Grand Master (40 page)

Allen stood mesmerized, convinced against all
reason and logic that she was right, that there was something
uncanny and inexplicable about the things she knew. He watched her
lift the receiver, watched her eyes come alive before it was even
close enough to hear, watched a broad triumphant smile streak
across her face at the voice she somehow knew would be there, and
heard the whispered shout as she spoke out loud the name that meant
more to her than life itself. He watched as the joy turned serious
and she began to make another effort to be brave. “He’s coming
home,” she said when she hung up. “He called from the plane. He
lands in two hours.”

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

The message, delivered that morning by
courier, could not have been more explicit. Jean Valette would call
that night at eleven thirty, that it was a matter of some urgency,
and that she should be there. Madelaine Constable knew she had to
take the call, knew that she could not afford to get on the wrong
side of Jean Valette, but the timing was all wrong. There was too
much at stake, too many things that had to be done just right, to
start worrying about the past. The President had been dead only a
few weeks, and now the country had been informed that he had been
murdered by a senator, the husband of a woman with whom he had been
sleeping. She was not just walking a fine line; she was walking two
of them at once. She was both the widow grieving for her dead
husband and the victim of his infidelity; a woman who loved her
husband and hated what he had done; a woman who while dealing with
all of that was about to become the Vice-President of the United
States. She had to convey an inner strength, the courage to
confront death and betrayal and rise above them, forgive the injury
and honor the memory of a man who, with all his faults, both she
and the country had chosen. She practiced in the mirror a smile
best suited to express both sadness and gratitude.

She could not say that she was excited that
she was about to be named vice-president, to take the post vacated
by the man who had now taken her husband’s place; she could not say
that she looked forward to next summer’s convention when she and
Irwin Russell would be nominated to run in their own right for
those two offices. She said instead that no one was better equipped
than Irwin Russell to continue the work her husband had started and
that she was glad to now have a chance to make some small
contribution of her own.

They stood together in the Rose Garden on a
sultry, sun-drenched afternoon, the new President and the woman
whose name he was sending to the Hill for confirmation as the new
Vice-President. Hundreds of reporters sat on folding chairs while
the television cameras captured the event for the evening news. It
was a formal announcement, a matter of public importance, done with
dignity and respect. The President read his statement and the
soon-to-be vice-president made a brief reply. There was time for a
few questions.

The questions were polite and mainly about
process: How long would it take the House to act? Would there be
hearings or, given the circumstances, would the House proceed
directly to a vote? There was a tacit understanding that this was
not the occasion to ask anything about the murder of Robert
Constable or the sensational accusations made against the Senator
now on the run somewhere in Europe. One reporter did ask whether
Russell had considered anyone else for the vice-presidency, or
whether ‘Mrs. Constable’ had been his only choice.

During his long years in the Congress,
Russell had been known as diligent, hard-working and dull, but
also, unlike many of his colleagues, modest and self-effacing.
There was none of that now. He was confident, decisive, without any
apparent doubts about anything.

“There was no one else. The choice was
obvious. Madelaine Constable changed the definition of first lady.
No one knows more about the way government works. No one is more
dedicated to public service. And let me add: No one cares more
about others and less about herself. I think the record proves
that,” he said in a way that by its very ambiguity reminded
everyone of what she had gone through with her husband.

“I have a question for Mrs. Constable!”
shouted a young reporter at the end of the first row. “Philip
Carlyle of the New York Times. Do you intend to report the money
that you and your husband received over the years from a financial
institution in France, tens of millions of dollars from The Four
Sisters?”

Madelaine Constable stiffened, but only for
an instant, and then she had the look of a woman used to being
treated badly.

“I think you’re referring to certain
charitable contributions made to one of the foundations established
by my husband to provide assistance to people who need it,” she
replied with a weary, and much put upon expression. “That has been
reported every year, so far as I know, by the people responsible. I
was not involved in any of that, so I could not say with complete
certainty, but I believe that to be true.”

She turned away, but Carlyle was not
finished. “No, I’m talking about tens of millions of dollars paid
into various accounts, money that benefited you directly. Do you
have any comment?”

“You’ve obviously been misinformed.” She
looked at him as if she had suddenly realized what he was saying.
“You think my husband, who, whatever human faults he may have had,
dedicated his life to this country, would have done something like
that - taken money from someone? What kind of people do you think
we are? You really ought to know what you’re talking about before
you ask a question like that!”

“You deny it then?”

“Of course I deny it! I’ve never done
anything like that in my life!”

Careful to get it down exactly the way she
said it, Carlyle did not fail to notice that she had shifted ground
and was now talking only about what she had done. Not that it
mattered, given what he had learned.

“President Russell!” he shouted as he
scribbled the last few words in his notebook. “Do you have any
comment, anything you would like to say about The Four
Sisters?”

If Russell heard the question, he ignored it.
With a quick smile and a brief wave he thanked everyone and with
Madelaine Constable beside him walked toward the West Wing as if
everything had gone just as planned. Privately, the President was
furious. “I thought this story died with your husband,” he said
with a withering glance.

Madelaine Constable ignored him. She looked
around the Oval Office, noticing the changes. The photographs on
the credenza were now pictures of Russell and his dowdy middle-aged
wife, pictures of their children and their grandchildren,
traditional family pictures instead of the endless gallery of
famous and important people that Robert Constable had kept there to
remind himself how far he had come from his hardscrabble beginnings
in America’s heartland. Russell had not yet replaced the desk, the
one that had been used by Theodore Roosevelt, the one that
Constable had chosen to paint himself as less partisan than some of
his immediate predecessors, the desk that seemed to give him
tangible proof that he was as good, or could be as good, as the
great ones had been.

“This ‘story,’ as you put it,” she replied
finally, “is the only reason you’re sitting in that chair. I
wouldn’t think you could have forgotten that.” No one sat down in
the Oval Office until they were first invited to do so, but
Madelaine did not think she needed anyone’s permission. She took a
chair in front of the desk and began to remove her gloves.

“How much do you think he knows?” asked
Russell. The lines in his forehead deepened with worry. “It seemed
like he knew a lot. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Everything was
supposed to be taken care of. Atwood said -”

“Atwood said!” cried Madelaine angrily.
“You’re really quite pathetic! You decide you want something, but
you’re afraid to go get it. You spent too much of your life making
deals. You should have stayed in Congress! You can’t compromise
your way out of this! You knew what you were doing when you got
involved, when you blackmailed your way onto the ticket four years
ago.”

Russell’s face turned red. The veins in his
temples throbbed. “I did no such thing! If anything, it was the
other way round. It was your idea - his idea -, not mine!”

A dismissive smile spread across her face and
stayed there, taunting him with her indifference to how he chose to
remember things. He could rewrite the past any way he wished; what
was important was what they had to do now. “No one can prove
anything, not if we keep our story straight. That reporter -
Carlyle - maybe he learned something from Quentin Burdick, but all
he has are questions. He doesn’t know anything.”

Russell was not so sure. “Burdick may not
have known anything either,” he said with a caustic glance. “And
look what happened to Robert.” They stared at each other, reluctant
to say anything more about the murder that had led to this, a
forced marriage of ambition that neither of them had wanted.

“None of this would have happened, if it had
not been for The Four Sisters. I tried to warn him. Even after it
started, I tried to get him to stop. I told him there was too much
to lose, that sooner or later someone would find out, but nothing
was ever enough for him. He thought that nothing could touch him,
that he was indestructible; and then, when the whole thing started
to come undone, when that damn Burdick started asking questions, he
was like some scared kid, caught trying to steal something. He
could have lied his way through it, but he was too much a coward
for that. He would have told Burdick everything, and tried to blame
it all on other people.” She looked straight at Russell. “But you
won’t have a problem doing what you have to do, will you?”

Russell picked up the telephone. “Will you
send in Mr. Atwood.”

He turned back to Madelaine. “I think you’re
right. No one is going to be much interested in something that may
have happened between President Constable and some investment firm
overseas. The only thing the public wants to know is when we’re
going to catch the man responsible for his murder.”

A moment later, the door opened and Clarence
Atwood stepped inside.

“Sit down,” said Russell, gesturing
impatiently toward the chair next to the one Madelaine was
occupying. “What’s happened since I talked to you this
morning?”

Atwood seemed nervous, ill at ease. His
shoulders slouched forward; his jaw began to tighten. He looked
from Russell to Madelaine and then back to the President.
“Nothing.”

“Nothing, nothing at all? You don’t know
anything about where he has disappeared?”

“He’s not in Paris... At least we don’t think
he is.”

Russell glared at him. He had expected more
than this. “The FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service - all the
resources of this government, and the help of other governments as
well - and the best you can do is tell us that you don’t think he’s
still in Paris?”

Atwood bent his lanky frame closer to the
President. “We have run into some problems with the French.”

“What kind of problems?” demanded Madelaine.
“There aren’t supposed to be any problems - remember? You knew how
to take care of everything!”

Atwood’s head snapped around. There was open
defiance in his eyes, challenging her to say what she meant. She
stared right back, daring him to try to force her hand.

“What kind of problems?” asked Russell in a
firm voice. “What do the French want?”

“They want to know what two men from our
embassy were doing, whose authority they were acting on, when they
broke into the apartment of our political attaché and killed him
along with Austin Pearce.”

Russell and Madelaine exchanged a worried
glance and then looked at Atwood. Russell could barely speak.
“They’re convinced that Hart was not involved?”

“They know Hart was not involved. There was a
witness. She was talking to Hart when the shooting started.”

“What have the French been told?” asked
Madelaine, her own voice suddenly weak and hollow. “That they must
have been acting on their own, but that we’re conducting an
investigation to make sure.”

“Do they believe that?”

“No, Mrs. Constable, they don’t. They not
only know that Hart was not involved, they know he tried to save
Austin Pearce. They’ve started asking questions. They think that
there must have been a reason why two men from the embassy - they
know the functions they performed - killed Pearce and the other
guy. They think it was because of what they had learned from Hart.
They think that someone in the government - this government -
arranged the murder of the President and is now trying to blame it
on the Senator.”

“The French can believe whatever the hell
they want!” cried Madelaine in a rage. “There’s nothing to link any
of us to that! Who’s going to pay any attention to some vague
suspicion of the French police?”

A bitter smile cut hard across Atwood’s
crooked mouth. “For one, that same reporter - Philip Carlyle - who
was asking questions about The Four Sisters. He just got back from
Paris, where he was spending time with the detective investigating
Pearce’s murder.”

The President stood up, a sign that the
meeting was over. There was only one thing he wanted to know. “Can
you control this?”

Atwood thought about it for a moment, and
then nodded slowly. “I’ll take care of it.”

Madelaine and the President were left alone.
For a long time, neither of them said anything.

“You didn’t know anything about your
husband’s financial dealings,” presently said Russell. “You have no
reason to think he ever did anything with this investment firm, The
Four Sisters, or anyone else, that was not what it should have
been. There were a number of contributors to the various
foundations that the President established to do good works. Other
people took care of that. You had your own work inside the White
House, trying to help the people of this country.”