Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  He said, “This is where we get off, Palmer.”

  St. Clair glared at him. “Why do you keep calling me by my Christian name?”

  “Sorry. This is where we get off, Mr. St. Clair.”

  “It’s Sinclair,” Palmer St. Clair said.

  “I’ll remember that, Palmer,” McGraw said. “After you.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, let’s go, Palmer,” said the large black agent in a loud voice. St. Clair looked up at him. The fellow must once have been an offensive lineman; he was enormous. “Move it,” the agent said.

  Move it. Up and down the car, people were staring. Some of them knew St. Clair even if he did not know them. He rose to his feet section by section, like a stick figure coming dazedly to life in an animated cartoon, and followed McGraw off the train.

  16

  In the library of the Norman manor house, Mallory listened as Attenborough repeated everything he had already told Lockwood. “You may be onto something, Tucker,” Mallory said, “but surely you don’t really think they’d try to get away with anything as brazen as this?”

  “Why not, when the alternative is you?” Attenborough said.

  “But Hammett?”

  “That’s exactly what Lockwood said. Same sneer, same tone of voice. Both wrong.” Attenborough had one of his coughing fits, wheezing and gasping for breath.

  Mallory reached over and touched him. “Tucker, do you need help?”

  “No,” Attenborough gasped. “But the country does.” He recovered. “Franklin, I’m telling you,” he said, wiping his eyes. “This is the joker in the constitutional deck. Those loonies have never been able to get themselves elected, but now they’ve finally found a man who’s stupid enough to try and take over the United States of America.”

  “You sound like Amzi.”

  “Amzi makes a lot of sense on certain subjects.”

  “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that they actually got away with this,” Mallory said. “There’d have to be an election sometime, and as you just got through telling me, people like Hammett can’t win elections in this country. He’d be out on his ear the day the polls opened and closed.”

  “That may not be something they’re worried about,” Attenborough said. “We may be talking about this country having an acting President for Life. All he’d have to do if Congress declared an election is put on his black robe and strike down the legislation in the Supreme Court.”

  Mallory said, “You’re saying that somebody could be Chief Justice and acting President at the same time?”

  “No reason why not,” Attenborough said. “This is a constitutional issue, and nothing in the Constitution says otherwise. It’s right there, plain as day. What Article Two says happens in a case like this is as follows: Congress shall declare, quote, what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President be elected. Unquote. Doesn’t say a damn thing there or elsewhere about resigning the office already held while serving as acting President.”

  Mallory shook his head with what he realized was a kind of twisted delight in Attenborough’s crafty reading of human nature and the Constitution. “That’s quite a stretch even for your byzantine mind, Tucker,” he said. “No one can hold two federal offices of profit or trust at the same time.”

  “Don’t underestimate their revolutionary creativity in these extraordinary circumstances,” Attenborough said. “Study it out. Watch the tube. If you think I’m wrong by this time tomorrow, good luck to you. Otherwise, call me.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ll tell you what I’ve got in mind.”

  Mallory was nodding again. “Does that by any chance include the possibility of your succeeding to a vacant presidency?”

  “You sound more like Lockwood every minute. The answer is not for long. But don’t jump to any conclusions. The longest way around is sometimes the shortest way home.”

  “ ‘Trust me.’ Is that the message?”

  “You’ve done it before, Franklin. Now I’ve got to get back to town in time to watch the burlycue. You’ve got Albert’s number?”

  “Yes.”

  Attenborough struggled to his feet, fought for balance, shook hands. His touch was cold; the upper lip that he drew back in a smile was filmed with sweat. “Albert or me,” he said. “Nobody else.”

  “I’ll call either way.”

  “I know you will. There’s one more thing I want to say. I know damn well you’re the rightful President of the United States and so does Frosty. That’s why he’s let this whole thing get out of hand the way he has. He knows he’s in the wrong and he can’t stand the thought. Whatever they say on TV, Lockwood’s an honest man. That’s the starting point.”

  Mallory saw more signs of Attenborough’s desperate physical condition. A pulse beat in the Speaker’s temple; his eyes, always before filled with humor and intelligence, had been deadened by whatever was happening to his body. Mallory said, “Tucker, are you telling me you want to make me President?”

  “What I want or anybody else wants doesn’t come into it,” Attenborough replied. “The people have already given you the job.”

  17

  Mallory’s call came while Zarah was watching Olmedo’s cross-examination of Philindros on television. Mostly the camera ignored them and lingered on Hammett, as if the real truth was to be found not in the testimony itself but in his reactions to it. Television did for Hammett what El Greco had done for the inmates of the Spanish asylum who were his models for portraits of the saints—transformed the signs of madness into the aura of sanctity.

  As this thought passed through Zarah’s mind, Mallory’s disembodied voice spoke into her ear. “I need to talk to you,” he said. “Can you come out to Great Falls?”

  “I’d rather not,” she said.

  “I know that. But this is about that woman who was following you. And related matters. There are things you must be told, a question I must ask you.”

  Zarah had never been to the Norman manor house. She said, “I don’t know the way.”

  “I’ll send a car,” Mallory said.

  “No, thanks.”

  “But you will come?”

  “All right,” Zarah said. “But no limousine. I’ll just follow the leader.”

  Two cars, a point vehicle and a chase vehicle, had shadowed Zarah since her encounter with Sturdi. On the way to Great Falls she drove at high speed, weaving in and out of traffic, driving the lead car ahead of her and shaking the chase car, so that the teams assigned to cover her almost lost her on the parkway and had to call for backup. In her mind’s eye she saw Lockwood, Julian, Hammett, Philindros, Attenborough, Macalaster, the temptress Slim of the dinner party and the woebegone Slim of the subsequent video passion play. Emily Hubbard in tears. Sturdi in her outlandish blond wig on the closed-circuit of the O.G.’s security video. Mallory on Inauguration Day. How could these figures she saw on television be the same men and women she had encountered as living persons? How could this Punch and Judy show that was American political life go on endlessly as it did?

  Every resident of Washington seemed to be plugged into a single brain that provided everyone with the same thoughts and sensations. She thought: They were right, those primitives in darkest Africa and Polynesia and the Amazonian rain forest who believed in the early days of photography that the camera was a device for stealing souls. A century later, flesh is the dream. Only the image is real, only the image endures; all this picture-taking by the media is a harvest of souls. The purpose of life is to await the camera, to keep in shape for it in case it ever comes. Out of celebrity, immortality. Should the universe collapse and then be recreated out of nothing, the image will still be present in the nothingness. When new galaxies form, when intelligence arises again, when technology is reinvented, the images will be recaptured and become visible again: tight shots of immortal beings who have escaped the bonds of flesh and mind, who have no memo
ry of them, who merely are. Dear God, she thought, what am I doing here among the living dead?

  Zarah parked the car in the drive and went inside. The house was strange to her; when its fantastic nature registered on her senses at last, it was like a continuation of her earlier train of thought. This place was like a hologram, an image designed for an image to live in: if you knocked on the door your fist would go right through it, passing between the electrons you had mistaken for oak. What could its history be? What Hearst or Mussolini had commissioned this wonder? Mallory could not have built it.

  Or maybe he could have. He awaited Zarah in the library, a much grander room than the ones in his city houses, three stories high, galleried for access to the thousands of volumes on its shelves. Handsome face glowing with pleasure, Mallory rose to greet her. They had not seen each other for days. He was dressed as usual in a tweed jacket and corduroys and his white hair was slightly tousled. He must have just come in from outdoors, because, she realized, he smelled of the open air in a musty room where nothing else did. Of course he had been reading and he held a book in his hand, the place marked with a forefinger. Before speaking to Zarah he touched a control that turned off all his electronics systems. The computer screen at his elbow, the television screens behind him faded to points of light, then went to black; the telephone emitted a single piercing, impossible-to-ignore note that notified the user that it was now inert. It was his version of privacy. Zarah burst into laughter.

  “What?” Mallory asked with a puzzled smile.

  “Nothing,” Zarah said. “I’ve been having strange thoughts all day.”

  “You’re not the only one. Sit down. Your friend Attenborough was just here. I want you to hear what he had to tell me, and then tell me what you think.” He told her. Then he said, “What would you do about this?”

  “If I were me or if I were you?”

  “If you were me. I think I may already know the other answer.”

  “All right,” she said. “If I were you and thought what you think, I would assume that what Attenborough suspects to be true is true. Then I’d investigate to test the assumption, and lastly, if it turned out actually to be true, I’d do what I could to prevent the whole thing from happening.”

  “But can I make that assumption?” Mallory asked. “Remember, Attenborough is next in line for the presidency himself.”

  “Why would he want it?”

  “I don’t think he does. But he’s suffered a lot recently from people like these. He has plenty of reason to be paranoid.”

  “Has he been subject to paranoid fantasies in the past?”

  “Not in my presence.”

  “Is he a truthful man?”

  “Truthfulness is his stock-in-trade,” Mallory replied. “I’ve never known him to lie about anything except his malaria.”

  “And what are the people he suspects famous for?”

  “For lying about everything. But virtuous lies are mother’s milk to political extremists. Denial of reality is the basis of their existence.”

  “So you’ve said before. It’s also the definition of insanity.”

  Mallory blinked. “That should be in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” he said. “You’ve observed Hammett. Could he be part of something like this?”

  Zarah said, “I think he’s mad and bad and listening to voices. You can see it in his eyes from the first moment, hear it in every word he says.”

  “You saw all that in the time you spent with him?”

  “Anyone would.”

  Mallory smiled very faintly. “Not quite anyone,” he said. “What makes him the way he is, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, but what difference does it make?” Zarah answered with an impatient shrug. “Has anyone ever figured out Hitler’s motivations? Did Stalin slaughter thirty million Russians, or fifty million or whatever the real number was, because he was a homicidal maniac or because he was a Georgian patriot and wanted to bury as many Russians as possible so that the odds wouldn’t be so great against his homeland in future invasions by the Muscovite army? Where madmen are concerned, actions count; motives are meaningless.”

  Mallory absorbed her words, then turned his back and went to the mullioned window, apparently lost in thought. Finally he said, “You’re quite right.”

  “About what?”

  “All of it.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Zarah said. “I don’t understand this country or these people. I’ve never been so confused in my life.”

  She joined him at the window and looked out. In the mellow light of afternoon, teams roamed about dressed as gardeners, workmen, runners, tennis players, even a few as presidential assistants-in-waiting in suits or dresses. The grounds were planted to resemble a French park, with fountains, formal flower beds, graveled walks, hedges and mazes and avenues of pollarded trees. Zarah felt that the architect’s intention had been to mimic beauty rather than to create something that was beautiful in its own right. But that was the controlling intention in this world of illusions. Suddenly she understood something about this estate and therefore about Mallory. The whole place had been designed by its original owner as a shrine to the camera cult, but Mallory had transformed it into a fortress to keep the camera out.

  Mallory stirred at her side, almost imperceptibly as was his way. “There’s something else,” he said. “Something quite important has been discovered about the person who murdered Susan. It’s thought you may be able to help.”

  “Help? How?”

  “By looking at pictures.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the assassin.”

  “On that day?”

  “And maybe afterward. It’s felt that you may recognize this person.”

  Felt by whom? Zarah wondered, but did not ask. She said, “All right. Why not?”

  18

  St. Clair’s lawyer, Jasper Trout, great-great-grandson of two of the founders of the austere downtown firm of Trout Jasper Timberlake Biolley & Noel, was not a criminal lawyer. But most of his clients were financiers, a line of work that bred felons at a steady and predictable rate, and he knew what to advise a man who suddenly found himself caught up in the toils of the criminal justice system. In an anteroom of the Senate chamber he said, “All I can tell you, Palmer, is what they’re offering: complete immunity from subsequent prosecution in any court in the land on the basis of anything you say here that may tend to incriminate you.”

  St. Clair said, “Incriminate me?”

  “It means that if you tell them everything you know, you walk, no matter what you’ve been up to.”

  “What am I supposed to have been up to?”

  “That was not disclosed to me.”

  “I thought they had to tell a man’s lawyer everything.”

  “These people don’t. The United States Senate isn’t a court of law, it’s a force of nature. They seem to think you are an accessory to a felony. If you have reason to think they may be right, take the deal.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “Then go in there and tell them so. But if you conceal or cover up a material fact from the government, you’ll be liable to be charged with a felony under Section 1001 of the U.S. Criminal Code. Same result if you make a false statement. Also you’ll be under oath. Perjury is not covered by the agreement.”

  “Do I have to appear? Don’t they have to give me time to prepare a defense?”

  “Yes, you have to appear. That’s a federal subpoena lying on the table. No, they don’t have to give you anything. You’re not a defendant, you’re a witness—for the moment.”

  For the moment? St. Clair gaped in disbelief; panic flooded into his face. This reaction was not altogether displeasing to Trout. He had never liked St. Clair—not at Lawrenceville, not at Princeton-Yale games, not at dances when their respective future first wives were debutantes, not on the golf course, not out in the garden in East Hampton with Trout’s disheveled third wife on a ginny summer night in 1992. Not now. He
waited with a look of fraternal concern and sympathy for St. Clair’s answer.

  St. Clair said, “Will you be in there with me?”

  “Afraid not,” Trout replied. “Witnesses are not allowed to bring their lawyers with them. Anyway, the thing is cut-and-dried. Either you talk or you don’t. It’s your decision, depending on what material fact you think they think you’ll be trying to cover up.”

  “I can’t begin to imagine.”

  Trout smiled urbanely. “In that case you’d better let me tell them you accept their terms,” he said.

  St. Clair thought, then nodded resentfully. “This is outrageous,” he said. “They abducted me off the train and flew me down here on a military plane, Jasper. Bucket seats. Lowlife thugs with guns and badges. Is this the United States of America?”

  “Oh, yes, Palmer,” Trout replied. “I’m afraid it always has been. What shall I tell them?”

  “What choice do I have? Obviously I’m in the hands of the Gestapo.”

  Minutes after this, St. Clair found himself swearing on a Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He did so quite stylishly, with head uplifted. Of course it was a comfort to look up at the podium and see Hammett sitting there, though he little resembled the awkward drudge of undergraduate days, and then to look outward into the chamber and see Buzzer Busby, older than himself but well known to him. There were other men he knew among the senators—not Shelleyans like Hammett and Busby, of course, but he knew them and they knew him. He had never been in the Senate chamber before. It was smaller and cozier than he had expected. He found it surprisingly pleasant—lulling, even. No wonder they called it a club; it had the same subdued atmosphere as, say, the Knickerbocker, the same sense that everyone who belonged here knew exactly what everyone else was talking about at all times.