Palace Council (48 page)

“I don't believe that. People should know the truth.”

Lanning shook his head. “No, Eddie. Not your version of the truth. The nation will never abide your truth, Eddie. And, in any case, your people would not survive it.” He glanced at his watch. “The hour is late, Eddie. I would still rather have you as an ally than an enemy, but, in any case, I'm afraid our meeting is at an end.”

“You won't get away with this.”

“You're welcome to try to prevent it. But do consider the consequences.” The grin turned cold and wicked. The Senator moved toward the door. His aide stepped aside. “Perry, see our guest out. Eddie, a pleasure as always. I'll say your goodbyes to Margot.”

(IV)

I
N THE FOYER
, Eddie turned to his silent escort.

“What about you, Perry? You loved Junie once. Are you going to let him get away with this?”

“With what?” He was holding the door open. The street was empty. The sun had risen during the argument with Lanning. Now it was Sunday morning, bright and clear and cold and quiet. “The nation is going to move, or we are going to move it. Nothing takes precedence, Eddie. Nothing.”

“Perry, come on. He ruined Junie's life. She committed terrible crimes—”

“Of her own volition.”

Eddie ignored this. “And then he left her to rot. Searching for those children. One of them his. Maybe both.”

Perry stroked his goatee. “You would sacrifice the whole darker nation for the sake of your sister, wouldn't you?”

Eddie decided not to take a swing at him, because it would never land. “I don't believe that to be the actual choice I'm facing.”

“If it were, however, you wouldn't hesitate, would you?” When Eddie did not answer at once, Perry grew animated. “You've read
Paradise Lost,
Eddie. A hundred times by now, I'll bet. Remember how it ends?”

A tight nod. “Adam and Eve march off into the world.”

“That's right, Eddie. They look back, and Paradise has been closed to them, defended with gates and armies and flames. They walk into the world because they have no choice. They listened to the serpent—the Tempter, the Paramount, the Author, Milton uses all of these—they listened, and the gates closed behind them. Because they must.” He pointed into the house. “You think
this
is the whole of the Project? You think Lanning Frost in the White House is the answer to my father's dreams? Because, if that's what you think, you're wrong. The Project is larger, and separate. And it cannot be stopped.”

“But this election—”

“Lanning Frost is an opportunity, no more. Random chance. My Aunt Sumner decided to move to the Midwest and pass into whiteness. Margot's father fell in love with her. Lanning fell in love with Margot. We didn't plan any of that, Eddie. How could we? But we would be dimwits indeed to take no advantage of it. My father began the negotiations with Elliott Van Epp. He didn't foresee all of this, but, still, the plan is essentially his. If Lanning wins, the community moves a centimeter closer to justice. And, yes, I will be there next door to the Oval Office to make sure that he does what is necessary on the matters most important to our people. If, on the other hand, Lanning loses, the community will be no worse off. Because the Project endures.” His eyes bright, gazing into the triumphant future. “The hour for stopping us is past, Eddie. Our victory is coming. Believe me. We are going to shake the throne. If not this decade, then next. You could have been a part of it. You are a worthy adversary, Eddie.”

“Decades,” said Eddie. “That's why you need the heirs.”

“We are patient men.”

“Don't touch Locke. Don't you dare touch him. He will never be a part of your Project. Never. If you try to recruit him, I'll kill you.”

Perry seemed amused. “Boys grow into men, Eddie. Men make up their own minds. But that's a question for some other time.” His eyes glittered. Malice. Triumph. “What matters, Eddie, is that now, at last, the Project is back on track. Lanning as President makes our path easier, but we can do it without him.”

Eddie said, “I don't care about the Project. It's Lanning I want to stop.”

“So stop him,” said Perry. “This question of your sister is between you and Lanning Frost. We have no position in the matter.”

“But—”

“We are not amoral, Eddie, nor are we entire fools. We did not kill Philmont Castle. We did not kill Belt or either of the Garlands.” His eyes were bright, and confident, and insane. “What matters to us is the Project. Not Lanning Frost. Not the presidential election of 1976. Only the Project. If you can come up with a way to bring down Lanning Frost without harming the Project, we will not interfere.” A wry grimace. “I cannot of course speak for the Senator himself.”

“What about the consequences Lanning predicted?”

Perry Mount, leader of the Palace Council, tilted his handsome head to the side. “We could not permit those consequences to come about, Eddie.”

“Spell it out.”

“What you do with Lanning Frost's secrets is up to you. What you do with ours, on the other hand…”

“Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Switch the envelopes. Make sure I got the clues about Lanning and Junie instead of whatever it was Belt swiped from Los Alamos. You got Leona to make a switch. Or that pastor. The Russians weren't buying secrets about presidential contenders. That entire scenario was for my benefit. How would they know whose secrets to buy, so many years in advance of an election? No. They wanted nuclear secrets from Los Alamos, and Joseph Belt supplied them, just like Hoover said. Somebody in Charleston tossed the photos the Russians wanted and replaced them with the letters and the note from Phil Castle. Then, later, somebody else added the note about D. H. Lawrence. But only after you were sure I would be coming to get the envelope. The first note—‘His wife has it'—that was from Castle, wasn't it? He wrote it for Langston Hughes, so in case anything happened, he'd know where the testament was. The Council intercepted the note but couldn't solve it, so you left it for me. And the note about the tragic age—that was your handwriting, wasn't it, Perry? Your insurance policy.”

A smile might have flickered over the tired face. It lasted no more than half a second, and, later, Eddie could not have said for sure. But it looked that way. “I really don't know what you're talking about. I was in graduate school.”

“You wanted me to know. You wanted the information out there, just in case Lanning got out of control.”

“You give us too much credit, Eddie. Or too much blame.”

“It's been you all along. Spreading the breadcrumbs for me to follow. Even when you tortured me in Hong Kong. You weren't trying to make me quit. You were hoping I'd be so angry I'd keep looking. I hadn't found any confirmation in Vietnam, so you did what you did to me to give me confirmation.”

Perry might have been stone.

“That's why you're giving me permission, isn't it? You
did
miscalculate. Frost
is
out of control. You
do
want me to stop him.” He covered his mouth briefly. “You don't want Lanning to be President, do you? You believed the clippings in the paper about how he was a dope. Everybody did. Only he turns out to be smarter than you thought he was. More independent. More—” He saw it. “You're scared of him. He's a killer. He hired Collier to find the testament, and now he has the whole list. Everyone who was at your father's meeting. And you can't touch him, can you? All those wonderful reasons he gave me in the kitchen, reasons why I dare not kill him or even try to bring him down—he was talking to
you,
wasn't he? Reminding
you
who's really in charge!”

“Speculation,” Perry snapped.

“Maybe. But why else would you waste all this time with me, instead of ordering me into the street?” Eddie laughed. “Okay, maybe I have it wrong. Maybe George Collier doesn't even work for Frost. But if he does, the Palace Council is in terrible trouble, isn't it? The monster turns on its maker? Or maybe you're living the scene at the end of
Paradise Lost
when God transforms Satan into a serpent permanently, and all he can do is crawl around on his belly and hiss. That's you, isn't it? You're crawling and hissing and hoping I'll do your dirty work for you. Oh, Perry!”

When the retired intelligence officer kept his face professionally blank, Eddie turned and stalked out into the morning cold. He swung back around, meaning to tell Perry that he was nobody's pawn, but the door was already closed. It was nearing six. Across P Street, Sunday gawkers had already begun to gather, along with a lone protester, whose sign proclaimed that the right to burn the flag would be the last to go.

(V)

E
DDIE WALKED ALONG
P S
TREET
to Twenty-seventh, then down to Dumbarton. There was a church there, of stout red brick, First Baptist of Georgetown, founded by a former slave in 1862, and still thriving, even though the surrounding community from which it had once drawn its congregation had turned white, and uninterested. Eddie was just in time for morning services. Peeking around on the off chance somebody he knew might notice, he slipped inside, sat in the back, and waited. After a moment, Aurelia joined him.

“What happened?”

“I failed.”

“Failed?” Grabbing his arm. “Failed how?”

He sat back, closing his eyes. “Nixon is out, but I didn't have anything to do with it. He'll resign within the year. I'm sorry, Aurie.”

“And—and Lanning?”

Eddie was a long moment answering. “Lanning Frost is going to be the next President of the United States.”

CHAPTER
67

A Promise

(I)

A
YEAR AND A HALF LATER,
Eddie and Aurelia sat on the sofa in the back room of his house on Albemarle Street, watching the disapproving countenance of America's most famous newsman reporting President Gerald Ford's pardon of his predecessor, Richard Milhous Nixon.

“Poor Dick,” said Aurelia, who had never forgotten his kindnesses.

Her head was on Eddie's shoulder. He was playing with her hair, worn lately in a large Afro after the style of Angela Davis. Eddie kissed her forehead. “He wasn't a good President.”

“He didn't deserve what happened to him.”

Eddie considered Nixon's two secret selves, both betraying his love of conspiracy: the paranoid worries that, together, led to the series of misdeeds known collectively as Watergate; and his presence at the meeting at Burton Mount's house when plans were laid for the creation of Perpetual Agony. Perhaps Nixon had joined the Project for Elliott Van Epp's reasons, persuaded that the existence on American soil of violent revolutionaries would help slow or even reverse the pace of social change. Whatever Nixon's motives, Eddie knew what Wesley Senior would have said: Richard Nixon had sown discord, and, predictably, reaped the whirlwind.

“He did deserve it,” Eddie said, marveling at what a spellbinder Burton Mount must have been, to win liberal support for his mad Project by talk of racial justice, and conservative support by talk of turning the nation back to its traditions.

Aurelia bit him on the neck. “Worse men than Dick have retired with honor.” She considered. “And gotten away with a lot more.”

Eddie decided not to pursue it. He kissed her again, then hopped to his feet. Aurelia, lounging in a robe, watched him taking a couple of books from the shelf, reaching behind them. She sipped her wine. She knew what was coming. She was sitting in her robe. Her legs had been curled beneath her, but now she put her feet on the floor, firming her will for the obligatory scene. It was late August. Aurelia's second novel, another romance, was selling briskly. Locke was on the Vineyard with Claire and Oliver and their children. Tomorrow Aurie would drive to New York City to pick up Zora, who was interning for the summer at the
Times.
The next day she would pick up Locke on the Cape. A week later, Zora, who had skipped a grade, would return to Radcliffe for her sophomore year, and Locke would begin his junior year of high school. But first there was the obligatory scene with Eddie.

On the television, Lanning Frost was talking about restoring America's greatness. The Senator had grown remarkably articulate over the past two years, but nobody seemed to notice.

Eddie switched off the set.

“We might be facing eight years of him. No need to start now.”

“Second the motion,” Aurie answered, but weakly.

She sat very straight, watching the man she loved pull the neatly wrapped box from its hiding place. He had not offered her a ring in almost a year. It was time for him to ask her, time for her to refuse even though she could not tell him why, time for him to grow first hurt, then angry, time for them to exchange words that could not be withdrawn, time for them to spend a chilly night in separate beds before she left at first light.

Aurelia steeled herself as he settled beside her, box in hand. He did not extend his arm.

“Eddie,” she began.

He kissed her gently, to shush her, then kissed her again.

Aurelia turned her head away. “I'm sorry,” she said.

But Eddie was smiling. The box had not budged. “I'm going to give you this,” he said, “in December.”

“December?”

“Right after Christmas. It'll give you something to look forward to.”

“Please, Eddie. Don't do this.”

He kissed her again, taking his time. “Remember what Granny Vee told you about how patience is a virtue because your future lies ahead of you? Well, she was right. We can be patient, Aurie, because in December you'll say yes. Right after Christmas.”

“No, Eddie. I won't.”

“You'll be going to Mona's, right? Like you always do?”

“Probably,” she said, feeling soft and vulnerable, irritated at the ease with which he could make her feel this way.

“I'll meet you there.”

“Why?”

“Because I know why you won't marry me.”

(II)

F
OR FOUR MONTHS,
Aurelia wondered. She taught her classes, she tried not to hover over her son, she made notes for a new novel. But at night, as she lay alone in bed in the house on Fall Creek Drive, sleep eluded her. Aurelia had never been a night owl, but now she conducted clandestine conversations with Mona in the wee hours. Eddie doesn't know anything, Mona assured her over and over. He's bluffing. He's just trying to rattle you. But Mona sounded rattled herself. “You're the one who dragged me into this,” said Mona one windswept October night. “I'm not sorry, sweetie—I'm glad—but you're in a funny position to come to me with second thoughts.”

After that, Aurelia called less often.

That fall, she saw Eddie twice.

The first time was in late September, when they served together on a panel at Duke on the future of Afro-American fiction. Everybody knew of their relationship, of course, and their hosts had offered to let them share a hotel suite, but they took separate rooms. At the panel, the two famous authors disagreed heatedly on whether the writers of the darker nation should simply tell stories, as Aurelia thought, or use their work to push an ideological agenda, as Eddie insisted. The astonished audience wondered what had happened to everybody's favorite literary couple. That night, their lovemaking was so fierce it was almost combative, and afterward, Aurelia asked Eddie what he was fighting against.

“The past,” said Eddie, dressing to return to his own room. “The present.”

“Not the future?”

He shook his head. “Our future is going to be wonderful.”

“Eddie—”

“I promise. After Christmas, your last excuse will disappear.”

The second time she saw Eddie was in late October. She had just finished her graduate seminar, and was crossing the Quad in the company of a student. The woman was white and flaxen and dedicated to the literature of the darker nation, which had been virulently suppressed, as she put it, by the white male literary establishment, which saw black people as simply a lower form of woman, or perhaps the other way around—Aurie could never get it straight. The student gesticulated wildly, raving about how the poetry of Eloise Bibb had never been sufficiently appreciated. As they passed the brooding statue of Andrew Dickson White, the university's co-founder, there was Eddie, lazing on the crumbling stone bench with its optimistic inscription:
ABOVE ALL NATIONS IS HUMANITY
.

“The poetry of Eloise Bibb,” Eddie said—to the graduate student, not to Aurelia—“is unappreciated because it is entirely derivative.” He smiled at the young woman's confusion. “You should select another topic for your dissertation.”

In her office in Goldwin Smith Hall, Aurelia fought to keep from laughing. She glared as hard as she could. “You've never heard of Eloise Bibb in your life.”

“True.”

“Bibb was a genius. Especially for her time, writing in the South.”

“If you say so.”

“You know Nancy recognized you. Poor thing. The great Edward Trotter Wesley just told her to pick another subject. Now she'll have to start over.”

“You're the great Aurelia Treene Garland. You can set her straight.”

Aurelia sat down. Another part of her was still angry from North Carolina. “What do you want, Eddie? What are you doing here?” She shoved papers around on her desk, frantic to keep her hands busy, lest they hug him by mistake. “I thought you were going to Zaire for the fight. Aren't you doing an essay for
Rolling Stone
or something?”

“For
Saturday Review.
I'm leaving tomorrow. I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Foreman is going to destroy him.” She did not know why she could no longer have a real conversation with the man she had loved all these years. “Ali could be injured, Eddie. Seriously injured.”

“Aurelia—”

“I can't stand the thought of him going out this way.”

“Will you stop for a minute and listen?”

“All right. What is it?”

Unbidden, Eddie moved a stack of student papers and sat in a rickety chair. “I wanted to tell you, before I left. I've done the cleanup work. It's over.”

“The cleanup work?”

“I went to the Vineyard. The librarian was very helpful. She pulled the newspapers from the summer of 1952. The Council was smarter than we thought. They hid the meeting in plain sight.”

“How? It wasn't a fund-raiser for Dick. Oliver told me. You remember. I don't think he would lie.”

Eddie smiled briefly. “I think Oliver was having a little fun with you. True, it wasn't a fund-raiser for Nixon. It was a fund-raiser for Elliott Van Epp. Nobody on the Island would pay the slightest attention to a Republican Senator raising money from his rich buddies.”

“But Nixon—”

“He isn't mentioned in the stories, Aurie. Not until a couple of weeks later. It seems he was an unannounced guest. In more ways than one, I'm betting. I'm sure Matty brought him, to impress Burton.” Serious again. “Not counting Nixon only two of the men mentioned in the testament are still alive. I've visited both. They won't talk. They're afraid. They're old, and they're afraid.”

Aurelia was playing with a gold pencil. “Maybe they should talk. Maybe we shouldn't sweep it under the rug.” Then she saw his point. “You and I know what happened at that meeting, too. Should we be afraid?”

“There's nobody left to be afraid of.”

“Yes, there is. The same person they're afraid of. Lanning Frost.” She remembered Eddie's empty face when they met at the church. “You said he can't hurt us—”

“He can't.”

“How do you know?”

“I'll tell you in December.”

“Eddie—”

“After you say yes.”

Aurelia rubbed her forehead. She felt a migraine coming on. “Please stop, Eddie. I'm not saying yes. Not now, not in December, not ever. I can't.”

His smile was weatherproof. “Well, kiss me goodbye anyway.”

She did. But only for a while.

(III)

T
HE FOLLOWING NIGHT,
at a dinner party in the suburb of Cayuga Heights, she found herself seated beside Tristan Hadley, now happily divorced, who still on odd occasions came sniffing around her. Tris dominated the table, as he always did, and tonight he wanted to talk about Lanning Frost, whom he planned to support for President next time around. Aurelia suffered in silence until somebody pointed to her, reminding the table that her late husband had worked for the Senator.

“Kevin just raised a little money for him,” she muttered, hardly lifting her eyes.

After dinner, Tris Hadley walked Aurie to her car.

“That was clever of you,” he said.

“What was?”

“Pretending that your husband was less than he really was.”

Aurelia, who had been keeping half a step ahead of him on the leaf-strewn street, the better to avoid his hand on her elbow, stopped and swung around. His self-important blue eyes had a hungry flicker. Steady, she told herself. Calm down. Tris is just having his fun. You've seen the names of the men who were at Burton Mount's meeting, and none was a Hadley.

“Kevin was a Republican all his life,” she said. “As far as I know, Lanning was the only Democrat he ever supported.”

“What your husband did for him was a little bit beyond the call of duty.”

Again Aurelia swayed on her feet. But no. No. Surely he only meant what everybody else believed, that loyal Kevin had thrown his body in front of Lanning's.

“He wasn't a hero,” she said. “He was just there.”

“All I'm saying is, I see why you're anti-Frost.”

“I'm not.”

“Sure you are. It's in your eyes. Your voice. You can't stand him. It's because you blame him, isn't it? For Kevin.”

“What?”

“I understand, Aurie. Believe me. I'm here if you ever need to talk.”

Aurelia should have wept. Or slapped his arrogant face. Instead, she laughed. To their mutual surprise. Threw her head back and howled at the magnitude of Tristan's error.

“You're a silly man,” she said, more warmly than either of them would have expected. At least he had made her feel attractive, at the very moment when she had begun to wonder. “Sometimes you can even be sweet.” She got up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “But, please, Tristan, dear, try to get it through your swelled head that I am never, ever going to bed with you.”

She slipped into her car, leaving him on the sidewalk. Heading back to Fall Creek Drive, Aurelia wondered what Eddie thought he knew, and how he intended to make her marry him. She remembered the night back in college, when Mona had taken too many pills. Aurelia had dragged her unwilling friend to the hospital, bearing her bleary invective. A week later, fully recovered, Mona had promised Aurie that when the day came, she would do as big a favor in return. A few years ago, Aurie had finally asked. Mona had come through. Hugely. Secretly. Aurelia shivered. If Eddie had somehow uncovered the secret—

But it was impossible.

She hoped.

(IV)

E
DDIE WAS AWAY
for two months. After Zaire, where Muhammad Ali unexpectedly knocked out the formidable George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” Eddie returned to Kampala to lecture at Makerere University, but by this time the college once known as the Harvard of Africa had fallen under the sway of President Idi Amin, who had exiled many prominent members of the faculty, and Eddie left after just two weeks. Depressed, he wandered. He spent a few days in London, a few more in Paris, and a week visiting friends near Toulouse, where he was thinking he might buy a cottage. At each stop, American intelligence took a look, because he was still on their watch lists. His sister, the dangerous radical, had never been found. Although her organization had died, and the search for her officially stood down, there remained the hope that she might turn up. And Eddie, who knew exactly what was going on, had his fun leading the watchers into the dankest alleys in the chilliest hours of the wettest nights, only to return to his bed without having spoken to a soul.