Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

“That’s right,” Wiggins said.

  McGraw said, “Do you know who you talked to at the clinic?”

  “It’s got to be in the computer,” Lucy said. “My God, Wiggins. Where has my mind been?”

  Wiggins looked long into his wife’s desolated eyes. He said, “I wonder if you folks would mind leaving Lucy and me alone for a few minutes.”

  Zarah, Macalaster, and McGraw went outside the van into the parking lot: firefly luminescence of sodium lights, smell of suburban greenery, metallic chill given off by hundreds of parked cars. Macalaster said, “Something has to be done about this.”

  “That may not be so easy,” McGraw said. “What we’ve got here, if we’ve got anything at all, is one hundred percent circumstantial. No D.A. would move on it. The killer would have to try to do the same thing again and get caught. You’d have to grab this maniac in the act.”

  “Set something up?” Macalaster said.

  “It’s been known to happen,” McGraw replied.

  Zarah had been staring at the van, her thoughts obviously with the other women inside it, one dead, the other alive. “Maybe it would be easier than you think,” she said. “After all, we now know what activates the maniac, don’t we? It’s frozen embryos—but not transplanting them as slaves to the moons of Jupiter. It’s the idea of a woman conceiving a child of Mallory’s right here on earth.”

  There was a silence. “Makes sense to me,” McGraw said at last. “But it’s one hell of a risk.”

  6

  The op-ed pages of the leading Washington, New York, and Los Angeles newspapers carried articles by elder statesmen of Lockwood’s party questioning the capability of Attenborough, an accused rapist, to exert moral authority if he succeeded to the presidency. All three writers also mentioned, with delicacy but with concern, the advanced age and fragile health of Otis Dyer, citing the president pro tempore’s tendency to call his colleagues by the names of senators long departed. He habitually addressed Baxter Busby as “Senator Fulbright” and Amzi Whipple as “Ev,” apparently confusing him with an earlier archconservative Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois.

  It was Dyer who was presiding over the Senate when Busby rose in the regular morning session to move for the repeal of the Senate’s certification of the results of the presidential election. Busby also spoke of moral authority. “No President can govern without it,” he said to the nearly empty chamber and to the cameras. “Some will say that the alternatives to the present crisis are too frightening to contemplate. To those pessimists I respond, ‘Remember the Constitution of the United States of America.’ This is a government of laws, not men, and that great document will be a guide to us even in this darkest hour of American democracy.” At this a number of Malloryite senators rose and walked out of the chamber. Busby took this as an excellent sign that his argument was having the desired effect.

  When at last he finished, Otis Dyer, upright and alert in the chair, briskly recognized Senator Wilbur E. Garrett, to whom many other senators had yielded their time. Garrett, a loquacious man by nature, held the floor, retelling homilies from the lives of the Founding Fathers, until the Senate adjourned two hours later and reconstituted itself as a court of impeachment. This maneuver kept Busby’s motion from coming to a vote, or even being seconded. During the trial, of course, neither Busby’s motion nor any other regular business of the Senate could be conducted.

  Mallory watched the broadcast of Busby’s speech while talking to O. N. Laster of Universal Energy on the telephone. “Franklin,” Laster said from Chile, “I thought you’d want to know that Patrick Graham is going to break a story on the evening news saying that Tucker Attenborough is dying from cirrhosis of the liver.”

  “Is the story true?” Mallory asked.

  “No question. He’s got no more than a couple of weeks to live. One of our subsidiaries runs the hospital whose staff Graham suborned to get his story, so I was able to check. It’s also true that Otis Dyer is terminally gaga. Not a reassuring picture, Franklin.”

  Neither man paused to express pious sentiments. Though both liked Attenborough, he had done this to himself. Mallory said, “What other unpleasant truths do you have for me this morning, Oz?”

  “Busby has talked to at least fifteen other senators about vacating the election and finding a constitutional way around the line of succession.”

  “By way of the Twentieth Amendment.”

  “I see you’re on top of things. The media’s no longer even mentioning your name in connection with the presidency. The radicals are burning up the phone lines and mobbing the cloakrooms lobbying for what they’re calling ‘the constitutional deliverance.’ They intend to throw out the election, burn the ballots, and appoint Archimedes M. Hammett President of the United States.”

  “Does this outcome seem in any way implausible to you?”

  “You must be joking,” Laster said. “They stole the election. Getting caught was a little setback, but if the original plan didn’t work, why wouldn’t they steal the presidency? Franklin, you finally see what’s happening, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Mallory said. “A coup d’état, exactly as you predicted. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “No, but the night is young. You’d better move your ass, because Lockwood sure as hell can’t handle this unless he’s ready to order the Air Force to nuke the Supreme Court.”

  “I don’t think they’d carry out the mission.”

  “Alas and alack. Franklin, act!”

  Mallory disconnected and put through a call to Albert Tyler.

  On hearing Mallory’s voice, Albert said, “Thank you for calling back. The Speaker said to tell you he thinks you two should go for a short ride in your airplane. Right away. Things happening.”

  It was ten-thirty in the morning. Mallory said, “Can you get him to the Baltimore airport by noon, straight up? A young couple will meet you in front of the general aviation terminal. You’ll be able to drive right to the plane.”

  “He’ll be there,” Albert said. “My car, dark-green ‘99 Buick, bad dent from a red car in the right front fender.”

  “The young couple will be—”

  Albert interrupted again. “Can’t miss your boys and girls,” he said.

  7

  In the Gulfstream, as it climbed steeply through thirty thousand feet above Chesapeake Bay, Attenborough said, “I saw Frosty this morning up at Camp David.”

  “How’s he holding up?” Mallory asked.

  “All right. He understands that he’s got to go.”

  “But not on my terms,” Mallory said.

  “If you mean concede the election four months after the fact and after he’s let himself be sworn in, no. But he wants to do what’s right.”

  “Which is?”

  “Invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment.”

  “That has been suggested to him before.”

  “Yes, sir, I know that. But there’s a time to keep and a time to cast away. Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter the third, verse the sixth.”

  Mallory said, “Who keeps and who casts away?”

  “Everybody does a little of both,” Attenborough said. “You spent a few years on the Hill and you’ve been watching this freak show on the TV, so you know just as well as I do that Congress in its present state of uproar is about as likely to name you Vice President so’s you can become President through the back door as to levitate the Capitol dome by burning chicken feathers and whistling ‘Dixie.’ ”

  Attenborough coughed, waving a hand for patience. Albert Tyler, who had come aboard with him, holding him upright as he labored up the gangway, now came down the aisle of the Gulfstream and offered him what looked like a half-full glass of spring water. Attenborough drained it and said, “Got any pills?” Albert said, “Not time for one yet, Mr. Speaker.” He went back to the rear seat and looked out the window. Mallory had thought that the two men, who had been inseparable ever since he’d known them, were about the same age, but now Albert looked twenty years y
ounger.

  The Speaker went on with his thought. “I think we’ve got till sundown to settle this thing, Franklin,” he said. “That slick New York lawyer of Frosty’s may slow ‘em up a little bit in the trial, but what we’ve got to work with is the rest of today. No more. Do you agree with me on that?”

  “Yes, more or less,” Mallory said. “Let’s get down to it, Tucker.”

  After his drink, Attenborough looked better, breathed more easily, sounded more like himself. He said, “The key is control of the Senate. Whoever has the majority calls the tune. Do you agree with that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s your down payment,” Attenborough said.

  Mallory said, “What is?”

  “The Senate. This is the way it’ll go. Lockwood resigns. I become President and immediately—in my first public statement—nominate a Vice President the Congress has to approve. Has to. Not you, for reasons already stated. One of their own, like Jerry Ford was the last time the radicals tried to take over the world. Time before that, with Andrew Johnson, it was the radicals again. Three different situations, three different parties, three different centuries. Same sorry hate-filled bunch who think they’re smarter than the people every time. Remember that.”

  “I’m keenly aware of it, Tucker. Who are we talking about for Vice President?”

  “Sam Clark.”

  “No,” Mallory said. “Amzi Whipple.”

  Attenborough said, “I can see you’ve been thinking about this. But hear me out. Your way won’t work; it’s too obvious and the radicals would go ape. Sam is from Massachusetts, just like you. The governor up there is a member of your party. He’ll appoint a good soldier to the vacancy; he might even discuss it with you beforehand as head of the party. The Senate will reorganize immediately with Amzi as Majority Leader, and Sam will be approved in a day.”

  “Both houses?”

  “Yes. I’m owed more favors by the membership of the House than there’s cactus in Texas, and all I’m going to ask is just this one last thing in return.”

  “All this is going to happen in one day?” Mallory said. “Nobody can make Congress move that fast.”

  “They’ll have an incentive,” Attenborough said. “You know what Frosty said to me? He said, ‘If you get my job you’ll be a ten-minute President.’ He was right, because what I’ll do as soon as Sam’s approved is invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment and hand it over to him.”

  “Invoke it on what grounds?”

  “That I’ve just about finished drinking myself to death and need a few more days to wind up the job.”

  “Is that the case, Tucker?”

  “Look at me,” Attenborough said tersely. “You want a note from my doctor?”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “So was I. Always thought it was malaria,” Attenborough said. “But I never wanted to be President anyway. So as soon as Sam’s sworn in as Vice President—by Albert, by God; he’s a justice of the peace—I will do what the Twenty-fifth Amendment requires, i.e., quote, transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives my written declaration that I am unable to discharge the duty and powers of my office, unquote. At that point Sam becomes acting President. Not President, Franklin, acting President.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you’re next. He’s just temporary, filling in until things get straightened out. The minute Frosty gives up the ghost the impeachment trial ends, leaving the issues unresolved.”

  “Who investigates the fraud and certifies the true outcome?”

  “The election authorities of New York, Michigan, and California, just like the Constitution provides,” Attenborough said. “If you’d asked me in the first place, I would have told you this is not, repeat not, a federal matter, and if you control the Senate you can make sure it doesn’t become one. The three states in which fraud has been alleged will reexamine the totals and establish the true results from the computer memories. Their electors will then cast their ballots for real, only this time they’ll be your electors, fairly chosen by the voters. The president of the Senate, presumably Wilbur E. Garrett, opens the ballots before the Senate and House as provided in the Twelfth Amendment. Sam steps down as acting President as provided in the Twenty-fifth Amendment and you take the oath.”

  “As administered by Chief Justice Hammett?” Mallory said.

  “Albert would be better. Be good for your image.”

  “Agreed, on the point about Albert only.”

  “That’s progress,” Attenborough said. “The whole thing should take about a month. You’ll be President by the Fourth of July. How do you like it?”

  “It’s worthy of you, Tucker,” Mallory replied. “What happens to the investigation of the items in the articles of impeachment?”

  “The Department of Justice will still be in existence and the attorney general will be working for you. Prosecute them rich boys and make sure you get a judge who’ll send ‘em to the right federal prison—the real article, not some summer camp—where they can have lots of firsthand contact with the suffering masses they so nobly did this for. What’s your answer?”

  Mallory took a deep breath. “You’ve asked me to trust you, Tucker. And you’re right, I know I can.”

  “Not just me. Sam. He’s the collateral.”

  “Has he agreed to all this? He’ll be making a big sacrifice, giving up the Senate and his party’s control of it in order to be President for a few weeks.”

  “He’ll make it,” Attenborough said. “It’s for the country.”

  Mallory said, “Sam doesn’t worry me. But others are involved, Tucker, including the Senate as it’s presently constituted.”

  “I don’t blame you for being nervous, but you and I know that at any given moment the Senate is composed of eighty-five honorable men and fifteen who think they are in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Give ‘em a chance and they’ll behave like the Founding Fathers always told ‘em to.”

  “Lockwood?”

  “Same thing in spades. His only sin is, he’s a babe in the woods— always has been, even if he did just find out about it. All he wants is to be found innocent of any wrongdoing, and he will be because he is. He knows that. But I have to take him something from you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve got to be able to tell him that you’re going to leave him alone on this Ibn Awad thing after you get back in.”

  “I’ve already told him I’ll do that.”

  “Then you won’t mind my telling him again.”

  “No.”

  Attenborough’s old sly look came back for an instant. “After he’s cleared on the election thing and that’s announced, it might be nice if you appointed him to something, soon as a little time goes by.”

  Mallory elongated the Speaker’s name: “Tuuuuuckerrrr!”

  Attenborough looked surprised. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “What I’m talking about is maybe ambassador to Japan. He’d have to eat raw fish day in and day out and listen to ‘em whine about unfair trade practices for two, maybe three years.”

  “It’s a thought,” Mallory said. “As to the rest of it, all right. If it’s Sam, it’s a deal.”

  “Got to be Sam,” Attenborough said. “Otherwise where the hell would the country be if I’m wrong about how all this is going to work out?”

  Mallory said, “There’s a loose end. Hammett.”

  “One thing at a time,” Attenborough said. “Want to shake on it?”

  Mallory extended his hand. Attenborough’s fingers lay lifeless on his palm, as if the blood had already stopped flowing through the old man’s body.

  Mallory was overcome by sympathy. He said, “Tucker, I’m sorry to see you go.”

  “Been here long enough,” Attenborough replied, and just in case Mallory might think he was talking about earth instead of the airplane, he added: “Tell the pilot to land this thing, will you? Don’t want to miss the Hubbard Bro
thers Show.”

  8

  Sometime during the rainy night following Philindros’s testimony Rose MacKenzie got out of bed and went outside wearing nothing but the old T-shirt in which she slept. Horace found her in the Hubbard burial ground at five in the morning, lying on Paul Christopher’s grave with another empty vodka bottle beside her. There was frost on the grass. She was in a state of hypothermia, lips blue, skin clammy, pulse almost indiscernible. Horace carried her down to the car, wrapped her in blankets, turned the heater on high, and drove at perilous speed to the hospital in Pittsfield.

  The emergency room doctor told him that Rose had relapsed into pneumonia. “If she comes out of it, and there’s no guarantee, you might consider institutional care—Austin-Riggs, maybe,” the young man said, looking Horace over and seeing old money.

  “Excellent suggestion, Doctor, thank you,” Horace replied. Psychiatric care at Austin-Riggs cost thousands a week. Neither he nor Rose had drawn a paycheck for months, and though Horace owned paintings and other objects that could be converted into cash, they had no ready money, and both knew that if the Harbor did not exist they would probably be living in a cardboard box on the sidewalks of New York.

  Horace remained with Rose, sitting beside her bed all night and on into the morning. She was unconscious. The other women in the four-bed room watched a series of agony shows on the television monitor that hung from the ceiling. Having lived in Islamic and Buddhist and Confucian countries for most of his nearly seventy years, Horace had had little exposure to daytime television, or any other kind of television, for that matter, and had never imagined that people would go before the cameras and confess the sorts of things he was now hearing them say. Spies and terrorists he had interrogated over the years would have stood up under torture unto death before confessing to the bizarre sexual acts a weeping female on the screen was now describing with evident pleasure and relief.

  Horace was about to rise and leave when the interview ended and another guest was introduced. When he heard the announcer say that this would be Ms. Slim Eve, ecolawyer, the recent victim of sexual abuse by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he waited out of idle curiosity to see what she looked like. He did not already know because, as a matter of house rules, there were no television sets at the Harbor. After the commercial, Slim entered to cheers and tumultuous applause. To his great surprise, Horace recognized her at once as someone he had known in a former life, as spies call long-ago operations. To be certain that there was no mistake he sat down and watched the entire interview. Slim was older, her hair was shorter, and her vowels were more elongated, but the lavender eyes, the glorious legs, and the gestures were unmistakably the same.