Davey, too, was baffled. He was trying to follow the interpreter, but simply wasn’t getting it. At the hospital, his dad had been yelling how the President was dead, but here was Mr Foster in front of them. And all this stuff about traitors? It was weird, like an episode of X-Men.
Isabel saw the confusion on the boy’s face and spoke to him from behind her hand so only he could read her lips. He nodded, but it was slowly enough to make his continued bewilderment obvious.
President Foster raised his head, saying, “Our enemies plotted a double assassination,” and he pasted a thin grin onto his ashen face. “Well,” he said, turning back toward Isabel and lifting his voice, “I’m… still… here.”
78
DAISY’S BAR & GRILL was packed tonight. It was the natural venue for folks in Manifold to congregate and party over the town’s newfound—and to be short-lived—celebrity status. Andy Goodman was on his fifth beer and was more relieved than most to see President Foster alive on the TV monitor, and he took Bobby Foster’s triumphant glare at Isabel Diaz as a mark that more was coming.
Suddenly, he jumped up, knocking the bar stool out from behind him. “She was the scheming bitch I said she was all along,” he shouted. Paul Dawkins was standing nearby and picked up the stool for him. “Hey, Dawkins, we shoulda let her freeze to death. That woulda been patriotism.”
The House camera zoomed in on Isabel and it seemed clear to Andy, his bar-room friends and millions of other viewers that guilt was oozing from her pores.
Unseen, a single bead of sweat slithered down the crevices in Ed’s face. As he turned to face Isabel with disgust clouding his face, the drop fell from his chin, slipping down Davey’s neck and prompting the boy to look up at his father, standing just behind him. The House TV producer had noticed the boy’s move and directed one of his cameras to pull back from Isabel to capture the fractured family group in a single frame.
“Some of what I’m about to tell you,” said President Foster, “is not what you would expect to hear from your President. For that, I apologise. All of what I tell you will distress you. But my solemn duty is to suppress none of it.” He paused to look around the Chamber. His eyes were glassy. Those watching on television saw tears welling. He slid a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. It came out with an envelope but he slipped that back inside. He wiped his eyes and continued, “When the people of this Union voted me in, you expected a strong leader… yet I am ashamed to tell you my own weakness put this country in harm’s way.” His head dropped for a moment.
Already starting to ripple through the minds of his political detractors was a cynical question, Is this emotion genuine or is he just working the jury like usual? Foster’s own supporters didn’t know what to think either.
“Order. Order.” It was Senator Mallord using the gavel.
Foster continued, “After we recently suffered the terrible threat of homegrown terrorism on our shores, and then a divisive and close-fought election, I asked the congressional leadership in a spirit of national unity to elect Ms Diaz to the post of House Speaker. Little did I suspect that this act of bipartisanship would place a death sentence on both my head and the Vice-President’s.”
The Hall exploded with more outbursts of “Shame!” and “Treason!” but again the President held up his hand for silence. He paused for more water, again glancing back at Isabel who was sitting yet still poker-faced, with Ed standing close by, his hands on Davey’s shoulders.
“How did this happen? The conspirators—yes, there were a number of them—hatched their plot months before November’s election, perhaps as early as July. Their scheming was intricate, exceptional. It also took considerable funds and was executed with a chilling precision and determination. Sadly, with Mitchell Taylor’s death, they partly succeeded.”
The Chamber erupted again.
“Order… Order!” Senator Mallord had to smash down the gavel five times before the legislators hushed. “Please continue, Mr President.”
“Just a few months ago, Ms Diaz here,” Foster’s arm moved back to point to her, “was hot favourite to be elected president—a certainty, it seemed—until an unexpected and destabilising series of events unfolded…”
Foster then connected the dots in ways the public had previously had no inkling of. He explained that when Isabel was forced to withdraw, mistakenly as they now knew, a band of patriotic extremists decided they needed a way to stampede voters into the right arms—Republican arms—and that it was this group, not Karim Ahmed and his four friends, who were the ingenious perpetrators of the thwarted terrorist attack on New York City.