Grand Master (39 page)

Almost immediately, Ryan changed his mind. He
made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

“But if Russell wanted Constable dead why
wait until now when he has only a few months to establish himself
in the office, and when the public’s sympathy is all for
Constable’s wife? He knew from the day he agreed to run for
vice-president that she was only waiting for the end of her
husband’s second term to run for her first.”

“Unless something happened,” said Allen;
“something that made him think he was going to be in real trouble
if Constable lived.”

Ryan put his hand on the back of his neck and
twisted his head from side to side. He remembered things now in a
different way than he had remembered them before. Everything had a
new importance.

“The story Burdick was working on, the
connection between Constable and The Four Sisters. Bobby was
convinced that was what got Constable killed. The story would have
destroyed Constable and any chance Madelaine had to become
president. Maybe they were all in on it, Constable, Frank Morris,
and Russell, too. Maybe. I don’t know. I still think it had to be
Madelaine. Russell doesn’t strike me as ruthless enough to do
something like this. And Atwood - where do you think his loyalties
are? Who would he trust enough to do something like this: organize
an assassination and then arrange the murders of everyone who
started to get close to the truth? It had to be Madelaine
Constable.”

Allen bit his lip and thought hard. He had
never trusted Robert Constable and had never liked his wife, but
facts were facts and all of them seemed to suggest that Ryan was
wrong.

“She would have to be a fool. She had to know
that as soon as Constable was dead all the power would be in
Russell’s hands and that everything would change. It’s one thing to
have a weak vice-president, someone who can’t win the presidency on
his own, someone who could not mount a serious challenge to a woman
as popular as she is. It’s something else again to defeat an
incumbent president of your own party, a man the whole country
wants to succeed after he has taken over for the victim of an
assassination. I don’t know if Russell is behind this, maybe it was
Madelaine - it has to be one of them - but if Russell wanted it
done, Atwood would have done it.”

Instead of a reply, Ryan sat down on the edge
of the chair and lapsed into a long silence. Finally, he stood up
and with his hands behind his back started shuffling back and
forth. A moment later, he stopped abruptly and looked straight at
Allen.

“What if it were both of them? What if
Russell and Madelaine Constable were in it together? What if they
decided Constable had to die - because it was the only way to stop
the story about The Four Sisters coming out - and they made a deal.
You’ve heard the rumor; you know what is going to happen: she’s
going to take his place as vice-president. What if this was part of
the deal?”

There was a certain clear logic in the
murderous precision of the scheme. It was political calculation
carried to a Machiavellian extreme: the removal of an obstacle to
ambition, and done in a way that by blaming it on someone else
makes you the object of universal sympathy and good will. Allen saw
at once how each part fit.

“Russell serves out the remainder of
Constable’s term and then has a term of his own. Madelaine is
vice-president and then has the chance to run for two terms on her
own. A devil’s bargain that gives them both what they want and that
gets rid of the only threat they face, Bobby Hart, by blaming it
all on him. And they won’t have to worry about him defending
himself, because -”

“Because he’ll be dead, killed while he was
trying to get away!”

“What can we do?” asked Allen. But for the
moment, Ryan had no answers.

If Allen had barely been able to sleep
before, now he could not sleep at all. He lay awake all night,
wondering what was going to happen, not just to his friend of
twenty years, but to the country. It had been bad enough, the
nearly eight years of Robert Constable’s lying ineffectiveness and
treachery, but four, eight, twelve years of government by a band of
assassins? The killing would not stop once the two of them,
Constable’s wife and vice-president, had what they wanted. If
history proved anything, it proved that no one was more suspicious
than the man or woman who had come to power through an act of
violence. Anyone thought to be a threat, whether a political rival
or someone who might discover what they had done, would have to be
dealt with, eliminated, made to disappear; and every time it
happened, every time they were forced to commit another murder,
another violent act, there would be another cover-up, and another
set of secrets that would have to be protected. The circle would
keep widening, spreading death and destruction, until, finally, the
circle, as always happened, would be driven back on itself, and the
ones who had started everything in motion would themselves become
the victims of some new aspirant to power.

Allen did not know what to do. There was no
use telling anyone that Bobby Hart was innocent. There were some on
the Senator’s own staff who did not believe that. Several of them
had resigned immediately, afraid of the damage that might be done
to their own careers; others, Allen knew, would follow shortly. If
even people on Hart’s own staff thought he had done what everyone
said he did, no one was going to believe that Russell and Madelaine
Constable were guilty instead. Whatever the charges, whatever the
risk, Bobby had to come back. Allen knew that he would try, that he
would never leave his wife here alone, but why had he not at least
tried to call, to somehow get a message to him that he was all
right; let him know something - anything - that might help put his
mind at ease? Hart had not even called Helen, though strangely
enough, she did not seem much worried about it.

Allen, who lived for politics, had never felt
entirely comfortable around Helen Hart. She was not quite like
anyone he knew; she certainly was not like most of the other wives
of successful politicians. She was in love with her husband, which
in Washington was rare enough, but she was in love with him not
because, but in spite, of who he was. Allen had for a long time
resented her, convinced that Hart would have run for president if
he had been married to a woman who, like most political wives,
dreamed of being first lady instead of living alone, just the two
of them, somewhere in the seclusion of the Santa Barbara hills. He
did not change his mind about that, but he did change his mind
about her. He realized that the reason he felt such a distance in
her presence was because her world was made up of only two people,
she and Bobby, and that while she could be a good and trusted
friend to others, all her thoughts were about him. Beneath the
surface, that fragile exterior that had nearly shattered, down deep
in her soul there was a kind of strength that in the days of
changeable attachments and replaceable relationships was not seen
so much anymore. She believed in her husband, but more than that,
she believed in them, the two of them together. David Allen envied
them a little for that.

“You look awful, David,” she said when she
opened the door. Allen stood in the doorway of the small apartment
the Harts had taken in Northwest Washington. He was breathing hard,
worn out from all the restless days and sleepless nights. Helen led
him into the living room and insisted he take off his jacket.
“Really, David, you can’t take all this on yourself. You’re not
going to do Bobby any good if you kill yourself from worry and
overwork.”

Allen sank into an easy chair and wrapped his
hands around a cool glass of lemonade. Helen sat on the edge of the
sofa just a few feet away. Her eyes were clear and a faint smile
played on her lips. “Yours is the first friendly face I’ve seen in
days. Except for Charlie, of course. He came by as soon as I got
back.”

“Why did you come back? Wouldn’t Bobby have
wanted you to stay at home, in Santa Barbara, while all this is
going on?”

“Yes, you’re right; he would have. But as
soon as I heard - I had just gotten home - I knew I had to come
back. I wasn’t going to hide, try to run away. I wanted these
people to know that I wasn’t afraid of what they were saying, that
all these accusations were false.” Without makeup, her hair pulled
back in a ponytail, dressed in a black turtleneck, she had the
clean, well-scrubbed look of a woman who never lived too far from
the drifting white sand of an ocean beach. Allen felt a desire to
offer her what assurances he could, a need to tell her that things
were not as bad as they seemed.

“No one who knows you, no one who knows both
of you, believes any of it. You have to know that.” Her smile
seemed to forgive the lie, and, more than that, thank him for what
she knew he was trying to do.

“You know us, and Charlie knows us. There
aren’t many others, though, are there - people who know us well
enough to believe that we aren’t what other people say we are? But
that only makes what you and Charlie have done more honorable.” She
got up, walked over to the window and looked down at the street.
“The reporters got all they needed. They seemed surprised by what I
told them.”

Allen rubbed his chin. His eyes began to
blink. “Surprised? Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

Helen folded her arms and leaned back against
the window sill. There was a strange, wistful look in her eyes.
“Shocked, I suppose. I’m not sure why. They accuse me of infidelity
and adultery, of having an affair with Robert Constable, but think
I’m too fragile - a woman who may or may not have had a breakdown -
to respond the way I did? I told them the truth, and did it in a
way I hoped they might understand.”

“Oh, I think they understood,” said Allen,
shaking his head at the effect it had. “I think everyone
understood.”

“And who knows, there might even have been a
few of them who believed me when I said it.” She looked down at the
empty street again, remembering the crowd and the stunned reaction
when she finished telling them exactly what she thought. She hoped
that when he heard about it, Bobby would understand why she had
thought she had to do it. “All I said was that I’d never slept with
anyone except my husband,” she explained, turning away from the
window. “And that even if I had been single, I never would have
slept with anyone who had slept with as many women as Robert
Constable. Then I told them that if they were going to run a
picture of me and Robert Constable, taken at some event I don’t
remember, to suggest that we had an affair, they might want to run
a picture of Robert Constable and Bobby Hart to show that I would
have had to have been not only a fool, but blind, to have done what
they said I did. And then I told them that if they were going to
accuse someone of murder because the President was screwing his
wife, they better include in their list of suspects half the
married men in Washington, to say nothing of the married women in
the other places he had been.”

Tilting her head to the side, Helen fixed
Allen with a look that seemed to defy him or anyone else to tell
her that she should not have done what she did. But almost
immediately, she relented, drew back as if none of it mattered.
There were more important things to think about. “Bobby left a
message on the telephone in Santa Barbara. He told me - he didn’t
need to, but he told me - that none of it was true, that he was
going to prove it, and that he was going to be okay. I haven’t
heard anything since. But don’t worry, David. Bobby will be fine.
I’d know it if he wasn’t.”

Allen was almost willing to believe it. It
was said that twins could feel what each other felt; why could not
she have that same telepathic gift when her whole life was bound so
closely with his. “It’s only been a few days,” said Allen. “We’ll
hear something; he’ll be back soon.”

Instead of being comforted, Helen seemed
alarmed. She shook her head emphatically. “No, he can’t come back,
not while this is going on, not while everyone thinks he hired
someone to kill the President. They’ll arrest him, if they don’t
kill him first,” she said darkly. “That’s the reason I asked you to
come by. I need your help.”

“Anything. What do you need?”

“Quite a lot, I’m afraid. As soon as I know
where Bobby is, I’m going. I’m leaving the country and I may need
some help to do it. I don’t imagine they can stop me from leaving,
but I don’t want anyone to follow me, to use me to find him. The
other thing,” she said hesitantly, “if we can’t come back -”

“Bobby will come back. He isn’t going to
spend the rest of his life hiding. He won’t do that, he’ll -”

“What other choice will he have? They’ll kill
him - whoever did this thing; they’ll kill him before they’d ever
let him go to trial. You know it as well as I. You know what people
are capable of, how easily they can turn on you when they think
you’re in trouble.”

“He’ll come back,” said Allen in a firm,
resolute voice. “Bobby never ran away from a fight in his life, and
we both know it, don’t we?”

All the bravery vanished from her face. She
seemed to grow visibly smaller, shrinking back inside herself, as
she contemplated the end of the one last thing that had given her
hope: the chance that, whatever happened here, she and Bobby could
find refuge in another place, safe from all the insanity that now
threatened everything. “Don’t…,” she begged. “Don’t say that. It’s
all different now. This isn’t just another fight; this is survival.
There are no more rules. Don’t you see that? They’re going to kill
him. They won’t stop trying until they do it.”

There was nothing more Allen could say. He
told her, as he got up to leave, that whatever happened, she could
count on him; that only she and Bobby could decide what they had to
do, and that he would help in any way he could. She kissed him on
the forehead, something she had never done before, and thanked him
for being such a loyal friend. She was just reaching for the door
when the telephone began to ring. “It’s Bobby,” she said, and went
quickly across the room to answer it.