“I’ve got my back to him,” said Ed. And to me, too, Isabel noted. “Where were we?” he asked.
The woman continued, “You were saying it’s two hours till she leaves.”
She? For Isabel, this was developing a very uncomfortable edge.
“I’m getting wet just thinking about this.”
Wisely, Isabel placed her glass on the coffee table.
“No dirty talk.”
“Ed, he’s deaf!”
I’m getting wet?
Niki.
Niki Abbott and Ed?
“I don’t care,” Ed said. “Our other call’s…”
The clip cut Ed short, and Isabel slumped back into the sofa, taking one of the cushions and holding it to her chest.
Eventually she stood, a little shakily, and faltered over to the fire, placing her hand against the mantel to steady herself and let the heat sear her face dry, chalking her cheeks with two streaks of salt. She felt suffocated and wanted to rip open her throat to let in more air. She had to breathe… to do something.
The bastard… the fucking bastard. Wait till she got home. But that wouldn’t be till tomorrow afternoon when the chopper came for her, and she had no means of calling it to come sooner. Damn this sanctuary shit, she screamed to herself.
She sat back in front of her laptop, staring at it like it was her enemy. The gossip… the snide innuendo. All through the campaign, she had dismissed the barbs, parking them beside malice or just plain jealousy. But here it was front and centre. True.
An image of Spencer Prentice wagging his manicured finger invaded her thoughts. He had been right, she knew that now. In his own genteel way, he’d always seen Ed as a scheming bastard who was using her. And what had she done? She’d laughed it off.
She wasn’t chuckling now.
The acid of the betrayal was etching dark lines under her eyes and the scar on her neck bleached against the flush of red drowning her. Every one of her senses heightened. Her skin burned. The mustiness in the shack returned, but this time it stank so she couldn’t stand it.
Had Ed loved her at all? Ever…? She slammed her fist on the arm of the sofa because plainly she had no idea.
Breathe deeply, she told herself.
Bésame… Fuck that song! Why did it have to enter her head right now?
Isabel played the video clip again. And again. With her hand trembling, she shook a few more drops of Tabasco into her drink and swirled it with her finger. She forced down a slug of the fiery liquid and then rested the glass, though well away from the table’s edge. Both her hands rose to steeple just below her nose and she gritted her teeth. An observer might think she was praying, and in a way she was.
There had to be an innocent explanation… Maybe, she hoped, the second clip would give one.
She licked her finger and for several seconds it lingered, poised over the ‘play’ button but not quite ready. Pressing it could only lead to two outcomes, one good, the other unbearable.
She gulped another hit of her drink. Bésame… Bésame mucho… That damn song, and her drunken mother… she couldn’t shake the tune out of her mind. Maybe if she walked around?
As she gazed out of the window, the deepening colours left her cold, reminding her she actually used to hate that old shirt of George’s and how Annette got upset whenever he wore it. She shivered a little, and turned back to the fire to see the untended flames were dying. Like her marriage. She bent over to pick up the poker but her gut wrenched and her throat gagged and, suddenly, she threw up uncontrollably into the fireplace.
The fire sputtered… the embers dimmed to black-red… but as the steaming stinking liquid evaporated, they flared up more fiercely than before and the flames erupted afresh.
Isabel wiped her mouth against the back of her hand and turned back to the computer, and the remaining clip.
She pressed ‘play’.
56
ISABEL NEEDED TO get down to Manifold, and it had to be tonight. Every hour mattered. Even tomorrow morning would be too late.
Why on earth had she come here with no phone… no fucking anything? She kicked herself. How ridiculous. How reckless.
With her head in her hands, she took deep breaths and calmed down a little, thinking it through. In daylight, even through snow, she knew that four hours at the most would get her to the town. That’s how long it had taken her last year. But at night? Six hours? Eight? She had no way of knowing. It was 5 PM already and she no longer cared how awe-inspiring the sunset might be, just that it might eke itself out a bit longer so she could trek as far as she could before dark. After that…
She had no time to lose.
Quickly, she prepared her backpack. Even though the trip wouldn’t last more than a few hours, doing most of it in pitch dark would have its challenges. She snapped open the lid of the emergency box and saw the yellow EPIRB on top, the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. She mulled over triggering an immediate distress signal for Search and Rescue. But with time so critical—with every second counting—she was certain she’d get herself to Manifold faster than hanging around up here wondering, but not knowing, if someone had picked up the signal while that… while Ed… and Niki…
The two Secret Service agents who had packed the emergency box for her were also keen mountaineers and had made the trek to the town themselves, plotting every mound and creek, almost every tree and burrow, and had printed and laminated the whole thing onto the mountain map sitting below the EPIRB. Even more thoughtfully, they’d uploaded a digital version of it onto her combination GPS satellite tracker/EPIRB. The device was working—she checked—and she stuffed it into her front parka pocket, together with a compass, just in case. Into various pockets and zips in her backpack, she slotted signal flares and matches, a whistle, a foil space blanket, a sleeping bag, a fluoro-orange plastic undersheet, chemical hand warmers, a collapsible hand shovel, a first aid kit, a miner’s lamp to strap on her forehead over her pull-on cap, a waterproof flashlight, a coil of rope, a roll of duct tape, a penknife and spare batteries.
Isabel wasn’t taking anything for granted, the way she’d done with Ed. She also shoved in an extra pair of mittens, hat, and even a second windbreaker—it didn’t look remotely like it could rain, but if she slipped into a creek she could freeze to death without a change of top clothes. The pack was already bulging, and that was before cramming in food and water.
By the time she’d finished, she’d also scoffed down a full mug of the hearty pumpkin soup she’d been simmering to avoid having to carry too much, but even so she threw in a couple of ring-pull cans of tuna and spaghetti, and some Mars bars. Accidents easily happened in the wild, everyone knew that.
As she hoisted the pack on her back, it wrenched her backwards a step or two. She steadied herself, deciding she’d have to rethink the contents. She shucked the bag off onto the floor and wolfed down more soup while she pulled out what she thought she could risk leaving behind.
Winter, she knew, was prime time for dehydration. The colder it got, the harder the body needed to work to maintain its temperature and the extra energy demands called for water to fuel them, and plenty of it. So damn the added load, she decided, and stuffed two extra bottles inside even though they were in glass, not plastic.
57
DAISY WAS NO longer at Daisy’s Bar & Grill but Brad kept everything else at Andy Goodman’s after-work hangout the same: the Millers on tap, the long-necked Buds, and the kettle-cooked peanuts in the unsanitary bowls that customers slid along the bar to each other with a traditional mountain holler.
Andy was already three drinks down, and he asked Brad to pull him a fourth.
Through the bar mirror, Andy saw the mayor’s daughter swing open the door, and he straightened his back and tucked in his grey work shirt. He knew she didn’t like beer; she was a white wine drinker, a stuck-up toffee-nose if he was really honest with himself, but what the heck. While she wasn’t as hot as a McDonald’s apple pie, she still had legs… and
after a few wines her personality might not be that unbearable. He hoped so.
“Did you hear?” she said across the bar, sloughing off her coat and slinging it at the rack near the door. “Taylor? Did you hear about Taylor?” Her gloves flopped onto the counter almost knocking over Andy’s beer. “A glass of white…”
“… wine,” nodded Brad. He’d snatched for the bottle the moment she pushed the door open and set the glass in front of her, giving Andy a wink. Lucky for him she didn’t notice.
“Taylor who? Taylor what?” Andy asked, his eyes taking in her new jeans. Tight in all the right places.
“Like, hello-o! Mitchell Taylor… Vice-President Taylor. Brad, switch on the TV,” she said, without a breath, “Taylor’s dead. Can you believe it? Radio says he collapsed… died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Shh! There!” She pointed at the screen and took a gulp of her wine.
Andy sipped his beer. He was laconic when he wanted to be, and he didn’t really give a shit about politicians. Continually dealing with the moans from Isabel Diaz’s people about putting in access to the shack was enough for him. So what if some politician was dead, what did he care? There were only more of them lining up to suck the public trough dry.
According to the replay time clock on the TV screen, it happened twenty minutes ago. In an echo of President George W. Bush reading My Pet Goat at Emma E. Booker Elementary School on 9/11, Taylor was cross-legged on a rug at Columbus Elementary sweet-talking some kids at an after-school Book Week readathon. With a Dr Seuss book in his lap, he simply keeled over.
Secret Service agents appeared out of nowhere, guns unholstered and scaring the bejesus out of the screaming kids even more than having a weird old guy collapsing in front of them did. While other agents swept the area for an assassin, one knelt beside Taylor to perform the classic airways, breathing and pulse-checks. The agent’s eyes were dark and his eyebrows heavy when he whispered into his cuff. He nodded a few times as he took instructions though his earpiece and, one second after he crooked his finger, three others crammed around the body with him and, cradling the Vice-President between them, whisked him out to the waiting car past the distraught children and stunned reporters.
“We’re crossing now to St Anthony’s Hospital, and Dr Alison
Martin…
“… Vice-President Taylor suffered a massive heart attack but died before reaching hospital. Despite all efforts, we were not able to resuscitate him.”
“Well, cheers to Dr Seuss,” said Andy chinking his beer heartlessly against his bar buddy’s wineglass. “What’s the difference between a politician and a trampoline?” he asked, and immediately answered, “You’d take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline.”
She didn’t return his laugh or cheesy smile, just eyed him as she would a smear of dog shit on her shoe.
“So,” said Brad, not quite changing the awkward subject, “how is your dad, the Mayor?”
Without a word, she swivelled off her stool, grabbed her coat and left.
58
PRESIDENT ROBERT J. FOSTER wrapped his arm around Chancellor Kurt Schneider’s shoulders. Thanks to the late nights and deep secrets they shared when they were Harvard Law roommates, America’s relations with the Federal Republic of Germany were thawing. On their way to pre-dinner cocktails in the Blue Room, they were chatting and laughing like the old buddies they were, the only remaining chill being in the air as they bustled along the colonnade from outside the Oval Office alongside the Rose Garden.
This was Schneider’s first visit during either man’s term. He couldn’t make the Inauguration, but came as soon as he could and the main topic of their talks was a free-trade agreement.
The Chancellor was as startled as the President when a posse of Secret Service agents appeared from nowhere, yanked Foster’s arm off him and whisked the President through a side door, abandoning the Chancellor to ponder the cold outside alone.
Less than a minute later, the First Lady emerged from the same door and, wide-eyed as though nothing had happened, greeted Schneider. “May I escort you to the Blue Room, Chancellor?” She took his arm and added blankly, “The President apologises for the abrupt interruption.”
Schneider noted Marilyn’s strained formality, and couldn’t help looking up to scan the skies.
“AT forty-fucking-two?” President Foster drummed his fingers against the rim of the Resolute desk, the one that most presidents since 1880 had leant on in times of stress. “A fatal heart attack…? You kidding me? Mitch worked out. Hey, Don,” he nodded to his chief of staff. “Are we sure this wasn’t…?”
Foster’s teary, strained eyes fell to one of the quotes that President Barack Obama had asked to be woven into the Oval Office’s centrepiece rug: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“Mr President, nothing showed up in the bloodwork, and,” Don said, checking his watch, “St Anthony’s are doing a full body-scan.”
Foster shook his head, “He goes through all the pressure of the campaign and… bam! We’re in office a few measly days and his body packs up? Go figure. I’ve got to visit with Julia and their kids. The First Lady, too… I’ll tell her to pack some things when I get to the Blue Room. There’s no way I can dump the Chancellor tonight—Kurt just got here—so we’ll fly out in the morning. He’ll understand. Don,” he added, “fix the rest, okay?”
“Yes, Mr President. There’s something else…”
The President said nothing, but his heart was pounding.
“We’ll need to announce your new vice…”
“Fuck that. This isn’t the time…”
“It’s precisely the time, Mr President. Section Two of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment requires you to nominate…”
“Not before I pay my respects to the family of the last one, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, sir, but…”
Exasperated, Bobby squeezed his chin and exhaled, “There are no buts, Don. Even after I nominate whoever, it’ll take months. Both Houses of Congress have to confirm it, and they’re not gonna do that till after all the damn hearings, so a day here or there, even a week… it’s all fucking irrelevant, orright?”
Don had gotten used to Bobby’s temper. This time it was personal, sure, but the unseemly behaviour was nothing new and he would let it wash over him, as usual.
He scrolled his mind to the following morning when the President would run across the South Lawn to his helicopter Marine One, ducking to avoid the rotors. Don would be beside him, stooped no more than usual, but whether Foster wanted to read it or not, Don would be passing him a detailed brief on the succession procedures, including a list of twenty potential nominees.
It was a shock, for sure, but both men knew this was no unique moment in history, although the details would come in Don’s brief, which three of his best staff were already preparing. It would tell Foster that no fewer than seven vice-presidents had died in office and two had resigned. In 1973 when Spiro Agnew resigned and Richard Nixon nominated Gerald Ford as his new Vice-President, it took nearly two months of Washington gum-chewing before Ford got to take his oath of office. When in 1974 Nixon himself resigned, Ford just one day later nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice-President, but it took almost four months for Rockefeller to take the oath of office; four months with no vice-president to step up should President Ford really stumble. And neither of those precedents remotely compared to the days before the Twenty-Fifth Amendment got passed in 1967: Lyndon Johnson had no vice-president for 14 months after President Kennedy’s assassination—some said there still wasn’t one even after Hubert Humphrey was eventually sworn in.
“But sir, what if you, er, suffered a… um… a heart attack?” Don was getting to his real concern. “Under the succession rules, it’s the Speaker—Diaz—who steps up. And after that FOX segment, there’s not even a scintilla of an argument to stop her.”
59
IN THE THIRTY minutes of snow and slush that Isabel had put between herself and the shack, she�
��d tramped not quite two miles, and had long discarded her snowshoes as virtually useless. The curtain of nightfall was closing in, and would slow her even more as the thickening cloud cover threatened to block the moon.
Her breath was streaking ahead faster than she was. Normally she loved it out here but tonight she felt totally isolated. Vulnerable. Petrified.
It wasn’t the moose tracks that worried her; Isabel imagined she could deal with a moose. It was the ripped-open logs and digging marks, signs that screamed of a black bear. Normally, a bear would be no problem unless you got between a mother and her cub but, right now, Isabel could only imagine the worst. For comfort, she glanced at her handheld GPS map-tracker as though it could reveal the whereabouts of vicious animals.
The distant howl of a wolf stopped her, chilled her. But even that didn’t pump her adrenaline as much as the dread of the impending dark and the many dangers it could hide.
BEFORE she had left the shack, she had plotted onto the laminated map with a marker pen what seemed like an easy path, and she was sticking to it as closely as possible, comparing it against the GPS tracker every ten or so minutes. “Easy” turned out to be a relative description, as her aching legs and back were discovering. It was heavy going over the thick snow and until now, despite the fading light, she’d resisted using her flashlight or miner’s lamp. But it was no longer safe to advance without them. Her pack had been cutting into her shoulders, so she readjusted it, bounced it into the small of her back and retightened the waist straps for support. After ten paces, it was hugging a lot better so she strapped the halogen miner’s lamp over her woollen cap and snapped on the light. In her left mitten, she had her tracker and map, and her other gripped a walking stick that doubled as a probe checking for crevasses hidden under the snow.
The miner’s lamp was a mixed blessing. She could see whatever its fairly narrow beam illuminated, but out of the gloom at its edges a succession of sinister shadowy shapes kept looming, one appearing like an angry mother bear… another she lashed her hiking pole at, imagining that the branch was Ed.
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