“I mean you, Davey… Please come down and join me here.”
A mask of fear fell over the boy’s face. He looked toward Ed and Isabel for a hint of what he should do… was he in trouble? Ed was motionless but Isabel nodded, and nudged him to go to President Foster. The boy walked slowly, worried.
Smiling for the first time, Foster got down on one knee, “I can assure you I’ve never been more thrilled to meet a single person, Davey,” he said and shook the boy’s hand. “Do you remember this?” he asked, slipping a silver object out of his pocket. Davey nodded and Foster handed it to him before standing back up. “That was Davey’s birthday camera. Davey turned nine only a couple of weeks ago, didn’t you Davey?”
Davey shrugged, his mind was in a whirl.
“A few days ago, Madam Speaker flew up for a break at her retreat, located in the mountains above the historic Vermont township of Manifold.”
“HE said ‘Manifold,’” yelled Andy as though the rest of the bar hadn’t heard it.
“Shh!” hushed everyone else.
“DAVEY,” continued the President, “couldn’t join her on the trip since he had school to go to, but he lent her his new camera so she could take snaps of the mountains and the snow and bring them back for him. But saved in the camera’s memory were a couple of video clips that Davey had shot of General Loane with his back to the camera and talking on a speakerphone so Davey, who is deaf, couldn’t tell what was being said. It was days later, up at her shack, that Ms Diaz played Davey’s video clips—to her horror. What she heard was her husband, Niki Abbott, and others many of whom have also been rounded up, coldly handing down their death sentences on Mitchell Taylor… and me… all so Ms Diaz would become President… all so General Loane here would be in a position, as he thought, to pull the strings.” He glanced over at Ed. “Well, General, your own wife has cut those strings.”
The Attorney General shook his head in disbelief. Isabel Diaz was some woman.
“Imagine,” the President continued, “Ms Diaz alone in her mountain-top shack, discovering all this, but with no communications with the outside world, hours from the closest town and with sunset almost upon her, the outside temperature sub-zero and dropping. Ms Diaz knows that if she waits till daybreak, Mitchell Taylor and I will both be dead… that she could walk casually, seemingly innocently, into the presidency herself.
“But Isabel Diaz doesn’t wait, instead urgently setting off into the dark and the snow to get to a town and a phone. As we know, a wolf attacks her and, desperately, she fights back not merely to defend herself, but also this nation’s Constitution. It’s a struggle to the death,” he said, and looked back at Isabel. Her eyes dropped to the floor in modesty, but he continued, “Both she and the wolf lie dying in the snow, losing pints of blood between them and her body temperature dropping fast to dangerous levels.
“Two unsuspecting heroes, park ranger Andy Goodman and his friend Paul Dawkins, are out searching for the female wolf in answer to a distress alarm from her radio-collar. She is part of an experimental regeneration program run by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They arrive at the blood-soaked scene and stumble on Ms Diaz, who is suffering acute hypothermia and from shocking, terrible wounds that you can only get a hint of today. They desperately race her to the county hospital for emergency treatment. On arrival at the ER, she is floating in and out of consciousness. Her ears pick up that Mitchell Taylor is already dead and her mind snaps back, just enough to demand a phone. And that… that was the call that saved this presidency and my life, though unfortunately it was too late to save Mitch’s.”
Davey ran back to Isabel and buried his head in her stomach as the once familiar chants of “Bel… Bel… Isa-bel” rang through the Hall to tumultuous applause.
INSIDE Daisy’s, Andy and Paul had been hoisted up on their friends’ shoulders and were being circled around the bar, their beers spilling over the floor as well as onto their friends who didn’t seem to care. Brad declared an open tab and Paul, in between swigs, was chanting his own version of “Isa-bel” but Andy, for the first time this evening, was quiet, almost dazed. No matter which way his bearers turned or swayed him, his head and his eyes stayed locked on the TV screen as though he needed to check it was still there, as though this wasn’t for real.