Grand Master (19 page)

Pearce’s visage darkened. His eyes seemed to
register astonishment at the catalogue of cruelties that marched
through his mind, the parade of half-truths and lies that had
become the regular, and expected, method of political warfare
practiced by the Constables against not just their opponents, but
anyone who got in their way.

“And the second rule has always been to make
it appear that they’re only defending themselves against an attack,
an outrageously unfair attack, by the other side. Are you sure you
want to expose yourself to that?”

A shrewd grin full of false confidence
flashed across Bobby Hart’s fine, straight mouth.

“At least I won’t be alone.”

Pearce had anticipated the point.

“Because of course I can confirm that you
told me almost immediately what you had learned, and that this
isn’t some recent fabrication on your part. All right: I agree we
can’t afford to wait. This has to come out; the country has to
know. The President was murdered and we damn well have to go after
the people who did it.”

“She must have suspected what had happened,
that it had something to do with The Four Sisters,” said Hart with
all the force of a sudden realization. “If she knew what was going
on, if she knew about the money, if she knew - or even if she only
suspected - what her husband was going to talk to Burdick about -
That’s why she wanted it kept secret, why she wanted me to find out
what I could: so she could know for certain if The Four Sisters -
if Jean de la Valette - was behind it. She’s afraid of the scandal,
for what it would do to his reputation - with all that means for
her own ambition. The President is on the take and gets killed when
he’s about to talk! It’s the end of everything for her if that
comes out.”

Austin Pearce sat down. He beat two fingers
hard against the arms of the chair, and then leaned back and, as if
he were seeing it for the first time, a visitor in someone else’s
home, made an idle inspection of the room. He seemed to approve of
what he saw, the rows of well-read books all neatly arranged, the
pair of portraits of men he had never known, Italian noblemen from
three centuries ago, painted by an artist whose name was now, like
theirs, buried in the vast obscurity of time.

“She’s going to run,” he said presently. “I’m
almost certain of it. Russell as president! - It’s a caretaker
government. That’s certainly the way she sees it, at least. This
isn’t just the best chance she’ll ever have; it’s better than the
chance she had before, when Robert was alive. There would have been
resistance then, serious resistance to what everyone would have
seen as a third term for the Constables; but now that he’s dead,
now that she is the brave and grieving widow, no one looks at it
like that. She can run to finish what he started, what he would
have done himself if he had not died. The sympathy for her in the
country right now is overwhelming. Even if Irwin Russell wanted to
run, get elected in his own right, I’m afraid he wouldn’t have much
chance. Strange the way things change. She used to be seen as
someone trying to take advantage of what her husband had achieved;
now she is seen as the only one who can complete his work.” Pearce
slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “You’re going to tell
Burdick everything?”

“What choice is there - help cover up a
murder?”

“He’ll have to contact her to ask her
response, ask whether she can confirm that her husband was
killed.”

“Maybe that will force her to tell the
truth,” replied Hart, unconvinced. “Maybe when she knows he going
with the story, that there isn’t anything she can do to stop it,
she’ll decide she can’t afford to lie.”

“I wouldn’t bet too much on it. She has
another problem to worry about,” said Pearce. His eyes darted all
around before settling on a point just beyond where Hart sat
waiting. “If they killed her husband because of what he knew, why
couldn’t the same thing happen to her? It may not just be the
scandal she’s worried about - what would happen if the world learns
about her husband’s involvement with The Four Sisters - she may be
worried about her life.”

Hart did not feel sympathetic.

“Even if she won’t talk about what she knows,
there are other people, people who don’t have the same fear, or the
same ambition. Clarence Atwood -”

“Will do exactly what she wants him to do,
just like she said,” interjected Pearce. “As long as he thinks she
might become president. Look what kind of leverage this gives him,
knowing what he knows, if she pulls it off. She’ll have to give him
anything he wants.”

“There’s the agent,” insisted Hart; “the one
who was there that night. I gave his name to Burdick. He didn’t
strike me as the type that could be convinced to cover up something
like this, not the way he feels about what he did with the woman,
the hired assassin, he helped get away.”

“If they haven’t already shipped him out to
some place in South America,” said Pearce with a skeptical glance.
“The important thing is that we tell Burdick what we know. Once he
has the story, once that happens, everything changes.” Pearce
suddenly remembered. “Jean de la Valette. There’s still no proof he
was involved. We have what the lawyers call circumstantial
evidence. Well, after Burdick runs his story, no one will be able
to stop an investigation getting started.”

Pearce was thinking fast, trying to put
everything together.

“I have to make a call.” He started toward
his study, thought of something else and turned around. “Why don’t
you call Burdick? Try to see him right away; tonight, if possible.”
He smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t be telling you
what to do. Actually, don’t call Burdick just yet. Let me make this
call first.” He glanced at the antique clock on the mantel. “It’s
only five in the morning in Paris, but he’s always bragging about
how early he gets up.”

When Austin Pearce came back ten minutes
later he was shaking his head.

“He was up, all right; in the middle of his
French lesson, he had to tell me right away.” Pearce dropped into
his favorite chair, spread his legs out in front of him and with a
look of helpless astonishment shook his head again. “Five years
he’s been there, the American ambassador to France, and almost
every time I talk to him he has to tell me how his stupid French
lessons are coming!”

Hart began to share in the astonishment.

“He doesn’t speak French?”

“No, even after five years - well, that’s not
fair: it overstates the effort. He is a man of frequent
enthusiasms: always eager to start something new; never quite able
to finish anything he’s started. He starts French lessons every
year.” Pearce folded his arms across his chest. He seemed to ponder
the point, search for some deeper significance, and then gave up on
it. “He has the short attention span of the rich. That’s how he
became ambassador of course: raised a lot of money for Constable in
his first campaign and then, after Constable won, thought he would
like to live in Paris. Nothing complicated about it. When I asked
him if he spoke French, he assured me that it didn’t matter because
every Frenchman he had ever known spoke English. And we wonder why
the French don’t like us!”

Hart had been trying to remember the name.
Pearce reminded him.

“Andrew Malreaux.”

“At least the name is French.”

“That’s the reason he thought he was
qualified,” replied Pearce, rolling his eyes. “But I shouldn’t be
so hard on him. He’s always been helpful.” There was a glint of
mischief in his eyes, and more than a little irony as well. “We
used to be enemies, when we both were here in New York, but then,
after I was in Washington he didn’t remember that anymore, and by
the time he became ambassador and I told him what a good job he was
doing, he was quite certain that we had always been friends. It’s
good when someone doesn’t hold a grudge; in his case it’s because
he can’t remember it.”

Austin Pearce spent so much time reading
histories that he sometime started composing them himself when he
talked about other people. Hart, as politely as he could, steered
him back to what was immediately important.

“There was a reason you called the
ambassador.”

Pearce looked at him as if he did not
understand; then, an instant later, realizing that he had gone off
on a long digression, he denied it.

“You need to know that about Malreaux; you
need to know his limitations. He’ll get us what we need, put us in
touch with the right people, but he’s not someone you want to talk
to about something as sensitive as this. I asked him to have
someone in the embassy’s political section prepare a dossier on
Jean de la Valette. Malreaux did not ask why. It was enough that I
said that a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be
there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I’ll need to make a reservation,
I’ll need….”

Pearce slowly got to his feet.

“No, we’ll take a private plane. It’s better
that no one knows we’re going.”

“You’re coming, too?”

“Of course! Don’t you remember? - I know Jean
de la Valette; you’ve never met him. It won’t seem unusual if the
two of us happen to be in Paris, consulting about the mutual
interests of France and the United States.

“But tomorrow -?”

“I don’t see how we can wait - do you? We
don’t know what he’s planning, and this business about the
President’s death….”

That reminded Hart that he had to talk to
Burdick. It was late, but Burdick answered on the first ring.

“What did he say?” asked Pearce after Hart
ended the call.

“He was down in Washington. He’s just gotten
back. He asked me if I could meet him right away. He said he
discovered something. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, only that -
and he sounded worried when he said it - it ‘changed
everything.’”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Quentin Burdick was not sure what to do. He
felt a little like a fool, waiting for someone who was already half
an hour late, someone who had probably changed his mind and was not
coming at all. It would have been bad enough if he was meeting him
in New York, but he had come all the way to Washington to talk to
the agent who had been in charge the night Robert Constable died.
Richard Bauman had been reluctant even to talk to him on the phone
and was on the verge of hanging up when Burdick told him that
Senator Hart - “Bobby Hart” - had given him his name and suggested
he ought to give him the chance to tell his side of the story
before he published his account of what had happened that night in
the hotel. There had been a long pause, and Burdick had the sense
that Bauman wanted to talk, but that something, or someone, was
holding him back.

“I trusted him,” said Bauman finally. There
was another, shorter, pause, tentative and full of meaning. “Do
you?”

Burdick immediately understood that something
had happened, and that it was not what had taken place in that
hotel room; it was something that had happened after that. Burdick
told him the truth: that the Senator had never lied to him and that
he would trust Bobby Hart with his life.

“Talk to me,” Burdick urged him. “I’ll come
to D.C.; we can talk there, wherever you like. I won’t use your
name, I’ll protect your identity; but we both know what happened,
and we both know that it’s going to come out.”

Bauman then said something that made Burdick
sit up and take notice, something that made him wonder if somewhere
along the line he had made a mistake, failed to understand the
story he thought he knew inside and out.

“Are you sure you know what happened?” There
was a bitter, cynical edge to Bauman’s voice, as if he knew
something that Burdick did not, something that would change
everything if only Burdick knew it too.

“What is it?” he asked. There was another
long silence and Burdick was afraid he was going to lose him. “I’ll
be in Washington tomorrow. Just tell me where you want to
meet.”

And so here he was, sitting in the middle of
Union Station, waiting for someone he would not have recognized if
he were standing right in front of him. It struck him funny now,
that he did not know what Bauman looked like. Bobby Hart had
mentioned something about his age, but all he had said about his
appearance was an off-hand remark about the way that, like other
agents of the Secret Service, Bauman was someone who could easily
pass unnoticed in a crowd.

Burdick checked his watch. Bauman had said to
meet him in the station lobby at two-thirty in the afternoon, and
it was now ten minutes after three. He was not coming; he had
changed his mind. It was just a short walk to the Capitol. The
Senate was still in session. Instead of calling Bobby Hart later
that night to tell him that he had reached Richard Bauman and that,
after some initial reluctance, the agent had agreed to meet him but
then had not shown up, he would try to see him now.

He checked his watch again. It was quarter
after. Bauman was not going to come. A train had just arrived and
the lobby was full of noise. Burdick got up and started toward the
doors and the street outside. Just as he got there, someone took
hold of his arm.

“You forgot this.” Burdick stopped and turned
around. A stranger, a middle aged man, was holding a thick, manila
envelope. “You left it on the bench next to you when you left. I’m
sure it’s something important.”

Burdick started to explain that the package
was not his, that someone else must have left it on the station
bench. Then he saw his own name written across the front of it.

“As I say, I’m sure it’s something you
wouldn’t want to lose.”

They exchanged a glance. The station was
crowded, people coming in and out, people all around them. Richard
Bauman pushed open the door and, with Burdick right behind him,
headed toward a long line of taxi cabs waiting at the curb.