Grand Master (23 page)

“Must have thought?” asked Allen as Burdick
got to his feet. “What do you mean?”

Burdick tapped his fingers on the package he
held in his other arm.

“There is a reason why Russell ran for
vice-president, and it isn’t what anyone thinks. Russell did not
have a choice. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that; not
yet, before I check a few things first. Would you tell the Senator
when he calls that I’ll be back in New York sometime late tonight
and that I need to see him right away?”

All the way to the airport, all the way on
the flight to New York, Quentin Burdick kept hold of the package.
The only time he let go of it was when he passed through security
at the airport, and then he held his breath, afraid that if he took
his eyes off it even for a moment it might disappear. He was still
holding onto it on the cab ride into Manhattan when Bobby Hart
finally called.

“We keep missing each other,” said Hart.
“Where are you? David said you were coming back to New York
tonight.”

“I just got in. I’m in a cab, just a few
blocks from the apartment.”

“You’re not going back there, are you?” asked
Hart, worried. “After your place was broken into, I thought you
were staying in a hotel.”

“I did, for a couple of days; but I couldn’t
stay there forever. I have to see you. I know it’s late, but is it
possible tonight? I’ve just gotten something - I was in D.C.
and…well, never mind; I’ll explain later. But it changes
everything, all of it, The Four Sisters - the whole story about
what happened that night. Look, can you come now, right away - my
place on 63rd? You’ve been there before. Half an hour? Perfect.
I’ll see you then.”

Burdick began to relax. He had his story, the
story of a lifetime, and as for the rest of it, Bobby Hart would
know what to do, how to stop what had started from going any
farther. He paid the cab driver and got out in front of the pre-war
building on East 63rd where he had lived for the better part of the
last twenty years. He was home, and even if, unlike California, the
heat was almost as bad late at night as it was during the day, he
could not imagine living anywhere other than Manhattan. Though he
could not sing a note, the words ‘I like New York in June,’ ran
through his eager mind as if he were sitting somewhere in a jazz
joint listening to some kid, some bright new talent, play a riff of
it on the piano.

“Hello, Mr. Burdick,” said a woman with a
soft, breathless voice.

He was just at the entrance, on the first of
the three short steps that led to the door. He turned and saw a
late night apparition, a gorgeous young woman in a blue silk dress.
She had that expensive, New York look, a woman who was used to
money.

“Good evening,” said Burdick, smiling to
himself at how much she reminded him of the endless, priceless
vanity of things, the way the city drew everyone to it, the promise
of what was just waiting for you to take it, if you were young and
ambitious and beautiful and rich.

“I love reading the things you write,” she
said, sliding closer.

She had the brightest, most entrancing smile
Burdick thought he had ever seen. She was still smiling at him,
looking right in his eyes, when he realized that he had seen her
before, seen her in photographs, six of them.

“You -!” he cried out, and then he felt it,
the gun pressed hard against his stomach, and then, an instant
later, everything went black and he did not feel anything.

Several people passed by on the sidewalk
while Quentin Burdick’s dead body lay on the landing, three steps
up, but if any of them noticed, none of them stopped. He lay there,
in a pool of blood, his eyes frozen in a vacant stare, until a cab
pulled up and Bobby Hart arrived. Before Hart was halfway across
the sidewalk, he knew that Burdick was dead. He bent down beside
him to make sure, and then called 911. He did not think that it was
a robbery, but he checked for Burdick’s wallet just to make sure.
It was still in his jacket pocket and Burdick’s watch was still on
his wrist. David Allen had told him something about a package that
Burdick had treated as if it were the most valuable thing he owned.
Hart glanced around, but there was nothing there; if Burdick had
had it with him, it was gone.

He wanted to close Quentin Burdick’s eyes, to
give him that much peace, but he reminded himself that this was now
a murder scene and he had better not do anything more than he
already had. So he sat down on the step and in the humid summer
heat waited for the police, promising himself, and promising his
friend, Quentin Burdick, that this was going to be one New York
murder that did not go unsolved. Then he pulled out his cell phone
and called Austin Pearce. “Quentin Burdick has been murdered. We
better leave tonight.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Helen tried to make a joke of it, teasing him
about flying off to Paris with Austin Pearce instead of her, when
he called from the airport to tell her where he was going, but he
did not laugh, and she knew that something serious had happened.
“What is it, Bobby? - Tell me.”

“Quentin Burdick - He’s been murdered.”

“Murdered, like the others, like the
President, like…?”

“I found him on the steps to his building.”
He did not add any of the details. He did not want to tell her, and
she did not want to know. “It’s all connected somehow: what
happened to Constable, what happened to Frank Morris…and now
Quentin Burdick. I had to find out. Whatever is going on, someone
has to stop it.”

She wanted to tell him that someone else
could do it, she wanted to tell him to come home, tell him that she
could not survive if anything happened to him, but she knew that if
stayed home safe he would think himself a coward, and so she did
not tell him anything except that she loved him and wished he did
not have to go.

“Go home tomorrow,” he told her; “go home to
Santa Barbara. I’ll fly out as soon as I get back.”

There was a long pause. There was something
he did not want to tell her, something that she had already heard
in his voice. “You don’t think it’s safe here; you think that the
same people who murdered Quentin Burdick might be coming after you!
That’s why you don’t want me to stay, why you want me to
leave.”

“Promise me - you’ll go tomorrow, first
thing.”

“I’ll need to phone the airline, I’ll need
-”

“It’s been taken care of. You’re on a ten
o’clock flight. Now try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before you
know it.”

Helen slept, but only for a few minutes at a
time; and even then she might as well have been awake: the only
difference whether what she feared the most darkened her
imagination or came to her in dreams. Bobby slept, but only for the
last two hours of the flight, and only then because he knew he
needed it to get through what he knew was waiting for him in Paris.
After five minutes with the American ambassador he began to wonder
if any amount of rest would have helped him keep his eyes open.
Andrew Malreaux was among the most profoundly dull-witted men he
had ever met.

“France is a really interesting country,”
remarked the ambassador as if he were sharing a fact that not many
people knew or could be expected to know. “Interesting people,
interesting buildings, interesting food - interesting language,
too, once you get the hang of it.” He said this with a bright,
confidential look, as of one who has, after some effort, achieved
the competence required to make a considered judgment.

In response, Austin Pearce spoke to him in
near perfect French. The ambassador squinted and nervously
scratched his chin. “I got some of that,” he said, confirming with
a silent nod of his head that he had indeed understood at least a
few of the words.

Pearce beamed approval. “Your French lessons
are coming along, then? You’ve certainly improved.”

“Yes, well, I work hard at it. One of these
days, I might even catch up with you, Austin. You never know.”

“That’s true, Andrew: You never do. We don’t
want to take up any more of your time. Did you have a chance to
arrange to have…?”

The ambassador stared at him, waiting to be
reminded what it was he was supposed to have done.

“You were going to have someone brief us on
someone. I’m sure you didn’t forget.”

“No, of course not. That was…?”

“Jean de la Valette, the head of a banking
firm that the Senator wants to know more about.”

“Valette! Yes, of course. Follow me.” He
turned and led his two visitors down a long hallway. “The head of
our political section - Aaron Wolfe, very intelligent fellow: Yale,
Yale Law - has put something together.” He stopped in front of the
second door from the end. “Poor Robert Constable! He had it all,
and then, just like that, he’s gone. Tell me, are the rumors true:
Was there a woman with him that night - Is that how he died? I
imagine that’s the way he would have wanted to go: He always did
like a good piece of ass.” Malreaux started to smile at the thought
of it, but the smile died on his lips. “I have to admit, though, I
didn’t much like it when he made a pass at my wife.”

“Angelique?” asked Pearce, rather surprised.
Malreaux had only married her the year before.

“No, the one before - Alexis. Remember her?
Not sure that was the only pass he ever made at her, either. Not
sure, to tell the plain truth about it, that the son of a bitch
wasn’t successful.” The memory of a former wife’s possible deceit
was now just that - a memory; and if Malreaux knew how to do
anything, it was how to forget. His former wife was gone, and now
so was the President who might have taken more than just his money.
“What’s going to happen now, with Russell, I mean? Do you think
he’ll run, or will she?”

Pearce seemed to ponder the question, to take
seriously what the ambassador wanted to know. He put his hand on
his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. “Chances are that
one of them will.”

“Yes, I think you’re probably right,” said
the ambassador, after thinking about it a moment. “In fact, I’m
almost sure of it.” Suddenly, he remembered who he was with. His
face reddened slightly as he turned to Hart. “I’m not sure I should
tell you this, but I suppose it can’t do any harm now: The
Constables thought you might run when his second term was over.
They were worried about it. Those of us who had raised money for
him were being asked to get ready to do the same thing for her.
They thought that if she had all the money locked up, you’d have to
think twice about getting into it.”

He said this with a look that suggested he
did not think it would have worked, and, that he would not have
minded if it had not; a look that said his relationship with the
Constables was as transitory, as dependent on immediate need, as
any other type of investment. Malreaux may not have known anything
of history or culture, or anything else of lasting importance, but
he had, like other men of business, an instinct for his own
advantage. “Any chance you might do it, run this time?” he asked
point blank. “She’ll beat Russell, if he tries to run; but you can
beat her. You’re the only one who can.”

“I didn’t have any plans to run before,”
replied Hart, an oblique reference to the calculation, bordering on
paranoia, with which the Constables had planned their campaigns. “I
certainly don’t have any now.”

It was exactly what someone who was planning
to run would say. No one shut the door on the chance to be
president. “If things change,” said Malreaux with a knowing smile,
“there may be some things I can do.” Nodding his satisfaction at
the prospect, he opened the door to the conference room and
introduced his two guests to the head of the embassy’s political
section. Then, begging other, pressing commitments, he left them
alone and, full of news, hurried off to his next appointment.

Aaron Wolfe was all business. The head of the
embassy’s political section through several changes of
administration, he had seen ambassadors come and go. A career
foreign service officer, he kept his opinions to himself and
offered advice only when he was asked to do so. Though it might
seem a paradox to others, he preferred serving under an ambassador
like Andrew Malreaux to one who came to the position thinking that
he knew something about the French. Malreaux had no choice but to
depend upon him; certain others, like Malreaux’s immediate
predecessor, thought that because they had lived in Paris for a few
months in their twenties, or read a few French novels in their
forties, knew everything there was to know and could decide things
on their own. Wolfe was only thirty eight, but intellectually,
especially compared to the ambassador, he felt ancient.

“The ambassador asked me to tell you what we
know about The Four Sisters,” he said, folding his hands in front
of him. He was sitting at the head of an oblong conference table, a
map of France on the wall behind him. Hart and Austin Pearce had
been directed to chairs on opposite sides. The windows behind Hart
looked out on the interior courtyard of the embassy. “This isn’t
usually the sort of thing we share,” continued Wolfe. “Senator
Hart, of course, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee
would have access to everything we have - through the normal State
Department channels; and as Secretary of Treasury, you, Mr. Pearce,
would have been entitled to the same information, and by means of
the same process. I mention this only because -”

“Because you’re not sure the ambassador
hasn’t made a mistake, and you don’t want to find yourself being
hung out to dry,” said Hart, with a friendly, earnest look that
took Wolfe off guard. Hart bent forward on his elbows. “I can’t
tell you why we’re here, I can’t….” He seemed to change his mind,
to wonder why he was continuing the pretense, why he did not just
tell him the truth and impress upon him the urgency of what they
needed to know. He glanced across at Austin Pearce to make certain
Pearce would not object.