Born to Run (26 page)

Don accepted this as the highest of praise from one professional to another; Gregory’s own concession speech.

J
UBILANT, FOSTER GRACED the lectern with eight flashes of gleaming teeth behind him: his wife and two children and his running mate, Mitch Taylor
and his family. The Democrat crowd was in ecstasy: banners waving, chants of “Fos-ter… Fos-ter,” torrents of confetti, balloons, pumping music, red roses tossed into the
air…

From up on the stage, it looked great. It felt great. It was great.

Bobby embraced his wife, Marilyn.

Another cheer.

He managed one “Good evening, my fellow Americans” without interruption. For several heady minutes the cheering wouldn’t let up. The flock of the faithful were in heaven, apart
from the fifty people scattered among them who weren’t. To slip past security all they’d had to do was smile, look neat—Democrat neat, not Republican neat—wear “Vote 1
Foster” buttons and carry their folded placards and their bouquets of red roses and plastic buckets full of petals through the airport-style metal detector at the entrance.

The group reached the centre of the vast venue and spread out. The network TV cameras panning the euphoria zoomed in on the red buds they were tossing into the air and the handfuls of rose
petals they scattered over the floor. Simultaneously, the scene was beamed up onto the big screens hugging the walls.

At first Bobby lapped it up as yet another rapturous moment and he held the pause, goading the excitement even higher. The ex-trial lawyer knew how to play an audience. If you could do juries,
he reminded himself, adoring crowds were a piece of cake.

But when the first unfolded placard shot into the air from the heart of the crowd, and then another, and another, Bobby’s night of glory began its plunge: “
Bouquets for
Isabel… Wreaths for Bobby.
”

“
Usurper.
”

And “
Wail to the Thief.
”

Eight different slogans, short and shrill. All with “ImposterFoster.com” slashed in red across the top corner. Ten stunned national TV seconds was how long the placards stayed up
before the scuffles wrestled them to the floor amongst the torn roses. For the networks, ten seconds was ample.

Upstairs in the suite, Don was slumped forward more than usual. He was open-mouthed, gaping along with the thirty or forty million others also witnessing this abomination. He lifted his beer to
his lips but as the infiltrators began their synchronised chants he set it down again without a sip.

“
Im-pos-ter Fos-ter.
”

“
Bel…Bel…Isa-bel.
”

The president-elect scanned the crowd. Where were the damn marshals? Who was behind this? Fuck. And fuck her. He read on, barely in control of himself, and his voice was shaky.

The uproar and scuffles continued.

Three pages into his speech, he paused and pasted a plastic smile on his face.

Don saw it coming. He felt it. His stooped frame shuddered from the base of his curved spine up.

No. Don’t.

Don’s hand moved to his heart and he felt the calm cool of the pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket. Almost without thinking, his fingers lifted the red and white box out.

The TV camera pulled in on Bobby for a close-up. Don saw the familiar lawyer’s venom flare from his boss’s eyes as he hesitated over the next page.

Don’t.

Don didn’t move. He caged in his breath and though he had no religious bone in his bent body, he prayed that Bobby wouldn’t do it…

Bobby ripped the next page right out of his speech, crushed it in his hand and hurled it to the floor, staring at it as if it were vermin.

Don’s fist slammed into the table, crushing his pack of smokes. “Fuck!”

Foster looked up and raised a hand in silence but this was no longer an audience the ex-lawyer knew how to play. It was out of control and his one chance of calming the mob was gone.

Don shrieked again, this time knocking his Bud over the coffee table, beer slopping all over his copy of the words Bobby’s heel had trampled.

“Fuck!” he yelled again, not caring who’d hear. He struggled to find a Marlboro that was still vaguely smokable and hung it off his lip.

Don was seething. Despite the odds, he had personally dragged this ungrateful bastard over the line and instead of just grabbing the flag that Don had handed him and waving it aloft in their
carefully thought-out victory move, Bobby fucking Foster had over-reacted and pissed into the wind and was going to get it back all over his face.

Don lit the cigarette and sucked as though this was his only way to get air. The smoke seared into his eyes, sending his tear ducts crazy. At least, he told himself, it was the smoke that caused
it.

TWENTY-FOUR hours before Election Day, with Don Thomas’ last-minute ad campaign turning the fetid tide, he again grabbed a longneck of beer and a package and, hunched
over, ushered Foster back inside the candidate’s hotel suite, closing the door behind them.

“What?” snapped Bobby.

“I’ve been digging around,” said Don and he handed his boss the package.

The ex-lawyer noted the red ribbon. He pulled on the bow and, with his law background, was able to skim through the hefty folios of expert opinions very quickly. Bobby regarded himself as good a
constitutional lawyer as anybody so, at first, the analysis Don handed him had stunned him. Three separate experts (from Yale, Harvard and Chicago) had opined, in writing, that the House of
Representatives could virtually appoint anyone they liked as Speaker. The person didn’t even have to be an elected representative nor even, more amazingly, a citizen.

“This says,” Bobby noted with subdued deliberation, “that the House can elect anyone Speaker. Even a British monarch or an Afghani warlord. Or, for Christ’s sake, Britney
fucking Spears.”

“Hell, no,” said Don, a smirk spilling over his pudgy face, “it’s got to be someone real.”

Foster shot him an icy stare. “All the same, every single Speaker since Congress first sat in…,” he looked down at the sheets for confirmation, “in 1789 has been a
Member of the House.” And as both men knew, a Member had to be a citizen of at least seven years’ standing.

Don explained that though his proposal—okay, Spencer’s, but he wasn’t about to jog memories—had not one single precedent in American history, it was still 100 percent
legal. “Sure, we’ve got over two centuries of precedent against us. But all that is merely what’s
happened
; convention. It’s not the law.”

Slowly Foster nodded, and his eyes zigzagged down the pages, carefully analysing the words of the Constitution and the commentary Don had put before him.

Don’s nostrils flared as he inhaled the cool clean air. He needed a cigarette. The longer Foster took, the more he could feel the excitement brimming. He was going to say yes. This was
going to be one of Don’s finest moments; not only would his candidate triumph tomorrow night with the unofficial declaration of the polls, but he’d be forever marked as one of the few
leaders truly able to unite a divided country.

He’d already crafted a spellbinding three paragraphs for Bobby to weave into his victory speech and he passed them to the candidate.

The writing was stirring—up there with his best—though, if truth be told, it was clichéd: that Bobby intended to be a president for all Americans especially in these troubled
times; that sores needed healing; that Isabel had much to give the nation; that it was a tragedy she’d been barred from the opportunity of serving, but that Bobby had personally blazed a new
track for her; and that, if she were willing, he would prevail on the House to propose her as its Speaker immediately.

BUT Don’s plan went badly wrong… election night went badly wrong… Despite their preparations, no one in the Foster camp had predicted the turmoil that
erupted on the celebration floor.

In the midst of his victory speech, before hundreds of supporters and millions watching TV, when Foster got to the page surging with Don’s vibrant prose about Isabel and the
Speaker’s role, instead of galvanising the historic moment and pulling the rug from under the protesters, the combative trial lawyer still in Bobby had ripped out the sheet, screwed it up and
hurled it onto the floor, crushing it under his foot.

No way was Bobby going to elevate that fucking witch now, he decided, not with those ImposterFoster fucks not more than fifty feet away wreaking havoc on his hard-won victory. This was
orchestrated, he fumed as his eyes panned across the floor for clues.

Foster didn’t know it, but Isis’s plan had just reached its spectacular destabilising climax.

Yet those who had engineered the disruption had no idea their actions were self-defeating; that because of Foster’s hot-headed reaction they had foiled Isabel’s elevation as Speaker,
something at that stage they didn’t know was even a possibility.

More so than Foster’s, their own victory that night was pyrrhic.

S
EVEN LONG TRANSITION weeks later, Don hadn’t stopped. “We can’t keep doing nothing. It’s Christmas. This could turn into
an avalanche…”

“Fuck them,” Bobby spluttered. “I’m President-Elect fair and square… no missing votes, no hanging chads, no Supreme Court… a good, solid, honest-to-goodness
majority...”

“…by a mere 9 electoral college votes…”

“Excuse me?” said Bobby, his eyebrows arched. “Nine over’s not good enough for you? Fucking
one
was good enough for Bush in 2000. Even JFK only got 34 over. Don,
I’m sick of this ‘ImposterFoster’ bullshit… I’m sick of this Transition Office limbo. I’ve nominated my Cabinet… I’ve got 120 policy task forces
running. I want to get on with the job I was elected to do.”

Don turned his head to the window to hide his bitterness. Outside the Presidential Transition Office, two miles down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, a bunch of kids were making
snowmen. They were probably midget Secret Service agents, he decided, though the thought did nothing to lighten his mood.

Inside the PTO, Don grit his teeth and turned back to see his boss stepping over to the bureau, again. For the fourth time in the last hour Bobby picked up the bottle of bourbon. He held it for
a moment as if reading the label for inspiration, then topped up his chunky tumbler. He plopped in a couple of shrunken cubes from the melting bucket of ice and lifted the glass up to his tired,
watery eyes. For thirty seconds, or so it seemed to Don, Foster’s eyes searched into the gold liquid as though it were a crystal ball. He again drew the glass to his lips. Foster’s
drinking was out of control.

“That slimy Prentice’s been slithering round here, hasn’t he?” Foster slurred, his eyes struggling to keep focus and avoiding Don’s pointed gaze. “He put you
up to this?”

EVEN ignoring the protocols of Christmas goodwill, the antagonism toward Foster had not abated. According to Don, now White House Chief-of-Staff-to-be, the anti-Foster movement
was accelerating.

The new Congress was due to commence its first short January session in a few days and, given the way the congressional elections had swung, it would be Democrat Majority House leader David
Prescott who’d get Speaker. If Don could get Foster to agree, they’d summon Prescott back a few days early from skiing in Aspen and lay it on him. Prescott had been a congressman for
sixteen years, and only last year was elevated to Democrat House leader. He’d want to be Speaker and there was no way he’d surrender that role, let alone to a Republican, but maybe a
spot as, say, an ambassador would do it. They’d do whatever it took, as far as Don was concerned.

“Send
Prescott
to Turkey?” boiled Foster. “That’s like sending sand to the Saudis.”

“I don’t care,” said Don, hovering at the edge of disrespect before jumping over it. “Mr President, if you want to avoid trouble on Inauguration Day,” only three
weeks away, “if Prescott wants Ambassador to fucking Jupiter, you’ll give him keys to the rocket.”

“Maybe China, then.”

F
OR LITTLE DAVEY, Isabel’s being scratched from the campaign and Hank’s losing it were not big deals. Sure, with enough surly faces
around to sour a month’s worth of breakfast milk, he knew Isabel and Ed were sore but even so, this last week had been the boy’s best lead up to Christmas ever. For the whole seven
days, Isabel had completely pulled out of all her other obligations. George had come back from California. Ed was there for most of it, though Davey didn’t much care if his dad had to be at
work provided George or Isabel were around to play.