Grand Master (26 page)

“It appears that you’ll have to inform the
Secretary that the Senator got away.”

What neither Austin Pearce nor Aaron Wolfe
could know was how close Bobby Hart had come to being caught. Less
than a minute after he made his way out of building and walked
through the back gate of the embassy, less than a minute after
Pearce stalling tactic finally failed, the alarm had been sounded
and no one was allowed in or out. Hart was in the streets of Paris,
safe for the moment, but with no clear idea what he should do
next.

The streets were full of traffic, and full of
noise; the sidewalks packed with smart-looking women and
well-dressed men. Hart moved quickly, trying to put the embassy as
far behind him as he could, but not so quickly as to draw
attention. It was a windless, sultry summer day, the sun a tattered
reddish disk fastened to the thick fabric of a gray oppressive sky.
There was perspiration on his face and dampness on his palms and he
laughed a little at his own sudden doubt how much was because of
the weather and how much his own fear. He stopped and looked
around, and wondered what he was looking for. Unless someone was
running after him, shouting his name, how would he know which face
in the thousand faces he saw on the street belonged to someone
trying to find him? No one was after him, he told himself, not now,
after he was out of the embassy. The only place anyone would know
where to look for him was the hotel where he and Austin Pearce had
checked in that morning; and that was the one place he was not
going to go. He was safe so long as he clung to the anonymity of
the crowd; safe until evening came and he could go to Aaron Wolfe’s
apartment and, if Wolfe had done what he had asked, begin to track
down Jean Valette and get to the truth.

He walked slower, more under control. He had
to think, to try to understand what had happened, why from being
asked to find out what he could about the murder of Robert
Constable, he was now thought to be the person responsible, the
head of some fictitious conspiracy. Start at the beginning, he told
himself; remember how you first got involved, what you were asked
to do. Go back to the beginning and start from there.

“Madelaine Constable!” he muttered between
his teeth. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he shook his head at
how easily he had been used. Helen had been right about her; Helen
was always right when it came to the motivations of ambitious
people. And Austin Pearce had been right as well. Madelaine
Constable’s husband had been murdered, but all she was worried
about whether anyone could trace back to her The Four Sisters and
Jean Valette. But why was she worried about that? - Because of the
damage it would do to her husband’s reputation and, more
importantly, her own chance at the presidency? That’s what Pearce
had thought, or rather had suspected as a possibility. And he may
have been right, especially after what she had said that last time
they met, upstairs, in her study at home: that flagrant lie she was
willing to tell, that ruthless determination to keep the secret of
the President’s murder from coming out, the contempt with which she
had announced that she was going to run for the presidency and that
nothing could stop her from getting what she wanted. That seemed to
be at the core of it, the devil’s bargain she had made to protect
The Four Sisters, cover up a murder in order to hide the truth of
what her husband had done.

It all made sense, and, as Hart realized
immediately, it did not make any sense at all. Everyone now knew
that the President had been murdered. The cover-up had failed. Or
had it? Was it possible that it had been part of the plan from the
beginning, to let the truth come out about the murder, because
whoever was involved understood that it could never been kept
secret for very long? Had he not told her himself that he would not
let it stay secret, that there would have to be an investigation.
Was it part of the plan from the beginning to get him involved, and
then blame the murder on him? Madelaine Constable had brought him
into it, but had she done that on her own, or had she been acting
at the direction of someone else, someone like Jean Valette,
desperate to cover all traces of what The Four Sisters had
done?

Hart walked for blocks in the sizzling Paris
heat, oblivious of everything except the logic of his own
entrapment. He felt like a character in a novel by Kafka, damned by
an accusation he did not understand. There could be no evidence
against him: he had not done anything. Or had he? Was there some
link he did not know about between he and the woman who had been
with Constable that night? Could someone have been that clever,
that diabolical, planned the crime so far in advance, and in such
precise detail, that there would exist some documentation - a
photograph perhaps - that would make it seem that he had known her
and… He remembered something Quentin Burdick had told him, how part
of the evidence used against Frank Morris had been an account in
the Caymans Morris did not know he had. A shiver ran up his
spine.

He checked his watch. He still had hours to
wait before he could go to the address Aaron Wolfe had given him.
Across the street was a sidewalk café. He could sit somewhere out
of the way, have something cold to drink in the shadows and try to
think. Moving slowly in the enveloping heat, he stepped off the
curb. He did not notice the black Mercedes that turned past him
until he heard the ragged noise of screeching brakes and squealing
tires. “There he is!” shouted one of the men who jumped out to the
two others who quickly followed.

Hart wheeled around and bolted, an adrenalin
rush giving him more speed than he knew he had. Weaving in and out
of startled pedestrians, banging into several he could not avoid,
he ran as hard as he could. He looked back over his shoulder and
for a moment thought he had lost them, and then, suddenly, the same
car shot past him in the street, slammed on the brakes and started
backing up. Hart sprinted forward, moving close to the buildings
until he reached the next corner where he turned and headed down a
narrow street jammed with cars. With no room to pass and the
traffic stalled, drivers cursed at each other as they leaned on
their horns.

The car following him could not follow him
here. There was a cross street just ahead. Once he turned the
corner his pursuers would not know where he had gone. He jumped
across the front hood of a tan Peugeot and started running up the
sidewalk on the other side. He felt a surge of confidence, a sense
that he could not be caught; the feeling, brought by danger, that
he was indestructible. He wanted to turn around and make some last
gesture of defiance - give them the finger - before he hit the
corner and disappeared. It was arrogance, pure and simple, and he
reveled in it - until he felt something whiz past his ear and, an
instant later, heard the shot. Then he forgot all about defiance,
all about everything, except an instinct for survival.

He darted into the first doorway he found,
hit the door full speed with his shoulder and forced his way
inside. He was in the back of a restaurant, in the middle of the
kitchen, and then he was shoving past an outraged waiter though a
maze of tables crowded with eager diners, out through the front
door onto the sidewalk on the other side. A middle aged couple was
just getting into a taxi. Smiling an apology, he got in with them,
and when they started screaming at him in French, said in English
that he was a United States senator and that he was very sorry for
the inconvenience but that someone was trying to kill him. The
couple looked at each other, knew he was an American, decided he
was crazy, and asked him where he would like to go.

“Not far,” replied Hart. “I’ll just ride
along for a few blocks, if you don’t mind.”

The woman, Parisian down to her shoes, seemed
amused.

“Are you really a United States senator?” she
asked quite calmly.

Hart was looking out the window, his eyes
darting all around, searching for anyone that might still be trying
to follow him. His heart was racing, every muscle in his body
tense. The strange, the unexpected thing, was that he was enjoying
it: not just the sense of danger, but his own reaction, the speed
with which he had made his decision, the absence of any real panic.
There was nothing like a bullet whizzing past you, nothing like the
threat of violent death, to make you feel alive.

“Reagan said that,” he remarked, turning to
the woman as if, instead of perfect strangers, she had been privy
to his thoughts. “When he was shot,” he explained. “He said there
was nothing more exhilarating. Reagan could always deliver a line,
especially when it belonged to someone else. Churchill said it
first, in something he wrote, about the last cavalry battle ever
fought. He was in it.”

He saw the mild astonishment on the woman’s
face. His eyes were full of mischief at what he had done.

“Yes, I am a member of the United States
Senate; and yes, to that other question you are too polite to ask -
I probably have lost my mind.”

The taxi was just passing the Eiffel Tower on
its way toward a bridge that crossed the Seine. Hart had the driver
pull off to the side. He started to get out, remembered he had been
an uninvited guest on someone else’s ride, and paid enough to cover
the fare for wherever the couple wanted to go. He watched them
travel on across the bridge on their way to the Left Bank, and
wondered what they would think when they learned later that the
crazy American they had just ridden with was wanted for murder, and
not just any murder, but the murder of the President. It might have
been only vanity, or more likely self-respect, but he wanted to
believe that no one who had spent time with him, even two French
strangers in a Paris taxi, would believe he could have had anything
to do with something as unthinkable as that. Though he did not know
their names, and would never see them again, he felt almost as if
they were friends. It was absurd, of course; but only, he realized,
if you were not facing the prospect of your own, imminent death.
Then the last face you saw, the last voice you heard, the last,
momentary connection with another human being, had more meaning
than what you had known of someone with whom you might have had a
brief conversation, exchanged a few, meaningless words, every day
for years. He watched the cab recede into the distance and with a
wistful glance wished two strangers well.

“Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he
mumbled to himself as he started walking. “And for God’s sake - try
to think!”

He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile,
collecting his thoughts, trying to make sense of things, when he
remembered that he had not done the one thing he should have done
as soon as he was out of the embassy and free on the streets. It
was one thing to ask Austin Pearce, but this was something he had
to do himself. He might be in danger, but Helen was in trouble.
Even safe in Santa Barbara, reporters would be all over this,
camped out in the street, badgering her with questions she could
not answer about her husband’s involvement in the assassination of
the President. He pulled out his cell phone and started to call,
but then he remembered that it was only late morning on the east
coast and Helen was booked on a ten o’clock flight.

“If she ever got to the airport,” he said out
loud. He stopped walking and looked around. He had changed
directions and come back along the river until he was only a
stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. He dialed the number, but
Helen did not answer. Perhaps she had gotten away before the story
broke, but that did not seem possible, if it was in all the morning
papers. Maybe she saw it, the headlines in an airport newsstand,
and remembered what he had told her, how important it was that he
know she was safe, and had gotten on the flight instead of turning
back to find out what was going on in Washington. He called Santa
Barbara. At least there would be a message waiting for her when she
arrived. “I’m all right,” he told her as calmly as he could. “Stay
there, wait for me. I know who is behind this, and it won’t take
long to prove it.” It was one of the few lies he had ever told
her.

Turning away from the Eiffel Tower and the
long lines of tourists, he walked toward a landing on the river
where he bought a ticket for an open boat ride under the bridges of
Paris. Just as he was about to board, he heard someone speak his
name. Several women, Americans from the sound of their voices, who
had already taken their seats, where pointing at him as they
whispered among themselves. Pretending that he had misplaced
something, Hart left his place in line and began to walk away.

“That’s him!” yelled one of the women,
jumping to her feet. “That’s Bobby Hart - the one who killed the
President!”

Hart kept moving, walking at the same,
measured pace, trying to lose himself in the crowd. The other women
started shouting as well, a strident chorus of accusation, shouting
until they were red in the fact, but to their astonishment, and
Hart’s relief, no one seemed to pay attention, dismissing with
French indifference the shouted demands of the Americans.

Even in Paris he could not pass unnoticed.
Anywhere on the street he might pass an American, a tourist out for
a stroll, and be recognized, and, recognized, accused. He was a
fugitive who, even in a foreign capital, could not count on
anonymity. There was no time to alter his appearance, no time to
change the color of his hair, but he could at least change his
clothes, get out of his suit and tie and dress more like a man who
lived there. He found a small men’s store where he bought a pair of
black pants, a short, two button brown jacket, a pair of walking
shoes, and a green colored shirt. The proprietor bundled up his
suit and dress shoes in a brown paper package.