Grand Master (17 page)

It was curious how easy it was for her, even
now, after her husband’s death, to step into the third person
plural when she talked about the presidency of Robert Constable.
She had done it to what some thought an embarrassing degree when he
was alive, an assumption of an influence that was unsettling to
those who liked to think of their presidents as men of independent
judgment, and an erroneous suggestion of equality to those who were
in a position to know how often Robert Constable had been forced to
yield to what she wanted. “And we will; I mean pay back the loans
that were made, the personal loans made by friends of ours.”

Hart remembered now why he had not liked the
Constables, why he had never trusted them: this sense of
entitlement, this belief that whatever they wanted, they should
have; this grating certainty that whatever they needed to do to get
it, whatever means they had to employ, was justified because they
knew what was best for everyone. “And was one of those friends Jean
de la Valette?”

Her eyes flashed with a moment’s heated
anger; and then, as quick as that, they changed, became reasonable,
willing to forgive an easily understood mistake. “He might have
been, had we asked; but no, the friends I’m talking about are
people we had known for a long time, before we ever ran for the
presidency. We understood what it would look like if….” She smiled
in a way that suggested that what she had been about to say was not
important, and then quickly changed the subject. “But you were
telling me about Quentin Burdick and the story he was working on.
He thought Robert was involved in something that would have gotten
him in trouble?”

She asked this in what seemed to Hart a
strangely neutral tone, as if she were doing it purely for the sake
of form rather than out of any concern with whether it was true or
not. He got up and stood next to her desk. Drumming his fingers on
the edge of it, he glimpsed a picture, hidden behind the others, a
photograph of Madelaine Constable, taken when she was years
younger, splashing in the surf of some South Seas island. She was
still a good looking woman, but at the time that picture was taken
she had been nothing short of gorgeous.

A thin, furtive smile, the smile of a woman
who, understanding the source of the power she has over men, has
come to despise them because of it, was there waiting when Hart
looked back. It told him something that before that moment he had
not really known for sure. He had been given a hint of it that
first time they had been in this room, when she had suddenly and
quite without warning confided that she had once been in love, not
with the man she had married, but with a boy - some ‘gorgeous boy’
was how she had put it - that she had known in college. That was
what the look of disdain had meant: the knowledge when she was
young that she could have any man she wanted had been, as it were,
her fatal flaw. The power to attract, to make men submit, could
never last, and she had been a fool to ever think it could.

“Quentin Burdick,” she reminded him. “What is
it he thinks he knows?”

“That millions of dollars ended up in your
husband’s pockets; that is was routed through a number of different
sources, but that all of it originated with The Four Sisters. This
isn’t based on some vague suspicion he has; Frank Morris confirmed
it.”

“Frank Morris, the congressman who was killed
in prison? What does he have to do with any of this? Wasn’t he
convicted of bribery? - He doesn’t sound like a very credible
source.”

“Burdick thinks so. He went out to
California, talked to him in prison. Morris was murdered right
after that, the same day.”

“And Morris said…?”

“That he had been taking money from The Four
Sisters, helping get defense contracts for some of the companies
The Four Sisters controlled, but when he discovered what they were
really up to - helping foreign interests acquire some of the major
media companies in this country - he decided he had to stop it. He
went to see the President and the next thing he knew he was on
trial for bribery and sent to prison.”

“You’re suggesting the President had
something to do with that?”

“Morris told Burdick that the President had
been the one who first encouraged him to talk to the people
connected with The Four Sisters, and that -”

“That doesn’t prove anything!” cried
Madelaine Constable, throwing up her hands. “Suggesting that
someone talks to someone hardly constitutes a crime!”

“He knew all about it!” Hart shouted back.
They glared at each other across the room. “He knew everything. He
told Morris there was nothing to worry about. He told him that they
- ‘they!’- hadn’t done anything wrong. He -”

“They hadn’t done anything wrong - That’s
what he said? You see, he hadn’t. Isn’t that what -?”

Hart looked straight at her, his eyes cold,
immediate. “He said no one would ever find out!”

Madelaine Constable turned on her heel.
Folding her arms in front of her, she stared out the window, too
angry to say another word. She began to tap her foot. “What have
you found out about his…death?” she asked finally. She would not
turn around, would not look at him. Hart’s eyes were drawn back to
the photograph of her on the beach. The thought flashed through his
mind that she must have had a temper then as well, but had always
gotten away with it: No one who wanted her would have risked
telling her that she had misbehaved. How many times has the beauty
of a woman taught cowardice to men?

“Your husband was involved with The Four
Sisters. He was taking money, vast sums of it, in return for doing
things he shouldn’t have done. He told someone what Morris told
him. Morris was convinced that by doing that the President signed
his own death warrant, that -”

Madelaine Constable wheeled around. She
seemed puzzled and confused. “Signed his own death warrant? Even if
all this is true, why would the fact he told someone that Morris
had changed his mind about what he was doing mean that?”

“Because if the President was willing to
betray Morris, there was no reason to think he would not betray the
people he was doing business with.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. If you and I
are in a conspiracy with someone else and you tell me that the
other person is thinking about telling the police, I can understand
getting rid of him, but why get rid of you?”

She said this as if instead of conspiracy and
murder, she was discussing a problem in formal logic. If A equals
B, and B equals C, then A….whatever follows, follows; there is
nothing moral or immoral about it. Hart had a different
understanding of things.

“Because it’s the only way to be absolutely
safe, the only way to make sure, now that everything is starting to
fall apart, that there isn’t anyone left who knows what you’ve
done.”

“Yes, I suppose you have a point.” Pursing
her lips, she seemed to think about it. She went over to the
bookshelves where she kept the liquor and poured herself another
glass. She closed the bottle and then remembered. “Would you
like…?”

“No, I’m fine,” replied Hart, glancing at the
drink he had barely touched.

Instead of going back to the window,
Madelaine Constable took the easy chair next to his. “What do you
think of our new president?”

Though he tried not to show it, Hart was
stunned. They were talking about the death of her husband, talking
about who might be responsible for his murder, and all of sudden
she wants to know his opinion of Irwin Russell? He searched her
eyes, but he could see nothing beyond what appeared to be a genuine
interest. That in itself revealed more about who she was than
anything he might have discovered had he been able to penetrate the
veneer of near perfect self-possession. “What do I think of…? I’m
afraid I’ve been a little too busy trying to find out who might
have murdered your husband to have given much thought to his
successor.”

“Interim successor might be the better
description. Irwin was the perfect vice-president: quiet,
inoffensive, someone everyone liked because he was not a threat to
what anyone wanted for themselves.” She gave Hart the knowing look
of the consummate insider, someone who can size up a situation,
take the measure of everyone involved, judge the play of forces
with a physicist’s precision, and do it all in the blink of an eye.
“That was the reason we chose him,” she added. “Unlike most of the
people in Washington, he didn’t wake up every morning full of
resentment because someone else was president.”

“And now he is,” said Hart in a way that
suggested something more than the obvious fact. “I’m sure you’re
right. I doubt he ever felt any resentment that someone else was
sitting in the Oval Office; but are you sure he never thought about
it, never wondered what it might be like, especially after he was
put on the ticket and became vice-president?”

That same knowing look was in her eyes. “Oh,
he thought about it, all right; rather I should say, worried about
it; worried whether he could hold up under the strain, the
pressure, the requirements of the office - if something ever
happened. Do you know the first thing he wanted to know when Robert
asked him to be his running mate? - Was his health as good as the
published reports said it was. Was his heart condition really just
a minor matter? Does that sound like someone who spends his time
dreaming about what a great president he would be?”

The irony of course, as Hart quickly noted,
was that was exactly the kind of question someone desperate for the
office might ask; and exactly the way someone would have to ask it,
as if his only concern was that nothing was likely to happen and
that he would not have to serve. But she was right about Irwin
Russell: he was that creature almost extinct in Washington, a
politician without ambition for what he did not have. “As I say, I
really haven’t had any time, and it hasn’t yet been two weeks; but
everyone seems to think he’s doing as well as could be expected
under the circumstances. Why do you ask?”

She stood up and, holding her drink in her
hand, crossed over to her desk. She seemed distracted, uncertain
what to do next. Her eyes darted from one thing to another, until,
finally, they came to rest on the same photograph that had caught
Hart’s attention. For a moment it seemed to take her back, not just
to the past, but to a different remembered future, to a time when
she had lived her life in the expectation of things that had not
happened. Her blue eyes brightened and the rigid discipline of her
mouth gave way to something softer and more sincere.

“Have they always called you ‘Bobby’? They
never called him that. It was always ‘Robert’ or ‘Bob.’ ‘Bobby’ is
more endearing, isn’t it? There is a kind of intimacy in it, - you
know, the easy familiarity you have with someone you grew up with,
someone who knows all the innocent secrets you had when you were
kids. That’s the way people feel about you; but you know that,
don’t you? You’re too smart not to know that. No one ever called
him that,” she went on, caught in a recollection that was new to
her. “He wouldn’t have let them; he wasn’t strong enough for that.
He thought it sounded weak. ‘Bobby.’ I asked him once about it. I
mentioned Bobby Kennedy; he started talking about Jack, and how it
sounded better, more in charge, than ‘Johnny.’ He thought about
things like that. Names - they don’t mean anything, really, do
they? And then, again, they mean everything, don’t they? There are
people who want me to run; people who think I should be the
nominee. What do you think I should do?”

There was not so much as a pause between the
one thing and the other; not so much as a second’s delay before she
went from what seemed an idle reminiscence about her husband’s name
and the announcement that she was thinking about running for
president herself. Hart was beyond the point of being shocked, much
less surprised, by anything she said. He was watching what he knew
was a performance, but he still was not clear why she was giving
it. He was sure she wanted something; he just was not sure what it
was.

“You asked me to see what I could find out
about your husband’s death. You told me that he had not died of a
heart attack, that he had been murdered,” he reminded her in a firm
tone of voice. “I’ve talked to Clarence Atwood, and I’ve talked to
the agent who was in charge of the detail that night. They
confirmed what you said. How could you even be thinking about
running for president, how could you be thinking about anything,
before we get to the bottom of this? And remember something else: I
told you at the beginning that this couldn’t be kept secret for
more than a very short time, that it was going to have to come out,
that there would have to be an investigation.”

He was becoming angry as he spoke, angry with
her, angry with himself. He should never have agreed to any of
this. He should have turned her down and insisted that an
investigation begin at once. He had made a mistake; he was not
going to make another. “The President was murdered! That’s the only
thing you should be thinking about, the only thing that matters. I
said I’d see what I could find out and I have. He was murdered
because someone wanted to keep him quiet; murdered so he couldn’t
tell anything to Quentin Burdick. And it seems pretty damn obvious
that The Four Sisters - someone involved with The Four Sisters - is
behind it. The President was murdered. And if you don’t tell what
you know to the authorities, I will!”

“But he wasn’t murdered! That’s what I had to
see you about, what I said was so urgent.”

Hart was on his feet, staring hard at her.
“What are you saying? You told me he was given a drug that caused
his heart to stop. They found evidence of it at the autopsy. Atwood
confirmed it.”

Madelaine Constable stepped closer. She
seemed almost contrite, as if she had bungled things and made his
life difficult because of it.