“That’s rather glib, isn’t it?” said Frederick Gallagher dismissively. The look in his eyes, however, suggested that fundamentally he did not disagree.
“I was asked what name I would give it,” replied Pearce calmly and without irritation. “What would you suggest?”
Gallagher was not interested in taking up the challenge. The conversation started to drift to other things. Gallagher noticed someone else he knew and wanted to know better.
“Let’s get together soon,” he said to Hart with the quiet urgency of a man of importance. “There are a number of things I think we might discuss.”
Hart watched as Gallagher moved across the crowded room, never looking to the side, always straight ahead, certain that he was being noticed by everyone he passed.“Hopeless, isn’t he?” asked Austin Pearce, not without a kind of sympathy. “He’s one of the smartest people I know,” he added when Hart turned to him, “and one of the dumbest. Sort of like poor Robert Constable, when you think about it: afraid that if he ever stopped being the center of attention no one would know who he was.”
“I think you just described half of Washington.”
“Only half? You seriously underestimate the vanity, and the insecurity, of the American politician.”
Pearce reached for a glass from a passing waiter. The rain had stopped, and the sound of thunder had become a distant fading echo in the yellow, sultry sky. Some of the guests started to make their way back outdoors. Searching for a place that would provide more privacy, Pearce took Hart by the arm and led him across the room, next to a white marble pillar. While Pearce sipped from his glass, Hart gazed across at Hillary Constable, watching her repeat with the same look of gratitude and sympathy the words with which she returned each mumbled expression of encouragement and loss. His hand was on the pillar, and he suddenly realized she was just like it: beautiful and cold, as near as anything, and as distant as twenty centuries, a woman who would never break, a woman who would break instead any hammer that tried to break her, unless of course she shattered.
“She is, isn’t she?”
Hart turned to find Austin Pearce watching him with friendly interest. Hart waited for Pearce to explain, but instead Pearce shoved his hands deep in his pockets, stared down at the glowing white marble floor, and then, as if giving up the attempt to find an explanation for what he felt, shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess I don’t really know-what she is, I mean. I knew her-I knew them both-starting years ago, but even then, she was-they both were-a kind of mystery. Bright, ambitious…” He paused long enough to give Hart a meaningful look. “Everyone in Washington is ambitious, but their ambition-it was of a different kind altogether. I wouldn’t tell anyone else this, but it always seemed to me that they weren’t constrained by anything; that, to put it bluntly, there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t have done to get what they wanted.” He hesitated, wanting to make sure he got it right, the thing that he had always known and yet had never been able really to explain or even describe. “That makes them sound ruthless, without principles, willing to use any means. They were all of that, all right, but there was something more. There wasn’t anything they didn’t want. Yes, I think that’s it. They didn’t stop when they got what they wanted. As soon as they got it, they had to have more.”
Bobby Hart tapped his finger against the hard white marble column.
“Like this?”
“Yes, exactly-a house the size of an embassy, as if from being president the next step was to become a country of his own. You think they could at least have waited until his second term was over. That was the reason I left, when I began to understand the outsized needs he had, his gargantuan appetites, this absence of all restraint, and then this thing he did…” His voice trailed off and for a moment he said nothing. “Can you come up to New York?” he asked suddenly.
With anyone else, Hart would have started to make excuses, but this was Austin Pearce and Austin Pearce was different. There were not ten people in the country who knew anything about financial markets and the global economy, maybe not ten people in the world, who would not have dropped everything and flown any distance to spend an hour alone with him.
“You see that man over there?” he asked, nodding toward the head of the receiving line. “Recognize him?”
There was something vaguely familiar about the distinguished-looking stranger who had just taken Hillary Constable’s hand and bent close to whisper his own condolences. There was a cultured, foreign aspect to his features, and Hart thought he might be someone with the diplomatic corps, or a member of a European government, there in his official capacity.
“I don’t think so. Who is he?”
A strange smile, full of caution, made a furtive appearance on Austin Pearce’s fine, intelligent mouth.
“The head of one of the oldest families in France, and what you might call the managing partner of one of the world’s most powerful, and most secret, private firms. It is called The Four Sisters.”
Chapter Four
The Four Sisters. Charlie Finnegan had mentioned it just a few hours earlier. It was the story Quentin Burdick was working on, the story that involved the president.
“It’s a private equity group, an investment house, correct?”
Austin Pearce searched Hart’s eyes, looking for reassurance, as it seemed, a sense that he could still trust him and rely on his discretion.
“The Four Sisters an investment house?-I have a feeling it’s a good deal more than that.”
Hart glanced back to where Hillary Constable had just let go of the hand of the man they had been talking about.
“Who is he?” he asked.
“One of the most fascinating men I’ve ever met: Jean de la Valette, charming, intelligent, well read-I don’t mean the kind of contemporary things we read to stay current, his horizon is rather different than that. I suppose that is inevitable, when your family goes back, not just a few generations, but five hundred years or more.” Pearce’s gaze became solemn, profound, and full of troubled calculation. “I meant what I said earlier,” he said finally. “Come to New York, as soon as possible-this week, if you can. I have to talk to you about something.” He made a quick, abrupt movement of his head toward Jean de la Valette, who was just then on his way outside. “It’s about The Four Sisters.”
He patted Hart on his sleeve and told him he had to go. He had not taken three steps when he turned back.
“I don’t trust many people, Bobby; not anymore. What I told you about The Four Sisters-don’t tell that to anyone, not even that you know the name.”
Hart watched as the former treasury secretary made his way through the crowd. Pearce was a small, average-looking man easily confused for an accountant’s assistant, someone brought into a meeting of government officials to take notes or double-check figures, until he began to talk and off the top of his head analyze a budgetary problem or a financial question with the same cogent ease as someone reading from the printed page. Pearce had never been short for an answer, never baffled by a problem, always calm and collected, never irritated or impatient, never for any reason disturbed-until now. He had not admitted it, not in so many words, but he had seemed almost frightened of this thing called The Four Sisters, whatever it really was: an investment house or, as he had put it, something more than that. Who was Jean de la Valette, wondered Bobby Hart, and what was his connection to Robert Constable?
“That looked interesting.”
Charlie Finnegan was standing right in front of him, but Hart had been so lost in thought he had not seen him approach.