The Secret Service agents ushered her through without so much as a question, clearly expecting her. Through one set of doors, then another and suddenly she was in what looked like any other American household at ten past eight in the morning. There were cereal boxes on the table, school bags spilling over with gym kit on the floor, and childish chatter in the air. Except for the minor matter of armed officers posted outside the door and state-of-the-art, encrypted communications equipment in every room, it looked like a regular family home.
Stephen Baker was not at the table scouring the New York Times over his half-moon reading glasses as she was expecting. Instead he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, jacket off, with an apple in his hand. Standing opposite him, three yards away and staring intently, was his son Josh – clutching a baseball bat.
‘OK,’ the President whispered. ‘You ready?’
The little boy nodded.
‘Here it comes. Three, two, one.’ He tossed the apple, slowly and at just the right height for it to make contact with the little boy’s bat.
Struck firmly, the fruit went flying past the President’s hand and splattered into the wall behind him.
A voice came from the next room, raised to full volume. ‘Josh! What did I say about ball games inside?’
The President made a mock-worried expression for the benefit of his son and then, conspiratorially, put his finger to his lips. In full voice he called out, ‘All under control, my love,’ as he retrieved the apple from the floor and wiped the pulp from the wall. Then, catching the eye of the Secret Service agent who had witnessed the entire episode, he mouthed, ‘You too. Not a word.’
Even here, without the trappings and grandeur of office, he was a striking man. Six foot three, with a full head of brown hair, he was always the first person in the room you noticed. He was lean, his features fine and sharp. But it was his eyes that grabbed you. They were a deep, penetrating green and – even when the rest of him was animated and quick – they seemed to operate at a slower pace, gazing levelly, never darting. During the TV debates, the camera seemed to seek them out, as if it were as mesmerized as the audience. When commentators wrote about Candidate Baker exuding calm and steadiness, Maggie was convinced it was not his answers or policy ideas they had in mind. It was his eyes.
And now they were looking towards her. ‘Hey Josh, look who’s here. Your favourite Irish aunt.’
‘Hi Maggie.’
‘Hi Joshie. How’s your new school?’
‘S’OK. I play baseball, which is cool.’
‘That is cool.’ Maggie was beaming. Josh Baker was a contender for America’s cutest boy and having first met him nearly two years ago she felt as if she had almost seen him grow up.
That first encounter had come on a summer Saturday in Iowa, at the State Fair in Des Moines. Stephen Baker had been there with his family – Josh, then aged six, kept nagging to ride on the bumper cars – as the candidate tried to endear himself to the ever-discerning, and crucial, people of Iowa. Baker was then the rank outsider in the Democratic field, the little-known governor of Washington State. His name recognition was zero, he had no national experience and carried no regional advantage: historically, Democrats liked governors from the South who might deliver a chunk of votes that would otherwise be hard to reach. Washington State? In a presidential primary, that counted as a disability.
Still, Rob – Maggie’s old pal from her Africa days, who had ended up in the State Department and had just dealt the death-blow to her nascent career – had been insistent. ‘Just meet him,’ he had said. ‘You’ll know right away.’
Maggie had stonewalled, resisting, refusing to be swayed by the barrage of calls, emails and texts that followed. Maggie Costello? Working for a politician? The idea was ridiculous. She had ideals, for God’s sake, and ideals had no place in the snakepit of modern politics. The young Maggie Costello had had nothing but contempt for politicians. She’d seen what they and other power-seekers had done to godforsaken bits of Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, first as an aid-worker, latterly as a behind-the-scenes diplomat. It sounded corny, but as far as she was concerned there was only one mission that mattered: trying to make the world a better place, especially for those on the sharp end of war, disease and poverty. The way she saw it, politicians tended, at best, to get in the way of that process; at worst to profit by others’ disadvantage.
Besides, she’d argued to Rob, the election was more than a year away; Baker’s candidacy was just a few months old and the Beltway wisdom had already written him off as an also-ran. They suspected he was running as a future vice president, trying to get himself noticed. The only poll she had seen gave him a score of ‘negligible’, too small to measure. And anyway, what did she know about US presidential politics?
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rob had insisted. ‘You know foreign policy. He’s governor of Nowheresville: the closest he gets to foreign policy is having lunch at the International House of Pancakes. Just go, just meet him and you’ll see what I mean. He’s different: he’s something special.’
So, sighing inwardly, she had gone to the Iowa State Fair and watched Baker mingling with the hog-farmers, eventually crowning a giant pig the winner of the hotly-fought Big Boar Contest. ‘He’s bigger than I am, he’s better looking – why isn’t he running for president?’ Baker had said to delighted cheers. She waited before introducing herself. She wanted to see him in action.
It didn’t take long to see he was a natural. His manner was easy, his interest in people shone through as genuine, not the synthetic sincerity of the blow-dried, bleached-teeth politicians usually deemed presidential material. Unlike most candidates, he knew there was a difference between listening and staying silent while you wait to speak again. He actually listened. And whatever quality it was that had won over her cynical friend, Rob, it seemed to be working on the usually wary folk of Des Moines – people who had grown sceptical of the procession of suitors who invaded their state every four years smiling brightly with their faces aimed towards the television cameras, making promises they never kept. Baker, on the other hand, had the crowd in his thrall: they watched him eagerly, mirroring his expressions, grinning when he grinned, reflecting back the warmth they felt from him. And unlike other candidates, who seemed to have been parachuted into such events from another planet, he genuinely seemed to be enjoying himself, making real human contact with the people around him, rather than using them as props for a photo opportunity.
Finally she stepped up to say hello.
‘So you’re the woman who brought peace to the Holy Land,’ he had said, wiping an oily hand on his apron as he paused from flipping chops on the outdoor grill beside the Iowa Pork Producers’ tent. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘Nearly,’ she had replied. ‘Nearly brought peace.’
‘Well, nearly’s a hell of a lot further than anyone ever got before.’
They snatched moments of conversation as he shook more hands, posed for camera-phone snaps or exchanged banter with a local reporter. He would break off – to admire a life-sized cow made entirely of butter or to have a bumper car ride with Josh – then pick up exactly where they had left off.
Eventually he asked her to hop in the car that would take them to his next event, an evening speech in Cedar Rapids. Kimberley and the kids would be in the back; she could ride with him up front. When she looked puzzled as to how there would be room, he smiled. ‘I have the most crucial job on the “Baker for President” campaign: I’m the driver.’
They talked for the entire two-hour journey, until the three Bakers in the back were fast asleep, the children’s heads resting on their mother’s shoulders. He listened as much as he talked. He wanted to know how she had started, asking her more about the work she had done as a volunteer in Africa, straight after graduation, than about the high-level shuttle diplomacy that had made her name in Jerusalem.
‘You don’t want to know this,’ she had said eventually, with an