Atwood’s head snapped around. There was open defiance in his eyes, challenging her to say what she meant. She stared right back, daring him to try to force her hand.
“What kind of problems?” asked Russell in a firm voice. “What do the French want?”
“They want to know what two men from our embassy were doing, whose authority they were acting on, when they broke into the apartment of our political attaché and killed him along with Austin Pearce.”
Russell and Hillary exchanged a worried glance and then looked at Atwood. Russell could barely speak.
“They’re convinced that Hart was not involved?”
“They know Hart was not involved. There was a witness. She was talking to Hart when the shooting started.”
“What have the French been told?” asked Hillary, her own voice suddenly weak and hollow.
“That they must have been acting on their own, but that we’re conducting an investigation to make sure.”
“Do they believe that?”
“No, Mrs. Constable, they don’t. They not only know that Hart was not involved, they know he tried to save Austin Pearce. They’ve started asking questions. They think that there must have been a reason why two men from the embassy-they know the functions they performed-killed Pearce and the other guy. They think it was because of what they had learned from Hart. They think that someone in the government-this government-arranged the murder of the president and is now trying to blame it on the senator.”
“The French can believe whatever the hell they want!” cried Hillary in a rage. “There’s nothing to link any of us to that! Who’s going to pay any attention to some vague suspicion of the French police?”
A bitter smile cut hard across Atwood’s crooked mouth.
“For one, that same reporter-Philip Carlyle-who was asking questions about The Four Sisters. He just got back from Paris, where he was spending time with the detective investigating Pearce’s murder.”
The president stood up, a sign that the meeting was over. There was only one thing he wanted to know.
“Can you control this?”
Atwood thought about it for a moment, and then nodded slowly.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Hillary and the president were left alone. For a long time, neither of them said anything.
“You didn’t know anything about your husband’s financial dealings,” Russell said presently. “You have no reason to think he ever did anything with this investment firm, The Four Sisters, or anyone else, that was not what it should have been. There were a number of contributors to the various foundations that the president established to do good works. Other people took care of that. You had your own work inside the White House, trying to help the people of this country.”
There was a hint of disapproval, regret that he could not be free of all this, in the way Russell looked at her as he summarized what would have to be her public position. His resentment, however, was nothing in comparison to hers.
“You don’t have to tell me how to handle this. I don’t recall that we ever asked you for your advice when you were my husband’s vice president.”
“It might have saved you some embarrassment if you had!” he shot back.
Her eyes went wild with anger.
“The only reason you’re sitting in that chair is because-!”
“But I am sitting in it, and there is nothing you can do about it now.” A smile full of malice twisted slowly across his mouth. “There never was anything you could do about it. Did you really think that once I took over, you could run against me for the nomination?”
“I could have beaten you, and we both know it!” she cried, jutting out her chin.
The smile on Russell’s face deepened and took on another meaning, one they both understood.
“Yes, but you didn’t run, did you? The world would have found out the truth about you and The Four Sisters, and a few other things besides. And what could you do?-Tell about me? I didn’t take anything like as much as you and Robert did; my involvement was minor compared to yours. Don’t look so upset. You’re going to be sitting here one day, or at least you’ll have your chance, just not as quickly as you had hoped. You’re about to become vice president, next in line of succession.”
A strange look of cruelty and contempt gleamed in his eyes as he looked past her for a moment. He laughed silently as at some private joke.
“That means you get to go home every night and hope that when you wake up the first news you’ll have is that the president is dead. I should warn you, however, that with none of the careless habits of your reckless husband, I won’t be an easy victim should someone decide they can’t wait for the accidents of mortality. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to study the speech I’m scheduled to give this evening when I introduce you as the next vice president and tell how we propose to build on the foundation of our beloved predecessor.”
The president had his speech, and so did she. In front of a vast audience in the Kennedy Center she struck just the right chord: somber, serious, and, despite the tragedy of her husband’s death, still hopeful that the country could move forward, building on what Robert Constable had done. There was a moment when it all seemed too much for her. She had just finished telling them, all these people who had supported her husband in the past, how the night at the last convention, when Irwin Russell’s name had been placed in nomination for vice president, he had said to her that Russell was the one man who could take over and continue his legacy if anything ever happened to him. There was a catch in her voice; her lips trembled, a tear came to her eye. The audience rose as one and began to applaud, a long, somber tribute to the memory of her husband and to what she had been forced to endure. She flashed a brave smile and managed somehow to go on. Whatever else anyone might remember about those two speeches, they would remember that. Hillary was sure of it.
She knew then that what she had said earlier in the Oval Office was true: that Irwin Russell would have had no chance had she chosen to run against him, that the nomination, and the election, would have been hers for the asking. If it had not been for that damnable secret she would have been here tonight launching her campaign for the presidency instead of being forced into the second place part that, except for the title, she had been playing for the last seven years. Everyone was there to see her, not the accidental president no one had seriously thought would ever hold the office. They lined up, nearly all of them, almost three thousand men and women, waiting to tell her how much they loved her and how much they admired her courage.
She began to realize that it was not too late. She could become vice president, wait a few months, and then break with Russell over some made-up issue, announce that she did not have any choice, that she had promised her dead husband to complete his unfinished agenda, but that the president wanted to take the country in a different direction, one she could not in conscience follow. The country would have to decide. She would run for the presidency herself.
Why had not she thought of it before? Russell could not threaten her with exposure, not after he had vouched for her honesty and integrity by choosing her to become his own vice president. Some of his people might start rumors, but that was a game two could play.
Careful to maintain an air of reserve, she kept shaking hands, thanking each one for the kind and thoughtful things they had to say, promising to do everything in her power not to let them down. The line passed from her to the president, but she knew they had all come to see her, and he knew it, too. She could see it in his eyes, this sense that he was an afterthought, a necessary obligation, a price the crowd was willing to pay for the chance to first have a few moments with her.
“They all love you, Hillary,” said the president when it was finally over and they stood outside.