Frame 232 (11 page)

Hammond hesitated, and for a moment, Noah thought he was going to beg off with some kind of manufactured excuse. Then he nodded in resignation. “All right, fire away.”

“First, there’s the construction of the new fabric plant in Brazil. The workers have been on strike for the past three weeks, and at first we thought it was for the obvious reason
 
—because they wanted more money. As it turns out, the brothers who own the construction company are the ones holding out for more, and they’ve staged this strike to make their employees out to be the villains.”

Hammond laughed, which surprised Noah. Usually he flew into a rage when someone tried to welsh on a deal they’d already signed. “That sounds like the Bouceiro brothers. Okay, if I’m not mistaken, those two scoundrels have been ardent supporters of Miguel Rapoula. Contact Ms. Verdial’s people and tell them you’re speaking on my behalf. They can call me if they need confir
 
—”

“Hang on a second. You mean
Elana
Verdial? The Brazilian vice president?”

“That’s right. Tell her people what’s happening. Rapoula really went after her during the last election, particularly with that slash-and-burn story about her son’s alcoholism. I’m sure she won’t mind shaking the Bouceiros’ tree a little bit. They have a couple of major contracts with her government. The threat of losing them should get them back in gear.”

Noah scribbled some notes. “Okay. Now, concerning the capital allocation for that green initiative in Texas. They’ve put up thirty turbines on that wind farm, but they say there’s room for at least another twenty. However, they’ve already used up the money you’ve loaned them and
 
—”

Hammond put up a hand. “I know what you’re going to say. Give them what they need for the other twenty.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. The front-end costs of wind farming are the only significant expense of this particular green technology.
Maintaining them after that is little more than routine housekeeping. As time passes and more people begin to understand the inherent value of wind power, that unused land will increase in value. We’ll have people fighting for it, and that’s when things will get really ugly. Empty space on a wind farm is valueless space. I’d rather put up the turbines sooner than later. And if it doesn’t work out, the materials can be repurposed. The initial debt is already being eroded at an above-average rate, correct?”

“Yes, according to the numbers I’ve seen.”

“Then we’d be foolish not to go forward. We’ll never run out of wind, Noah.”

“No, I guess not.”

“If worst comes to worst, we can always aim the turbines in Washington’s direction. One session of Congress will have them spinning so fast you won’t be able to see them. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Good point.”

“What’s next?”

“The tax structure of profits earned through several of our European investments.”

“Let me guess
 
—a few of the higher-ups over there are trying to find ways to wrap their greedy little fingers around as much of it as possible so they can help out the E.U. nations who haven’t bothered to pay
any
taxes since time out of mind.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“No one likes it when the parents come home and the party’s over.”

“No.”

Hammond sighed and shook his head. “Okay. I’m willing to give back a little, but not for free. I start down that road
and pretty soon they’ll be taking 99 percent and telling us we should be grateful for the remaining one. Call Kip Larson in Switzerland and tell him to ease up on 5 percent. In return, tell him he needs to communicate to the right people that it’s about time they softened their tariffs on our exports. Let’s get a little quid pro quo going here.”

“Do you think they’ll go for it?”

“Half the continent is teetering on the brink of insolvency, and the horrors that follow will last for a generation. Yeah, I think they’ll be in the mood to bend a little.”

“All right.”

Noah made more notes and kept going, but it wasn’t long before Hammond’s attention began fading. This always happened, and it always made Noah nervous. Hammond now had sole control of his father’s multibillion-dollar empire. He had inherited much of his father’s business genius, but he wasn’t as good at focusing it. While some of his decisions had led to significant gains, others had resulted in horrific losses. The only time Noah felt he consistently had Hammond’s full attention was when they discussed the handful of humanitarian organizations Hammond had launched on his own. Overall, the businesses were still running strong, but they had definitely declined since the death of the father and the succession of the son. Noah feared the day when the shareholders rose up in rebellion.

He held out a manila envelope, and Hammond took it in his lap. He scanned each document briefly, then jotted his name at the bottom.
Like a teenager doing homework,
Noah thought.
Just get it over with.

Handing it back, Hammond said, “Is that it?”

“Yes.” Noah replaced the chair in its original spot and went to the door. He looked over at the young man he had
come to love, whose abandonment of faith concerned him deeply, and whose suffering had become so much Noah’s own. Hammond was already lying down again, lost in his book and, Noah knew, the only part of his life that didn’t antagonize him.

“Lunch is at two,” he said.

“Okay, thanks.”

Hammond read until one thirty, then pulled on cotton slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt. Stepping into the hallway, he closed the bedroom door and headed toward the servants’ staircase.

About halfway there, he came to a halt and turned back. There was still plenty of diffused sunlight coming through the curtains, brightening the pink carpet. One end of the hallway looked the same as the other
 
—a tall window, an accent table, and a vase with fresh flowers. But Hammond fixed on the end farthest from him, staring at it and then away . . . at it and then away.

He began moving in that direction, his breathing heavier. When he got there, he turned again
 
—this time to the right. The hall continued on for only about twenty feet before terminating at a large door, which had been painted white to match the chair rail. He stopped again, heart pounding. A disorganized collection of sounds began playing in his mind, softly at first and then rapidly growing louder
 
—voices in other rooms, music from clock radios, drawers being opened and closed, the whoosh of shoes on carpet. The notes of everyday life.

Each step toward the door seemed longer than the last. He saw his hand reach for the knob as if it were someone else’s. The knob turned easily, and then he released it, and
the door drifted back. The hallway continued unremarkably, with the pink carpeting and the diffused sunlight and the white chair rail on either side, interrupted occasionally by more doors, each recessed. Nothing unusual to the ordinary observer. To Hammond, however, it felt as though every nerve was coming alive.

He saw ghost images of people going between rooms, could detect a familiar blend of colognes, perfumes, old-house dustiness, and a dozen other aromas. The sights and sounds were phantasmal, he knew. But the faintest trace of that unique odor, even after all these years, remained. That somehow made it all real, as if the accident had never happened. As if it were just another day.
As if they were still here.

He left his safe zone behind and crossed the border. The first door led to his sister’s room. He didn’t have to open it; he knew what was in there. As with every other room in this part of the house, it was still, per his orders, exactly as it had been on the day they were taken from him.

A few steps farther, on the right side, was his own room
 
—or at least his former room. It, too, was kept in a museum-like stasis. Very little had been exported to the new one; Hammond bought all new furniture, clothes, and decor. The pictures on the walls were pretty enough: landscapes, mostly. But they were impersonal and generic, like something on the walls of an upscale hotel. Noah once commented that they spoke nothing of the room’s occupant. Hammond feared they spoke too much.

He moved on and arrived at the hall’s geometric center. This was marked by a set of large double doors on either side. Those on the left led into his parents’ bedroom suite, those on the right into his father’s four-chambered home office. He had not entered either in six years.

He stood facing the office doors for a long time. More sights and sounds and scents tormented him. He was hyperventilating now, his face glistening with perspiration. His hand came up again, reaching for that doorknob a million miles away. He made contact with the cold smoothness of the brass, held there for a moment, then let go again.

The voice of a slightly younger Noah Gwynn echoed in his mind:

“Jason, I’ve got some very bad news. You’d better sit down.”

“. . . on the way back from the Caribbean . . .”

“. . . They’re not sure what happened. . . .”

“. . . isn’t much hope . . .”

He turned and walked off.

THE TRAGEDY
that wiped out his family had occurred six years earlier. The Hammonds had been vacationing in the Bahamas at the time, hiding from the brutality of another New England winter. They’d spent the first week on Bimini, then the Abacos, and finally Nassau.

Jason’s father, Alan, was known for three things
 
—hard work, a love of family, and an unswerving belief in the Lord. He began in life with nothing and was a member of America’s billionaire club by the age of fifty-five. In everything from cable television to software engineering to foreign currencies, he had the Midas touch. “It goes to show you,” he reminded his son frequently, “you can be successful without compromising your beliefs. It’s not impossible, in spite of what others might try to tell you. Trust in the Lord’s way, because it’s the only way.”

Jason had no trouble following this advice; even as a small boy he had felt a personal connection with God
 
—one that he enjoyed enormously. The relationship with his father, however, was not always so harmonious. Jason had always been aware of his family’s wealth, but it was not until his
early teens that he began to understand his father had not acquired all of it through ethical means. Early in his career, before he found the Lord, Alan Hammond had a reputation for ruthlessness. He steamrollered anyone who presented an obstacle, skirted any law or regulation that he found inconvenient, and dabbled in businesses that were less than savory. After his spiritual awakening, he abandoned these tactics and made some effort to help those he had exploited. But his son still had difficulty resolving the fact that a percentage of his family’s fortune had been acquired in this manner. Fueled by embarrassment, Jason urged his father to do more to help the people he thought of as the man’s victims. These discussions sometimes erupted into heated arguments. There was still a core closeness between them, but outwardly their bond was often fraught with discord.

Jason’s mother, Linda, played the role of referee during these episodes. A boundlessly patient individual, she was a physician by training who had set her career aside while her children grew up. Once they were old enough, she returned to the medical profession, making missionary trips to developing nations. Her last was a three-week stay in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to treat river blindness with the UFAR organization.

Jason’s older sister, Joan
 
—who agreed with most of Jason’s positions concerning the family fortune but was not as willing to spar with their father about it
 
—followed her mother’s lead into the medical profession and became a pediatric nurse. She, too, decided to devote her life to charity work and had just returned from Burkina Faso when the family left for the islands.

Jason was a postgrad at Harvard at the time, building on his love of history while trying to minimize his lack of talent
for mathematics and certain scientific disciplines. He hoped to earn his doctorate and eventually secure a professorship. He also wanted to do some teaching in Senegal, perhaps take part in the planning and construction of schools in areas where there had never been formal learning institutions before.

The Hammonds arrived in the Bahamas together and planned to leave together. Then Jason received word that Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was due to give a seminar back at Harvard, followed by a Q&A session, so he left four days early. The following Friday, the news came that his family’s single-engine Cessna had lost power and fallen into the Atlantic less than a hundred miles from Miami. The search-and-rescue mission found floating debris but little else.

After their deaths, Jason withdrew from the world. He left Harvard, stopped attending church services, and remained within the grounds of the estate, communicating with no one. He did not succumb to the lure of alcohol or drugs or any of the other traditional poisons. He simply turned inward and stayed there. It was rumored that he hired a parade of personal trainers, martial arts experts, combat veterans, and a host of others to develop his physical skills and complement his already-formidable intelligence, even while he remained cut off from the rest of the world.

Then Hammond reemerged. He made headlines a few years later when he launched, with his own money, an investigation into the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, son of former New York governor and U.S. vice president Nelson Rockefeller. Michael had been studying the Asmat tribe in southwestern New Guinea in the early sixties. While traveling down the Eilanden River, his double-pontoon boat capsized. He tried to swim for shore but was never seen again.

Hammond threw himself into the investigation and eventually found human remains that would be positively identified as those of the missing heir. This brought him international attention, and he dove into other high-profile mysteries. With his considerable family fortune, his father’s ongoing business ventures, and his global connections, he was able to succeed where others had failed and became a kind of folk hero. It appeared as though he had found meaning in his life again.

Noah wasn’t so sure.

Lunch included poached salmon and mixed vegetables. Hammond ate, as he always did, in the anteroom just off the kitchen rather than in the formal dining hall where he and his family, in a somewhat dynastic fashion, had taken all of their meals together. The anteroom’s furnishings could have come from medieval England
 
—a heavy slab of wood for a table and a pair of long benches.

Aside from Noah, Hammond’s dining companions included the few other people who lived on the estate full-time. They had all been close to the family and grieved deeply at their passing, and they now served the sole survivor with the same loyalty and devotion. As with Noah, his pain was their pain.

Hammond said very little, sitting at the end of the table by himself. He was as polite as always, but his emotional demeanor set the tone for the household regardless. The others huddled in a group and spoke quietly. Noah felt a stitch of guilt, wondering whether his earlier comments in the bedroom had triggered this latest bout of melancholy.

Following the meal, Hammond went to the office he
kept for himself on the first floor. It was far too small for its intended purpose; the hulking L-shaped desk barely fit. But it had previously been a sitting room that no one ever used and thus held no memories.

Noah paused at the door, which was open a crack, before knocking. He had received the phone call a few moments earlier, and now the caller was on hold. He considered letting her stay there until impatience drove her to hang up, but he had a feeling she’d just call back. He didn’t have a problem with the caller as a person; actually she seemed quite nice. But he did have a problem with the reason for the call in the first place.

He knocked softly.

“Come on in.”

He sounds different already,
Noah thought,
now that he’s in there.

As the door swung back, a familiar image was revealed
 
—Hammond behind his paper-littered desk, hunched over an open book under the green banker’s lamp. This, too, struck Noah as bittersweet. It was the image of What Could Have Been, of Hammond as a university professor had he stayed on track and completed his studies at Harvard. Same man, same scene, but with a very different emotional undercurrent.

“Jason, you have a phone call. She’s been on hold for a few minutes.”

“Who is it?”

“A woman named Sheila Baker. She’s in Dallas, and she says she has some new information about the Kennedy assassination.”

The only change in Hammond’s expression was a quick raise of one eyebrow. “And you thought it legitimate enough to put the call through?”

“I did.”

“What, specifically, is this new information?”

“You really should talk to her.”

Hammond’s skeptical gaze remained in place as he reached for the phone. “Okay, thanks.”

“Sure.” Noah closed the door quietly.

Hammond lifted the receiver and pressed the Hold button. “Ms. Baker?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jason Hammond.”

“Thank you for taking my call.”

“No problem. I understand you might have some new information regarding the assassination of President Kennedy?”

“I do.”

“Can I ask the nature of it?”

“I have a film.”

“A film?”

“Yes. Taken on the day of the shooting.”

“Okay. You mean, like, as the president got off the plane at Love Field? Or on his way down the
 
—?”

“In Dealey Plaza.”

Hammond’s heart skipped a beat. Even if this turned out to be nonsense, just the thought of it was stimulating.

“Excuse me?”

“In Dealey Plaza, Mr. Hammond. Right there, as it happened.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m dead serious.”

“It’s a generally accepted fact that all film taken that day and in that location has been accounted for.”

“This one was shot by my mother, who was there when the president was struck, and it’s been kept by her in a safe-deposit box ever since.”

There was a pause here as Hammond tried to detect any signs of duplicity. She certainly
sounded
truthful.

“Do you mind my asking what, exactly, is on it?”

“Everything, Mr. Hammond.”

“Is it all clear? I mean, can you see
 
—?”

“Crystal clear. You can see it all in great detail. The president’s limousine, the officers on motorcycles, the people standing on the sidewalks
 
—” she paused before continuing
 
—“and something else.”

“I’m sorry?”

“There’s more.”

“Such as?”

Another pause, and then she said the words he would never forget.

“A second assassin.”

Hammond’s shoulders sagged. “Ms. Baker, I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but I’m not altogether certain I believe you.” He didn’t like saying this, but what choice was there? He did get loonies from time to time
 
—practical jokers, nobodies looking to be somebodies, even occasional outright jerks.

“Mr. Hammond, I’m sorry if this also sounds rude, but I really don’t care if you believe me or not.
I
know I’m telling the truth. I’ve got the film
right here
.”

“Then why don’t you go to the government? I would think they’d be very interested in it.”

“I don’t trust them. My mother didn’t trust them. Would you?”

“Well
 
—”

“She believed she was being followed, watched.”

“By whom?”

“She was never sure.”

“That’s convenient.”

“I swear it.”

“Then why not go to the media with all this? Tell the papers?”

“I don’t trust them, either.”

“Okay. Then why me?”

“Because you’re the only one who . . .”

“Yes?”

“. . . who I think might know what to do.” Her voice faltered, finally. Hammond hated himself for putting her through this.

“I’m
scared
,” Sheila said. “Very scared, Mr. Hammond. Please . . .”

He lowered his head. “I really want to believe you, Ms. Baker, but . . . a
second assassin
? Also, as I said before, there is very little uncovered evidence of the Kennedy assassination believed to still be
 
—”