“What was in the papers? That Hart was involved-I know that-but what else? Who said that he was involved?”
The ambassador stopped blinking. In the midst of his confusion, he became for a moment quite lucid.
“The head of the Secret Service. He said they had known within days of the president’s death that he had been murdered, but that they kept it quiet while they launched a full-scale investigation.”
Pearce did nothing to hide his astonishment.
“That’s what the head of the Secret Service said: that they launched a full-scale investigation?”
Malreaux had never seen Austin Pearce this upset. He was not sure how to reply.
“Look, Austin-all I know is what I was told: that there is evidence Hart was involved and that they want him back in Washington for questioning.”
They were standing there, the three of them alone-Austin Pearce, the ambassador, and Aaron Wolfe. The marine guard, the plainclothes CIA, could be heard scrambling through the rooms on the floor above. Pearce exchanged a glance with Wolfe before turning to the ambassador.
“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 the building and walked through the back gate of the embassy, less than a minute after Pearce’s 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.
“Hillary Constable!” he muttered between his teeth. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he shook his head at how easily he had been used. Laura had been right about her; Laura was always right when it came to the motivations of ambitious people. And Austin Pearce had been right as well. Hillary Constable’s husband had been murdered, but all she was worried about was 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, to 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 have 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? Hillary 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 him 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 adrenaline 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.