She sits up again, checking the speedometer to make sure the driver isn’t doing something stupid like speeding, to make sure that a police cruiser isn’t happening by at this moment.
Then she bends down again, removing the hard-shell case from the floorboard compartment. She places her thumb on the seal. It takes only a moment for the thumbprint recognition to pop the seal open.
Not that the people who have hired her would have any reason to mess with her equipment, but better safe than sorry.
She opens the case for a quick inspection. “Hello, Anna,” she whispers, the name she has given it. Anna Magdalena is a thing of beauty, a matte-black semiautomatic rifle capable of firing five rounds in less than two seconds, capable of assembly and disassembly in less than three minutes with nothing but a screwdriver. There are newer models on the market, of course, but Anna Magdalena has never let her down, from any distance. Dozens of people could confirm its accuracy—theoretically—including a prosecutor in Bogotá, Colombia, who until seven months ago had a head atop his body and the leader of a rebel army in Darfur who eighteen months ago suddenly spilled his brains into the lamb stew on his lap.
She has killed on every continent. She has assassinated generals, activists, politicians, and businessmen. She is known only by her gender and the classical-music composer she favors. And by her 100 percent kill rate.
This will be your greatest challenge, Bach, said the man who hired her for this job.
No, she replied, correcting him. This will be my greatest success.
Friday,
May 11
Chapter
4
I wake with a start, staring into the darkness, fumbling for my phone. It’s just past four in the morning. I text Carolyn. Anything?
Her response comes immediately; she’s not asleep. Nothing sir.
I know better. Carolyn would’ve called me right away if something had happened. But she’s become accustomed to these early morning communications ever since we discovered what we were up against.
I exhale and stretch my arms, letting out nervous energy. There’s no way I’ll go back to sleep. Today’s the day.
I spend some time on the treadmill in the bedroom. I’ve never—not since my baseball days—lost the need to work up a good sweat, especially in this job. It’s like a massage before the stress of the day. When Rachel’s cancer returned, I had a treadmill installed in the bedroom so I could keep an eye on her even while exercising.
Today it’s an easy stroll, not a run or even a brisk walk given my current physical condition, the relapse of my illness, which is the last thing I need right now.
I brush my teeth and check my toothbrush when I’m done. Nothing on it but the slushy remnants of the gel. I do a wide smile in the mirror and check my gums.
I strip off my clothes and turn around, look back at myself in the mirror. The bruising is mostly on my calves but is also on the backs of my upper thighs. It’s getting worse.
After a shower, it’s time to read the President’s Daily Brief and hear about any late developments not covered in it. Then on to breakfast in the dining room. That was something Rachel and I used to do together. “The rest of the world can have you for the next sixteen hours,” she used to say. “I get you for breakfast.”
And usually dinner. We made the time, though when Rachel was alive, we didn’t eat either meal in this dining room; we usually ate at the small table in the kitchen next door, a more intimate setting. Sometimes, when we really wanted to feel like normal people for a change, we’d cook for ourselves. Some of our best moments, in the time we shared here, were spent flipping pancakes or rolling pizza dough, just the two of us, as we did back home in North Carolina.
I cut through the hard-boiled egg with my fork and look absently out the window at Blair House, across from Lafayette Park, the hum of the television serving as white noise in the background. The television is new since Rachel.
I’m not sure why I bother with the news. It’s all about the impeachment, the networks trying to bend every story to fit this narrative.
On MSNBC, a foreign-affairs correspondent is claiming that the Israeli government is transferring a high-profile Palestinian terrorist to another prison. Could this be part of some “deal” the president has cut with Suliman Cindoruk? Some deal involving Israel and a prisoner trade?
CBS News is saying that I’m considering filling a vacancy at Agriculture with a southern senator from the opposing party. Is the president hoping to siphon off votes for removal by handing out cabinet appointments?
I suppose if I turned on the Food Network right now, they’d be saying that when I let them visit the White House a month ago and told them my favorite vegetable is corn, I was secretly trying to curry favor with the senators from Iowa and Nebraska who are part of the bloc itching to remove me from office.
Fox News, over the banner TURMOIL IN THE WHITE HOUSE, claims that my staff is sharply split on whether I should testify, the yes-testify crew led by the White House chief of staff, Carolyn Brock, the don’t-testify faction headed by the vice president, Katherine Brandt. “Plans are already under way, as a contingency,” says a reporter standing outside the White House right now, “to claim that the House hearings are a partisan charade to give the president an excuse to change his mind and refuse to attend.”
On the Today show, a color-coded map shows the fifty-five senators in the opposing party as well as the senators from my party who are up for reelection and who might feel pressure to be part of the twelve defectors necessary to convict me at an impeachment trial.
CNN says that my staff and I are calling in senators as early as this morning to lock them down as not-guilty votes in the impeachment trial.
Good Morning America says that White House sources indicate that I’ve already decided not to run for reelection and that I will try to cut a deal with the House Speaker to spare me impeachment if I agree to a single term in office.
Where do they get this crap? I have to admit it’s sensational. And sensational sells over factual every day.
Still, the wall-to-wall impeachment speculation has been hard on my staff, most of whom don’t know what happened in Algeria or during my phone call to Suliman Cindoruk any more than Congress or the media or the American people do. But so far they’ve rallied while the White House is under assault, considering it a source of pride to stand together. They’ll never know how much that means to me.
I punch a button on my phone. Rachel would kill me for having a phone at breakfast, too. “JoAnn, where’s Jenny?”
“She’s here, sir. Do you want her?”
“Please. Thank you.”
Carolyn Brock walks in, the only person who would feel free to do so while I’m eating. I’ve never actually said that nobody else is allowed in. It’s one of the many things a chief of staff does for you—streamlining, acting as a gatekeeper, being the hard-ass with staff so I don’t have to think about such matters.
She is buttoned-up as always, a smart suit, dark hair pulled back, never letting her guard down while on camera. Her job, she has told me more than once, is not to make friends with the staff but to keep them organized, praise good work, and sweat the details so I can focus on the hard, big stuff.