Grand Master (34 page)

He cast another, long look at the portrait of
his same named ancestor, and laughed at the thought that there
could be any comparison between the Grand Master and what the Order
he had led in battle had become. “Names stay the same; their
meaning changes. It was always a struggle between Christianity and
the truth, the need to take care of things here on earth. The Order
of St. John, the Knights of Malta, did not take an oath to turn the
other cheek, to foreswear violence; they swore to conquer for the
church or die. But then, later, the church went through another one
of its frequent periods of insanity and became Christian again.
Instead of fighting for what it believed, it taught, as someone
once put it, that it was ‘evil to speak evil of evil.’ Those people
yesterday, part of some secret society? Impossible!”

“Then why do you go there every year, why go
speak about the past? Is it just to raise money for that school of
you mentioned, the one named after the Order?”

A shrewd smile stole across Jean Valette’s
face. “You don’t have to ask me that question. You already know the
answer.”

“You don’t need their money; you need their
approval, their consent. Some of them send their children there,”
said Hart, certain he was right.

“As I say, the names of things stay the same,
and sometimes - not often, but once in a while - the meaning that
has changed can change again. Perhaps one day there will be a new
Order of St. John like the old one, and another Grand Master. To
most of us, the future remains impenetrable.”

They continued their brief journey through
the portrait gallery and the chronology of Jean Valette, the time
it had taken to pass through all the generations that had ended,
finally, with him. When they reached the end of the facing wall,
they were back to where they had begun. “There,” he said, “one
last, vacant place; room, should anyone ever want it, for a
portrait of me.” He stared at that blank space on the wall like
someone staring into a grave. “There won’t be anyone after me. I am
the last.” Immediately, a look of contempt shot through his eyes.
He disliked pity in any form; he hated it for himself.

“There is another picture, or rather I should
say, pictures, that I think you might want to see,” his eyes again
bright and eager. “You may have noticed - you did notice - that all
those portraits are of the male descendants in my line. There are
no women, and women in my family have been very important.”

“You mean the four sisters, who raised your
father and ran the bank?”

“You are very well informed, Mr. Hart. Though
I must say, I am not surprised. Yes, they raised my father and made
us rich, turned a small banking establishment into a center of
international commerce. They started with certain advantages. They
were all four of them quite brilliant, but two of them were quite
beautiful and became the willing mistresses of more than a few
wealthy men and their money. Come with me and judge for
yourself.”

Hart was led down a wide marble floored
corridor, past several large rooms, to a pair of double doors at
the end. They opened onto a room with windows facing west. Hart
looked around, but there were no pictures on the walls. Jean
Valette said nothing for a moment, and then raised his eyes to a
domed ceiling where, from each of four quadrants, the faces of his
father’s four aunts looked down with painted elegance and grace.
They must have been in middle age, or even older, when the decision
was made to make this, as Jean Valette explained, the Hall of the
Four Sisters, but the artist had captured them forever in the bloom
of youth. Far from exaggerating, it had been something of an
understatement to say that two of them had been quite beautiful.
One of them seemed to Hart to bear an uncanny resemblance to his
own wife, Helen. His host noticed how it had drawn Hart’s
particular attention.

“I was not sure until I saw your reaction,
but I was struck by that, too: the resemblance to your wife. I’m
certain, however,” he said quietly, “that the resemblance ends
there. My great aunt, as I suggested, was not the kind of woman any
husband could trust.” He checked his watch and frowned. “It’s later
than I thought. But I wanted you to see this room. We’ll meet here
again this afternoon, shortly after lunch, you and I and our other
guest.”

“What does this have to do with me? Who is
this person and why have you brought him here? I can’t sit around
waiting for something to happen. I’ve lost enough time as it
is.”

“Patience, Mr. Hart. You’ll understand
everything soon. I agree with you, by the way, that there isn’t any
time to lose, but I’m afraid we don’t for the moment have much
choice. We can’t do anything without the inspector.”

“Dumont, the chief inspector, is coming here?
But why? I told him everything I know. You said yesterday he wanted
to arrest me. Is that why he’s coming: to take me back to Paris and
turn me over to the people who want to kill me?”

Jean Valette had already started walking to
the door. “As I said, we’ll meet here again this afternoon. In the
meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. There are a thousand
things I need to do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

When Hart was summoned back to the Hall of
the Four Sisters that afternoon, Jean Valette was sitting at a long
table, directly across from Marcel Dumont. Valette had changed out
of the flamboyant costume he had been wearing earlier in the day
into a dark business suit. Like his clothing, his mood was
decidedly more subdued.

“This goes too far,” protested the inspector,
shaking his head in disagreement. “If I had known you were going to
do this….”

Seeing Hart in the doorway, he stopped in
mid-sentence, got up and walked to the window. He stood there,
deciding what to do about a situation that was getting out of hand.
Tall and overweight, on the downside of middle age, and with all
the cautious instincts of the policeman, he had still the
confidence of the boxer he had been in his youth. He might get
beaten, but he would never be intimidated, not even by the famous
and formidable Jean Valette.

“First you make me an accomplice in hiding an
international fugitive! Now you want to make me party to a
kidnapping! Incredible!” Holding his hands behind his back, he
began to pace, and with each step his face became more animated
until, finally, a broad smile broke hard and clean across his face.
“Yes, well, why not? I’ve gone this far against my better judgment;
might as well see just how big a fool I really am!” Waving his hand
in the air, a signal that he had given up, he came back to the
table and took his chair. “Let’s meet this other American of
yours.”

Jean Valette picked up a telephone and issued
instructions. A few minutes later, two men brought in the person
Hart had seen from his window. His hands were now free, but his
eyes were still covered. He was put in a chair across from the
inspector and then the two men left.

“Can I take this off?” he asked, running his
right hand along the blindfold.

“Yes, of course,” replied Jean Valette. “And
I am sorry that you were subjected to this indignity. It was
necessary to take certain pre-cautions, Mr. Carlyle.”

“Like grabbing me off the street in
Manhattan?” he said with rising anger as he removed the blindfold.
He looked at Jean Valette, sitting next to him, and then shot a
glance at Marcel Dumont. “Who the hell - ?” But then he saw Hart,
and his mouth dropped open. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. “What are
you -? Where are we, anyway?”

“My name is Marcel Dumont, Mr. Carlyle: Chief
inspector of the Surete Generale. The gentleman on your left is
-”

“My name does not matter,” interjected Jean
Valette. “But I’m the one responsible for bringing you here. And
again, I apologize for the way it was done. My only excuse is that
I thought you would probably want to come and it was the only safe
way to get you here.” Jean Valette turned to Hart, who still did
not know who this Mr. Carlyle was, except that he was an American
in his early thirties who kept staring at him as if he had just
discovered gold. “Philip Carlyle, Mr. Hart, is a reporter: a
colleague of your friend, Quentin Burdick, if I am not
mistaken.”

Carlyle looked across at Dumont. “Chief
inspector? The Surete? I’m in France, somewhere in Paris?”

“In France, but not in Paris,” replied Jean
Valette. “You’ll go there next, with the inspector, if, after
hearing what we have to say, you decide that is what you want to
do.”

Carlyle was confused. He glanced at Hart, and
then, again, at Dumont. “The Senator is wanted for murder,
conspiracy to murder the President, but instead of placing him
under arrest, you have me kidnapped and flown across the
ocean?”

However much he might disagree with what Jean
Valette had done, dealing with the accusations of this American was
a different matter. Folding his arms across his chest, Dumont fixed
him with a look of studied indifference. “Would you like to leave
now, flown back home? It can certainly be arranged.”

The young reporter could not keep his eyes
off Hart who was sitting there, just a few feet away, the story
that would make his career.

“Really,” persisted Dumont, rather enjoying
it. “We can have you on a plane in an hour. And perhaps, after all,
it’s for the best that you go.” He glanced at Jean Valette. “I told
you this was not a good idea, forcing someone to come here against
their will, just to give Mr. Hart, who despite the fact that we
have reason to believe he is just a pawn in someone else’s game, is
still wanted by the American authorities, a chance to tell his side
of the story. You had no business doing this. It could put the
French government in a very difficult position should Mr. Carlyle
here decide to make a formal complaint.”

“Me? No, I’m not complaining about
anything!”

“But you were kidnapped, ‘grabbed off the
street in Manhattan,’ is the way I think you put it,” said Dumont,
shaking his head in evident disapproval of the way the young man
had been treated. “And tied up, and blindfolded, besides. This is a
very serious matter, Mr. Carlyle.”

Carlyle could not take his eyes off Hart.
“No, really, I’m sure there were good reasons,” he insisted.

Jean Valette took his cue. “If anyone had
known where he was going,” he explained to the inspector; “if
anyone had known whom he was going to see, I doubt very much that
Mr. Carlyle would still be alive.”

Dumont stroked his chin as he appeared to
take this possibility under advisement. “Yes, perhaps. But tell me,
Mr. Carlyle: Other than the fact you were taken against your will,
have you been otherwise ill-treated? Have you been fed
properly?”

Carlyle’s blue eyes lit up at the memory of
what he had been given, better than any restaurant, at least of the
kind he could afford. “And the room was terrific,” he added, eager
to start asking question of his own. “Everything has been great.
And if I had been allowed to see anything except the room I was
staying in, and now this one, I’d probably never want to leave.”
His eyes shot back to Hart. “You didn’t do it - you weren’t
involved? Then how in the hell did all this happen?”

“Did you really think I was?” Hart asked with
a stern, caustic glance. “How well did you know Quentin Burdick?
Did you know what he was working on when he was killed?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean: not exactly?”

“I knew he was supposed to see Constable, but
then Constable died - murdered, as it turns out; and I knew he went
out to California to talk to Frank Morris and that Morris was
killed. He told me that someone had broken into his apartment the
night he got back. He told me he thought everything was connected
to something called The Four Sisters.”

“And your Mr. Burdick was right,” said Jean
Valette, exchanging a glance with Hart. “But put that aside for the
moment. There was another murder, here, in Paris -”

“Austin Pearce,” said Carlyle, with a quick
nod. “And the head of the political section of the embassy.” He
reached inside his jacket for his notebook and then looked from
face to face. “You don’t mind if I start making notes?”

“So long as you don’t use my name,” continued
Jean Valette.

“I don’t know your name.”

“I insist on anonymity, and not just my
identity, but where we are. No one can know where this conversation
took place. Do you understand that?”

“But I don’t know where I am, except that it
is somewhere in France.”

“Do you agree?” asked Jean Valette.

“Yes, I agree.”

“Then, my name is Jean Valette, and I am the
head of investment house known as The Four Sisters.”

“The Four Sisters? Burdick said everything
led back to -”

“And it does, as I just told you. But first,
the murder of Austin Pearce. Marcel, perhaps you could
explain.”

Placing both arms on the table, the inspector
hunched forward and began to describe what had happened the night
before last in the apartment of Aaron Wolfe in the 18th
arrondisement. “And so you see,” he said when he was finished, “Mr.
Hart arrived only after the two killers were already there. He was
downstairs talking to the landlady when the shooting started. That
means, as you can see, that they were sent there, the two Americans
from the embassy - both of them with one of your intelligence
agencies, unless I miss my guess - to kill Pearce and Wolfe. There
could be only one reason for this: to keep them from telling what
they knew about who killed your president.”

Carlyle scribbled furiously a moment longer
and then looked at Hart. “You didn’t have anything to do with this
- I don’t mean the murder of Austin Pearce - the murder of the
President?”

“Because he slept with my wife? It never
happened. This whole thing is a set-up, a way for the real
murderers - the real conspirators - to get away with what they did.
I didn’t hire that woman, the one who supposedly died trying to get
away. And all that evidence they found - bank transactions, money I
paid into her account - Do you really think a paid assassin would
keep records like that, and keep them in a place where they could
so easily be found?”