‘Before?’
‘Oh yes. Not much point doing it afterwards, is there?’
‘And did they find anything?’
‘You know everything they found. So does the American people.’
Maggie smiled at the realization of it. ‘Of course. The big “I experimented with drugs” admission. Getting stoned rebranded as a science project. Experimented, my arse.’
‘Sure, it’s bullshit. But it worked, didn’t it? Once you get it out there, you get to define yourself—’
‘—before they define you. What about Iran?’
‘Well, that couldn’t come up during the campaign ‘cause it hadn’t happened yet. That took some serious digging. Somehow Forbes knew what we didn’t know ourselves.’
‘You didn’t know Jim Hodges was Hossein Najafi?’
Goldstein jerked his head back, as if affronted. ‘Listen Maggie. Even my booba, may she rest in peace, knows that you don’t take money from fucking I-ran! Of course we didn’t know.’
‘Were we set up? Someone sent Hodges in here to embarrass us?’
‘Maybe. Maybe the Iranians did it. Make Baker look like an asshole. Right now, though, the only thing that bothers me about Hodges is how Forbes knew about him. And about the shrink.’ He stared at the TV. ‘I want to know who this bastard is.’
In the end, she was disappointed. Vic Forbes did not look like a monster or a pantomime villain. In truth, his face, as he stared dead-on at the camera, conducting a satellite interview from a studio in New Orleans, was forgettable. It was lean, like one of the whippets her grandfather’s friends used to keep in Dublin. His nose seemed to be pinched, too thin at the bridge. He was bald, save for some slight grey at the temples, which had Maggie put his age at around fifty, though it was perfectly possible that he had looked the same way when he was thirty.
If she had guessed how this scene would have played out, she would have imagined embarrassment would at least feature in it somewhere. Maybe shame was too much to ask for in this day and age, but you’d think a man who had anonymously smeared the President would at least have the courtesy to seem uncomfortable, even if he couldn’t bring himself to squirm in his chair.
But Forbes was having none of it. Maggie watched mesmerized as he batted away a series of questions as if he’d been doing this all his life.
Describing himself as a ‘researcher’, he insisted he was aligned with ‘no party and no faction’, a phrase that, to Maggie’s ears at least, reeked of pomposity.
‘I am a truth-teller, if you will,’ he said. ‘I had this information – this truth – and I felt guilty that I wasn’t sharing it with the American people. It’s an old-fashioned phrase, but I believe they have a right to know. They have a right to know who their president really is.’
‘But how did you get it?’ the interviewer asked. ‘Surely the American people have a right to know that too, don’t they?’
Maggie felt her own fist clench, involuntarily. Come on.
‘Well, Natalie,’ he began.
Good, thought Maggie. He seemed flustered.
‘The thing is . . . Look, in an ideal world . . .’
Maggie glanced at Stuart, who was as transfixed as she was, hoping that they were witnessing the unravelling of Vic Forbes on live television.
‘The point I would make, Natalie, is to ask you this: would you reveal your sources, if your network had broken a story like this without my help? Of course you wouldn’t.’ Maggie felt the air deflate out of her. ‘And nor would anyone ask you. That’s a basic principle of journalism.’
‘Yes, but you’re not a journalist, are you, you scumbag bastard!’ Stuart hurled an empty Styrofoam cup at the TV.
The same sentence ran through Maggie’s head, on a repeat loop: Who is this guy?
Stuart’s phone rang. He stabbed at it, putting it on speaker. ‘Hey, Zoe, whaddya got?’
Maggie heard the agent’s voice, stiff and correct. ‘It’s still very early in our inquiries, Mr Goldstein.’
‘I know that. And I also know that electronic data of this kind is complex and searches can take several weeks—’ his voice was rising, ‘—and that it’s impossible to be certain, I know all of that, Zoe. But I need to know. WHAT. HAVE. YOU. GOT?’
The sound of shuffled papers was finally followed by an intake of breath.
‘OK, Mr Goldstein. Our preliminary investigation—’
‘Zoe.’
‘New Orleans. We think the person who sent that message to Katie Baker’s Facebook page was white, male, extremely adept with computer technology and from New Orleans, Louisiana, sir.’
He hung up, shooting one eye at Maggie, the other on the TV.
‘So, Stu, he’s the same guy, right?’
‘Confirmed,’ Goldstein said, staring at the screen, watching Forbes perform. ‘How come this guy’s so good? All that BS about “the people’s right to know”. Where did that come from? He looks like shit; he’s sweating. But he’s impressive. He’s careful. He’s like a goddamn politician.’
Without taking his eye off the screen, he reached for the remote and hit pause. (A set-top box, allowing the pausing and rewinding of live TV, was now an essential tool of the trade: it meant never having to miss an enemy gaffe again.) He rewound and watched the last minute again.
‘What are you looking for?’ Maggie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he murmured. ‘But I’ll know it when I see it.’
There he went again, more guff about his ‘duty’ to lay out the facts before the American people. He couldn’t play judge and jury, but people should know he was serious and the President should know he was serious.
But on this second viewing Goldstein was not listening. He was looking. And now he saw what he had glimpsed so fleetingly. Maggie could see it too. A movement of the eye, still looking at the camera but no longer as if trying to meet the gaze of the unseen interviewer: he was, instead, looking into the audience. More than that, he seemed to be addressing someone specific.
The President should know I’m serious.
Goldstein hit pause once more, freezing Vic Forbes at the moment he lifted his eyes, the signal that he was speaking to an audience of one.
The President should know I’m serious. Deadly serious.
Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 18.15
For the third time in two days, Maggie was in the White House Residence. ‘Maybe I should get myself sacked more often,’ she had said to Stuart. ‘It seems to be a good career move.’
This was an emergency meeting, called by the President. He wasn’t pacing this time; his exterior, at least, was calm and cool. He had chosen one of the wooden chairs, allowing him to stay upright even if everyone else would be forced to slump on a sofa.
Maggie looked around the room, five of them had been called here – Goldstein, her, Tara MacDonald, Doug Sanchez, and Larry Katzman, the pollster.
‘Thank you for coming,’