The Better Angels

by Charles McCarry

  Julian knew the voice that came over the speaker at once. It was Patrick Graham’s. Julian switched on the phone. “Yes, Patrick,” he said. Graham, who had been speaking to the tape recorder, stopped in mid-sentence. When he resumed talking, this time directly to Julian, he had taken some of the resonance out of his voice, and Julian could hear the voice Patrick had had at Yale, before he trained himself to speak into microphones.

  “Julian,” Graham said, “I know it’s Sunday morning, and I’m sorry to break in, but I wanted to catch you before you took your kids out.” Graham paused to light a cigarette—the speaker amplified sound more than an ordinary phone, and Julian could hear the snap of the lighter. Before he began to speak again, Graham coughed convulsively on the smoke, and when he came back on the line, his voice had been roughened; Julian wondered why a man in Graham’s line of work would use cigarettes.

  “I wondered if you and your Emily would drop by for a drink this evening about five,” Graham said. “Wear whatever you have on, there’ll be no one but Charlotte and me.”

  Julian hesitated. The Grahams lived only a block away on O Street, in a much grander house than Julian’s, and Julian had often gone there, though never with pleasure.

  “I just got off a plane from Beirut,” Graham said. “I spoke to Horace. I spoke to some others, too, in Baghdad. The subject was Ibn Awad. It’s time, I think, to speak to you about what sent me out there.”

  Graham began coughing again; evidently he was holding the telephone away from his mouth because the dry barking sound came weakly through the speaker. Julian waited until he thought Graham had the phone at his ear again.

  “Five o’clock,” Julian said, and broke the connection. His mind began to worry the problem Patrick’s call had created, but he stopped himself: Sunday belonged to Jenny and Elliott.

  Julian woke the children on his way downstairs, and in the kitchen fried eggs for himself and Elliott and Jenny and made sandwiches with French bread. This was their regular Sunday breakfast, as it had been Julian’s and his mother’s, along with coffee mixed with sweetened hot milk. He packed cold meat, cheese, a loaf of bread, some apples, and a thermos of lemonade into a rucksack, and then the three of them went off in Julian’s small car, the Secret Service vehicle tailing behind. They traveled south, across the Potomac into Virginia, rolling along the deserted back roads just after sunrise. This was their only ride of the week in their own car; Julian had the same ration of diesel fuel as anyone else, and it was just sufficient to take them to a forest. Franklin Mallory, when he was President, had followed a policy of unlimited burning of fossil fuels, arguing that their maximum use was necessary to reach the next stage of technology in which new fuels would be invented and exist in plenty. Lockwood had preferred to conserve the earth’s dwindling resources. Under him, the skies were clear of smoke again, and traffic ceased roaring through America; on any day, in the largest city, Americans could hear the unstifled sounds of nature again.

  In a forest near Leesville they walked quietly for several hours, and saw a wood thrush, a gray squirrel, and in a swampy place the tracks of a white-tailed buck. They ate their lunch on a hilltop under a red oak. Julian and Elliott played with a ball while Jenny gathered wildflowers. On the way out of the woods, walking behind them, Jenny sang: I’d rather have one kiss from the gypsy’s lips than all your silver and gold.

  Julian stopped, waited for her, and put an arm around her shoulders. “That’s an old, old song,” he said. “Where did you hear it?”

  Jenny’s face was hidden by her unbound hair and she shook her head so that her father could see her. “Mummy used to sing me to sleep with it,” she said.

  When Julian returned with the children, he found that Emily had decorated the house for a celebration—paper streamers, fresh flowers, candles. The children were in on the surprise and they watched their father—Elliott with bursts of delighted laughter, Jenny with her solemn smile—to see if he could guess the occasion. He could not; they had to tell him it was Father’s Day, celebrated a week late because he had been traveling the Sunday before.

  Emily had chilled a bottle of champagne, and as the four of them drank it, the children gave Julian their present. The gift dazzled Julian. He took pains unwrapping it; the silver paper and the ribbon had been put on with great care. Inside the package he found a scrapbook, the wooden cover made by Elliott. On opening it, he saw that Jenny had mounted on each page a different dried wildflower: lady’s slipper, wild columbine, gaywings, spring beauty, showy orchis, wild pink, meadow rue—all the blooms he had taught her to know and she had gathered season by season on their Sunday outings. The faint woodsy smell of each dead blossom rose from the volume as they turned the pages together. Julian lifted the little girl onto his lap and kissed her.

  Emily told him later that his eyes had been filled with tears. “It was wonderful,” she said, “you love Jenny so. I long to see you look at our child in that way.”

  9

  “Isn’t the evening light lovely at this time of year?” asked Emily. She and Julian walked hand in hand along O Street, on their way to the Grahams’, and the late afternoon sun fell through the trees ahead of them in a series of diagonals. Within these shafts of light, Julian saw the colors of the quiet street—pale greens of new leaves, mellow pinks and yellows of old brick. He smiled and Emily thought it was for her. She squeezed his arm.

  Emily kissed him, tugging his head downwards to her lips. Two Secret Service guards walked ahead of them and two behind, and two across the street.

  Julian rang the Grahams’ doorbell. It was an old-fashioned bell pull, not an electrical device. The heavy glass and grillework door had been brought from England, and Patrick had found in Paris two enameled blue and white house numbers which, side by side, showed the four digits of his American address.

  Patrick himself opened the door. He drew Emily inside and kissed her on the cheek. He and Julian nodded to one another. They never shook hands. Patrick walked ahead of Julian into the living room with his arm around Emily’s shoulders. Emily had known him before she knew Julian. “Journalists run in a pack, didn’t you know that?” she’d said to Julian, explaining her friendship with Patrick. “Patrick’s sort of regarded as the dominant male of the local baboons.”

  Patrick had grown handsomer with age. He had a reputation among young women as a seducer. Julian had never known of this until Emily told him about it. The news surprised him; knowing how desperately Patrick had been able to love Caroline, he had supposed that he must now love Charlotte just as much.

  Charlotte was at the bar, and by the time Julian entered the room she had a drink for him. She knew what he wanted without asking. Charlotte put a hand on Julian’s sleeve. He liked this woman very much, liked her way of showing no emotion except amusement and her pose of saying whatever came into her head while, every moment, she kept her head. Patrick led Emily to the other end of the room, his arm still about her. He was showing her a new painting. The canvas, a winged nude, was displayed on an easel.

  Charlotte, her slim figure bent back like a strung bow, watched her husband and Julian’s wife together and then turned to Julian. “What is this fascination your wives exercise over poor Patrick, do you suppose?” she asked. “It was hellish all those years you were married to Caroline, Patrick staring across the room at her with spaniel eyes. Now he leads Emily straight to the nearest nude and gives her little pats. Do you mind?”

  Julian smiled. “Not if my wives don’t.”

  “I rather think Patrick wishes you would mind. Really, sometimes I think it’s you he wants to fondle, Julian, instead of your women. You’re the last man in America—in the world—Patrick is truly jealous of. Don’t let on I told you that.”

  They watched Patrick and Emily coming back to them. Patrick shrugged to settle his jacket back on his shoulders. He was wearing just the right things for a Sunday afternoon at home: a tweed jacket, flannels, knitted shirt, and the buckled oxblood boots that were in fashion that year.
Patrick had always had a sense of costume. In the old days in New Haven he had worn dirty jeans and lumber-jack shirts and broken shoes. He had had a beard then and reeked of unwashed skin; now his cheeks shone from the razor and he smelled of cologne. Charlotte had done a great deal for him; she had taught him some subtle things about dress, and he had picked up her upper-class mannerisms. When young, he had been surly; Charlotte, unable to change his character, had shown him how to be rude in a way that flattered people, and gave them the idea that it had been a natural thing for him to wed the daughter of an earl.

  “How do you like Patrick’s flying nymph?” Charlotte asked Emily. “I should think she’d have found the missionary position rather uncomfortable with those great wings folded up under her. Patrick is making a collection of Victorian nudes. He’s found this wonderful man named Alan Stone who climbs into attics and finds them for him.” Emily and Charlotte kissed.

  Charlotte turned to Julian. “Did you watch Patrick’s show last night?”

  “I’m afraid I missed it.”

  “He keeps on saying dreadful Mallory may defeat your wonderful Frosty Lockwood in November. Say it isn’t possible, Julian.”

  The forthcoming election was only four months away, and Graham had already said on television, many times, that the reelection of Lockwood was in jeopardy. Julian knew he was right, and knew that Graham’s pounding on the point on his weekly show was really designed to awaken Lockwood’s supporters to their danger. But the President’s admirers didn’t like to be reminded that Lockwood had made so many enemies, even if they were the right enemies.

  “I’m worried about you people,” Patrick Graham said. “Lockwood will be renominated all right. But you’ve seen the polls. I think the party is afraid he can lose in November.”

  “To Mallory?”

  “Fascism isn’t dead.”

  “Come on, Patrick.” Julian was not going to run the chance of being quoted as agreeing that Franklin Mallory was a fascist.

  “If Mallory is able to run the kind of campaign he’s talking about, combining vision with viciousness—nobody’s his equal at that—he may damn well be the first President since Grover Cleveland to serve two nonconsecutive terms,” said Patrick. “That’s his new witticism. He goes around the country asking people if they can name the President who served between Cleveland’s two terms. Can you?”

  “Harrison,” said Emily.

  “Smart girl. Which Harrison?”

  “I’m not that smart,” Emily said. She giggled, but Patrick was dead serious.

  “A line like that can do a lot of damage,” he said. “It makes men laugh, it forms a connection between two Presidents nobody remembers and Bedford Forrest Lockwood.”

  “Does he talk to you?” Julian asked.

  “Mallory? Sure. He’s a very professional fellow, doesn’t let his grudges show. I may have killed him off last time, but this time he may find a way to make me help him. That’s how his mind works.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t altogether wrong, Patrick. You’re the equivalent of a neutral power. If you found a scandal in our administration, would you hide it? If Mallory doesn’t think so, knowing your sympathies, then you ought to be flattered.”

  “Do you think I’d cover up for you, Julian?”

  Julian believed, after all the years he had known him, that he could read Patrick’s moods; Graham wasn’t a man who tried to conceal what he meant. Tonight Patrick wanted to semaphore some tension in himself. He didn’t require an answer to his question; he went on with what he wanted to say, hardly pausing to draw breath.

  “I’d say this, Julian. I don’t think you realize how hard Mallory can hit you.”

  “You think he can win with a witticism about the two Harrison?”

  “I think he can win on an issue, if he finds one. He’s not some survivor of the primaries who has to pussyfoot. He’s the maximum leader of a fanatical political party. He’s the former President. To a lot of people he never stopped being the President. That includes a lot of the media. He’ll be coming back, in a lot of people’s minds, to pull Excalibur out of the sacred stone. Frosty has made a lot of enemies.”

  Charlotte fluttered a beringed hand. “I must say I have to depend on you wise men to remind me what a demon Franklin Mallory is supposed to be,” she said. “When I see him on television, much less when he used to press my flesh in the old days, I go all squishy. He makes everything so simple. Perhaps he does have hooves—but like Pan, with that white hair and that glowing skin and those hypnotic eyes. Don’t you agree, Emily?”

  “Yes, but all the same, he’d put all of us into one of those prisons he built in Alaska, wouldn’t he?”

  Patrick took Julian’s empty glass from his hand and put it, with his own, on a table. Patrick never had more than one drink, and he knew that Julian didn’t either. He enjoyed drawing attention to his remarkable memory for small details.

  The doors to the garden were open and Patrick, with a nod to the women excusing him and Julian from their company, led the way outside. In the house behind them Patrick and Julian could hear Charlotte’s English voice rippling with mirth and Emily’s American one, throaty and serious.

  Patrick had converted the ground behind his house into a small-scale replica of an eighteenth-century formal garden; the original owner had been an early minister to France who brought the plans for the garden back from Paris but lacked the money to build it. Money was no problem for Patrick; his contract with the network was worth millions, and he earned almost as much again from books and documentaries. He had hired an architect to work from the old drawings. The architect had built in an American backyard a garden designed as a park. To keep the proportions correct, everything had been made small—the fountains and statues were a quarter their expected size, the walks were mere strips of gravel, the shrubs and trees were dwarf species. Patrick’s garden was one of the rare places where Julian was conscious of his tallness. A man of normal size seemed large here. Julian loomed like a giant.

  The two men sat down on a low bench by a fountain. Patrick lapsed into a silence. Julian, watching the fountain, said, “You say you saw Horace in Beirut?”

  “Yes. He’s well.”

  A mild wind was blowing and spray from the fountain pattered on the gravel at their feet. Patrick got up and Julian followed him to another bench on the opposite side of the fountain.

  “I’d hoped Horace could help me,” Patrick said, “but he chose to be polite.”

  “What did you want?”

  “I’m not sure. Reassurance, perhaps. Horace was a great friend of Ibn Awad.”

  “You said something about Awad on the phone.” Julian felt a spot of cold, like an ice cube lodged in the gullet, forming in his chest.

  “I’m developing an interest in Awad’s death—in how he died.”

  Julian said nothing. Patrick lit one of his cigarettes. Even in the open air, it smelled very strong. Patrick inhaled and turned aside to cough up the smoke.

  “I have to ask you this, Julian. Did you or Frosty Lockwood have any foreknowledge of the death of Ibn Awad?”

  “Foreknowledge?” Julian widened his eyes. “Exactly what kind of a question is that supposed to be?”

  “It’s an easy question,” Patrick said, “if the answer happens to be no.”

  The smoke from Patrick’s cigarette was blowing away from them. It must come from the Near East; the burning tobacco had a peculiar smell.

  “Let me show you how to answer, Julian. I have a suggestion from one usually reliable source, corroborated by a second source, that Ibn Awad did not, as the world has always believed, order his own death. My sources say he was murdered. They say, further, that President Lockwood had a hand in this murder.”

  Julian controlled his voice. “And you’re prepared to entertain that as a possibility, knowing what Lockwood is?”

  “It’s my job to examine possibilities. Four years ago, in this garden, Julian, you gave me a piece of paper that seemed to incriminate F
ranklin Mallory in a plot to steal half of Canada. If I hadn’t entertained that possibility, maybe you and Frosty would be living happily today as private citizens.”

  “Lockwood is not Franklin Mallory.”

  “I can tell the good guys from the bad guys, Julian,” Patrick said. “In my heart, I think Lockwood’s the best human being we’ve had in the White House since Kennedy. But as a reporter, I’m paid to be suspicious. I’m telling you I’m suspicious.”

  Julian returned Patrick’s look in silence. There was danger here. When Patrick had the bloody bone of a fresh story in his teeth, he could growl over it. The old vengeful beast still slouched in him.

  “Do you really think, Patrick,” Julian said, “that Lockwood, or any President, could survive even the suggestion that he’d been mixed up in an assassination?”

  “No.”

  “Then you have a simple choice before you. If you go on the air with such a suggestion about Lockwood, Franklin Mallory will defeat him for the presidency in the fall.”

  “Are you telling me what I’ve heard is a lie?”

  Julian blew a long breath through his nose and looked at Patrick. The other man’s eyes, squinting against the smoke, were unreadable.

  “You stand silent?” Patrick asked.

  “Dumbstruck. People do lie to journalists, Patrick, even journalists as eminent as you. Wasn’t it you, just a moment ago, who told me that Lockwood has made enemies?”

  “You’re saying Frosty’s enemies are retailing this lie?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t follow his enemies around or tap their phones.” Exasperation sharpened Julian’s voice. He got to his feet. Beyond the brick wall surrounding the garden he heard the crackle of radios as his Secret Service guards talked to one another.