The Chosen One Read Free Page A

serving Magnus Longley, who had probably sacked enough people over the years to fill RFK Stadium.
    She waited till she was in her own rabbit-hutch of an office, an eighth the square footage of the Chief of Staff’s, before she would even breathe out properly.
    Once she was sure the door was closed, she used her forearm to sweep everything – two tottering piles of classified documents, magazines, paper bags from the deli, chewed pens and other assorted detritus – off her desk and onto the floor. The gesture made her feel good for about three-fifths of a second. She fell into her chair.
    Was this going to be the story of this year, having a magical opportunity in her hands, only to screw it up royally? Forget this year, was this going to be the story of her bloody life? And all for the sake of one supremely stupid moment of unguarded honesty. Not that Adams wasn’t an arsehole: he was,First Class. But it was absurdly naïve to put it in an email. How old was she? Nearly forty, for God’s sake. When would she learn? For a woman who’d made her name as a skilled diplomat, a peace negotiator for Christ’s sake – with all the sensitivity, discretion and sureness of touch that required – she really was an idiot. Eejit , she could almost hear her sister Liz teasing her in fake bog-Irish.
    It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had a chance. When she had got back from Jerusalem – hailed as the woman who had at last made a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process – she was, everyone told her, able to write her own ticket. She had been swamped with job offers, every think-tank and university had wanted her name on their headed notepaper. She could teach international relations at Harvard or write editorials in Foreign Affairs. There had even been a whisper from ABC News that, with the right training – and a suitable wardrobe – she might have the makings of on-air ‘talent’. One executive had sent a handwritten note: ‘I truly believe you are the woman to make international relations sexy.’
    But it was none of this that had made her return to the States nearly three years ago so thrilling. Instead, and much to her amazement, things had actually worked out with Uri. She had wondered if the relationship would prove to be little more than a glorified holiday romance: they had, after all, come together during the strangest and most intense week in Jerusalem and he, out of his mind with grief after both his parents had died within days of each other, had hardly been thinking straight. She had learned long ago to be suspici ous of relationships hatched on the road, especially those lent glamour and significance by the constant presence of danger and proximity of death. Love among the bombs felt delicious at the time, but it rarely lasted.
    And yet when Uri had invited her to share his apartmentin New York she hadn’t said no. True, she couldn’t quite bring herself to sign on the dotted line marked ‘official cohabit ation’: she had kept her apartment in Washington, planning to divide her time between the two places. But when it came to it, both she and Uri simply found that they wanted to spend most nights in the same city – and in the same bed.
    There had seemed to be no reason for it ever to stop. But somehow, just a few weeks ago, she had found herself sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking out at a gleaming Washington, DC – scrubbed up and ready for the inauguration of a new president – with Uri at her side, his voice cracking, saying that they had run out of road. That he still loved her, but that this was no longer working. She had made her choice, he said. She had voted with her feet, deciding that her work mattered above all else: ‘The bottom line, Maggie, is that you care about Stephen Baker more than you care about me. Or about us.’
    And, even though the tears were falling down her cheeks, she hadn’t been able to argue. What could she say? He was right: she had dedicated the