“… 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.
81
AFTER 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
ED 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