“You told Burdick that he was right? But how could you…?” There was a new interest and, more than that, a sudden intuition, in the Pearce’s eyes. “She told you, didn’t she?-Hillary Constable.” Pearce caught the slight movement, the subtle change of expression that revealed Hart’s dilemma: that he would not lie and could not tell the truth. “It’s all right,” Pearce assured him. “I understand. But she must have told you for a reason. She obviously doesn’t want anyone else to know. The whole country thinks he died of a heart attack; the only question whether he was in bed alone the night he died,” he added with a distinct look of disapproval. “The way he lived, a rumor like that had to spread.”
He started to say something more along that line: the conduct, notorious, flagrant, that would have barred someone like Constable from office in an earlier time, but which in the age of tabloid television had only added to his celebrity. The fact of what Hart had said suddenly came home to him in all its naked, twisted consequence. Like any second, delayed reaction, it hit with greater force.
“Murdered! My God, someone murdered the president of the United States and no one knows about it? No one is doing anything about it?” Then he realized what he had missed. He looked at Hart in a different light. “You’re doing something about it, aren’t you? That was the reason she told you. But how did she…? No, never mind. The Four Sisters…Burdick-you both think…?”
Pearce banged his hands down hard on the arms of the chair and leaped to his feet. He began to pace back and forth, three steps in one direction, three steps back, moving quicker with each step he took. He stopped abruptly, swung around, and faced Hart directly.
“It’s possible. If Morris was murdered because he talked to Burdick-and Morris was a prison inmate serving a sentence for bribery, someone it wouldn’t be too difficult to dismiss as a liar and a thief. But the president! If he talked-and he was scheduled to see Burdick the next day… But why would he talk? Yes, of course: because he thought Burdick knew more than he did, that he knew all about The Four Sisters and not just the name.”
Pearce was still not satisfied. Something did not add up. He stood at the corner of the desk, looking down at the deep shining surface as if the longer he looked the more hidden layers he would discover beneath it, each one changing the meaning of all the others.
“It wasn’t the money,” said Pearce with a certainty that to Hart was inexplicable. “If The Four Sisters-if Jean de la Valette-is involved in this, if he’s responsible for two murders, if he ordered the murder of the president of the United States, it was not because he was trying to keep Constable or Morris from talking about the money they might have been paid. Burdick said he didn’t have anything, nothing he could use, until he stumbled on the name-right? But it would have been almost impossible to trace whatever money was given to Constable back to Valette. With all those companies, all the various enterprises, all the ways money can be moved from one account to another-No, it wasn’t the money; it was something else, something that The Four Sisters, that Valette, could not afford to have known; something he was planning, and is probably still planning, to do. But kill the president? What could be worth that kind of risk?”
Chapter Ten
Bobby Hart was annoyed and, more than that, perplexed. First he was told that Clarence Atwood was out of town and would not be back until sometime the next week; then, when he made it plain that he would not be put off, that it was a matter of some urgency, he was told that someone would get back to him by the end of the day. No one did. That night Hart called Hillary Constable. An hour after they finished talking, Clarence Atwood finally called.
“Sorry, Senator, this is my fault. With all changes going on-the vice president taking over-my staff has become a little overprotective. I’ll be glad to meet with you whenever you like.”
He said this in an even tone of voice, calm, unflappable, exactly what one would expect from a man in his position. Hart told him he would like to see him the next morning. At first, Atwood seemed to hesitate, but finally agreed that they would meet at ten o’clock in his office. And then, just before midnight, Atwood called Hart at home and asked if he would be willing to meet the next night instead of the next morning, and at his apartment instead of at his office. He did not offer a reason and, after giving Hart his apartment number at the Watergate, did not wait for a reply. “I’ll see you then,” was all he said before he ended the call.
Hart got off the elevator, glanced at the piece of paper on which he had jotted down the apartment number, and headed down the hallway. The door opened before he had a chance to knock. Without a word of welcome, Clarence Atwood pulled Hart inside, stuck his head out just far enough to look both ways down the empty corridor, and then quickly shut the door. Hart was wearing a sports jacket and a shirt open at the collar, but Atwood was still dressed in a dark suit and tie, the nondescript clothing of a Secret Service agent trained to blend in with the crowd.
“Anyone follow you?” he asked as he led his guest into the living room. The curtains were drawn. There was nothing, not even a magazine, on the coffee table in front of the sofa that, along with two end tables and a single leather recliner, was the only furniture.
“Did anyone follow me?” asked Hart, more puzzled by the minute. “Why would anyone be following me?” But even as he said it, he knew. “You think whoever did this knows someone is looking into it? But even if they knew that, why would they think I knew anything about it?”
Atwood looked at the sofa, then at the chair, as if he were trying to decide exactly where to sit.
“This isn’t your apartment, is it? This isn’t where you live?”
Atwood ignored him. He gestured toward the sofa as he sat down on the recliner, but he sat too far back and had to push himself forward to the front edge of the chair. Tall and gangly, nothing seemed to fit him right. His suit pants were just a trifle short, the sleeves on his jacket just a shade too long. Everything about him seemed discordant and uneven; everything except his face, which was for the most part a perfect blank expression, the triumph of either a severe self-discipline or the successful purge of all emotion. He had a way of looking at you that almost made you doubt your own existence.
“What do you know, Senator? What is the reason you wanted to see me?”
“What’s the reason…? No, you tell me-why would anyone be following me?”
Atwood shrugged his shoulders. There was no change in his expression.
“No reason.”
Hart would have none of it.
“Of course there’s a reason. You wouldn’t have asked if there wasn’t.”
There was no response. It was not that Atwood had not heard the question; the question did not count. His gaze remained the same: steady, and if it is not too strange a thing to say, relentless, as if this were some kind of psychological experiment designed to test the reaction of someone systematically ignored. Hart was not in the mood to play.
“You wouldn’t have called me last night to ask if I’d meet you here instead of your office if you didn’t think-what is this place, anyway?” he asked as he cast a glance of disapproval around the soulless, sparsely furnished room. “A safe location, a place you have meetings you don’t want anyone to know about?”
There was nothing, not the slightest movement, in Atwood’s immobile face. Hart’s voice echoed into a silence that became profound.