Born to Run (28 page)

Bobby Foster continued, “and when I offered him the ambassadorship, not only did he accept but, conscious of his responsibility as the likely new House Speaker, he sought my counsel.
Isabel Diaz was the obvious choice to us both… as Speaker, I mean. Unconventional, sure, but obvious when you think about it. I have spoken to the leadership of both Parties and, as I
already mentioned, I am delighted to say that she has their unwavering support and we all expect the House to elect her at its first session on…”

“Doña Isabel, why are you doing this?” It was the correspondent from Miami
’s El Nuevo Herald
. He was fresh to the Washington press gaggle and blurted out his
question without waiting for the President to finish, let alone being called.

Isabel tilted her head toward Foster.

“Go ahead,” he said, forcing a smile through gritted teeth, and he stepped back from the lectern to make room for her.

“Thank you,” she said, taking his spot. “For this phase of my life I deeply wanted to serve the American people but, in case you missed it, things didn’t go as I
planned…,” though she did get the laughs she planned. “And you know,” she shrugged, “when the President of the United States asks…”

“Ms Diaz…”

Another one! Foster was incensed.

“
Los Angeles Times
… Isn’t there an irony here, ma’am? My read of the succession rules says you’ll be next-in-line after Vice-President Taylor if anything,
God forbid, should happen to the President. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The reporter’s analysis was only half correct. As Don Thomas had explained it to Foster and as most legal commentators were now busy scribbling, there was simply no way Isabel could become
president; at least not without a Supreme Court bench that would be bold enough to upend centuries of settled constitutional law, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Isabel smiled at the reporter, “There’s no irony. It’s just plain irrelevant.” No one seemed to mind she’d ducked the question.

T
HE REAL GOAL—panicking voters into Hank Clemens’ arms to deliver the election—had failed. But after the guerrilla
“ImposterFoster” campaign to destabilise Foster’s new presidency had gone viral, it had paid off in an unexpected way. Levering Isabel into a post that was prize Democrat booty
was a sign of Foster’s desperation, which the conspirators had been able to relish for the few days prior to it becoming public knowledge.

“Outstanding press conference,” said Dwayne. Despite being voice-masked, as they all were, his code-name flashed up on all the phone screens.

Isis snapped, “What was that?”

“The press conference. I said it was…”

“No, the background noise.”

“Oh? I was riffling through the newspaper. Sorry,” said Diana. “That line,
There’s no irony. It’s plain irrelevant
. How good was that?”

“Boot-licking isn’t your forte,” said Isis, though Diana wasn’t quite so sure.

Dwayne spoke, “Some lawyer wrote it up in the
Post.
” No one said anything, so he continued, “He says if the President dies, the Vice-President
becomes
President—we all know that, right, but the crucial word is
becomes
, okay? That’s the word the Twenty-Fifth Amendment uses…
becomes
—and to
become
President, the VP has still got to qualify with all the eligibility doodads, including the natural born citizen thing. But listen to this: if the Vice-President himself is dead or he won’t
stand… whatever… and succession slips to the next-in-line, which as we know is the… ta-da… Speaker, she actually doesn’t
become
President under the law, she
only gets to
act
as President, and… boom-boom… no eligibility criteria to interfere…”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Isis, cutting him short.

B
ACK IN THEIR home in the Hamptons, Isabel was stretched out with Davey on one of the soft lounges in the great room, struggling with the
instruction manual, trying to decipher how to operate his birthday camera. George was watching from the red Regency récamier, and kept switching from one end to the other. No matter which
way he lay, he couldn’t get comfortable on the double-backed day bed, so eventually swung his legs off and moved to the chaise longue. Ed was stuck in a meeting in New York.

“It’s totally intuitive,” the camera salesman had told Isabel. Not for her it wasn’t, though it was clearly different for Davey. He was way ahead of her, snatching for
the camera, pressing this button, twisting that dial, tapping an icon on its screen, discovering shortcuts here and new tricks there. Naturally, she was worried he would press, pull, tap or twist
something wrong and wreck it, but so far the slim-line digital camera with a thousand-image memory chip seemed Davey-proof. And apparently intuitive.

By noon, the boy fancied himself as a modern-day Ansel Adams, the photographer famous for his idealised landscapes of the American West. She’d recently taken Davey to an Adams
retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where back in the 1940s Adams was instrumental in establishing the first museum department of photography. Contrary to Isabel’s
expectations, even after two hours traipsing around MOMA’s tiring concrete floors, there hadn’t been a single shuffle or yawn out of the boy. Davey was hooked and she knew what his
birthday gift just had to be.

Davey dragged Isabel off the lounge and posed her on several of the antique chairs, first one way, then the other. And he had George prancing around like an arthritic old ballet dancer despite
having an arm in a sling.

Davey scampered off to download his new snaps onto the computer in the family room. George fell back onto the sofa for a bit of shut-eye and Isabel kicked her feet up onto the glass coffee table
to read a little more of the camera manual. Interesti…

SHE woke up to one of Davey’s pinches. He was flapping computer prints in her face while jigging a little dance and, when he had her attention and pushed her feet off the
coffee table, he spread the shots out, like a breathless artist revealing his portfolio for the first time.

“Very artistic,” she said as she rubbed her eyes before even seeing the snaps. He had printed only six shots—his best, she guessed—and positioned them in two horizontal
rows of three, temporarily masking the bottom row with blank sheets. The top three were grotesque blowups: Isabel’s left nostril, her left eye and her shoe. “Excellent,” she
nodded. “At least you got my good side!” and she rocked her head back for a good laugh.

He peeled off the blank cover sheets on the three below. An eerie Dorian Gray intensity haunted the first, where Davey had snapped himself in a mirror. And the shot of George’s bandaged
wrist with his head lolling back, snoring on the sofa, bordered on the melancholic.

The third was a shot of Isabel’s scar. Davey must have noticed her eyes avoiding it; he took her finger and pressed it to the photo, tracing along the line but he almost recoiled when he
felt the shudder tremble from her finger up her arm.

Isabel looked over at George, hoping for a diversion, but he was still asleep. She hadn’t felt this in weeks. She’d even been entertaining a tentative optimism that she’d got
her dark cloud under control.

Why now? And with a photograph?

Her fingers found themselves combing through Davey’s blond locks as tears streamed down her cheeks. He slid up on her lap and nestled his head into her shoulder. His stringy arms wrapped
around her, holding her tight and then he did something he’d never done before: he lifted her hand from his hair and pressed it against his voiceless throat and, in turn, he stroked her
scar.

Isabel caught her breath, and she felt it at the same time as she heard it.

A breath of a whisper.

“What?” she snapped her head back in shock. “Did you say someth…?”

Davey quivered a brave little smile. His tongue touched his top teeth and his breath blew a second time… slow and deliberate. The husky breathy sound was “love”, she was sure
of it.

She watched as his mouth formed an “O” and he exhaled again.

“Oo”? No, she decided, it was “you”. It had to be.

“Love you.”

Her bottom lip bled as she threw her arms around him.

“ED! Ed! Davey spoke to me…”

“Wha…? Tell me.”

“He’ll tell you himself,” she said, crying with joy, and handed the phone to Davey.

Davey took it and held it, gazing into the handset. Finally, he put it to his head but made no motion to speak.

“Go on,” Isabel encouraged him, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Davey,” said Ed. “Isabel said you spoke… That’s wonderf…”

Davey pulled the phone away from his face and stared into it again. He lifted his eyes to meet Isabel’s and after a second, he passed it back to her and shook his head. He slid off her
knee and, as she watched, he walked slowly to his room.

T
HE NEW FIRST Lady, Marilyn Foster, wriggled into the white silk pillows and surveyed the bedroom with a serenity she’d not felt for months.
The Inauguration over, it was their first official night in the White House. She watched over her husband and toyed with his boyish front curl but stopped when she saw he was rousing. His blue eyes
opened and fluttered a look around the hand-painted birds that dotted the walls.

“They match your eyes,” she spoke softly. “Michelle was a clairvoyant.” Michelle Obama had overseen the last major decoration of this room.

Bobby Foster stretched an arm over and caressed his wife’s cheek. “Can you believe this, Marilyn? You and me… us… here?”

“We almost weren’t,” she whispered. “Hey, Mr President,” she said with a lilt, “d’you think they video this room?”

“I checked. No way.”

“Perfect.” She slid down and billowed the sheet over the two of them.

E
LIA CACOZ RUGGED up for her trip to La Paz but hadn’t bargained for this. She’d skied when she was younger, so whistling mountain
winds weren’t new, but cheek-burn took on a new meaning at over 13,000 feet above sea level.

It was Elia’s first visit to Bolivia and apart from the cold she’d prepared for it well. Her experience with
Close-up
had taught her to keep a lid on leaks and her new boss at
FOX, Mr Devine, had approved of her precautions.

He was Mr Devine to everyone, though maybe not to Mr Murdoch himself. She was still pinching herself, though not from the cold. When she’d initially proposed her project—deep, deep
research on Isabel’s past—Mr Devine wasn’t keen since Isabel was out of the race, old news. But Elia was positive she had a new angle and worked it up in her spare time. Six weeks
later, on the day of the Inauguration, and with four other stories under her belt, good stories, she braved a knock on Mr Devine’s door.

His head was bowed over some copy, his shiny liver spots flashing like idea bulbs as Elia swayed from side to side hoping her movement would attract his eye. The customary cigarette—in
breach of office rules—drooped from the corner of his mouth. Still he didn’t acknowledge her. She gripped the back of the lonely visitor’s chair and held her breath as the smoke
curled up and fingered through his salt-and-pepper comb-over.

Finally, she blurted it out.

Devine swung his head up at her, the sudden action seeming to drain the purple out of the alcohol veins on his nose. Heaving himself out of his seat, he waddled past her to shove the door
closed. On his journey back to his chair, he plucked at the cigarette and stubbed it out in his famous water glass; it looked like water but there were rumours.

“Who else knows about this?” he wheezed, sprawling his vast bulk over the mottled green sweat towel draped over his chair.

“Just my researcher in La Paz,” she said.

“Perfect. Better than perfect, missy,” he said and, with the leaden point of a freshly sharpened pencil, scraped out a flake of tobacco, or maybe it was peanuts, from between his
stained teeth.

Elia didn’t like being called missy, or lovey, or sweetie, or any of the other endearments her old-school boss bestowed on every young woman who toiled for him, but she was new and they
were only words, and since no one else who worked there had the guts or the boorishness to fuss about it, she wasn’t about to rock the boat; especially not now; now she was better than
perfect.

He gazed at her through his smudged spectacles, saying nothing, sizing her up. Eventually his hand, palm down, directed her to sit. “Let’s get to work.”

Within thirty-five magical minutes, he’d organised a crew, a plane, and a face: a TV reporter who’d front the camera and take as much credit for the story as the late Mike Mandrake
would have wished he hadn’t taken for his. She hadn’t noticed it before but with the window behind Mr Devine, the wisps of his hair seemed to make him radiate. The harmless old coot
could call her missy, or lovey, or sweetie, any time he liked.

“You’re flying out at the crack of dawn tomorrow.” He lit up his Zippo, a signal for her to leave. “You know,” he added as he aimed the flame at his cigarette,
“you get this in the can,
Close-up
will have more egg on their face than a year’s worth of breakfasts.” He took a long sip from his water glass, Elia watching in disgust.
“Ah. That was good,” he winked and licked his wrinkly yellowing lips. “Well, off you go, sweetie.”