The Better Angels

by Charles McCarry

  “Laster wants Lockwood defeated and Mallory back in the White House,” Philindros said. “It makes sense. Mallory’s in favor of unlimited use of fossil fuels. Lockwood has cost Universal Energy billions in oil and coal and gas revenues. They had a big piece of the fusion power development contract.”

  Philindros touched the tape in his pocket through the black cloth of his jacket. He lifted his chin. Horace answered the unspoken question.

  “They’ve tapped our computer system. There’s no other way they could have all that data.”

  “But FIS has its own communications satellite; it’s supposed to be unbuggable,” said Julian angrily.

  “Unbuggable by the Russians or the Chinese or the Japs. Not by Universal Energy. They have the blueprint. They own the electronics company that manufactured the satellite.”

  Julian absorbed this information, and understood it. He asked no more questions. He glanced at some photographs showing Wilmot in the places where the conversations took place.

  “There’s no picture of him actually with Laster?”

  “Even better. We have voice prints,” Horace said. “It was a bit difficult to get the two of them on tape; we had to insert a transmitter into Clive’s tube of Colgate.” He smiled; and for the first time in Julian’s experience, so did Philindros. These men were pranksters at heart.

  “You say voice prints are just as reliable as photos?” Julian asked.

  “More so. You can put on a putty nose and a false beard before someone takes your photo; you can’t escape your vocal tones—they’re like the whorls in fingerprints. You can be sure that the men on this tape are Laster and Wilmot.”

  “I want to be sure of more than that. I want Franklin Mallory’s fingerprints on this money Wilmot is so anxious to earn,” Julian said. “Maybe his prints are on other money in the past—was it the Eye of Gaza that killed two members of the Supreme Court? Was it…”

  Horace tried to stop his brother, but Julian was aroused; he was snapping out orders to Philindros as if he were a Navy rating.

  Philindros said, “There are difficulties.”

  “Overcome them. Years ago, there were difficulties with the CIA. Men who were loyal to the President then were put into a special unit. The Director didn’t need to know what was happening. There must be men in FIS who are loyal to Lockwood; cull them out of the herd, give them to Horace. Go away, Jack. Cover your eyes.”

  Philindros said nothing.

  “That incident, in the end, destroyed the CIA,” Horace said. Julian threw his hands apart in impatience. “You’ve got Wilmot and Laster. I want Mallory,” he said.

  Philindros interrupted. “Julian, there are certain requirements you cannot put on the FIS,” he said. “When we began this investigation it was clearly a counterintelligence problem. If the President’s role in Awad’s death was known outside our government—”

  “Wait a minute,” Julian said.

  Philindros increased the volume of his voice and went on speaking.

  “… If the President’s role in Awad’s death was known outside our government, then clearly that meant that the FIS had been penetrated. We had a duty, and a legal right, to find out how and by whom. We’ve done that. We’ve repaired the leak. Our operation is over.”

  Julian stared, dumbfounded, at Philindros. The man was displaying emotion. Two spots of red appeared on his olive cheeks; he pressed his lips together to keep them from trembling; his hands were hidden. His throat was dry and he cleared it repeatedly.

  “Jack, I don’t quite follow you,” Julian said.

  “Then I’ll be more specific. This has become a domestic political matter. You will not use the FIS for domestic political purposes. It’s against the law. It’s wrong. I won’t help you further in this. Neither will any other officer of the FIS.”

  Julian looked to Horace.

  “You can have a copy of the tape, of course,” Horace said. “Jack agrees that’s within the President’s power to demand.”

  Philindros pushed the duplicate cassette across the table, and a manila envelope containing the photographs of Wilmot.

  “Be sure to have Horace hold the cassette when you go through the glass booth on the way out. Otherwise the tape will be erased,” Philindros said. “There’s a magnetic field designed to do that.”

  Julian’s tone, when he replied, was elaborately polite. “Horace is accompanying me?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Philindros replied. He poured ice water into a plastic cup and drank it. “Your brother is retired from the FIS as of the close of business today. He can go where he wants, help whom he pleases.”

  Julian looked from Philindros to Horace and back again. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “I’m speaking for the President.”

  “But I do understand,” Philindros replied. “You’re speaking for the head of your party. You’re speaking for a political movement. The FIS talks to people like you all over the world, supports them, seduces them. But it doesn’t do so in the United States.”

  “So you’re giving me Horace, and that’s all?”

  Julian thought he saw something, a glint of amusement, in Philindros’s glance, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Horace ought to be enough,” Philindros said.

  THREE

  1

  J ULIAN HAD WAITED until he and the President were back in Washington to tell Lockwood the facts Horace had discovered. He didn’t mention Horace’s retirement. Julian was not Philindros; he was Lockwood’s man and it was his job to tell him what he had to know, keeping from him the things that might trouble him—or put him in the position of having to choose, someday, between telling the truth or a lie to someone like Patrick Graham.

  As the last syllable of evidence fell from Julian’s lips, Lockwood made up his mind.

  “There’s only one thing to do, Julian. Tell the truth. Put out the story. No cover-up, no excuses. That way lies quicksand. The people will understand.”

  Julian was not so sure about that. He said nothing to contradict Lockwood; the President knew as well as he how damaging this scandal was going to be. As it was, Mallory was only two points behind in the polls. This could very well put him ahead. Nothing, then, could bring victory to Lockwood except a furious campaign, travel, speeches, exhortations, explanations. If Lockwood’s people saw him often enough as he was, they might by election day be persuaded once again that he was what he’d always seemed to be. They might forget what he’d done to Ibn Awad.

  “Of course this was O. N. Laster’s work,” said Lockwood. “It had to be him or someone like him. They want Mallory back. His barons are plotting to restore the monarchy, smother parliament, grind down the poor. I wonder how much Franklin knows about this. Half of that Canadian business was the work of the conglomerates, greedy for oil and all the rest. Franklin could have been a great man if he’d got in with a different crowd.”

  Horace’s information about the connection between Clive Wilmot and Universal Energy meant that Patrick Graham could be given the story; permitted to break it. In his hands, the emphasis would change. Sinister forces would be proved to be working against Lockwood. The reason they were doing so could be made secondary.

  In the weeks since Patrick had first voiced his suspicions to Julian, a change had come over Lockwood. He now believed that he could not, in fairness, be held responsible for the death of Ibn Awad; the old visionary had somehow killed himself. Mallory and his ruthless backers had set the whole thing up, contrived a trap.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that Universal Energy was in this deeper than we know,” Lockwood said. “Doesn’t energy include plutonium? They’ve built half the nuclear power plants on earth, damn them, and they have their hands on half the nuclear experts in the world. Why couldn’t they have made those bombs for Awad?”

  He was pacing the floor. “You can’t dismiss that possibility, Julian,” he said, pounding a fist into a palm.

  Julian waited for him to sit dow
n again.

  “There are difficulties,” he said. “Remember, we don’t have the bombs. We don’t know where they are. There’s no physical evidence.”

  Lockwood waved the objection aside. “There’s our word.” He picked up the tape recorder and the documents and brandished them. “There’s all this.”

  “Your word has always been good. That’s mainly what we have going for us. But however much Patrick Graham wants to believe you, however much your supporters want to believe you, Mallory is going to bite back.”

  “Then we’ll suck the poison out. Patrick’ll do it when it comes down to it. Where he leads, the rest of the media will follow. That’s why we’ve got to give him the story, and do it quick.”

  “I can speak to him tonight, brief him.”

  Lockwood nodded. “Good. Leave the part about the bombs to me. Send him over here for coffee at six o’clock in the morning.”

  “Do you want me with him?”

  “No. Just Patrick and me—and the truth.”

  That night, in Julian’s study in the house on O Street, the evidence was laid out: a psychiatrist’s report on Ibn Awad; documents with the headings clipped off that could only have come from the FIS, detailing Awad’s involvement with the Eye of Gaza.

  Patrick Graham read each document under the saffron glow of Julian’s old gooseneck lamp. Julian sat quietly in the shadows, his attache case open on his knees. Like a fisherman drawing a big catch near the boat by casting entrails on the water, Julian was chumming. The real bait wasn’t yet on the hook. Patrick awaited it. He had been through other scenes like this one with Julian.

  Julian gave him the photographs of CliveWilmot in London and Paris and Beirut. They were numbered and captioned, keyed to the conversations on the tape recording. Julian produced a small cassette recorder from his bag, switched it on, and handed it to Patrick. He made him listen to it through an earpiece, as though the hidden listening devices of Mallory’s apparatus might be a danger to them even here.

  When Laster and Wilmot spoke of using Patrick, and of their reasons for wanting to do so, Patrick’s lips tightened for an instant. He listened impassively to the rest.

  The tape ended and Patrick rewound it and popped it out of the recorder. He placed it atop the stack of papers and photographs on the bare surface of the desk. Like all of Julian’s desks, this one was completely uncluttered.

  “What am I supposed to conclude from all this, Julian?”

  “You’ll have to form your own conclusions. I told you I’d give you the facts when we had them. I’m doing that.”

  “All the facts?”

  “I haven’t finished.”

  Julian went on in his precise way. Patrick had never heard him speak an incomplete sentence or an ungrammatical one. Julian had a weakness for old-fashioned usage: supper instead of dinner; dinner instead of lunch; looking glass, not mirror. He almost never used even the mildest profanity.

  Patrick realized what it was about Julian that he had never before been able to classify: he didn’t merely speak, he recited. He was always rehearsed. In all his conversations with Patrick, he had been speaking for others: at Yale for the invisible men who could shut down the News if it went too far; in the outburst of Patrick’s jealousy and heartbreak, for Caroline; now for Lockwood.

  “You’re telling me that the President of the United States ordered the assassination of Ibn Awad?” Patrick said.

  “In law and conscience there is such a thing as justifiable homicide.”

  “And you think this stuff makes a case for justifiable homicide?” Killing a man—a saint, Julian—because he has a bit of a neurosis? And maybe, just maybe, because he’s had some connection with the Eye of Gaza?”

  “Yes, and I hope you’ll think so, too, when you have the complete picture, when you’ve talked to Frosty”—Julian used the nickname for a purpose, to remind Patrick of all Lockwood had been to him—”when you’ve thought it through. It’s Frosty who will have to make the people understand.”

  “He’s going public?”

  “Of course. What else would you expect him to do? You’ve known him half your life.”

  Patrick riffled the papers Julian had given him; they were fresh from the copying machine and still gave off its faint acid odor. “You’ve left things out,” he said.

  Julian gave him an inquisitive look: Horace’s mannerism. “The medical report isn’t complete. You didn’t give me the physical part.”

  Julian reached into his briefcase. “Oh. Is that interesting to you? Awad had a malignant tumor of the prostate; that was removed. A mild case of high blood pressure, traces of childhood ailments. He’d lived in primitive circumstances.”

  “Traces of childhood illnesses. Nothing about a brain lesion that left him unable to write? Therefore making it impossible for him to have written that famous suicide note?”

  Julian handed Patrick the papers. “I believe that’s mentioned. Is it important?” He knew Patrick could not admit not knowing something if it was presented as a well-known fact. “Was it a secret that he was illiterate? I thought everyone believed that was one of the admirable things about him—how he could keep the whole Koran in his head, along with all the business of his emirate. I believe he dictated to scribes—usually to Prince Talil, when important documents, secret things, were involved.”

  Julian let a minute go by. Patrick, defeated by his bravura, said nothing more. Then Julian put the real bait in the water. “There’s more. I haven’t told you everything, Patrick.”

  “Then somebody had better.”

  “Yes, I agree. The President himself wants to fill you in on the rest. He’d like you to have coffee with him, upstairs in his study, at six tomorrow morning. You know the way in. He wants to speak to you alone.”

  Patrick could not let himself appear to be mollified. “He won’t speak to the cameras?”

  “After he’s spoken to you, why not? But have coffee first—that’s what Frosty wants. And I don’t suppose you want to go on camera cold.”

  Julian rose to his feet. It was part of his loyalty to Lockwood never to use air conditioning, and it was sweltering in the room.

  “Would you like a big envelope to put that stuff in?” he asked courteously.

  Patrick filled the manila envelope—he noticed it wasn’t government issue, but of a kind available in all stationery stores—then juggled it on his palm, as if guessing its weight.

  “I assume there are no restrictions on my use of this material,” he said.

  “What I give you is background. The President will give you quotes.”

  Julian walked down the stairs with Patrick. The treads creaked under their feet, a faint squeal under Patrick’s weight, a louder one under Julian’s. At the door, two Secret Service men waited to escort Patrick home; Julian had asked him not to bring his own security people; he wanted no outside witnesses to Patrick’s midnight visit.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Patrick said.

  “Tomorrow you will, after you’ve talked to Frosty.”

  Graham stood for a moment with his head down. Then, without speaking, he lifted the manila envelope Julian had given him in a gesture of farewell. He turned and walked out the door. Julian and Patrick had not shaken hands in years.

  Next morning, Lockwood had no difficulty in conveying his anguish first to Patrick and then to the camera. It was genuine. Patrick felt it, and he knew how the camera would magnify it.

  Lockwood’s mobile face reflected the suffering his terrible decision had cost him. Equally, the screen showed Patrick’s reactions to Lockwood’s off-camera voice. Patrick asked no easy questions. Lockwood responded firmly to the harshest demands for facts. Patrick didn’t ask about Clive Wilmot or O. N. Laster; no accusation of a conspiracy should come from Lockwood.

  At the end of the interview, the camera stayed on Patrick and the audience could read in his eyes the struggle between shock and sympathy. In a softened voice, Patrick asked his final question:

/>   “Mr. President, I understand, and I think the American people will understand, why this terrible thing happened. Why now of all times, in the middle of a campaign for re-election, have you decided to tell the American people the truth?”

  Lockwood’s ravaged face appeared while Patrick spoke. His eyes, in which the memory of his awful decision swam, were made even more expressive by the lighting and the angle of the camera.

  “Because telling the people what happened, and why—all the terrible reasons—is the right thing to do,” Lockwood said simply. “I can only hope that they will understand.”

  Patrick’s face came back. He said nothing. His expression told those watching that they had elected a President who was incapable of telling a lie. At that moment, he believed that, and so did Lockwood.

  Patrick spent the day locked in his office, using the telephone, typing the story. O. N. Laster wouldn’t speak to him; Clive Wilmot couldn’t be located. Patrick did not try to contact Philindros. It would be useless; Philindros never spoke to the press, and the FIS was not the heart of the story.

  On camera, Patrick never read from notes or used cue cards. In interviews or commentary, Patrick spoke with a peculiar intensity, as if he had seen the truth at that exact moment. He alone had mastered the technique. Viewers and even some professionals believed that Patrick’s performances were utterly spontaneous. In a sense, they were right. He wrote everything down in private and committed it to memory; he could remember hundreds of words, exactly as they appeared on the page. His words simply came out of him, first as letters of the alphabet on a white sheet of paper, then as spoken words. No conscious effort was involved. Once he had uttered them on the air, he forgot them.

  Charlotte said that he had mastered self-hypnosis and that was the secret of his success. She alone knew how he worked. It was all instinct, all feeling. That was why his audience believed him.

  It was not until Patrick saw the whole show going out over the network that he realized how predictably he had reacted to the stimuli Julian had subjected him to. Patrick really thought that he had forced this story out of the White House, rather than having it planted on him. All day, as he worked, the conviction that he was ending Lockwood’s political career and bringing Mallory back into the presidency haunted him. Once or twice he had to stop to fight back tears. But he had gone ahead, putting fact next to fact remorselessly, as he believed. The realization uppermost in his mind, so keen that it was almost pain, was that Lockwood had at least condoned, and very probably actually committed, murder. The President had put himself beyond forgiveness.