by D. W. Buffa
“No, absolutely not! I said it was absurd. In the first place, the Knights of St. John are not—”
The door to the hallway suddenly swung open and the ambassador, nervous, agitated, and obviously alarmed, motioned for Wolfe to join him outside. He stood there, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, glancing first in one direction then the other, almost as if he were trying to avoid looking at anyone. Then, just as Wolfe got there, just before he closed the door, he shot a brief, frantic look at Austin Pearce.
“There must be a crisis somewhere,” said Pearce, when the door swung shut and he and Hart were alone. “Given his absence of any sense of proportion, it could be anything from an impending nuclear attack to someone having forgotten to bring him the right brand of coffee. Still, that look he gave me…. It may be serious.”
A moment later, the door opened again and Aaron Wolfe came back into the room with a solemn, pensive expression. He sat down, but instead of turning to either Hart or Pearce, he stared for the longest time down at his hands. Finally, he looked at Hart.
“The ambassador just told me something that I’m not sure I believe, and he has asked me—I should say instructed me—to do something I’m not sure I should. You took a chance when you told me that the president had been murdered. Why did you do that, take a chance like that with someone you didn’t know?”
There was a palpable sense of danger, and while Hart did not know what the danger was, he knew—he could feel—that it had something to do with him. He told Wolfe the truth.
“Instinct. We had to trust someone; I had a sense we could trust you.”
“Instinct? I suppose, when you get right down to it, that’s the best reason there is.”
“Why?” asked Hart with a growing sense of urgency. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“You’re staying at a hotel? Don’t go back there. Don’t go anywhere. Disappear.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a card. “No, go to this address. It’s my apartment. No one will think to look for you there.” He nodded toward another door, one at the far corner of the room. “Go out that way. It leads to the backstairs. But be quick—there isn’t much time. They’re waiting for you downstairs, at the front entrance.”
“What are you talking about?” cried Austin Pearce, rising from his chair. “Why should the senator have to do anything of the sort?”
“The ambassador has just been informed—it’s in all the morning papers at home—that the president didn’t die of a heart attack, that he was murdered instead.”
“Which is exactly what we were telling you, the reason we’re here, that the president was…!” Something in Wolfe’s expression made him stop. “The president was murdered, but…?”
“The president was murdered by a conspiracy, a conspiracy led by Senator Robert Hart.”
Chapter Seventeen
Austin Pearce was angry, as angry as he had ever been in his life. This was worse than a mistake, this was an outrage: this was insane. He was on his feet, glaring at Aaron Wolfe.
“Who is the idiot responsible for this? What fool decided that Bobby—that Senator Hart—could have had anything to do with this? He’s the one who has been trying to find out what really happened, for Christ sake!”
“I don’t know,” insisted Wolfe, who then turned immediately to Hart. “All I know, Senator, is that if you don’t leave right now, you won’t get out of here at all.”
Hart sat staring straight ahead, frozen to the spot, a dozen different thoughts racing through his mind. If he ran, tried to get away, everyone would think he was guilty, that he had done what they said he did: took part in a criminal conspiracy to murder the president. If he was charged with a crime—any normal crime—a crime for which he could be certain of having a chance to prove his innocence, have a trial with all the protections given a citizen, there would not be any doubt what he would do. His brain was spinning, pictures of courtrooms, of judges and juries, flashed in front of him, but they did so at a distance, pictures of a place he knew he could not go.
He was being accused of something he did not do, and the only people who would do that were the people who were trying to protect themselves; powerful people who could manufacture the evidence they needed to place the blame for what they had done on someone else, and do it so effectively that agents of the government, the government of which he was an important part, were about to place him under arrest and take him, bound and shackled, back to the United States. But not to stand trial. Whoever was doing this, whoever was involved in the murder of Robert Constable, could not afford to let him tell anyone, much less a crowded public courtroom, what he had learned. An hour after they had him, he would be shot while trying to escape.
“Call Laura for me,” he said to Austin Pearce as he started toward the door. “Tell her I’ll be all right.”
“Where are you going? What will you do?” asked Pearce in a plaintive voice.
Hart looked back at Aaron Wolfe.
“I’m going to trust you. I’ll be at your place this evening. I need you to find out something for me.”
Wolfe did not hesitate.
“Yes, of course—anything.”
“Jean Valette. Where does he live—how can I get to him?” Hart thought for a moment. “How are you going to explain this? What are you going to say about why I didn’t come with you? You could lose your career—and maybe more than that.”
Wolfe was so certain of Hart’s innocence, so certain that he was doing the right thing, that the thought that he might be about to destroy his career made him only more eager to take the risk. The sense of liberation was intoxicating, and for once in his careful life he felt the thrill of flamboyance.
“Maybe I’ll just tell them the truth: they’ll never believe that.”
And he almost did. He and Austin Pearce waited until Hart was safely gone down the backstairs, and then, as if they had nothing on their minds more pressing than the weather, came down the main staircase speaking French to one another. The ambassador was waiting just inside the front entrance, along with three of the embassy guards—marines in their dress blues—and two men in dark suits. Pearce guessed they were CIA. The ambassador’s mouth was rigid, and his face had turned to chalk. His eyes darted past Pearce to the stairs.
“The senator will be coming down in a minute?”
The head of the political section looked at the ambassador first with surprise, then with a deeper sense of puzzlement.
“He didn’t come down this way? As soon as I went back in the room—just after we talked,” he said in a way that suggested that the nature of their brief conversation was still secret, “—the senator said he was running late and had to leave. But you didn’t see him?”
The veins on Malreaux’s temples began to throb violently. His eyes became intense. He could barely control himself.
“You just let him go!—After what I told you? Don’t you know—?”
“You really didn’t see him?” interjected Wolfe, with a brazen smile that registered astonishment at the incompetence of the ambassador. “And you just waited down here, didn’t send anyone to make sure that he didn’t get away?”
“Get away?” asked Austin Pearce, with a look of incredulity that, under the circumstances, was not hard to produce. “What are you talking about? What’s going on, Andrew?” he demanded. “Why do you have these guards here? Are you going to have me locked up?—Because if you are, I’d damn well like to know the reason!”
Malreaux was almost too flustered to talk.
“No, of course not,” he replied, angry with Pearce for even asking.
“Then maybe you’ll be good enough to tell me why you’re taking that tone with me!” insisted Pearce, showing some anger of his own.
“What? Why I’ve taken…? Sorry, it isn’t you that’s in trouble.” He was trying to figure out what to do next, but he was not someone who could easily deal with two things at once, and Austin Pearce kept demanding that he deal with him. “It’s
not you that’s in trouble,” he repeated as if he needed to give assurances.
“That’s nice to know,” said Pearce in a harsh, caustic voice. He locked his eyes on Malreaux to keep his attention. “I come all the way from New York, bring with me one of the most distinguished members of the United States Senate, come to you because, as I explained earlier, there was something extremely important we had to do; and now, instead of having a few minutes to say goodbye, you stand here with an armed guard and tell me that I’m not in trouble. That’s a fairly strange way to treat someone who has always regarded you as a friend!”
The three marines, trained to a rigorous discipline, stood still as statues, but the two others—the ones Pearce thought were CIA—were screwed as tight as drums, up on the balls of their feet, leaning forward, working their jaws, desperate to stop talking and act.
“I told you, this has nothing to do with you. This—”
But nothing could stop Austin Pearce from dragging things out. It was the only way he had to help Bobby Hart get away.
“We came here to follow a lead.” He stepped closer until he and the ambassador were not six inches apart. “The president did not die of a heart attack, Andrew—he was murdered. That’s why we’re here. Hart is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He thinks he knows who is behind this, so whatever you think you’re doing, think twice about it.”
The ambassador’s eyes went blank. Now he did not know what to believe. One of the CIA agents put his hand on Pearce’s arm.
“Do you know who I am?” demanded Pearce, as he jerked it free.
But the agents were not listening anymore. They barreled past, and with the marine guards right behind, ran up the stairs, shouting directions to each other as they started a search.
“Hart is the one they’re looking for,” said the ambassador. His eyes were blinking rapidly. He bit hard on his lip. “Hart’s the one that had the president killed. I just found out. They call came in just a few minutes ago. I was supposed to hold him, I was supposed to—”
“Who called? Who told you this, who told you that Hart was involved? He wasn’t—but who said he was?”
“The secretary called; he—”
“The secretary of state?”
“Yes, the secretary—he said it was in the papers.”
“What was in the papers? That Hart was involved—I know that—but what else? Who said that he was involved?”
The ambassador stopped blinking. In the midst of his confusion, he became for a moment quite lucid.
“The head of the Secret Service. He said they had known within days of the president’s death that he had been murdered, but that they kept it quiet while they launched a full-scale investigation.”
Pearce did nothing to hide his astonishment.
“That’s what the head of the Secret Service said: that they launched a full-scale investigation?”
Malreaux had never seen Austin Pearce this upset. He was not sure how to reply.
“Look, Austin—all I know is what I was told: that there is evidence Hart was involved and that they want him back in Washington for questioning.”
They were standing there, the three of them alone—Austin Pearce, the ambassador, and Aaron Wolfe. The marine guard, the plainclothes CIA, could be heard scrambling through the rooms on the floor above. Pearce exchanged a glance with Wolfe before turning to the ambassador.
“It appears that you’ll have to inform the secretary that the senator got away.”
What neither Austin Pearce nor Aaron Wolfe could know was how close Bobby Hart had come to being caught. Less than a minute after he made his way out of the building and walked through the back gate of the embassy, less than a minute after Pearce’s stalling tactic finally failed, the alarm had been sounded and no one was allowed in or out. Hart was in the streets of Paris, safe for the moment, but with no clear idea what he should do next.
The streets were full of traffic, and full of noise; the sidewalks packed with smart-looking women and well-dressed men. Hart moved quickly, trying to put the embassy as far behind him as he could, but not so quickly as to draw attention. It was a windless, sultry summer day, the sun a tattered reddish disk fastened to the thick fabric of a gray oppressive sky. There was perspiration on his face and dampness on his palms and he laughed a little at his own sudden doubt how much was because of the weather and how much his own fear. He stopped and looked around, and wondered what he was looking for. Unless someone was running after him, shouting his name, how would he know which face in the thousand faces he saw on the street belonged to someone trying to find him? No one was after him, he told himself, not now, after he was out of the embassy. The only place anyone would know where to look for him was the hotel where he and Austin Pearce had checked in that morning; and that was the one place he was not going to go. He was safe so long as he clung to the anonymity of the crowd; safe until evening came and he could go to Aaron Wolfe’s apartment and, if Wolfe had done what he had asked, begin to track down Jean Valette and get to the truth.
He walked slower, more under control. He had to think, to try to understand what had happened, why from being asked to find out what he could about the murder of Robert Constable, he was now thought to be the person responsible, the head of some fictitious conspiracy. Start at the beginning, he told himself; remember how you first got involved, what you were asked to do. Go back to the beginning and start from there.
“Hillary Constable!” he muttered between his teeth. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he shook his head at how easily he had been used. Laura had been right about her; Laura was always right when it came to the motivations of ambitious people. And Austin Pearce had been right as well. Hillary Constable’s husband had been murdered, but all she was worried about was whether anyone could trace back to her The Four Sisters and Jean Valette. But why was she worried about that?—Because of the damage it would do to her husband’s reputation and, more importantly, her own chance at the presidency? That’s what Pearce had thought, or rather had suspected as a possibility. And he may have been right, especially after what she had said that last time they met, upstairs, in her study at home: that flagrant lie she was willing to tell, that ruthless determination to keep the secret of the president’s murder from coming out, the contempt with which she had announced that she was going to run for the presidency and that nothing could stop her from getting what she wanted. That seemed to be at the core of it, the devil’s bargain she had made to protect The Four Sisters, to cover up a murder in order to hide the truth of what her husband had done.
It all made sense, and, as Hart realized immediately, it did not make any sense at all. Everyone now knew that the president had been murdered. The cover-up had failed. Or had it? Was it possible that it had been part of the plan from the beginning, to let the truth come out about the murder, because whoever was involved understood that it could never have been kept secret for very long? Had he not told her himself that he would not let it stay secret, that there would have to be an investigation? Was it part of the plan from the beginning to get him involved, and then blame the murder on him? Hillary Constable had brought him into it, but had she done that on her own, or had she been acting at the direction of someone else, someone like Jean Valette, desperate to cover all traces of what The Four Sisters had done?
Hart walked for blocks in the sizzling Paris heat, oblivious of everything except the logic of his own entrapment. He felt like a character in a novel by Kafka, damned by an accusation he did not understand. There could be no evidence against him: he had not done anything. Or had he? Was there some link he did not know about between him and the woman who had been with Constable that night? Could someone have been that clever, that diabolical, planned the crime so far in advance, and in such precise detail, that there would exist some documentation—a photograph perhaps—that would make it seem that he had known her and… He remembered something Quentin Burdick had told him, how part of the evidence used against Frank Morris had been an a
ccount in the Caymans Morris did not know he had. A shiver ran up his spine.
He checked his watch. He still had hours to wait before he could go to the address Aaron Wolfe had given him. Across the street was a sidewalk café. He could sit somewhere out of the way, have something cold to drink in the shadows and try to think. Moving slowly in the enveloping heat, he stepped off the curb. He did not notice the black Mercedes that turned past him until he heard the ragged noise of screeching brakes and squealing tires.
“There he is!” shouted one of the men who jumped out to the two others who quickly followed.
Hart wheeled around and bolted, an adrenaline rush giving him more speed than he knew he had. Weaving in and out of startled pedestrians, banging into several he could not avoid, he ran as hard as he could. He looked back over his shoulder and for a moment thought he had lost them, and then, suddenly, the same car shot past him in the street, slammed on the brakes, and started backing up. Hart sprinted forward, moving close to the buildings until he reached the next corner, where he turned and headed down a narrow street jammed with cars. With no room to pass and the traffic stalled, drivers cursed at each other as they leaned on their horns.
The car following him could not follow him here. There was a cross street just ahead. Once he turned the corner his pursuers would not know where he had gone. He jumped across the front hood of a tan Peugeot and started running up the sidewalk on the other side. He felt a surge of confidence, a sense that he could not be caught; the feeling, brought by danger, that he was indestructible. He wanted to turn around and make some last gesture of defiance—give them the finger—before he hit the corner and disappeared. It was arrogance, pure and simple, and he reveled in it—until he felt something whiz past his ear and, an instant later, heard the shot. Then he forgot all about defiance, all about everything, except an instinct for survival.
He darted into the first doorway he found, hit the door full speed with his shoulder, and forced his way inside. He was in the back of a restaurant, in the middle of the kitchen, and then he was shoving past an outraged waiter though a maze of tables crowded with eager diners, out through the front door onto the sidewalk on the other side. A middle-aged couple was just getting into a taxi. Smiling an apology, he got in with them, and when they started screaming at him in French, said in English that he was a United States senator and that he was very sorry for the inconvenience but that someone was trying to kill him. The couple looked at each other, knew he was an American, decided he was crazy, and asked him where he would like to go.