Silence in the kitchen. Eddie felt his hold on the story weakening. He was missing something. He could read it in the Senator’s confident gaze. “Tell me, Senator, was the second child yours, too? Did you maybe resume your affair with my sister while she was running around and blowing things up?” Silence. He turned to the man at the door. “You loved my sister once, Perry. Are you going to let him get away with this?” Back to Lanning. “So—what happens now? Does Perry shoot me in the back?”
Lanning’s smile was political and confident. “Oh, I think such melodrama will hardly prove necessary, Eddie. Your story, I admit, possesses the virtues of imagination and verve that one finds in the best of your fiction. Its only vice is that it doesn’t happen to be possible.” He leaned forward, tapping extended fingertips against each other in his excitement. “Think about it, Eddie. It’s all very clever. I killed off some of my father’s best friends, arranged to blow up poor Kevin Garland while making it look like they were after me—all of that. But it still rests on a single premise. The premise is that Junie and I had an affair. All right. Let’s think it through. Suppose that your sister had been my girlfriend. Suppose she was carrying my baby. When exactly did the Soviets think to acquire this information? Your sister vanished in the summer of 1957. Wasn’t Colonel Abel already under arrest by that time? Besides, Castle died in 1955. If Junie had the baby in July of 1957, her pregnancy began, when? Late in 1956? When am I supposed to have impregnated her? And how could an envelope left behind by Phil Castle possibly have contained that information?”
(III)
EDDIE COVERED HIS MOUTH. He had missed the obvious, and Lanning, in a trice, had found it. Eddie had been patient. For a decade and a half he had collected facts, building and building until he could finally present his thesis. And Lanning Frost, with the simplest and most basic of criticisms, had knocked over the entire structure.
“I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, Eddie. I know what your sister meant to you. Still means to you. If you’re right, and the unfortunate Professor Mellor was not the father of your sister’s child, then the father is still out there somewhere.” The Senator grew reflective. “And the baby, too. Let’s see, born in July of 1957, your niece would be going on sixteen now. Maybe you should put your indisputable energy and talent into finding her, Eddie. Maybe she needs you.”
Eddie said, “I never told you the baby was a girl.”
“No? I’m sure you mentioned it.”
“I’ve never mentioned it to a soul, Senator, and certainly not to you. And I’m quite sure Junie wouldn’t have told a stranger, either.” He felt dizzy, confused, the way we do when we stand on the precipice poised between everything we always wanted and everything we always feared. “Junie told me. But who would have told you? I don’t think anybody in the world knows, Senator. Nobody but me, and Junie…and the baby’s father.”
“So we’re back to that.” The smile faded.
“Yes, Senator. We’re back to that.”
“You still believe it? Despite your little embarrassment over the dates?”
“I can’t see how it was done, but, yes, Senator, I believe it. And I believe I’m ready to use it to ruin you.”
“Well, fine, Eddie. America is the home of free speech. Say what you like, to whomever you like. I won’t stop you. Wild stories like this—well, you’ve been spreading all sorts of craziness this past decade. Call the Washington Post. Call CBS News. Call whom you like. Tell them the story. It’s salacious, it’s exciting, it’s tabloid fodder. They’ll consider the source and ignore it. As they should. Democratic politics are destroyed by such personal attacks. Nixon made it an art form, which is the main reason he has to go.”
“I hear you’re getting death threats.”
“Every politician gets them.”
“From Junie?”
The Senator shrugged, but his eyes shifted ever so slightly. “We’ll deal with them.”
“Why would Junie threaten to kill you unless she blames you?”
“I don’t know, Eddie. Why do radical misfits do anything? To get attention? To deny their inadequacies? I have no idea.”
Eddie burned. “We don’t have to wait for Junie, Senator. I could just kill you for what you’ve done to my sister.”
This seemed at least to capture the Senator’s interest. “I suppose you could make the attempt, yes. And, lying dead after your failure, you would ensure my election.” That smile again. “Especially once it turned out that you were a former suitor of poor Margot’s.” His wiggling fingers described quotation marks in the air. “NOVELIST WESLEY SHOT TRYING TO ASSASSINATE FROST—CRAZED WRITER LOVED SENATOR’S WIFE, SOURCES SAY. Yes. I like that scenario very much. So, Eddie, please. Go ahead and try.” He laughed. “Oh, and we’d also have to be sure to tell them you were a friend of Nixon’s. That would put me over the top if nothing else would.”
“I might succeed.”
The smile vanished. “Yes, Eddie, you might. You might succeed in killing me. You might succeed in persuading the country that a group of successful black men from Harlem has been secretly running the world. And the pogrom that would follow would then be on your head. Think of what the nation would do to your people, after a Negro assassinated the next President, and more Negroes turned out to be conspiring to do worse.” He was on his feet. “And there is a larger problem, Eddie, isn’t there? The larger problem is that you aren’t sure you’re right. And you would not want to do murder, take the life of another human being and bring all of that hellfire down on your people’s heads besides, without being absolutely certain.” He leaned over the table. “Let it go, Eddie. There is no point in fighting. Some things are inevitable.”
“I don’t believe that. People should know the truth.”
Lanning shook his head. “No, Eddie. Not your version of the truth. The nation will never abide your truth, Eddie. And, in any case, your people would not survive it.” He glanced at his watch. “The hour is late, Eddie. I would still rather have you as an ally than an enemy, but, in any case, I’m afraid our meeting is at an end.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
“You’re welcome to try to prevent it. But do consider the consequences.” The grin turned cold and wicked. The Senator moved toward the door. His aide stepped aside. “Perry, see our guest out. Eddie, a pleasure as always. I’ll say your goodbyes to Margot.”
(IV)
IN THE FOYER, Eddie turned to his silent escort.
“What about you, Perry? You loved Junie once. Are you going to let him get away with this?”
“With what?” He was holding the door open. The street was empty. The sun had risen during the argument with Lanning. Now it was Sunday morning, bright and clear and cold and quiet. “The nation is going to move, or we are going to move it. Nothing takes precedence, Eddie. Nothing.”
“Perry, come on. He ruined Junie’s life. She committed terrible crimes—”
“Of her own volition.”
Eddie ignored this. “And then he left her to rot. Searching for those children. One of them his. Maybe both.”
Perry stroked his goatee. “You would sacrifice the whole darker nation for the sake of your sister, wouldn’t you?”
Eddie decided not to take a swing at him, because it would never land. “I don’t believe that to be the actual choice I’m facing.”
“If it were, however, you wouldn’t hesitate, would you?” When Eddie did not answer at once, Perry grew animated. “You’ve read Paradise Lost, Eddie. A hundred times by now, I’ll bet. Remember how it ends?”
A tight nod. “Adam and Eve march off into the world.”
“That’s right, Eddie. They look back, and Paradise has been closed to them, defended with gates and armies and flames. They walk into the world because they have no choice. They listened to the serpent—the Tempter, the Paramount, the Author, Milton uses all of these—they listened, and the gates closed behind them. Because they must.” He pointed into the house. “You think this is
the whole of the Project? You think Lanning Frost in the White House is the answer to my father’s dreams? Because, if that’s what you think, you’re wrong. The Project is larger, and separate. And it cannot be stopped.”
“But this election—”
“Lanning Frost is an opportunity, no more. Random chance. My Aunt Sumner decided to move to the Midwest and pass into whiteness. Margot’s father fell in love with her. Lanning fell in love with Margot. We didn’t plan any of that, Eddie. How could we? But we would be dimwits indeed to take no advantage of it. My father began the negotiations with Elliott Van Epp. He didn’t foresee all of this, but, still, the plan is essentially his. If Lanning wins, the community moves a centimeter closer to justice. And, yes, I will be there next door to the Oval Office to make sure that he does what is necessary on the matters most important to our people. If, on the other hand, Lanning loses, the community will be no worse off. Because the Project endures.” His eyes bright, gazing into the triumphant future. “The hour for stopping us is past, Eddie. Our victory is coming. Believe me. We are going to shake the throne. If not this decade, then next. You could have been a part of it. You are a worthy adversary, Eddie.”
“Decades,” said Eddie. “That’s why you need the heirs.”
“We are patient men.”
“Don’t touch Locke. Don’t you dare touch him. He will never be a part of your Project. Never. If you try to recruit him, I’ll kill you.”
Perry seemed amused. “Boys grow into men, Eddie. Men make up their own minds. But that’s a question for some other time.” His eyes glittered. Malice. Triumph. “What matters, Eddie, is that now, at last, the Project is back on track. Lanning as President makes our path easier, but we can do it without him.”
Eddie said, “I don’t care about the Project. It’s Lanning I want to stop.”
“So stop him,” said Perry. “This question of your sister is between you and Lanning Frost. We have no position in the matter.”
“But—”
“We are not amoral, Eddie, nor are we entire fools. We did not kill Philmont Castle. We did not kill Belt or either of the Garlands.” His eyes were bright, and confident, and insane. “What matters to us is the Project. Not Lanning Frost. Not the presidential election of 1976. Only the Project. If you can come up with a way to bring down Lanning Frost without harming the Project, we will not interfere.” A wry grimace. “I cannot of course speak for the Senator himself.”
“What about the consequences Lanning predicted?”
Perry Mount, leader of the Palace Council, tilted his handsome head to the side. “We could not permit those consequences to come about, Eddie.”
“Spell it out.”
“What you do with Lanning Frost’s secrets is up to you. What you do with ours, on the other hand…”
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Switch the envelopes. Make sure I got the clues about Lanning and Junie instead of whatever it was Belt swiped from Los Alamos. You got Leona to make a switch. Or that pastor. The Russians weren’t buying secrets about presidential contenders. That entire scenario was for my benefit. How would they know whose secrets to buy, so many years in advance of an election? No. They wanted nuclear secrets from Los Alamos, and Joseph Belt supplied them, just like Hoover said. Somebody in Charleston tossed the photos the Russians wanted and replaced them with the letters and the note from Phil Castle. Then, later, somebody else added the note about D. H. Lawrence. But only after you were sure I would be coming to get the envelope. The first note—‘His wife has it’—that was from Castle, wasn’t it? He wrote it for Langston Hughes, so in case anything happened, he’d know where the testament was. The Council intercepted the note but couldn’t solve it, so you left it for me. And the note about the tragic age—that was your handwriting, wasn’t it, Perry? Your insurance policy.”
A smile might have flickered over the tired face. It lasted no more than half a second, and, later, Eddie could not have said for sure. But it looked that way. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I was in graduate school.”
“You wanted me to know. You wanted the information out there, just in case Lanning got out of control.”
“You give us too much credit, Eddie. Or too much blame.”
“It’s been you all along. Spreading the breadcrumbs for me to follow. Even when you tortured me in Hong Kong. You weren’t trying to make me quit. You were hoping I’d be so angry I’d keep looking. I hadn’t found any confirmation in Vietnam, so you did what you did to me to give me confirmation.”
Perry might have been stone.
“That’s why you’re giving me permission, isn’t it? You did miscalculate. Frost is out of control. You do want me to stop him.” He covered his mouth briefly. “You don’t want Lanning to be President, do you? You believed the clippings in the paper about how he was a dope. Everybody did. Only he turns out to be smarter than you thought he was. More independent. More—” He saw it. “You’re scared of him. He’s a killer. He hired Collier to find the testament, and now he has the whole list. Everyone who was at your father’s meeting. And you can’t touch him, can you? All those wonderful reasons he gave me in the kitchen, reasons why I dare not kill him or even try to bring him down—he was talking to you, wasn’t he? Reminding you who’s really in charge!”
“Speculation,” Perry snapped.
“Maybe. But why else would you waste all this time with me, instead of ordering me into the street?” Eddie laughed. “Okay, maybe I have it wrong. Maybe George Collier doesn’t even work for Frost. But if he does, the Palace Council is in terrible trouble, isn’t it? The monster turns on its maker? Or maybe you’re living the scene at the end of Paradise Lost when God transforms Satan into a serpent permanently, and all he can do is crawl around on his belly and hiss. That’s you, isn’t it? You’re crawling and hissing and hoping I’ll do your dirty work for you. Oh, Perry!”
When the retired intelligence officer kept his face professionally blank, Eddie turned and stalked out into the morning cold. He swung back around, meaning to tell Perry that he was nobody’s pawn, but the door was already closed. It was nearing six. Across P Street, Sunday gawkers had already begun to gather, along with a lone protester, whose sign proclaimed that the right to burn the flag would be the last to go.
(V)
EDDIE WALKED ALONG P STREET to Twenty-seventh, then down to Dumbarton. There was a church there, of stout red brick, First Baptist of Georgetown, founded by a former slave in 1862, and still thriving, even though the surrounding community from which it had once drawn its congregation had turned white, and uninterested. Eddie was just in time for morning services. Peeking around on the off chance somebody he knew might notice, he slipped inside, sat in the back, and waited. After a moment, Aurelia joined him.
“What happened?”
“I failed.”
“Failed?” Grabbing his arm. “Failed how?”
He sat back, closing his eyes. “Nixon is out, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. He’ll resign within the year. I’m sorry, Aurie.”
“And—and Lanning?”
Eddie was a long moment answering. “Lanning Frost is going to be the next President of the United States.”
CHAPTER 67
A Promise
(I)
A YEAR AND A HALF LATER, Eddie and Aurelia sat on the sofa in the back room of his house on Albemarle Street, watching the disapproving countenance of America’s most famous newsman reporting President Gerald Ford’s pardon of his predecessor, Richard Milhous Nixon.
“Poor Dick,” said Aurelia, who had never forgotten his kindnesses.
Her head was on Eddie’s shoulder. He was playing with her hair, worn lately in a large Afro after the style of Angela Davis. Eddie kissed her forehead. “He wasn’t a good President.”
“He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
Eddie considered Nixon’s two secret selves, both betraying his love of conspiracy: the p
aranoid worries that, together, led to the series of misdeeds known collectively as Watergate; and his presence at the meeting at Burton Mount’s house when plans were laid for the creation of Perpetual Agony. Perhaps Nixon had joined the Project for Elliott Van Epp’s reasons, persuaded that the existence on American soil of violent revolutionaries would help slow or even reverse the pace of social change. Whatever Nixon’s motives, Eddie knew what Wesley Senior would have said: Richard Nixon had sown discord, and, predictably, reaped the whirlwind.
“He did deserve it,” Eddie said, marveling at what a spellbinder Burton Mount must have been, to win liberal support for his mad Project by talk of racial justice, and conservative support by talk of turning the nation back to its traditions.
Aurelia bit him on the neck. “Worse men than Dick have retired with honor.” She considered. “And gotten away with a lot more.”
Eddie decided not to pursue it. He kissed her again, then hopped to his feet. Aurelia, lounging in a robe, watched him taking a couple of books from the shelf, reaching behind them. She sipped her wine. She knew what was coming. She was sitting in her robe. Her legs had been curled beneath her, but now she put her feet on the floor, firming her will for the obligatory scene. It was late August. Aurelia’s second novel, another romance, was selling briskly. Locke was on the Vineyard with Claire and Oliver and their children. Tomorrow Aurie would drive to New York City to pick up Zora, who was interning for the summer at the Times. The next day she would pick up Locke on the Cape. A week later, Zora, who had skipped a grade, would return to Radcliffe for her sophomore year, and Locke would begin his junior year of high school. But first there was the obligatory scene with Eddie.
On the television, Lanning Frost was talking about restoring America’s greatness. The Senator had grown remarkably articulate over the past two years, but nobody seemed to notice.
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