Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  “He didn’t get me arrested,” she said, gently. “I told you, it was all a big misunderstanding.” She hugged them both. “And, no, honey, I’m not going to marry him.”

  Locke squirmed free. “Why not?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Aurelia was shocked. Zora told him to stop, and he did. Later that night, Zora told her mother that Locke wanted a father in the worst way.

  “What about you?” asked Aurie, fearful of the answer.

  “I think you’re cool,” said her daughter, which was not, precisely, an answer.

  Back in her office, Aurelia found concentration difficult. The students had gone on strike to protest the Kent State killings, and exams had mostly been canceled, but some of the more ambitious young strikers had snuck final papers into the faculty mailboxes, hoping not to be caught by their fellows. Aurelia’s grades were already tardy. Her department chair asked if she needed time off. He spoke kindly, the way one does to the dying. In academic life, those who take time off tend to be forgotten very fast. Often the salary slot goes to someone else. Aurie told her chair not to worry. She worked double-time for a day and a half and got all the grading done.

  In free moments, Aurelia pondered. The part of her that had always believed in America wanted to go public, to call reporters she knew, or perhaps have Eddie talk to his political contacts. But Eddie was dead set against the idea. With the divisions in the country, especially over race, he feared the path that public hysteria might take. Besides, he said, nobody would believe them: Mr. Collier, by arranging their arrests at Jumel Mansion, had cleverly shoved them to the political margins. Aurelia allowed herself, however reluctantly, to be persuaded.

  Toward the end of June, she packed the kids into the car and made her annual pilgrimage to New Rochelle, visiting Kevin’s grave. While the children fed birds around the pond, Aurie remained standing before the headstone, asking her husband for lots of advice, and, probably, lots of permission.

  Two weeks later, Tristan Hadley, now separated from his wife, asked Aurelia out on a date. She refused. He asked if that meant that she and Eddie were a steady couple. She said she had no idea. Tris brightened. He sent flowers. He sent cards. She could not get him to stop. Tris pestered her and pestered her until she said yes out of sheer bone-weariness. Over dinner at Ithaca’s one fancy steak house, while a woman who might have been Streisand sat nearby, Tristan produced a ring.

  Aurelia almost fell out of her chair.

  She told him that he was sweet but she was not a marrying woman. He accepted this, then asked if he could see her again. She said no. She said it nicely, but she said it firmly. Later that night, she called Mona. At first Aurie asked about her son’s worrisome secretiveness, and his temper. Mona assured her that a degree of rebelliousness was normal at his age—especially against his mother. Then Aurie confessed her true purpose in calling.

  “This whole thing is getting out of hand,” she said.

  “If you’d say yes to one of these guys, the rest of them would go away.”

  “I can’t say yes.”

  “Then quit dating.”

  Aurelia decided she would. But when Eddie called to suggest that the two of them get away to the Caribbean for a few days once her children were settled at summer camp, she said yes fast.

  “Just don’t bring a ring,” she said.

  The island they chose was Barbados. A very polite police detective followed them everywhere they went. In bed one night, they decided whom to tell.

  (III)

  THE DRAWING ROOM had been refurbished since Erebeth Hilliman died. Out had gone the antiques and chintz. Now everything was modern and sleek and bound to be obsolete in another five years. It seemed to Eddie that there were fewer servants at Quonset Point, and, certainly, no domo, whether major or minor. They sipped fruit juice instead of sherry, because Gary Fatek was on a health kick. He did not have much time for them because his nephew Jock was waiting to see him, a spoiled preppie who was always in trouble.

  “How much of this do you actually know?” he asked when they were done, folding fleshy fingers over his knee. “How much of it is speculation?”

  “We can show you our notes,” said Eddie. He and Aurelia were on the low Scandinavian sofa, holding hands.

  “Notes on conversations with each other,” Gary pointed out. “You see the problem, don’t you? The central player isn’t you, Eddie. It’s Aurie. And the world will say she compiled these notes from two sources, both of whom she was sleeping with. Correction. Three sources, counting her husband.” He held up a hand in apology. “I know you weren’t sleeping with Tristan Hadley, but my sources say the whole academic world thinks you wrecked his marriage.” He stood up and began to pace. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you. People are dead, and it can’t all be coincidence. And not by natural causes. Two or three murders, a suicide, a ski accident.” He was at the window, looking out on his private beach. “And Mr. Collier. My sources tell me things about him, too.”

  “What things?” said Aurelia, when she realized that each of the two men was prepared to wait the other out.

  “George Collier is an assassin. Well, maybe you guessed that. He’s done a job or three for our government, details unavailable. His military appointment is cover. Which agency actually employs him, my sources can’t find out. But he’s a legend in the secret world, so they tell me. His particular expertise is making sure that every job he does is blamed on somebody else. He doesn’t leave unsolved crimes lying around for some journalist to pick up later. If you have Mr. Collier as an enemy, well, maybe you should move in with me. My place is a fortress, and, frankly, I could use the company.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to hurt us,” said Eddie, wondering why Gary was refusing to face them. “I don’t think he’s allowed to.”

  “Yes. You said that. But you’re putting an awful lot of faith in something a killer told you in a Saigon hotel.”

  “He could have killed me in Saigon. He could have killed us both in Harlem.”

  Gary shook his head. “No, no, Eddie. You’re missing the point. He couldn’t just shoot you in Jumel Mansion. What good would that do? I just told you, he doesn’t leave unsolved crimes lying around. He plans his murders for months, from what I hear. Maybe years.”

  Eddie and Aurie looked at each other. Both understood that there was something the leader of the Hillimans was having trouble getting out.

  “Let’s say you’re right,” Gary continued. “Let’s say your theory is true. What do you think we should do about it? You think because I have more money than Midas I can wave my hands and make people disappear?” He was suddenly very agitated. “You don’t have evidence to arrest anybody. You could say, let’s beat Lanning Frost. Well, fine. I’ll finance as many campaigns on the other side as you want. How’s that? You dredge up the candidates, I’ll buy them.” A long pause. Too long. “Or were you thinking of a more direct form of action?”

  So there it was.

  Gary was asking if they wanted him to hire a George Collier of his own.

  “Of course not,” said Eddie, quite alarmed. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”

  “We’re not killers,” said Aurie, eyes wide as she began to understand. “You’re talking about assassination, Gary.”

  The billionaire laughed, and turned to face them. He leaned on the sill and folded his arms. Now that he had broached his idea, the tension seemed to have evaporated. “You know, Eddie, what Lanning Frost said to you was true. If your opponent has dirt on you, you better have more dirt on him. And if your opponent has Mr. Collier on his side—follow me?”

  He offered them a guest room, but they decided to drive back to Manhattan that evening after dinner. In the carport, he told them they should call him if they changed their minds.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” fumed Aurelia as they sped along the interstate.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Eddie. “He was delivering a message.”

 
“That he thinks we should kill somebody?”

  “No. If we’d said yes, he’d have found some excuse. No. That whole speech was to let us know he won’t lift a finger to help.”

  “But that’s impossible! He’s”—a momentary stumble—“your friend!”

  “Not any more,” said Eddie. “We’re on our own, honey.”

  As they drove on through the darkness, Eddie remembered his first and only meeting with Erebeth Hilliman, more than a decade ago. He would never be a real writer, she had lectured him, until he read Milton.

  John Milton—author of Paradise Lost.

  CHAPTER 61

  Again the Golden Boy

  (I)

  THE YEAR 1970 MELTED into 1971, and still there was no word of Junie. Eddie wondered if his sister might have fled the country. There was political violence everywhere. The Baader-Meinhof Gang was robbing banks in Germany. Could Junie have joined them? The Front de Libération du Québec kidnapped a British diplomat. In Uruguay, the Tupamaros kidnapped another. Had Junie been involved? Somebody had to know. Despite his outward cynicism, Eddie, like many American radicals before and since, harbored a childlike wonder at the Godlike powers of his government. It was not possible for them to have misplaced Junie so thoroughly. Therefore, it was a plot. A conspiracy. Not human failing. Human malice. What he could not supply was a motive.

  Eddie still found topics for essays. A Supreme Court decision on busing. The Pentagon Papers. But his writing had lost its sparkle, and everybody knew it. The promised Hong Kong novel languished. He roamed the huge house, unable to concentrate. Sometimes he visited Aurelia. Sometimes she visited him. Sometimes she found him unbearable.

  In September, riots erupted at Attica. The prisoners took hostages. The assault by police and National Guard units three days later led to the largest killing of Americans by Americans in the twentieth century. One of the inmates who died was Maceo Scarlett, a leader of the uprising. Harlem had forgotten the Carpenter, so Eddie paid for his funeral. Only a dozen mourners showed up, but one of them was Bernard Stilwell.

  Later, he and Eddie had a bite to eat.

  “I never told you why I left the Bureau,” said the retired agent. He was pale. His hands shook. “The Director is an old man, Eddie. He’s sick. One of his sickest ideas was something called the Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. You’ve never heard of it. You will soon. You know Hoover liked to collect information on powerful men. The sort of thing I bugged you for when you were at the White House. Well, COINTELPRO puts some of the information to use. The Bureau infiltrates any group the Director considers radical. Some of them are violent. The Panthers. Weatherman. But a lot of them are just people the Director disagrees with. We kept tabs on all the civil-rights leaders. I helped run the program for a while, Eddie. I know.”

  Stilwell coughed. His chest rattled. Sympathy welled unexpectedly. “Why are you telling me this?” Eddie asked, more gently than he would have expected.

  “I don’t have too much time left. You guessed that, didn’t you?” Another cough. “Maybe I want to make amends. Maybe I just don’t want to die with certain things on my conscience.” He sipped his coffee. “Eddie, the Bureau had Agony marked down from the beginning. Those kids couldn’t make a move we wouldn’t know about. When your sister joined up—when she had her training sessions in Rockland County, when she was in the safe house in Tennessee—all that time, the Director had his finger on them. Their name wasn’t even Jewel Agony. That was something we made up to separate out the false confessions. Really they called themselves Perpetual Agony, and, well, anyway, we had them fully penetrated. Then they got away from us. That’s the thing. They got some new help, professional, somebody who knew our methods as well as we did, and we lost touch. The Director was furious. A couple of people got demoted over that one.”

  Professional help, Eddie was thinking. Maybe from a CIA man who used the name Ferdinand, who would have seen the Bureau’s reports and wanted the woman he loved far from Hoover’s clutches. Either the woman he loved or the terrorist organization the Palace Council had created, as Castle’s testament put it, to scare America.

  “The thing I want you to understand is this, Eddie. Until Agony got away from us, nobody ever died in its actions. This was when your sister was running it. But once we lost track of the group, Sharon Martindale took charge, and people started dying. That’s what I wanted you to know.”

  Eddie did understand. And could have kicked himself for not seeing it earlier. The dates in the source reports he had read in Ithaca matched up perfectly with the dates of Agony’s actions. The 1963 Birmingham bombing, the first fatal attack by Agony, occurred when Junie was in Ghana. Then, in 1965, after Agony killed Kevin Garland, Junie renounced violence. She was stripped of her authority, and within a year or two, she left to find her children. After Junie’s departure, Agony kept on killing.

  With Sharon in charge—and Perry Mount pulling the strings.

  No wonder he wanted Junie found.

  (II)

  AT THE END of 1971, Eddie received his usual invitation to Byron Dennison’s New Year’s party. From Albemarle Street he called Aurie. Yes, she had hers, too. And she thought they should go.

  “You’re joking.”

  “We should talk to him.”

  “He’s part of what’s going on.”

  “I’m not so sure,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think he’s a bad man.”

  Against his better judgment, Eddie agreed. As usual, Aurelia drove the kids to Hanover just after Christmas. She and Eddie met in Boston. In the taxi, he was nervous. “He’s not going to hurt us,” Aurie said.

  “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?”

  He showed her the clipping from that morning’s Boston Globe, an innocuous item most readers would have forgotten immediately after turning the page. The article spanned only three paragraphs, and was buried deep in the middle of the paper. FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT AIDE TO ADVISE SEN. FROST, the tiny headline decreed. The story reported that Lanning Frost had retained the services of a veteran of several foreign postings to help develop foreign-policy positions for his likely presidential run. Of course, the Senator was being schooled by experts galore, and nobody had ever heard of the new gentleman. But already, according to the final paragraph, Perry Mount—“a Negro graduate of Harvard”—was being mentioned by senior staffers as a possible National Security Adviser, should Lanning snatch the nomination from the favored Muskie in 1972.

  Aurie said, “So, what do you want to do, Eddie? Call Gary back and tell him we accept his offer?”

  But her man was lost in his own thoughts, and she knew when to leave him alone.

  The party was as sumptuous as always. Bay was delighted to see them, and made a great fuss. The governor of Massachusetts pumped Eddie’s hand as if he consorted with radical novelists every day. Claire Garland greeted Aurie as if they had never argued in their lives. The two old friends wound up sitting at a table with five or six other prominent women. Aurelia lost track of Eddie.

  Then Chamonix Bing sat down beside her, and Aurelia knew there was going to be trouble, because her old friend’s last name was now Mount.

  Somebody asked the obvious question.

  “Perry is wonderful,” Chammie enthused. “I love being married again, and to such a wonderful man. The children adore him, and he adores them. Jonathan especially. I couldn’t be happier.”

  But by now nobody was listening to her desperate assurances, because across the room a fight had broken out.

  (III)

  “THERE’S A MORAL HERE,” said Byron Dennison as Aurelia applied Bactine to her lover’s bleeding cheek. He held an ice pack on his split lip. “Never punch a man who’s been in the CIA.”

  They were sitting in the kitchen off the ballroom. Waiters streamed in and out the door. The noise of the party crackled. The revelers had taken the fisticuffs in stride. Perry and his wife had left.

 
“I wanted to do a lot more than punch him,” said Eddie.

  “You never did like Perry,” said the Congressman. “Didn’t he have a pretty big thing for your sister once upon a time? I wonder how he ever got a security clearance.”

  “Maybe he had help,” Eddie growled, glaring at Bay.

  Aurelia kissed him on the forehead. “Stop it.”

  Dennison’s eyes were thoughtful. “Maybe you want to tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

  Eddie was still angry, and needed an outlet. “Like you tried to help before? Getting the woman I love to steer me away from Perry toward Junie?” He brushed Aurie’s hand aside, and, shakily, stood. “What was the idea, Bay? To have me keep looking so your Palace Council could find her? Yes. I know about the Palace Council. And I know Perry is the Paramount. Well, does the Council know that its Paramount has had people killed? Or what he was up to in Hong Kong?”

  The Congressman seemed as relaxed as ever. None of the chefs was close enough to hear. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Not everybody’s your enemy, Eddie. Some of us—well, we don’t all agree with the direction in which Perry is taking things.” He nodded at Aurie. “Remember year before last? When you gave me that speech about how, when you do things in the darkness, you don’t have anybody to tell you when you’re wrong? Well, that’s the problem with Perry. Burton was crazy, but in his heart he was a decent man. I’m not sure Perry is all that decent.”

  Eddie was about to say something irretrievable, but Aurelia got in first. “So, it was Burton’s plan to begin with?”

  The Congressman nodded. “In a way. Burton was the head of the Empyreals, back in Harlem in the old days, and that’s where all those silly names and phrases come from. The Paramount. Shaking the throne. All of that. They had mimicked Paradise Lost for decades. Maybe they thought it captured the story of the race. I don’t know. The point is, when they all got together, Burton suggested using the same terms, and everybody liked them. And there it was. The Palace Council.” He pursed his lips. “And it was a joke. A big joke on the Empyreals. Of course Senator Van Epp let the black folks run the meeting. Of course he let everybody think that it was all Burton’s idea. But it wasn’t. Not really.”