Im sure, sir. Shure, shir.
I used to call him Andrew at school. Thats how I came to think of him. Andrew Jackson, like the president. I just didnt make the connection. What on earths this all about, Maggie?
I wish I knew, Mr President. But I intend to find out.
Theyre calling me back in, Maggie. What do you need?
They stole my wallet and my phone.
OK, Sanchez will send you everything.
Thank you, sir. But make sure he leaves no trail. Stuart wouldnt want you accused of running a slush fund, paying someone like me to poke around into Jacksons past. Tell him to be careful.
Maggie, its you who has to be careful. I cant afford to lose another person I trust. There are too few of you left.
Thank you, Mr President.
She must have dozed off straight after the phone call, worn out by the effort of it, because nearly an hour had passed when she woke up. A handwritten telephone message had been left by her bedside from a Mr Doug of Dupont Circle. She smiled at Sanchezs attempt at discretion.
The door creaked open. Maggie looked up, struggling to focus. She could see that a woman had entered, middle-aged but in the dark it was hard to make out her features.
What an unexpected surprise to see you again, she said. There you are, dear.
Dear.
Maggie created a fist, a futile gesture for a woman with two broken ribs and a tube in her arm, but it was a reflex, the result of the bolt of fear and rage that had just coursed through her.
Now the woman was coming nearer, approaching the bed. She had a syringe in her hand. Maggie recoiled.
No need to be scared, Maggie dear. No need to be scared at all. I have something that will make all the pain go away.
40
Diplomatic cable:
From the Head of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, Tehran
To the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran, housed within the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Washington DC
TOP SECRET. ENCRYPTION SETTING: MAXIMUM.
You are to be congratulated. SB dangles by a silken thread. But the Supreme Leader is concerned about the matter of credit. Whatever is written in the West, it is imperative that believers understand the Islamic Republic to have played the critical role. Please advise what action you will take to ensure the wider Muslim world understands that, when the moment comes, the head of the snake did not simply fall off: it was severed! Ends.
Editorial from The Guardian newspaper, London, Saturday March 25:
For the past week, the world has watched events in Washington with something like incredulity. Sixty-four days have passed since Stephen Baker swore the oath of office as President of the United States. When he did so, it was not just Americans who hoped they were about to make a fresh start. The world dared to hope too.
Yet a series of allegations, apparently timed to go off in sequence like a set of terrorist bombs, has left Mr Baker more vulnerable than would have seemed imaginable on that icy January morning of his inauguration. Extraordinarily, impeachment proceedings have begun against a president who has barely got his feet under the Oval Office table.
This newspaper deplores that effort. Republicans determined to topple Mr Baker should pause, reflecting that they will not simply be removing the head of their own government. Bombastic though this may sound, they will be depriving the world of its de facto leader. For that is what the role of US president in the twenty-first century entails.
Now is not the time. Not when the world faces so many grave problems, from bitter wars to a changing climate. And Mr Baker who seems to understand those problems better than most is not the right target. We are heartened by the news that one conservative Democrat on the House of Representatives judiciary committee has signalled that he will stay loyal to his president. We call on the remaining two waverers those whose votes, were they to switch to the Republicans, would formally advance impeachment proceedings against Mr Baker to do the right thing. It is not just America that needs them to act wisely. The entire world is watching.
41
Aberdeen, Washington, Saturday March 25, 11.25 PST
There really is nothing to be frightened of at all, dear.
Maggie reached for the cup of coffee, still hot, that had been left at her bedside. The woman was looming over her. If only Maggie could grab hold of it, she could throw the steaming liquid in her face. She stretched
And at that moment she saw the womans face clearly. Grey-haired, yes, but not, after all, the apparently kindly lady who had sabotaged her car at the school.
Im sorry, Maggie panted. I thought you were someone else.
Its easy to get confused, dear. I was in the ambulance bay when they brought you in. Youd had quite a scrape. Now what about these painkillers?
Painkillers?
Yes, dear. The doctor says you should take them. She checked her watch. Around now. I can either do it intravenously, she held up the needle, or with tablets. What would you prefer?
Maggie nodded towards the tablets. She took the tiny paper cup from the nurse and put the pills on her tongue, then knocked back a swig of water.
Well done, dear.
The instant the nurses back was turned, Maggie popped the two tablets out of the side of her cheek where she had lodged them, and tucked them under her pillow. She waited for the door to creak shut.
Right, that was it. Whoever it was who had tried to kill her once would doubtless be back to try again. She would not stay here a moment longer, a sitting duck. Lying here she could be injected, poisoned or smothered: it would be so easy.
She looked first at her hand, at the needle embedded in the largest vein. Grimacing from the pain, she removed it slowly, grabbing a tissue from the box by her bed to staunch the blood.
Next she levered herself forward away from the pillow, so that she was supporting her back with her own strength. She pulled back the duvet. For the first time she saw that she was wearing a standard hospital robe, the words Grays Harbor stencilled across it in the style of a prison uniform.
Now, with a massive exertion, she swung first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed and slid her bottom forward till her feet touched the ground. Gingerly, she transferred her weight onto them and to her relief, realized that she could walk. Clearly she had sustained the most serious injuries in her top half.
She made it across the room to the chair where her overnight bag sat like an old friend. She unzipped it, finding trousers and a shirt inside. It took nearly ten minutes to dress herself.
She was about to leave when she remembered the note from Sanchez, still by the bed. She shuffled over and retrieved it, then moved towards the door, and froze. There, a full-length mirror projected back an image that stopped her short. Her right cheek shone with a red bruise and there were dark, deep lines around and underneath her eyes. She looked like an inmate of a womens refuge.
Cracking open the door, she tried to swing her bag casually over her shoulder a movement that made her want to howl with pain and began to make her escape. With all the strength she could muster, she walked past the nurses station no shuffling allowed now determined not to look back.
She had gone perhaps five paces when she heard a voice behind her. Miss? Excuse me?
She was just a few feet from the double doors leading away from here.
Miss?
Over her shoulder, as nonchalantly as she could manage, she called out: She seems much better! Thanks. She pushed the doors open and left.
The signs offered little help. Geriatrics upstairs, obstetrics downstairs, X-rays along the corridor. And then, separately, something else: student halls of residence.
She hobbled in that direction, wincing at the pain as she headed down two flights of stairs. Before long she was away from the wards and in a series of corridors containing a series of identical doors.
Finally she found what she was looking for: an exit sign. Her hunch had been vindicated. The medical students had their own separate entrance one that, Maggie hoped, would not be monitored by whoever was watching her.
The fresh air was a shock to her, colder than she was expecting. It seemed to slap her in the face, the wind whipping her with a sudden, sharp sense of how alone she now was. Battered and penniless in the middle of nowhere, she had no way of contacting the outside world, and no one, anyway, she could contact. Her closest ally was dead, almost certainly murdered. She had no real friends, no boyfriend and no family on the entire continent.
So she would just have to rely on herself. It wouldnt be the first time.
The walk to the main road was long and agonizing. She dreaded how easily, out in the open, she would be spotted by her pursuers. At last she flagged down a cab and slumped into the back seat.
Where can I take you?the diner
Heron Street. She tried to smile, then saw the driver look her over in the rear-view mirror.
You OK?
Im getting there.
She pulled out the message from Doug and looked at it properly for the first time.
There is a safe way to do this. Go to Heron Street. And remember, we always believed in Western unity.
The road was wide, more a highway than a street, and as the driver passed Sidneys Casino, a building with all the glamour of a large garden shed, and several open-air car dealerships, their forecourts crammed with discounted Dodges and Chevys, she felt her brow furrow. Why would Sanchez send her here?
And then she saw it, the tall flagpole-style sign for Safeway. She smiled at the simplicity of it and asked the driver to wait, forming a guess for the last piece of Sanchezs attempt at a puzzle.
She only had to look around the supermarket for thirty seconds to see it. A counter, close to the checkout lines, below the instantly recognizable bright yellow-and-black sign: Western Union.
And remember, we always believed in Western unity.
She gave her name to the young, much-pierced girl behind the glass window who promptly asked for ID. Maggie began to explain, that was the whole point, everything she had had been stolen: passport, drivers-
Hold on, theres a note on my system here? Says Im meant to check your face against this? The same upspeak Maggie would have heard back home, on OConnell Street.