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

‘This isn’t just about him, Maggie. Just like it was never about me. It’s about the country. You need to make sure the train stays on the tracks.’

‘Sure, so that he can ram it into the buffers. Besides, what would I even do for him? Former UN aid worker, former peace negotiator, woman – I’m not exactly his cup of tea, am I?’

‘You could do for him the same thing you did for me. Troubleshooter in chief. The woman who knows how to get to the bottom of any crisis and solve it.’

‘But that requires trust.’

‘I know, Maggie.’

‘You trusted me and I trusted you. Totally.’

‘I know and I cherish that. But you’ll find a way. You always do.’

Maggie looked at the photograph, marvelling at the naiveté of her earlier self. Even a year ago she would never have believed this was possible. Mind you, nor would anyone else.

And then she felt it, that familiar stab of guilt and with it the attendant nausea. It seemed to rise from a specific place, a site of revulsion deep in her guts. If only she hadn’t …

In an attempt to push that dread thought out of her mind, she thumbed out another message to Richard.

How early can you leave tonight?

Let’s eat at my place. Really need—

But before she had finished, her office door flung open. She heard him before she saw him. ‘Are you decent?’

Crawford ‘Mac’ McNamara, senior counsellor to the President. If Maggie and all the other non-partisans who had stayed on were dedicated to keeping the train on the tracks, McNamara was the man who decided the destination. Even Bob Kassian, the nominal Chief of Staff, was a mere bureaucrat compared to McNamara. In the White House solar system, only one star burned more brightly.

Of course, Maggie was several moons below him – even under the previous president, her official title never reflected her true status – which under the old Washington rules meant a man of his rank would never deign to say so much as two words to her, let alone make the journey to come see her in her office. But McNamara was the self-styled outlaw, the sorcerer who had shredded the Washington rulebook to get his man elected President. Protocol could go hang. Memos were for dweebs, minuted meetings were for assholes. Instead he patrolled the West Wing each day, strolling into whichever office he wanted to whenever he wanted to. The Oval was no exception. McNamara saw the President first thing in the morning and last thing at night; he was the all-powerful voice in his ear.

Nor was this the first time he had made the journey to see Maggie. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Richard had said, when they discussed it over Chinese takeout the other night. ‘You’re the most attractive woman in the office and he’s … intrigued. I’d be flattered.’

Maggie’s reply had been concise: Ugh. And now here he was again, middle-aged but wearing cargo-style shorts, with square, capacious pockets, and a Linkin Park T-shirt. He wore socks, but no shoes. His head was almost completely bald.

‘You seen the paper today, Costello?’ He threw over a copy of the Washington Post, landing it just in front of her. It was folded open on a story about a new poll, confirming the country was ‘more divided than at any time since the civil war’.

‘Why are you showing me this, Mr McNamara?’

‘Ooh, did someone just let my father in the building? Mister McNamara? Who’s that? It’s Mac, Maggie. Mac. Thought all you liberals dug that informality thing in the workplace.’ He made a mincing gesture and raised the pitch of his voice. ‘Oh, we’re all equal. Treat me equally.’

She reminded herself of what she and Richard had agreed. That perhaps they could mitigate the effects of this presidency, even in a small way, by being here, on the inside. They had a duty to make a difference, if they could. She took that vow again now. ‘How can I help you, Mister … Mac.’

‘Look at the paper, Maggie.’

‘“First states roll out registry of Muslim citizens. Arizona, Texas, pilot new scheme.”’

‘Not that story. The one I’ve marked, next to it. Look where we are with eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds.’

‘Twenty-three per cent approve, seventy-four per cent disapprove, three per cent don’t know.’

‘Exactly. Twenty-two last month, now up to twenty-three. The young are coming round to us, Maggie. I can feel it.’ And with that he threw his head back and burst into song, his own version of a David Bowie classic.

‘Allllllt-Right, we are the young Americans!’ As he repeated the line, he did a slow turn, his eyes closed, head nodding – a middle-aged rocker on stage in a nostalgia tour.

Maggie said nothing.

‘OK, you got me. That’s not why I came in here.’

‘If it’s about that calendar, there’s no way that’s going back up.’

‘I noticed the lovely Miss May was missing in action. Are you to blame for that? Are we still doing that, the student protest thing?’

‘Under the legal definition of sexual harassment, just putting that on the wall counts as creating a hostile environment.’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘None of you get it, do you? Not even a little bit. Don’t you realize that’s why the folks elected the big guy last November? I mean, sure it helped that his opponent had endangered national security by using an unsecured phone.’

Maggie rolled her eyes.

‘But the main reason was precisely this kind of bullshit. Because folks were sick to their hind legs of prissy little missies spouting horseshit like “hostile environment”.’ He made the quotation marks with his fingers, delivering the two-word phrase in a high-pitched voice now accompanied by an effeminate swing of the hips. ‘People are sick of being told that being a normal, red-blooded white man is a federal crime.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t come here to re-fight the election campaign, Mac.’

‘No, but as it happens, it’s all relevant.’ McNamara helped himself to a chair, sat back in it and put his shoeless, socked feet on her desk. Maggie all but recoiled.

‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I need you to make something go away.’

Maggie raised her eyebrows.

‘It came up in the campaign and it’s coming up again now.’

Maggie still said nothing. She saw no reason to make this any easier for him.

Eventually, he lowered his voice. ‘I think you Washington insiders call them “bimbo eruptions”.’

Maggie paused. ‘Do you mean the President has been having extra-marital affairs?’

‘No!’ Mac smiled. ‘Not affairs. Nothing that you’d call an affair.’

‘Oh, you mean sexual assault. Grabbing random women.’

‘I mean accusations of that.’

‘More accusers coming forward? People from the past, alleging that—’

‘Partly that.’

‘Oh, so not just the past? The present. Here? In this place? Jesus, Mac, they impeached the last man who did that.’

‘Oh, I’m not worried about that. The House leadership are rimming our asshole. The tongue’s in deep.’