‘Mr President. We need to go across to the Roosevelt Room. You’re signing VAW in two minutes.’ A small turn of the head. ‘Hi Maggie.’
Baker took his jacket off the back of a kitchen chair and swung his arms into it. ‘Walk with me.’
The instant he began moving she could see the Secret Service agents alter their posture, one whispering into his lapel, ‘Firefly is on the move.’ Firefly, the codename allocated to Baker by the Secret Service. The bloggers had been kept busy for a week, deconstructing the hidden meaning of that one.
‘What kind of options are you after, Mr President?’
‘I want something that will get the job done. There’s an area the size of France that’s become a killing field. No one can police that on the ground.’ As they walked, a pair of agents hovered close by, three paces behind.
‘So you’re talking about the air?’
He looked Maggie in the eye, fixing her in that cool, deep green. Now she understood.
‘Are you suggesting we equip the African Union with US helicopters, Mr President? Enough of them to monitor the entire Darfur region from the sky?’
‘It’s like you always said, Maggie. The bad guys get away with it because they think no one’s looking. And no one is looking.’
She spoke slowly, thinking it through. ‘But if the AU had state-of-the-art Apaches, with full surveillance technology – night vision, infra-red, high-definition cameras – then we could see exactly who’s doing what and when. There’d be no place to hide. We could see who was torching villages and killing civilians.’
‘Not “we”, Maggie. The African Union.’
‘And if people know they’re being watched—’
‘They behave.’
Maggie could feel her heart racing. This was what anyone who had seen the massacres in Darfur had been praying for for years: the ‘eye in the sky’ that might stop the killing. But the African Union had always lacked the wherewithal to make it happen: they didn’t have the helicopters to monitor the ground below, and so the killers had been free to slaughter with impunity. Now here was the American President vowing to give them the tools the dead and dying had been crying out for. The spark of excitement was turning into a flame – until she remembered that she was about to lose her job.
‘We only have very narrow majorities in the House and Senate, sir. Do you think—’
He smiled, the wide, bright smile of a confident man. ‘That’s my job, Maggie. You give me some options.’
By now they had arrived in the West Wing, standing in the corridor just outside the Roosevelt Room. An aide tried and failed to hand him a text, another stepped forward and reminded him who was in the front row and needed to be acknowledged. A third leaned forward and applied four precise dabs of face powder for the sake of the TV cameras. Someone asked if he was ready and he nodded.
The double doors were opened and an unseen tenor voice bellowed out the words that were simultaneously thrilling and wholly familiar.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!’
Washington, DC, Monday March 20, 08.55
She watched as a packed Roosevelt Room rose to its feet, adults acting like schoolchildren, standing to attention at the sight of the man in charge. Everyone did that, wherever he went. She was almost used to it.
They were applauding him now, a room full of some of the most senior politicians in the country. Most were smiling wide, satisfied smiles. Sprinkled among them were a few faces she did not recognize. Women, though not dressed in the brightly coloured, tailored suits favoured by their Washington sisters. It took Maggie a moment to work out who they were. Of course. The victims. An occasion like this was not complete without victims.
She tried to sneak in discreetly, in the tail of the entourage, but still she caught the eye of Tara MacDonald, which registered surprise and irritation, noting that Maggie had entered the room with the President.
Crisply, as the applause was still subsiding, Stephen Baker began directing those in the first row to gather behind him. Knowing the drill, they formed a semi-circle, standing as he sat at the desk. Maggie identified the key players: majority and minority leaders from the Senate, whips and committee chairs from the House, along with the two lead sponsors of the bill from both chambers. Closest to him was Bradford Williams, solemn and distinguished: the former congressman whose selection to be the first African-American vice president had been notched up as yet another one of Stephen Baker’s historic breakthroughs.
‘My fellow Americans,’ the President began, setting off the loud clatter of two hundred cameras, a pandemonium of motors and bulbs. ‘Today we gather to see the new Violence Against Women Act signed into law. I’m proud to sign it. I’m proud to be here with the men and women who voted for it. Above all, I’m proud to be at the side of those women whose courage in speaking out made this law happen. Without their honesty, without their bravery, America would not have acted. But today we act.’
There was more applause. Maggie smiled to herself as she noticed there was not so much as a note on the table, let alone a fully-scripted speech. The President was speaking off the top of his head.
‘We act for women like Donna Moreno, whose husband beat her so badly she was hospitalized for two months. We act for women like Christine Swenson, who had to fight seven years of police indifference before she could see the man who raped her convicted and jailed. They are both here in the White House today – and we welcome them. But we act for those who are not here.’
Maggie glanced at the people she had joined, lined up against the far wall nearest the door, the traditional zone occupied by the senior aides to the President. It was a curious bit of choreography. On the one hand, it signalled their status as mere staff, serving at the pleasure of the President. They stood like butlers, hovering several paces away from the dining table, awaiting instructions. Everyone else was allowed to sit: even the press corps.
And yet, to be among this group was a mark of the highest possible status in Washington. It said you were close to the President, even one of the indispensables who needed to be ‘in the room’. While the invited guests sat bolt upright, their suits pressed and their hair fixed for their big day at the White House, the staffers slumped against the wall, their ties loose, as if this were no more than another day at the office. Maggie looked at the Press Secretary, Doug Sanchez, young and good-looking enough to have caught the interest of the celeb magazines: he had his head down, barely paying attention to proceedings, scrolling instead through a message on his iPhone. Aware he was being watched, he looked up and smiled at Maggie, nodding in the direction of the President and then back at her, with a lascivious raise of the eyebrows. Translation: I saw you and him arrive together . . .
‘For the women who have been attacked and not believed, even by the law-enforcement officers who should have protected them,’ the President was saying now. ‘For the wives who have been made prisoners in their own home. For the daughters who have had to fear their own fathers. Each of them is a heroine and – from today – they will have the law on their side.’
More applause as President Stephen Baker reached for the first of a set of pens fanned out on the desk before him. He signed his name, then reached for another pen to date the document, then several more to initial each page.
‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s done.’
The guests were on their feet again, the cameras clacking noisily. The President had come around in front of his desk to shake hands with those who had come to witness the moment. There were double-clasps with the congressional leaders, a hand placed on the forearm to convey extra warmth, hugs with the leaders of the key national women’s organizations and then