Prosser applied another kitchen match to his pipe and leaned back. The sun was dipping, throwing long shadows across the Back Bay. Traffic moved sluggishly on Commonwealth. Chandler had a headache.
“My first commitment,” Prosser said slowly, brushing a knuckle along his white moustache. “My commitment underwent something of a change that night in Maine, a cleansing you call it, when I saw what the documents, as we thought of them, actually were … not some tedious figures about units of production or troop allocations or how amenable a congressman might be to selling his vote. No, we were dealing with something else here, the kind of thing I’d begun to forget.
“You will appreciate this, Colin. I was thinking of history and of the great men who had made it, history—the only record of the course man has taken, all we really have, the real legacy. How have men behaved before us? And as I studied the documents even cursorily I made certain judgments about them … and against these judgments I balanced the corruption and venality of my masters, the purpose to which these pygmies who employ me would put the documents … I saw them being twisted and reshaped and used by men who could not begin to imagine what George Washington and his men needed in their bosoms to survive that winter, and not only to survive but to prevail in the end.” He straightened up abruptly and rapped on the table: “By jove, a man has his limits! And I have reached mine—I never minded about tampering with the present age of the pygmy, but to stick our poker and tongs back into the age of the giants, rearrange things from afar? Damnation, that is going too far … my blood was up, I tell you! Let the KGB have this information for use in some cheap joke? Never! I’d sooner die … and, children, I hadn’t come across anything worth dying for in such a long time …”
“What was your final decision about the Washington letter?” Chandler asked.
“First, the Davis lad was delirious—he was living in a charnel house, his friends were dying, there was virtually no food, they’d damn near run out of hope. Who knows what he actually may have heard as he stood there half-frozen, frightened out of his wits? We’ll never know. And what did he actually see? A large broad-beamed man in a cloak signing a paper … and then a gunfight that left him pissing in his pants. That’s what this undeniably courageous lad is dealing with, under the severest kind of stress. And, second, we know of all the shoddy plots afoot at the time to undermine Washington’s stature—good Lord, the man was like a God to much of the populace, they’d have gone through what they did for no one else … so there were rumors, innuendos, accusations and a great many forged documents purporting to show the godawful real George Washington …”
Prosser shrugged: “It’s a fake. George Washington never signed that piece of paper … Nat Underhill should have known better, then none of this would have happened. But he wanted it to be true … capstone to his career. I understand, I understand …”
The telephone rang in Chandler’s study late that evening. Polly had just put on her sheepskin coat for the drive home. The chill of winter was back in the air. They had gone over Prosser’s remarks in a state of dulled amazement, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at the peculiarly meaningless absurdity of the entire business. And the telephone cut through their good-night kiss.
“Colin, for chrissakes, what’s happening? I thought I was a poor dead son of a bitch there for awhile … then I’m not dead but I’m in some fuckin’ quarantine with no goddamned fingernails and a helluva cold … ever try to get Kleenex out of a box with bandages all over your hands? Well, don’t …”
“Hugh,” Chandler cried.
“Old man Prosser was just in to see me—Prosser himself! Said he was bringing the message from you that all was well, and that I was getting sprung tomorrow … fuckin’ heart attack I thought I had, but you don’t know about that, do you? Anyway it was a pulled muscle …”
“Tomorrow?”
“You owe me a ride, too, you bastard …”
Saturday
CHANDLER’S TELEPHONE RANG AT SEVEN o’clock Saturday morning. He came awake as if he’d been doused with ice water. Where the hell was Polly? He didn’t like sleeping alone anymore: it had taken him hours to drift off after she’d left. He’d wanted her to stay with him, brew another pot of coffee in his marvelously renewed house, sit at his kitchen table and talk about what had happened to them, but she had insisted, had said that she had a home, too, that she enjoyed being there with Ezzard, had missed it. And he had the good sense to let her go. But now the telephone was ringing and he reached for it with a burst of hope.
It was Polly and he sank back on the pillows, smiling like a schoolboy.
“Colin, I woke up with the most awful thought,” she said, sounding dry and still half asleep. “I knew we’d forgotten something … Nora Thompson!”
“Nora Thompson,” he repeated. “My God, she’s still down at the Parker House, poor thing. She must think the earth opened up and swallowed us—”
“Well, we’ve got to take care of her, do something—”
“She has had a nice vacation, though. Expenses paid, if you recall …”
“Pick me up in an hour. I’ve got to spend at least forty-five minutes in a steamy tub. I’ve never been so stiff in my entire life. It’s just hitting me now.”
“Me too. See you in an hour.”
The morning was bright, clean, cold, with a sweet-smelling ground fog hanging over the Cambridge Common as he drove past. Polly was waiting at the curbside, doing deep breathing. She wore a navy peacoat, gray slacks, penny loafers. She kissed him. Her mouth was cold and fresh.
Over breakfast an astonished Nora Thompson heard a carefully edited version of their story, accepted their assurances that it was over. That somehow the world had been made safe for Nora Thompson to go home again.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve known for several days what the package contained—”
“You have! How?” Colin felt his eyes widening.
“A professor at Oxford returned my call, he’d been on one of poor Mr. Underhill’s lists, and he said a Belgian who’d been at dinner with Mr. Underhill that last night in Bucharest told him about the document.” She nodded, agreeing with herself, sipping her coffee. “That’s right, can you believe it? Told me all about George Washington’s signature and his being an English spy … I asked him what he thought about it, did it seem like the truth. ‘I’ve no doubt your Mr. Underhill had a document,’ he said, all huffy and pompous, ‘but the document’s rubbish! Poppycock! Should have known better, I’d say.’ His exact words.”
Polly glanced at Chandler, said: “That seems to be the general opinion. Professor Prosser, Colin’s departmental chairman, said much the same thing, didn’t he, Colin?”
“Most certainly. Said it was all nonsense.”
“Then these people have died for nothing,” Nora Thompson said wistfully.
In the afternoon they collected Hugh at the hospital. He looked a trifle peaked, a state he attributed to the difficulty involved in trying to eat with large, mittenlike bandages on your hands. Otherwise, he was in good spirits, if rather confused as to what precisely had been going on.
“Prosser told me I’d killed one of the bastards. That made me feel much better about the whole thing. Said there would obviously be no charges … and get this, he said there was some speculation that Pliers and his little wheezer of a pal were Russian agents! Well, Christ, what can you say to that? Quite a guy, Prosser … damn good thing you contacted him and you are very welcome for the suggestion. Now, Miss Bishop—Polly, if I may—tell me how you’ve been fighting off this fellow these past days … or is it weeks? Jesus, I don’t know which end is up, to be perfectly frank—”
“Hugh,” Colin said as the car neared the Yard on Massachusetts Avenue.
“Yes, my lad.”
“Hugh, have we got a story for you.”
“You don’t say …”
Together the three of them strolled the jumble of streets converging on Harvard Square, braced by the sunshine and the
cold. The world had a brittle, newly minted air about it. Polly and Colin took turns with the telling, left out nothing. They finished at the foot of the Widener Library steps.
“So now I’m supposed to believe all this,” Hugh said. The color had returned to his face and already it seemed to be filling out.
“Could we make it up?” Polly said.
“You have a point there,” Hugh said. “Colin?”
“So help me God.”
“It’s just a game then, that’s what you’re telling me—what Prosser told you.” He considered the contention, shrugged. “Well, why not? It makes more sense than believing that there’s some big point to all the bullshitting … I mean, if Prosser’s right, it explains a lot. Jokes—we’re living in a world of bad jokes. It makes too damned much sense …”
“Tough on the people who die, though,” Polly said. She put her arm through Colin’s, then through Hugh’s, walking between them.
“Hell, tough on the people who just get their fingernails pulled out.”
“The rotten part,” Chandler said, “is that they didn’t even know it was a game.”
“What about Washington, though?” Hugh asked. “The kid back there at Valley Forge … he said he saw him—”
“I choose,” Colin said, “to believe that he was mistaken.”
Polly decided that it would be best for Hugh to room with Chandler until his hands became somewhat more manageable. It wouldn’t do, she argued, to have you survive the torture of KGB thugs only to starve to death in a kitchen full of food. Consequently they stopped at Hugh’s, packed the essentials, and carted them over to Colin’s house where there was an extra bedroom prepared for the guest.
They sent out for pizza and Chandler broke out a bottle of champagne. There were several toasts: to survival, to the remarkable Harvard professors, to Bert Prosser and his Rolls-Royce …
“And to Polly Bishop,” Colin said, lifting his glass, pausing.
“Yes, man,” Hugh cried, “get on with it!”
“Whom I love with all my heart!”
Polly gave it a good try but one tear escaped, hung beneath her long dark lash. Colin kissed it away.
“Hark,” Hugh said. “Did I hear a sound at the door? Could it be the pizza man?” He lumbered into the hallway. Polly sniffled. Colin Chandler looked down at her fondly, feeling as if it had all somehow become a fairy tale.
“What the hell is this?” Hugh was making peculiar sounds in the hallway. Then the door slammed and presently he reappeared pushing a large cardboard packing box along the floor with his foot. “No pizza … just this and a car making off down the street. Well, don’t just stand there—I’m in no condition to open boxes …”
“There’s no name on it,” Polly said, kneeling.
“I’ll open it,” Colin said. “Is it ticking?”
He pulled the packing tape off and folded back the flaps. Slowly he worked his fingers into the excelsior packing material, took hold of something smooth and cold, pulled it slowly up out of the box until it was in plain view—creamy white, noble, sightless, perfect. Dumbstruck, they could do nothing but stare.
Houdon’s bust of Washington.
Epilogue
Cambridge
OGDEN WAS HOLDING PROSSER’S VELVET-COLLARED black chesterfield when the master came down the steps. He was wearing dinner clothes, bound for a formal dinner at a friend’s club. It was in fact an Old Boys’ dinner, an annual gathering of men who had attended the same preparatory school. Prosser rather enjoyed the chance to see so many men who had turned out to have surprisingly little in common but their adolescence. Usually it made him feel rather good about himself, a state of mind he wasn’t experiencing much lately.
“I’ll be driving myself tonight, Ogden,” he said, slipping his arms into the narrow sleeves.
“I know, sir. Old Boys’ night.” Ogden nodded gravely.
“Is there something wrong with the Rolls, Ogden?”
“On the contrary, sir.”
“Good, then. I saw you working away on it so diligently this afternoon, I thought there might be a problem.” Ogden had been, with him for nearly thirty years, ever since he’d been able to afford a good butler cum valet cum batman.
“I wasn’t aware I’d been observed, sir. I was merely tuning it up a bit, making sure it was ready, since you’d be taking it out yourself this evening. Here, now, let me give the collar a quick brush.”
Mrs. Grasse appeared at the end of the hall, watching.
“Ah, Mrs. Grasse, a parting thought—would you be so kind as to leave me a plate of biscuits and a thermos of cocoa before you retire? The digestive biscuits?”
“Yes, Professor. I’ll remember. It’s Old Boys’ night … you’re a creature of habit, you are, Professor.”
“Yes, well, that’s as may be.” He pulled on his gloves, tugged his white silk scarf into place, made sure the fly front of the coat was flat. “Well, then, good-night. Have a pleasant evening. Go to the pictures … something.”
“A quiet evening of television,” Ogden said. “Goodbye, Professor.”
The moment the door closed behind the departing professor, Ogden turned and made a shooing motion at the blocky figure of Mrs. Grasse. “Hurry,” he said impatiently. “The cellar stairway … no, no, I’ll close the door after me.” Ten seconds after Prosser left, the hall was empty, the door at the end which led to the cellar closed tight.
Once again, taking precautions paid off.
When, at the turning of the key in the ignition, the Rolls-Royce exploded with a consumptive roar, all the windows across the front of the house exploded inwards. The windows above and flanking the front door filled the hallway with needles of broken glass. The front of the garage disappeared as well.
Florida
THE AFTERNOON SKY COVERED THE visible world like the inside of a perfect robin’s-egg blue bowl, a sort of metaphysical bell jar under which all was perpetually well. Gentle breezes blew in from the outfield, carried the shouts of the ballplayers as the sleepy game dawdled into the sixth inning. The Pirates had built a six-to-three lead over the White Sox but had just sent an untested rookie to the mound.
“It could be a good game yet,” Maxim Petrov said. He was wearing a yellow waterproof windbreaker he’d picked up in Havana. The sun baked his face. “The pitcher is a mere boy … the White Sox just might hit him …” He bit off a huge piece of mustard-drenched hot dog and licked the remnants from his mouth.
“Baseball is for the birds,” his friend said, taking a great swallow of cold beer. He handed the oversize cup to Petrov who washed down the rest of his hot dog. He picked up another hot dog.
“Arden, what you lack is the subtlety to appreciate the infinite complications. To you it is boring … to me it is a hotbed of conflict—damn! I love it! Do you think I should defect?”
Arden Sanger winced: “Don’t say that, not even in jest.”
“All right. But I love baseball.” A White Sox batter doubled down the right field line. Several hundred spectators clapped perfunctorily. They were, for the most part, old, or infirm, or both.
“And don’t lecture me about subtlety,” Sanger said grumpily. “Not after unleashing those two imbeciles in Boston …”
“But I did not unleash them, as you perfectly well know. It was such a simple job—a joke, as I’ve told you—and we sent Prosser some low-grade merchandise. I can’t accept responsibility for every mistake …” He frowned at the thought: “If I did, I’d have no time for anything else. I thought those two men were perfect for such an elementary task … I was wrong.”
“You can say that again.” Sanger finished the beer.
“You must admit it would have been embarrassing … the Father of your country nothing but a traitor …” He chuckled ruefully.
Sanger grunted.
“You’ve finished the beer,” Petrov said. “I still have half a hot dog …”
Sanger motioned for another beer.
“Following your logic
,” Petrov said as another White Sox batter smashed a double, this one to left, making the score six to four, “I should say that you wiped out an entire landing party and a very costly fishing trawler—” He took the beer. Sanger paid.
“Fishing trawler,” Sanger said sourly. “Is it my fault if your boys are no damn good in a shooting match? We lost some, too, you, know.”
“Some, yes. We lost every man.” He shook his head, licked foam from the corners of his mouth. “What a mess …” He sipped more beer. “You know that you owe us something … we discussed that. We are agreed, is that correct?”
“Grudgingly. But, yes, agreed. Tit for tat.”
“And what is it that you’re going to give us?”
“It’s already done.” Sanger stared straight ahead at the game.
“Indeed?”
“The old man,” Sanger said. “To show our good faith.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. The old man … We’re both better off.”
A White Sox batter took two quick strikes. It appeared for the moment that the kid pitcher was out of trouble. The batter hit a home run on the next pitch.
“What did I tell you?” Petrov said, wishing he weren’t going back to Moscow at midnight. “The score is tied.”
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