The media that usually got herded in on the President’s trips were nowhere to be seen. When they woke up and discovered what they’d missed, especially if it leaked that he’d flown off in the VH-60, they’d be grizzling about more than a skipped flight.
66
DAN CARTER’S CHEEKS almost matched the red of the scarf wrapped around them. For twenty sub-freezing minutes that began at 5.30 AM, the Manifold Tribune reporter—also its editor and publisher—was one of the fifty or more souls who, thirsty for the story, had been bunched up outside in the dark, cross-slapping their shoulders and stomping their feet near the cold stone hospital steps. In that throng of reporters who’d rushed here, Carter was alone in one respect: when the newswire came through, he was the only one who’d ever heard of Manifold, let alone lived there. He’d actually come here last night—the news had flown around the town—but Tom Cisco had insisted on the hospital enforcing a no-go zone, even for his friend Dan.
The jostling forward started as soon as the wash of yellowish light that had filtered through the glass front doors began flickering, telling the media that someone was once again headed up the corridor to come out to speak to them. This time it wasn’t the nurse. Instead, the swing doors were pushed aside by the head surgeon, a distinguished, balding man with serious deep-set eyes and an arrow-point nose that Dan Carter knew was, for Tom Cisco, too uncomfortably close to a certain former president’s. Instantly hit by the dazzling onslaught of the TV floodlights and camera flashes, the doctor stood at the top of the steps blinking and shielding his eyes.
Dan and Tom were fishing buddies and just last night, the pair were about to hoe into the apple pie when the doctor was called in.
Dan decided to assert his local droit du seigneur and got in first, “Dr Cisco, is Ms Diaz stable?” he asked.
Before Cisco could give his answer, another reporter stretched her microphone forward, past several sets of frost-pink ears and asked, without a hint of intended humour, “Has the Speaker said anything?”
The doctor peered down from the steps, trying not to squint. This was one of those moments, he thought, when it would be perfect to wear those pince-nez glasses, the ones that characters in novels or movies always got to stare down over the top of. But his perfect eyesight meant Cisco had to do without props, other than his forearm to shield him from the floodlights that had just been snapped on.
“Dan… Dan Carter,” said the doctor bumping up his friend’s status by using his name, “Ms Diaz is no longer critical. I’m relieved to say she is stable, and sleeping. But…,” he held up his hand to halt the surge of interruptions, “you should know that Madam Speaker came to us in a most serious state, suffering acute hypothermia, massive lacerations and severe blood loss after an attack by a wolf up at Potter’s Mound…” The crowd jostled in closer. “Two locals, ranger Andy Goodman and Paul Dawkins, found her up there. They immediately stemmed her blood loss and their quick thinking saved her from frostbite and, ah, much worse. Relatively, she’s doing fine. But no, she isn’t speaking. She’s under sedation.”
“Her family?” asked another hack, pushing up the steps and thrusting her mike into Cisco’s face.
The doctor stepped back, his face twisting at the poor manners, but he collected himself and wrenched his features into a smile, “They’re due here shortly. Perhaps you should go and greet them at our little airport.” He prayed they would, especially this jackal!
A small pack did break off to go, but hesitated when they heard the next question, “When will Ms Diaz be able to speak to us?”
“That’ll be up to her, but not before this afternoon.” Cisco was being safe. He knew Isabel would be fine enough physically; she’d recovered quickly from the hypothermia thanks to Paul Dawkins’ and the nursing staff’s efforts. His surgery, though intricate, was pretty much a patch job. While her parts of her arm and leg had been ripped to shreds, her main problems were likely to be residual shock, lingering stings and severe throbbing, but with pain-killers he could get her hobbling about within the day, though he would not be recommending it.
For a county doctor, Tom Cisco was hardly garrulous, Dan Carter already knew that, but the visiting journalists’ frustration was mounting. Cisco wasn’t giving much away, so they pressed him further and further into the inconsequential, and Cisco reacted defensively, trying desperately to close it down and get back inside. But to the journalists, any personal tidbit about Isabel was better than nothing. Cisco detested even a flicker of publicity—it was why he’d moved here fifteen years ago. Each question answered on camera was another fingernail scraping away at his veneer of civility and as soon as decency permitted, he got himself back inside the sanctuary of his hospital, where he rushed into the men’s room to wash the sweat dripping off his face.
CISCO drew back the curtain around Isabel’s bed to check everything ahead of the expected invasion of visitors. As well as those who’d already arrived—her husband, a general no less, and her son and foster father—the hospital had been alerted to expect an influx of Secret Service and Administration personnel around lunchtime.
Dotted over the pale pink curtain around Isabel’s bed were representations of Vermont’s state bird, the grey-brown hermit thrush. For Tom Cisco, the chubby warbler’s haunting, flute-like song was one of the reasons he and his wife used to relish their mountain camping summers when they were younger.
Isabel hadn’t roused from the drugs yet, but observing the monitors, Cisco thankfully saw that she seemed to be progressing well. He reached over to her side-table for a tissue to wipe the stress off his brow but he accidentally nudged the chromium drip stand, causing it to rattle. He lunged to silence it.
Isabel’s eye creaked open. A low voice grated over her sandpaper throat, “Foster… dead…”
Cisco automatically broke into one of those patronising smiles doctors spend years perfecting along with their terrible handwriting. Confusion or even slight hallucinatory episodes were common in cases like hers so, for added reassurance, he placed his hand softly on her good arm. “No, Madam Speaker. President Foster’s fine. It was the Vice-President who died.”
She was struggling to speak, but her throat gagged and her eye glazed over.
67
ED’S LEFT HAND brushed over his head. Tom Cisco couldn’t avoid a spasm of repulsion at seeing Ed’s stump for a pinkie. It was an odd reaction for a surgeon, he knew that, and he checked himself. He watched Ed’s eyes fall on Isabel. “I know she doesn’t look great,” said the doctor, “but don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”
ED had planned an exceptional celebration for his dinner companions the previous evening. As always his organisation was impeccable, down to the last detail. Apart from Isabel’s accident.
After he listened to the message on his voicemail and left the table to speak to the agent who’d left it, and then to the hospital, Ed returned to his seat. He snuffed out his cigar in the dregs of his cognac, and explained why he had to cut the evening short. Everyone around the table started talking at once, until Ed raised his hand bringing immediate silence. “As I said, the surgeon’s optimistic.” After a contemplative silence, he stood and they all rose and manoeuvred into two lines, one down each side of the table, and stepped to At-ten-tion! before saluting him. After returning the gesture, he told them he had a surprise waiting for them at the airport and, without a further word, he turned and led them outside to the line of stretch limos which had already been packed with their bags. The drivers, not expecting their passengers quite so early, stubbed out their cigarettes and rushed back to their vehicles from under the mushroom heater on the other side of the driveway.
Niki held back to share Ed’s car and slid in beside him. “How is she really?”
“Like I said, it’ll mostly be trauma. When you cut through it all, the doc says the injuries were bad but largely cosmetic… hypothermic shock, too, but he’s confident they’ve got it beat…”
“So what’s your surprise?” Niki asked coldly, pulli
ng the tight hem of her black dress down a little under her coat and letting the tips of her fingers rest against his leg where not even the driver could see.
“You’re all getting a vacation on me.”
“On you? Appealing…”
Ed ignored her comment but chose not to move her wandering hand away. “It’s a week on Butaka, starting now. All their wives and girlfriends are in on it, and they’re already there. I’ll get a jet to take me and Davey, and that fat freak George, over to see Isabel first thing in the morning. But Niki,” he said, arching his eyebrow, “don’t worry. You’ll find something to do on Butaka.”
“Or someone,” she winked.
THE next morning, Dr Cisco’s she’ll be fine still echoed in Ed’s ears. He glanced up at the TV, which had been on mute since he’d arrived at the hospital. According to the text scrolling along the bottom of the screen, the man being interviewed was Andy Goodman, the local park ranger who’d saved Isabel. “Can we turn that up, Doctor?”
“I’d rather we didn’t, General. The noise…” Cisco indicated the quiet hum of the sensitive apparatus around them but his resistance had nothing to do with the equipment. Thirty minutes earlier, when he’d seen this interview clip the first time, Goodman’s brainless performance had discomfited him, and he was only Isabel’s doctor not her husband, let alone a military hero who, judging by his bearing and the tight pursed lips under his pencil moustache, could probably suffocate an enemy just by sucking in the air from around him.
Ed reached for the remote control and pumped up the volume. Cisco blinked, held his breath and began an intense scrutiny of the ceiling tiles.
… arrogant, when you come down to it, simple as that. And it’s exactly because of her big-city rich-folks’ attitude why we don’t want people hikin’ on their own up here. Especially…
Cisco had counted thirteen squares when a newsflash thankfully cut off Goodman’s even more offensive comments.
We apologise for this interruption. We’re holding for an announcement from the White House. Our Washington newsroom expects it will be President Foster nominating a new vice-president. Stay tuned.
Cisco’s eyes edged warily back over to Ed, expecting anger over Andy’s distasteful remarks, but Ed’s mask of cold fury sent a shiver up his spine.
68
BUTAKA ISLAND’S FRONT-LINE staff had just finished hand-brushing the last grains of sand off the blue welcome carpet on the tarmac when the jet engines whirred to a hush and its steps lowered. Though it was only sunrise, the temperature was already a comfortable 23°C, lucky for the waiting line-up of the resort island’s valets, with their perfect bodies and crimson loincloths.
The fifteen valets stepped forward for the traditional welcoming ceremony, sprinkling petals of a rare crimson tulip along the carpet from the steps to each one of the sparkling yellow beach buggies. That this exclusive Caribbean island didn’t grow tulips was, to those who knew the proprietor, the whole point. And these guests knew him well. They’d all been here before, mostly with Ed Loane. The proprietor had fought alongside many of them in Grenada in ’83. After discharge, he came here, buying the island soon after and eventually making it off-limits to all but the super-rich, and his friends.
Mario, who’d been allocated as Niki’s personal valet for her stay, whisked her away to her private grass hut, one of fifteen luxury bungalows scattered in remote seclusion around the island. Butaka was one of those elite resorts never covered in the weekend travel section. In all these decades, Butaka had never advertised, not once. No journalist had ever been invited, and none could afford to pay. It had no website, and even managed to appear as a vague unnamed dot on most Caribbean tourist maps. Butaka actively shunned publicity, which played to its privileged clientele. Any place that could charge so much had to be perfect… and it was. But for Loane’s Rangers there were no charges. Never.
Mario showed Niki through her thatched cottage. She threw her tote bag and black stilettos onto the bed and dismissed him, noting his quiet grace as well as the bulge beneath his loincloth, but this wasn’t the time. There’d be plenty of that later. With her Red Sox cap planted firmly on her head, twisted to the right as she preferred it, she strolled out onto the fine cream sand and padded down to her personal strip of surf.
Mario occupied himself by polishing his buggy outside her hut. He wolf-whistled, silently, as he watched her sidle toward the water, the sunrise with enough swing to it so that the black cocktail dress she’d been wearing since last night clung to her most intimate places. He loved his job.
He leant on the buggy and reassembled himself under his loincloth as he watched Niki wriggle her toes in the 24°C shallows. In the year he’d been here, the waters had rarely fallen below that. Mario tossed back his wavy black hair and tied an elastic around it at the back. Twisting into the buggy, he grabbed a tube of sun cream from the seat, squeezed a dollop onto his palm and slowly rubbed it into his hairless chest, waiting. He didn’t have to wait long.
Niki crossed her arms over in front of herself, curled her fingers under the hem of her dress and in one sweep, drew it over her head, careful not to knock her cap off, and flung it behind her onto the sand. Hmm, Mario nodded. No underwear; he’d won that bet with himself. Niki stood for a moment with her hands on her hips, and her head cocked to the side, insolent to the waking sun, as though daring it to admit it had met its match.
By the time she slipped into the sea, leaving her cap on her dress on the sand, Mario had unfurled two towels from her bathroom rail and was walking them down to the water’s edge for her… and hopefully for him.
Service with a smile was Mario’s motto.
69
DR CISCO STARED at the hospital room TV, stunned over what he’d just heard. This couldn’t be… Not after… His mind wound back to the reports of when Andy and Paul had rushed Isabel in. Her panicked intensity. Her demands for a phone. Even the confused ramblings he heard himself before she went under anaesthesia. What was going on? Cisco was tentative about Ed, but increasingly certain he should mention this. He heaved in a chestful of air but, when he saw the thin smile cracking Ed’s lips apart, he hesitated.
The door burst open and Davey rushed in. He’d run from the cafeteria where, rather obviously, he’d been shovelling a breakfast of scrambled eggs and crispy bacon into his mouth.
George followed him in, panting, his liver spots blotched over the craze of veins on his cheeks, and his grey ponytail swinging. “Did you hear?” he said, before seeing the TV to realise they had. “Foster… The White House won’t say where he is,” he puffed. “What if he’s dead, too?”
“That’s what they’ve just been asking,” said Cisco, pointing to the TV.
“Do you r-realise…?” stuttered George, shaking his head at the enormity of what he was about to say, “if Foster’s dead, it means Isabel’s…”
“President.”
“It’s incred…”
“It’s justice,” said Ed, tossing a serene shrug and turning to the window, observing the police barrier now encircling the hospital, and the milling security agents and local cops holding back the growing crowd of onlookers.
Both the doctor and George eyed Ed strangely, but George was less controlled and was about to say something he would have regretted when Davey tugged his sleeve and pointed to the TV. The nine-year-old had been doing his best to read the announcer’s lips simultaneously with the newsbar scrolling across the bottom of the screen…
ISABEL DIAZ… NEXT IN LINE AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES… CURRENTLY UNDER SEDATION AFTER WOLF…
Meanwhile, the TV commentator—a local—was mid- sentence:
…last heard of on board Air Force One late last night. According to sources, the President and First Lady were flying to St Louis after Mr Taylor’s fatal heart attack yesterday to sit with the former Vice-President’s widow, Julia Taylor and their three small children. But Air Force One never landed at Lambert-St Louis Airport. The White House won’t say where it went a
nd has completely clammed up over the President’s whereabouts, though senior officials insist off-the-record there is nothing unusual. Excuse me! Our Vice-President is dead, our President is unaccounted for even though he’s due to deliver his State of the Union Address tomorrow night, and finally the next in line is discovered up in the mountains, by chance I might add, herself only hours from death. No wonder the conspiracy theorists…
His eyes flashed off camera for a split second.
Just a moment… we’re crossing to Washington. Secretary of State Bert Robinson has just called a media conference…
The Secretary stood on the steps of the Capitol, flanked by the leadership of both major political parties:
…inform you that President Foster suffered an acute… a very serious… and sudden asthma attack while on board Air Force One on his way to St Louis late last night, but I am glad to say he survived it and is doing well. The White House Physician, Rear Admiral Dr Morris Blakeney was, as always, on board and, working with the aircraft’s excellent medical facilities and crew, he arrested the attack. Despite the timing, we see no suspicious link to yesterday’s tragic death of Vice-President Taylor. I’ll take questions.
The first rang out like a shot:
“Mr Secretary. Where is President Foster right now?”
“He is safe, recuperating in a secure location.”
“But if there is nothing suspicious, Mr Secretary, why won’t you tell the American people where he is?”
The Secretary’s eyes moved in a manner that Ed’s interrogation training told him that a lie or an evasion was coming:
“I understand your concern, but please… the President is due to deliver his State of the Union message tomorrow night,” the Secretary said, “and he will.”
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