A shrewd grin full of false confidence flashed across Bobby Hart’s fine, straight mouth.
“At least I won’t be alone.”
Pearce had anticipated the point.
“Because of course I can confirm that you told me almost immediately what you had learned, and that this isn’t some recent fabrication on your part. All right: I agree we can’t afford to wait. This has to come out; the country has to know. The president was murdered and we damn well have to go after the people who did it.”
“She must have suspected what had happened, that it had something to do with The Four Sisters,” said Hart with all the force of a sudden realization. “If she knew what was going on, if she knew about the money, if she knew-or even if she only suspected-what her husband was going to talk to Burdick about-that’s why she wanted it kept secret, why she wanted me to find out what I could: so she could know for certain if The Four Sisters-if Jean de la Valette-was behind it. She’s afraid of the scandal, for what it would do to his reputation-with all that means for her own ambition. The president is on the take and gets killed when he’s about to talk! It’s the end of everything for her if that comes out.”
Austin Pearce sat down. He beat two fingers hard against the arms of the chair, and then leaned back and, as if he were seeing it for the first time, a visitor in someone else’s home, made an idle inspection of the room. He seemed to approve of what he saw, the rows of well-read books all neatly arranged, the pair of portraits of men he had never known, Italian noblemen from three centuries ago, painted by an artist whose name was now, like theirs, buried in the vast obscurity of time.
“She’s going to run,” he said presently. “I’m almost certain of it. Russell as president!-It’s a caretaker government. That’s certainly the way she sees it, at least. This isn’t just the best chance she’ll ever have; it’s better than the chance she had before, when Robert was alive. There would have been resistance then, serious resistance to what everyone would have seen as a third term for the Constables. But now that he’s dead, now that she is the brave and grieving widow, no one looks at it like that. She can run to finish what he started, what he would have done himself if he had not died. The sympathy for her in the country right now is overwhelming. Even if Irwin Russell wanted to run, get elected in his own right, I’m afraid he wouldn’t have much chance. Strange the way things change. She used to be seen as someone trying to take advantage of what her husband had achieved; now she is seen as the only one who can complete his work.” Pearce slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “You’re going to tell Burdick everything?”
“What choice is there-help cover up a murder?”
“He’ll have to contact her to ask her response, ask whether she can confirm that her husband was killed.”
“Maybe that will force her to tell the truth,” replied Hart, unconvinced. “Maybe when she knows he’s going with the story, that there isn’t anything she can do to stop it, she’ll decide she can’t afford to lie.”
“I wouldn’t bet too much on it. She has another problem to worry about,” said Pearce. His eyes darted all around before settling on a point just beyond where Hart sat waiting. “If they killed her husband because of what he knew, why couldn’t the same thing happen to her? It may not just be the scandal she’s worried about-what would happen if the world learns about her husband’s involvement with The Four Sisters-she may be worried about her life.”
Hart did not feel sympathetic.
“Even if she won’t talk about what she knows, there are other people, people who don’t have the same fear, or the same ambition. Clarence Atwood-”
“Will do exactly what she wants him to do, just like she said,” interjected Pearce. “As long as he thinks she might become president. Look what kind of leverage this gives him, knowing what he knows, if she pulls it off. She’ll have to give him anything he wants.”
“There’s the agent,” insisted Hart, “the one who was there that night. I gave his name to Burdick. He didn’t strike me as the type that could be convinced to cover up something like this, not the way he feels about what he did with the woman, the hired assassin he helped get away.”
“If they haven’t already shipped him out to some place in South America,” said Pearce with a skeptical glance. “The important thing is that we tell Burdick what we know. Once he has the story, once that happens, everything changes.” Pearce suddenly remembered. “Jean de la Valette. There’s still no proof he was involved. We don’t have what the lawyers call circumstantial evidence. Well, after Burdick runs his story, no one will be able to stop an investigation getting started.”
Pearce was thinking fast, trying to put everything together.
“I have to make a call.” He started toward his study, thought of something else, and turned around. “Why don’t you call Burdick? Try to see him right away; tonight, if possible.” He smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you what to do. Actually, don’t call Burdick just yet. Let me make this call first.” He glanced at the antique clock on the mantel. “It’s only five in the morning in Paris, but he’s always bragging about how early he gets up.”
When Austin Pearce came back ten minutes later he was shaking his head.
“He was up, all right-in the middle of his French lesson, he had to tell me right away.” Pearce dropped into his favorite chair, spread his legs out in front of him, and with a look of helpless astonishment shook his head again. “Five years he’s been there, the American ambassador to France, and almost every time I talk to him he has to tell me how his stupid French lessons are coming!”
Hart began to share in the astonishment.
“He doesn’t speak French?”
“No, even after five years-well, that’s not fair: it overstates the effort. He is a man of frequent enthusiasms, always eager to start something new, never quite able to finish anything he’s started. He starts French lessons every year.” Pearce folded his arms across his chest. He seemed to ponder the point, search for some deeper significance, and then gave up on it. “He has the short attention span of the rich. That’s how he became ambassador, of course: raised a lot of money for Constable in his first campaign and then, after Constable won, thought he would like to live in Paris. Nothing complicated about it. When I asked him if he spoke French, he assured me that it didn’t matter because every Frenchman he had ever known spoke English. And we wonder why the French don’t like us!”
Hart had been trying to remember the name. Pearce reminded him.
“Andrew Malreaux.”
“At least the name is French.”
“That’s the reason he thought he was qualified,” replied Pearce, rolling his eyes. “But I shouldn’t be so hard on him. He’s always been helpful.” There was a glint of mischief in his eyes, and more than a little irony as well. “We used to be enemies, when we both were here in New York, but then, after I was in Washington he didn’t remember that anymore, and by the time he became ambassador and I told him what a good job he was doing, he was quite certain that we had always been friends. It’s good when someone doesn’t hold a grudge; in his case it’s because he can’t remember it.”
Austin Pearce spent so much time reading histories that he sometime started composing them himself when he talked about other people. Hart, as politely as he could, steered him back to what was immediately important.
“There was a reason you called the ambassador.”
Pearce looked at him as if he did not understand. Then, an instant later, realizing that he had gone off on a long digression, he denied it.
“You need to know that about Malreaux; you need to know his limitations. He’ll get us what we need, put us in touch with the right people, but he’s not someone you want to talk to about something as sensitive as this. I asked him to have someone in the embassy’s political section prepare a dossier on Jean de la Valette. Malreaux did not ask why. It was enough that I said that a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee would be there tomorrow.”