TOM KNOWLES RODE back to the White House with Sarah, who had been with him at the dinner.
The president’s relationship with his wife was pretty much a working relationship, had been for years. There had been infidelities, thankfully with women who turned out to be discreet even when the affairs were over. But Sarah had found out about them. At one point they had considered divorce, come right to the brink. Fortunately they stepped back. It wasn’t impossible that he might have become governor of Nevada as a single, divorced man with a history of infidelity, but it was inconceivable that he would have made it anywhere near the White House. Sarah herself had causes she cared for, and being first lady of Nevada, and then of the country, gave her opportunities she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She worked tirelessly on behalf of returned war veterans. She campaigned for rehabilitation programs for convicted drug offenders. Tom respected her for her work. He respected her for lots of things. It was possible that after they left the White House they would get divorced. On the other hand, they might not. They had settled into a mutually convenient coexistence that sometimes, not often, flared into something warmer.
‘I thought your speech was good,’ she said. ‘You hit the right notes.’
Knowles smiled ruefully. The mood at the dinner had been more wake than post-mortem, but that would come soon enough. People hadn’t said what they were thinking – not to his face, anyway. Over the next few days Ed Abrahams would work his networks to gauge the way reaction in the party was really developing.
They went separate ways at the White House, Sarah to the residence floor, Knowles to the West Wing, where he found Abrahams, Ruiz-Kellerman and Devlin all sitting in Roberta’s office, watching the results coming in. The remains of pizzas and sodas and coffees were all over the room.
He settled into a chair.
‘Where are we?’ he said.
‘Logan’s conceded in Florida,’ said Devlin.
‘What about Morrison?’
‘He’s not going to win. Buckley’s safe.’
‘Ogden?’
Devlin shook her head.
‘Looks like Anders in Ohio is safe,’ said Ruiz-Kellerman.
‘Were we worried about Anders?’
‘After yesterday, we were.’
‘Jesus Christ. What about the House?’
‘That’s borderline. The networks are calling it four to five seats either way. From the polls I’ve seen, I agree. It’s too close to call.’
Knowles let out a long breath. He looked at Abrahams. ‘This is bad.’
Abrahams nodded. ‘This is fucking bad.’
The president watched a bunch of pundits on the screen equivocating over who was going to control the House of Representatives.
Abrahams had spoken to Jack Harris, national chairman of the Republican Party.
‘What did he say?’ asked Knowles.
‘Nothing. What could he say? He’ll call you tomorrow.’
There was silence. The atmosphere in the room was grim.
‘Well, who needs sixty seats in the Senate?’ said Abrahams. ‘It’d just give Hotchkiss another lever to pull. He’d threaten to vote against us and pull his little band of acolytes every time he thought it would do him good.’
‘He already does that,’ said Devlin.
Abrahams smiled. ‘True.’
‘He’s going to love this. He’s going to fucking love this.’
‘I think we should assume his campaign starts today.’
‘So does ours,’ said Abrahams. ‘We’ve got two years to put this right. As far as Hotchkiss is concerned, we paint him as a rebel. Disloyal. He’ll go overboard. That’s what he’s like. Every time he makes trouble, we slam him.’
‘Ed,’ said Devlin, ‘his constituency wants him to be a rebel. That’s what they like about him. All those redneck anti-abortion gunslinging evangelical bigots don’t have any problem at all with him bringing our programs down.’
Abrahams laughed. ‘Roberta, you’re talking about the soul of our party! Look, when we had fifty-eight in the Senate he could play his games and it didn’t make a difference one way or the other. Now he does that and our programs fail. He does that, he’s got to pay a price. In their gut, Republicans hate disloyalty. His constituency might like it but everyone else won’t. Now, if he was a Democrat, they’d all love him for it. Not us. That’s how we get him.’
Tom Knowles stared disconsolately at the screen. ‘We got any good news about Uganda?’ he said suddenly. ‘Every day I get these reports and nothing’s happening. Weren’t we going to get some good news?’
‘Just as well we didn’t. Anything we got would have got lost in the noise of the last couple of days.’
‘We could use some now.’ Knowles looked at Abrahams. ‘Can we do something about that?’
‘I’ll talk to Gary.’
The pundits on the screen kept pontificating. There were four of them from various parts of the country on a split screen and the anchor was trying to keep control of the discussion.
‘Did anyone talk to Custler to find out why they didn’t take the offer?’ asked Knowles.
‘Susan’s talking to him. It’s obvious though, isn’t it? The markets worked it out. The Chinese let it fail. You look at what the market did today. Anything they could find with big Chinese government ownership, they dumped.’
‘Is that what happened?’
Devlin nodded. ‘Serves the Chinese right. Crashes the value of their holdings.’
‘What happened in Shanghai?’
‘Their market was down four per cent.’
‘Their investment funds will be buying to keep prices up,’ said Abrahams. ‘It’s an unwritten law. Shanghai never falls by more than four per cent in a day.’
Knowles still couldn’t understand why the Chinese president had refused to step in. Having to stem the fall in Shanghai by state intervention, however he tried to conceal it, did him no favors.
‘Zhang could definitely have made the PIC do what he wanted, right? Hell, I got the toughest bankers on Wall Street to make an offer for a bank none of them wanted to touch. And I told him what would happen. I told him there was no more. You heard me tell him.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to send a message,’ said Devlin.
‘What’s the message? Don’t call me up? Don’t disturb me after 9pm?’ Knowles paused. He found that suddenly he was fuming. ‘That guy, I tell you, I just hate dealing with that guy. If there’s one leader I’d like to send an exploding cigar to, it’s Zhang. Anyone ever seen Zhang laugh? It’s like they’ve botoxed him round the mouth.’
Ed Abrahams chuckled.
‘Probably wouldn’t smoke the damn thing anyway even if I did send him one,’ muttered Knowles.
Abrahams laughed out loud.
‘I wish you were the guy who had to talk to him, Ed. I’d hand it over to you gladly.’
‘I don’t think President Zhang would appreciate that.’
‘I don’t think he would either. I don’t think he appreciates anything.’ Knowles looked at the screen, which was showing a schematic of the projected seats in the House of Representatives with a surge of blue and the shrinking Republican majority in red. Knowles stabbed his finger at it. ‘You know, you’re forced to the conclusion that this was a deliberate, carefully planned conspiracy to make that happen.’
‘It’s an interference with our democratic process,’ said Abrahams, utterly serious now.
‘It is. It’s outrageous.’
‘Outrageous.’
‘What are we going to do about it?’
‘That’s something we need to figure out.’
There was silence.
‘Do we have any idea who leaked about Fidelian refusing the offer?’ asked Ruiz-Kellerman.
‘It was always going to come out,’ said Abrahams. ‘Enough people knew about it and the Street would have figured out there must have been a rescue attempt. The really damaging leak would be if they knew we’d spoken to Zhang. That would make us look bad. First, we have to go calling a foreign leader for help, then he refuses to give it.’
Knowles nodded. If that came out, it would make him look terrible.