In one way Julian had not changed at all. Despite his fall from grace and favor, he regarded everyone else with equestrian condescension, as if nothing whatever had changed in their situations. Old pretensions die hard, thought Hammett. Julian was so used to being the ranking human being in any encounter with another American, let alone a foreigner, that he still behaved like a man who had the power to change the lives of others with a word, a favor, a mere suggestion.
Reminding Hammett that he had recently done exactly this in his own case, Julian said, “How do you like being Chief Justice?”
Hammett replied lightly, “How do you like being the invisible man?”
Julian’s smile intensified slightly. “I find it restful. Answer the question.”
Hammett shrugged. “Frankly, it’s even more boring than I imagined. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“No?”
“No. I have a question for you. How much do you know about the private life of Lady Zed?”
Julian sighed. This obsession of Hammett’s, one among so many, had slipped his mind. What sort of mythical being was he now turning Zarah into? Hammett’s tenacity when trying to prove the reality of one of his paranoid hunches was truly unlimited. With another of his patronizing smiles (Hammett read his thoughts as follows: What could this toad possibly know about a cousin of the Hubbards’?), Julian drawled, “Does Zarah have a private life?”
“She’s dating Franklin Mallory—midnight visits back and forth between their houses, intimate tête-à-têtes over hummingbird tongues, served with exactly the right rare wine, private showings of great works of art, et cetera, et cetera. Is that what you’d call a private life?”
Julian was so surprised by this that he let it show in a gratifying way. “Zarah is seeing Franklin Mallory?” he said. “But he’s too old for her.”
“He’s fifty-five, she’s about thirty,” Hammett replied. “These June-September matches are quite common.” These were also the approximate ages of Julian and Emily Hubbard. Hammett shook his head in mock solemnity. “It’s the Montagues and the Capulets all over again,” he said. “The kids are just a little older now.”
Julian interrupted. “How do you know this?”
“I have my sources, and what they tell me is this,” Hammett replied. “Lady Zed is leading a double life. Or maybe a triple or quadruple one. She also romances Ross Macalaster, thus playing off the Lone Ranger of the media against the Prince of Darkness.”
“Romances?” Julian said. “Romances?” He knew Hammett too well to question the accuracy of his information, as far as it went. He almost always got the surface details right; it was the interpretation of facts that led him into error because he believed so strongly that nothing was what it seemed to be.
Hammett said, “I thought you’d be surprised.”
“Well, I’m not really,” Julian replied. “Zarah has always had admirers. Even you can’t seem to forget her.” He smiled his lofty smile again.
“Not surprised?” Hammett said. “Why is that?”
“Because nothing the Christophers do ever surprises me.”
“Even joining up with the enemies of mankind?”
“Nonsense. All she’s done so far, according to what you’ve told me, is have dinner with Mallory and look at some pictures.” He smiled again, eyes intent. “Now if she’d been lying on a tiger skin with him, I’d be worried. Wouldn’t want any little Mallory cousins at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”
“What amazing genes you must have in common with these Christophers, Julian,” Hammett said.
“You don’t know the half of it when it comes to consanguinity,” Julian said. “The saying in the family is, The Christophers screwed the Hubbards smart.”
“Then maybe their genes will help you answer a question: What was Lady Zed up to yesterday afternoon when she went straight from a social call at the White House to a meeting with Franklin Mallory? Or at five o’clock this morning, when she met him, just the two of them, in Rock Creek Park?”
Abruptly Julian stopped smiling. In a voice devoid of humor, he said, “Tell me more.”
Hammett shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
He studied Julian’s long, suddenly anxious and puzzled face. Curiosity, as he knew, was one of the greatest of all reinforcements to behavior, and he had just infected Julian with an acute—and, he hoped, incurable—case of it.
The bell rang for closing time. A museum guard, indifferent to their identities, made a gesture for them to depart. Julian seemed relieved. With a nod in Hammett’s direction that was so decisive that it ought to have made a noise, he turned on his heel and left.
Hammett sauntered after him, pausing to glance for a moment at John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madame Edouard Pailleron. He doubted that the woman had really been as patrician or as interesting as Sargent made her seem. She wore an expression that was a lot like Julian’s. No doubt the Hubbards and the Christophers of that era had had themselves painted by Sargent or someone similar, and this must be one of the reasons why they had cultivated that perpetual smile: they were trying to look more like their portraits than like themselves.
“We’re closing,” said the guard in an insistent tone.
Hammett ignored the man. He walked briskly out the door and down the wide marble staircase, the trace of a smile lingering on his lips as he remembered his insight about Julian and his tribe. Although even he had to admit it would be difficult, in Zarah’s case, to improve on nature.
2
Julian’s relationship with Lockwood, formerly so interwoven that the world, and even Lockwood and Julian themselves, had scarcely known where one personality ended and the other began, had now changed so profoundly that the President no longer even laughed in the presence of his chief of staff. Where in the past Julian had walked in and out of the Oval Office or the Lincoln sitting room at will a dozen times a day, he now saw the President just twice: at 7:30 A.M. to deliver his morning report and receive his instructions, and again at 7:30 P.M. after the network news, to summarize the routine business of the day.
These were short, formal encounters, with none of the ribald jokes, raucous gossip, and deep confidences of times gone by. Political questions were never discussed, least of all the impeachment process that would decide the fate of both men. The intricate tactics and strategy, the politics of maneuver, which had been Julian’s special province and Lockwood’s joy, were no longer subjects for discussion. Offers of advice by Julian met with a cold stare and a wall of silent reproach from the President. After the first few rebuffs, Julian stopped offering counsel of any kind. Without ceremony or notice, he had been reduced from the informal but real rank of second most powerful man in the administration, and therefore in the world, to that of glorified clerk.
The demotion had even been gazetted. Patrick Graham, citing “the highest source,” which could only mean Lockwood now that the words “unimpeachable source” had been dropped as an identifier, had broadcast a piece revealing that Julian no longer spoke for the President because he was no longer privy to Lockwood’s innermost thoughts. After Graham dropped this boulder into the water, causing ripples of withdrawal to spread across the news media, Julian ceased being courted by journalists. He had not received a call at home from an important reporter for weeks. Hammett’s caustic wisecrack about invisibility had been all too apt: though he continued to enjoy his title and perquisites and go to work every day in the second-largest office in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington terms Julian really had sunk from sight. Insiders no longer mentioned him; outsiders who had always before referred to him when dropping names as “Julian” now spoke of him curtly as “Hubbard.”
However, the Secret Service’s presidential protection detail was still responsive to the chief of staff because he continued to stand between them and the President in the chain of command and communication. Therefore as soon as he returned to his desk after his encounter with Hammett, Julian called Bud Booke
r into his office. “Give me the details of Zarah Christopher’s last three visits to the White House,” he said.
Impassively Booker removed his miniature computer terminal (ironically, a Universal Energy product developed for Mallory’s security detail on a pro bono basis) from its holster in the small of his back and punched in a code that accessed the central computer’s memory bank. Booker listened impassively through his earpiece. “Just one visit shows under that name,” he said. “Day before yesterday, sixteen hundred hours to sixteen forty-two hours, tea with the First Lady in the family quarters.”
“Where was the President in that time period?” Booker did not reply. After an awkward moment, Julian said, “I know where he was, Bud. What I need is the exact time frame. When did he go upstairs and when did he come back down?”
This was family business: Booker seemed reluctant to answer. As if calling a dog, Julian beckoned the information from the agent’s lips with a low whistle and a crooked forefinger.
Out of his perfectly blank face, Booker said, “The President was with the visitor and the First Lady from sixteen twenty-one hours to end of visit, when subject was escorted to the East Wing exit by Lieutenant E. Zwingle, the military aide on detail to the family quarters at that time. The President returned downstairs, to his small office, at seventeen oh eight.”
“Thank you, Bud.”
“No problem.”
Booker left. Julian waited five minutes before rising to his feet and striding down the hall to the Oval Office.
“He’s busy,” Jean McHenry called out as he passed her desk, giving the second word a coloratura lilt, but Julian plunged onward. Lockwood, standing by the french doors that looked out onto the portico and the muddy lawn beyond, was deep in conversation with Bud Booker. The look on Lockwood’s face told Julian what they were talking about.
Guesswork was not necessary, however. Lockwood turned on Julian with fury in his voice. “What the hell’s the idea of checking up on Polly’s tea parties?”
“I had a family interest,” Julian said.
“Well, by God, so have I!” Lockwood bellowed.
Booker looked from one angry man to the other—Julian, deeply flushed, had stopped in his tracks midway into the room and Lockwood was advancing on him with his huge fists clenched at his trouser seams—then ducked out the french doors and on down the portico.
“I had to hear about Zarah’s visit from an outsider,” Julian said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“Couldn’t believe what? What the hell’s the matter with you, Julian, going to the Secret Service to spy on my wife?”
“I couldn’t imagine that I’d be deceived in this way.”
“Deceived?” Lockwood said. “Jesus Christ, you can speak that word to me?”
All the pent-up anger and rejection and frustration of the past weeks ruptured within Julian’s bosom. Blood pounded through his heart at a dangerously high pressure—195 over 135 the last time the White House doctor had checked it—that even his medication could not control. A pulse beat painfully—and, he was sure, visibly—in his forehead. Lockwood, very close now, stabbed him on the breastbone with a rigid forefinger.
Julian slapped the President’s hand away. “What the hell’s the matter with you, using my cousin to traffic with the enemy?” he cried. “Don’t you know who she is, what she’s done for this country, what this can mean?” Lockwood looked studiously at his hand, then back into Julian’s contorted face, saying nothing. “You are using her to carry messages to Mallory, aren’t you?” Julian said. “That is what this is all about, isn’t it?”
Lockwood said, “Get your ass out of here.”
Julian stood his ground. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
Lockwood looked him up and down as though he had walked into the Oval Office naked. Then, without another word or gesture, he turned his back and walked toward the door that led to his small private office.
“What you’re doing is demented—worse, it’s stupid,” Julian said. “Mallory wants to destroy you. He wants to destroy everything you stand for. He’ll destroy Zarah.”
Lockwood opened the door, which was plastered like the wall and set flush into it, and walked through it, slamming the bolt home behind him. Julian stood where he was, breathing heavily and staring at the locked door, until Jean McHenry said with unwonted gentleness, “Julian, you should go now.”
3
It was twilight. Back in his own office, Julian stood by the window gazing southward across the spillway of blinking taillights between the White House and the Potomac bridges. His heart still pounded; he had trouble breathing; the skin burned on his face. Not even when he had crashed his burning Phantom into the South China Sea almost thirty years before had his body taken control of his mind in this way. To himself he silently repeated the words his father had spoken to him once upon a time: “I require you to think quietly, systematically, unemotionally.”
Julian’s well-worn Zeiss binoculars, the ones his father had taken from the corpse of an SS officer whom he had strangled by night with a wire noose in occupied France, hung by their worn leather strap from a hook in the window sash. He took them down and swept the trees and bushes on the south lawn. In the gathering dusk he saw a movement in the sky above the Ellipse. He refocused the glasses and to his amazement and delight identified a red-shouldered hawk. The unmistakable rufous shoulder patch, rusty body, and ruby underwing all showed up distinctly. The hawk was hunting field mice, its winter prey, or more probably smaller specimens of the Norway rats that teemed among the stately monuments. Suddenly it dove straight downward, then rose again with powerful strokes of its two-foot wings, grasping a writhing animal in its talons. Julian watched the bird out of sight as it pinioned toward the river, a creature with form and instincts out of prehistory.
As he was entering this fortunate sighting in his book (Buteo Meatus, time, date, place, and particulars, with the notation, “red in beak and claw as nature itself!”), it occurred to him that the hawk appearing over the heart of the city during rush-hour traffic had been an omen of some kind. This errant thought, so incorrect in terms of the enmity to all forms of superstition by which he had always tried to live, took him by surprise.
Julian was a little calmer now. As if drafting a diary entry, he tried to describe his present situation as a way of understanding it. But he failed to understand it, as he had failed many times before in recent days, because he had nothing to compare it with. Even the end of his first marriage had been affectionate and civilized in comparison with this. Caroline, his first wife, was a changeful woman who had simply fallen out of love with him and into love with another man, Leo Dwyer. Her second husband, who worked at home, was in a position to be with her all the time, and, as she said outright to Julian—Caroline was not a woman to leave her reasons for doing something unspoken—Leo had enormous sexual energy. Julian had never been home when she needed him, and most of the time he was too tired, too distracted, or rendered impotent by the pills he took for his high blood pressure to be much use to her in bed. He understood why Caroline wanted a change; he let her have it. After a period of chaste cohabitation in the little Georgetown house while the necessary legal arrangements were made, she left. When they parted in the hall on the last morning of their marriage, she might as well have been a daughter kissing her father goodbye before going off to Vassar. It was a turning point; their lives changed irrevocably, but they themselves did not. She would still be Caroline and he would still be Julian. The event was dramatic, but the effects were mild and civilized. They thought no less of each other after the divorce than before; they liked each other’s new spouse; each was glad of the other’s second chance at happiness—if that’s what the limbo of after-youth was called.
What had happened today was not like that at all. There was no residue of affection between Julian and Lockwood, no consciousness, even, of the past. In a flash of insight, Julian understood why. He and Caroline had abandoned their marriage, but they we
re still alike by birth, education, sensibility, and above all politics, and they were bound together permanently by their son and daughter, who would grow up to be a great deal like them, and by a vast network of relations and friends who were also semblances of themselves.
But when Julian and Lockwood abandoned the thing that had bound them together—the pretense that the pauper could be hero to the prince—nothing remained. It had always been a pretense. The man who had pretended to be Julian’s father and the one who had pretended to be Lockwood’s son had ceased to exist. The charade was over, and all the sentiment and enjoyment it had engendered, all the sympathy it had inspired for its characters, all the suspension of disbelief that had been necessary to its enjoyment, were left behind.
It was time to go home. Julian closed his birding log and from his desk drawer withdrew a sheet of the stiff White House writing paper whose vulgar ostentation had always repelled him. His ancient Mont Blanc fountain pen, which, like the Zeiss binoculars, had once belonged to his father, was already uncapped. In a fluent hand, he wrote:
Dear Mr. President,
I hereby resign as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.
Yours truly,
He signed his name and dated the document. There, Pa, he thought—the ultimate writing cure. Then, with deliberate movements and a lighter heart, he put his pen and his birding log into his pockets, slung Elliott Hubbard’s captured binoculars over his shoulder, and, standing at his desk, made one last telephone call at taxpayer expense before going out the door forever.
Ordinarily Julian would not have used this phone to make this particular call, but circumstances had rendered him reckless. The number he reached was the one in Stamford, Connecticut, and when Seven-One answered in slightly drunken tones, for it was late enough in the far suburbs for the third martini to have been poured, Julian said with a lift in his voice, “What did Trelawny snatch from the funeral pyre at Viareggio?”
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