The Driver

“Someone has to.”

“Fine.” He took another long pull of his beer. “You worry about it as much as you want, but, I’m telling you, there ain’t no need for it.” He finished the beer and tossed it into an open bin. “Now then — you didn’t come here to bitch and moan at us. What can we do for you?”

“There’s another problem.”

“Same kind of problem as before?”

“The exact same kind.”

He shook his head. “Seriously? Number five? You want to get our boy to keep his little man in his trousers.”

“You think I haven’t tried? It’s not as easy as you think.”

“Who is it? Another hooker?”

“No, not this time. Worse. She’s on staff. He’s been schtupping her for a month and now she’s trying to shake us down. We either pay up or she goes public. One or the other. It couldn’t be any more damaging.”

“And paying her wouldn’t work?”

“What do you think?”

His greasy hair flicked as he shook his head. “Nah — that ain’t the best outcome. She might get a taste for it. You want her gone?”

There it was: the power of life and death in the palm of his hand. It still gave him chills. And what choice did he have? Joseph Jack Robinson II, for all his faults, was still the medicine that America needed. He was the best chance of correcting the god almighty mess that had become of the country and if that meant that they had to clean up his own messes to keep him aimed in the right direction, then that was what they would have to do. It was distasteful but it was for the greater good. The needs of the many against the needs of the few.

“Sort it,” he said.

“Same as before. No problem.”

“No, Jack. Not the same as before. Make it so she disappears. Properly disappears. This stuff on the news—”

“I’m telling you, that was just bad luck is what that was.”

“No, Jack, it’s fucking amateur hour, that’s what it was. I never want to hear about her again. Not next week. Not next month. Not when some mutt puts its snout into a bush on the beach next fucking year. You get me? Never.”

“Sure I do.” Jack fixed him with gimlet eyes and Crawford remembered what the man was capable of; the man was a snake — venomous, lethal — and, like a snake, he needed careful handling. “You got her details? We’ll get looking into it right away.”

36

“Thank you so much. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you all. I can’t tell you how wonderful that makes me feel. Now, I want to tell you who we all are in this room. We’ve not done a good enough job of just laying out who we are because we make the mistake of assuming people already know. But they don’t. What they know is based on the way we are portrayed in pop culture, in the media and by our opponents. And we need to do better than that. We are patriots, ladies and gentlemen, that’s what we are, and like good patriots, we love our country.” Applause. “We love all of it and everyone in it, from the mom and pop business on Main Street to the hard-working man trying to establish himself as a tradesman, to the mom who stays home to bring up the kids and the student who works a bar so that she can afford her college tuition. We see potential, ladies and gentlemen. Unlimited potential. In all of these people, and everyone else, we see the average American, the person who makes this great country tick. We know that these people can fulfil their dreams and be everything that they want to be if we just remove certain things from their path. You know the things I mean: excessive taxes that mean a business owner can’t afford to take on new staff and regulations that make it too difficult to break into new areas. Too much government. We look at some of the things that are happening today — like those poor girls who have been found up there on the Headlands — and we know that although our culture is sick, it can be healed. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.” Applause. “We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life.” Applause. “Liberty, Freedom.” Applause. “And the pursuit of happiness.” Applause. “And I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, that all three of these are under assault. And I promise to you, I guarantee with my hand on my heart, that if I am nominated for the office of President, then I will defend those great principles with my dying breath. Thank you for coming, thank you for your support, God bless you and God bless America!”

Robinson took the applause, raising his arm above his head and waving broadly, shining his high beam smile out over the adoring crowd. He walked across to the right hand side of the stage, paused to bask in the acclaim — occasionally pointing out people in the crowd who he recognised, or those who he wanted to give the impression that he recognised — and then came back to the left, repeating the trick.

Milton was almost entirely apolitical, a personal choice he had made so that he was able to carry out his orders dispassionately and without regard to the colour of the government that he was serving, but even he could feel the electricity in the air. The woman next to him was glass-eyed and a little unsteady on her feet. The man at her side was booming out the three syllables of Robinson’s name with no regard to what the others around him might think (not that it mattered; they were just as fervent as he was). The air thrummed with excitement. It was close to mania.

Robinson came down the steps. A path had been arranged right down the centre of the hall, maintained on either side by metal railings that slotted together to form a barrier. There were photographers there, their cameras ready to take a thousand snaps of the Governor in the midst of his people.

Milton knew he would only have one chance to get at him and he had to move fast. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd, muscling through the throng until he was pressed up against the barrier. Robinson was ten feet away, the crowd swelling until Milton was squeezed even tighter against the metal. He thrust his elbow back to free his right arm and extended it out, over the guardrail, bending his usually inexpressive face into a smile. “Great speech, Governor,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Robinson bathed him in that brilliant smile and took his hand, emphasising the gesture by placing his left on top of Milton’s right. A nearby camera flashed, white streaks blasting across his eyes.

Milton maintained his own smile.

He tightened his grip.

He leant in even closer.

“I need to speak to you, Governor.”

A flicker of concern. “I’m afraid I’m a little busy.”

Milton didn’t release his hand.

“And you need to talk to me. It’s very important.”

Robinson tried to pull his hand away but Milton just tightened his grip, taking the strain easily.

Robinson took his left hand away and tugged again with his right. “Let go.”

Milton did not. The Governor’s expression mutated: the fixed grin and the sparkle in his eyes were both washed away by a sudden flush of fear. The security man in the suit, less than five paces away, had noticed what was happening. He started to close in. Milton guessed he had a couple of seconds.

“I know about you and Madison Clarke.”

The fear in Robinson’s eyes was subtly altered. It graduated from an immediate fear, a response to the physical threat of the smiling man with the cold eyes who wouldn’t let go of his hand, to a deeper fear, more primal, more fundamental, one that required calculation to properly assess.

Milton could see him begin to make that calculation.

“Let go of the Governor’s hand,” the man in the suit said.

Milton held on.

His mouth was inches from Robinson’s ear.