Allen bit his lip and thought hard. He had never trusted Robert Constable and had never liked his wife, but facts were facts and all of them seemed to suggest that Finnegan was wrong.
“She would have to be a fool. She had to know that as soon as Constable was dead all the power would be in Russell’s hands and that everything would change. It’s one thing to have a weak vice president, someone who can’t win the presidency on his own, someone who could not mount a serious challenge to a woman as popular as she is. It’s something else again to defeat an incumbent president of your own party, a man the whole country wants to succeed after he has taken over for the victim of an assassination. I don’t know if Russell is behind this, maybe it was Hillary-it has to be one of them-but if Russell wanted it done, Atwood would have done it.”
Instead of a reply, Finnegan sat down on the edge of the chair and lapsed into a long silence. Finally, he stood up and with his hands behind his back started shuffling back and forth. A moment later, he stopped abruptly and looked straight at Allen.
“What if it were both of them? What if Russell and Hillary Constable were in it together? What if they decided Constable had to die-because it was the only way to stop the story about The Four Sisters coming out-and they made a deal. You’ve heard the rumor; you know what is going to happen: she’s going to take his place as vice president. What if this was part of the deal?”
There was a certain clear logic in the murderous precision of the scheme. It was political calculation carried to a Machiavellian extreme: the removal of an obstacle to ambition, and done in a way that by blaming it on someone else makes you the object of universal sympathy and good will. Allen saw at once how each part fit.
“Russell serves out the remainder of Constable’s term and then has a term of his own. Hillary is vice president and then has the chance to run for two terms on her own. A devil’s bargain that gives them both what they want and that gets rid of the only threat they face, Bobby Hart, by blaming it all on him. And they won’t have to worry about him defending himself, because-”
“Because he’ll be dead, killed while he was trying to get away!”
“What can we do?” asked Allen. But for the moment, Finnegan had no answers.
If Allen had barely been able to sleep before, now he could not sleep at all. He lay awake all night, wondering what was going to happen, not just to his friend of twenty years, but to the country. It had been bad enough, the nearly eight years of Robert Constable’s lying, ineffectiveness, and treachery, but four, eight, twelve years of government by a band of assassins? The killing would not stop once the two of them, Constable’s wife and vice president, had what they wanted. If history proved anything, it proved that no one was more suspicious than the man or woman who had come to power through an act of violence. Anyone thought to be a threat, whether a political rival or someone who might discover what they had done, would have to be dealt with, eliminated, made to disappear; and every time it happened, every time they were forced to commit another murder, another violent act, there would be another cover-up, and another set of secrets that would have to be protected. The circle would keep widening, spreading death and destruction, until, finally, the circle, as always happened, would be driven back on itself, and the ones who had started everything in motion would themselves become the victims of some new aspirant to power.
Allen did not know what to do. There was no use telling anyone that Bobby Hart was innocent. There were some on the senator’s own staff who did not believe that. Several of them had resigned immediately, afraid of the damage that might be done to their own careers; others, Allen knew, would follow shortly. If even people on Hart’s own staff thought he had done what everyone said he did, no one was going to believe that Russell and Hillary Constable were guilty instead. Whatever the charges, whatever the risk, Bobby had to come back. Allen knew that he would try, that he would never leave his wife here alone, but why had he not at least tried to call, to somehow get a message to him that he was all right; let him know something-anything-that might help put his mind at ease? Hart had not even called Laura, though strangely enough, she did not seem much worried about it.
Allen, who lived for politics, had never felt entirely comfortable around Laura Hart. She was not quite like anyone he knew; she certainly was not like most of the other wives of successful politicians. She was in love with her husband, which in Washington was rare enough, but she was in love with him not because, but in spite, of who he was. Allen had for a long time resented her, convinced that Hart would have run for president if he had been married to a woman who, like most political wives, dreamed of being first lady instead of living alone, just the two of them, somewhere in the seclusion of the Santa Barbara hills. He did not change his mind about that, but he did change his mind about her. He realized that the reason he felt such a distance in her presence was because her world was made up of only two people, she and Bobby, and that while she could be a good and trusted friend to others, all her thoughts were about him. Beneath the surface, that fragile exterior that had nearly shattered, down deep in her soul there was a kind of strength that in the days of changeable attachments and replaceable relationships was not seen so much anymore. She believed in her husband, but more than that, she believed in them, the two of them together. David Allen envied them a little for that.
“You look awful, David,” she said when she opened the door.
Allen stood in the doorway of the small apartment the Harts had taken in northwest Washington. He was breathing hard, worn out from all the restless days and sleepless nights. Laura led him into the living room and insisted he take off his jacket.
“Really, David, you can’t take all this on yourself. You’re not going to do Bobby any good if you kill yourself from worry and overwork.”
Allen sank into an easy chair and wrapped his hands around a cool glass of lemonade. Laura sat on the edge of the sofa just a few feet away. Her eyes were clear and a faint smile played on her lips.
“Yours is the first friendly face I’ve seen in days. Except for Charlie, of course. He came by as soon as I got back.”
“Why did you come back? Wouldn’t Bobby have wanted you to stay at home, in Santa Barbara, while all this is going on?”
“Yes, you’re right, he would have. But as soon as I heard-I had just gotten home-I knew I had to come back. I wasn’t going to hide, try to run away. I wanted these people to know that I wasn’t afraid of what they were saying, that all these accusations were false.”
Without makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in a black turtleneck, she had the clean, well-scrubbed look of a woman who never lived too far from the drifting white sand of an ocean beach. Allen felt a desire to offer her what assurances he could, a need to tell her that things were not as bad as they seemed.
“No one who knows you, no one who knows both of you, believes any of it. You have to know that.”
Her smile seemed to forgive the lie, and, more than that, thank him for what she knew he was trying to do.
“You know us, and Charlie knows us. There aren’t many others, though, are there-people who know us well enough to believe that we aren’t what other people say we are? But that only makes what you and Charlie have done more honorable.” She got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at the street. “The reporters got all they needed. They seemed surprised by what I told them.”
Allen rubbed his chin. His eyes began to blink.
“Surprised? Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
Laura folded her arms and leaned back against the window sill. There was a strange, wistful look in her eyes.