“And now I say goodbye. God bless the American people. God save the Constitution. God preserve America and the noble dream that made it.”
Because Lockwood was Lockwood, there was a tear in his eye. He wiped it away as the camera lights went out, and stepped into the next room, away from the stunned television crew. After closing the door behind him he picked up the phone, on which Tucker Attenborough was waiting on an open line. “Tucker?” he said. “Don’t die before you get rid of that son of a bitch I was damn fool enough to make Chief Justice of the United States.”
Lockwood departed immediately by helicopter. As the tilted blurry improbable machine, emblematic of so many ambiguous American endings, rose into the night, it was silhouetted for an instant against the fourth full moon since Inauguration Day.
19
Just after midnight on the night of Lockwood’s resignation, Macalaster parked his Jaguar next to McGraw’s rented Ford in the unlighted back lot of the fish market on Maine Avenue. With Macalaster beside him in the front seat, McGraw drove slowly by the row house five or six blocks away where Slim and Sturdi had been living rent-free as guests of a sympathizer who wished to do something to ease the financial and other burdens imposed on Slim by her legal battle against Attenborough. “That’s it,” McGraw said to Macalaster. “Number 507, pink door, black iron fence, Volvo with Connecticut plates parked in front, light on upstairs. Got it?”
Macalaster nodded.
McGraw said, “Don’t try to be Spencer Tracy in there. Play yourself. That’s the part you’ve been rehearsing for all your life.”
“To wild applause,” Macalaster said. He did not like the feeling of behaving like an agent provocateur or the prospect of carrying out the mission under journalistic cover, but he agreed that he was the only one who could possibly do what he was about to do: bait the hook.
McGraw swung the wheel. “What I’m going to do is turn the corner here, drive two blocks, turn another corner, and let you out,” he said. This neighborhood was risky at night, though not remotely so dangerous as some others not far away to the east and north. Here the streets were empty of pedestrians except for the occasional flitting shadow at the edge of an amber puddle of street light. McGraw switched off the lights and pulled into a dark parking place. “Okay, you’re up,” he said. “Walk like you know where you’re going, don’t look back, and when you get there, knock on the door and say the sooth. Then go back to your car and go straight to the destination. Everyone else will already be out in the woods, you’ll be a hundred percent on your own, but it can’t be any other way.”
“Understood.”
McGraw said, “Remember, the whole idea is to get them to follow you. Forget you’re in a Jaguar. If you get yourself arrested or lose your tail, everything goes up the flue.”
Macalaster got out and walked briskly down the middle of the street, a routine precaution advised by the police and all newspaper and magazine articles on urban survival.
After the adjournment sine die of the impeachment trial that afternoon—that is to say, its end—Hammett had vanished. The media watch on the Supreme Court and the one on his apartment building on Pennsylvania Avenue reported no sightings there. Not even Patrick Graham could reach the Chief Justice on the telephone.
However, Macalaster was where he was because teams had followed Sturdi to the borrowed house near the Federal Center Metro station when interest in her was high. They had also placed a tracer bug on the Volvo—a pinhead of radioactive matter disguised as a speck of tar whose emissions could be read from a considerable distance with the right equipment but was undetectable by ordinary counterbugging measures unless you happened to have a Geiger counter with you. Today, on Wiggins’s orders, other teams had followed the Volvo home from the Capitol and reported that Hammett had emerged from it and entered the house. At half past midnight Macalaster rang the doorbell.
Slim answered the door. “Sorry,” she said coldly. “This is not convenient.”
Macalaster said, “I have something important to tell him.”
“He’s not seeing anybody. Goodbye.” The look Slim gave him was one of concentrated suspicion, hostility, and disgust—as if he were a Neanderthal who had suddenly popped up in the middle of a Cro-Magnon religious rite.
He smiled brightly and said, “You’ve never really liked me since I killed the deer, have you?” Slim started to slam the door. Macalaster put his foot in it and took out his telephone. “If he doesn’t want to see me, one of his oldest friends,” he said, “how do you think he’d like to have a media encampment out front?” He punched six digits into the phone. “One more digit and he’s got it.”
The look of primal animosity on Slim’s face intensified. But she said, “Follow me. But I promise you, he’s not in the mood for this.”
In the living room, Hammett was watching television, the late-night roundtable shows, four of them on-screen in individual windows, switching the sound on and off in random sequence. All four windows were filled with shots of the Speaker, who was now the President, or with the faces of men and women who were talking about him as obsessively as, only hours before, they had been talking about Hammett. They had already stopped talking about Lockwood and Mallory. Of Attenborough’s accession Patrick Graham, looking somewhat stunned, said, “It was surely the most surreptitious taking of the presidential oath in history, administered by the President’s longtime valet, who turns out, lo and behold, to be a justice of the peace. The ceremony, such as it was, took place in privacy, in the presence of a few old cronies. There was no television, no visual record of any kind to give the occasion legitimacy, except a black-and-white still photograph by a man who takes pictures of weddings. And he hasn’t been seen since. No one knows where he is.”
Hammett had changed back into the never-soiled work clothes that had been his trademark before he became Chief Justice. Sturdi sat in another chair, her head wrapped in a proletarian bandanna, and when she saw Macalaster follow Slim into the room, her eyes snapped angrily and she cried out, “Shit!”
Slim said, “Mr. Chief Justice, it’s Ross Macalaster.” Hammett jumped slightly when his attention was broken but otherwise showed no surprise. He said, “Ross. Of course it’s you. So how do you like your friend Attenborough now?”
“I’ve always liked him,” Macalaster said. He chose his next words carefully for maximum effect on Sturdi. “A fine American.” With a cry of wordless disgust, Sturdi leaped to her feet and rushed out of the room.
Hammett said, “I guess she didn’t think that was funny.”
Macalaster said, “Really? She has no idea how unfunny it’s going to get.”
Hammett said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I picked up a funny story today,” Macalaster said. “It’s all about you and the two Eves.” Slim was standing close behind Macalaster, and he could feel her alertness level rise.
Hammett switched off the television. He said, “What story is that?”
“Well my source tells me that Lockwood’s legal team has identified the Mickey Finn St. Clair used to hang that tape on me.”
“The fishing fly, you mean.”
“Right. They think it belongs to Associate Justice Bobby M. Poole.”
Hammett said, “Poole hung the tape on you?”
“No. A Mickey Finn was stolen from his collection of hand-tied flies in his chambers at the Supreme Court.”
“Stolen? Who says so?”
“Poole reported it stolen. Lockwood’s people asked the FBI crime lab to examine the one I had.”
“You handed it over?”
“They subpoenaed it.”
“And you didn’t resist? I thought you were a journalist.”
“I am. That’s why I’m so curious. The crime lab says that this particular Mickey Finn was made from materials that correspond exactly to the ones used by Justice Poole. He ties his flies in alphabetical order, so the cuts he made in the materials used in the one before and the one after match exactly under the microsc
ope.”
Hammett said, ‘Tm impressed. That’s your big story for the day?”
“That, and the fact that the two Eves are the prime suspects.”
“What two Eves?”
“Your two Eves.”
Hammett stared. “You’re joking.”
“No. This is serious. The Eves had access to Poole’s collection; the logs show them as the only outsiders who came in and out of the building late at night. Also there are tapes from the security cameras of one of them going in and out of Poole’s chambers in the night.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t have that detail. But I think this may break quite soon.”
“Break?” Hammett said. “Who’s the reporter going to be, Franz Kafka? No journalist in this town would break that story. Not even you, Ross. We’ve been through too much together.”
“True. I couldn’t write it as is.”
Sturdi came back into the room wearing a short black mannish wig. It was slightly askew. Into Macalaster’s mind’s eye came the computer-generated image of Sturdi with shaved head, and he realized that she always covered her head with a bandanna or one of her wigs because she was bald. How had Lucy’s computer missed this detail? How had he? Her bold gaze seemed to challenge Macalaster to say what he was thinking. He looked away and realized why he had never noticed her baldness: he had always avoided looking at her.
Hammett said, “Sturdi, did you happen to hear what this guy was telling us?”
“I heard,” Sturdi said.
Hammett shook his head in disbelief. “They’ll stop at nothing,” he said. “This is so obvious. First they pull my college fraternity out of the hat and make it sound like Smersh, now it’s a fishing fly that has a sinister meaning. What next?”
Hammett and the two unsmiling women were examining Macalaster. “If you think that’s bizarre,” Macalaster said, “wait till you hear the Zarah Christopher theory.”
“The Valkyrie strikes again.” Hammett snorted and rolled his eyes. “I can’t wait.”
“Well, she thinks that Sturdi has been following her.”
“What?” Hammett said. His lip curled in disgust.
“Not just following her, but wearing disguises,” Macalaster said.
“Good grief,” said Hammett. “More disguises.”
Macalaster said, “Mallory’s security people got on the case because Zarah’s so close to him. They took a lot of pictures of this alleged activity.”
“You’ve seen these pictures?”
“Yes. According to computer comparisons, it could be Sturdi. But that isn’t where it ends. Zarah has much more serious suspicions.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out tonight. Something to do with Susan Grant. She’s extremely upset. I’m going out to talk to her—Zarah, that is—when I leave here. But before I went I wanted you to know you may have a problem.”
Sturdi said, “Where is this psychotic liar? I’m filing suit in the morning.”
“For what?” Macalaster said. “Violation of your right to stalk Mallory’s girlfriend?”
Hammett said, “That’s not funny.”
“Nothing’s funny anymore—haven’t you noticed?” Macalaster said. “Are you going to be here for a while? I’d like to chat with you after I’ve spoken to Zarah.”
“You mean you’re working on this as a story?”
“Working on stories is what I do for a living.”
“I remember,” Hammett said. “The question is, do you remember what you owe me?”
“Sure, leprosy,” Macalaster said.
“Plus riches and fame.” Hammett was being circumspect about whatever was between him and Macalaster. Slim and Sturdi realized this and became even more watchful of Macalaster.
Macalaster said, “Dr. Faustus thanks you. Do you want to get together or not?”
“When will you be back?”
Macalaster looked at his watch. “It’s a long drive to where she is.”
Hammett said, “Where’s that?”
“I can’t tell you that. Zarah made me swear not to. But it’s a long way. I won’t get back in town until morning. Then I have to write.”
“How long a way? North, south, east, west?” Hammett was asking all the questions; as was their habit, the Eves were as mute in his presence as obedient wives in a religious commune.
“You’re not going to get it out of me,” Macalaster said. “She’s in hiding. She thinks Sturdi is a real threat. I think pretty soon, after she’s done whatever she’s going to do, she’s going to vanish back into the Mountains of the Moon or wherever she came from.”
“And what exactly is she going to do?” asked Hammett.
“That’s what I’m on my way to find out,” Macalaster said. He was surprised at how well he was doing this; it was like being in a movie, just remembering to be debonair, and that he was not responsible for the dialogue. He looked at his watch again. “It’s one o’clock. I’ve got to get started. My car is parked in the fish market.”
“You’re planning to walk through this neighborhood at this hour?” Slim said.
“I don’t think I’m likely to find a taxi.”
“Come on,” she said with sudden friendliness. “I’ll drive you to your car.”
Macalaster grinned at her again. “You want me to live?”
“I just don’t want you to die in this neighborhood,” she replied. “I’d be too likely a suspect.” Suddenly she smiled at him, and the glum, overexercised ideological harpy who had met him at the door became the giddy Cosmopolitan girl of the Attenborough dinner party. She really was a knockout.
They went out to the Volvo together. Slim drove in silence to the parking lot and let Macalaster out. During the short ride he was conscious of her body, as if it were emitting energy along some weird emotional spectrum that he could not quite tune in to. Macalaster had never regarded Slim as a sex object, but now he was aroused. As he fought against this, he suddenly realized why: he used to feel the same alternating waves of hatred and sexual invitation coming from Brook. He said, “Thanks,” and got out of the Volvo.
Slim got out too and walked around the Jaguar as he unlocked it. As he opened the door she rapped sharply on the trunk and said, “This car is disgusting.”
Slim’s face had reverted to its normal expression of barely contained rejection and disgust. But she was right about the Jaguar.
Without looking back he headed down the freeway and across the Potomac, watching the speedometer carefully, the car fretting under the restraint he was imposing upon it. Since its collision with the whitetail buck on Foxhall Road, Macalaster had had the vague feeling that the Jaguar had gone loco. It seemed possible to him that it might suddenly spook like a horse and swerve to the left or right and hurtle suicidally off the road.
20
Before going out to meet the assassin, Zarah refused the weapons offered to her by Wiggins and Lucy—a pistol, an aerosol canister of red-pepper spray, an umbrella made of bulletproof cloth that fired tranquilizer darts from the ferrule—but accepted a protective vest that stopped all known bullets up to 12mm. Inasmuch as the assassin, like all gunmen who had been trained on KGB principles, always got close and aimed for the head, Zarah did not think this would be of much use, but she took it for the sake of unit morale.
Lucy handed her a small glass object about the size of a walnut. “This thing is called MININOVA, as in exploding star,” she said. “It’s attached to a ring. Slip it over your finger, hold it in your hand at all times, and when the moment comes, press the bulb back into the ring—see?” Zarah nodded. Lucy said, “Close your eyes.” She pressed the switch and the MININOVA went off with a blinding flash of light that dazzled Zarah even through her closed eyelids. McGraw, who had been entertained by the impressive array of weaponry, said, “Neat. Just like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.”
After this they went over the plan, detail by detail, one last time. The women would play th
e most dangerous roles.
The two of them discussed each contingency, each move, each signal, calmly and intelligently, with no outward display of emotion, but the air was charged with Lucy’s doubts.
Wiggins showed his worry. “You’ll have to be flawless, both of you,” he said. “I’d feel better about this if we had time for a rehearsal. If we had backup.”
“I’ve been rehearsing it monthly for years,” Lucy said, “and you’re my backup. All Zarah has to do is smile and set off the flash at the right moment.”
“At exactly the right moment,” Wiggins said.
“I don’t know how that could be rehearsed,” Zarah said. “It’s going to be a matter of instinct.”
“That’s why I’ve loved this whole idea from the start,” McGraw said with heavy irony. “Instinct makes the world go around.”
Zarah gave him a smile. Lucy did not acknowledge his words or the thought behind it in any way. For days now he had been watching Lucy watching Zarah, and he knew that Lucy had not been able to overcome her instinct. She still thought something was wrong about Zarah, that she was not to be trusted, not to be believed.
Lucy and Wiggins had to get into position before dark, so they left first. There were no goodbyes.
“See you there,” Zarah said.
“No, you won’t,” Lucy said. “But I’ll see the light. But remember, I won’t be able to hear or see a thing before that, and you won’t be able to see a thing after it goes off.”
Zarah smiled. “Then I guess we’ll be at each other’s mercy,” she said.
After Lucy and Wiggins had left, McGraw said, “Tell me something, Zarah. Do you sense a problem with your partner?”
“Lucy? She doesn’t trust me; she may even think I’m leading them into a trap.”
“That doesn’t make you uncomfortable?”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” Zarah said. “She doesn’t have to trust me. All she has to do is see the light.”
“And follow her instincts.”
“No,” Zarah said. “Her training.”
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