For three days, Bobby Hart’s administrative assistant had been forced to answer accusations, each one more damaging than the last, about the senator’s part in the conspiracy to murder the president. Allen had started with an angry denial, outraged that anyone would suggest such a thing was even possible, but then, as more and more evidence was produced, when documents were discovered proving Hart had paid the assassin, he found himself on the defensive, arguing that despite what all this seemed to prove, it was not true. Then, when Hart escaped arrest at the embassy and disappeared somewhere in France, even that became impossible and he was reduced to mumbling the obligatory “no comment” each time he had to pass through a phalanx of shouting reporters in the hallway outside the Senate office.
By this time, there were not more than a dozen people in Washington who did not believe what everyone else believed, that Bobby Hart was behind the murder of Robert Constable, and probably less than half that number who were still willing to say so. David Allen was one of them; Charlie Finnegan was another. Both of them knew Hart too well, knew too much about what he had gone through with his wife, to think that the case against him was anything other than a deliberate fabrication, part of a conspiracy that had started with the murder of the president and had perhaps always been intended to end with the blame fixed on someone else. In the hours after Hart had gone missing in Paris, Charlie Finnegan met secretly with David Allen to decide what they should do.
An unmarked door just off one of the main corridors in the Capitol opened on to a narrow hallway in which certain members of the Senate had private rooms where they could spend time alone, or sometimes not alone, away from the prying eyes of reporters and the constant demands of staff, a place where they could, if they wanted, actually think.
“Atwood is lying through his teeth!” exclaimed Finnegan, shaking his head in angry disbelief.
He gestured toward a brown sofa which, along with a matching leather chair and a coffee table, made up the furnishings of the room. Allen sat down, but Finnegan was too agitated even to stand still. He kept moving, a few slow, hesitant steps in one direction, a few steps back, an awkward, sliding motion in which he would suddenly dip his shoulder and turn to the side, stop, stare down at the carpet, and then, shaking his head again at the enormity of what had happened, start off on another short, distracted journey.
“It’s that goddamn Atwood! He’s at the center of this. He’s lied about everything. When Bobby went to see him-did he tell you this? He said that he had told the FBI, that they had started an investigation, and that the CIA was aware of it as well. Then we have the director of the CIA in front of the committee and Bobby asks him and he doesn’t know anything about it! And now this-announces that Constable was murdered and that the Secret Service-the Secret Service, for Christ sake!-was investigating, and they find the assassin, the woman who was in the room with him that night, and she died trying to escape, but they found all the evidence they needed in her apartment. In her apartment, for Christ sake!”
Finnegan took one more step and wheeled around.
“Her apartment! This professional killer, so good at what she does she gets Constable to take her to bed so she can put a needle in him; so good at what she does that she gets that poor bastard, the agent who was supposed to be guarding Constable, to help her get away; so good at what she does that no one seems to know who the hell she is-keeps records in her apartment like she was some tax accountant afraid of losing even one receipt? Notice, by the way, that the only records they found were about this one job; not a shred of evidence about any of the other murders she must have done! It’s Atwood. He’s in the middle of this. The only question is who he is working for. He wouldn’t have had any reason to do this, go to these lengths, get rid of this many people and then frame Bobby for it, on his own.”
While he listened, Allen thought back to the last time he talked to Hart, when Hart was in New York meeting with Austin Pearce. He remembered the reason why he had tried to reach him.
“Quentin Burdick came to see Bobby the same day he died, that afternoon. Bobby was in New York. He had gone up to see Austin Pearce. I’m not sure why Burdick was here, but he must have come to see someone. He said he had to talk to Bobby. It seemed quite urgent. He said Bobby would know what it was about, but then he said that he wouldn’t, that he would think he did, but he wouldn’t. It was all very mysterious. He said to tell Bobby that it was what they talked about before-The Four Sisters-only that there was a lot more to it than what he had thought then.”
“Bobby told me about that-Burdick had asked me about it once-The Four Sisters.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He couldn’t. He only told me because he thought I might be able to help. Did Burdick say anything else?”
“Not really. He had a package with him. I don’t know what was in it, but it must have been important the way he held onto it.”
“He didn’t talk about anything else? Nothing?”
“We just talked about the rumors going around. What Russell was going to do: whether he would try for the nomination, and whether he would have any chance against Hillary Constable if he did.” Allen narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “There was something. It was odd. Burdick wanted to talk about the reasons why Russell had gone on the ticket with Constable, why he didn’t stay chairman of Senate Finance instead. He went through all the things that had been said at the time, but then he said that the real reason was because Russell did not have a choice.”
“Didn’t have a choice?”
“I don’t know what he meant. I asked, but all he would say was that he couldn’t tell me yet. Whatever it was, he seemed pretty damn certain of what he knew.”
“Didn’t have a choice,” repeated Finnegan in a pensive voice. “Constable would have done that, used something he had, something he knew about Russell, to force him to do what he wanted, run for vice president. If that’s true, you could see why Russell might decide that… And now Constable is dead, and Russell does not have to worry about whatever Constable had on him and he becomes president in the bargain.”
Almost immediately, Finnegan changed his mind. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“But if Russell wanted Constable dead, why wait until now when he has only a few months to establish himself in the office, and when the public’s sympathy is all for Constable’s wife? He knew from the day he agreed to run for vice president that she was only waiting for the end of her husband’s second term to run for her first.”
“Unless something happened,” said Allen, “something that made him think he was going to be in real trouble if Constable lived.”
Finnegan put his hand on the back of his neck and twisted his head from side to side. He remembered things now in a different way than he had remembered them before. Everything had a new importance.
“The story Burdick was working on, the connection between Constable and The Four Sisters. Bobby was convinced that was what got Constable killed. The story would have destroyed Constable and any chance Hillary had to become president. Maybe they were all in on it, Constable, Frank Morris, and Russell, too. Maybe. I don’t know. I still think it had to be Hillary. Russell doesn’t strike me as ruthless enough to do something like this. And Atwood-where do you think his loyalties are? Who would he trust enough to do something like this: organize an assassination and then arrange the murders of everyone who started to get close to the truth? It had to be Hillary Constable.”