First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [0]
BY ERIC VAN LUSTBADER
Sirens
Black Heart
Jian
Shan
Zero
French Kiss
Angel Eyes
Black Blade
Dark Homecoming
Art Kills
The Bourne Legacy
The Testament*
The Bourne Betrayal
The Bourne Sanction
First Daughter*
Nicholas Linnear Novels
The Ninja
The Miko
White Ninja
The Kaisho
Floating City
Second Skin
The Pearl Saga
The Ring of Five Dragons*
The Veil of a Thousand Tears*
Mistress of the Pearl*
The Sunset Warrior Cycle
The Sunset Warrior
Shallows of Night
Dai-San
Beneath an Opal Moon
Dragons on the Sea of Night
*Available from Tom Doherty Associates
FIRST DAUGHTER
Eric Van Lustbader
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
FIRST DAUGHTER
Copyright © 2008 by Eric Van Lustbader
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge(r) is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-3018-5
ISBN-10: 1-4299-3018-7
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
From the very first day I started writing fiction, I've been influenced by many sources, but none as telling or important as Colin Wilson's brilliant book The Outsider.
As an Outsider myself, I never really understood who I was or how I fit in (or didn't!) until I read The Outsider.
For this, and especially for all the help and inspiration his body of work provided while mapping and unraveling some of the characters in First Daughter, a heartfelt thank-you to Colin Wilson.
This is for my cousin David.
With great love and affection.
And for my lost child . . .
January 20
Inauguration Day
ALLI CARSON sat in the back of the armor-plated limo, sandwiched between Sam and Nina, her Secret Service detail. She was just three days shy of her twentieth birthday, but with her father being inaugurated President of the United States today, she'd scarcely had time to think about what she might get in the way of presents, let alone contemplate what she was going to do to celebrate.
For the moment, it was all about her father. The inauguration of Edward Carson, former senior senator from the great state of Nebraska, was celebration enough. Even she had found it interesting that the media had made such a fuss over the exit polls showing that her father was the first president to be significantly helped by a massive African-American turnout. Those votes had been the result of a national campaign engineered by her father's formidable election machine in conjunction with the powerful black religious and political organization, the Renaissance Mission Congress. Her father had successfully run as the anti-Rove, basing his campaign on reconciliation and consensus building, for which the RMC had been the standard-bearer.
But for the moment, everything else was subsumed beneath the intricate and laborious plans for today, which had been ongoing for more than six weeks, as directed by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies. The speeches, balls, cocktail parties, media ops, and shamelessly opportunistic sound bites had begun five days ago, and they would continue for another five days after her father was sworn in, an hour from now.
After eight years of the executive branch being at loggerheads with the legislature, today would usher in a new era in American politics. For the first time, a moderate Republican would be president—a man who, though a fiscal conservative, was unabashedly pro-choice and pro-women's rights, which put him at odds with many Republicans and the religious right. Never mind. His mandate had come from young people, Hispanics and African Americans who, finally deciding it was time for their voices to be heard, turned out in record numbers to vote for Edward Carson. Not only did they find him irresistibly charismatic, but they also liked what he said, and how he said it. She had to admit her father was clever as well as smart. Still,