Grand Master (41 page)

There was a hint of disapproval, regret that
he could not be free of all this, in the way Russell looked at her
as he summarized what would have to be her public position. His
resentment, however, was nothing in comparison to hers. “You don’t
have to tell me how to handle this. I don’t recall that we ever
asked you for your advice when you were my husband’s
vice-president.”

“It might have saved you some embarrassment
if you had!” he shot back.

Her eyes went wild with anger. “The only
reason you’re sitting in that chair is because - !”

“But I am sitting in it, and there is nothing
you can do about it now.” A smile full of malice twisted slowly
across his mouth. “There never was anything you could do about it.
Did you really think that once I took over, you could run against
me for the nomination?”

“I could have beaten you, and we both know
it!” she cried, jutting out her chin.

The smile on Russell’s face deepened and took
on another meaning, one they both understood. “Yes, but you didn’t
run, did you? The world would have found out the truth about you
and The Four Sisters, and a few other things besides. And what
could you do? - Tell about me? I didn’t take anything like as much
as you and Robert did; my involvement was minor compared to yours.
Don’t look so upset. You’re going to be sitting here one day, or at
least you’ll have your chance, just not as quickly as you had
hoped. You’re about to become vice-president, next in line of
succession.”

A strange look of cruelty and contempt
gleamed in his eyes as he looked past her for a moment. He laughed
silently as at some private joke. “That means you get to go home
every night and hope that when you wake up the first news you’ll
have is that the President is dead. I should warn you, however,
that with none of the careless habits of your reckless husband, I
won’t be an easy victim should someone decide they can’t wait for
the accidents of mortality. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to
study the speech I’m scheduled to give this evening when I
introduce you as the next Vice-President and tell about we propose
to build on the foundation of our beloved predecessor.”

The President had his speech, and so did she.
In front of a vast audience in the Kennedy Center, she struck just
the right chord: somber, serious and, despite the tragedy of her
husband’s death, still hopeful that the country could move forward,
building on what Robert Constable had done. There was a moment when
it all seemed too much for her. She had just finished telling them,
all these people who had supported her husband in the past, how the
night at the last convention, when Irwin Russell’s name had been
placed in nomination for vice-president, he had said to her that
Russell was the one man who could take over and continue his legacy
if anything ever happened to him. There was a catch in her voice;
her lips trembled, a tear came to her eye. The audience rose as one
and began to applaud, a long, somber tribute to the memory of her
husband and to what she had been forced to endure. She flashed a
brave smile and managed somehow to go on. Whatever else anyone
might remember about those two speeches, they would remember that.
Madelaine was sure of it.

She knew then that what she had said earlier
in the Oval Office was true: that Irwin Russell would have had no
chance had she chosen to run against him, that the nomination, and
the election, would have been hers for the asking. If it had not
been for that damnable secret she would have been here tonight
launching her campaign for the presidency instead of being forced
into the second place part that, except for the title, she had been
playing for the last seven years. Everyone was there to see her,
not the accidental president no one had seriously thought would
ever hold the office. They lined up, nearly all of them, almost
three thousand men and women, waiting to tell her how much they
loved her and how much they admired her courage.

She began to realize that it was not too
late. She could become vice-president, wait a few months and then
break with Russell over some made-up issue, announce that she did
not have any choice, that she had promised her dead husband to
complete his unfinished agenda, but that the President wanted to
take the country in a different direction, one she could not in
conscience follow. The country would have to decide. She would run
for the presidency herself.

Why had not she thought of it before? Russell
could not threaten her with exposure, not after he had vouched for
her honesty and integrity by choosing her to become his own
vice-president. Some of his people might start rumors, but that was
a game two could play. Careful to maintain an air of reserve, she
kept shaking hands, thanking each one for the kind and thoughtful
things they had to say, promising to do everything in her power not
to let them down. The line passed from her to the President, but
she knew they had all come to see her, and he knew it, too. She
could see it in his eyes, this sense that he was an afterthought, a
necessary obligation, a price the crowd was willing to pay for the
chance to first have a few moments with her.

“They all love you, Madelaine,” said the
President when it was finally over and they stood outside.

“They loved Robert,” she replied.

Russell’s smile suggested that they both knew
the truth, knew that the crowd had loved Robert Constable only
because they had not really known him. It also suggested something
deeper, something that Madelaine understood immediately: the crowd
loved her for the same reason.

“I better go,” she remarked coldly. “I have a
very long day tomorrow.”

“I’m sure they’ll all be busy now,” said the
President as he turned and got into the limousine.

She watched the motorcade speed away and
then, full of thoughts of her future, stepped into her own, waiting
car, and headed home. It was ten minutes past eleven. Her mood
began to darken as she remembered the call she had to take in
twenty minutes. Why was Jean Valette calling her, and why now, the
night before the last piece would be in place for what she had been
waiting for all her life?

Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps he just wanted
to offer his own congratulations. Probably he wanted to remind her
that he had always been their friend, she and Robert’s, and that he
hoped he could in some manner be helpful in the future. That was
it. Everyone wanted to remind you of their friendship once you had
a position in which you could do something for them. Perhaps she
ought to tell him that it might be best if they put things on hold
for a while, that things were a little too delicate, to do anything
that might cause someone to start looking at what their
relationship had been like before. Jean Valette would understand.
He was too intelligent not to realize the consequences of making a
mistake at this point.

The house was cloaked in darkness. Two Secret
Service agents escorted Madelaine inside while several others took
up their positions on the grounds. Though she was not yet
vice-president, as the former first lady, and the widow of a slain
president, she had never stopped being under their protection.
Leaving the two agents downstairs, she went up to the privacy of
the second floor. She did not like coming back to an empty house.
She was used to having people around, people who worked for her and
shared her ambitions, people who were always full of ideas, eager,
all of them, to be the first with the latest rumors or the latest
news. She needed that, the constant noise, the constant attention,
the sense of being in the center of things, but tonight she was all
alone. Everyone who worked for her had been at the Kennedy Center,
listening to her speech.

The study was pitch-black. She turned on the
desk lamp and sat down. It was almost eleven-thirty; the call would
come any minute. She glanced at the photographs that covered the
desk, a chronicle of what now seemed ancient history, the times
beyond remembering when she had last had the chance for what might
have been a normal life. She wondered why she still kept them. She
supposed it was to remind her of the price she had paid, and how
that price had been so much greater than what she had originally
imagined. She remembered what it had been like, when she was young
and attractive and every man she met eager to have her, and how she
had known even then that any one of them would be a better husband
than Robert Constable. Knowing it, she had done it anyway, because
Robert Constable was going to be president, and no one was going to
be able to stop him. It seemed odd now, looking back, that she had
never once doubted that extraordinary, improbable fact. She had
known he was going to be president, and she had known that there
was every chance he would make her life a living hell. She had
hoped she might be wrong about that.

The clock struck eleven-thirty. She moistened
her lips and began to rehearse in her mind what she was going to
say. It was so quiet she could hear her own breath. A minute
passed, and then another. She tapped her fingers softly on the
desk’s leather top. Five minutes passed, then ten.

“Damn,” she muttered in frustration. “Five
more minutes, that’s all I’m giving him.” Suddenly, she felt a
strange sensation, one she could not account for, a kind of
warning, a premonition, that something was different, not quite
right. “I’m afraid Jean Valette won’t be calling tonight. I’ve come
instead.” She jumped to her feet, pointing into the darkness the
other side of the room, where from behind the chair in which he had
been sitting, Bobby Hart rose to greet her.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Madelaine Constable stared at Bobby Hart in
wild-eyed disbelief. “Where did you come from you? How did you get
here?”

“What’s the matter, Madelaine? I thought you
would be glad to see me. Didn’t I do everything you asked, try to
find out who killed your husband before - what was it? Yes, I
remember: before all the rumors started and the country tore itself
apart? Didn’t I find out everything you wanted to know about how
much of Robert Constable’s involvement with The Four Sisters could
be traced back to you?”

In the dim light of the desk lamp each
movement cast a shadow on the wall, creating the illusion that they
were on a stage playing to an audience they could not see.

“When I asked you to do that, I didn’t know
you were the one who had had him killed!”

Hart had been sitting in that darkened room
for a long time, waiting for her to come in, waiting to confront
her with what he knew. He had been thinking about what he was going
to say to her, what she was going to say to him, from the moment he
had gotten on the private plane from France. He thought he was
ready for anything, but when he heard this he could barely restrain
himself.

“I was the one who had him killed! You
miserable….Who the hell do you think you are? Your husband was a
liar and a cheat, and the biggest thief who ever held the office,
but you - you’re worse. I know all about you; I know all about you
both. The Four Sisters didn’t come to your husband, he went to
them. He started it, he demanded money, tens of millions, and you
knew all about it, didn’t you? You knew what would happen if
someone got hold of that story; you knew what would happen if he
talked to Quentin Burdick. That’s why you did it - why you had your
husband killed - to protect yourself!”

“That’s a damn lie!” she screamed back. “I’m
going to put an end to this right now.” She picked up the phone,
but Hart caught her by the wrist and forced the receiver back.

“You’re not going to do anything.”

“And just how are you going to stop me?”

“With this, if I have to.” He pulled his
jacket to the side, revealing a pistol tucked into his belt. He saw
the smirk start onto her lips, the arrogant dismissal of what,
despite the gun, she thought an empty threat.

“You think I won’t - after what you’ve done
to me? You think I don’t know how? I remembered well enough when I
had to shoot the son-of-a-bitch who murdered Austin Pearce. Trust
me, I’ll use it if I have to.”

The smirk vanished, replaced with uncertainty
if not yet fear. “Why are you here? What do you want? What do you
hope to prove? Everyone knows what happened, why you had Robert
killed. You think that because you somehow got back into the
country, all you have to do is hold a press conference and announce
that you’re innocent?”

“You’ve already done that for me, today, in
the Rose Garden, you and Russell, when you denied knowing anything
about The Four Sisters. Weren’t you a little worried when you did
that? Didn’t you wonder how much Philip Carlyle really knew?”

“You weren’t there. How do you know the name
of the reporter?”

Hart smiled at her in a way that made her
mouth go dry. “We were for a while both guests at the home of Jean
Valette.”

Darkness swept across her eyes and for a
moment she thought she was about to faint. She took a deep breath
and dropped into the chair. “At the home of Jean Valette,” she
repeated in a lifeless monotone. “I didn’t…. What you said I did -
I didn’t have anything to do with Robert’s murder. I really thought
- when I saw the evidence, the records of payment - I thought what
they said about you was true. But, Jean Valette - why would you,
why would that reporter…?”

Hart had seen too many of the different faces
of Madelaine Constable, too many masks put on for effect, to
believe any of them authentic, especially one as convenient as
this, the practiced look of a woman misunderstood. “You really
believed, when you saw the evidence…? Of course you did. There were
only two people who had something to gain by the President’s death:
Irwin Russell and you. The Four Sisters story would have forced the
President to resign. And you - what chance would you have had to
run for anything after a scandal like that? But instead, Robert
Constable dies, Russell becomes president, and you become - what? -
president-in-waiting? You told me you were going to run against
Russell. Why didn’t you? Nothing could stop you. That’s what you
said. But there was something, wasn’t there? Russell knew about The
Four Sisters, because he had done the same thing as Frank Morris.
Except that Russell didn’t have a conscience, he wasn’t any danger
to the great Robert Constable. Unlike Frank Morris, he didn’t have
to be killed.”