To Kill the President

by Sam Bourne

  There was now no doubt in her mind that Dr Jeffrey Frankel, physician to the President, had been murdered. Much harder to face was the fact that his widow had, inadvertently, pointed the finger of suspicion at two of the most senior figures in the United States government.

  13

  The Willard Hotel, Washington, DC, Tuesday, 6.53pm

  ‘And no checking your phone.’

  Robert Kassian said nothing. He was checking his phone.

  ‘Bob!’

  His wife couldn’t see him, but she knew. She was in the bathroom, getting ready for tonight’s reception: his second of the evening. He had bidden Jim Bruton goodbye, slipped out of the East Room and come straight here.

  As he perched on the end of the bed, waiting for her, he wondered: was the use of this suite a perk of Pamela being a board member, or had it been granted as a gesture towards his needs, as White House Chief of Staff? If the latter, it was considerate. Privacy, space to meet his wife and make the transition from the working day to the evening: it was helpful. Unless – and the thought appalled him – someone in his office had demanded it, treating this tiny not-for-profit as if it were one of the mega-charities the White House was used to. He thought about thumbing out a quick email to his assistant, but thought better of it. What if Pamela poked her head around the bathroom door and caught him in the act?

  She was in there adjusting her dress, perfecting her make-up, he didn’t know which. He’d been in there once, to make a judgement on jewellery – earrings or bracelet or both? – and she had seemed almost ready then. But that meant nothing. It was perfectly possible that a choice of necklace had triggered a rethink of the entire ensemble, dress included.

  Ordinarily, he quite enjoyed this ritual. He still liked seeing his wife in her underwear. He took pleasure in the seriousness of it. And he liked this occasion especially: the annual dinner of the Coalition for Shelter, raising funds for the homeless of DC. It was a noble cause and, best of all, thanks to his wife’s seat on the board, he was there purely as a spouse.

  Sure, people would be lining up to speak to him all night, just as they had, mainly in vain, at the White House event earlier. He got that: Washington society was all about proximity to power. He occupied too coveted a perch in the DC jungle to be ignorable. But at least they’d have to disguise it a bit. This evening was not about him, but his wife. He could follow his usual preference, and recede into the background, and this time people would give him credit for modesty, admiring him as a supportive partner and enlightened man.

  But the stipulation that he stay off the phone? That was ridiculous. Ordinarily, maybe. But these were not ordinary times. He would have to be glued to it, in case the President decided to unload the entire US nuclear arsenal on North Korea and China or to stage some other horror show, as yet unimagined. But he didn’t say that. Of course he didn’t. Pamela was the one person to whom Robert Kassian could never say no.

  He looked out of the window, down 14th Street. They were near enough to the White House that there were protesters on almost every corner. Almost directly below was a mixed group, black and white, but overwhelmingly young, with the usual collection of banners: ‘Not My President’, ‘We’re Better Than This’, ‘Not In Our Name’ and one that had started appearing recently, ‘We’re All God’s Children’. There were klaxons and chants, but up here it was hard for Kassian to hear the words they were using. He could guess though.

  Eventually Pamela emerged and soon they were heading towards the Pierce Room on the lower ground floor. Kassian deliberately walked behind his wife, letting her greet people first when anyone approached for a handshake. She looked luminous; he was proud of her. When she was safely rapt in conversation with a key funder, he allowed himself a glance at his phone. Twitter was full of the Frankel death. The body was barely in the ground and the bush telegraph was already crackling.

  What I’d like @WhiteHouse to explain is the delay between the time of death and the first announcement. Did you guys need time to get your story straight?

  This wasn’t some random nut. Or rather it was a random nut, but one with an audience. Kassian clicked to discover that the man asking this question had 1.2 million followers.

  What did @WhiteHouse doc Geoffrey Frankel know and when did he know it.

  That came from the account of someone who billed himself as a ‘conservative talkshow host’ and ‘Fox News contributor’. He’d probably been on once, but still his misspelled and unpunctuated question had got 1400 retweets.

  Reinforcement came from the left, from a site that specialized in intelligence leaks:

  MSM say it’s absurd to say Frankel silenced because he held info that cd undermine the Presidency. Not absurd at all: Plenty of precedents

  Among liberals and mainstream journalists the tone was different. Some linked to earnest articles about suicide among older men. Others lamented the easy availability of guns, which could ‘turn a bad mood into a catastrophe’.

  Others rushed for the moral high ground. One female commentator came out early with:

  Can we please let the Frankel family grieve in peace?

  While an official in the former administration tweeted:

  I knew Jeffrey Frankel. A good, loyal American. Is it too much to ask that we hold off on the speculation for 24 hours?

  And an MSNBC anchor tried to send the same message with a smile:

  Radical suggestion. When a human being, a person with family and loved ones, is found dead, can we all shut the fuck up? *sheesh*

  But of course it was no good. No one could get enough of the Frankel death. The right assumed the left had got rid of him because he knew too much about the previous president, though what possible threat that could pose now they didn’t explain. The left believed the right had killed him because he was poised to embarrass the current President by revealing some devastating secret. And still others, striking a sophisticated pose, suggested the White House was at war, with factions both supportive of and hostile to the President and that the latter camp had killed the doctor as part of this internal civil war. In making this argument, they usually named McNamara as head of the loyalist faction, but were all over the place when it came to the dissenters. A couple mentioned the Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that was it. One mentioned Bruton; nobody mentioned him.

  It was time for dinner. He was seated next to Helene Kitson, the formidable chief executive of the Coalition for Shelter. He knew and liked her, but he could see from the start this was not going to be easy. An African-American in her late thirties, it would be a statistical miracle if she were not a firm supporter of the other party, even under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. And tonight she had a face like thunder. Still she managed to squeeze out an opening pleasantry.

  ‘Mr Kassian, we are so grateful for you joining us tonight.’

  ‘Glad to be here, Helene. And please: it’s Bob.’

  ‘Bob.’

  He began cutting into his pyramid of smoked salmon, even as he braced himself. ‘So what’s on your mind, Helene?’

  ‘Can I be completely candid?’

  ‘I think you’re going to be,’ he smiled.

  ‘I fear this city is going to explode.’

  He stopped eating and put his silverware down. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. This is a racially diverse city, but it’s a racially divided city too.’

  ‘That’s been true a long time, Helene.’ He regretted that: it sounded condescending. ‘What I mean is: go on.’

  ‘What happened last week in Phoenix. White young men running through Latino neighbourhoods, pounding on doors, smashing shop windows, dragging out anyone they suspected of being an undocumented migrant—’

  ‘The governor of the state has restored calm there now.’

  ‘Sure, after twenty-four hours of what was basically a pogrom.’

  ‘Those were terrible scenes, no doubt about it. But you can’t really blame the—’


  ‘I’m not talking about blame, Mr Kassian.’

  ‘Bob.’

  ‘I’m not interested in blame, Bob. I’m interested in prevention. And what I’m trying to say is, there’s no reason that couldn’t happen here.’

  ‘In DC?’

  ‘Sure. People think it’s just a black–white thing here, but it’s not. There’s nearly a million Latinos in the DC metro area.’

  ‘A million?’

  ‘Yep. If you count the people who come here to work. A million.’

  ‘And some of them are illegal?’

  ‘Some will be undocumented, of course. That’s not the point. It’s people thinking they’re undocumented that’s the problem.’

  ‘And going out to find them.’

  ‘Just the whole idea of a deportation force has legitimized this kind of behaviour. You must see that, Bob. The moment your President started—

  ‘Our President. He’s your President too.’

  ‘The moment he set up that deportation force, he essentially said these people are an enemy within. They’re a legitimate target.’

  ‘Well, obviously I can’t agree with that,’ Bob said, finishing the starter on his plate. It was a formulation he was using often these days. Perhaps no one noticed the wiggle room it contained – provided by that ‘can’t’ – but he did. Maybe it would have taken a lawyer to tease it out, but he knew he was not quite telling Helene Kitson that he didn’t agree with her – just that he could not. It carried enough of a hint that he might well want to agree with her, if only his job allowed him to. Whether she heard it that way was a different matter.

  ‘And you know what’s incredible?’ Kassian noticed she had barely touched her food. ‘No one will dare write about this stuff.’

  ‘In this city? Are you sure?’ Kassian was smiling. ‘People are not usually shy about voicing trenchant opinions around here.’

  ‘Oh, that used to be true, I grant you. But, Bob, don’t tell me you don’t see it. This place is changing. It’s already changed.’

  ‘Changed? In what way?’ He caught Pamela’s eye, across the table. His wife could see that Helene was in her stride. She mouthed a single word: ‘Sorry.’

  ‘The press! They’re so tame. Ever since he did that thing with the IRS. They’re all scared he’s going to come after them the same way.’

  ‘Oh, I think that will come as news to my colleagues in the President’s press team,’ he said, offering a world-weary smile. But he knew she was right. In his first month in office the President had unleashed the Internal Revenue Service against the owner of one of the country’s biggest newspaper groups, to pursue ‘irregularities’ in the parent company’s tax affairs. When his opponents said this was a blatant attempt to gag a critical press, his defenders fanned out across cable TV to say it was no such thing: the President was just making sure that ‘the richest people in America paid their fair share of tax’. Naturally, that produced a howling gale of mockery from the late-night comedians, who pointed out there was more evidence that Elvis was alive than there was that the President had ever paid a cent in income tax.

  The more serious objection arose from the words of the President himself. During the election campaign he had explicitly warned the owner of that newspaper, the one that kept needling him, that, if he won, he would use the full machinery of the federal government to come after him. At the time, people wrote it off as bluster. They assumed he was joking, talking like Tony Soprano, striking a street-fighting pose. But this, Kassian reflected, had proved to be one of those times, and there were many, when it was wise to take the President at his word: both seriously and literally.

  Perhaps Kitson had seen Pamela’s little mouthed apology, because now, as she sat back in her chair, allowing the waiter to remove her plate, she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m giving you a hard time. You’ve shown us the good grace of coming to our annual dinner and here I am, beating up on you. My mother would not approve.’ She smiled a wide, conciliatory smile which Kassian did his best to reciprocate.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘How are things with the shelter? Are you getting what you need?’

  ‘Well, events like this help. The time and generosity of people like Pamela.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘But of course, the need is great.’ She paused. ‘I don’t want to beat up on you again.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Well, poverty is not going down, put it that way. People are really struggling. Including people who used to have a safety net.’

  He gestured for her to explain.

  ‘Veterans.’

  ‘But that’s always been an issue, hasn’t it?’ Kassian said, swiftly attaching the word ‘sadly’ to the end of his sentence.

  ‘That’s true. And most of them have got the VA. I’m talking about a specific kind of veteran.’

  Kassian furrowed his brow.

  ‘Latinos.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘They don’t always want to go to the VA.’

  ‘Because Veterans Affairs would demand—’

  ‘Papers. Some of these men are undocumented.’

  ‘But if they wore the nation’s uniform, if they served—’

  ‘Sometimes it’s not about them. It’s about their families. Maybe they themselves would be OK, because they served. But they’ve got a brother or a wife or a sister or a mom. These new rules—’

  ‘The executive order?’

  ‘They’re harsh, Bob. And they’re being implemented harshly. So you’ve got a veteran who a year ago would have gone straight to the VA for help. Maybe he doesn’t want to be on anyone’s radar right now. Doesn’t want that knock on the door at his mom’s house.’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘We don’t talk about it much. The comms team say it’s too “contested”.’

  They both smiled at that. And then she apologized once more. ‘See, I’m doing it again. The voice of doom! It’s no good. If our board knew I was talking this way … I’m meant to be inspiring you.’

  ‘No, no, you are inspiring me. Really.’

  She patted him gratefully on the forearm and turned to talk to the man on her other side. And as the wheels in Kassian’s mind started turning, he reflected on the meaning of the word inspiration. If it meant sparking an idea, then Helene Kitson, Chief Executive of the Coalition for Shelter, had done just that.

  14

  Washington, DC, Tuesday, 9.35pm

  As Maggie scrolled through the tweets under the hashtag #FrankelDeath, she saw that, though it grieved her to admit it, McNamara had been right. Every wacko conspiracy theorist and crank was all over this one.

  The White House doctor had been murdered by the previous occupant of the White House. He had been murdered on the orders of the next occupant of the White House (who apparently had already been selected and was currently serving as the minority leader in the Senate). Alternatively, he had been murdered by Russian intelligence, to demonstrate their reach. He had been murdered by a North Korean death squad, to serve as a warning to the bellicose US President. He had been murdered by the drug companies, because he had been urging the President to move on excessive charges for prescription drugs. The former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan thought everyone was missing the obvious point:

  Frankel was a Jew. The Rothschild banking elites killed one of their own to put us off the scent. But it won’t work! #WhiteRising

  Tweets, Facebook posts, blogs – the world was full of experts on a death that had happened just a few hours ago and about which information was almost non-existent. People like Maggie, those she liked and followed on social media, were united in harrumphing their disapproval. Clearly, they sighed, Dr Frankel had been a troubled man driven to taking the ultimate action. How sick was our culture that people could not just accept that as the sorrowful truth that it was?

  Ordinarily, Maggie would have placed herself in their camp. And yet, based not on her prejudice but simply everything she had seen and discovered toda
y, she had to conclude that – just as a stopped clock is right twice a day – this time the conspiracists had stumbled across the truth.

  Not the garbage about North Korea or the minority leader, admittedly, but the kernel of truth without which these theories could not even take root. They believed the suicide claim was a lie, and on that basic point they were right.

  But where they came unstuck was motive. Why would anyone want to bump off the White House doctor? No one could have been further from the political action than him. He was scrupulously non-partisan, serving not just the previous president but the one before that. Maggie had checked his personnel file, supplied to her courtesy of Crawford McNamara. There was no history to speak of, no complaints lodged against him, no claims of indiscretion. Even if someone worried that he knew too much, they would have had no grounds to suspect he would ever leak. As far as she could see, he never had.

  The key, Maggie felt, must lie with that meeting Frankel had had last night, with Bruton and Kassian. It was too much of a coincidence that, hours after a home visit from two of the most powerful men in the White House – and therefore the world – the doctor had ended up dead.

  But what business would those two men have had with Frankel? He was way below them in the Washington food chain, in a city where such things mattered. For them to visit him at home was especially puzzling. Even if they had needed to see him, why wouldn’t Kassian – as Chief of Staff – simply summon him to his office? Let’s say Kassian was worried about the President’s health; perhaps he had seen some alarming test results. He might well want a discreet word. But what would any of this have to do with the Secretary of Defense?

  It struck her that she didn’t know much about either man, not really. Their appointments had come when she was at the denial stage, barely paying attention to the news. She had spent most of those days during the transition either attempting to tie up loose ends for the outgoing president, listening to him as he tried to persuade her to stay for the good of the country, or wanting to curl up under the duvet, vowing not to emerge until four years had passed and this nightmare might be over. That was when she was not cursing the candidate who had lost, or else hating herself for … everything.