Gospel Read Free Page A

– with the patience of a saint and the organisational skills of an army captain, given the Mannixes had four boys all under the age of twelve.
    The Commissioner was going, and Mayor Moses Novelli, not to mention all the heavies from Washington; the Vice President, the Director of the CIA, the Attorney General. She’d even heard a rumour Maxine Bryant, the US Chief of Staff was on a night flight from DC to be at the dinner. Which was not such a stretch given her daughter, Melissa Bryant Bradshaw, was married to the Vice President.
    Bottom line, all those jocks at HQ could go screw themselves. She was smart, looked damn fine in a long black evening dress, her dark hair slicked back into a classic French chignon, and nothing, not even Frank McKay’s ridiculous over-simplifications, were going to dampen her enthusiasm tonight.

3
    â€˜C an you give us a moment, Dan?’
    â€˜Yes, sir, Mr Vice President.’
    Secret Service Agent Daniel Kovac slipped quietly from the appropriately named Presidential Suite of Boston’s Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, a four-star institution in Boston’s historic Back Bay.
    â€˜How do you do that?’ Melissa Bryant Bradshaw asked her husband.
    â€˜Do what?’
    â€˜Remember all their names.’
    â€˜Whose names?’
    â€˜You know what I am talking about, Tom,’ she smiled. ‘Everyone’s names – your entire Secret Service detail, every person on your staff, everyone you have ever had the pleasure or displeasure of meeting in your whole entire life?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Tom Bradshaw replied, a look of mock amusement on his face. ‘Doesn’t everyone do that, Gladys?’
    â€˜Very funny.’ She walked across the expansive Presidential Suite living area, stopping briefly at the plush-covered sofa to kiss him lightly on the cheek, before continuing into one of the two marble bathrooms, passing under at least three Waterford crystal chandeliers on her way.
    He watched her as she moved, her fashionable but appropriatelyconservative Calvin Klein evening gown caressing her frame with every step, its slick white fabric accentuating her perfect figure, its slightly lowered backline framing the fall of her long, sleek, ice-blonde hair.
    â€˜Did you call Diane?’ he asked as he rose to the mini-bar and poured himself an Evian before returning to the burgundy coloured French neoclassical sofa. His feet had finally begun to feel the pain of twelve long hours on the campaign trail and he knew he had another five ahead of him.
    â€˜Yes,’ she said as she walked back into the living area while fixing the iridescent pearl drops on her right ear. ‘Tommy is studying for his spelling bee, and Alicia is already in bed.’
    â€˜Good,’ he said. ‘Are my parents here?’
    â€˜According to Connie, they are about half an hour away.’
    â€˜And your mother?’
    â€˜She arrived about twenty minutes ago via the side entrance,’ said Melissa. ‘Soon she’ll go back out and be driven around the block a few times before arriving officially at the front entrance. I thought it might work better if she got here just before your parents, so that she could turn at the top of the entrance way and greet your family. Lindsay agreed it was a good idea. Terrific photo op – the press will love it.’
    â€˜I am sure they will,’ he smiled, accustomed to her innate ability to see the bigger picture. ‘What’s Maxine’s window?’
    â€˜Three hours. Mother will stay for dinner, talk to as many people as she can and then fly back to DC. She and the President are expected in New Hampshire first thing tomorrow. I know we had a windfall in the Primary, but better safe than sorry. It’s our home state, after all.’
    â€˜How do you do that?’
    â€˜Do what?’ she asked.
    â€˜Remember everyone’s schedules,’ he smiled again.
    â€˜Why, Mr Vice