The Mark of the Assassin Read Online Free Page A

easily won every race he entered. His rise had seemed effortless, as if he were preordained to greatness. California elected him attorney general, then lieutenant governor. It sent him to the U.S. Senate for two terms and then brought him back to Sacramento for a term as governor, the final preparation for his ascent to the White House. Throughout his political career, the professionals surrounding him had crafted a careful image. James Beckwith was a common-sense conservative. James Beckwith was a man the country could trust. James Beckwith could get things done. He was exactly the kind of man the Republican Party was looking for, a moderate with a pleasing face, a presentable counterbalance to the hard-line conservatives in Congress. After eight years of Democratic control of the White House, the country had been in the mood for change. The country chose Beckwith.
    Now, four years later, the country wasn’t sure it still wanted him. He turned from the window, walked to his desk, and poured himself a cup of coffee from a chrome-colored insulated carafe. Beckwith believed that from all adversity good things come. The downing of an American jetliner off Long Island was an egregious act of international terrorism, a savage and cowardly deed that could not go unanswered. The electorate soon would be told what Beckwith already knew: TransAtlantic Flight 002 had been brought down by a Stinger missile, apparently launched from a small craft offshore. The American people would be frightened, and if history were a guide, they would turn to him for comfort and assurance.
    James Beckwith detested the business of politics, but he was savvy enough to realize that the terrorists had handed him a golden opportunity. For the past year his approval ratings had hovered below fifty percent, death for an incumbent president. His acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention had been flat and lifeless. The Washington press corps had branded his vision for a second term “warmed-over first term.” Some of its elite members had begun writing his political obituary. With just one month before the election, he trailed his opponent, Democratic Senator Andrew Sterling of Nebraska, by three to five points in most national polls.
    The electoral map looked different, though. Beckwith had conceded New York, New England, and the industrial Midwest to Sterling. His support remained solid in the South, the crucial states of Florida and Texas, and California, the mountain West. If Beckwith could capture them all, he could win. If any one of them fell to Sterling, the election was lost.
    He knew the downing of Flight 002 would change everything. The campaign would freeze; Beckwith would cancel a swing through Tennessee and Kentucky to return to Washington to deal with the crisis. If he managed it well, his approval ratings would rise and he would close the gap. And he could do it all from the comfort and security of the White House, not racing around the country in Air Force One or some godforsaken campaign bus, shaking hands with old people, making the same goddamned speech over and over again.
    Great men are not born great, he told himself. Great men become great because they seize opportunity.
    He carried his coffee back to the window. He thought, But do I really want a second term? Unlike most of his predecessors, he had given that question serious consideration. He wondered whether he had the endurance for one last national campaign: the endless fund-raising, the microscopic scrutiny of his record, the constant travel. He and Anne had come to detest living in Washington. He had never been accepted by the city’s ruling elite—its rich journalists, lawyers, and lobbyists—and the Executive Mansion had become more like a prison than a home. But to leave office after one term was unacceptable. To lose reelection to a second-term senator from Nebraska and leave Washington in defeat . . . ?
    Beckwith shuddered at the thought.
    They would be