Born to Run (44 page)

“HOLY fuckin’ fuck!” Andy Goodman shrieked and he slid off his friends’ shoulders onto the beer-swilled floor.

MARILYN Foster sat herself down again. He did it! The bastard actually did it… put his family ahead of his damn prick, and his career. She didn’t believe it; that
he was really going to keep his dick in his pants for the next three years… to prove himself worthy of another run at the presidency. To prove himself to her and, if he passed that test,
she’d certainly stand there with him. Again. But next time it’d be for keeps.

F
OR THE SECOND time tonight, the Chief Justice stepped forward to swear Isabel in. During the oath, Paul Dawkins’ wife approached her
husband, who was now perched on a stool at the bar. “Another idiot male blinded by sex,” she said, slapping his back.

“Yeah?” said Andy, next to Paul and keeping his eyes on the beer the barman was pulling for him, “and another idiot female blinded by love. What’s the fuckin’
difference?”

“MY fellow citizens,” President Diaz began, alert to the irony those words would have carried only months ago. There was much to say, but the row upon row of sapped
faces before her, let alone her own flagging energy, told her she should save most of it for the next four years. What couldn’t wait, what the moment decreed, was a tribute to Foster’s
astonishing altruism. But as she spoke, most of the Congress stayed flat, tolerating her words with barely glimmering smiles that might dupe a TV camera, but not her.

She was staggered… after what she’d been through, and
they
were exhausted?

But spurring her on, virtually alone on the floor of the House—a beacon among flickering candles—was Spencer Prentice. The gleam in his eyes energised her, cheered her on.

“President Foster led us only briefly,” she continued, “but lead us he has, and tonight, in a remarkable generosity of spirit and national renewal we saw him lead in the best
way imaginable… by example. And in that same spirit, and by his example, I too will nominate my Vice-President…”

Hank Clemens, who’d kept his seat as Representative for North Carolina, was ready to step forward. He ran his fingers through his mop of brown hair, and still seated, pulled his jacket
down as best he could to ensure the line at the back was smooth, perfect for when the TV cameras zoomed in on him as he got the call.

Isabel continued, “…a man who stood by me…”

Hank straightened his tie.

“… and has been my friend and counsel…”

Hank readied himself to stand.

“… the gentleman from Massachusetts, Spencer Prentice. Sir, will you accept my nomination?”

Hank’s smile turned to stone but recorded history was saved the moment as the cameras zoomed in on Spencer, capturing the tall, elegant Afro-American moving to his feet amid the applause.
Spencer’s bowtie was still a little crooked, but he kept his large hands by his sides. His expression was severe.

“Mr Prentice, do you accept?” Isabel repeated.

“Madam President, I do, but on one condition,” he replied soberly.

Isabel bit into her top lip, her stomach tightening. “And that condition is…?”

“That you won’t ever resign on
me
,” he said, and he split his face into the starburst grin his mother adored so much.

A
FTER SPENCER WAS also sworn in on the floor of the House, Isabel took Davey’s hand and, in turn, he took Spencer’s. The three of them
stood while the Chamber roared and stamped its final ovation. Davey’s lip quivered and a tear slowly ran out of his eye. He snuck a peek back at his disgraced father surrounded by the tall
men with the curly earpieces stretching down inside their collars.

His eyes met his dad’s. Cold eyes. Hard eyes. Eyes that didn’t even seem to see him… rather through him. Eyes that didn’t show any sign of regret. The boy shook his
little blond head as though to cast off the image and turned away, back to the front.

Spencer looked down and saw Davey wipe his eyes and screw his face up into a tight knot. It appeared the boy was thinking hard about something, or trying to make a tough choice. Poor kid, he
reflected.

Davey tugged on Isabel’s jacket. At first, she ignored it, but the little boy was insistent. Almost blanching, she bent down to him, leaning on her cane for support.

Davey opened his mouth and worked his jaw, breathing hard and, as his words came out, slowly, deliberately, Isabel took his hand again, squeezing it in encouragement.
“Please…,” he said, his voice nasal and absent of tone or lilt, “can… I… still… go… to… the… shack…?”

Isabel’s eyes burst with emotion and, though her back was still bent and sore, she couldn’t restrain her joy and drew the boy toward her.

At that moment, they both knew that sometimes words aren’t necessary.

EPILOGUE

E
D WAS BUSTLED off the podium. Still cuffed, he was shuffled out to a black van with heavily tinted windows. As the rear doors slammed shut on him,
he leant forward to give his hands room behind his back. His thumb, with the flesh-coloured pad on its tip, where he’d said his wart had been removed, located his other padded finger.

Like Niki, he pressed the pads together for the crucial eight seconds, counting ten just the same. The forced contact of the specially coated pads caused a chemical reaction that itself, one
second later, generated a shot of electric current, weak, but enough to trigger the release of the poison in the implant.

Ed’s body spasmed and he flew forward from the seat, his head cracking on the cold steel floor. His pupils rolled back into their sockets revealing nothing.

“CARLOS who?” snapped Elia Cacoz, grouchy that she’d even picked up this call; what were assistants for, now she had one? For the last three hours she’d
been chiselling her thoughts for the weekly news editors’ conference about to commence—the first she’d chair since her promotion—and disruptions were not welcome. She stood,
her foot tapping, and her shoulder crooking the phone against her ear while her eyes kept scrolling her notes as the others started to amble in.

“Carlos in La Paz,” he said, and then to prompt her, “I do research for you?”

“Oh, yeah.” Her mind wandered back to the interview with Isabel Diaz’s mother, and her aborted attempt at shooting a follow-up once Isabel had become President. Maria Rosa had
died.

But—she gathered her thoughts—what the hell did Carlos want now? She’d paid him for his work; paid him plenty, in fact.

Sensing Elia’s irritation, Carlos filled the silence, “I do good for you, yes?”

“Yeah, good.” She motioned to the other journalists to take seats. “Look, I’m busy, so what’s…?”

“I find more for you, Miss Elia.”

“More,” she said.

“
Si
. I find him.
El jardinero.
How you say…? The gardener. The
papá
of your presidente.”

Everyone in the room watched the sheaf of notes slip out of Elia’s hand and flutter to the floor.

“Hallo… hallo?” pressed Carlos.

“You’ve got her natural father? The embassy gardener?”

“Not exactly, Miss Elia…
El jardinero
is dead many years. But I find his brother.”

“And why should I care about his brother?” asked Elia, shrugging and then hunching down to pick up her papers.

“Is funny thing,” said Carlos. “He tell to me his brother, the gardener, was
estéril
. How you say…? He could not have
bebés
. No
bebés
… never.”

Elia left the papers on the floor.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

M
Y MOTHER’S TEARS over John F. Kennedy’s assassination led me, decades later, to create
Born to Run’s
Isabel Diaz.

My late mother wasn’t American, and her taste of US life was sweetened by episodes of
I Love Lucy
and Hollywood movies. We lived in far-away Australia yet JFK was idolised here and,
for this kid in short pants, her grief fired a spark: that American presidents matter.

I have often scratched my head at why the charisma genie has blessed so few of the nine US Presidents since, and why they’ve mostly been Democrats. Only Clinton and Obama approached
Kennedy’s lustre, although Obama’s is sputtering as I write. Many say Reagan had the gift, but it didn’t seem like it at the time.

Before Kennedy’s day, revered Republicans weren’t as rare. Start with Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and the startling snippet of history that the Democrats were then the
pro-slavery party.

Given recent history, it’s high time for an inspirational Republican to pop up so, impatient for a real one, I created my own.

In
Born to Run
, the world yearns for Isabel Diaz to become US president. She’s widely hailed as a saint yet, as the story’s dark side unfolds, we begin to dread she is a
demon. Isabel Diaz is a woman born to run, yet she faces two big questions… can she win… and should she?

I’ve been researching this story implicitly for years, visiting the US so many times that I’ve chalked up visits to towns and cities in around half the 50 states, including Half Moon
Bay, California where Isabel Diaz, as a 15-year-old runaway, first hobbles into the greasy diner that will seed her fortune and, of course, Washington, DC from where she aims to lead the
nation.

I’ve also been addicted to US presidential elections since Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew from the race after he visited Australia, and NSW Premier Bob Askin notoriously spat out “Run
over the bastards” when anti-Vietnam War demonstrators lay in front of the motorcade.

One of the story twists in
Born to Run
springs from a glitch I teased out of the US Constitution and a dusty 1898 Supreme Court ruling over it. For confirming I correctly interpreted the
law, I thank James C. Ho—then Chief Counsel of the US Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, and now Solicitor General for Texas—and Todd Gaziano, Director of the Centre for Legal and
Judicial Studies at Washington’s Heritage Foundation. (For the nit-picky, see Jim Ho’s article, “Unnatural Born Citizens and Acting Presidents,” (2000) 17 Constitutional
Commentary 575.)

To develop my character Jax Mason’s cataclysmic subway shockwave model, I sat for many hours in both the New York Transit Museum and the London Transport Museum scouring books and historic
resources for details of subway construction and history. But I owe my biggest debt for this to advanced analysis engineering guru Shane Donohoo. Shane works in a global engineering group devising
“theoretical disasters” and testing their likely effects on complex structures such as oil rigs and dams. He shared not only his insights, but numerous technical papers that helped show
me that while Jax’s model is indeed technically feasible, it has enough barriers, thankfully, for it to be a snack in fiction, but virtually impossible in real life.

For colour and detail on what Washington’s Capitol Police do during a president’s State of the Union Address, I am grateful to Capitol Police Public Information Officers, Michael
Lauer and Contricia Sellers. For advice on nine-year-old Davey Loane’s likely strengths in lip-reading, I thank Professor Carol Padden, Professor of Communication at the University of
California, San Diego whose work includes research on literacy in young deaf children. For details about the heart rates of grey wolves, thanks to Dr Terry J. Kreeger of the Wyoming Game and Fish
Department and Professor Peter D. Constable, head of the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Purdue University, Indiana. For insight into Hispanic and Andean languages, I consulted Dr Luis
Fernando Restrepo, Professor of Spanish, Comparative Literature, and Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Arkansas.