The Chosen One. Sam Bourne

over her shoulder to see the pair from the other car start out on the sidewalk, three yards behind her.

      They were not in uniform but they were hardly disguised. If the black SUVs with tinted windows didn’t give it away, the dark suits and curly wire in the ear surely did. Zoe had told Maggie that she had thought about putting in a request for different vehicles, but that would have meant form-filling and more explanation. Mr Goldstein had been clear: no widening of the circle and no time to waste.

      The front door revealed nothing. No nameplate. Zoe looked back towards the other agents, one of whom was looking into the recycling bin, searching for old letters or envelopes that might yield a name. He shook his head.

      Zoe rang the bell, moving her ear close to the door to pick up any footsteps. Maggie pictured the man inside, in a bathrobe, legs apart, his face blue from the computer screen, jerking himself off as he stared at the bodies of girls not much older than Katie Baker.

      No preconceptions. That’s what Zoe had said.

      The agent knocked on the door, loudly. Maggie saw her glance at her watch, give it five seconds and then nod to Ray. Without hesitation, he shouldered the full weight of his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame into the door, busting its lock on the first attempt.

      Zoe was first in, legs astride, weapon brandished in a double-handed grip. Ray and partner followed; then it was Maggie’s turn. She hesitated, then stepped forward, the way she had once closed her eyes and jumped off the tallest rock at Loughshinny beach: don’t even think about it.

      ‘SECRET SERVICE!’ Galfano bellowed. ‘Put your hands up!’

      Something caught the agent’s eye. She swivelled around, to see an archway leading to what seemed to be the kitchen. A nod towards Ray instructed him to join her and head that way. A flick of her revolver told the other agent, now in the doorway, to check out the upstairs.

      She stepped forward gingerly, noting the change in the light coming from the kitchen. One pace behind, her heart banging in her chest, Maggie sensed it too. Someone was moving in there. Silently, but moving all the same.

      ‘We are agents of the United States Secret Service!’ Zoe shouted once more. ‘Come out with your hands up.’

      The first noise, a kind of grinding sound. Was that a key turning in a backdoor lock? Was he getting away?

      Zoe now rushed through the archway, her finger tight on the trigger. ‘Freeze!’

      A half-second later they saw the source of both the change in the light and the noise. The image Maggie had had in mind had been half-right. There was a computer – but no man. Just a lonely machine on the kitchen table, the flickering green lights of a router right next to it.

      Zoe lowered her gun and stepped towards the machine. She could see from the blinking cursor that the computer was functioning. She turned to Maggie. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Costello, this seems to have been a wild goose chase. I really—’

      But Maggie stopped her. ‘Look—’

      The cursor was moving, apparently of its own accord. They watched as it zipped around the screen, finding the Word icon, clicking it open to reveal a blank document. And now words began to appear on the screen, letter by letter, typed by some unseen hand.

       Welcome to my home. Sorry I’m not in. Do make yourself comfortable. Do I take it from your visit that your boss is keen to talk?

TEN

       Washington, DC, Tuesday March 21, 14.26

      ‘Aren’t people going to talk?’

      ‘What? About you and me?’

      ‘Yes. Me, in here.’

      ‘Something tells me, Maggie, that people worked out long ago there’s not a chance of that happening: you’re not my type.’ And with that, a smile spread across the large, flushed, wobbling face of Stuart Goldstein, the first smile Maggie had seen in what felt like weeks but was actually less than thirty-six hours.

      At his request, she had gone straight to his office as soon as she had returned from the raid on the Maryland house. He had had to put her on the visitors list at the bloody tourists’ entrance at Fifteenth and Hamilton Place; she had had to show her passport to gain admission to the White House.

      ‘I mean it, Stu. People will be suspicious.’

      ‘Maggie, right now we have seven senators calling for an independent counsel to investigate the President for “alleged financial links” to fucking Tehran. People in this building have got other things to worry about than your employment arrangements.’

      Maggie bowed her head in a ‘you’re the boss’ gesture and continued her report back: the Secret Service was conducting an urgent trace on the dumb terminal they had discovered in Bethesda. They had so far narrowed down the location of the master computer to the south-eastern United States, but could not be more specific.

      They were waiting for the TV to deliver what it had promised. Fifteen minutes earlier, Goldstein had had a call from a contact inside MSNBC warning him that the network was about to air a live interview with the source of its two recent stories on Stephen Baker. The partial identification in the blogosphere had given way to a full ID, once the collective investigative might of the internet had got to work.

      The source had been named as Vic Forbes of New Orleans, Louisiana. Stu had immediately put one of his best researchers onto it: he knew he was in a race against both the media and the Republicans to know everything about Forbes that could be known. And then to define him. Crank, attack dog, dopehead. Whatever would shatter his credibility.

      ‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ Maggie said, while the TV cut to a weather forecast. ‘The shrink thing. How come that didn’t come out before?’

      ‘I still haven’t quite figured that out. Not to my own satisfaction.’

      ‘Do you think the others knew and didn’t use it?’

      ‘No way. Adams and Rodriguez were trying to kill him in the primaries. And Chester in the general. They all had oppo research digging away, night after night, climbing all over his past. And the media, working twenty-four/seven.’

      ‘What about you? Did you know?’

      ‘Come on, Maggie. You’re my favourite Irishman and all that, but I can’t get into my personal relationship with him.’

      ‘So you did know.’

      Goldstein smiled enigmatically, an expression which was accompanied by a counterpoint of snorting, as the exhalation that would normally have exited from his mouth re-routed via his nose. He really was monumentally unfit. ‘Whether I did or did not is not the important thing here. What matters is how the fuck did this Vic Forbes find out?’

      ‘Maybe he spoke to the shrink?’

      ‘Difficult. He died fifteen years ago.’

      ‘There would have been records. Papers.’

      ‘Nuh-uh. None.’

      ‘Bills?’

      ‘Put it this way, yours truly did not come down with the first shower of rain. I am used to the dirtiest dirty tricks. You don’t get to be a councilman in New York unless you know how to rip a guy’s heart out with your teeth. I made sure in Baker’s first race that the enemy couldn’t dig up any surprises.’

      ‘Because you had dug them up first.’

      ‘Exactly. Wielded the spade myself.’ He held up his hands, the effort of which once again altered the rhythm of his breathing. ‘Then I did it again for the governor’s race.’

      ‘With professional help this time, I bet.’

      ‘You’re damn right. I had two of Seattle’s