Three Jack McClure Missions Box Set (81 page)

Brandt might be right about all that, he thought now, but the fact was he didn’t trust Yukin, and now he didn’t trust the General either, which was why he’d resolved to bring the surveillance photos into play now, rather than keep them in reserve.

Not that he himself was innocent—he had no illusions on that score. This was why he loved Shakespeare—because his kings were so self-aware. Not for them the delusions of lesser mortals; they were clear-eyed even in their madness. They knew their hands were covered in blood, that they had committed murder, that they had given difficult orders on which lives rose and fell, hung in the balance, and were ultimately plowed under the bloody fields of battle. Neither had they conveniently forgotten the plots and betrayals that had paved their way to the crown.

Into his wandering mind now came one of his favorite lines from
Henry V:
“What infinite heart’s ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy!”

He lifted the glass to his lips, but he’d already finished the scotch. The remainder of the Talisker was in the bottle on the other side of the room, but instead of going for it, he put down the empty glass and headed for the connecting door.

A youngish, gangly individual who looked uncomfortable in his boxy suit looked up at the president’s appearance, startled and pale beneath his African-American brown. He was already reaching for the portable defibrillator as he said, “Sir, are you feeling—?”

“Relax, I’m fine.” Carson sat down in the chair opposite the person known colloquially as Defib Man, the doctor who trailed after him in case he had a heart attack. “Sit, sit.”

The president looked over at the ultraportable computer Defib Man had set back on his lap. “Catching up on the news in the real world?”

“No, Mr. President, I’m e-mailing my daughter, Shona.”

“What school is she in?”

“Well, it’s a special school. She’s crazy about horses.”

“Does she ride English or Western? My daughter rides—”

“Neither, Mr. President. She’s got Asperger’s syndrome. She concentrates very well, especially on the things she likes, and in that sense she’s something of a genius, but she has no emotions.”

The president’s brow furrowed. “I don’t follow you. Surely she loves you and your wife.”

“She doesn’t, Mr. President, not in the normal sense, anyway. She doesn’t feel anything—-joy, sorrow, fear, love.”

“And yet you said that she’s crazy about horses.”

“Yes, she’s discovered a way to breed them that’s some kind of breakthrough, though to be honest I don’t get it. They fascinate her, but on a level neither my wife nor I can fathom. Maybe they operate on her level, who knows? Basically, she’s in a world of her own making. It’s as if there’s a glass bell jar around her that nothing can get through. What makes it all the worse is that she’s perfectly self-aware. She’s a prisoner of her own mind, and she knows it.”

With a pang the president thought of his own daughter who, in hindsight, had been lost to him a long time ago, there was no use pretending otherwise. He couldn’t understand her the way Jack
seemed to; worse, he was losing patience with her. Whatever she had gone through was over and done with, why couldn’t she put it behind her like a normal human being? There was only so much time he could devote to her and her issues. He was used to solving problems, not having them continue to unwind like an endless ball of twine. How the devil had he and Lyn given life to a creature who seemed to feel nothing toward them except contempt? Of course that begged the question of what he felt about her. Of course he loved her, he had to love her, she was his daughter. As such he would protect her with his life, but that didn’t mean he had to like her, or that he should accept who she was. What did she know of the real world, anyway? She exhibited only disdain at the compromises he had been forced to make in order to gain and retain his political power. These days his emotions tended to swing from praying she’d pull out of her depression or whatever the hell she was wallowing in to being fed up with her unacceptable and childishly narcissistic behavior. Lyn had always been in the habit of acceding to her whims and threats, never more so than now, but he was coming to the end of his tether.

Defib Man stirred uneasily causing Carson to think,
Heartache here, too. We’re both unlucky fathers, there is no real difference between the two of us.
He said, “I’m truly sorry …”

He was groping around in his memory when Defib Man said, “Reginald White, sir. Reggie.”

“Yes, of course. Reggie. Very good.” He trusted his kilowatt smile to burn away his lapse. “I’m hungry, Reggie. Are you hungry? What say we get something to eat?” He reached for a phone, but one of his protectors got there first.

“What can I get you, sir?” the Secret Service agent said.

“How about a burger—no, a cheeseburger deluxe. How would you like that, Reggie?”

White seemed slightly terrified, as if his world had been turned
upside down. “Surely, Mr. President, you have more important things to do than have a burger with me.”

“As it happens, Reggie, I don’t. And even if I did, this is what I want to do now.” He turned to the agent. “A pair of cheeseburgers deluxe. And French fries. Do you like French fries, Reggie? Good, who doesn’t. We’ll share a large order then. And a couple of Cokes.”

Then he turned back to Reginald White. “Now I want to hear all about Shona and her breakthrough. You have good reason to be proud of your daughter.”

“It gets worse?” Paull said.

Thomson nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

As if on cue Benson returned to the chesterfields, but now he sat beside Paull, rather than opposite him. “Now comes the chapter and verse on General Brandt.”

“Not until I see my daughter and grandson,” Paull said.

“We don’t have time—”

“You’re the one who brought my family into the mix, Benson.” Paull stood. “I have enough to go to the president, which will save him, but not, unfortunately, the two of you.”

Thomson, alarmed, rose as well. “If you let us explain fully—”

“Be my guest,” Paull said,
“after
I see my family and after I tell them that I’m not dying.”

“Consider,” Benson said. “They might not then wish to see you.”

Paull shook his head. “You really are apiece of work.” He cocked his head. “Now I think about it I’m not going to make this easier for you. You’re going to tell them I’m not terminal. It’s your lie, you wriggle out of it.”

Benson looked bleakly over at Thomson, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Then he got up heavily, straightened his jacket, brushed down his trousers, and sliding open the pocket doors, led the way across the hall to a somber study, devoid of sunlight.

Paull was at once terror-stricken. He hadn’t seen his daughter in seven years, hadn’t ever laid eyes on his grandson—Aaron, he had a name to which Paull was about to put a face. He realized that he could take Claire’s rejection, she had become for him a shadow, an image in a photo, slightly faded from time and the slippage of memory. She had become, in a way, like Louise, shut away in her own private Petworth Manor, as if she, too, suffered from Alzheimer’s, her forgetting him not of her own volition. It was easier, or at least less painful, to think of her as debilitated, ill, not in control of her mind or her emotions. In this way he had frozen her like a butterfly in amber, a small child he could still remember sitting on his knee while together they recited the words to
Goodnight Moon.

But now here she was, rising from the floor where she had been sitting beside Aaron, smoothing down her skirt as Benson had smoothed his trousers, a small but telling gesture both of propriety and of nervousness. He both recognized her and didn’t recognize her because the photo in his mind had become faded and fragile, thin as rice paper.

They stood looking at each another, silently assessing the damage and wear time had assessed on human flesh and the human heart. Claire was older, yes, but also more beautiful, as if when he’d last seen her the Great Sculptor hadn’t quite finished his work.

“I’m sorry about Mom.” She spoke first, her voice subtly deeper and richer than he remembered it, but also stiff and awkward, as if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing.

“It’s for the best. She’s peaceful now, herself again.” His voice was just as stiff and awkward, and he realized with astonishment that it was quite possible, likely, even, that he had faded from her consciousness as surely and inevitably as she had from his own.

“My grandson,” Paull said, almost against his will, because it would be Aaron’s rejection he could not bear. His throat felt tight and parched.

She looked down at the boy with a jerky little motion of her head, as if her mind and her body were not quite in synch. “Aaron, please stand up.” Her voice changed, became clearer, declarative when she addressed her son.

The boy—Aaron—unfolded from his position on the floor, where he had been using an iPhone application and turned, stood facing Paull in ranked row with his mother.

“Aaron,” Claire said, “this is your grandfather. His name is Dennis.”

“Hello,” Aaron said.

The boy was taller than Paull had imagined, but then he had no expertise with seven-year-old boys, no frame of reference except his memories of Claire at that age. Much to Paull’s relief he didn’t look like his father, or rather Paull’s rancid memories of his father. Rather he looked like Paull himself, which made Paull’s heart stop momentarily; it was as if he were looking into the face of immortality, another him just starting out along life’s rough road.

“Hello, Aaron,” he said, his heart in his mouth, and then despite what he’d said to Benson, he added eagerly, almost avidly, “Mom may have told you that I’m ill, but I’m not.” He found that he could finally smile. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Dad,” Claire said, “is that true?”

But Paull remained mute, entranced by his grandson. It was difficult to know whether he even heard her.

She turned to Benson, her face flushed with anger and resentment. “Is this true, Mr. Benson? You said my father was terminal.”

“Yes, well, that was something of an untruth.”

“Something of an untruth?” Claire echoed. “Good God, man!”

She was leaning forward at such an angle that she was forced to take a step toward him, an aggressive step, it seemed to Paull, who had come out of his near-trance, a threatening step, as if it were a prelude to an assault. Benson faced her like the ex-military man he
was, ramrod straight, but his eyes were filled with battlefield humiliation.

“You lied to me and my son, added to our anguish and … My mother just died, you unspeakable toad!”

Benson held his ground, but made no reply because there was nothing he could say, no excuse he could fabricate in the face of her wrath—and wrath was the right word, Paull thought, because there was something old-fashioned, unfashionably traditional about her anger, and this made him proud of her. And it was precisely in that moment when the faded and fragile image he had of her collided with the Technicolor force of her actual presence and became concrete, past and present dissolving into each other and, by some mysterious alchemical process, leading him home.

He turned to Benson now and said, “My family and I would like some time alone.”

Benson opened his mouth, possibly to reiterate that time was of the essence, but between the looks on both Paull and his daughter he ended up keeping his mouth shut.

After Benson departed, Paull was alone with the ghosts and demons that had bedeviled him even as he valiantly and vainly tried to push them far down into his subconscious.

“So,” Claire said, her voice once again thin and terribly strained, “you’re okay, you’re well.”

He nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

“But how is it that you’re here, what do these people want?”

“I don’t know yet.” Paull felt safe talking about Benson and Thomson.

“These are important men.”

“Well, they were,” he acknowledged. “Perhaps they still are, who knows. They kidnapped me, more or less, and once I was here told me that I could see you and Aaron if I listened to them.”

“I notice you didn’t listen to them.”

“I turned the tables on them, instead.”

“That’s so you, Dad.”

He cleared his throat, wished he had a glass of water to hide his question behind. “Are you …” He felt a fresh rush of terror, as if he was entering a haunted house, or the lair of a dangerous animal. “Are you married?”

“No, I’m not.” It was a simple, declarative statement, devoid of ruefulness or self-pity. “Lawrence never came back, he hasn’t seen Aaron. I wouldn’t want him to.”

“I see.” He had been right about that privileged bastard.

This flow of information was followed by a self-conscious silence during which Aaron looked from one to the other, his brow furrowed in a distinctly unchildlike manner, as if he were trying to parse the currents and undercurrents of emotions swirling around him.

“It must have been tough those last months with Mom,” Claire said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get to see her more often.”

“That’s all right, I—” He stopped in mid-sentence. It would be so easy to keep, and even embellish on, the fantasy she had of him spending time with Louise when he hadn’t. Guilt and remorse were powerful foundations on which to reunite, to ensure that she would love him again. Initially he’d had that impulse, the same selfish inclination that had kept him away from Louise. It was possible, he thought now, that Claire had succumbed to the same impulse. But he could not go through with it. This wasn’t a time for selfishness or for lies. It occurred to him that, difficult though it might be, he could manage to bear Claire’s and Aaron’s rejection far better than he could a lie that brought them together under a false flag.

“Honey, the truth is I did what you did. I spent far less time with your mother than I should have. The truth is …” He looked away for a moment, at Aaron, who was watching him with a child’s disconcertingly piercing gaze. And it was this gaze that gave him the courage to continue. He smiled in gratitude at Aaron before he got
on with it. “The truth is I couldn’t bear to see her in that state. She didn’t know me, didn’t respond to the songs we loved together. She didn’t even know where she was. She was locked away in a place that had no key.”