“All right.”
For no reason that Macalaster could explain to himself, Zarah popped into his mind. He rang her number immediately—years of calling up people who did not really know him and might not want to talk to him had cured him of any vestige of telephone shyness—and to his surprise she accepted without hesitation. He supposed this was because she wanted to meet Mallory; most people, even those who believed that he was another Hitler, were consumed by curiosity about him. He said, “If you’ll give me your address, I’ll come by for you a little before seven.” Zarah replied, “No need; I can meet you at his door. I live in the neighborhood.”
Although it was dark and a wind swirling out of the Rock Creek ravine whipped her skirt, she was waiting for him on the sidewalk when he got out of his car. This gave Macalaster, who might otherwise have been struck dumb by her beauty, something uninventive to say as an icebreaker: “Which one is your house?”
“That one,” Zarah replied, pointing.
Dark-blond hair blew across her face. Macalaster, who had known any number of psychotic beauties, had ceased romanticizing women on the basis of appearances a long time before, but he was charmed by the way she looked. He said, “That used to be the O.G.’s place.”
“That’s right,” Zarah said. “Did you know him?”
Macalaster said, “I knew the figure of mystery. Not the real man. Did you?”
Zarah laughed, another delight because it was so unstudied. “They were one and the same, I think.”
The O.G.—the initials stood for “Old Gentleman”; he’d had a proper name, but no one ever called him by it—had been the head of U.S. intelligence under half a dozen Presidents. Nearly everyone in the world who had a claim to any kind of fame, from heads of state to the humblest journalists, had been welcomed to his house at one time or another.
Another gust of wind came out of the ravine. Zarah said, “I think we’d better go in.”
Inside the high-security entrance, a butler took their coats and showed them down a corridor. Walking ahead, Zarah vigorously shook her disheveled hair, and every strand fell back into place. They arrived in a reception room at the back of the house. Because it was intended as a place to have one drink before dinner, it had no chairs. The other guests, Jack Philindros of the FIS and Senator Amzi J. Whipple of Oklahoma, the Minority Leader of the Senate, and their spouses, already held glasses in their hands. As they joined the group, Bitsy Whipple was whispering, “It seems so funny not to see Susan in this room!”
Eleanor Philindros kissed Zarah. After looking Zarah up and down, Bitsy, a still-voluptuous former first runner-up for the title of Miss Oklahoma who was many years younger than her white-maned, corpulent husband, smiled a dazzling contestant’s smile and moved protectively closer to the senator. Zarah took a glass of California chardonnay from a tray offered by a servant. Macalaster accepted the Swedish vodka with lemon peel and freshly ground green peppercorns that was known in this house to be his drink of choice.
Meanwhile Mallory was deep in conversation with Philindros on the other side of the room. Alerted by the stir of an arrival, Mallory looked up, saw Zarah, and gave a visible start—the only involuntary physical response Macalaster had ever detected in him. Still talking to Philindros, he fastened his eyes upon her. His gaze was so intense, his attention so obviously distracted, that Philindros, who had his back to the room, turned around to see what was going on. Mallory put a hand on Philindros’s arm and walked him across the room.
Macalaster, pleased at the impression his companion had made, said, “Mr. President, this is Zarah Christopher, a neighbor of yours.”
Mallory shook hands with her. In the five steps it had taken him to reach them he had regained his composure. He said, “A neighbor? How near?”
Zarah gave the house number. Mallory, who of course had been a friend of the O.G.’s, knew all about the house. With a smile he said, “Have you kept the bric-a-brac?” The O.G. had been a famous collector of exotic junk.
Zarah shook her head. “No. He left all the furnishings, except the books and the wine, to his Boston club.”
“They must have been delighted. Who got the books and wine?”
“My father got the books; he left the wine to me.”
“Lucky woman,” Mallory said. “I hope you’ll tell me more about that at dinner.”
They sat at a round table. Mallory did not believe in rectangular ones, and said so when Zarah remarked on it. “Long tables establish a hierarchy and encourage plots,” he said. “Put any three human beings in isolation, as at the head of a table, and two of them immediately form a cabal against the third. Two people in the same situation will usually form an attachment, especially if one is male and the other female.”
“The famous Pax Sexualis Malloryana, isn’t that right, Mr. President?” said Senator Whipple. “How’s my Latin?”
“Naughty,” Bitsy said.
Whipple was old enough and eminent enough to tease former Presidents, though he scrupulously called them by their titles. He was, as well, the grand old man of the reactionary movement. As its first outright candidate for President many years before, he had paved the way for Mallory’s own candidacy and election. Mallory grinned at Whipple with transparent affection. Macalaster, who had never before observed him in private among his own kind, was surprised by the pleasure he took in the company.
Zarah said, “Is this theory of threes the reason why you do everything in twos?”
Mallory was seated across from her, no doubt on his own orders. He nodded approvingly. “Exactly. Even numbers are the building blocks of harmony. You’ve heard the expression ‘odd man out’? It’s basic to human nature.”
Senator Whipple laughed. “Mallory’s Second Law. Bitsy agrees with that one, don’t you, honey?”
Whipple was famously indulgent of his alcoholic wife. During his presidential campaign the tabloids, followed by the mainstream press, had published nude photographs for which she had posed while attempting to become a movie actress. The pictures had little effect on the outcome of the election—Whipple had known from the start that he had almost no chance of winning. But Bitsy believed that their publication had cost him the presidency, and he believed that guilt had driven her to drink.
He winked at Zarah. “My dear wife hates threesomes.”
“I do; I readily admit it,” said Bitsy, directing her words to Zarah with another incandescent smile. “Odd woman out is my motto.”
Zarah looked back at her in the same way she had looked at Hammett a few nights earlier, steadily but without expression of any kind. A silence fell. Looking around the table, Mallory waited for someone to change the subject so that he himself would not have to slight a guest, even a tipsy one, by doing so. Trained to cope with awkward moments, Eleanor Philindros said, “I have something funny to tell you all. The rug man came to pick up one of our carpets for cleaning right after Jack came home from the office yesterday. He took one look at Jack and said, in this really heavy Middle Eastern accent, ‘You’re not an American.’ Jack said, ‘Yes, I am.’ The man said, ‘No, you’re not. I’ve lived all over this country for forty years, and I know every American face by heart because I’ve seen them all. And yours is not one of them.’ ”
Philindros, a dark man who dressed in dark clothes, was so unassertive that he was often overlooked by flight attendants when they handed out drinks and snacks. Now he found all eyes upon him.
“Well, I can see what he meant,” said Bitsy Whipple flirtatiously. “You are exotic, Jack. I’ve always said so.”
“It made us laugh,” Eleanor Philindros said quickly, “because wherever we’ve been posted all these years, even in places like Japan and India, the locals always thought Jack was one of them. They’d argue with him about it when he denied it—which wasn’t always. The O.G. always said he could pass for anything but an American, and I guess he was right.”
Mallory said, “The O.G. usually was, about things like that. Speaking of appearances, Zarah
, you remind me of somebody I used to know. You’re not Paul Christopher’s daughter?”
“Yes. You’re the second President in a week to notice the resemblance.”
“The other was Lockwood?”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
“Likable.”
“Himself, in other words,” Mallory said.
Forgetting Bitsy, Amzi Whipple winked at Zarah; by now every man at the table was directing nearly everything he said to her. He said, “Your host has a weakness for Frosty Lockwood.”
Zarah said, “I can understand that.”
“Well, I can’t,” Bitsy Whipple said. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I just can’t. First he had that poor harmless old holy man Ibn Awad assassinated, and then he stole the election—”
Whipple said, “Now, Bitsy.”
“Well, he did, Amzi, he killed that poor old Arab and then he stole votes to get back into the White House. You know he did. And it was those horrible Hubbards who put him up to it.” Bitsy turned to Zarah. “Did the charming Lockwood happen to say where he’s hidden Horace Hubbard? Because the whole world would like to know.”
Macalaster said, “The subject didn’t come up, Bitsy.”
Bitsy turned her head in his direction. He saw that her eyes were wasted by drink. “How would you know?” she asked.
“The party was at my house, and I don’t allow my guests to ask visiting Presidents rude questions.”
“You don’t?” Bitsy let go a peal of laughter. “It was at your house? My, Ross, you do flit from blossom to blossom, don’t you?”
Everyone smiled appreciatively, as if at a genuine witticism. The conversation died; servants cleared the plates. As soon as the entrée was served, Bitsy said to Philindros, “Jack, is it true what they say about Horace Hubbard?”
Philindros, who had uttered not a single word during dinner, said nothing in reply to this unanswerable question.
Mallory said, “If they say that Horace and Julian Hubbard are Zarah’s cousins then, yes, Bitsy, what they say is true.”
“Cousins? Oh, my!” Bitsy smiled her great big smile, turning to look at everyone—Zarah last. “Oh, I knew that,” she said. “My, Franklin, but this chicken is delicious. It’s so tender.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Mallory said. “We must remember to have it again next time you come.”
“What I want is the recipe.”
“Then you shall have it,” Mallory said.
The sound of string instruments being tuned drifted in from another part of the house. Mallory said, “After dinner we’re going to have some music in the parlor. That’s the string quartet tuning up—young people, spirited but serious. I hope you like Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet.”
Whipple said, “Will I like it, Miss Zarah?”
“If you like deaf old men in despair.”
“Well, I like the Senate.”
Zarah smiled cautiously at the nice old man, whose eyes were fastened on his wife’s flushed face.
“Mmmm, this chicken,” said Bitsy.
Without comment, the rest of the guests ate the entrée, grilled swordfish in a sauce that tasted of mustard and fresh herbs.
7
For obvious reasons, Mallory’s security people routinely checked the background of every new person who came to see him. This involved no fuss or bother. On hearing the visitor’s name, the team on duty merely asked the computer for all available information. Normally this produced in a matter of seconds the entire life history of the subject: date and exact time of birth (useful in predicting the behavior of Orientals and others who rely on horoscopes), order of birth and number of siblings; education, including Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and I.Q. scores; physical appearance, including photograph, fingerprints, and voiceprint; records of military service if any; political and sexual orientation; pattern of drug and alcohol consumption; marital status and/or details of other cohabitations; personal friendships and associations since childhood; medical records, including prescription drugs used and any psychotherapeutic treatment received; job history, including earnings and performance evaluations; police, immigration, tax, and credit records and financial assets; an inventory of real estate and other property and possessions. A second data bank provided an indexed summary of all unevaluated gossip collected over the years by investigative agencies engaged by creditors and potential employers—and, for the period since background checks for sensitive government appointments were taken away from the FBI and privatized under the Mallory administration, all personal information gathered by investigative contractors on behalf of the U.S. government. Though it did not constitute a truly comprehensive picture of the individual checked, this computer profile provided a silhouette from which basic characteristics and probable behavior could be deduced.
The check conducted by Wiggins and Lucy on Zarah during the twenty-minute cocktail period came up blank except for a United States passport issued under her birth name, Zarah Meryem Kirkpatrick, and the date and country (“Morocco or Algeria”) of her birth to Catherine Eugenie Kirkpatrick. There was no entry under paternity. The passport had been renewed punctually every ten years as it expired. Beyond this, there was only a routine U.S. Customs list of less than a dozen entries and exits at American ports. The discovery of such a barren file was a rare, indeed almost unheard-of, event, and to Wiggins and Lucy it was very disturbing. Usually, the system drew a blank only in the case of impostors, who were by definition highly dangerous. The armed and highly trained security operatives who were on duty as servants for the dinner party were placed on full alert. Mallory was aware that this had happened because the tiny blue lapel pins they had been wearing earlier were replaced between cocktails and dinner with white ones. Lucy activated the listening devices in the dining room long enough to record a sample of Zarah’s voice, but the computer found no match. She dusted Zarah’s chardonnay glass, recovering a perfect thumbprint and three good fingerprints from the right hand, and transmitted these for identification to the data bank that contained every fingerprint from every source in the world. Zarah’s were not on file.
In theory this result could not occur because it was impossible to obtain an American passport without being fingerprinted. Lucy accessed the State Department records again and discovered that Zarah’s passport had been issued to her at birth by the American consul at Casablanca, who had waived the footprint then required by State Department regulations for infants born abroad of American mothers. His authorization for this highly unusual omission was a cable with an identifying number that Lucy traced to the U.S. intelligence service; this number contained a string of digits that identified it as the personal code of the man known as the O.G., who was then head of American intelligence. The name of the consul who had issued the passport did not appear on the register of Foreign Service officers for the period, which almost certainly meant that he had been an intelligence officer who was using the post as official cover. The nature of these data told Lucy that the computer would be able to tell her no more than it already had, because the computer itself had never been told what Lucy described to Mallory, immediately after dinner, as “the rest of the story.”
“All we know for certain about this woman,” Lucy said, “is that she appears to be left-handed.”
“Appears to be,” said Wiggins. “We’d better alert the boss.” As dessert was served, he passed Mallory a note.
Mallory asked Jack Philindros to stay behind after the other guests departed. While Eleanor Philindros chatted with Lucy, whom she had known since childhood because Lucy’s father was an Outfit officer who had served with Philindros in a number of foreign assignments, Mallory and Philindros discussed Zarah.
“There should be more than that in the files,” Philindros said. His voice was nearly inaudible.
Mallory moved closer and cupped a hand behind his ear. “Really? Tell me what isn’t there.”
Philindros cleared his throat and tried to speak louder, but h
e could not, so his answer emerged as a murmur. “That no one can do, Mr. President,” he said. “However, I can tell you what I know. Zarah’s mother, born Catherine Kirkpatrick, and Paul Christopher, whom you know about, separated a few days after Zarah was conceived. After divorcing him in Paris and reassuming her maiden name, Catherine disappeared and never again communicated with her husband or any other member of either of their families, not even her parents. Paul Christopher didn’t know of Zarah’s existence until she turned up on his doorstep a few years ago. It turned out she had spent her life in the Atlas mountains of North Africa with an isolated tribe of Berbers.”
“Zarah spent her whole life among these people?”
“Until her mother was killed a few years ago, yes.”
“Her mother was killed? How?”
“She stumbled onto a terrorist training operation in the Sahara Desert and was murdered. The Christophers are an unlucky family.”
Mallory was frowning, not because he was displeased with what he was hearing but because he was having so much difficulty hearing it. He said, “But this woman is highly educated.”
“Yes, more so than most,” Philindros whispered. “Cathy’s idea was to make her self-sufficient so that she would never be beholden to a man. Four or five languages and their literature, art, history, mythology, music, even a course in medicine. She can set bones and deliver babies. She plays the piano. She’s an expert on primitive Judaism.”
“You mean to say she had no contact with a university or with people of her own kind until she was over twenty?”
“Her mother brought in tutors—Brits and Australians mostly, never Americans—who also taught the Berber kids. That whole age group of the tribe are whiz kids. Cathy and Zarah lived well, in a big house. Cathy had money of her own.”
“Sounds like she was also well ahead of her time.”
“Something like that.”
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