Shelley's Heart

by Charles McCarry

  These developments did not surprise Hammett. He understood them for what they were, a predictable, programmed, Skinnerian response by an organism to a stimulus. The organism was the Cause. The stimulus was Olmedo’s charge that there was something false about Hammett. This implied that the secular religion which was the Cause must also somehow be false and deceptive. All but a few of those messages of concern to the Senate and much of the commentary in the news media had come from people who held radical beliefs with evangelical passion and would spring ferociously to their defense at the slightest sign that they were being questioned. Hammett knew their minds: Correctness was virtue; belief was personal validity; doctrine was truth. All else was evil. Hammett was the defender of the faith. Destiny had placed him inside the camp of the enemy in what many in the Cause were beginning to see—Graham again: he had superb writers—as “the Yorktown of the second American Revolution,” an engagement on which the whole future of truth and justice turned.

  All this Hammett explained, in slightly different terminology, to Sturdi and Slim, who had brought him dinner in a thermos bag. Since the beginning of the trial he had been living in his chambers at the Supreme Court, an impenetrable fortress, seeing no one, speaking to no one, knowing nothing of what anyone had done or was planning to do. He had not seen or heard from Julian since his confirmation. Busby had told him nothing. Slim and Sturdi told him nothing about the Attenborough case or anything else that might be discoverable by the media or the Senate. His telephone life, formerly so consuming, had come to a stop; every day, dozens of calls from journalists, members of the Apparatus, and Capitol Hill went unanswered. All this was by design: Hammett always worked best from hiding, and where this situation was concerned he had more reason to conceal his role, to quarantine himself from any possible contamination, than ever before in his life. No Shelleyan had called him in weeks. Owing to Julian’s decision, taken weeks before at the Harbor in the meeting with Busby and Horace, to isolate him from the actual management of this crisis, Hammett knew nothing of Julian’s plans or projects. He’d had no warning at all that his cell-fellow Palmer St. Clair 3d was going to drop out of the sky and be questioned about the Shelley Society, no inkling that St. Clair had done what he had done in regard to Macalaster and the Lockwood tape. In fact he was amazed that Julian, or whoever it was who had managed this particular operation, had even thought of St. Clair or that St. Clair had been able to carry out the mission with such efficiency. Was it possible that Horace, the spy of spies, had trained him?

  With Slim to his left as always to accommodate her left-handedness, Sturdi to his right, Hammett ate his supper (two kinds of squash, garlic, dried figs and prunes and unsalted farmer’s cheese in a sweet sauce over brown rice, with boiled spring water to drink), while watching a video recording of the day’s proceedings in the Senate. Although he had perfect hearing, his television set was equipped with a closed-caption function. What he saw on the muted screen confirmed his inner version of what had happened that day. A magisterial Hammett made a silent ruling, solemn and composed. His remark about the List of Names scrolled across the bottom of the screen. The camera panned to the choleric visage of Amzi Whipple on the floor of the Senate, then to the ravaged face of Attenborough in the gallery, then to Olmedo’s silent-movie Latin-lover countenance. Finally, turning to the visitors’ gallery, it showed the identical knowing half-smiles on the faces of the people of the Cause. In the Skinnerian sense, these men and women were reinforced by every word, every ruling, every gesture Hammett made. Each of them was touched by the sound of Hammett’s words in exactly the same part of his psychology, and all reacted as one.

  This was not mere chance, either. Hammett had seen what could happen, what advantages could accrue, as soon as Olmedo went into his act, and as soon as poor terrified St. Clair had been dragged into the dock, the Chief Justice had given the signal: The List of Names. He had made an instantly recognizable reference and that was what had activated the organism. That was the stimulus that set off the whole reaction, projecting into every good person’s mind the famous black-and-white television image of unshaven, uncouth, unspeakable Joe McCarthy, while in the background the quavering voice of reason asked. “Have you no decency, sir? At long last, have you no decency?” Hammett was pleased with himself; he had triggered it all with subliminals. It did not begin with Skinner or even Pavlov. His grandfather Gika Mavromikháli, lying in wait on the Mesa Mani for a hidden enemy to show himself, had willed his target to urinate, and when he did so after hours of absorbing Gika’s irresistible thoughts, the old fighter aimed his rifle by sense of smell and killed him. Ah, Grandfather, Hammett thought.

  The recording came to the part in which St. Clair was describing his encounter with the bicyclist. Hammett had finished his plate. Sturdi’s was untouched; she crouched in her chair beside him as if she meant to spring into the monitor and grapple with Olmedo in its green electronic depths as with a shark. Hammett said, “That wasn’t you, I hope?”

  Sturdi turned a pale, frowning face toward him. “What wasn’t me?”

  “The androgynous messenger in yellow goggles on the bike. It wasn’t you.”

  “What a question.”

  “It wasn’t an accusation,” Hammett said, “it was a pleasantry. Lighten up, Sturdevant. You seem tense, disturbed.”

  In jest he always called her by the name she had used before she changed it to Eve, and since it was Hammett, Sturdi did not mind. “Who wouldn’t be disturbed with all that’s happening?” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  “All this is just the Establishment behaving according to its nature,” Hammett said. “What bothers you in particular?”

  “This Shelley Society business.”

  “Because you didn’t know it existed?” He smiled. “Or if it actually does exist?”

  “How should I know? I have no need to know. But somebody did need to know in order to do what was done today. All those details. If it does exist, they penetrated it. How?”

  “Sounds like they tapped telephones.”

  “But they had to know which phones to tap. How could they possibly know whom to tap if only the members know who they are?”

  “Treason, obviously.”

  “I agree,” Sturdi said. “Do you remember your concerns about a certain relative of the Hubbard brothers?”

  “Ah, the ubiquitous, all-seeing Lady Zed,” Hammett said. “The Valkyrie. What about her?”

  “Maybe you were right. Maybe she did hear something from someone in the family and pass it on to Lockwood in one of those secret meetings she had with him. Her father must have been a member of the Shelley Society.”

  “Her father went to Harvard,” Hammett said. “The Harvards don’t have any secrets.”

  This was the sort of detail Hammett loved to know and reveal. After his enormous success today, he was in one of his playful, almost giddy moods. Sturdi did not like his mood; it disturbed her when his sense of humor ran away with him like this. It wasn’t the real him; he was like a man at such moments. She shot a glance at Slim. Coming to her aid, Slim said, “The O.G. bequeathed Zarah Christopher his house. Surely he must have been a member.”

  Hammett happened to know that the O.G. had been in the same cell as the Hubbards’ father and Paul Christopher’s father. Hammett raised his eyebrows as if intrigued by Slim’s suggestion but kept this information to himself. He was not prepared to admit even to Slim and Sturdi that he knew anything about the Shelley Society. He knew that they would admire him for this. He also knew that withholding information from Sturdi acted as a stimulus to her. Some of her most remarkable behavior had been a response to this. When she needed managing, he would not tell her something. She would respond with resentment. He would then reinforce her desire to be trusted with an irrelevant scrap of data that made her even more curious. Thereupon she would go out and do something she supposed he wanted her to do (she did not always read his wishes accurately), and then he would reward her, temporarily, with the confidence
she craved.

  Both Hammett and Sturdi enjoyed the game; Slim did not like it at all because it reduced her control over Sturdi. Now, knowing that Slim understood what was going on and did not approve, Hammett fed Sturdi the irrelevancy. “She’s everywhere, I agree,” he said.

  “Who’s everywhere?” Sturdi said carelessly, but an excited light began to kindle in her wild Romany eyes. She looked more than ever like a Gypsy tonight, dark and full of the lore of the caravan. As always in his presence, she was wearing a bandanna instead of one of her innumerable wigs; he was allergic to wigs, disgusted by the idea of dead hair decorating the head of a living person.

  “Lady Zed is everywhere, on both sides of Armageddon,” he replied. “Sowing doubt and disharmony. It’s amazing. I asked Julian why she was shacking up with Mallory when he’s trying to put her whole family in jail. He had no reply.”

  “The WASPs invariably choose family over principle even though they pretend to do the opposite.”

  “There’s more to it than that. Julian holds her in some kind of ancestral awe. Hubbards and Christophers have been marrying each other for a couple of centuries. Julian told me so. He says the saying in their family is ‘The Christophers screwed the Hubbards smart.’ ”

  “Charming,” Slim said. “Sturdi, help me with the dishes.”

  Hammett was enjoying himself, the last thing he had expected to be doing when he got up that morning. He held up a hand, freezing the women in place. He said, “I said to Julian, Suppose they’re making little Mallorys and putting them in the deep freeze? Imagine a child of Mallory and that Valkyrie being gestated a thousand years from now, when the species has evolved beyond suspicion and greed and learned perfect trust. With that combination of regressive genes the little fiend would take over the world in a matter of hours.” There was no truth in this story: Hammett was in a teasing mode. The light went out in Sturdi’s eyes; she gritted her teeth. He saw that his joke had disturbed her. She had no sense of humor, none at all; in that respect as in so many others she was a foot soldier of the Cause par excellence. Slim put a hand on her arm before she could blurt out whatever was on her mind; Hammett was slow to forgive outbursts.

  “The dishes,” Slim said calmly, “and then home. We all have to get up early in the morning.”

  As Sturdi stuffed sterile plastic plates and glasses into a bag, Slim compressed her lips, looked at Hammett, and shook her head in a parody of disapproval. Most of the time the two women merged in Hammett’s mind into a single female; it was only at moments like this that he saw how different they were: Sturdi slow-witted, muscular, and swarthy; Slim quick-minded, fair, and lithe—and the stronger of the two in every way.

  Hammett did his best to smooth things over. “It was all in fun, Sturdevant,” he said. She ignored him. He said, “Let’s play famous sayings. I’ll start. ‘Everyone should have some fun every day. A day without fun is a day wasted.’ Who said that?”

  Sturdi sulked. Slim said, “I have no idea.”

  Hammett said, “Give up? It was Dwight D. Eisenhower. At a presidential press conference in 1957, one of his famous jabberwockies. Ike would turn over in his grave if he knew how obediently the news media have followed his advice.”

  Even though none of the three actually remembered Eisenhower, they knew that the mention of his name was always good for a chuckle in the right company. Slim smiled; Sturdi relaxed.

  2

  At Camp David, Lockwood hurled the morning press summary into the fireplace. “I told you it would backfire, damnit!” he said. Pages caught fire, giving off an acrid chemical odor. A few fluttered up the chimney on the draft. Blackstone watched them go, unsure that he could conceal his true feelings if he shifted his gaze and met the red feral glare in Lockwood’s eyes. The President said, “Where the hell is Olmedo? I want to talk to him before he does something like this again.”

  “He’ll be here soon.”

  “Why isn’t he here now?”

  “He’s meeting with Senators Clark and Whipple to discuss today’s proceedings,” Blackstone said.

  “At seven o’clock in the morning?”

  “The schedule is tight, Mr. President. The defense case on the first article of impeachment commences today, assuming that the trial continues.”

  “It’ll continue, all right.” Lockwood uttered a hollow laugh. “Empty exercise though it is after yesterday.” Then, with a sudden crafty stare, “Why the hell wouldn’t it continue?”

  “As you will recall, Olmedo made a motion for a mistrial.”

  “Showboating. Don’t mean a thing. Nobody but a senator can make a motion on the floor of the Senate.”

  “That’s what is being discussed. Procedure. The next step.”

  “The next step is to subpoena that damn tape Jack Philindros made, the unexpurgated version, and get it on record that I never told him to kill that old man or any of the rest of it.”

  Blackstone, perfectly controlled, said, “With respect, Mr. President, that’s the worst thing we could do. We don’t know what’s on that tape, if it exists, and besides, it’s valueless as corroboration in light of the experts’ reports on the Macalaster tape and Olmedo’s cross-examination of Philindros.”

  “ ‘Valueless’? How can it be valueless if it’s got the truth on it?”

  “We have shown that tapes can be altered. After this, no tape recording can be accepted without question as evidence in this trial. That was our objective.”

  Lockwood reared back and made his windmill gesture signifying that he had just been driven beyond the limits of human endurance. “Then you cut me off at the ankles, Spats. Jesus!”

  “Not at all, Mr. President,” Blackstone said. “We, more accurately Alfonso Olmedo, laid the basis for a resolution of this case on the terms you laid down—your exoneration of blame for the high crimes and misdemeanors named in the articles of impeachment.”

  “ ‘Exoneration of blame’? What about guilt?”

  “You see the distinction, sir. These things happened, but you did not participate. That has always been the thrust of our defense.”

  “I thought the idea was to put the blame on the Hubbard boys.”

  “That’s the next step. First we established that certain things happened. Now we will demonstrate that they happened not only without your knowledge but against your wishes, even by treachery.”

  “And you figure Julian and Horace will go right along with that?”

  “They will have no other choice. We’ve got the goods on them and their accomplices. I can’t put it more simply than that.”

  “I can,” Lockwood said. “You’ll knock off two spear-carriers and wound a few others. What the hell does that accomplish? I am the responsible officer of the government.”

  “Yes,” Blackstone said. “But it is our hope that making the case for perfidy by your trusted aides will restore the sympathy and the affection of the nation to you and preserve an honorable place for you in history. As I understood it, that was the objective you laid down.”

  “Damn right it was. But it’s not what I’m willing to settle for and Alfonso knows that. Who told you that you could stipulate that the damn election was stolen?”

  Despite the earliness of the hour, Blackstone was dressed in his usual waxworks style: glossy pumps, pin-striped three-piece suit with only the top button of the four-button coat fastened, stiff collar, flowing cravat, pearl stickpin, gold watch chain with Phi Beta Kappa key slung across his middle. There were no clocks in this room, another omission designed by Julian as an aid to presidential relaxation. Blackstone took out his antique chiming watch.

  “We don’t plan to stipulate anything, Mr. President,” he said. “But the fact that fraud took place will be established. There is nothing we can do to prevent that. However, it is entirely possible that the Senate will, in fact, find it convenient to declare a mistrial.”

  The sound of a helicopter engine came to their ears. Blackstone nodded in satisfaction and put his watch back into his wa
istcoat pocket.

  Lockwood said, “Is that Alfonso?”

  “I believe so, Mr. President,” Blackstone said. “The Speaker and the Majority Leader may come with him.”

  “What for?”

  “Your attorney believes, and I agree, that the moment has come to discuss an arrangement that will be satisfactory to all sides, Mr. President.”

  “What about ‘what’s best for the country’?” Lockwood said. “That’s the usual line at a moment like this.”

  This time Blackstone met his eyes. “That is your area of competence, Mr. President,” he said.

  Lockwood looked down on him, all exasperation spent. “You want me to cop a plea,” he said. “Is that what your partner and the rest of ‘em are coming up here to advise me to do?”

  “Essentially, yes,” Blackstone replied. “But I beg of you, sir.” He paused. “Whatever it is that they have come to tell you, listen.”

  3

  Lockwood took this advice, and as he heard what Sam Clark had to tell him he grew calmer and calmer, changing before Blackstone’s eyes from the petulant, profane client he had just been dealing with into something resembling the presidential, indeed Lincolnian, figure Blackstone had believed him to be before coming to work for him. Lockwood’s vocabulary did not change, just his tone and demeanor.

  Clark and the other members of the Senate Committee on the Impeachment had been up most of the night listening to a filibuster by Senator Busby. “What Tucker said was going to happen is starting to happen,” Clark said. “What Busby wants to do is end it today, go right to a vote on the question of the charges of election fraud.”

  “How?” Lockwood said. “The trial isn’t over.”

  “I’m not talking about the trial,” Clark said. “Busby wants to do this during the regular morning session of the Senate. He says the country can’t stand another moment’s delay; this crisis is tearing it apart.”