To Kill the President

by Sam Bourne

  He took a unilateral decision, beyond the scope of anything he and the Secretary of Defense had discussed. A quick search offered up multiple options, but he settled on a line he found in Psalms 146:9. The Lord watches over the strangers.

  Garcia read it over and it pleased him. Proud of his heritage, he liked to think that, thanks to this addition, when people came to explain what Hernandez had done, they wouldn’t only talk about his ethnicity. They would not talk of his action solely as the work of a ‘crazed Latino man’.

  He read the line again and proceeded to add more like it. Next to a photograph of a weeping six-year-old child in Laredo, Texas, torn away from his parents by a squad of uniformed officers of the USDF, one read:

  In the name of Jesus stop the deportacions!

  Attached to a picture of the President at the White House podium, the eyes blotted out by Satanic bursts of red, he wrote:

  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus!

  And introducing a Spanish-language news story from three months earlier, alleging that the administration was planning to construct internment camps for undocumented migrants, he cut and pasted another Biblical quote, this one from the Book of Deuteronomy. He read it once, then read it again. He tried to picture it as a screengrab on the TV news, hours after what would be the biggest news story since 1963. He nodded to himself. It read as he wanted it to read – as an unheeded warning from the grave.

  It is mine to avenge. I will repay. Their day of disaster is near.

  21

  The White House, Wednesday, 3.10pm

  Maggie was in her office, glancing at intervals at the door, guarding against the possibility of a McNamara visit. She’d closed it and, were it not the sort of action that might have been interpreted by her colleagues as paranoia or even madness, she’d have locked and bolted it too. She had considered jamming a chair against it, but decided that too might look … eccentric.

  She had chewed her way through two pen tops and was now on a third. Fuck, if she didn’t feel like a cigarette. A memory floated into her head of those nights in Africa, or Jerusalem, when, no matter what stress she was under – talks deadlocked, the parties accusing each other, or her, of some unforgivable act of betrayal – she would take a moment and stand outside, under the stars, having a fag. Best was when she was not alone, but sharing a smoke. One of the greatest pleasures life had to offer, the pre-coital cigarette.

  And not a pleasure she had yet shared with Richard – or was ever likely to. Like most people in Washington under the age of thirty-five, Richard regarded his body the way federal law regarded the Arctic wilderness, as a pristine, sacred domain that was not to be violated at any cost. (Or rather, Maggie corrected herself, the way federal law used to regard the wilderness. In his first week in office the President had drastically shrunk the list of nationally protected areas, mainly so that his pals could do what they’d been itching to do for decades: start drilling for oil.) Minimal consumption of alcohol, zero consumption of nicotine or any other artificial substances, frequent and intense exercise.

  Of course, that had its upsides – and instantly Maggie found herself thinking, once again, of the taut strength of Richard’s body. Strange to admit it at this point in her life, but she’d never known sexual attraction like it. Attraction wasn’t even the word. Too mild. Richard had a sexual hold on her.

  She went back to the screen, forcing herself to concentrate. She understood her own distraction. She was in shock, still reeling from what she’d been told by Lieutenant Rajak, every word of which had rung true.

  In normal times, the graphic and brutal account of sexual assault at the hands of the President would, on its own, have been enough to shake her. But the appalling truth was that these days it no longer registered as a surprise. Given everything that had come out about this man, such revelations had lost their sting. Maggie feared that what was happening to her was happening to the American public. They were becoming inured to it. Not that she would ever admit such a thing to Mary Rajak’s face.

  No, what had rocked Maggie was her description of a President on the verge of ordering a nuclear strike against North Korea and China, a move that would, at a minimum, have left hundreds of millions dead. Even if North Korea’s threats had proved to be empty, and their new missiles had failed to reach the US West Coast, China’s would have had no such trouble. Large stretches of the three countries involved would have been incinerated. And, surely, the madness would have spread. There’d have been nothing left.

  And what had provoked it? A few incendiary – and stupid – words from Pyongyang. Nothing that a ferocious statement from a spokesman couldn’t have dealt with. She half-wondered if it was a tactic, a ploy the President had worked out – perhaps with that lunatic he’d installed at State – to scare the bejesus out of every foreign capital, in Asia and beyond. The old Nixon trick. But when Nixon did it, it was all about sending a signal. He’d once ordered his Defense Secretary to put US nuclear forces on high alert. No one could miss that: eighteen B-52s packed with nukes flying towards the Soviet Union, for Christ’s sake. The message: Nixon means business.

  But from what Rajak had said, nothing like that had happened here. The President wasn’t merely trying to send a message or rattle America’s enemies. As far as Maggie could tell, there was no way they’d even know about it. (Though what was it Rajak had said? Maybe there was a recording or something. What on earth was she talking about?) Besides, Nixon had only ordered an alert. By contrast, according to Rajak, the President had steamed in and ordered an actual attack. That was not about sending a bloody signal. By the time the other side had got it, everyone would be dead.

  Displayed in front of her was the record of all calls routed through the White House switchboard connecting all White House personnel. It backed up Rajak’s account perfectly. It showed calls from the Situation Room to Kassian’s personal cell at 3.20am and to Bruton’s a minute earlier. It then showed a second call to Bruton just after that, surely the one Rajak had hoped to route through to the side conference room. That showed up as lasting just a few seconds and fitted what Rajak had said: in grabbing her wrist, the President had cut off the call before it could be properly connected.

  What she needed most, though, were the logs of Bruton’s phone and Kassian’s. If she were determined, she could get them too. But that would require a formal and elaborate process of authorization that would immediately announce to both men that they were under investigation. It might well require the permission of the President himself. Not an option.

  Still, there was plenty she could look at directly, given the authority of the Counsel’s office. She quickly consulted the White House entry and exit record. She could see that Kassian’s pass was scanned at 3.41am on Monday morning, Bruton’s two minutes earlier. Enough to know that Rajak was telling the truth.

  Now she pulled up the electronic appointments diary of the Chief of Staff. Tellingly, she could see that most of his Monday morning appointments had been cancelled. That confirmed Rajak’s account too: after an incident like that, of course Kassian would have cleared the decks. He’d have needed to meet with a whole range of people, to limit the damage.

  But this was curious. None of those new meetings had been logged. She’d have expected a record of a session with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, perhaps a debrief with the overnight team on duty in the Situation Room, certainly a sit-down with Bruton. Instead, it seemed like the morning had been cleared and nothing put in its place. The only thing she could see entered between the hours of 7.45am and 11.40am was a number: #018779411.

  It didn’t look like a phone number, though she tried it just to be sure, adding a variety of area codes in different permutations. None worked.

  Then she entered it as a search term into the White House database. Still nothing.

  She chewed the pen top harder, cursing the day she gave up smoking. She opened her desk drawer for some nicotine gum. Where had she s
een a number like that?

  Now she opened her own electronic diary and did a search for a similar number. She typed in 01877 to see what happened. Nothing.

  Then she tried 018. It brought up one result. A meeting with the National Security Council, from a while back, which had been titled: ‘New strategies for Israel/Palestine, Preparing for 2018’. Useless.

  This time she included the hashtag in her search. Nothing for #018. But when she tried #01, several entries appeared. Attached to a date in early January of last year, #014555621. In the previous October, #014234998. Now she understood. These were booking reference numbers, assigned by the White House travel office whenever you were on official business. With a few keystrokes, she could see that the number in Kassian’s diary referred to a flight to New York. She could also see that the booking had been made that morning. Whatever he’d been doing there, it must have been a response to the near-catastrophe that had played out during the night.

  Now she sought to do the same for Jim Bruton. Much harder, because the Pentagon had its own protocols. She couldn’t simply rummage around in the electronic files there as easily as she could in the White House.

  Fortunately, she still had a good contact at the Pentagon, someone who, like her, had stayed on. He was a classic Washington type, the kind she used to mock as insufferably dull: straight arrow, humourless and earnest. But, Jesus, how times had changed. Now she positively cherished men like Nick, non-partisan career officials who were faithful to boring things like facts, evidence and the law. The country would be finished without them.

  ‘Nick, it’s Maggie Costello.’ Her voice sober, one serious public servant to another.

  ‘Hi there, Maggie. What’s on your mind?’

  She explained there was something she was trying to chase down at her end, an issue that she could not detail at this stage. Someone had claimed a meeting with the Secretary of Defense as a kind of alibi and the only way of checking it out was by knowing if the Secretary had indeed met this person at any stage in the last three days. Before Nick had a chance to say no, she said, ‘Basically between, say, six am on Monday and now.’

  This was not the kind of information officials liked to divulge. Maggie suspected that, had the request come from almost anyone else, Nick would have refused it. But he understood that she worked for that part of the White House charged with ensuring the law was observed and ethical standards maintained. That gave her the scope to ask questions about any government employee and to expect answers. Nick would see it as his professional duty to help.

  ‘All right, I can see the diary,’ he said. ‘What’s the name you’re looking for?’

  ‘That’s just it, Nick. I can’t disclose that at this stage.’ She scrunched her eyes closed, hoping she would get away with it. ‘Could you bear to go through what you can see? I know the Secretary began the day early at the White House. Very early.’

  Nick began to read out from the appointments diary, Maggie scribbling as fast as she could. What came was an alphabet soup of initials and abbreviations, as he rattled through each fifteen-minute encounter the Secretary of Defense had had with the head of CENTCOM, DARCOM or COSCOM. It seemed endless.

  She thanked him and then explained that she had a further, perhaps more sensitive request. On hearing it, he gave away no reaction, merely saying he would contact her if and when he had any information. Which she took as a polite, but understandable, rebuff.

  She hung up and contemplated the long, yellow sheet with its series of times alongside multiple strings of letters. With a bit of help from Google, she had soon decoded them all – until she had two items circled.

  One was Private social engagement, private address, Chevy Chase, MD on Monday evening. That, she decided, was the visit with Kassian to Dr Frankel.

  The other was more intriguing. It was the only appointment in the diary that broke the format applied to all the others. At eleven am today, Jim Bruton had had a meeting with an individual associated with SOCOM, special operations. Except this person was not identified. All it said of him or her was, no name supplied.

  Maggie got to her feet. A thought was forming. She needed to walk.

  She went down one corridor, then another, until she was by the suite of offices officially held by the First Lady, though these days they were used more by the President’s daughter. Indeed, Maggie could see her now, from the back – that impeccable sweep of hair falling down an expensively cut, tightly fitted dress. She appeared to be in animated conversation with someone leaving her office. Now her shoulders were rising and falling. She was laughing.

  And as Maggie turned the corner, changing the angle, she could see who it was who held the First Daughter in such rapt attention, though in truth her instinct had already provided the answer.

  There, his eyes locked on the woman’s gaze, giving her the full, twenty-thousand-watt smile, was Richard, looking more handsome than ever.

  22

  Delhi, India, 7.30pm, two weeks earlier

  The evening barely brought respite. Looking over his driver’s shoulder, Aamir Kapoor could see that the outside temperature was forty-five degrees, at least according to the gauge on the dashboard which, given what this car cost, he had no reason to doubt. A sane man would stay inside this air-conditioned cocoon and have his driver turn around and take him back towards Lutyens’ Delhi and the equally refrigerated comfort of home.

  But some things were beyond the reach of reason, or even sanity. Once he felt the need to pay his respects, to bow his head in tribute, then he could not refuse that urge. Was it superstition? Partly. But he preferred to think of it as an act of love. Not for the long-dead Sufi holy man whose shrine sat inside the seething, crammed narrow streets of Nizamuddin West, but for a man more recently departed.

  What would his international business partners, those who only ever saw him in his office inside the gleaming tower of steel-and-glass or at a celebratory, contract-signing sushi dinner in one of the city’s five-star hotels, make of this ritual of his? Some would doubtless think it charming, an exotic custom that was fascinating.

  But most, he suspected, would find it barbaric, primitive. They would be embarrassed by the sight of him out of his dark suit, one of a dozen he’d had made for him on Jermyn Street in London, wearing instead the worn, nearly threadbare kurta he had taken from his father’s cupboard in the days after the old man’s death – a garment he would still hold to his nostrils, hoping for a hint of memory. If, say, his American business partners were to follow him through these side streets, if they were to experience this heat, this dust, this dirt, it would remind them that they were dealing with a country that might do a good job of appearing first world, but where half the population, 600 million people, owned no toilet. Like his good friend, Swapan, always said, ‘This country is floating on shit and no one talks about it.’

  He told his driver to pull up and let him out. ‘Keep circling around,’ he said. ‘I’ll text you when I’m ready to go.’ A visit to the shrine, a quick bowl of mutton nihari, and he would be done. That would give him his monthly dose, enough of a fix to get him through the next few weeks.

  And Aamir felt that, given what was coming, he would need the strength. He would need all his resolve to stand in the way of this plan and the men backing it. Not so long ago, he had had plenty of allies: in the city council, in the national government, on his own board. But ever since the key investor had become – what was the word in English – elevated to a new role, Aamir’s one-time friends had suddenly undergone a dramatic change of heart.

  Now they saw the merit in the American’s scheme: to build a California-style ‘Indian heritage’ theme park, right in the heart of one of Delhi’s most historic neighbourhoods, sweeping away centuries of history and leaving perhaps twenty-two thousand people homeless. ‘We can lose that many people in an hour’s flooding in Uttar Pradesh, what’s the big deal?’ Those were the actual words spoken by a man he had once regarded as a friend. The acquisition of enormous po
litical power could be very persuasive, Aamir had discovered.

  So he would need all his steel to hold back this tide. Coming here on a Thursday night, the way his father had done every week, would help, he was sure of it.

  He waved the Porsche away and began to walk west, instantly grateful for the teeming crowd, the noise, even the stink. His European friends told him they needed to get away to the Scottish Highlands, or the Alps, to relax, to clear their heads. For Aamir, it was the opposite. Being here, in this packed square kilometre of narrow lanes and tiny stalls, allowed him to think. The buckets of boiling oil at every turn, fizzing as they turned folded pastry and diced vegetables into samosas, the heat emerging from the gaping mouth of the tandoor ovens, the sweat on the bodies he passed, the great leveller of body odour, unavoidable even among the most fastidious – it did not disturb him. On the contrary, it allowed him to relax, to disengage from the office and the phone calls and the emails, and to enter some other state.

  He was closer to the shrine now, this place that had meant so much to his father. If Aamir had his way, they’d build a statue to the old man right here. Who else better embodied the greatness of India than his father, a man who had begun his life pushing a rickshaw in these streets and who had hassled and hustled and scratched together enough rupees to pay for Aamir, his favoured son, to attend an elite school, with a little help from a scholarship for the exceptionally gifted? Who?

  He brushed past a couple of white women in their thirties – they never looked whiter than when they came here – and passed the open butcher’s shop, with its great slabs of red buffalo meat luridly lit by the neon overhead, bright enough to turn the blood coagulating on the floor to scarlet. He took in the smell of the meat, simultaneously sweet and rotting. A goat navigated around his ankles and moved on.

  He nodded to the shopkeeper, standing watch over his collection of plastic replicas of the Taj Mahal – each one with a cheap clock embedded in it, primed to chime when it was time to pray – green flags and poster prints of Mecca. And he waved aside the first bidders for the right to take custody of his shoes: all in good time.