“Shocked, I suppose. I’m not sure why. They accuse me of infidelity and adultery, of having an affair with Robert Constable, but think I’m too fragile-a woman who may or may not have had a breakdown-to respond the way I did? I told them the truth, and did it in a way I hoped they might understand.”
“Oh, I think they understood,” said Allen, shaking his head at the effect it had. “I think everyone understood.”
“And who knows, there might even have been a few of them who believed me when I said it.” She looked down at the empty street again, remembering the crowd and the stunned reaction when she finished telling them exactly what she thought. She hoped that when he heard about it, Bobby would understand why she had thought she had to do it.
“All I said was that I’d never slept with anyone except my husband,” she explained, turning away from the window. “And that even if I had been single, I never would have slept with anyone who had slept with as many women as Robert Constable. Then I told them that if they were going to run a picture of me and Robert Constable, taken at some event I don’t remember, to suggest that we had an affair, they might want to run a picture of Robert Constable and Bobby Hart to show that I would have had to have been not only a fool, but blind, to have done what they said I did. And then I told them that if they were going to accuse someone of murder because the president was screwing his wife, they better include in their list of suspects half the married men in Washington, to say nothing of the married women in all the other places he had been.”
Tilting her head to the side, Laura fixed Allen with a look that seemed to defy him or anyone else to tell her that she should not have done what she did. But almost immediately, she relented, drew back as if none of it mattered. There were more important things to think about.
“Bobby left a message on the telephone in Santa Barbara. He told me-he didn’t need to, but he told me-that none of it was true, that he was going to prove it, and that he was going to be okay. I haven’t heard anything since. But don’t worry, David. Bobby will be fine. I’d know it if he wasn’t.”
Allen was almost willing to believe it. It was said that twins could feel what each other felt; why could not she have that same telepathic gift when her whole life was bound so closely with his?
“It’s only been a few days,” said Allen. “We’ll hear something. He’ll be back soon.”
Instead of being comforted, Laura seemed alarmed. She shook her head emphatically.
“No, he can’t come back, not while this is going on, not while everyone thinks he hired someone to kill the president. They’ll arrest him, if they don’t kill him first,” she said darkly. “That’s the reason I asked you to come by. I need your help.”
“Anything. What do you need?”
“Quite a lot, I’m afraid. As soon as I know where Bobby is, I’m going. I’m leaving the country and I may need some help to do it. I don’t imagine they can stop me from leaving, but I don’t want anyone to follow me, to use me to find him. The other thing,” she said hesitantly, “if we can’t come back-”
“Bobby will come back. He isn’t going to spend the rest of his life hiding. He won’t do that, he’ll-”
“What other choice will he have? They’ll kill him-whoever did this thing. They’ll kill him before they’d ever let him go to trial. You know it as well as I do. You know what people are capable of, how easily they can turn on you when they think you’re in trouble.”
“He’ll come back,” said Allen in a firm, resolute voice. “Bobby never ran away from a fight in his life, and we both know it, don’t we?”
All the bravery vanished from her face. She seemed to grow visibly smaller, shrinking back inside herself, as she contemplated the end of the one last thing that had given her hope: the chance that, whatever happened here, she and Bobby could find refuge in another place, safe from all the insanity that now threatened everything.
“Don’t…,” she begged. “Don’t say that. It’s all different now. This isn’t just another fight; this is survival. There are no more rules. Don’t you see that? They’re going to kill him. They won’t stop trying until they do it.”
There was nothing more Allen could say. He told her, as he got up to leave, that whatever happened, she could count on him; that only she and Bobby could decide what they had to do, and that he would help in any way he could. She kissed him on the forehead, something she had never done before, and thanked him for being such a loyal friend. She was just reaching for the door when the telephone began to ring.
“It’s Bobby,” she said, and went quickly across the room to answer it.
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. Hillary 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.