The Book of Fate

by Brad Meltzer

  But that’s why we brought the motorcade. We didn’t need eighteen cars. The runway in the Daytona Airport was actually adjacent to the racetrack. There were no red lights to run. No traffic to hold back. But to everyone watching . . . Have you ever seen the President’s motorcade on a racetrack? Instant American frenzy.

  I didn’t care how close we were in the polls. One lap around and we’d be picking out our seats for the inauguration.

  Across from me, Boyle wasn’t nearly as thrilled. With his arms crossed against his chest, he never stopped studying the President.

  “Got the stars out too, eh?” Calinoff asked as we entered the final turn and he saw our welcoming committee, a small mob of NASCAR drivers all decked out in their multicolor, advertising-emblazoned jumpsuits. What his untrained eye didn’t notice were the dozen or so “crew members” who were standing a bit more erect than the rest. Some had backpacks. Some carried leather satchels. All had sunglasses. And one was speaking into his own wrist. Secret Service.

  Like any other first-timer in the limo, Calinoff was practically licking the glass. “Mr. Calinoff, you’ll be getting out first,” I told him as we pulled into the pit stalls. Outside, the drivers were already angling for presidential position. In sixty seconds, they’d be running for their lives.

  Calinoff leaned toward my door on the driver’s side, where all the NASCAR drivers were huddled.

  I leaned forward to block him, motioning to the President’s door on the other side. “That way,” I said. The door right next to him.

  “But the drivers are over there,” Calinoff objected.

  “Listen to the boy,” the President chimed in, gesturing toward the door by Calinoff.

  Years ago, when President Clinton came for a NASCAR race, members of the crowd booed. In 2004, when President Bush arrived with legendary driver Bill Elliott in his motorcade, Elliott stepped out first and the crowd erupted. Even Presidents can use an opening act.

  With a click and a thunk, the detail leader pushed a small security button under the door handle which allowed him to open the armor-lined door from the outside. Within seconds, the door cracked open, twin switchblades of light and Florida heat sliced through the car, and Calinoff lowered one of his handmade cowboy boots onto the pavement.

  “And please welcome four-time Winston Cup winner . . . Mike Caaaalinoff!” the announcer shouted through the stadium.

  Cue crowd going wild.

  “Never forget,” the President whispered to his guest as Calinoff stepped outside to the 200,000 screaming fans. “That’s who we’re here to see.”

  “And now,” the announcer continued, “our grand marshal for today’s race—Florida’s own . . . President Leeeee Maaaaanning!”

  Just behind Calinoff, the President hopped out of the car, his right hand up in a wave, his left hand proudly patting the NASCAR logo on the chest of his windbreaker. He paused for a moment to wait for the First Lady. As always, you could read the lips on every fan in the grandstands. There he is . . . There he is . . . There they are . . . Then, as soon as the crowd had digested it, the flashbulbs hit. Mr. President, over here! Mr. President . . . ! He’d barely moved three steps by the time Albright was behind him, followed by Boyle.

  I stepped out last. The sunlight forced me to squint, but I still craned my neck to look up, mesmerized by the 200,000 fans who were now on their feet, pointing and waving at us from the grandstands. Two years out of college, and this was my life. Even rock stars don’t have it this good.

  Putting his arm out for a handshake, Calinoff was quickly enveloped by the waiting crowd of drivers, who smothered him with hugs and backslaps. At the front of the crowd was the NASCAR CEO and his surprisingly tall wife, here to welcome the First Lady.

  Approaching the drivers, the President grinned. He was next. In three seconds, he’d be surrounded—the one black windbreaker in a Technicolor sea of Pepsi, M&M’s, DeWalt, and Lone Star Steakhouse jumpsuits. As if he’d won the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the—

  Pop, pop, pop.

  That’s all I heard. Three tiny pops. A firecracker. Or a car backfiring.

  “Shots fired! Shots fired!” the detail leader yelled.

  “Get down! Get back!”

  I was still smiling as the first scream tore through the air. The crowd of drivers scattered—running, dropping, panicking in an instant blur of colors.

  “God gave power to the prophets . . .” a man with black buzzed hair and a deep voice shouted from the center of the swirl. His tiny chocolate eyes seemed almost too close together, while his bulbous nose and arched thin eyebrows gave him a strange warmth that for some reason reminded me of Danny Kaye. Kneeling down on one knee and holding a gun with both hands, he was dressed as a driver in a black and bright yellow racing jumpsuit.

  Like a bumblebee, I thought.

  “. . . but also to the horrors . . .”

  I just kept staring at him, frozen. Sound disappeared. Time slowed. And the world turned black-and-white, my own personal newsreel. It was like the first day I met the President. The handshake alone felt like an hour. Living between seconds, someone called it. Time standing still.

  Still locked on the bumblebee, I couldn’t tell if he was moving forward or if everyone around him was rushing back.

  “Man down!” the detail leader shouted.

  I followed the sound and the hand motions to a man in a navy suit, lying facedown on the ground. Oh, no. Boyle. His forehead was pressed against the pavement, his face screwed up in agony. He was holding his chest, and I could see blood starting to puddle out from below him.

  “Man down!” the detail leader shouted again.

  My eyes slid sideways, searching for the President. I found him just as a half dozen jumpsuited agents rushed at the small crowd that was already around him. The frantic agents were moving so fast, the people closest to Manning were pinned against him.

  “Move him! Now!” an agent yelled.

  Pressed backward against the President, the wife of the NASCAR CEO was screaming.

  “You’re crushing her!” Manning shouted, gripping her shoulder and trying to keep her on her feet. “Let her go!”

  The Service didn’t care. Swarming around the President, they rammed the crowd from the front and right side. That’s when momentum got the best of them. Like a just-cut tree, the crush of people tumbled to the side, toward the ground. The President was still fighting to get the CEO’s wife out. A bright light exploded. I remember the flashbulb going off.

  “. . . so people could test their faith . . .” the gunman roared as a separate group of agents in jumpsuits got a grip on his neck . . . his arm . . . the back of his hair. In slow motion, the bumblebee’s head snapped back, then his body, as two more pops ripped the air.

  I felt a bee sting in my right cheek.

  “. . . and examine good from evil!” the man screamed, arms spread out like Jesus as agents dragged him to the ground. All around them, other agents formed a tight circle, brandishing semiautomatic Uzis they had torn from their leather satchels and backpacks.

  I slapped my own face, trying to kill whatever just bit me. A few feet ahead, the crowd surrounding the President collided with the asphalt. Two agents on the far side grabbed the First Lady, pulling her away. The rest never stopped shoving, ramming, stepping over people as they tried to get to Manning and shield him.

  I looked as the puddle below Boyle grew even larger. His head was now resting in a milky white liquid. He’d thrown up.

  From the back of the President’s pile, our detail leader and another suit-and-tie agent gripped Manning’s elbows, lifted him from the pile, and shoved him sideways, straight at me. The President’s face was in pain. I looked for blood on his suit but didn’t see any.

  Picking up speed, his agents were going for the limo. Two more agents were right behind them, gripping the First Lady under her armpits. I was the only thing in their way. I tried to sidestep but wasn’t fast enough. At full speed, the detail leader’s shoulder p
lowed into my own.

  Falling backward, I crashed into the limo, my rear end hitting just above the right front tire. I still see it all in some out-of-body slow motion: me trying to keep my balance . . . slapping my hand against the car’s hood . . . and the splat from my impact. Sound was so warped, I could hear the liquid squish. The world was still black-and-white. Everything except for my own red handprint.

  Confused, I put my hand back to my cheek. It slid across my skin, which was slick and wet and raw with pain.

  “Go, go, go!” someone screamed.

  Tires spun. The car lurched. And the limo sped out from under me. Like a soda can forgotten on the roof, I tumbled backward, crashing on my ass. A crunch of rocks bit into my rear. But all I could really feel was the tick-tock tick-tock pumping in my cheek.

  I looked down at my palm, seeing that my chest and right shoulder were soaked. Not by water. Thicker . . . and darker . . . dark red. Oh, God, is that my—?

  Another flashbulb went off. It wasn’t just the red of my blood I was seeing. Now there was blue . . . on my tie . . . and yellow . . . yellow stripes on the road. Another flashbulb exploded as knives of color stabbed my eyes. Silver and brown and bright green race cars. Red, white, and blue flags abandoned in the grandstands. A screaming blond boy in the third row with an aqua and orange Miami Dolphins T-shirt. And red . . . the dark, thick red all over my hand, my arm, my chest.

  I again touched my cheek. My fingertips scraped against something sharp. Like metal—or . . . is that bone? My stomach nose-dived, swirling with nausea. I touched my face again with a slight push. That thing wouldn’t budge . . . What’s wrong with my fa—?

  Two more flashbulbs blinded me with white, and the world flew at me in fast-forward. Time caught up in a fingersnap, blurring at lightspeed.

  “I’m not feeling a pulse!” a deep voice yelled in the distance. Directly ahead, two suit-and-tie Secret Service agents lifted Boyle onto a stretcher and into the ambulance from the motorcade. His right hand dangled downward, bleeding from his palm. I replayed the moments before the limo ride. He would’ve never been in there if I hadn’t—

  “He’s cuffed! Get the hell off!” A few feet to the left, more agents screamed at the dogpile, peeling layers away to get at the gunman. I was on the ground with the rest of the grease stains, struggling to stand up, wondering why everything was so blurry.

  Help . . . ! I called out, though nothing left my lips.

  The grandstands tilted like a kaleidoscope. I fell backward, crashing into the pavement, lying there, my palm still pressed against the slippery metal in my cheek.

  “Is anyone—?”

  Sirens sounded, but they weren’t getting louder. Softer. They quickly began to fade. Boyle’s ambulance . . . Leaving . . . They’re leaving me . . .

  “Please . . . why isn’t . . . ?”

  One woman screamed in a perfect C minor. Her howl pierced through the crowd as I stared up at the clear Florida sky. Fireworks . . . we were supposed to have fireworks. Albright’s gonna be pissed . . .

  The sirens withered to a faint whistle. I tried to lift my head, but it didn’t move. A final flashbulb hit, and the world went completely white.

  “Wh-Why isn’t anyone helping me?”

  That day, because of me, Ron Boyle died.

  Eight years later, he came back to life.

  2

  Eight years later

  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

  Some scars never heal.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the ex-President of the United States, Leland Manning,” our host, the deputy prime minister of Malaysia announces. I cringe as I hear the words. Never call him ex. It’s former. Former President.

  The deputy prime minister repeats it again in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Malay. The only words I understand each time are: Leland Manning . . . Leland Manning . . . Leland Manning. From the way Manning tugs on his earlobe and pretends to glance backstage, it’s clear that the only words he hears are ex-President.

  “Here you go, sir,” I say, handing him a letter-sized leather box that holds the pages of his speech. I’ve got a 101 fever and just stepped off an eleven-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur during which I didn’t sleep a minute. Thanks to the time difference, it feels like three in the morning. It doesn’t slow Manning down. Presidents are built to run all night. Their aides, however, aren’t. “Good luck,” I add as I pull the burgundy curtain aside, and he bounds out from the right-hand side of the stage.

  The crowd rises to a standing ovation, and Manning waves the speechbox in the air as if he’s got the nuclear codes in there. We used to actually have them. A military aide would follow us everywhere, carrying the codes in a leather briefcase known as the Football.

  These days, we don’t have a mil aide . . . or the Football . . . or a motorcade . . . or a staff of thousands who will fly fax machines and armored limos around the world for us. These days, beyond a few Secret Service agents, I have the President, and the President has me.

  Four months after the assassination attempt, President Manning lost his bid for reelection, and we all got tossed from the White House. The leaving was bad enough—they took everything from us . . . our jobs, our lives, our pride—but the why . . . the why is what haunts.

  During the congressional investigations after the assassination attempt, Capitol Hill nitpickers were all too eager to point out every possible security flaw made on the racetrack trip, from the Secret Service agent in the local Orlando field office who had been stopped for a DUI two days before the President’s visit . . . to the unexplainable holes that allowed the gunman to sneak through security . . . to the fact that the President’s personal physician had accidentally ordered the wrong blood type for the ambulance on the day of the event. None of those mistakes mattered. But there was one that did.

  After John Hinckley took a shot at President Reagan in 1981, Reagan’s approval ratings shot up to 73 percent, the highest they reached during his eight years in office. After that day at the speedway, Manning’s approval ratings kamikazed to a dismal 32 percent. The only thing to blame is the photo.

  Pictures endure after every crisis. Even in the midst of the chaos, photographers manage to click their shutters and snap a shot. Some photos, like the one of Jackie Kennedy at the moment of JFK’s shooting, show unapologetic terror. Others, like the one of Reagan, caught mid-blink during his shooting, show just how little time anyone has to react. It’s the one thing politicians can’t spin. They can manipulate their policies, their votes . . . even their personal backgrounds—but photographs . . . photographs rarely lie.

  So when we heard about the photo in question—a crisp digital print of President Manning in mid-yell . . . standing behind the NASCAR CEO’s wife . . . his hand on her shoulder as he was tugged backward by the Service . . . and best of all, trying to help push her out of the crushing crowd—we thought we’d have Reagan numbers. America’s Lion in mid-roar.

  Then we saw the photo. So did America. And they didn’t see Manning pushing the CEO’s wife forward, out of the way. They saw the President pulling her back, in front of him . . . cowering down behind his own personal shield. We trotted out the CEO’s wife, who tried to explain that it wasn’t how it looked. Too late. Five hundred front pages later, the Cowardly Lion was born.

  “Roar,” Manning whispers into the microphone with a wry smile as he grips the sides of the podium onstage.

  When former President Eisenhower was lying on his deathbed, he looked at his son and one of his doctors and said, “Pull me up.” They propped him up in bed. “Two big men,” Ike groused. “Higher.” They propped him even more. He knew what was coming. He died minutes later. All Presidents want to go out strong. Manning’s no different.

  He roars again, this time even softer. It took three years before he could make that joke. Today, it gets easy laughs and applause, which is why he opens every paid speech with it.

  It’s okay to make jokes now. The public even expects it—they can’t get over it until you do.
But as I learned during my first week on the job, just because the President is laughing doesn’t mean he’s laughing. Manning lost far more than the presidency that day at the speedway. He also lost one of his dearest friends. When the shots were fired, the President . . . myself . . . Albright and everyone else— we all went down. Boyle was the only one who never got back up.

  I still see the milky pink puddle seeping out below him as he lay there facedown, his face pressed against the pavement. I hear the doors of his ambulance slam shut like a bank vault . . . the sirens fading into a muffled black hole . . . and the gasping, stuttering sobs of Boyle’s daughter, struggling to get through the eulogy at her father’s funeral. That was the one that cut deepest, and not just because her voice was shaking so much she could barely get the words out. His daughter, barely entering high school, had the same intonation as her dad. Boyle’s whistling s’s and short Florida o’s. When I closed my eyes, it sounded like Boyle’s ghost speaking at his own memorial. Even the critics who once used his father’s arrests to call him a moral black eye on the administration kept their mouths shut. Besides, the damage had already been done.

  The funeral was televised, of course, which for once I appreciated, since the surgeries and the damage in my face meant I was watching it all from my hospital room. In a warped way, it was even worse than actually being there, especially as the President stood up to deliver the final eulogy.

  Manning always memorized the opening lines of his speeches—better to look the audience in the eye. But that day at the funeral . . . That was different.

  No one else even saw it. At the podium, the President had his chest out and his shoulders back in a conscious display of strength. He looked out at the reporters who lined the back walls of the crowded church. At the mourners. At his staff. And at Boyle’s wife and now-bawling young daughter.