Macalaster stopped thinking and turned the ignition key. He had parked the car in front of Julian Hubbard’s house before he realized in any conscious way that he had chosen it as his destination.
11
Julian was delighted to see him. “Ross!” he cried on opening the door. He held a rumpled copy of The Washington Post in his hand, half-moon reading glasses dangling from a shoestring around his neck. “What a surprise! Come in, sit ye down. Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
Julian was famous for this earthy question. He asked it of everyone who walked through his door, male and female, young and old, mighty or humble.
Macalaster said, “No. Can we talk?”
Julian sensed his troubled mood immediately and acknowledged it with one of his smiles. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said. “Emily’s still asleep.”
In his basement office, Julian gave Macalaster his desk chair, the only one in the room, and sat down on his writing table. Macalaster handed him the tape recorder, earplug dangling. Julian lifted his heavy eyebrows in inquiry: Was he supposed to listen? Macalaster nodded; Julian fitted the plug into his ear, put on his reading glasses so he could see which button to push, and started the tape. He listened to the end, his face a complete blank, then removed the earplug and handed the machine back. He did not ask how Macalaster had acquired the tape, nor did Macalaster volunteer an explanation. Under Washington rules, both the question and the revelation were forbidden.
As a young reporter Macalaster had learned to ask the most important question first, because it often eliminated the need to ask any others. You either shocked the truth out of the source or got thrown out. In either case you knew you had a story. Knowing this, Julian waited for what he knew would come next. At last Macalaster said, “Is that conversation genuine?” He did not specify that they were on deep background. Julian was always on deep background with everybody; in his ascendancy, everyone had talked about him, but no one had ever quoted him by name. He had been the “informed source” of hundreds of news stories, always behind the scenes, never out in front of the President.
Julian never made the mistake of lying to a reporter. He nodded. Nodding again at the tape recorder in Macalaster’s hand, he asked, “Is that thing on?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good. Fire when ready.”
Macalaster said, “You were present?”
“As you heard. Yes.”
“Lockwood meant what he seems to mean? Nothing is missing, there’s been no editing that leaves out words or understandings that might give his instructions a different meaning or interpretation?”
“The essentials are there.”
“Can you be a little more forthcoming, Julian?”
“There’s not much to be forthcoming about. It had all been discussed beforehand. The President called Philindros to Live Oaks for the express purpose of deciding what to do about Ibn Awad. Philindros told him what the FIS knew or suspected. Lockwood made his decision. As you heard, he had trouble putting it into words, but Philindros insisted.”
“He had trouble because he didn’t really want to do it and Philindros did, or what?”
“Oh, no, it was the other way around. Jack hated the idea. Lockwood saw it as a necessity of state.”
“How did you feel about it?”
“My feelings were, and are, irrelevant. The President had weighed the intelligence and listened to the arguments. He had been presented with options. He had made a finding and issued an instruction. It was the first agonizing decision of his administration, and new as we were, I think we were all aware at the time of what it meant.”
“In what terms?”
“In terms of the fate of the world and Lockwood’s hope of Heaven. Also our own hopes thereof. Jack’s and mine.”
“And it was your job to support this decision, no matter what?”
Julian smiled for the first time, charmingly. “I could have resigned. That’s what you do if you can’t support the policy. But I didn’t, did I?”
“At least not right away.”
“Whenever, that wasn’t the reason.”
Silence returned. Although rush-hour traffic moaned on Wisconsin Avenue only a block or two away, no sound penetrated the basement; it was as quiet as a broadcasting studio, and the voices of the two men were flat and unnaturally clear.
Macalaster said, “Julian, you realize what this means?”
“You mean do I realize how it will appear? Oh, yes. But I’ve been through the whole thing before.”
“What do you mean, you’ve been through it before?”
“Patrick Graham had a copy of this same tape last fall, when he broke the Ibn Awad story. He decided in the end that making it public wasn’t a good thing to do.”
“Why was that?”
Julian said, “Oh, I think it had something to do with being able to live with himself afterward.”
“Patrick’s an expert on that, all right.”
Julian smiled again. “Aren’t we all?” He slid off the writing table, on which he had been balanced on one haunch, and crouched in front of a large old-fashioned green safe. While he twisted the combination dial, Macalaster, a professional collector of details, read the maker’s name, Monroe T. Grossnickel, Dalton, Massachusetts, Est. 1894, written on the door in gilt script.
The bolt clicked loudly and Julian swung open the door. The safe was filled with books bound in graduated shades of tan goatskin, darker hues at the top, lighter ones at the bottom. He said, “Do you know the exact date of the event in question?”
“You mean what’s on the tape?”
“Yes, what’s on the tape.”
“Yes, I do.”
Julian raised a hand before Macalaster could say it aloud. He stood up with a volume in his hand, and dropped it on the writing table in front of him. “Then you’ll have no trouble finding the place in this.” He closed the door of the safe, turned the handle that shot the bolt, spun the dial, and switched on the green-shaded desk lamp. “I’m going birding along the canal,” he said. “When you’re finished, just leave things as they are, if you don’t mind, and find your own way out.”
When the door at the top of the stairs clicked shut behind Julian, Macalaster opened the leatherbound book. The date was stamped in gold on the spine. It was Julian’s diary for the first year of the Lockwood administration and contained, in minute detail, in Julian’s clear, almost calligraphic handwriting, the entire story of the assassination of Ibn Awad. No dossier of top secret documents from the innermost archives of the White House could have been half so revealing because this was a confession, beautifully expressed, of a man who knew everything. As he read it, Macalaster felt that he was looking into another life through a one-way glass. He did not understand why Julian was letting him do this, but he copied the whole story, which was scattered throughout the volume, into the notebooks he always carried in his pockets. He read none of the passages in between; he understood just how far the limits of Julian’s permission ran. When he had finished, he closed the diary and tried unsuccessfully to wipe off the salt stains left on the binding by his sweaty hands.
12
Macalaster was unable to get through to Lockwood—now that Julian had resigned, he did not know whom to go through—so he called Jack Philindros. He had no hope that Philindros would tell him anything of his own knowledge or volition. Philindros did not talk to members of the press; neither did anyone else at FIS who wanted to go on working there. Philindros’s first official act as director had been to abolish the public affairs office established after the previous American intelligence service had been deconstructed by publicity. A secret intelligence service, he declared, had no public affairs; therefore it had no reason to traffic with journalists.
Philindros was now in the final months of his ten-year term as the first director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, and as far as anyone knew, he had never in all that time talked to a member of the news media on or off the record. When h
e encountered such people in social situations he either kept silent, as he had in Macalaster’s presence at Mallory’s dinner party, or talked about fly fishing; he and Associate Justice Bobby M. Poole went to a mosquito-infested backwoods fishing camp in Labrador every spring to catch trout and salmon, which they released immediately after netting. The FIS switchboard and Philindros’s secretaries automatically hung up on journalists. Paradoxically, this inaccessibility had made Philindros popular with the press. Macalaster got through to him because he had found the number of his secure telephone in Julian’s diary. It had been entered in block letters at the top of a page, evidently as a reminder, but perhaps, Macalaster thought, as a convenience to himself. In any case, he dialed the number.
It took Philindros a moment to recover from the surprise of picking up the receiver and hearing Macalaster’s voice on his ultraprivate line.
“Ah, Ross Macalaster,” he said in a faint but civil murmur, “we met not long ago.”
Macalaster could barely make out the words. As in person and on the fatal tape recording, Philindros was virtually inaudible.
Macalaster said, “I’d like to meet again. I think we should talk.”
“Meet?” Philindros said. “Talk? For what purpose?”
“To discuss a certain conversation between you and the President.”
“Goodbye.”
The dial tone replaced Philindros’s whisper. Macalaster rang back at once. He said, “Let me tell you which conversation.”
“They’re all the same. Privileged.”
“This one’s different. Don’t hang up until you hear this.”
Macalaster played the first two or three sentences of the tape recorder into the mouthpiece. The line remained open. He said, “Mr. Director, will you talk to me about this?”
“No,” Philindros said. “And please don’t call this number again.”
“Then I’m going to have to go ahead without you.”
“That’s up to you.”
“You’ll be able to read what I write in tomorrow’s paper. In the meantime you should understand that I’ve been unable to get through to the President to tell him what I know and what I have in my possession and to give him the opportunity of commenting. If you want to mention this to him, you’re free to do so.”
This time Philindros hung up for good.
13
Macalaster was in his attic office, writing, when the front doorbell rang insistently. He ignored it. A moment later his telephone rang. When he picked it up he heard Lucy’s cheery midwestern voice.
“Wiggins and I are out front,” she said. “President Mallory would like you to come to him.”
Stooping, Macalaster peered through the round window and saw one of Mallory’s blue-black automobiles idling at the curb. Lucy stood beside it, holding a cellular phone to her ear. He was surprised by this visit. In spite of all that had been happening, he had not heard from Mallory for a long time, and his calls to him that morning had not been returned.
Macalaster said, “Now?”
“If that’s in any way possible, he’d appreciate it.”
“It’s not possible, really. I’m on deadline.”
“He realizes that this is short notice. He apologizes. But he said to tell you that Jack Philindros called him about your call, just in case you wondered what this was about.”
“I see. Let me ask you this: Does he want to tell me something in relation to the information Jack presumably gave him, or does he want me to tell him something?”
“I don’t know the answer to that question,” Lucy said.
On the way to Great Falls, Macalaster worked on his column on a miniature word processor, and by the time they arrived at the Norman manor house—Wiggins had taken the parkway today, so the trip lasted about forty minutes—Macalaster had finished a rough draft.
Mallory wasted no time on pleasantries. “I’ve been told you have a story.”
“I’ve just been writing it. You’re welcome to read what I have and make comments.”
Mallory’s voice was cold. “No, thank you. Are you actually going to publish these allegations?”
“I’ll publish what I believe to be fact.”
“When will it appear?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You realize the House begins impeachment hearings tomorrow.”
“What a coincidence.”
Mallory’s eyes turned colder. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”
“Well, it occurred to me that I might be indebted to you for the delivery of this information.”
“Then you’re making a foolish mistake.”
“If that’s so, what is this meeting for? Do you want to listen to the tape?”
“I already have a copy, thank you.”
“You do?” Macalaster, in whose presence secrets had been blurted out many times before by persons who knew better, was startled nevertheless at this revelation. He said, “What are you telling me?”
“This,” Mallory said. “And I want you to understand it clearly. I had absolutely nothing to do with that tape’s coming into your possession. And I have nothing to gain from its publication. What makes you so confident that it’s completely genuine?”
Macalaster said, “You know I can’t tell you that. If you have the tape, why haven’t you released it?”
“I told you I have nothing to gain from that.”
“Really? It’s going to mean the end of Lockwood.”
“I’m glad you understand what you’re doing. But it may not stop with Lockwood. You might consider that before you leap into this.”
Macalaster did not know what to make of Mallory’s behavior. “Are you asking me to cover this up?”
“Don’t be foolish. But I don’t think you realize what the real consequences of publishing this story will be.”
“I have an idea. It will cause a donnybrook. But whatever happens or doesn’t happen has nothing to do with me. I wasn’t in on the plot. So I don’t have to search my soul.”
“No, I guess not. But maybe you should ask yourself the obvious question about all this.”
“ ‘The obvious question’?” There was an edge of contempt in Macalaster’s voice over Mallory’s choice of words; for his own reasons he was as scornful of patriotic cant as Julian Hubbard. “What obvious question?”
“Who profits?” Mallory replied.
14
During the design stage of Universal Energy’s hyperfrequency communications satellites, O. N. Laster had instructed the engineers to leave a few electronic deaf spots on the face of the earth so that he could escape every now and then from telephones and computers. One of these hushed and unpeopled places was the Kunlun Plateau of northern Tibet, where he had gone to stalk a snow leopard the weekend before the Ibn Awad tape was delivered to Ross Macalaster in Washington. The snow leopard was one of the rarest animals on earth, and possibly the most difficult of all trophy animals to sight because of its nocturnal nature and acute senses. Laster wasn’t interested in actually killing this rare beast. He conducted a sporting stalk, approaching within rifle range of the animal, fixing its image in the ectoplasmic field of the night scope, placing the luminous dot of the laser beam sighting device on a vital organ, and snapping the firing pin on an empty chamber. So acute was the cat’s hearing that even this tiny sound, carrying eight hundred meters across a craggy abyss, was enough to cause it to vaporize, as it seemed to the supremely happy hunter, into the thin, frigid mountain air.
Even though a Tibetan guide on retainer had spotted the leopard in advance, and Laster had landed within a few miles of its lair in a short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft that had been prepositioned in Lhasa, the sporting stalk had required three full nights, so Mallory was unable to reach him until well into the evening of the day he talked to Macalaster. He finally got Laster on the phone in his Gulfstream somewhere over western China.
Mallory’s digitalized voice said, “I’m calling because I have a question for you. Did you ha
ve anything to do with the delivery of a certain tape recording to Ross Macalaster?”
“He has the tape—the tape?”
“He does. And he’s going to print it in two hundred newspapers tomorrow morning.”
“Amazing. All I have to say is God bless freedom of the press.”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“Have you asked him the same question?”
“Of course not. But he doesn’t have a clue.”
“Are you telling me he really doesn’t know where he got the thing?”
“I imagine he knows where. But not who gave it to him.”
“It wasn’t you?”
“In spite of much well-meant advice to the contrary,” Mallory said, “no, it wasn’t.”
“Amazing.” Laster laughed. “The answer is no, it wasn’t me or anyone I know. If it had been me, trust me, he’d be in no doubt about the matter because he’d be absolutely sure it came from somebody else.”
15
As soon as Mallory broke the connection with Laster, he dialed Zarah Christopher’s number. Again there was no answer. No recorded voice inviting him to leave a message. How could this be? He buzzed for Wiggins and Lucy, who had been watching him on television in the adjoining security station and were able to join him in less than a second by means of a hidden door in the wall. The folklore about Mallory’s protective technology wasn’t completely unfounded.
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