The Death Instinct

Mrs Cross identified some of the men to Littlemore: Mr Colby,

the Secretary of State; Mr Baker, Secretary of War; Mr Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; Mr McAdoo, whom Littlemore had met with Commissioner Enright and the Mayor; and Mr Daugherty, the man expected to be Harding's Attorney General. 'Senator Harding himself would be here,' she said, 'but he's vacationing, lucky man. Not that he would have made any decisions anyway. These are the men who make the decisions.'

'So this McAdoo – he's the President's son-in-law? He must be as old as Wilson himself.'

'Girls like older men in this town,' replied Mrs Cross. 'Eleanor must have been about twenty when she became engaged to him. He was over fifty. But a very handsome over-fifty. You don't approve of a girl taking an interest in older men?'

'Wonder how the President felt about it,' said Littlemore, thinking of his own daughters.

'They say it broke his heart. Mr McAdoo was a member of Mr Wilson's Cabinet at the time. But Mr Wilson let him go and then, last June, took the Democratic nomination away from him. I believe Mr McAdoo might have been our next president otherwise. Poor Eleanor. I wonder how she feels now.'

'Wilson fired his own daughter's husband from the Cabinet?'

'Oh, Mr McAdoo came out all right. He's a very prominent lawyer. He's here because he knows the location of the biggest oil wells in Mexico, which belong to one of his clients. I believe Mr Brighton is an acquaintance of yours? You rode his train to New York. It's quite nice, isn't it?'

'How does everybody know what I'm doing?' asked Littlemore.

'Were there any girls on Mr Brighton's train?'

'No, there weren't.'

'Too bad. There were the one time I was invited. Well, I'm taking a rest.' It was past two in the morning. At the foot of the stairs, she turned: 'Would you mind coming upstairs, Agent Littlemore? I need to ask you something.'

Senator Fall's apartment had two floors. Evidently the bedrooms were upstairs. Littlemore went to the stairwell. The motion of Mrs Cross's figure ascending a flight of steps was even harder to turn away from than it was on flat ground. He followed her and found her in a guest bedroom, unfastening her earrings. 'Close the door,' she said.

'Why?' asked Littlemore.

'I told you – I need to ask you something.'

He closed the door. She undid her blond hair and shook it out. 'What's your question, Mrs Cross?' he asked.

She approached very near him. With her heels, she was almost exactly his height. 'Does Mrs Littlemore know how important her husband's going to be?'

'Does Mr Cross know how his wife spends her nights?'

'There is no Mr Cross anymore. He died in the war.'

'I'm sorry about that, Grace, and I'm flattered, I really am, but I can't. There are rules about this kind of thing.'

'Rules?' She slipped off her shoes, one at a time, and looked up at him, putting her hands on his chest. 'This is Washington, Agent Littlemore. The rules don't apply here.'

'Maybe not,' he said, removing her hands. 'But I still play by them.'

At five-thirty in the morning, the meeting broke up, and the well- dressed gentlemen took their leave. There was little talk, and much seriousness of expression, as the long dark overcoats made their way out of Senator Fall's apartment.

'I'm too old for this,' said Fall to Littlemore after all had departed, pouring himself another drink and easing himself into a chair. 'The war order will go out tomorrow. It'll take a while to get the troops to the border. I told them we'll need half a million soldiers.'

'A half million?' repeated Littlemore.

'Baker thinks we can do it with a fifth as many, because he's not thinking about what we're going to be doing after we win. We're going to have a country to run, for Christ's sake.' Fall took a drink, grimaced. 'Where's Grace? I need milk. Wilson's people don't want to make it public yet that Mexico bombed Wall Street. That's what I was fighting with them about. They're afraid the people will panic if they realize that the enemy can blow the hell out of our cities. I told them the American people aren't a bunch of sissies. They'll demand war when they find out. Anyway, for now Baker's not going to say anything about the bombing. They're going to play it in the papers as a response to Obregon grabbing our mines.'

'What are they going to do about Mr Houston and the three senators?'

'Nothing yet.'

'I thought they wouldn't. All we've got is an authorization from the Mexicans to transfer funds. It's not proof any money ever changed hands. It's not proof of any crime at all. We need more.'

'You've done your country a great service, son.'

'Thank you, Mr Senator,' said Littlemore.

The sun was rising when Littlemore left. The November air was sharp and clean; the smell of burning leaves was everywhere. Littlemore walked the two miles back to his hotel. When he got there, he showered, trying to figure out how he would behave around Secretary Houston and what he'd need to do at the Treasury. He stayed under the steaming water a long time.

Chapter Eighteen

I think you must like keeping me in the dark,' Colette said to Younger in their lurching airplane, shouting to make herself heard over the propeller's roar.

Younger had refused to give Colette any explanation of his changing their destination from Bremen to Paris except to say that he had questions only Marie Curie might be able to answer. Far below he could see the twisting Danube, whose course the pilot was evidently following. 'Yes, it must be frustrating,' he replied to Colette, 'when you've been such a model of transparency yourself.'

When they finally reached Paris, they passed so close to Mr Eiffel's tower they seemed almost about to graze it. At the airstrip a few other planes warmed themselves in the afternoon sun, haphazardly arranged, and there was even a ticket office, but the entire place was deserted. The pilot, himself a Parisian, eventually gave them a lift to the city center in a ramshackle car.

Colette pointed out favorite sights as they crossed the bridge to the Trocadero and its spectacular crab-shaped Oriental palace, where, around calm reflecting pools, top-hatted men and parasol-carrying women promenaded. She gave the pilot directions to the Radium Institute. 'You must remember,' she said to Younger, 'that Madame is not in the best health anymore, and her sight is failing.' Colette shook her head. 'They almost rumored her to death a few years ago. Now she is the toast of Paris, and they all try to pretend it never happened.'

Viewed from the Rue Pierre Curie, the Radium Institute looked more like a comfortable bourgeois house than a scientific laboratory. 'When I first went through these doors and saw Madame s equipment inside,' said Colette, 'I thought it must be the grandest, finest laboratory in the world. Then I saw your marble halls of science in America. It must seem like nothing to you.'

Inside the equipment was indeed of very high quality: banks of electrometers, gas burners, twisted-necked glass beakers, all sparkling with scrupulously maintained sterility. Colette, after greeting old friends, eventually led Younger to the doorway of a room with a high ceiling, a large window, and a desk rather than a laboratory table. A gray-haired woman stood inside this room, instructing an assistant who was carefully packing equipment into a box.

Colette knocked on the open door and said, 'Madame?'

Marie Curie turned and stared: 'Who is it?'

'It's Colette, Madame,' said Colette.

'My child,' cried Madame Curie, beaming with delight. 'Come here. Come here at once.'

Marie Curie, fifty-two, looked older. Her upper lip was pinched with little vertical lines, her hands were spotted, her fingertips red. She wore her gray hair in a tight bun. A simple black dress covered her entirely, from tight collar to long sleeves to floor-length skirt. Her posture, however, was straight and proud, and she had one of those brows so clear, so fine, that it conveys a serenity beyond the slings and arrows of human misfortune.