Page 185 of Never

‘I’d say she’d have trouble choosing. She loved them both.’

‘Then she’d better focus on those grades. How are the other supervisors?’

‘Mr and Mrs Newbegin are complainers. Nothing is up to the standard they expect. But Amelia’s a good sport.’

I bet she is, Pauline thought sourly.

Gerry said: ‘Are you okay?’

‘Sure, why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, you sound – tense. I guess you are. There’s a crisis.’

‘There’s always a crisis. I have a tense job. But I’m heading for an early night.’

‘In that case, sleep well.’

‘You, too. Goodnight.’

‘Goodnight.’

She ended the call, feeling strangely breathless. ‘Wow,’ she said, turning around. ‘That was weird.’

But Gus was gone.

***

Sandip called Pauline at 6 a.m. She assumed he was going to talk about Shanghai Data, but she was wrong. ‘Dr Lafayette gave an interview to her local newspaper in New Jersey,’ he said. ‘Apparently the editor is her cousin.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She quoted you as saying that two American lives in exchange for one hundred and three Chinese lives was a good bargain.’

‘But I said—’

‘I know what you said, I was there, I heard the conversation. You were speculating about how the Chinese Communist government might view the matter.’

‘Exactly.’

‘The newspaper is very proud of its exclusive and is promoting this week’s issue on social media. Unfortunately James Moore’s people have picked it up.’

‘Oh, hell.’

‘He’s tweeted: “So Pauline thinks Chinese murder of two Americans is a bargain. I don’t.”’

‘What a fuckwit.’

‘My press release begins: “Small town newspapers sometimes make mistakes, but a presidential candidate should know better.”’

‘Good start.’

‘Do you want to hear the rest?’

‘I can’t bear it. Send it out.’

Pauline watched the news while she drank her first cup of coffee. They were still showing the footage of Joan Lafayette’s arrival at Kennedy, but James Moore’s bargain story was the second lead, taking the shine off Pauline’s triumph.

Her mind kept returning to the previous evening. She shuddered when she remembered thinking that no one would know if she took Gus to her bed. It would be impossible to keep such an affair secret in the White House. For Gus would have had to leave her in the middle of the night and make his way through the corridors and walkways to his car then drive out of the gate, and he would surely have been seen by half a dozen security guards and Secret Service agents, not to mention cleaners and maintenance people, and every one of them would have wondered who he had been with and what he had been doing there so late at night.