Isabel struck her gavel twice, and the Sergeant at Arms announced, “Madam Speaker… the President of the United States.”
A commotion erupted at the back of the Hall and ten plainclothes Capitol police ran up the centre aisle and around the sides. Several clusters of congressmen and women from the rear leapt from their seats and themselves charged to the doors, blocking the view from the front. Everyone rose, this time including George.
Three officers stepped up onto the rostrum to protect Isabel and Senator Mallord, though from what no one seemed to know. Four other officers hugged the front row just to the side, near where Ed and Davey were now standing, with Davey trying to peek toward the back between all the tall bodies.
Those who couldn’t see were straining their bodies toward the cause of the hubbub, only adding to it by asking their neighbours either side if they could see anything.
The Chamber was descending into a rabble. Because of her injuries and the difficulties she’d have using her gavel while she was standing, Isabel had asked Senator Mallord to take temporary control of it and, with her cane, she carefully pressed herself to her feet.
Mallord slammed the gavel with no remit but the only soul who seemed to be paying attention was Isabel who judiciously kept her hands safely away from the bench. Mallord was forced to shout, “Order! Order!” Again and again, he smashed the gavel onto the bench and, stretching out his neck, even he couldn’t detect what was going on in the ruckus down the back.
“Please!” shouted Mallord, “Members, Senators… Do you hear me? Order!”
The Sergeant at Arms was on the case. His single finger held aloft signalled to Mallord that he’d need a further moment as he pushed back through the swarm.
The authorised camera crew suffered similar obstructions though, briefly, a gap opened up among the crowd milling around the doors and, before it closed up again, they managed to zoom their camera through it.
One of the Capitol police officers stationed near the rostrum was pressing on his earpiece. He was refusing to trust what he thought he’d heard, but when it came through a second time he stepped between Mallord and Isabel to inform them.
“Truly?” Mallord exclaimed for everyone to hear, even over the hullabaloo, and pressed his fist to his mouth to suppress a nervous cough.
Never before had so many legislators with their mouths open been as silent.
77
UNUSUALLY FOR A President’s entrance, if that’s what was about to happen, no one was applauding. Instead everyone was listening and watching. Waiting.
Spencer Prentice stood near the doors in edgy silence, almost on his toes. He swivelled back to the front and saw Isabel was also standing, leaning on her cane, her blank eyes fixed on the back of the Hall not far from him. She wasn’t unsteady, though there was something hard about her, pitiless. She was like a rock.
Spencer had never seen her like this. Sure, he’d seen her tough and resolute, but always tempered, with a softness to her edge. But he knew she’d been through a lot the last forty-eight hours, let alone the last eighteen months of her futile campaign. She was entitled to feel empty when the man she would easily have defeated, if she had been allowed to continue in the race, was about to deliver a speech that should have been hers. Just then, President Robert J. Foster swept through the doors into the Chamber.
To Spencer and everyone else Foster’s face, too, was set like week-old concrete. His usual glinting Kennedy smile was gone. His eyes, thought Spencer—turning his head to and fro a few times to check—were aimed right at Isabel as though he were trying to fix her to the spot, and her own glare in return coldly matched his.
The aisle swarming before Foster cleaved open as though he were a prophet parting the sea. His eyes kept locked ahead, never deflecting from Isabel’s, not acknowledging a single face to either side. Normally, a President would be smiling, chatting, shaking hands, hugging as he came down the aisle, but Foster did none of that, emitting a frigid shield that no one dared break into. The House didn’t know how to respond. Ordinarily, they’d be giving his entrance a standing ovation, but all they could do was stand, and gape. The few weak attempts at applause quickly petered out.
Foster had a slight lean, preferring one side as he walked, but he had not a hint of a smile; not even a smirk. Just cold poison. As he strode to the rostrum, there was now only silence and this time not even George would interrupt it.
Everyone was wondering the same thing. Isabel Diaz? Had she…? Politics and disbelief were suspended. Guts were knotted and lungs constricted by the dread of what they were about to hear. If hands weren’t glued to people’s sides as if taped there, they were covering their mouths.
President Foster stepped up to the podium, a little less slowly than Isabel had, and went for the lectern at the Clerk’s desk, just in front of the Speaker and the Senate President. He didn’t shake their hands or catch their eyes, and he didn’t follow the custom of handing them two manila envelopes containing his address.
To the majority of those present, familiar with House protocol, this made them even edgier. Faces around the Hall wrinkled, eyes blinked and eyebrows furrowed. Stomachs were clenched. Those watching in their homes were tipping on the edges of their sofas as the TV commentators explained the unexpected breaks with tradition. Bars were silenced as their customers stared at the TV screens hanging from the ceilings or on the walls.
Foster’s jaw was grim, Spencer could see that, and there seemed to be nothing physically ailing him, despite the slight lean Spencer had noticed as he’d walked through.
Suddenly, it dawned on Spencer, and on many of those watching. Foster hadn’t been recuperating… he had been in hiding.
But from Isabel? Surely not.
“Members of the Congress,” said Isabel, interrupting these thoughts, “I have the high privilege and the distinct honour of presenting to you… the President of the United States.”
Foster’s head bowed as in prayer and the House clapped lightly. When he raised his head back up, all he could see were heavy, worried eyes, not unlike his own. He arced left and right as if blessing the grand hall. His right hand patted the air to signal those before him to sit.
“Members of Congress,” he said, pausing until the tide of heads had subsided. “Distinguished guests and fellow citizens. Your eyes have not deceived you but your President has… and when you hear why, I pray you will forgive me.”
He paused to pour himself a glass of water from the crystal pitcher, and took a sip, taking particular care to wet his lips. Eyes, still puzzled, met all around the Chamber.
“The Secretary of State,” he said, pointing to the front row, “announced to the public that I was mentally alert, but because my physical state was weak, that my physician had temporarily confined me to bed. The truth is that I am not—nor was I—feeble nor so confined. You can see before you that I am fit, and you will be your own judges that I suffer no mental impairment. But there are people who were hoping otherwise… who had planned otherwise. And it was vital in the nation’s interests that these people, these traitors, felt the possibility that they had… ah… that I had died.”
As he twisted around for a long glare at Isabel, the House rumbled. He turned back to the microphone, “Why did Secretary Robinson lie to you? Because I asked him to. A President does not deceive his people lightly, so why did I ask my friend and Cabinet colleague to do so for me? Several times in our more than two centuries of unbroken democracy, traitors or madmen have attempted to, and on four occasions have in fact assassinated our presidents. And this time… this week… such people—not madmen, but traitors surely—got close… perilously close… with a treasonous plan to assassinate both your President and your Vice-President. It was a plan to completely overthrow our elected administration, and our Constitution, and it nearly worked.” As the murmuring rose, Foster said, “One of those traitors… is here among us… in this Chamber.”
The House exploded in uproar and people leapt to their feet. T
he President looked back at Isabel, but signalled to her not to gavel. Instead, he raised his hand and waited until silence fell. The Chamber seemed to press in on itself.
As if to answer the obvious question—who?—the three security men who’d earlier marched onto the rostrum clamped themselves into a tight U-shape behind Isabel. The four who were on the side near Davey pressed forward, ready.
Until this minute, Isabel Diaz was a national treasure, yet now eyes all over the country were clouding with disbelief, many with tears. Isabel had been a shining light, an icon of hope. One Senator had even started humming to himself the Paul Simons’ lyric, “Who’ll be my role model now that my role model is gone?”
Isabel stared back at the Hall showing nothing but stony calm. She reached her good arm out toward Davey and Ed, and two of the police officers ushered them forward and escorted them up to stand beside her in support.
Spencer’s blood seemed to drain from his head, a cold sweat had burst through his skin and his hands were gripping the back of the seat in front of him as though he was dangling from a crumbling ledge thirty floors above the ground. He bit his lip until he tasted blood. How could he have so badly misread her?
“Please sit,” said Foster, but few obeyed him. “Initially,” he continued regardless, “medical opinion was that Vice-President Taylor died of natural causes. That was wrong: his death was a cold-blooded, carefully plotted assassination. A plot to eliminate Vice-President Taylor first so that when my own death followed—yes, consecutive assassinations—America would have no vice-president to replace me and the presidential succession would automatically fall to the House Speaker, Ms Diaz here.”
One congressman at the back shouted “Treason!” setting off a chain reaction. The President immediately raised his hand again, and when the clamour stopped, he went on, “To Julia, Mitchell Taylor’s widow, and Oliver, James and Tyrone, his three children who, by regretful necessity, are hearing this for the first time… let me say this to you: be strong in your knowledge that Mitch, my great friend and a fine man… your dad and your husband… died serving his country… All of us owe Mitchell Taylor, and the four of you he has left behind, a debt this country will never forget.” He bowed his head.
The Chamber flurried with whispers. Fingers accused Isabel from all directions.
The memory of a conversation flooded back to Spencer: when he’d pointed the finger at Ed, for manipulating her. “What makes you think I’m not using him?” she’d said. The comment had unsettled him at the time, but now… Spencer’s legs turned to jelly and couldn’t support him. He slumped back onto his chair and tears spilled down his cheeks, hidden from the cameras by the forest of legislators towering around him.
Isabel had been his trusted friend. No, it was more… the truth he could never admit before was that he had loved her. How could he have been so misguided… not to see the charade?
And suddenly what he had done hit him… his own unwitting role in this treachery with his fool idea to persuade Foster to get her appointed as Speaker… He, Spencer Prentice, had caused, or at least created the circumstances that killed Taylor and… worse.
Spencer wasn’t the only one searching for answers. To the cameras doing likewise, George was an early target, but all he offered them was a grey head burying itself into an old man’s trembling hands. Isabel had told him about Ed’s affair, but this…? He couldn’t believe it. But the evidence unfolding seemed to give him no choice.
Davey, too, was baffled. He was trying to follow the interpreter, but simply wasn’t getting it. At the hospital, his dad had been yelling how the President was dead, but here was Mr Foster in front of them. And all this stuff about traitors? It was weird, like an episode of X-Men.
Isabel saw the confusion on the boy’s face and spoke to him from behind her hand so only he could read her lips. He nodded, but it was slowly enough to make his continued bewilderment obvious.
President Foster raised his head, saying, “Our enemies plotted a double assassination,” and he pasted a thin grin onto his ashen face. “Well,” he said, turning back toward Isabel and lifting his voice, “I’m… still… here.”
78
DAISY’S BAR & GRILL was packed tonight. It was the natural venue for folks in Manifold to congregate and party over the town’s newfound—and to be short-lived—celebrity status. Andy Goodman was on his fifth beer and was more relieved than most to see President Foster alive on the TV monitor, and he took Bobby Foster’s triumphant glare at Isabel Diaz as a mark that more was coming.
Suddenly, he jumped up, knocking the bar stool out from behind him. “She was the scheming bitch I said she was all along,” he shouted. Paul Dawkins was standing nearby and picked up the stool for him. “Hey, Dawkins, we shoulda let her freeze to death. That woulda been patriotism.”
The House camera zoomed in on Isabel and it seemed clear to Andy, his bar-room friends and millions of other viewers that guilt was oozing from her pores.
Unseen, a single bead of sweat slithered down the crevices in Ed’s face. As he turned to face Isabel with disgust clouding his face, the drop fell from his chin, slipping down Davey’s neck and prompting the boy to look up at his father, standing just behind him. The House TV producer had noticed the boy’s move and directed one of his cameras to pull back from Isabel to capture the fractured family group in a single frame.
“Some of what I’m about to tell you,” said President Foster, “is not what you would expect to hear from your President. For that, I apologise. All of what I tell you will distress you. But my solemn duty is to suppress none of it.” He paused to look around the Chamber. His eyes were glassy. Those watching on television saw tears welling. He slid a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. It came out with an envelope but he slipped that back inside. He wiped his eyes and continued, “When the people of this Union voted me in, you expected a strong leader… yet I am ashamed to tell you my own weakness put this country in harm’s way.” His head dropped for a moment.
Already starting to ripple through the minds of his political detractors was a cynical question, Is this emotion genuine or is he just working the jury like usual? Foster’s own supporters didn’t know what to think either.
“Order. Order.” It was Senator Mallord using the gavel.
Foster continued, “After we recently suffered the terrible threat of homegrown terrorism on our shores, and then a divisive and close-fought election, I asked the congressional leadership in a spirit of national unity to elect Ms Diaz to the post of House Speaker. Little did I suspect that this act of bipartisanship would place a death sentence on both my head and the Vice-President’s.”
The Hall exploded with more outbursts of “Shame!” and “Treason!” but again the President held up his hand for silence. He paused for more water, again glancing back at Isabel who was sitting yet still poker-faced, with Ed standing close by, his hands on Davey’s shoulders.
“How did this happen? The conspirators—yes, there were a number of them—hatched their plot months before November’s election, perhaps as early as July. Their scheming was intricate, exceptional. It also took considerable funds and was executed with a chilling precision and determination. Sadly, with Mitchell Taylor’s death, they partly succeeded.”
The Chamber erupted again.
“Order… Order!” Senator Mallord had to smash down the gavel five times before the legislators hushed. “Please continue, Mr President.”
“Just a few months ago, Ms Diaz here,” Foster’s arm moved back to point to her, “was hot favourite to be elected president—a certainty, it seemed—until an unexpected and destabilising series of events unfolded…”
Foster then connected the dots in ways the public had previously had no inkling of. He explained that when Isabel was forced to withdraw, mistakenly as they now knew, a band of patriotic extremists decided they needed a way to stampede voters into the right arms—Republican arms—and that it was this group, not Karim Ahmed and his four friends, who were t
he ingenious perpetrators of the thwarted terrorist attack on New York City.
“These zealots framed and, in cold blood, murdered those five young men, innocents who were moulded so easily to fit into the radical Islamist stereotype.
“But it was homegrown non-Muslim pariahs who did this. Not only did they organise the subway attack, they orchestrated for it to be foiled, though only at the last possible moment… to maximise panic with minimum collateral damage. Their goal was not mass destruction, rather the upswell of relief that comes after a cataclysmic near-miss, expecting it to flood voters back into a safe, right-wing harbour. But their plan failed… despite their despicable deceit, the people still elected Mitch Taylor and me, though not by much, that is true. So, silently waiting until after my Inauguration, this despicable group triggered the final climax of their murderous plan.”
He stooped to lift the pitcher to splash more water into his glass. “At this point, I have no choice but to reveal my own shameful part in this.”
Silence temporarily descended on the Chamber but the speculation among the TV commentators was approaching fever pitch.
Foster continued, “During the campaign, a… er, photographer was travelling with our team, making a record for the archives. Her name was Niki Abbott and her award-winning work includes a photo-series for Newsweek on… on Ms Diaz’s own campaign during the primaries.”
Mallord shouted now, “If I have to call for order again…”
“Ms Abbott had become an associate of Ms Diaz, and we also now know that she was a, er, confidante of Ms Diaz’s husband here.” Foster gestured toward the pair on the rostrum as they exchanged a quick glance between themselves which, especially in close-up on TV, now seemed to be screaming with mutual guilt.
DAISY’S Bar was in uproar when Andy shouted, “Foster’s not gonna admit he had sexual relations with that Niki woman, is he?” He slapped Paul Dawkins on the back. Paul’s wife had sent him to sit with Andy at the bar to hose him down, to keep him quiet, but it clearly wasn’t working.
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