Is The First Lady Really the First Liability?
Arguments Rock White House Residence
Rumors of Darmond Divorce Cast Pall Over State Dinner
POTUS Said to Be Distracted By Marital Stress
First Step Supports Mom in Divorce Rumors
They went on and on.
“This is all background,” Venice explained. “I don’t know how relevant it is, but Anna Darmond is no Pat Nixon. Apparently, the public eye is not something she relishes.”
“What’s a ‘First Step’?” Boxers asked.
“The stepson,” Venice explained. “The son born before she was married. Remember when he made a point of telling the press that he voted for the other candidate?” It was big news at the time, capturing the imagination of every television comic on the planet. “And these only scratch the surface. The Darmonds make the Clintons look like lifelong lovers.”
“Among all the pundits, are there theories as to why there’s so much discord?” Jonathan asked.
Venice gave him an annoying smirk. “You really are not dialed into pop culture at all, are you?”
Jonathan smirked back. “We’ve met, right?”
“She doesn’t like his politics. She says he’s wandered from the principles he held when he first ran for Congress. She’s been very vocal. She’s even done talk shows dissing her husband. How can you not know this?”
“I stopped watching television when the morning news shows stopped doing news and started hawking movie stars. Newspapers are only half a step better.”
“I say the prez off’d her to shut her up,” Boxers said.
Jonathan shot him a look. “Are you serious?”
Big Guy shrugged with one shoulder. “Half serious, anyway.”
Venice made a puffing sound, her ultimate dismissal.
The theory actually rang as not outrageous with Jonathan. If there was one lesson he’d learned over all those years serving as Uncle Sam’s muscle — and the additional years serving as an anonymous watchdog — it was that there was no limit to the degree to which power corrupts. If the president of the United States — particularly this president of the United States, whose own cabinet had already proven itself to be murderous — needed only to kill someone to gain reelection, Jonathan could imagine that being an easy decision.
“Let’s table that theory for a while,” Jonathan said. “Any others?”
“Maybe she just wanted to get away,” Venice offered. “Having everybody assuming that she was kidnapped is way better than having the country hate her for walking away from her husband.”
“You know that would make her a murderer, right?” Jonathan asked. “People were killed in that shoot-out. If it turns out to be some kind of tantrum-inspired ruse, that would spell really bad things for her.”
“You asked for other theories,” Venice said. “That was the first one that popped into my head.”
Jonathan’s gaze narrowed. “You’ve got some back-pocket research.”
Venice smiled. “I confess that I accessed some files that Wolverine might not want to know I know about.”
Time after time, Venice proved herself to be the mistress of electrons. As an analog guy trapped in a digital world, Jonathan had no idea how she worked the magic she did, but he’d come to think of her abilities as a force of nature.
“Anna Nazarov emigrated to the United States from Russia in 1986, the year before her future — and much older — second husband first ran for Congress. She had her only child, Nicholas, eighteen months later, courtesy of Pavel Mishin, an electrician whom she never married.”
“How old was she when she arrived?” Jonathan asked.
“Sixteen, and not by much.”
“Nothing wrong with her youthful libido,” Boxers said.
“It’s that clean American water,” Jonathan said.
“Can we grow up, please?” Venice chided. “Those years marked the last desperate breaths of the Soviet Union. Her baby was a natural-born citizen, and her ticket to stay in the US of A. There’s not a lot else on the record until she met Tony Darmond on a blind date in 2002. Apparently, it was a whirlwind romance, and yada, yada, yada, she’s FLOTUS.”
Jonathan recognized the acronym for First Lady of the United States. Something in the way Venice said the yada, yada, yada rang a warning bell. “You’ve got a suspicion,” he said.
“Not a suspicion, really. Okay, yes, a suspicion. It was hard to come to the United States back in the eighties. You had to be somebody over there, but when I search her family name, I don’t really get much. She held menial jobs, but never really made an impact anywhere. Here’s a woman who sleeps with the most powerful man in the world, and all we’ve got on a major chunk of her life is generalities. That makes me suspicious.”
“Be less mysterious,” Jonathan said. “Say what’s on your mind.”
“Really, that’s it. I don’t have a larger theory. It just seems incongruous to me that the First Lady would go so… unexamined.”
“Well, her husband does belong to the news media’s favorite political party,” Boxers said. In the Big Guy’s mind, being a member of the media put you very close to being an enemy of the state.
“But what about the bloggers?” Venice pressed. “And the networks of the opposition? Nobody’s given this chick a hard look.”
Jonathan grinned. “But I sense that someone’s about to.”
“I’ve tried,” Venice said. “I mean, I’ve really tried. She sort of disappears.” She drilled Jonathan with her eyes. “Remind you of anyone you know?”
Because of his covert work, Jonathan and Boxers had both disappeared off the grid a long time ago. Jonathan laughed. “What, you think she was an operator?”
“I don’t know what I think. I really mean that. But everybody leaves a footprint. Emigrés leave a big footprint. Mrs. Darmond, not so much. Just seems odd to me. I don’t know if she’s a Special Forces operator or part of witness protection, but it seems very, very weird to me.”
Jonathan thought about that. These were the days of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. CNN reported on zits that appeared on celebrities’ noses. First Ladies should have complete pasts. “Are you telling me that she’s invisible for those years between having her kid and marrying the future president?”
“Essentially, yes. I can’t even find a driver’s license application.”
“How about tax returns?” Boxers asked.
“Yes. There’s a tax return for every year. Not surprisingly, I suppose, they show a geometric growth in charitable contributions after she met Darmond.”
“Feeding the poor through pure ambition,” Boxers said. “A noble and long-standing American tradition.”
Jonathan smiled. No one did cynicism better than Big Guy.
Venice continued, “I even looked for good works. Maybe she worked for a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. There’s nothing.”
Jonathan weighed the meaning in his mind, forcing himself to assume the worst, if only because years of experience had shown him that the worst was the norm. When people disappeared from view, it was either by their own choice, or by the choice of others. In Jonathan’s case, he was a cipher in official records because of the good — and occasionally bad — works he’d performed in service to Uncle Sam. Others disappeared because of testimony they’d provided for the US attorney, and still others — think the Unabomber — disappeared because they wanted to be anonymous. Nobody—nobody—disappeared accidentally.
“Plus, there’s one other big thing that bothers me. The first three digits of her Social Security number are one two eight. That’s a New York series.”
Jonathan leaned closer. “And?”
“There’s no record of Mrs. Darmond ever living in New York. How would she get a Social from an area where she never lived?”