Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  “Morgan,” he said, “you can tell old Patrick back in the studio that’s the dumbest damn question he ever whispered in your pretty little ear.”

  He had gone too far. It was the pills and liquor. He realized this and reached out a reassuring hand. Meaning to chuckle, he coughed explosively and this raucous sound bounced back and forth across Statuary Hall. Other reporters were shouting questions about Lockwood and Ibn Awad, but Attenborough, bent double, and fighting for breath, waved a hand in apology as he walked rapidly away toward his office at the end of the corridor.

  3

  When her doorbell rang, Zarah Christopher, dressed for the day in jeans and a blazer, was watching an admiring profile of Chief Justice Archimedes Hammett on Newsdawn with Patrick Graham: panoramic shots of his bleak birthplace and of the gothic Yale campus, interviews with his fond teachers, footage of his impassioned defense of wretched outcasts, filmed passages from a seminar with law students.

  Zarah pressed a button on the remote control and the broadcast was replaced by the closed-circuit video signal transmitted by the security system. On-screen, replacing Hammett’s somber and statesmanlike image, she saw the black-and-white likeness of a blond young woman in a tailored suit, briefcase in hand, face tilted helpfully upward toward the hidden camera above the door. Supposing that this person must be a messenger from Mallory—no one else in Washington had a reason to arrive on her doorstep unannounced—she went downstairs and opened the door. It was then, seeing her in the flesh and close up, that she recognized Sturdi.

  Sturdi smiled. The great nose, the furry unplucked eyebrows that suggested equally furry armpits, the faint shadow on the depilated upper lip, contrasted strangely with the bright Teutonic hair of her wig. “Ms. Christopher,” she said, “we haven’t met, but I believe you know my client, Ms. Slim Eve.”

  Puzzled, Zarah said, “I do?”

  “You met at a dinner party at Ross Macalaster’s house on the seventeenth of this month. The Chief Justice and the Speaker of the House were also present.”

  “Your client,” Zarah said. “Is she suing somebody?”

  Sturdi gave Zarah another smile—or, rather, a slight intensification of the already intensely pleasant expression she was wearing. She handed Zarah a business card. “S. R. Eve, spelled the same way.”

  There was something odd about the expression in this woman’s eyes; she was gazing at Zarah with what could only be called hunger. Zarah noted this without expression. She said, “What can I do for you?”

  “You can talk to me about the dinner party—what you remember.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “My client is exploring her legal options. There could be a lawsuit, even criminal charges. I’m gathering information so that she can make her decision on the basis of the facts.”

  Zarah wanted to say, “Is that why you’ve been following me around town wearing all those ridiculous disguises?” Instead she said, “I see.”

  On tiptoes, Sturdi was peering into Zarah’s front hall through the open door. “May I come in?”

  Zarah had been studying the androgynous torso, the large chapped hands, the burning eyes surrounded by purposeful smile lines, the almost visible aura of concealed thoughts and disguised purposes. An expensive glove-leather envelope that could contain anything was clasped tightly under Sturdi’s left arm, and she wore a heavy silver bracelet that could conceivably be used as a weapon. Zarah did not doubt that Sturdi would use it as a weapon if necessary. She behaved like a lunatic or a terrorist, if there was a difference between the two, someone who was fighting against some deep and irresistible impulse, but only until it was safe to give in to it. Zarah’s curiosity was deeply engaged by this combination of signs and by the fact that this woman was showing herself to her in this way. Plainly Sturdi had no idea that Zarah knew who she was or even guessed that she was the runner, the bicyclist, the dog walker who had been following her so relentlessly for two weeks. This meant she must be stupid, and this was the most disturbing of all the signs.

  Zarah said, “Actually, you rang the bell just as I was going out. We can walk together if you like.”

  Sturdi stopped smiling; a stricken look came into her eyes. Obviously she had not foreseen this response. “I’m a little pressed,” she said. “Can we possibly make an appointment to meet later in the day? Evening would be best for me, actually. I’d be glad to come back.”

  “That wouldn’t be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  Zarah smiled at the question but did not answer it. She closed the door and pressed the electronic control in the pocket of her jacket; locks snickered shut all over the house and the full security system came on; Sturdi noted this, eyes flickering as though she had just learned something of vital importance. Keeping her visitor squarely in front of her, Zarah looked casually up and down the street. She had not been outdoors since her sidewalk telephone conversation with Mallory, but she assumed that his teams still had her under surveillance. Even if Mallory had called them off, she knew that they continually watched the whole street on video, and that at this moment they must be watching, if not listening to, this encounter. They too would soon identify this primly dressed professional person as yet another version of the person who had been following Zarah—or their equipment would do so. No matter what Mallory’s orders were, duty and curiosity would leave them no other choice than to shadow the two of them. As long as she remained in the open—assuming that Sturdi did not pull out a gun and shoot her dead, a possibility she did not dismiss—Mallory’s boys and girls would be nearby.

  “All right, let’s go,” Sturdi said with a sudden hoarse giggle. “But I wish I had on different shoes.” Her legs—the legs of the runner and bicyclist she was, with loaves of muscle for thighs and calves—were defined even more noticeably by the spike heels and split skirt she was wearing.

  Zarah set off at a rapid pace toward Massachusetts Avenue, keeping close to the curb and adjusting her pace so that Sturdi remained well within her peripheral vision. Of course Sturdi kept up easily, heels ringing on the pavement; she smelled of a strong, familiar perfume that Zarah, searching her memory as though for a misplaced name, recognized as a fragrance she had smelled before, in a foreign country, but could not quite identify.

  At the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Belmont Road, they walked through crowds of Muslims who had come to pray at the mosque. Sturdi weaved among them, smiling with strange cordiality, as if she thought they would doubt her goodwill unless she let them know she was a friend.

  Zarah said, “What exactly did you want to talk to me about, Ms. Eve?”

  Exuding her pungent but elusive scent, Sturdi replied, “About the attempted rape of my client by Attenborough.”

  “ ‘Attempted rape’?” Zarah replied. “When did that occur?”

  “According to the others at the dinner table, as well as three waiters who were eyewitnesses, at about nine twenty-five on the evening in question. You were present?”

  “I was present when she jumped up from the table, displayed a rip in her undergarments, and called Mr. Attenborough a name.”

  “Do you recall her exact words?”

  “Yes. She said, ‘Oh, you filthy swine!’ I was surprised by her vocabulary.”

  “Why?”

  “I had never before heard an American use the word ‘swine.’ ”

  Sturdi got out a small tape recorder and switched it on. “What was her emotional state?”

  Zarah said, “I don’t know.”

  “But you say you saw her jump up and heard her make an accusation.”

  “It was more in the nature of an exclamation. But I had no way of knowing what she was feeling.”

  “You didn’t observe her state of mind?”

  “I observed her behavior. She seemed to be angry and disturbed. Maybe she actually was.”

  Once again Sturdi was offended. Zarah had the wrong vocabulary, the wrong sensibilities. “You don’t think she really was angry and distur
bed?”

  “She certainly indicated that she was in every possible way.” Zarah shrugged. “But if she really was feeling those emotions, it was very sudden. A few seconds earlier she had been happily eating her dinner, drinking wine and listening to Attenborough and Hammett argue, smiling as if she hadn’t a care in the world.”

  “They were arguing? About what?”

  “Shelley.”

  Sturdi looked puzzled.

  “The poet,” Zarah said. “Shelley seemed to be on Hammett’s mind that night. Attenborough was leaning across the table, quoting lines from ‘To a Sky-Lark.’ He had his back to . . . your client. If he was attempting to rape her, he was doing it in a way that isn’t in the Kama Sutra.”

  Sturdi flushed. “You’re using a very narrow definition of rape,” she said. “Let me tell you what rape is.”

  Zarah knew what it was, having been drugged and raped by an entire cell of Eye of Gaza terrorists on the night David Patchen was tortured and murdered. Suddenly she realized where she had smelled this pungent cologne before: on one of the terrorists. She said, “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Whatever you say,” Sturdi said. “But this is no joking matter.”

  “I’m not joking. Why do you use the term ‘rape’?”

  “My client was penetrated.”

  Zarah looked at Sturdi in puzzlement and surprise; she had to slow down to do so because the other woman kept falling back and disappearing from the corner of her eye like a laggard child. As she glanced to her right, Zarah saw the female member of a team cross Kalorama Road. Other members of the team also took up new positions. Their technique was so perfect that its execution was unmissable.

  Zarah realized that Sturdi had observed these maneuvers also, or at least sensed them. In a tense voice, she said, “I said my client was penetrated.”

  “I heard you,” Zarah said. “I’m afraid I didn’t observe that part of it.”

  “The instrument of penetration was a finger with a sharpened nail, the same sharpened nail that shredded the victim’s panty hose.”

  “The victim.” Zarah’s tone was flat.

  “The vaginal tissue was lacerated,” Sturdi said, in a louder voice. “We have the medical report.” Her face was stern, angry, accusative. “My client was in great psychological and physical distress. How could you not have observed that?”

  They had reached Sheridan Circle. Zarah stopped walking. It was time to break off this contact; by now the teams must have obtained all the video images and audio tracks they required, and she herself knew more than she needed to know about Sturdi, who was clearly on the point of giving way to her psychosis.

  “As a woman, you must have seen how distressed she was,” Sturdi said, moving closer.

  Zarah stepped back. “No, that’s not what I saw,” she said. “Your client provoked and flirted with Attenborough from the first moment of the evening. She was wearing a very short dress for a lawyer escorted by the Chief Justice of the United States. She was in a state of almost feverish excitement; at first I thought she might be on drugs. And when suddenly, very suddenly, she leaped to her feet and lifted her skirt to display the damage to her clothing—damage that could not possibly have been done in one single grope by the sharpest fingernail in the world—she was obviously in a state of sexual arousal.”

  “ ‘A state of sexual arousal’?” Sturdi could scarcely bring herself to repeat the words. “How could such a thing be obvious?”

  Zarah was calm, watchful. She replied, “Sense of smell, Ms. Eve.”

  Sturdi’s lip twisted in disbelief. “You must have one hell of a sense of smell.” The sun was warm, and the strong perfume she was wearing was noticeable over the stench of exhaust fumes.

  “Do you think so?” Zarah said. “Then you won’t mind my asking you why in the world you’re wearing Roger et Gallet after-shave cologne.”

  Sturdi gasped, blanched, and fumbled with her briefcase. The nearest team swiftly moved even closer. Another team leaped out of a car that had pulled up to the curb just ahead of them.

  Sturdi, whose eyes had been fixed on Zarah’s face, detected these movements at the edges of her field of vision. Her head swiveled to left and right, spotting the surveillance. She turned away, whirling so energetically that her skirt billowed above her knees, and broke into a run, spike heels beating a tattoo on the sun-splashed pavement as she gestured frantically for a taxi.

  For a long moment Zarah stared after this fleeing figure. Then, approaching the nearest team, she handed the male partner Sturdi’s card. “You saw who that was?” she said.

  The agent nodded. Across the avenue, Sturdi stared at them with wild eyes through the rolled-down window of a Red Sea Cab.

  4

  Attenborough knew that the sensation created by Vice President Graves’s sudden death could not last more than a day. Thereafter the Ibn Awad tape would take over the news, and therefore would take over the impeachment process. Graves, a likable and harmless Californian who reminded friend and foe alike of Ronald Reagan, was a conservative who had been added to the ticket to reassure the right wing of the party. Owing to his position on the political spectrum he had never been a favorite of the media. Even though his was the deciding vote in the evenly divided Senate, the progressive wing of the party was unhappy that Graves had been removed by the hand of fate from the presidential picture. That was the trouble: they realized that one of the best reasons they’d had for defending Lockwood was to make sure that a crypto-Republican like Graves did not succeed to the presidency. That reason had now disappeared. This realization that they had been blessed by an accident of fate was guaranteed to send the radicals off on a chain of thought that could lead anywhere.

  There was little that Attenborough could do about this. The radicals were not really members of the party; they were a party within the party, with their own philosophy and their own agenda. There was no telling what effect the revelations about Ibn Awad might have on them, but he knew it was an issue that could drive them, as defenders of the wretched, into a frenzy of righteous anger.

  Attenborough loved his party and had always believed that it was the hope of the poor and defender of the people. But he knew that it had a dark side, and he had lived in fear for thirty years that what had happened to Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon could someday happen to one of his own; in fact he had believed that it was bound to happen, not only because of the revenge factor, but also because he knew, as only a man of his political experience could know, that every President, without exception, is impeachable. All the impeachment process did was give political zealots a way to overthrow the government under cover of the Constitution, and in Attenborough’s opinion (though he never ever uttered it aloud), insinuating this Trojan Horse into the scripture of the republic was the biggest damn fool mistake the Founding Fathers ever made.

  “This is a simple issue,” he told the party leadership at the seven-thirty meeting, “and what we’ve got to do is keep it that way. Our job in the House is to ask the right question so that the Senate can come up with the right answer and get the country back to normal again.”

  Now, at last, Attenborough revealed how he planned to do this. “Today we’ve got three things to accomplish,” he said. “First, resolve the House into a Committee of the Whole and elect the Speaker chairman. Second, adopt a resolution to impeach Bedford Forrest Lockwood. Third, elect a Committee of Managers to recommend articles of impeachment for adoption by the full House. Tomorrow we’ll adopt three articles of impeachment relating to the allegations of election fraud in Michigan, New York, and California, in that order.”

  “We’re going to do all that in two days?”

  “That’s all it took in 1868 when the House impeached Andrew Johnson, with a day off in between sessions.”

  “There was no television in 1868.”

  “That’s one hundred percent correct,” Attenborough said. “That’s why we’ve got to get this thing over with, stick to the point and keep it dow
n to one simple question.”

  “As of this morning,” Bob Laval said, “we’ve got another question. Ibn Awad.”

  “No, sir, we do not,” Attenborough said. “What we have is a mischievous leak to the media designed to divert the House from the main issue.”

  “That won’t wash,” Laval said. “Lockwood told the country he just kind of let the Ibn Awad thing happen because it was the only way to save the world. Didn’t have a thing to do with it himself.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “It’s what he implied,” Laval said. “And the whole world knows it. Now there’s this tape where he puts out a contract on the guy. You don’t think that has a bearing on the case?”

  Laval’s tone was pugnacious. He was a big, florid, excitable man with a smashed nose who had worked his way through night law school as a roughneck in the Louisiana oil fields. Of all the people around the table, he was the one who worried Attenborough the most because he was unpredictable, a Southern conservative who had never liked Lockwood or his progressive social programs, and who had often voted against them on the floor of the House.

  “What has a real bearing on the case are the lessons of history,” Attenborough said. “Andrew Johnson won acquittal in the Senate by one vote because his supporters stuck by him. A hundred and five years later Nixon resigned because his deserted him and he knew he couldn’t win. It’s votes, not appearances, that count. The people who leaked that tape are trying to confuse the issue and split this party.”

  “Nixon taught us another lesson,” Laval said. “If we ignore this or go easy on it, it’s going to look like a cover-up.”

  “I’m not saying we ignore it or go easy on it. All I’m saying is, keep it separate. Take it up some other time, in some other forum, like the Judiciary Committee.”

  “How the hell can we do that?”

  “We can do it by sticking to the issue Congress was asked to decide,” Attenborough said. “There’s only one question before the House: Is Lockwood the legally elected President of the United States? That’s the question. It is the only question, and it is the question the House is going to ask the Senate to answer, as provided in the Constitution. Everything else is beside the point.”