The Candidate (36 page)

MIKE DID not need 24 hours.

He stumbled out of the airport and took out his phone. He punched in a number and barked a few shouted orders down the line. Then he waited for the call back. He crouched down on his haunches and shivered in the familiar cold. The sunshine and warmth of Guatemala was a memory. Here it was still winter. He looked up at the thick gray clouds, blocking out even the promise of sunshine. Then the phone rang.

Howard Carver took just five minutes to call him back.

“Mike Sweeney?” he asked.

“Listen, Howard,” Mike said. “I haven’t got time to explain on the phone. But I have information that I want to give you. If you use it, you can save Stanton’s ass and maybe take Hodges down. You want it?”

There was the briefest silence on the other end of the line as Carver digested Mike’s words. Perhaps he sensed a trap.

“Where are you?” Carver asked slowly.

“Washington.”

“Rent a car. We’ll pay for it. I’m on the road in South Carolina with Governor Stanton but I can break off. Let’s meet in Columbia tonight. Shouldn’t take you more than five or six hours.”

“I’m on it,” Mike said and was about to hang up but Carver stopped him.

“Mike,” he said. “What do you want?”

Mike snorted in disgust.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

* * *

THEY MET on a bench in the park at the front of the State House in Columbia. The long drive south boosted the temperatures and the sun came out. The cold, weary skies of Washington were replaced by a sparkling pristine blue, not warm, but hinting at spring.

Mike found Carver already waiting for him. The man did not get up but he spread his arms wide in greeting and gestured for Mike to sit next to him, all the while grinning like a shark. They sat beneath a flagpole on which fluttered a Confederate battle flag, a reminder of past sins.

Mike got out a sheaf of papers. They were photocopies of some of the documents that Villatoro gave him from Natalia’s possessions. He handed them over and told Carver the whole story. He told him he suspected the payment to Carillo that Carver’s team uncovered was hush money. That Carillo was a former war criminal and he and Hodges were involved in terrible human rights abuses. Prompted by her daughter’s problems in the gangs, Natalia shot at him to atone for her own sins by inflicting the punishment that few other people even knew he deserved.

Carver could not disguise his glee as he leafed through the papers and listened to Mike talk. He fidgeted on the bench like a naughty schoolboy kept behind after class; desperate to leave as soon as possible.

“Hodges was involved in torture,” Mike finally stated. “I can’t stand by and let that be ignored.”

Carver nodded his jowly face. He looked puzzled, as if trying to figure out what game Mike played. It unnerved him to get something so valuable for free. It broke the rules. It was unnatural.

“We knew something was up with that cash going down to Guatemala. We just couldn’t figure out what,” Carver said.

“That’s why you slipped the money order under Lauren’s door?”

Carver nodded.

“Her and about a dozen others. We hoped the press would do its job. But everyone bought Dee’s spin about the college fees.”

Carver shook his head, but Mike knew there was admiration, not anger there. Then Carver turned to squint at Mike and his watery eyes glistened slightly in the sun.

“If we can bring Hodges down with this, we’ll have space for you,” he said. ‘Do you want a position?”

Mike suddenly felt tired. “No,” he said. “I just want people to know the truth.”

Carver shrugged. “You’re very old fashioned,” he said and got to his feet. He looked down at Mike and quickly stuffed the file into his brief case as if he feared Mike would make a sudden grab for it. He seemed awkward and then he stuck out a hand. Mike shook it. Carver’s skin felt clammy and cold.

“Good luck, Mike,” Carver said and he turned and walked away.

Mike watched him go. He stayed there for a long while and tried to feel the warmth of the struggling sun. He realized, almost as a surprise, that he had nowhere to go. He had no job. He had no purpose. It was all gone the moment he made the call to Carver. He got up. There was only one place to go. Back to Corinth Falls. Back home to wait out the coming storm.

* * *

THE DOOR to the conference room at Hodges' campaign headquarters burst open with a violence that saw it spring back against the wall and chip off a spray of plaster flakes. Inside, Hodges, Christine and a half dozen campaign workers jumped at the sound and the sight of a red-faced, furious Dee exploding into the room.

“Dee!” Hodges said, getting to his feet.

Dee ignored him. “Everyone get the fuck out!” she yelled and then jabbed a finger at Hodges and his wife.

“Except you and you!”

Everyone was stunned at the outburst. No one had any doubt that Hodges had not been spoken to like that for many years. No one moved. But Dee did not see her candidate anymore. She saw a red mist drawn like a veil across her vision.

“Could I make myself any fucking clearer?” Dee yelled.

Hodges looked at her and then turned to everyone else in the room. “It’s okay,” he said. “Give us some time.”

Now the spell of immobility broke and, with a scrape of chairs being pushed back on the floor, people raced to get out, casting worried glances at each other. As soon as the door closed Hodges stood up to his full height. But Christine beat him and spoke first.

“You better have a good reason for talking to Jack like that?” she said. “Or you’re out of a job.”

Dee rounded on her without hesitation. “Oh, shut the fuck up, Christine,” she said. “I’ll deal with you later, you goddamn bitch. But right now we’ve got to defuse a bomb that’s about to destroy this whole campaign.”

Hodges was lost for words. He and Christine exchanged glances and then he sat down again, folding up his lanky frame like a machine. He crossed his legs and looked at Dee. His expression gave away nothing.

“I know the truth about the payments to Carillo,” Dee said.

Christine put her hands in the air with an exasperated sigh. “Dee! I told you already! He is an old friend. We’re helping his family out with university fees.”

Dee offered a fake laugh. “Christine. That is the last time either one of you lie to me. The
last
time. Do you understand?”

Christine fell silent. Hodges still did not move or say anything. Dee turned to face him. “Carillo may be your friend. But he has no family. You’re paying him hush money because you two worked together during his country’s civil war.”

Hodges finally opened his mouth to speak but Dee shushed him. “No lies, Jack,” she said.

He closed his mouth.

“Mike Sweeney found evidence that shows you signed off on some of Carillo’s more dubious fun and games back in the 80s when he was a real sick puppy. Torture, death squads, village massacres. The usual Central American shit-storm.”

Dee’s voice was laced with venom but it was impossible to tell if it was disgust at the acts she described or the fact she felt Hodges played her for a fool.

“The woman who tried to kill you…” she said, but then switched gears. “As I am sure you already know, she used to work for Carillo. She was a psychotic case, which he found useful when it came to shooting peasants. Mike found out all of this on a road trip I sent him on to identify that crazy bitch and your man Carillo seems to have taken a swipe at him.”

“What do you mean?” Hodges asked.

“I mean your good buddy from the old days tried to kill one of your own staffers. And he
did
kill a priest who was helping Mike.”

At last Hodges reacted. He groaned and his head sank to his chest. “Oh God,” he muttered.

“Yeah, exactly,” Dee said. “Not surprisingly Mike’s kinda pissed about it. He’s talking about going public with all this.”

Hodges looked up. The blood drained from his face. His face was shockingly pale. The only color was in his eyes, like blue pools of shallow melt water on the surface of a glacier.

“It was war, Dee,” he said. “We were fighting against the Soviets. I was serving my country to the best of my ability and I will not apologize for that.”

For the first time Dee was quiet. Hodges walked over to Christine and stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him and squeezed one of his hands in hers.

“I was a much younger man,” Hodges said. “It was a different time and place. Do I have regrets that certain things happened? Of course. But someone needed to make tough decisions. I challenge anyone to put themselves in my place. I had a duty to protect my country and I did my duty to the best of my ability.”

“So why pay money to Carillo?” Dee asked.

Hodges shook his head grimly. “He asked,” he said. “I advised his unit during the war. I helped him and the government win. But I had not given him a thought for years. Then he rang out of the blue after he saw my picture in a newspaper. He said he needed help as he had fallen on bad times. But the implication was clear: pay up or he would start talking about our time during the war.”

Hodges stopped talking for a moment. He cast a resigned look in Dee’s direction.

“It seemed the easiest thing to do,” he said. “To just go along with it and put it in Christine’s name to give me a little distance.”

He kneaded Christine’s shoulders now and slowly the color came back into his cheeks. His face gradually hardened, his jaw setting along a firm line as he came to terms with what happened. “I’m sorry I did that, Dee,” he said. He forced the words through clenched teeth. “But I will not apologize for being a loyal American soldier. I will never apologize for serving my country.”

At the words a flash went off in Dee’s brain like a firework. It reminded her of the moment she first saw the photograph of Hodges under fire from the shooter back in Iowa. Once again, she envisioned the future. She smiled grimly.

“That’s it,” she said and then again, louder: “That’s it. That’s our line. You are a patriot. You took the hits for your country back then. Just like you’d take them now.”

Hodges looked at her, slightly confused. “Is this going to sink us if Mike speaks out?” he said.

Dee thought about it long and hard. She looked at Hodges and then Christine and then back to Hodges.

“Not if I can help it,” she said. “If the worst happens, we get out in front of it. Push back immediately. Get out all the facts and then control the message afterwards. You were a soldier in the line of fire. You did your duty for the stars and stripes. Repeat that until you are blue in the face. Anyone who disagrees is a goddamn coward who wasn’t there.”

“Ok,” said Hodges. “But what about Mike?”

Dee shook her head. “That’s my business. I’ll deal with him.”

CHAPTER 24

THE COUCH REEKED of staleness and age. The smell filled Mike’s nostrils as he sat on it, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, with his laptop open and the TV tuned to Fox News. His mother was at work which left him alone to await the impact of his actions. He knew he should feel some sense of righteousness that he had done the moral thing. But he felt only numb failure. He looked back at the months dedicated to the campaign as if they belonged to someone else; a close friend perhaps, but not him.

He understood now that he left the real campaign the moment he accepted Dee’s offer of a job investigating Natalia and the shooting. As soon as he stopped working the streets and retreated inside the inner workings of the machine, he was lost. Ending up in this position was as inevitable as a rising sun. Sitting here in the home he grew up in, alone on this couch, destroying everything he worked so hard for, was always his final destination.

He wondered when it would happen. He handed over the documents to Carver the night before and now it was mid-morning. He could imagine that Carver and his team poured over them all night, verifying and exploring, and then worked out the best strategy. The one with the maximum impact to seize the news agenda. After all it was just two days until South Carolina voted. They had little time to knock down Hodges.

But so far there was nothing on the cable news. He flicked through the channels again, stabbing at the remote control and whirring through CNN, MSNBC and Fox in a never-ending tableaux of talking heads. He guessed Carver wanted to get it out early enough in order to ensure the evening news shows could prepare for more in-depth reports. But it was also worthwhile waiting just to keep Hodges’ team guessing. Carver undoubtedly, and wisely, aimed to put Dee under maximum pressure. Mike flicked through the stations yet again and then refreshed the Drudge Report on his laptop.

There it was.

“HODGES A WAR CRIMINAL — SHOCK CLAIM!”

The headline shouted the news in huge type complete with a flashing animated siren above it. Mike felt shocked even though this was the moment he waited for. Seeing it happen was still something else. He got up, his brow suddenly covered in a film of sweat, and went into the kitchen. His stomach was in knots and he leaned over the sink, wondering if he would throw up. He gripped the counter-top and then poured himself a glass of water.