Palace Council (50 page)

Before he could answer, the telephone rang in another room.

(III)

W
HEN
J
UNIE CAME BACK,
she did not sit. She had changed into a thicker sweater, as if talking to her brother had chilled instead of warming her. Her arms were crossed, and her eyes were lost. “It's time for you to go,” she said.

“Junie—”

“Gwen.”

“Gwen. Who was on the phone?”

“The FBI. The CIA. My boyfriend. My girlfriend. What difference does it make?” She pointed to the front window. “Aurie is out there worrying. Probably freezing, too. You should go.”

“We could invite her in—”

“No.”

Eddie clenched his fists, fighting the frustration. He did not know what he had expected, but he had not expected this. “Junie—Gwen—look. I'll come back. As often as you'll let me. Every week, every month, whatever suits your—”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, you can't come back.”

“Sure I can. It's not that far, and—”

Junie lifted her palm and covered his mouth, the way she used to. A ghostly smile danced across her lips. “That's not what I mean, bro. Sorry. This time I'm the one who has to be selfish, not you.” Her hand fell to her lap. The fingers trembled. “I'm sorry, Eddie. I am. But I can't let you get close to me. If you come up here once, well, fine, you're visiting Mona. You come twice, and all your friends—the Bureau, the Agency, Lanning, everybody—they'll wonder why. A third time, and everybody will come sniffing around. My cover's good, but not great. What keeps it intact is, nobody has any reason to look behind it, and, well, nobody has the resources to investigate every woman of my age in the country. The easiest plan is to follow you until you lead them to me.”

Junie crossed the room, tugged the curtain aside, peeked. She did not turn back toward the room. Her shoulders shook, and Eddie supposed she was crying, but he knew better than to offer comfort. It occurred to him, far too late, that among the many reasons his sister had kept her distance all these years was the undeniable fact that he had indeed once served as an informant for the FBI, in the capture of Rudolf Abel. Junie herself had arranged it.

“I'm where I am, Eddie,” she resumed after a moment. “I've made my peace. I can't have my old life back. So I have this one. I do my art, I teach my students, and, every now and then, I see my kids.” She let the curtain fall. “The alternative is to go to Algeria or someplace, or else to go to prison. They've got indictments waiting for me everywhere.”

“But you didn't do anything,” Eddie protested, a bit stupidly. “You were just—the whole thing—it was imaginary.”

“Agony did a lot of things,” said Junie.

“You didn't do them personally.”

“I was the commander, brother of mine, and that makes me liable.” A harsh laugh. “And, besides. You have no idea what I did.” She swung around and, for a moment, the gray eyes went flinty. “No idea,” she repeated.

Eddie could not meet her gaze. It implied too much that he would rather not envision. He wondered whether she ever confided in anyone, but knew at once that she did not. These despairing arguments with herself were all Junie had. Life alone is a terrible thing.

“Okay,” he said.

“You should go.” This brought his head up. Junie's cheeks puffed out with the effort of holding in whatever she was really feeling.

“I just got here,” said Eddie, his limbs in any case too leaden for him to rise.

“You still should go.”

“I have a question.”

She shook her head. Her voice was steel. Commander M. “No, brother of mine. No questions. I'm not going to tell you where I've been or how I got here or who else helped me. I'm not going to tell you the names of my six best lovers or my six worst enemies.” She read something in his face. “What do you want me to do, bro? Go to the newspapers? Call my congressman? I'd be dead before anybody answered the phone.”

Eddie saw this quite clearly. “What I want to know is—Junie, look. I've read the memo. Castle's testament. I know about the meeting at Burton Mount's house. I know who was present. I know why they picked you to lead Agony. They were looking for somebody who would see to it that no real harm was done. You were a pacifist, Junie. Wouldn't hurt a fly. That's why they picked you.”

“I'm not going to discuss it,” she repeated, and turned stubbornly away.

“I'm not asking about the history, sis. How you got involved in Agony, any of that. I just have one question, and it isn't about the past. It's about now, Junie. I want to know if you're still a pacifist.”

“It's late, brother of mine.”

Still Eddie could not budge. “Those threats against the Senator. Those are genuine. Those are from you.” Junie said nothing. She was playing with the cat again, tickling its nape. “You're just keeping him off balance, right? You don't actually intend to do anything about it.” The cat was occupying all of her attention now. She caressed it with both hands, calling the creature sweetheart and baby and snookums, and the cat mewled and stretched with pleasure. Eddie tried again. “You don't want him to forget what he owes you. What he did to you. That's his punishment, right? Not being allowed to forget?”

“He ruined my life,” said Junie, mostly to the cat. “Yes, mmmm, yes, he did, the bad man ruined Mommy's life, didn't he, sweetheart?” She shook the cat's cheeks. “He ruined my life. Look at me, bro. He ruined my life, and he deserves to suffer.”

“Yes. He does. To suffer. That's all.” He quoted Wesley Senior, who had measured his daughter's crimes not according to the Bible but according to Gandhi: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh, meaning you agree?”

Junie stood up, the cat now on her shoulder. “You better go,” she said, and her smile was like an unforgettable but hopelessly distant summer. “Before the bad guys start wondering where you are.”

Their hug was brief, and felt like mourning.

(IV)

W
HEN
E
DDIE CLIMBED BACK
into the car, face stony, Aurelia started to speak, to apologize, to explain. Eddie covered her mouth with his hand. He kissed her. Then he leaned across her and opened the glove compartment. Inside was the jeweler's box. He handed it to her.

“No more secrets,” he said. “That's the only rule.”

Aurelia looked at him. Feeling queasy, she opened the box and took out the ring. It was old and heavy, and she guessed it must be an heirloom. Perhaps it had belonged to his late mother. She looked at him again, pondering. Time for the fine old truth. Mira the cat watched from the window. Gwen was nowhere to be seen.

“This time I'm not changing my name,” Aurie said.

EPILOGUE

The Retirement Party

(I)

O
N THE SECOND
S
ATURDAY
in March of 1975, Edward Trotter Wesley Junior married Aurelia Treene Garland in a private ceremony at the bride's home on Fall Creek Drive in Ithaca, New York. The groom was attended by Gary Fatek, the bride by Mona Veazie. There were few other guests. Marcella represented the groom's family. Nobody represented the bride's, but her son and daughter jointly escorted her down the aisle. The afternoon was unexpectedly warm, so the small reception was moved out onto the lawn. Gary led off the toasts, just as he had at Aurie's first wedding twenty years ago. Mona watched him closely. Of course, there were still people in the well-to-do corners of the darker nation who believed that the Hilliman heir was the father of Mona's children, but the rumors would die with the generation that had spawned them. Black America was so spread now. The trickle of the middle class out of their segregated neighborhoods had become a flood, and the younger generation would spend less energy than their parents on what Langston Hughes used to call colored
sassiety.

Eddie watched Gary, too. He now understood his old friend's furtiveness. He had been caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. Gary must have been the other link, the person who had helped Junie escape, and whom she had refused to name. That was why Aurie had been so upset at the thought that he might have betrayed them. It would have taken money and connections to set up Junie's emergence from underground. Gary had both, and, back then, would have done anything for Mona.

Including allow those rumors to spread, the lie so juicy that nobody would imagine a different truth.

By five, the weather had cooled a bit, and the guests had departed. Zora left early, for the drive back to Cambridge. Locke, on spring break from school, left with Mona and her children for a week in New Hampshire. The honeymoon would be in the Caribbean. Eddie had already packed his wife's station wagon for the quick jaunt to Tompkins County Airport. Waiting downstairs for her to decide she was presentable, he walked from room to room. The house was so big, but this was where Aurelia wanted to live. She loved Cornell, and she loved Ithaca. She had blossomed here, and did not want to risk unblossoming. Eddie was a man of the city, but he supposed he could write anywhere. Besides, Washington held no further attraction for him. He was through with politics.

For a moment the pain rose, the realization that he could never see Junie again. But he wrestled it down, as he had every day for the past couple of months, and he supposed he might have to wrestle it down every day for the next thirty years.

Never mind. Junie was past. It was as simple as that. Junie was past, and Aurie was future. He had to live in the future.

He stood at the bottom of the sweeping staircase. “Are you almost ready?” he called.

“One minute, honey.”

“You said that half an hour ago.”

“Get used to it, buster.”

He checked his watch. “We'll miss the plane.”

“There's another one at nine-thirty.”

“We'll miss our connection. We'll have to spend the night in New York.”

“Then leave me alone and let me dress.”

Eddie smiled. He took an apple from the fruit bowl on the dining-room table, then settled onto the bench seat in the foyer with a copy of Toni Morrison's latest novel.

The doorbell rang. Eddie put the book down, supposing that a late gift was being delivered.

He was wrong.

George Collier stood on the front step.

“Let's walk,” the killer said.

(II)

“W
E HAVE A PROBLEM,
Mr. Wesley.”

“We do?”

Collier nodded. He was wearing a windbreaker and jeans. The jacket was zipped but loose and bulky. Eddie wondered what it concealed. “I've decided to retire from my current line of work. Time to turn it over to the youngsters.”

They had reached the suspension bridge. Collier stood aside, indicating with a sweep of the hand that Eddie should precede him. As they traded places, Collier glanced up at the house. Eddie had no need to do the same. He had told Aurelia only that he would be right back. He knew she would be watching from the window.

“The trouble is,” Collier resumed, “that a man who does what I do doesn't generally leave witnesses around. People who can get him into trouble.”

“I can see how that would be a problem,” said Eddie, hoping the blond man's attention might slacken for a moment, giving Eddie a ghost of a chance to shove him over the fence, down the two-hundred-foot drop into the gorge.

“You could get me into serious trouble, Mr. Wesley.” He pointed over his shoulder. “So could your wife. If she has any sense, she's hunting for her gun right now.”

“She has a lot of sense.”

“No doubt. However, I have her gun.” He patted one of the many bulges in the jacket.

“I see,” said Eddie, waiting. They were standing in the middle of the bridge, leaning on the rail, the surface rocking slowly in the wind.

“You're thinking I'm here to kill you.”

“The notion crossed my mind.”

“That would be silly of me, killing you in Ithaca. If I wanted you dead, Mr. Wesley, I'd wait for you and your lovely wife on Eleuthera. Honeymooners drown all the time.” Collier patted Eddie's shoulder. “No. I'm here to offer you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“I told you the people I was working for insisted that I keep you alive. Now I guess I know why. They didn't dare harm a hair on your head, did they? Because she would do something about it. Expose their secrets. Their connection to Agony.”

Eddie rounded on him then, furious and fearful. “You—you didn't—”

“But I did, Mr. Wesley. It's your own fault. You left plenty of clues. I've been to Norwich. Don't give me that look. You sister remains”—he seemed to search for the word—“undisturbed.” A pause. “For the moment.”

“What do you want, Collier?”

“A simple exchange. You leave me alone, I leave you alone.”

“And Junie?”

“You mean Gwen. I leave her alone. I'm going into retirement, like I said. I have a farm, and I'm staying there. I'm even getting married. Oh, and, by the way, congratulations.” That yellow grin. “You do see the point, don't you, Mr. Wesley? If the FBI drops in on me one day, if one of my former clients sends a hit squad after me, well, I'll know who sent them. I can find you. I can find your wife. I can find your sister. Follow me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then I wish you a pleasant honeymoon.” The killer stuck out his hand. Eddie did not shake. Collier shrugged. “You're probably right. We're not friends. We're not anything, really.” He adjusted his jacket. “Well, all right. We won't meet again, Mr. Wesley. One last job, and then I'm through.”

Eddie's eyes narrowed. “One last job?”

Collier nodded. “You don't want to know.”

“True. I don't.”

But he was remembering what Collier had said to him after killing Benjamin Mellor:
Do you think because I'm a hired gun I don't care about my country?
And his words to Aurelia, at Lanning Frost's apartment years ago:
There certainly exist people, Mrs. Garland, who are not worth protecting.

“If and when it happens—” Collier began, and stopped.

Eddie took his cue. “I won't say a word.”

“That is correct, Mr. Wesley. You won't. Because you know what happens if you do.” He straightened up. He said, without turning, “It's all right, Mrs. Wesley. You can put down the knife.”

“My last name,” said Aurelia, “is Treene.” But she lowered her hand.

“All the way down, please.”

At a nod from her husband, she let the knife clatter to the concrete surface. Never looking back, Collier gave the knife a kick. It bounced, then spun, then slid beneath the fence, tumbling toward the creek below. Eddie watched it glisten bravely, then vanish suddenly, like the hopes of youth.

“Do we have a deal?” said Collier.

“Yes,” said Eddie, arms now around his wife.

“Yes,” said Aurelia.

“Good.”

Eddie met the killer's pale eyes. America was so violent a country. Assassinations had become almost commonplace. People expected them. The television networks loved them, because everybody tuned in. Horror and disaster were the nation's most popular spectator sports. Perhaps that was the true American Angle. People watched, and cried, and hugged the familiar ever closer. Wesley Senior would have called it holding tight to that which is good. Eddie found himself drawing his wife into his protective embrace. Lanning Frost, to whom next year's election had been all but conceded, was a terrible man who had done terrible things. His march to the Oval Office was fueled by violence. Yet he, too, had a family that loved him. More than that, there was a way to stop such men. Indictments. Impeachments. Trials. The country, in an agony of righteousness, had turned one President out of office, without resorting to murder. Might there not be energy to do it a second time?

Maybe. Maybe not.

“What you're planning,” said Aurelia suddenly, “is wrong.” So she had been thinking along the same lines.

Once more the killer bared his teeth. “
Wrong.
I like the sound of that word. Short and to the point. I wonder what it means.” He shrugged. “Tell you what, Mrs. Wesley. The day America looks up the definition, and cares? I will, too.”

He turned and, for the last time, left them.