To Kill the President: The most explosive thriller of the year

‘Folks would say he was out for himself.’

‘He’d be dead to the base if he backed a stunt like this. Forever. And he’s smart. “The assassin never inherits the crown.”’

Kassian put the document back in his pocket. ‘So what if the cabinet came together – without him – and wrote the statement? Presented it to the Veep as a fait accompli. Nothing to do with him, he can’t be blamed. He just has to go along with it.’

Bruton shook his head. ‘Fine in theory. And he gets what’s going on. Or at least he should, a man like him. But the others? Look at them, Bob. I sit around the table with those guys. They’re nodding dogs. So long as they’re getting their beef and gravy, they’ll salute. Have you seen even one of them voice misgivings about anything?’

‘Tom is anxious, I know that.’

‘The Ag Sec? You think the President is going to be removed from office because he’s lost the Department of Agriculture?’

‘Barbara is also unhappy. Health and Human Services is a significant department.’

‘Yeah, but Barbara’s husband is a tranny, Bob.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘“Transitioning to become a woman.”’

Kassian exhaled. ‘I did not know that.’

‘McNamara’s been holding onto it for weeks. Leverage.’ Bruton opened his eyes wide, as if to say: We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.

‘We did the right thing with the doctor, but it’s not helped us,’ Kassian said, mindful that they both ought to get back to their offices before people – McNamara – started getting suspicious. ‘We can’t get the VP. We can’t get the cabinet. We don’t have anyof the tools in place to trigger the Twenty-fifth and we have no prospect of getting them.’

Bruton sighed. ‘We’re back to impeachment.’

‘We’ve been over this, Jim. “Treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.’

‘But what’s a freakin’ higher crime or misdemeanour than ordering the end of the freakin’ world? Jesus.’

‘Look, you don’t have to persuade me. It’s Capitol Hill we’d have to persuade. And they’re in lockstep with him. They’re terrified of crossing him. They wouldn’t believe us anyway. There’s no way we could provide the proof – not unless we want to make public what happened yesterday. Which could trigger a nuclear war all by itself.’

‘So you’re telling me we’re all out of options,’ Bruton said.

‘I think so, yes.’

There was a silence between them, filled by what they both knew but did not want to say. In truth, it had hovered over them since that first phone call in the small hours of yesterday morning. They both knew it.

Eventually Kassian, so used to letting Bruton lead, spoke first. ‘The Twenty-fifth Amendment is closed to us. So is impeachment. Not for reasons that anyone could defend, not because of public servants taking a different view of what’s best for the safety of the country, but because of politicians thinking of what’s best for their careers.’

Bruton nodded, willing Kassian to speak for both of them – and to say it.

‘And yet it remains true that this man poses a clear and present danger to the republic, to the Constitution and to the safety of the world.’

That was enough for Bruton. As if that were his cue, he stood taller and straightened his jacket. He fixed the Chief of Staff in the eye. Kassian wondered if the Defense Secretary was about to salute.

Instead Jim Bruton said in a voice at once quiet, but firm, ‘I’m satisfied we’ve exhausted all other means. As patriots, who’ve sworn an oath to defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic, I believe we have only one option left to us. I believe it is our duty to kill the President.’

10 (#ulink_bdf064c7-00d0-51a8-95b6-26d55c6812dd)

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Washington, DC, Tuesday, 10.21am

Maggie had thought of heading first to the Park Police who were handling the investigation into the death of Dr Jeffrey Frankel, but instinct told her that could wait. She hailed a cab instead for E Street, South West: the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

En route, she noticed a huge mural on the side of a building. It depicted the President with fangs and devil’s horns and, in huge letters alongside it, the words, Not In Our Name.

Once she’d arrived, she flashed her White House credential and asked to see the most senior person present. She was swiftly introduced to a woman, Dr Amy Fong, who led Maggie into an office, closed the door and asked if she was there to identify the body.

Maggie had to think quickly. She had assumed a family member would already have done that. If they hadn’t, they certainly should. Surely it wasn’t right for her, who barely knew Frankel, to perform such a final, even intimate act.

But she also intuited what giving the wrong answer might mean. If she said no, then why was she there? Why would this office give her any information or access? If, on the other hand, she said yes then, crucially, they would surely have to show her the body. ‘That’s right,’ she said.

They walked down one corridor, through a set of double doors, then another and finally into an examination suite. As they walked, Dr Fong explained that the identification would have to be done very quickly. ‘I’m afraid we’re under extreme time pressure. The family are hoping to have the funeral today. Jewish thing, I think.’

And there, on a thick counter, lay the white, inert body of a man in his sixties. She only allowed herself a glance above the neck: enough to see that while much of the face was left, the back of the head seemed to have been reduced to a bloody pulp.

Not for the first time, she reflected on the strange unreality of a dead body. It seemed to her like a waxwork or a movie prop, a fake. It was as if, once the breath of life was gone, a human body belonged to another realm altogether. Or perhaps that’s just what she needed to tell herself.

Now the woman and the doctor doing the examination, who had, Maggie noticed, blood on his overalls and on his latex gloves, conferred briefly. The man then picked up a clipboard and pen, turned to Maggie, asked her to confirm her name, date of birth and address – which she gave as the White House – before asking her ‘to identify the deceased’.

Now there was no hiding. Maggie had to come round to the doctor’s side of the counter and look properly at the face of the dead man.

She had seen corpses before. A lifetime ago, during that mediation effort in Congo, she had been led to the site of a massacre: the leader of one of the parties to the talks refused to continue unless Maggie, as chair of the negotiations, had seen with her own eyes ‘what our enemies are doing to us’.

On that occasion, though, she had not had to focus as intently – or closely – on one person, as she did now.

As she had already glimpsed, the face was still mostly intact. But the skull was a mess, a congealed tangle of blood, brain and bone. The contrast between the front and back – between a face that still promised a person, capable of a smile or a glance, and a mess of gore that would make you wince if you saw it in a butcher’s shop – stopped Maggie short. It filled her with a queasy thought: that the distance between the human and the animal is much shorter than we like to think.

And then she noticed something else. Two little indentations on the bridge of the dead man’s nose, the traces left by a lifetime of wearing glasses. And in a second she was back in Ireland: a child, sitting on her grandfather’s lap, fascinated by those same marks on his face, grooves indented by time that suggested the old man belonged with the rocks and cliffs, as ancient as geology.

What had this doctor on the slab, perhaps the same age her grandfather had been when she was little, gone through that had led him to put a gun to his throat and pull the trigger? What had made him that desperate?

And then, unbidden, came a different image. She saw the seventeen-year-old girl Liz had told her about last night. Mia. She imagined her hanging in her room, and all because she could not see a way out of a pregnancy that had been inflicted on her. A child herself with a child in her belly, she had been found by another child, her twelve-year-old sister.

Involuntarily, Maggie closed her eyes. So much pain in the world. It seemed to be brimming over. As if the world had more sorrow than it could contain. And, there was no denying it, the man she worked for, the man she served, was adding to it. Each day, with his laws, his deportation squads, his insults, his bile and venom, he was adding to this overflowing volume of anguish. And there was Liz’s voice again, as loud as ever. I cannot believe you work for that evil man.

‘Are you all right, Miss Costello?’

She opened her eyes, only realizing at that moment how long she had kept them closed.

‘Are you feeling a little faint? Would you like a glass of water?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘It happens a lot here.’ It was Fong, passing her a paper cup filled with ice cold water.

Maggie drank it down, then forced herself to give a smile. Then she answered the question the male doctor had asked her. ‘This is Dr Jeffrey Frankel, White House physician.’