Bobby had not seen the former Secret Service agent since the night he met with Clarence Atwood at the Watergate. Bauman had not changed in any obvious way, but there was still a difference: He seemed more certain of himself; all the guilt he had felt that night was gone.
“Come inside,” said Hart as they shook hands.
“No, I don’t want to be a bother.”
“What can I do for you then? My wife told me that you had been here every day.”
“She’s been very nice about it. Yes, every day. I knew you would come back here. I could not stay in Washington. I would have been dead by now.”
“Come in,” said Bobby. “We can talk.”
“Can you come with me?” asked Bauman politely, but with insistence. “There’s something I have to show you. It’s what I gave Quentin Burdick, what probably got him killed. It’s in my room, at the motel where I’m staying. I didn’t want to carry it around with me, in case I was being followed.”
“Sure, all right. Tell me where it is. I’ll just grab my keys and tell Laura where I’m going.”
The motel was one of the cheaper places, where tourists on a budget liked to stay, rooms with a view of the parking lot and a long walk, a mile or more, to the beach. Bobby sat on one of the two plastic chairs, Bauman sat in the other. A tattered leather briefcase lay on a wooden table next to them. Bauman removed a large manila envelope and handed it to Bobby.
“It’s all here, everything I got from Atwood’s office. I made copies and put the originals back. I gave one to Burdick-decent man, told me there might not be anyone else around to trust, but that I could trust you. They were all involved, you know; one way or the other, all of them: Constable, his wife, Russell, the others. Whether they knew what was going to happen, whether they had any part in the decisions that got made-doesn’t matter, they were all responsible.”
Bobby bent toward him. Bauman was a completely honest man. He knew that, but he still was not sure what Bauman was trying to tell him. He tapped his finger on the envelope.
“You got this from Atwood’s office, and you gave it-a copy of it-to Quentin Burdick?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Bauman with a slight, embarrassed smile. He would try to be clearer. “Atwood hired the girl. All the records of payment are in there. But the girl wasn’t just some paid assassin; she was one of ours, someone who did things that no one is supposed to know. Atwood knew everything about all of them, what they had done, the money they had taken-all of it. That was the leverage he had, that and the fact that he didn’t have any reservations about doing whatever seemed to be necessary.”
“But he wouldn’t have had any reason to have Constable killed,” objected Bobby. “Russell and Hillary Constable had a lot to lose if Constable lived, and a lot to gain if he died. Atwood had to be working for them, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. Atwood didn’t do this on his own-have the president murdered, I mean. Because the rest of what happened: Burdick, what happened to those two in Paris, the attempt to make it seem like you were the one responsible-I’m pretty sure Atwood did that on his own; did it, as far as I can tell, with the consent of both Russell and Mrs. Constable. Once the president was killed, all they cared about was protecting themselves and getting what they wanted. They depended on Atwood for that. Do what’s necessary, that’s what they would have told him, and no one needed to tell him what that meant.”
Bobby was on the edge of his chair.
“But then, if it wasn’t Atwood on his own, and if it wasn’t Russell or Constable’s wife, who told Atwood to kill the president?”
Richard Bauman nodded toward the heavy envelope.
“There, on the last page, I think you’ll find the answer. It’s how the whole thing started, isn’t it?” he asked as Bobby dug through the documents.
Bobby pulled out the last page, read it through quickly, and then, scarcely believing what he had seen, read it through again.
Bauman nodded.
“Atwood wasn’t working for the president, or the president’s wife. He wasn’t working for Irwin Russell. He was always working for The Four Sisters. He was working for Jean Valette.”
“Jean Valette, who helped save my life, helped restore my reputation, provided the evidence to destroy both Hillary Constable and Irwin Russell – Jean Valette ordered the murder of Robert Constable?” asked Hart, as angry as he had ever been.
“There is no proof,” said Bauman, with a helpless shrug. “Nothing that would ever get a conviction. Atwood was paid a lot of money – millions – by The Four Sisters; but there is nothing to link Jean Valette directly to murder. Atwood could have done it on his own, done it for the same reason the others had: to keep Constable from talking about what he knew.”
When he got home, an hour later, and told Laura what had happened, what Roger Bauman had discovered, he could only marvel at how easily he had let himself be deceived.
“I should have known,” he said, shaking his head. “It was right there in front of me. Everything with Jean Valette – everything! – has a double meaning. He told me I was going to be president. What he meant was that it had already been arranged. He set everything in motion, moved everyone around like pieces on a chess board. He them – all of them! – in situations where they thought they had only one choice – the choice that led to their own destruction. It was in that speech of his: the call to recapture former greatness; it was there, right in front of me, when he showed me the portrait gallery of his ancestors, the line that goes back a thousand years. He thinks himself the last Grand Master, destined, like his namesake five hundred years ago, to save Europe and the West, save western civilization, from a danger no one else knows exists.” Hart’s eyes lit up as he remembered something more. “Ten men, acting together, disciplined, devoted to a cause, can change the world. That is what he said, and that is what he believes: Ten men, willing to follow where he wants to lead them; ten men everyone else will follow.”
“But you’re not one of them, Bobby,” insisted Laura, reaching out to touch him on the sleeve. “He may have controlled everything that happened, manipulated everyone the way you say he did, and he may have wanted it to end like this, with you as president, but he doesn’t control you. He never could, he never will. You’re not like the Constables: there is nothing you want that he can give you.”
Hart shook his head and with a rueful smile got up from the kitchen table where they were sitting and walked over to the window. He watched the sun slide down from heaven and set the sea on fire, watched as the stars came out to watch what the day had made them miss.
“What is it, Bobby? What are you thinking?”
“I told Charlie Finnegan that Jean Valette was either the most intelligent or the craziest man I had ever me,” he said, as he turned to face her. “Everything he said – about the meaning of the past, what has to happen in the future – made perfect sense when I was there, listening. And now he has sent me that,” he said, nodding toward Jean Valette’s thick manuscript with its brief, but urgent, plea that he read it, and read it slowly. “Doesn’t control me? Not by force, not by buying me with money, but what other effect his use of words? He held me captive when he spoke. What happens now, if I read what he has written?”
D. W. Buffa
D W Buffa served as a defence attorney for ten years and has a doctorate in political science. He is now a fulltime writer and lives in Napa Valley, California.