Free What Really Happened by Rielle Hunter Page B

extra baggage. And now, without anyone having a way to reach him (minus one or two incoming calls to his home phone), we finally could.

SEVEN
    The Leaves Are Changing
“Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.”
— N ELSON R OCKEFELLER
    T HE END OF SEPTEMBER 2006 I drove with Sam Cullman, my director of photography, out to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. During the drive I got a call on my phone from Johnny’s work phone, but he hung up before I could answer it. Weird. When I arrived in the lounge to connect with our little traveling “Save Uganda” group, I learned what happened. Johnny couldn’t figure out where all his numbers had gone on his cell phone so he had handed the phone to Josh Brumberger. But it was the wrong phone—the cell I had just bought for him. Fortunately he realized what he had done before any damage was done.
    After everyone arrived, four folks from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and five people from Team Edwards—Johnny, Josh, Derek Chollet (Johnny’s foreign policy guy), Sam, and I—all headed to our gate.
    Once on board, we were told that there was a problem with the plane and they were going to contact maintenance to fix it instead of deplaning us. That’s when the drinking began.
    Josh and Sam were very excited to learn that rapper Flavor Flav was on our flight. (He wasn’t hard to miss given that he was wearing his trademark clock around his neck.) They wanted to get pictures but seemed a bit starstruck. I had no reaction to Flav so I went up to him and told him that Senator John Edwards was on the flight. “You know, the guy who ran for vice president?” Suddenly Flavor Flav got excited, and soon cameras were flashing everywhere.
    After what felt like several hours sitting on the ground, our pilot finally informed us that we all needed to get off the plane, go through customs again, and get on another plane. We realized we were probably going to miss our connection in Brussels to get to Africa, but because the senator’s schedule was booked for months, it was decided that we would just fly to Brussels anyway and figure it out from there.
    When we finally landed in Belgium, we were met at the gate by some super nice airline folks who were very eager to help. (Traveling with Senator John Edwards was usually a big plus because airline people treated us like real human beings.) We had definitely missed our connection. The next plane to Uganda was a couple of days later, so our best bet was to claim our bags and recheck them with another airline. We headed to London to pick up a connecting flight to another spot in Africa, where we could catch a bush plane to Uganda. While waiting in the bag check line, Johnny managed to express to me how much it meant to him that I was there, how happy he was being with me, and how I made him feel so happy—no small feat to say all that without all our traveling companions hearing a thing.
    We flew to London where we had to go through the most intense security I had ever been through. Senator or not, they did not care—he, too, may be packing bombs—and searched through every single bag. Once we made it through security, we hung out in a VIP room where the IRC men briefed us on the crisis going on in Uganda and the details of the Lord’s Resistance Army, the army of children who had been kidnapped and forced to fight.
    At one point I left the VIP room to use the bathroom and ran into Johnny in the hallway, just as he was coming out of the men’s room. He proceeded to plant a huge kiss on me. We were deliriously tired, out of our element, and full of fire, which I obviously liked. But my response was, “Stop! Are you crazy? Someone will see us!”
    We finally got on an African airline and were seated in first class. Team Edwards was outrageously comfy. We were all in the front row—Johnny was at the window, I was next to him on the aisle, and then the guys. As usual, Josh was unable to hide the