The Candidate (13 page)

ERICA ARRIVES HOME TO FIND Jenny and Becky sitting on opposite living room couches, books in hand, intently if somewhat haltingly having a conversation in French. Both frequently pause to look up words, tenses, pronouns, and the thousand other idiosyncrasies of the language.

“Je suis
impressed,” Erica says.

Becky rolls her eyes and smiles. She's been losing weight and paying more attention to her posture and hair, and is starting to look markedly more attractive. “Don't be. Jenny is teaching
me
.”

“Let's stop now,” Jenny says, slapping her book shut with a frown. And Erica was already dreading this evening.

Becky stands up. “Good night, Jenny.”

Erica walks Becky to the door. “Listen, what's your schedule like on Saturday?”

“I thought you were taking Jenny to the Cloisters?”

Erica grimaces. “I have to go out of town . . .”

Becky waits expectantly. Erica stops there.

“She's really looking forward to it. She was talking about it all night.”

“I really didn't need that information.”

“Of course you didn't. Stupid me. Will you be gone long?”

“Just the day. I'll be back Saturday night.”

“So you're not going far . . . ?”

Erica exhales. “I'm going up to Cambridge to see George Yuan.”

“Oh great. So that project is moving along?”

“Becky, when I'm involved in an ongoing story, sometimes I like to keep things to myself until I see what direction it's heading in. Does that make sense?”

Becky nods.

“When I'm a little further along, I'll bring you on board. You've already been helpful.”

“I can work Saturday. I'll take Jenny up to the Cloisters.”

Erica feels that familiar stab of jealousy. “Maybe not the Cloisters, I was looking forward to seeing it myself.”

“Actually, she's doing a paper on the museum. She told her teacher about it.”

Well, she hasn't told her mother.
“Yes, of course . . . I knew that.”

Becky looks at her doubtfully.

Why is she fibbing to this young woman? Because—when it comes to Jenny and motherhood—she's still a roiling bundle of insecurity, doubt, and guilt.

“By the way, Becky, you're looking terrific.”

Becky smiles—has she had her teeth whitened too?—and leaves.

Erica finds Jenny in her bedroom—her neat-as-a-pin bedroom—laying out her clothes for school tomorrow.

“Hi, honey.”

Jenny grunts a greeting.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

Jenny doesn't look at Erica but makes a great show of pulling out skirts and shirts to consider. “What about?”

“Well, about Saturday, first of all. But also about
us
, about where we're going.”

Jenny wheels on her.
“What about Saturday?
Are you canceling again?”

Erica could kick herself—why did she start with the bad news? She's so inept. “I think I started on the wrong foot here, honey. Could we back up?”

“No. I need to know if you're canceling our trip. I have a paper on the Cloisters due! You care about that job ten thousand times more than you care about me.”

Erica makes a quick decision—and this time there's no fibbing. “No, I am
not
canceling Saturday. Not if you think I shouldn't.”

“I think you shouldn't.”

“Can you at least hear me out for two minutes?” Erica sits on Jenny's bed. “Please, honey, just come sit for a minute and let's talk.” She pats the bed.

Jenny hesitates, then comes over, sits on the edge of the bed, and crosses her arms, looking straight ahead.

“I'm working on a story that I think might be important.
Very
important. I think there might be something wrong with Mike Ortiz.”

Jenny frowns, and Erica can see she's trying to stifle her curiosity, but out it comes. “What do you mean? Like, what wrong?”

“Well, that's just it, honey. I don't know exactly what. But when he came back from his time as a prisoner in Iraq, his affect seemed different, flatter. And he seems to be controlled by his wife, to an unnatural degree.”

“Is that a crime?”

“It's not a crime, per se, but if something . . . unusual . . . did happen while he was a hostage, I think the American people have a right to know it. He could be our next president. I think the Buchanan bombing, the assassination and suicide that followed, and then the hit-and-run of Martin Vander might all be connected to the Ortizes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Right now I have ten questions for every answer. But there's
so much at stake. I feel a real responsibility to follow this investigation. I may come up empty-handed, but I have to try.”

“Do you have to try on Saturday?”

“I have a piece of potential evidence that needs to be examined by an expert up at Harvard. I feel very real time pressure. The nominating convention is coming up, and then it's only a couple of months before the election.”

Jenny looks down and says nothing.

“My offer to cancel still stands.”

“Oh sure, cancel—and then when President Ortiz turns out to be a robot, blame me.”

“That
would
be a weight on your shoulders.”

“If I can handle
you
, I can handle anything.”

Erica can't stifle a laugh.

“There's one thing I want in return.”

“What's that?”

“My allowance raised to thirty dollars.”

“But that's emotional blackmail.”

“Whatever it takes.”

Since those three words are one of Erica's mantras when she's conducting an investigation, what can she say? “All right, thirty it is.”

Jenny sticks out her arm, and mom and daughter shake hands.

“Do you have
any
idea how much I love you?”

“Please don't get all syrupy, Mom.”

Without thinking Erica reaches out and grabs Jenny, pulls her tight to her breast, kisses the top of her head again and again, squeezes her, holds her, hugs her, now and for always.

Then she looks up and sees Becky in the doorway.

“Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt. I forgot my glasses. I knocked and rang the bell, but when there was no answer I tried the door and it was open and so I just came in and got them.” She holds up the retrieved glasses. “Bye now.” Becky disappears.

A shiver races up Erica's spine. She takes Jenny's hands in her own, looks her in the eyes, and says, in her most serious mother voice, “Listen, Jenny, don't mention
anything
to
anyone
about what I told you. Even Becky.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Erica kisses Jenny one last time and then goes and locks the front door. Then she goes to the living room window and looks down. She watches as Becky leaves the building, crosses Central Park West, and then reaches into her bag, takes out her cell phone, and makes a call.

AS HER TRAIN APPROACHES BOSTON'S South Station, Erica's baggage includes more than the briefcase on the seat beside her. She and Boston have a checkered history—this is the town where she first tasted success. And where she wound up in jail for DUI and reckless endangerment. But all that's behind her. Isn't it?

Erica usually finds train trips relaxing, but she's too filled with expectation, even foreboding, to enjoy this one. She's deeply unnerved by Vander's death, which she is growing convinced was murder, flawlessly planned and executed. She's almost afraid to learn what the frail manuscript that she has gingerly tucked into her bag is about.

She leans back in the seat and closes her eyes, hoping to grab a moment of peace—instead, she flashes on Becky standing there in the doorway of Jenny's room, silently watching them. How long was she there? How much did she hear? Was she lurking out of sight, listening, before she appeared in the doorway? Erica tries to quell her doubts about Becky. She's just a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who's trying to get a toehold in the big leagues. Erica remembers her own youthful missteps. And Becky
is
good for Jenny. If Erica replaced Becky it would be a big disruption in Jenny's life. Not to mention her own.

The train comes to a stop, and Erica gets off and heads to the cabstand. She's wearing cream slacks, a blue blouse, and sunglasses as protection against the world—she's in no mood for autographs or selfies or even understated Bostonian expressions of goodwill.

As her cab makes its way through the narrow streets lined with charming old buildings and a palpable sense of history, civility, and respect for tradition, she thinks,
America could use a little more Boston these days.

They reach the Charles River and drive west to Cambridge. The water is sparkling, dotted with sculls and pleasure boats, the sky is blue, but all Erica sees is danger and malevolence, lurking, waiting. All the tradition in the world, all the civility, even all the lovely weather, none of it is protection in the end.

They drive through Harvard Square, jammed with tourists soaking up the Harvardness—sidewalk singers, buskers and magicians, bookstores and cupcake emporiums, clothing stores catering to fourteen-year-old social-media addicts. They reach the vast Harvard campus—passing gates that lead to grassy yards filled with students in the last blush of innocence. They come to Divinity Place, where the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations is housed in an undistinguished redbrick building.

Erica holds her bag close to her chest as she finds the office of George Yuan. The door is open, and when Yuan sees Erica he bounds up out of his chair.

“Welcome to Ye Olde Cambridge. What a pleasure!” Yuan is young, midthirties tops, lean, and bristling with energy, with thick black hair, eyes that beam out a restless intelligence, and a movie-star handsome face he tries to soften with a pair of hip-nerd black glasses. “Sit, sit, make yourself comfortable.”

Erica sits in a chair, expectant—she meets a lot of dynamic people in her business, but they have nothing on George Yuan. He closes the office door, sits, rubs his hands together, and makes a pro forma stab at small talk. “So . . . you found us all right?”

“Yes. As you may know, I used to work in Boston.”

“I do know. You were my favorite newscaster.”

Erica is disarmed by his compliment. George Yuan is a generous guy who has managed to make her feel drawn to him within thirty seconds of meeting. “From what I've read it sounds like you do fascinating work.”

“Oh, I'm just a musty academic. I've always admired people like you, out in the real world, making a difference.” He rubs his hands together again. “So . . . you've brought the manuscript?”

Erica takes the brown-paper-wrapped book out of her bag and hands it to Yuan. He places it on his desk and gently unwraps it. The book sits there and he stares at it for a few moments before opening it at a couple of places—handling the pages as reverently as if it were a Gutenberg Bible. His focus is intense, and Erica's curiosity is becoming almost unbearable. Finally he turns from his desk to her.

“I don't know how much you know of the ancient Chinese texts, sometimes called the canonical texts.”

“That would be somewhere between zero and zilch.”

“They're called the Four Books and Five Classics. They were written before the Qin dynasty unified China in 221 BC, and cover history, philosophy, agriculture, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, religion, art, and literature. Together they provide a priceless record of that ancient neo-Confucian civilization. Probably the most famous in the West is the
I Ching
.”

Erica knows a little bit about China's rich history, and she closely follows the extraordinary trajectory of modern China as it has become the world's economic superpower. But these texts are new to her, 221 BC. That's a long time ago—over 1,600 years before Columbus set foot in the New World. America was home to wildly scattered Native American tribes, while in China the foundations of a highly advanced civilization were being recorded.

“There is one classic text of which so few copies exist that some scholars consider it a fraud, an imposter written centuries later by
generals and military scholars. Other experts, myself included, believe this so-called ‘lost' text is wholly legitimate, but was suppressed at the time because its methodology was rejected by the leaders of the ascendant Qin dynasty.”

“And
this
is that text?”

“Yes. Not an original, obviously. None of the original texts has survived. However, they were transcribed by ensuing generations. I would date this copy back to the late nineteenth century. This is the only time I have ever seen this manuscript outside a museum. It remains controversial, with few scholars taking it seriously. Do you know how Dr. Vander came to have it?”

“He told me he was going to visit Chinatown, but that was the only hint he gave.”

“New York City is home to the largest Chinese population outside China. A lot of secretive commerce takes place there. He may have had a lead to a rare books dealer, perhaps one operating out of his apartment, under the radar. The important thing is, we have this now.”

“You haven't told me what it's about.”

“Well, it's a military text—but it's not about armies and grand strategies and battlefield tactics. No—it covers the philosophy, history, and methodology of a single and peculiar element of military tactics.”

“Which is?”

“Well, the title is
How to Conduct Warfare of the Mind.
”

“YOU LOOK SHOCKED, ERICA,” GEORGE Yuan says.

“I am shocked.” Erica tries to gather herself, to make some sense of what she's just learned. “I don't know what I was expecting, but . . . well, it only heightens my suspicions.”

“Which are?”

Erica is hesitant to open up to Yuan. He seems completely trustworthy, and could possibly even be helpful, but she feels like she's playing with fire—a serious conflagration—and she wants to err on the side of caution.

“I'd rather not go into a lot of detail.”

“Am I right to assume you believe the tactics described in this text are being used today?”

“Is there a translation of the text?”

“Ah, your evasions only add to
my
suspicions.” They exchange a complicit glance. “In Chinese culture we value discretion. In American culture discretion is the better part of failure. I am caught in between.”

“So am I. Has the text been translated?”

“Not that I know of. As I said, it was discredited for centuries and
didn't generate a lot of interest. It's written in ancient Chinese, which is an obsolete language. Finding a translator will be difficult.”

“But you know ancient Chinese?”

“I do.” He leans back in his chair, locks his fingers behind his head, and stretches out his elbows—a gesture that shows off his lithe, toned body. “Okay, I'll take a stab at it.”

“Seriously?”

“I'm up to my neck in my new book—but it will be nice to work on something relevant.”

“I'm so appreciative.”

There's a pause, and as the room goes quiet the mood shifts. Yuan grows serious, even somber, and he leans forward, elbow on knees. “Erica, from what I know of this book, it is dark.
Very
dark. It goes to places in the human soul that are pure evil. If you're dealing with people who are using it, you are in danger. Do you understand?”

Erica nods.

“Are you sure you want to move forward with this?”

“I am. I believe the arc of history bends toward justice. I want to add my weight, my strength, to bending it.”

There's another pause as he considers her words. Then he says, “I am with you, Erica. As an ally. And as a friend.” He reaches out and clasps her hand.

As Erica walks down the sidewalk to her waiting car, she is touched by Yuan's pledge, renewed and recharged. Up above her is the cobalt blue sky, and all around her, bright, idealistic young people walk and talk and laugh and play—there
is
decency and justice in the world, and she wants to make it more secure for those coming up behind her. For Jenny. Erica's spirits soar. Then she looks over her shoulder and sees a dark cloud bank sweeping in from the west.

And she didn't bring an umbrella.