Patricia, regaining her sarcasm, said, “Kill us all, Wellington? I thought you were done with the melodrama.”
“You won’t have to be killed,” he said. “You’re all sane, you can be reasoned with. Bradford can’t be reasoned with, that’s why killing him is the only official answer. But all of you have things short of your life that you don’t want to lose.”
Meredith Fanshaw said, “Even a Senator?”
Wellington looked at him. “Especially a Senator.”
Patricia said, “Because he has so much to lose? I’m not a Senator, Wellington, I have nothing to lose.”
Wellington’s expression didn’t change. “I mention Stockton,” he said.
The flesh around Patricia’s eyes seemed suddenly paler, her eyes more deep-set. She said nothing, and Harrison, frowning at her in perplexity, said, “Stockton? What the hell is Stockton?”
Wellington faced Harrison. “To you,” he said, “I mention the Crocker Citizen’s Bank.”
Harrison blinked, and then stood there with his mouth open.
No one said anything. Wellington studied each of the eight faces, seeing the same fear of him in each, and was both sickened and relieved at that unanimity of expression. He said, “I’ll let you talk it over. I don’t have to be here for your decision, my superior will be listening in. I’ll know what you decide by what orders he gives me. But I would like to say something from a personal point of view. If you force me to kill my father, I will do it, because I long ago gave up the idea that I should have attitudes about the orders I was given to carry out. But through whatever small channels of influence I may have constructed for myself over the last twenty-three years, I will make sure that every one of you regrets it.”
Harrison cried, “You can’t put that kind of responsibility on us!”
Wellington looked at him. “I can’t?” He turned away and left the room. Downstairs, he said goodbye to Sterling, collected his wife and daughter, and started the long drive back to Washington.
10
On Monday, the twelfth of November, Bradford came back from his mid-day walk smiling and cheerful and full of his news. It was a cold day, the coldest of the season so far, sunless and crisp under high clouds, and when Evelyn saw him, in a downstairs parlor, his cheeks were so red, his mood so good, his whole manner so boisterous with health and good spirits, that she felt at once a kind of helpless rage at the fact that the façade was a lie, that beneath the apparent robustness was a crippled mind that would never be whole again.
“Action at last!” he said, in a stage whisper, and took her arm, doing a parody of secretiveness, looking over his shoulder, peering this way and that, touching his finger to his lips.
She had no idea what he was talking about. So far as she knew, things were still as they were. Robert had come back from last Thursday’s meeting in Boston full of the plans for the defense of Bradford at the funeral but vague about any plans for Bradford’s future. Apparently the second meeting had been just as fruitless as the first in producing any solution for this impasse.
So what could the action be? When he was finished with his mock-undercover game, Bradford finally told her: “First stop, Paris!”
“What?” The sentence made no sense to her, and at this stage whatever she didn’t understand was potentially a threat.
“Paris,” he said. He was delighted. The last time he’d looked this pleased was when he’d first told her of his plan to run for his old seat in Congress. And if he hadn’t been argued with then, if he’d been permitted that modest dream, would they all be in this position today? She kept telling herself it would have wound up here anyway, he wouldn’t have settled for such a spear-carrier’s role in world events, but none of them could ever now be sure.
But what was this he was talking about? She said, her voice ragged with tension, “I don’t understand. Bradford, for God’s sake don’t play with me!”
The sharpness in her voice, from a nervousness and fright he didn’t know existed, obviously startled him, and he looked at her in some surprise. “Well, of course, Evelyn.” Then, thinking he understood, he smiled gently and rested a hand on her arm. “I know this is a strain for you,” he said. “Sneaking away like cat burglars, committing ourselves to self-exile in such a completely alien land. But to me it’s an adventure, I can’t help that. I can’t help being excited by it, and that keeps me from feeling the strain.”
She remembered now why she loved him, which cushioned her at once from her own feeling of strain, and she returned his smile, saying, “I know that, Bradford. I’m sorry I was irritable. Tell me what they said.”
“We’re going to Paris,” he told her. “They’ve decided it will be easier for me to slip away if I start from there.”
Paris? She hadn’t been told anything about this. Had the Chinese managed to re-establish contact after all? Was it the Chinese and not Wellington’s men he’d seen today?
No, it couldn’t be, they would surely have told him the truth about her own feelings and how much the family knew and all the attempts to stop him from going. Or would he be playing his own double game now, pretending to be in ignorance so he could get away from them after all?
She had to see Robert, she had to find out what was going on.
Bradford was saying, “Edward’s gone back, hasn’t he?” Meaning Edward Lockridge, Sterling’s son, Howard’s brother, who had come home from his diplomatic post in Paris for Elizabeth’s funeral, where he had seemed a much older and sadder man than the one who had so endlessly and comically subdivided Paris at Carrie Gillespie’s last June.
“I think so,” Evelyn said. “They’d left Eddie, Jr., at Carrie’s place, I think they wanted to get him off her hands as soon as possible.”
“Why didn’t they bring him home for his grandmother’s funeral?”
There is comedy somewhere in any situation, no matter how grim. Straight-faced, Evelyn said, “He refuses to set foot on American soil till we change our foreign policy.”
Bradford snorted. “I can hardly wait to talk to that young man.”
Evelyn said, “Are you sure they want you to go to Paris? Do they speak English very well?”
“Perfectly. Why would they send agents here who didn’t speak the language?”
“Still—” She was trying to understand it, and failing. “Did they say it was tentative?”
“Not at all. Definite. They wanted to know if I could be ready in a week. I told them I could be ready this afternoon.”
“You’ll have to have approval, won’t you? From the State Department or somebody?”
“Approval?” The word seemed to offend him, returned to him that touch of aloof arrogance that was a recent character trait. “They like me to check in with them,” he said, “to keep them informed of my movements, but I wouldn’t exactly call it approval.”
“Still, you should do it this time, shouldn’t you? To keep them from getting suspicious.” And to give somebody an opportunity to keep it from happening. Paris? How could the family protect him in Paris?
“Oh, of course I will,” he said. “I’ll go through all the usual formality. Right up till the moment I disappear.” And he beamed, like a man who knows a wonderful joke.
“That’s good.”
“See, the idea is, I’m taking a winter vacation, a family trip. I’ll be visiting my nephew and my old friend Carrie Gillespie.”