She picked out one of the unused, disposable phones and dialled Lizs number.
Christ, thank God Almighty.
Liz, what is it?
Jesus, when I hadnt heard from you, I thought maybe-
Im OK. Liz, calm down. She could hear her sisters breaths coming quickly, as if she were about to cry.
You may be able to handle all this, Maggie, but Im not sure we can. Not if something happened to you. Ma and me-
You havent told her anything!
Course I havent. A loud sniff. But Jesus, Maggie, you had me worried. Now the contagion seemed to have spread, as the phone was filled by the noise of a child sobbing. Oh, its OK, Calum pet. Mummys OK. There was rustling and more sniffing. There you go, love. Oh look, Peppa Pigs on.
Liz, I can call another time.
No! Youve got to see this.
See what?
Get your computer out, get online.
Hang on. I havent any time, Ive-
This wont take a second.
Liz, this better be She opened the laptop and waited as it came back to life. All right, its on.
OK, go to the Freenet page whereYou know what, forget it. Ive still got remote access, Ill do it.
Maggie watched as the cursor moved, apparently by magic, around her screen. From the internet browser it directed itself to the Freenet and from there to the eerie, unsmiling portrait that constituted victorforbes.gov. Maggie could see that Liz was typing in the password the twelve letters of Stephen Baker rendered as asterisks that transformed that image into the page that glistened with just a single date. March 15, a quarter-century ago.
Now, though, only a vestige of the original image was visible. It appeared to be slowly fading away on the screen, as square by square it was replaced by another.
On an electronic post-it which Liz had somehow thrown up on the screen, the cursor began typing. Look very carefully.
Before her eyes, a photograph was materializing. It was old, grainy and black-and-white but it looked vaguely familiar.
As the pixels filled out, each one becoming more defined, Maggie saw what she was looking at. It was a newspaper shot of the Meredith Hotel, the night it all but burned to the ground. And there in the foreground were the guests, milling around on the street in a state of semi-dress, most in pyjamas or bathrobes.
Another message from Liz: Do you see who I see?
Maggie looked closely at the picture whose resolution was improving with each second. A cluster of three people were in sharpest focus, their faces wearing the panicked expressions of those caught up in a disaster. And now, with a shudder, she recognized him.
There, hugging himself against the cold night, watching the Meredith Hotel burn down was the man whose face Maggie, along with the entire American people and now the world, had come to know. Younger, unlined but undeniably the same person.
She was looking at Stephen Baker.
59
From TPM Muckraker posted at 16.45, Monday March 27:
Youve gotta love this. With the exquisite timing of the damned, one of the Presidents key tormentors has just suffered what you might call an ethics malfunction. Sen. Rusty Wilson was all set to play the role of Grand Inquisitor alongside Rick Franklin had the impeachment proceedings against President Baker moved from the House to the Senate. Something tells us Republicans will be revising those plans now.
For Sen. Wilson has just been on the sharp end of a rather unfortunate leak: to wit, the transcripts of every text and email exchange, and every phone conversation, between himself and a thirty-seven-year-old pharmaceutical industry lobbyist from his state who, as luck would have it, is a chesty blonde among whose qualifications for such a policy-intensive job include past service as a waitress at Hooters. The transcripts reveal the senator as a breathy and demanding lover, one prepared to see the sick people of his state pay over-the-odds for prescription drugs, if that would ensure the continuing loyalty of his young mistress.
Maybe this is why they call Republicans the Grand Old Party. Or should that be HOP? Because they certainly seem to be having a Helluva Party.
Be interesting to see if Bakers persecutors on House Judiciary feel as eager as they were twelve hours ago to keep up their moralistic crusade against the President. Or maybe they should check their scripture. Can TPM Muckraker recommend Matthew 7:3? And why behold you the mote that is in your brothers eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye?
Too early to say Bakers out of the woods, but folks in the White House may be breathing a little easier just now
60
TeterboroAirport, New Jersey, Monday March 27, 18.42
For the best part of forty minutes Maggie had sat on the edge of the rear passenger seat, willing the cab driver turbaned and listening to the BBC World Service to go faster. He had given her a series of disapproving looks, as if her angst were so much cigarette smoke fugging up his cab. Taking out her compact, she could see why. She looked appalling, like some kind of strung-out addict, pale and drawn and raw around the eyes; hardly a suitable guise for the next stage in her plan. She repaired as much of the damage as she was able to, brushing the unfamiliar hairstyle into some kind of order, applying dabs of concealer, mascara, a touch of lipstick. All it succeeded in doing was papering over the cracks, but it was the best she could manage.
For the rest of the journey she had alternated glances over her shoulder, checking to see if they were being followed, with long spells spent staring at the photograph which she had kept up on her now-offline computer screen. She tried to look at it from different angles, to see if there was any way that the lean, handsome young man in the picture was not Stephen Baker.
She had tried and she had failed.
Could it have been doctored? You could do anything these days on Photoshop. But even as she grasped at that straw, she knew that Forbes would not have gone to such lengths to protect a bogus photograph. This was his blanket, the insurance policy designed to protect his life. The photo must be real.
And yet, she had seen the picture cherished for so long by Anne Everett, the clipping from The Daily World showing young Baker in Washington, DC, on the other side of the continent, on the very same day as the hotel fire. It made no sense.
Eventually the cab passed a sign for the General Aviation building and Maggie jumped out, thrusting a wad of bills into the drivers hand. She looked at her watch: the plane was due to take off in fourteen minutes.
She did her best to straighten herself out and to walk tall. She needed to look like the kind of woman who knew her way around a private airfield for the highest-paying corporate customer.
She strode up to the reception desk. Im afraid this is very urgent. Im here for the AitkenBruce flight to Washington that leaves in a few minutes? I have some important documents to deliver to them.
Are they flying out of nineteen or twenty-four today?
You know, they didnt say. Could you check for me?
Are they flying out of nineteen or twenty-four today?
You know, they didnt say. Could you check for me?
The woman tapped away at her computer. Its runway nineteen. Ill let them know youre here.
Maggie turned around and headed for the door, the voice of the receptionist calling after her: Miss! Excuse me! Someones coming to meet you here. Youre not to go out there. Miss!
As she walked headlong into the wind, vicious in this flat expanse of asphalt, it was a struggle to maintain her confident, head-up-shoulders-back stride. Eventually she broke into a jog. She passed a sign for Runway 1 and, a full five minutes later, Runway 6. It was no good. There was just too much ground to cover. Her sides heaved: her battered ribs complained. She looked at her watch. Six minutes to take-off. She was never going to make it. But she had to: she was perhaps the only obstacle standing between Roger Waugh and Stephen Baker; the only one who could unravel the mystery that tied them together. Taking a deep breath, she drove herself into a faster jog, cursing all the damage that cigarettes and her own bloody-minded refusal ever to visit a gym had done to her poor lungs.
Finally, she saw a marker indicating that she was at Runway 19. Three minutes to take-off. She stood where she was, near three parked, golfcart-style airport buggies, and looked straight ahead.
Before her, separated by a grass strip perhaps seventy yards wide, was the sleek body of a Gulfstream jet. The top half was painted white, with a long curve of black just below the seven passenger portholes. At the rear, flanking the tail, were the mighty jet engines, already revving up. The noise was so loud she could feel it vibrating through her breastbone.
Parked just alongside the open cabin door and the descended staircase was a vehicle no less elegant, a black Lincoln Town Car. That surely confirmed she had come to the right place. She was now in no doubt that that plane belonged to AitkenBruce and that inside that car sat its chairman and chief executive, Roger Waugh.
What was she to do now? Should she just stride up to the car, waving a sheaf of fictitious papers? Even if that worked, then what? She had come this far and yet now, so close, she was uncertain.
Unbidden, a question popped into her mind: What would Stuart say? She was just forming an answer when she felt the sudden and tight grip of a hand on each of her upper arms. A half-second later, there was a hand over her mouth and then darkness.
61
TeterboroAirport, New Jersey, Monday March 27, 19.01
Now tell me this isnt the way to travel. The accent was New York, the manner self-satisfied. He spoke again, rapidly, as if he had forgotten something. Forgive me. Where are my manners? Guys, you can take all that stuff off now.
As the black hood was lifted off her face, light seemed to flood into her eyes. She heard a muffled sound of protest: her own. Now one of the two bodyguards who had dragged her onboard the plane sharply pulled back the strip of duct tape that had sealed her mouth, so that her first audible sound was a howl. It was mixed with a gasp of relief, for now she was able to gobble whole greedy gulps of air rather than relying on tiny sniffs of the stale oxygen inside that hood.
Nice to see you, Miss Costello. Welcome aboard. Well be taking off any moment. I dont need to tell you to fasten your seatbelt.