The Chosen One

‘What about you? Did you know?’

‘Come on, Maggie. You’re my favourite Irishman and all that, but I can’t get into my personal relationship with him.’

‘So you did know.’

Goldstein smiled enigmatically, an expression which was accompanied by a counterpoint of snorting, as the exhalation that would normally have exited from his mouth re-routed via his nose. He really was monumentally unfit. ‘Whether I did or did not is not the important thing here. What matters is how the fuck did this Vic Forbes find out?’

‘Maybe he spoke to the shrink?’

‘Difficult. He died fifteen years ago.’

‘There would have been records. Papers.’

‘Nuh-uh. None.’

‘Bills?’

‘Put it this way, yours truly did not come down with the first shower of rain. I am used to the dirtiest dirty tricks. You don’t get to be a councilman in New York unless you know how to rip a guy’s heart out with your teeth. I made sure in Baker’s first race that the enemy couldn’t dig up any surprises.’

‘Because you had dug them up first.’

‘Exactly. Wielded the spade myself.’ He held up his hands, the effort of which once again altered the rhythm of his breathing. ‘Then I did it again for the governor’s race.’

‘With professional help this time, I bet.’

‘You’re damn right. I had two of Seattle’s finest – ex-cops actually – investigate Stephen Baker as if they were determined to convict him of a felony. Find out everything. Go through his phone bills, house deeds, mortgage payments, bank accounts, college transcripts. They hacked into his emails and tapped his phone for all I know. Spoke to everyone, interviewed old girlfriends, made sure there were no old boyfriends. If there was a wall Stephen Baker had pissed against, they went to sniff it. Then I did it all over again before he announced for President.’

‘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.’