Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  Lockwood said, “You still here? Thought you’d gone.”

  “I’ve been using the facilities,” Clark replied. “You know what George the Fifth said to George the Sixth—never miss a chance to take a pee.”

  Lockwood led his friend across the carpet to a spot where they could speak in privacy. Clark looked around him to make sure they were alone, then said, “Frosty, I’ve got to tell you that was one sorry excuse for a meeting you just held.”

  “I was just mentioning that to the boys, Sam. We’ll do better soon as we figure out the windage.”

  “I hope so. This is going to cause a commotion. It may last the whole four years of your term.”

  “I know that, Sam.”

  “Franklin’s likely to bring up what happened to that sheik who wanted to nuke all the Jews.”

  “I know that.”

  “They’re going to go for impeachment unless you step aside.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Unless you get a grip on this situation, they may win. Franklin is a sly son of a bitch who’s richer than the government and doesn’t know when to stop, and the Hill ain’t what it used to be when it comes to party loyalty.”

  “Hell, Sam, we never knew it when it was. What are you saying to me?”

  “I’m saying you should think about the whole problem and consider all the alternatives. I’m saying this isn’t going to be like old times, Frosty. The rest of ‘em are already worrying about their own asses. If the House returns articles of impeachment, the Senate will have to try you. I can’t predict how it would come out. Last thing I can do is get out in the open if I’m going to be sitting in judgment on you.”

  “So what are you advising? You want me to step aside like my worst enemy wants me to and let him be President?”

  “No. Just don’t let Franklin Mallory be the only man in town who’s willing to think the unthinkable.”

  “I don’t plan to.”

  “Glad to hear it. First thing you should do is get yourself a real lawyer. Today. What you need is an alley fighter. That dummy you’ve got now is a handful of shit waiting to hit the fan. Make him ambassador to Papua New Guinea and hire a man who’ll kill for you—one of us.”

  Lockwood nodded. “I understand what you’re saying to me, Sam.”

  “I hope so, Mr. President.” Clark put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. The two men were standing together in front of the bulletproof glass doors that looked out onto the lawn. The ground, which had been bare when the sun rose, was already white with snow, and huge cottony flakes fell in a curtain that seemed to absorb the daylight as it descended.

  “Really coming down,” Clark said. “The radio says it’s only the beginning.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lockwood replied. “It sure does look that way.”

  8

  Franklin Mallory’s security apparatus was famous for its efficiency. It was state-of-the-art. His houses, including the one on Capitol Hill, were equipped with sensors, cameras, listening devices, silent alarms—and, according to rumor, wondrous inventions capable of immobilizing an intruder with a cloud of nerve gas or a dart tipped with a tranquilizer that paralyzed the central nervous system in milliseconds.

  It was partly because Mallory’s security measures were so good—and partly, of course, because there was no precedent of a former President’s briefing the news media while his successor was in the act of being inaugurated—that the Secret Service gave its approval for his 11:30 A.M. news conference on the east steps of the Capitol. Each journalist invited to the event was furnished with a plastic name badge imprinted with a hologram of Mallory’s political logo, Jupiter and its moons. One of these moons, Ganymede, flew an oversize American flag because Mallory, who believed that the future of the human species lay in space, had landed American astronauts there and established a base for future colonization. Because he also believed that the future of the universe depended on capitalist development, he had also licensed the first private mining operations on the moon, on Ganymede, and in the asteroid belt. As a further precaution, journalists were provided with a password, in this case BALLOT BOX, which they were expected to repeat to any member of the Mallory entourage who asked for it. This requirement was particularly distasteful to media stars whose faces were household images, and some of these celebrities believed—possibly with reason—that the bodyguards singled them out for challenges as a way of humiliating them. Finally, all participants in the news conference were asked to pass through a trailer housing a metal detector and a low-roentgen X-ray machine and chemical sensor. This equipment was sufficiently sensitive to detect implanted explosives such as those used by the Eye of Gaza, as well as the gossamer wires the terrorists had employed to detonate the plastic beneath their skin by means of a weak electrical signal from a battery concealed in a wristwatch or a paging device.

  Owing to Lockwood’s draconian reductions in the White House budget—he even returned half of his own salary to the Treasury—the Secret Service could not afford such gear. Its agents, stalking ahead of the President or deployed on the flanks of his entourage, were forced to rely on methods that differed little from Stone Age tactics formerly practiced by war parties of American Indians and other primitive peoples. Instead of searching for painted enemies concealed among the trees, the Secret Service was trying to discover psychotic killers concealed in crowds of normal Americans who looked, and in most visible respects behaved, just like them. It was an impossible job. As Mallory pointed out when the Eye of Gaza was stalking Lockwood, these methods had failed to prevent the assassination of several nineteenth- and twentieth-century Presidents.

  Macalaster had planned to attend Mallory’s press conference, then find his way through the labyrinth of the Capitol to the Vice President’s office for his meeting with Julian Hubbard. One of Mallory’s security teams had provided him with the necessary badge and watchword as he left the house on Capitol Hill. By then it was 10:33, and the first occasional flakes of snow were beginning to fall as the leading edge of the slow-moving storm, coming from the west, hit Capitol Hill fifteen minutes later than the White House.

  The change in the weather drove Macalaster indoors. After making his call to Julian Hubbard over the cellular telephone that he, like nearly every other Washington journalist and official, always carried with him, he wandered down Second Street and entered the Library of Congress through the back door. In the main reading room, which was nearly deserted, he sat down at one of the long tables and transcribed his conversation with Mallory into a miniature computer.

  Macalaster was about halfway through this task when he looked up and caught a glimpse of a reporter he knew. The man, whose name was Montague Love, was a relict of a bygone age of journalism. He represented twenty-six independent weekly newspapers and local radio stations across the country. Each of his employers covered a minute portion of his salary, so he received twenty-six paychecks every week. Love wore a Mallory press conference badge pinned to the lapel of his ancient chocolate-brown Kmart raincoat, and it was clear from the direction and speed with which he was moving that he was headed for the men’s room. Love walked with a limp on a built-up shoe, and whatever misfortune had crippled him evidently had weakened his bladder and bowels as well; he was well known for hurrying out of press conferences, even presidential ones, and then returning after having relieved himself. Macalaster had often given him a fill, sharing his own notes with him on the parts he had missed.

  By now it was eleven o’clock. Macalaster packed up his computer and started for the press conference. He had to pass the door of the men’s room on his way to the outdoors, and decided to stop in. He had time. The walk to the Capitol couldn’t take more than five minutes; add another ten for the security check and he still had plenty of leeway. There was no need to arrive early. Everything Mallory did began precisely on time.

  As Macalaster entered the men’s room, another man, young and well-dressed, emerged. He had dark eyes, nut-colored skin that was darker than an
Arab’s but lighter than an Indian’s, and a hook nose. When he saw Macalaster, he quickly put his hands into the pockets of his coat, as if he had something to hide. He was clearly a person of mixed parentage—not an American in whom many bloodlines mingled, but someone who was half one thing and half another, but almost certainly a foreigner. He smelled strongly of Mediterranean cologne. Evidently he had dashed inside out of the storm only moments before: there was a crust of snow on the astrakhan collar of his blue overcoat, and his black hair was damp and freshly combed straight back; the tracks of the comb revealed a scrupulously clean, bluish scalp. He too wore a Mallory news conference badge. Macalaster did not recognize him as he brushed by, nor could he read his name, which was half hidden under the large fleece collar. On Inauguration Day, the fact that he was a stranger meant nothing; he could have flown in from Tiflis or Montevideo to do a stand-up for some local TV station.

  Macalaster asked, “Is it snowing harder outside?” The other man, hurrying away, flung back the word “blizzard,” elongating the I. This enunciation and his somewhat false voice added to the impression that he was a broadcaster and a foreigner. So did the fact that he wore sunglasses to the bathroom on a snowy day in January.

  Inside the men’s room, the first thing Macalaster saw was Monty Love’s feet, the left shoe with a sole three inches thicker than the right, protruding from beneath one of the cubicle doors. He shouted, “Monty!” and pushed the door inward. Love was lying on his back with his head beside the toilet and his trousers down. There was blood on the floor. His thick glasses, wire rims bent out of shape, hung from one ear. Macalaster realized at once that somebody had reached beneath the door, grabbed Love by the ankles, and pulled him violently off the toilet. Possibly he had hit his head on the way down, but his assailant must have slammed his skull against the rim of the bowl again, because his wounded scalp gushed blood.

  Macalaster could see that Love was not dead. He breathed in a quick, shallow way, and his fingers toyed reflexively with a hole in his raincoat where his assailant had cut off his press badge with a sharp knife or razor, removing the patch of fabric to which it had been pinned. The blade had sliced through Love’s blazer and shirt, incising a bloody circle in his skin. Was this the identifying mark of some terrorist gang? Macalaster dismissed the thought as crazy. The entire assault and robbery could not have lasted more than thirty seconds. Like the mid-twentieth-century ink-stained legman that he was, Love was in the habit of taking notes on a wad of blank newsprint copy paper that he carried in his coat pocket. This was missing. Macalaster knew that he would have written everything he had heard that day into his notes, including the password.

  Dialing 911 on his cellular phone as he ran, Macalaster sprinted down the long hall that led to the front entrance. As he burst through the west door of the library, the guard, who recognized him, shouted, “Watch the snow, my man!”

  A second later, Macalaster’s feet went out from under him as he stepped into two inches of fresh wet snow. As he fell, his telephone spun away into the whiteness and he heard a tinny black female voice saying, “All 911 operators are busy. Please hold. If you are not reporting an emergency, hang up now and call—” His head hit the granite pavement with a hollow thump, and as unconsciousness overtook him—very slowly, it seemed to him—the woolly snowflakes that descended toward his upturned eyes transformed themselves into sheep he had seen grazing on a hillside as he swam, many years before, in the surf off the island of St. Barts. He had almost drowned that day. For the first time in months, he saw his wife’s face in his mind’s eye; she had been swimming beside him that day and saved his life. As the undertow seized him and started to drag him out to sea, she turned easily in the water—she was a wonderful swimmer—and gave him an inscrutable smile.

  9

  Earlier, on his way out of the house on Capitol Hill, Macalaster had caught a glimpse of Susan Grant. She had neither smiled nor said hello. Uttering necessary words was not Grant’s way. She was Mallory’s lover. Thanks to the news media, the whole country knew this. For all intents and purposes, she was his wife, and had been even when he was President. The couple had never gone through a wedding ceremony, but neither had they ever denied that they lived together as if married. They had met about a year after Marilyn Mallory died, and within weeks Grant had moved into the White House as chief of staff, right-hand person, and de facto hostess and first lady. This arrangement surprised no one who understood Mallory. While she lived, he and his first wife, childhood sweethearts who had married at twenty, were not only one flesh but one intellect that formed an indivisible unit in business and later in politics. He was an intensely monogamous man who believed that the scheme of creation had endowed the human male and female with different but complementary qualities, and that the one was not complete without the other.

  Although Mallory was not religious in the usual sense, the notion that a man and a woman were the right and left hemispheres of an organism that had divided itself by mistake and was intended by nature to recombine exercised a mystical influence on his life. This was the reason why everyone who worked for Mallory did so with a partner of the opposite sex. He hired only young single people and permitted them to select their own workmates as they settled in. Once paired, they did not usually remain uncoupled in other ways for long. Like his business empire, his administration was almost certainly the most connubial since the Moonies of the late twentieth century. As he put it in a motivational equation reproduced on countless posters and lapel pins, . Feminists referred to this formula as the Hyena Equation.

  Liberated though Grant was, she never slept in the house on Capitol Hill. This was still Marilyn Mallory’s territory, and the otherwise unsuperstitious Grant half-believed that she haunted the place. Not only was every item in the household exactly where the departed wife had placed it, but her scent was still in the air. The Salvadoran housekeeper made sure that the sachet of dried flower petals that Marilyn had preferred was regularly renewed in all the closets and dresser drawers.

  “You don’t think she’s a malevolent spirit?” Mallory asked.

  “No,” Grant replied. “But if I were she, I wouldn’t want some other woman in my bed with you, or hanging her clothes in my closets. Or drinking out of my glasses. Or anything else.”

  Grant had spent the earlier part of the morning making the final arrangements for the news conference and monitoring the media. After Mallory filled her in on his conversation with Macalaster, she briefed him on press reaction.

  “The word is out,” she said. “Lockwood met with Clark and the others this morning, and they’ve been leaking ever since. Of course that was the purpose of the enterprise. He’s meeting right now with the lapdog press.” Grant, the female, was merciless to Mallory’s enemies.

  “What are they saying on TV?”

  “They’ve been hitting the FIS angle hard. You might think that a bunch of spooks had stolen the election from Lockwood instead of the other way around.”

  “Do they have details?”

  “Not many so far. They’ve been interviewing each other. But of course they’ll have the whole file in their hands in less than an hour. Some of them may have it already, courtesy of some staffer on the Hill. It’s embargoed until eleven-thirty, but that won’t mean much with a story as big as this one, especially when they can’t get to anybody until after lunch because all their usual sources are with Lockwood.”

  By now it was nearly eleven. Side by side on a sofa, Mallory and Grant waited patiently for the call they knew would never come. As Grant had pointed out, one of Julian Hubbard’s purposes in organizing the meetings between Lockwood and the congressional leaders, and later with his loyal friends in the news media, was to leak the fact of Mallory’s challenge and to raise questions about it. At 11:10, emerging early from the press meeting with Lockwood, Patrick Graham, dean of Washington media figures, described what was happening as a “putsch.”

  “Franklin Mallory has called a press conference at eleven-thir
ty here at the Capitol to explain himself,” Graham said. “Even for him, this should be an interesting exercise. Not even Nixon, not even the dark figures we remember from prewar Germany, ever made such an attack on an opponent’s honor.” He paused dramatically. “I have just seen President Lockwood, who at this hour gives every sign of standing fast.”

  “Good old Patrick,” said Grant. “Always the mot juste. I haven’t heard anyone use the word ‘putsch’ since college. He also managed to announce your press conference on national television.”

  Knotting his plain blue necktie by sense of touch—he disliked mirrors—Mallory nodded and went on watching. He had expected this. He was not in the least disturbed; on the contrary, he was pleased that Lockwood’s shock troops were already on the move. It meant that they were stung.

  As soon as Patrick Graham faded out, Mallory and Grant, accompanied by a security team, left the house and walked together down Maryland Avenue past ranks of bandsmen and others waiting to march in Lock-wood’s parade. These included fifty half-drunken men wearing buckskins and coonskin caps and carrying Kentucky long rifles. Mallory and Grant walked side by side under a large blue-and-white golf umbrella. The umbrella created problems for the cameramen who were walking backward, crab-fashion, in front of them because it gathered and reflected their brilliant lights, washing out facial details. She was an inch or two taller than he, and about thirty years younger. Because Mallory had an ageless face and a body that was sinewy by nature, the difference in height was somewhat more noticeable than the difference in age. This was true even though the milky light was not kind to Mallory, who, with his silvery hair, heavy eyebrows, and burning dark eyes, was naturally telegenic. The snowstorm was doing the work of television directors who, whenever they could, counteracted the camera’s love for Mallory by shining too much light on him. In an earlier age, Whistler or Sargent would have made a patrician figure out of him, elongating his body by posing him on a pedestal. Such effects were not the business of the people who processed news into entertainment. They wanted public figures to be as never-changing, as one-dimensional, as instantaneously recognizable, as actors in situation comedies. This was why they cast politicians in roles as soon as they came to town and made sure they stayed in character—Lockwood as Lincoln, Mallory as Richard III.