  “Shut up, Marcella.”

  She gasped and stood up abruptly, as if preparing to defend herself physically.

  “How dare—”

  “Leave this to me.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want the White House?” he asked lightly, as if mentioning a new car model. He didn’t wait for a response. “Then let me handle this.”

  “Goodnight, Julian.”

  “Marcella?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you in Nashua tomorrow.”

  “But I have—”

  “I want you at your husband’s side.”

  The line went dead, and for a few moments she was dead, too, standing paralyzed in front of her reading chair, still clutching the phone. She was unused to taking orders, unused to being interrupted, unused to compromise. With sufficient money, you avoided all three. And she sensed strongly that this was only the beginning. Was it worth it? Did she really need this? A smoldering log in the fireplace shifted with a hissing spit, startling her. She turned, picked up her book, and headed upstairs.