Grand Master (25 page)

“What about Valette himself?” asked Hart,
anxious to learn more about the man. “Apart from what he believes,
apart from the long historical view he takes of things - what is he
like? You know the reason we’re here.” He bent toward Wolfe. “When
I told you that the President had been murdered, and that we had
reason to believe that The Four Sisters is involved, what was your
honest reaction? Were you surprised? Was your first thought that it
was impossible, that we must be making a mistake?”

“Honest reaction? I didn’t have time to have
a reaction. I’ve been too damn numb - sorry, forgive me for that,”
he said, embarrassed by his candor in front of two men he respected
but did not know. “The President was murdered? I still can’t
believe it. And no one knows? Why is it being kept a secret? I
don’t understand. It’s almost two weeks since he died.” Despite his
confusion, Wolfe was too quick, and too experienced, not to see the
implications. “Someone doesn’t want…?”

“It’s complicated,” replied Hart. “I can’t
tell you everything, but if we’re right The Four Sisters is the key
to everything: the murder of the President and the reason why
certain people don’t seem to want there to be an investigation.
Now, whatever you can tell us about Jean Valette, anything that
would have given him a motive, a reason, to want the President
dead.”

Wolfe scratched his head as he tried to
think. His eyes lit up; he sat forward in the chair with an air of
certainty that vanished as suddenly as it had come. “No, that’s
absurd. It makes no sense,” he said, lecturing himself.

“What makes no sense?’ asked Austin Pearce,
who did not think anything at this point beyond the realm of
possibility.

“The Knights of St. John,” explained Wolfe
with a dismissive glance. “There’s a connection, but it doesn’t
mean anything.”

“A connection - how?” asked Pearce,
intrigued.

“Valette’s ancestor was -”

“Also named Jean de la Valette, the Grand
Master of the Knights of St. John,” interjected Pearce. “He fought,
and won, the battle of Malta in the year 15-”

“You know about that? Yes, exactly; the
Knights of St. John, or as they are sometimes called the Knights of
Malta, still exist. Irwin Russell, our new president, is a member.
And of course Jean Valette is -”

Astonished, Hart bolted forward. “You’re
suggesting that the President of the United States is a member of
some bizarre ancient order, some secret society, and that Robert
Constable was murdered so that someone who owes his loyalty to this
organization that Valette controls could become president?”

“No, absolutely not! I said it was absurd. In
the first place, the Knights of St. John are not -”

The door to the hallway suddenly swung open
and the ambassador, nervous, agitated, and obviously alarmed,
motioned for Wolfe to join him outside. He stood there, shifting
his weight from one foot to the other, glancing first in one
direction then the other, almost as if he were trying to avoid
looking at anyone. Then, just as Wolfe got there, just before he
closed the door, he shot a brief, frantic look at Austin
Pearce.

“There must be a crisis somewhere,” said
Pearce, when the door swung shut and he and Hart were alone. “Given
his absence of any sense of proportion, it could be anything from
an impending nuclear attack to someone having forgotten to bring
him the right brand of coffee. Still, that look he gave me….It may
be serious.”

A moment later, the door opened again and
Aaron Wolfe came back into the room with a solemn, pensive
expression. He sat down, but instead of turning to either Hart or
Pearce, he stared for the longest time down at his hands. Finally,
he looked at Hart.

“The ambassador just told me something that
I’m not sure I believe, and he has asked me - I should say
instructed me - to do something I’m not sure I should. You took a
chance when you told me that the President had been murdered. Why
did you do that, take a chance like that with someone you didn’t
know?”

There was a palpable sense of danger, and
while Hart did not know what the danger was, he knew - he could
feel - that it had something to do with him. He told Wolfe the
truth. "Instinct. We had to trust someone; I had a sense we could
trust you.”

“Instinct? I suppose, when you get right down
to it, that’s the best reason there is.”

“Why?” asked Hart with a growing sense of
urgency. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“You’re staying at a hotel? Don’t go back
there. Don’t go anywhere. Disappear.” He reached in his pocket and
pulled out a card. “No, go to this address. It’s my apartment. No
one will think to look for you there.” He nodded toward another
door, one at the far corner of the room. “Go out that way. It leads
to the backstairs. But be quick - there isn’t much time. They’re
waiting for you downstairs, at the front entrance.”

“What are you talking about?” cried Austin
Pearce, rising from his chair. “Why should the Senator have to do
anything of the sort?”

“The ambassador has just been informed - it’s
in all the morning papers at home - that the President didn’t die
of a heart attack, that he was murdered instead.”

“Which is exactly what we were telling you,
the reason we’re here, that the President was…!” Something in
Wolfe’s expression made him stop. “The President was murdered,
but…?”

“The President was murdered by a conspiracy,
a conspiracy led by Senator Robert Hart.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Austin Pearce was angry, as angry as he had
ever been in his life. This was worse than a mistake, this was an
outrage: this was insane. He was on his feet, glaring at Aaron
Wolfe. “Who is the idiot responsible for this? What fool decided
that Bobby - that Senator Hart - could have had anything to do with
this? He’s the one who has been trying to find out what really
happened, for Christ sake!”

“I don’t know,” insisted Wolfe who then
turned immediately to Hart. “All I know, Senator, is that if you
don’t leave right now, you won’t get out of here at all.”

Hart sat staring straight ahead, frozen to
the spot, a dozen different thoughts racing through his mind. If he
ran, tried to get away, everyone would think he was guilty, that he
had done what they said he did: took part in a criminal conspiracy
to murder the President. If he was charged with a crime - any
normal crime - a crime for which he could be certain of having a
chance to prove his innocence, have a trial with all the
protections given a citizen, there would not be any doubt what he
would do. His brain was spinning, pictures of courtrooms, of judges
and juries, flashed in front of him, but they did so at a distance,
pictures of a place he knew he could not go.

He was being accused of something he did not
do, and the only people who would do that were the people who were
trying to protect themselves; powerful people who could manufacture
the evidence they needed to place the blame for what they had done
on someone else, and do it so effectively that agents of the
government, the government of which he was an important part, were
about to place him under arrest and take him, bound and shackled,
back to the United States. But not to stand trial. Whoever was
doing this, whoever was involved in the murder of Robert Constable,
could not afford to let him tell anyone, much less a crowded public
courtroom, what he had learned. An hour after they had him, he
would be shot while trying to escape. “Call Helen for me,” he said
to Austin Pearce as he started toward the door. “Tell her I’ll be
all right.”

“Where are you going? What will you do?”
asked Pearce in a plaintive voice.

Hart looked back at Aaron Wolfe. “I’m going
to trust you. I’ll be at your place this evening. I need you to
find out something for me.”

Wolfe did not hesitate. “Yes, of course -
anything.”

“Jean Valette. Where does he live - how can I
get to him?” Hart thought for a moment. “How are you going to
explain this? What are you going to say about why I didn’t come
with you? You could lose your career - and maybe more than
that.”

Wolfe was so certain of Hart’s innocence, so
certain that he was doing the right thing, that the thought that he
might be about to destroy his career made him only more eager to
take the risk. The sense of liberation was intoxicating, and for
once in his careful life he felt the thrill of flamboyance. “Maybe
I’ll just tell them the truth: they’ll never believe that.”

And he almost did. He and Austin Pearce
waited until Hart was safely gone down the backstairs, and then, as
if they had nothing on their minds more pressing than the weather,
came down the main staircase speaking French to one another. The
ambassador was waiting just inside the front entrance, along with
three of the embassy guards - marines in their dress blues - and
two men in dark suits. Pearce guessed they were CIA. The
ambassador’s mouth was rigid, and his face had turned to chalk. His
eyes darted past Pearce to the stairs. “The Senator will be coming
down in a minute?”

The head of the political section looked at
the ambassador first with surprise, then with a deeper sense of
puzzlement. “He didn’t come down this way? As soon as I went back
in the room - just after we talked,” he said in a way that
suggested that the nature of their brief conversation was still
secret, “- the Senator said he was running late and had to leave.
But you didn’t see him?”

The veins on Malreaux’s temples began to
throb violently. His eyes became intense. He could barely control
himself. “You just let him go! - After what I told you? Don’t you
know -?”

“You really didn’t see him?” interjected
Wolfe, with a brazen smile that registered astonishment at the
incompetence of the ambassador. “And you just waited down here,
didn’t send anyone to make sure that he didn’t get away?”

“Get away?” asked Austin Pearce, with a look
of incredulity that, under the circumstances, was not hard to
produce. “What are you talking about? What’s going on, Andrew?” he
demanded. “Why do you have these guards here? Are you going to have
me locked up? - Because if you are, I’d damn well like to know the
reason!”

Malreaux was almost too flustered to talk.
“No, of course not,” he replied, angry with Pearce for even
asking.

“Then maybe you’ll be good enough to tell me
why you’re taking that tone with me!” insisted Pearce, showing some
anger of his own.

“What? Why I’ve taken…? Sorry, it isn’t you
that’s in trouble.” He was trying to figure out what to do next,
but he was not someone who could easily deal with two things at
once, and Austin Pearce kept demanding that he deal with him. “It’s
not you that’s in trouble,” he repeated as if he needed to give
assurances.

“That’s nice to know,” said Pearce in a
harsh, caustic voice. He locked his eyes on Malreaux to keep his
attention. “I come all the way from New York, bring with me one of
the most distinguished members of the United States Senate, come to
you because, as I explained earlier, there was something extremely
important we had to do; and now, instead of having a few minutes to
say goodbye, you stand here with an armed guard and tell me that
I’m not in trouble. That’s a fairly strange way to treat someone
who has always regarded you as a friend!”

The three marines, trained to a rigorous
discipline, stood still as statues, but the two others - the ones
Pearce thought were CIA - were screwed as tight as drums, up on the
balls of their feet, leaning forward, working their jaws, desperate
to stop talking and act.

“I told you, this has nothing to do with you;
this -”

But nothing could stop Austin Pearce from
dragging things out. It was the only way he had to help Bobby Hart
get away. “We came here to follow a lead.” He stepped closer until
he and the ambassador were not six inches apart. “The President did
not die of a heart attack, Andrew - he was murdered. That’s why
we’re here. Hart is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He thinks
he knows who is behind this, so whatever you think you’re doing
think twice about it.”

The ambassador’s eyes went blank. Now he did
not know what to believe. One of the CIA agents put his hand on
Pearce’s arm.

“Do you know who I am?” demanded Pearce, as
he jerked it free.

But the agents were not listening any more.
They barreled past, and with the marine guards right behind, ran up
the stairs, shouting directions to each other as they started a
search.

“Hart is the one they’re looking for,” said
the ambassador. His eyes were blinking rapidly. He bit hard on his
lip. “Hart’s the one that had the President killed. I just found
out. They call came in just a few minutes ago. I was supposed to
hold him, I was supposed to -”

“Who called? Who told you this, who told you
that Hart was involved? He wasn’t - but who said he was?”

“The Secretary called; he -”

“The Secretary of State?”

“Yes, the Secretary - he said it was in the
papers.”

“What was in the papers? That Hart was
involved - I know that - but what else? Who said that he was
involved?”

The ambassador stopped blinking. In the midst
of his confusion, he became for a moment quite lucid. “The head of
the Secret Service. He said they had known within days of the
President’s death that he had been murdered, but that they kept it
quiet while they launched a full-scale investigation.”

Pearce did nothing to hide his astonishment.
“That’s what the head of the Secret Service said: that they
launched a full-scale investigation?”

Malreaux had never seen Austin Pearce this
upset. He was not sure how to reply. “Look, Austin - all I know is
what I was told: that there is evidence Hart was involved and that
they want him back in Washington for questioning.” They were
standing there, the three of them alone - Austin Pearce, the
ambassador, and Aaron Wolfe - the marine guard, the plainclothes
CIA, could be heard scrambling through the rooms on the floor
above. Pearce exchanged a glance with Wolfe before turning to the
ambassador.