Grand Master (35 page)

As Hart watched Carlyle, measuring his
reaction, he was reminded of Quentin Burdick. There was the same
focused attention on the matter immediately at hand, the same
concentration on getting the basic structure of the story right.
Carlyle did not yet have Burdick’s years of experience, but he had
that deep curiosity about things that experience, by itself, could
not teach. “I told Quentin almost everything I knew. I’m the one
who confirmed that the President had not died of a heart attack,
that he had been murdered instead.”

The next question was out of Carlyle’s mouth
before he even thought about it. “And who told you, how did you
know Constable had been murdered?”

“Constable’s widow, Madelaine, the day her
husband was buried.”

Carlyle did a double-take. “She knew it then,
that soon?”

“She wanted me to find out what I could about
who might have done it, what reason they might have had. She
thought - or at least she said - that if we didn’t know something
before the story became public the rumors would never end. She may
have had another reason.”

“Another reason?”

Hart hesitated, wondering how far he should
go. Then he started to laugh, which produced a puzzled reaction,
which made him explain. “Half the country - more than that, for all
I know - probably thinks I should be lynched, and I’m worried
whether something I say might get someone else in trouble!” A grim,
determined expression twisted slowly across his mouth. “I’m going
to tell you everything I know, Philip Carlyle, but Quentin knew
something and I still don’t know what it is. The night he died, we
talked on the phone. It was late, but he wanted me to meet him at
his place right away. He said he had discovered something - he had
just gotten back from Washington, so it must have been there - and
that it ‘changed everything.’ I don’t know what he meant.”

For the next hour, Hart described in detail
everything that had happened, from that first conversation with
Madelaine Constable in her study at home, to the meeting in the
embassy with Aaron Wolfe. “It was probably a mistake, that I agreed
to find out what I could; but then, when she told me that I should
forget everything, that it was better if everyone was left to
believe that her husband had died of a heart attack, I knew
something dangerous was going on. I just was not smart enough to
know what it was. But Austin was. He thought I had been sent to
find out what could be discovered about the President’s death so
that it could not be discovered again.”

Jean Valette had sat in silence listening
intently to everything Hart said, but now he had a question. “But
why were you chosen, Mr. Hart? The head of the Secret Service, this
Clarence Atwood, should have been able to conduct that kind of
investigation. Instead of starting at the beginning, start at the
end: start with what you know now. You’re being blamed for the
murder. Isn’t it just possible that this was always the
intention?”

“But why?” asked Carlyle, riveted by the
possibility that Hart was the subject of an elaborate conspiracy, a
plan that had been in place from the beginning. “What would be the
point of doing this to you?”

Before Hart could answer, Jean Valette
offered a suggestion. “What other reason than to get rid of a
competitor, someone who might take away the thing you most wanted
in your life? The presidency, Mr. Carlyle. The White House. Isn’t
that what it was about from the beginning?” Jean Valette leaned
back and with a pensive expression tapped his thin, tapered fingers
together. His eyes grew hard and distant. A shrewd, death-like
smile, made a fugitive appearance at the corners of his mouth. He
had no illusions about the dark side of human nature.

“The President is dead, and someone else
takes his place. Fate, chance, the inscrutable workings of
providence, God’s will? Is that what we believe, that someone
murdered, someone planned the death, of Robert Constable, and it
had nothing to do with - as you Americans would put it - the
biggest prize of all?” Gesturing toward Hart, he challenged the
reporter. “Don’t you think it more than strange - is it not a new
record in mass stupidity - that an enormously popular United States
senator - a man, from what I’m told, a great many people hoped
would run for the presidency himself - is accused of murder because
the man he murdered supposedly slept with his wife? These things
happen. I don’t need to be told that. A crime of passion has a
certain appeal. But hire a professional assassin? Where is the
passion - where is the honor - in that? You feel so strongly about
a wife’s infidelity that you want the man she slept with dead, but
you don’t want to do anything about it yourself? Where is the
passion in that, Mr. Carlyle? There isn’t any. This was no crime of
passion; this was passion of a different kind: the passion for
power, the desire to take control, to seize an office, in perhaps
the only way you could ever have it.”

Jean Valette tapped his fingers together once
more, and then, dropped his hands onto the table, sat straight up.
“Tell me, Mr. Carlyle, you cover American politics - that is the
reason we invited you - what were the chances, if Robert Constable
was still alive, that Irwin Russell would ever become
president?”

Carlyle’s eyes almost popped out of his head.
He looked immediately at Hart, but Hart was still staring at Jean
Valette, wondering what he was going to say next. Inspector Dumont,
for his part, sat with folded arms, gently rocking back and forth,
listening with the slightly bored expression of a man who had heard
and seen too much to ever be very much surprised at anything.

“Everything leads to The Four Sisters,” said
Carlyle. His eyes were cold, immediate. “You confirmed what Quentin
Burdick said. How does this tie into that? What is the connection
between The Four Sisters and the possibility that the President had
something to do with Constable’s murder?”

His elbow on the arm of his chair, Jean
Valette stretched two fingers along the side of his face and placed
his thumb against his chin. He sat there, in that attitude of
repose, moving his head side to side, keeping rhythm with his
thought; debating, as it seemed, how best to answer. “When you
leave here today, Mr. Carlyle,” he said finally, “you will take
with you a collection of documents assembled from some of the
companies in which The Four Sisters has an interest. Copies of
checks, bank transfers, financial transactions - some of them quite
complex - that in some cases go back more than ten years.”

“What do they explain about the murder?”
demanded Carlyle, who wanted a more immediate answer than a series
of old bank statements. “Our President was murdered and you’re
telling me that another President killed him?”

To Hart’s astonishment, Jean Valette denied
it. “That’s not what I said, Mr. Carlyle. I did not accuse Russell,
or anyone else, of anything.” He said this with a calm, almost
playful gaze. He was enjoying it, this game of words; enjoying it
as if the question who murdered the President, a political
assassination, was nothing more than an intellectual exercise, a
method by which to sharpen one’s wits. “I only raised the question
whether Irwin Russell could have become president in any other way.
The same question could be asked about the President’s widow,
couldn’t it? Would she have had any chance to become president if
her husband had lived?”

“Good God!” cried Carlyle. “Now you’re
suggesting….You really think she could have done it: arranged to
have her husband murdered?” He seemed more interested in this
possibility than in the other, perhaps because it seemed to fit
better the known facts of the former first lady’s ambition, not to
mention the known facts of her husband’s rampant infidelity.

“The answer to your question,” said Hart,
turning to Jean Valette, “is that you made a mistake in your
assumption.”

Jean Valette cocked his head. A thin, knowing
smile threaded its way across his mouth. “A mistake?”

“Irwin Russell probably could not have become
president if Constable had lived, but Madelaine Constable could
have. She would have run as her husband’s successor; the nomination
would have been hers. It’s doubtful anyone could have beaten her;
it’s doubtful anyone would have tried. That was one of the reasons
he was picked to run with Constable in the last election: so there
would not be a vice-president who would try to run against
her.”

The smile on the face of Jean Valette
deepened, and became more profound. “Are you sure that was the
reason they wanted Irwin Russell on the ticket, Mr. Hart? Are you
sure it was really their decision?”

“Russell helped him carry Ohio,” insisted
Carlyle. “With Constable, everything was a political
calculation.”

But Hart and Jean Valette were still looking
at each other, measuring, or trying to measure, what the other one
knew, or thought he knew.

“It doesn’t really matter why he was chosen,”
observed Hart. “It doesn’t affect the fact that Russell could not
have won the presidency on his own and that Madelaine Constable
could have, and still might. What motive could she have had to want
her husband dead? You seem to think she had one. Why don’t you just
tell us what you think it was?”

Jean Valette looked across at Carlyle as if
he were seeing for the first time how young he was, and how eager
to get this story right, the story that any reporter would have
killed to get. That was what struck Hart as he watched: how
conscious Jean Valette was of the effect the story was going to
have on everyone, not only those directly involved in the events,
but those who were going to tell the story, and who would,
immediately upon the telling, become the new subject of other
people’s stories, the center of attention for everyone who wanted
to know more about the secret interview with Bobby Hart and the
anonymous and enigmatic source that somewhere in France had first
revealed the involvement of The Four Sisters and provided the
documentary evidence necessary to prove it. Hart could not quite
rid himself of the feeling that everything that was happening,
everything that had been said in that room, was exactly what Jean
Valette had expected. It was a feeling that immediately became more
pronounced.

“Mr. Hart already knows what it is,” said
Jean Valette with perfect confidence. “And so, Mr. Carlyle, do you.
You said it at the beginning, what your friend Quentin Burdick
first told you: everything leads to The Four Sisters. That’s the
secret they shared, the secret none of them could afford to have
anyone learn: that millions, tens of millions of dollars, had
passed into their hands, money provided through one means and
another by companies in which my firm had an interest.”

Inspector Dumont got to his feet. “Perhaps
this would be a good time for me to leave. I don’t think I should
-”

“No, it’s alright, Marcel. We weren’t
involved in any criminal wrong doing; certainly nothing that broke
the laws of France. There is a difference, after all, between
bribery and extortion. I didn’t - The Four Sisters didn’t - offer
to give Constable or any of his friends and associates money in
exchange for any help we needed. He came to us, explained that he
wanted better trade relations, and that the only way to do that was
to help elect people who wanted the same thing. He was really quite
ingenious, when it came to working out a scheme for his own
advantage, ingenious and quite corrupt. Everything with him was a
maneuver, a way to get around whatever obstacles stood in his path.
Foreigners could not contribute to American political campaigns?
Give money for other things - a foundation, a library - or move
money into an American company, a subsidiary, and get the money
into the right hands that way.”

“Some of that money came from foreign
interests that weren’t supposed to be doing any business in the
United States,” added Hart with a sharp, accusatory glance. “And in
exchange, because of what you did, some of those same interests
were able to get control of companies that have a direct effect on
what Americans think.”

“It’s a global economy, Mr. Hart. The point
is that Robert Constable had taken millions - forced us to give him
that money - and so had several others.”

“Frank Morris, who changed his mind and got
sent to prison because of it, and then, after he talked to Quentin
Burdick and told him what he knew, got killed,” said Hart, growing
more agitated by the minute.

“Yes, I’ve heard this,” said Jean Valette,
who seemed almost amused. “That would have been something Constable
would have arranged.”

“Constable was already dead!” Hart reminded
him forcefully.

“Exactly.”

“Exactly?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Who other than
Constable could have set the wheels in motion? Who else could have
had the congressman charged with a crime, turned out of office and
sent to prison? Do you think he wouldn’t have given orders that if
it became necessary, if Morris started talking about what he knew,
he should be eliminated? But if Morris was killed to protect the
secret, why wouldn’t Constable have been killed for the same
reason? This gets us back to the same two people, doesn’t it?”

Carlyle slammed the ball point pen on the
notebook and let out an expletive. "Russell was one of those taking
money?” His eyes brightened with a new intensity. “Morris, chairman
of the House Ways and Means Committee; Russell, chairman of the
Senate Finance Committee. Constable had to be able to use them
both.” He looked sharply at Jean Valette. “You - The Four Sisters -
would have needed the help of both, if -”

“If we had played an active part in this; but
we only did what Constable said we should, what, as he explained,
was the only reasonable way to obtain the changes that would be
good for everyone.”