Chapter Twenty-One
Unable to sleep, Hart lay awake, seeing ghosts, fleeting fragments of faces he had known, murdered, every one of them, by some lethal, hidden hand. If Jean Valette had not ordered the assassination of Robert Constable-if this strange, erratic, and ultimately enigmatic character was telling the truth-then he was back at the beginning, knowing less than he had known before about who was behind a conspiracy that had thus far been so successful that the only one under suspicion was him. Who had reason to want Robert Constable dead, and, more importantly, was in a position to arrange the murder of a president and then eliminate anyone who might learn what they had done?
Jean Valette may not have been involved, but everything still led back to him. He was the one who had known the secrets that, had they been discovered, would have destroyed Constable and his presidency. Was that what Valette had meant by that astonishing remark: that he had given Constable all those millions precisely to help bring about his destruction? But why, what motive could he have had, to do something as Machiavellian as that? Hart had hoped to sound him out that evening, to see if any of it made sense, or was only the fantasy of a disordered mind. But Jean Valette had disappeared.
As soon as they arrived, Hart had been taken upstairs to his room, or rather a suite of rooms as large as any apartment. The chateau, a castle by any other name, might be as old as the Crusades, but in this part of it at least there was nothing missing to provide for the comfort of a guest. Soft, oriental carpets were scattered over stone floors polished so smooth that when the light was just right you could see your own reflection; and instead of the dancing shadows of ancient chandeliers with tiered layers of wax-dripping candles, modern, recessed lighting cast a steady, even brightness in the room. The furniture was modern, comfortable, with well-upholstered chairs and a bed stacked waist high with mattresses. Exhausted, frustrated, and confused, Hart had taken a long, hot shower only to discover that someone had taken his clothes. He slipped on a robe that he did not remember seeing on the hook behind the door and, when he went back into the bedroom, found a liveried servant waiting to show him his new wardrobe: slacks, two sport jackets, a dark suit, a half dozen shirts and several ties, socks, clean underwear, and three pairs of shoes.
“If these aren’t suitable, if you would prefer to see some other things…?”
“No, I’m sure these will be fine. But how did you know that I’d be here, or that I would need something to wear?”
“Things are always kept on hand for unexpected guests,” explained the servant with a cursory nod.
He left the room while Hart got dressed and then, the very moment Hart finished tying his shoes, there was a brief knock on the door and he reappeared. Dinner would be served in half an hour, and, to his regret, Jean Valette would not be able to join him. He had pressing business, work that would occupy him until very late. They would meet again in the morning and, until then, if there was anything Mr. Hart wanted, all he had to do was make his wishes known.
Hart dined alone at a table with nineteen vacant places, and ate next to nothing. His mind was too entangled in the labyrinth of trickery and deceit in which he found himself to think about food. Back in his room, he kicked off his shoes, propped his head on two enormous pillows, and tried to find answers to the questions that would not stop screaming in his brain, taunting him with his own incompetence. He needed to get home, back to the United States, back to Washington. There was one person left alive who had to know something: Clarence Atwood, the head of the Secret Service. He could see him, sitting awkwardly in the chair in that Watergate apartment that was not his, explaining that the president had been murdered and that the investigation had already begun, but only after he had first tried to question Hart about how much he knew. Atwood had been close to everyone: Constable, Constable’s wife, and now, still head of the Secret Service, close to Irwin Russell, the new president he was sworn to protect. Who was he really protecting? What did he really know?
Every question had a dozen different possible answers, and every answer raised a dozen new questions. The only thing that seemed certain in Hart’s angry and bewildered state was that he had to do something, anything, whatever the risk might be. He could not wait for someone else to solve the mystery of what had happened; he could not just stay here and do nothing. He had to act.
“Do something, damn it!” he cried in the silence of the room as he sprang from the bed and started pacing back and forth. “Do something, for God’s sake-anything!” He stopped dead in his tracks, wheeled around as if he were facing an accuser, beat his fists against his head, and swore out loud in desperation. Then, suddenly, his shoulders slumped and all the fire and defiance left his eyes. He was tired, used up, and not just discouraged, depressed. What he had felt before, false bravado, an embarrassment to his now empty, sober mind. He had no chance of winning, no chance at all; probably no chance of coming out of this alive. He knew that now, but he knew something else as well, that he could not give up-that if he was going to die, he had to die trying. He owed that much to Laura.
He tried to sleep, but the faces of those he had known, ghosts of those who had died, kept marching through his mind. If he did not die, if he lived a hundred years, he would never forget the look in Austin Pearce’s eyes, the sad certainty with which Austin had in those last few moments faced his death, the absence of all complaint, the last thing he did, the last thing he tried to do, telling Hart that there was something for him in his pocket. And that, after he had with that warning gesture saved his life. Austin had warned him once before, about what Hillary Constable was after when she asked him to find out what he could, whether what her husband had done with The Four Sisters could be traced, whether there was anything that could threaten her own ambition. There was something else Austin had said, a small thing, it had seemed at the time, but that now, when Hart remembered it, took on a larger significance. The Order of St. John, the order that Jean Valette had spoken to that day-Austin had said that Irwin Russell, the president, was a member. What did that mean? Did all of them-Constable, his wife, Irwin Russell-have some connection with Jean Valette, with The Four Sisters? Hart had never thought about Russell.
Finally, fitfully, Hart drifted off to sleep, but then, a little after three in the morning, he was awakened by the sound of a plane passing low overhead. He went to the window and in the distance saw the parallel lights of a landing strip and the fast descent of a private jet. It was too far away to see who got off or got on, or what might be happening. Hart wondered if it had anything to do with him, or whether this was part of the pressing business that had forced Jean Valette to miss dinner.
Ten minutes after the plane landed, it took off, and the headlights of a single car wove through the darkness toward the chateau. It was the same limousine in which Hart had ridden on the journey from Mont Saint-Michel, but this time Jean Valette was not in it. He was waiting at the steps, tapping his foot, as the driver and another man helped out of the back seat a man wearing a blindfold with his hands tied behind his back. Valette stood there, watching, as his newest guest was helped up the steps, and did not say a word when he passed in front of him and was led inside.
Someone had been brought a prisoner to the chateau. What did that mean for him? For all Jean Valette’s protestations of sympathy and good will, what did he really have in mind to do? Hart threw on his clothes, determined to find out. But the door was locked, he could not get out! He pounded on the thick wooden door, shouting for help, demanding that someone come at once. But nothing happened, no one came. He was a prisoner, and there was nothing he could do except wait to see the next move in a game he did not understand and did not want to play. He went back to bed and, staring at the ceiling, wondered how much longer he would be alive.