“You couldn’t have prevented it,” said Jenna firmly, standing in front of Havelock at the desk. “You’re not permitted to go to the State Department and it’s a condition you accept. If the mole saw you, he’d either kill you quietly and remain where he was, or bolt and run to Moscow. You want him, and your being seen isn’t the way to find him.”
“Maybe I couldn’t have prevented it, but I might have let his death—his life—mean more than it did. He wanted to tell me and I told him not to say any more. He said this phone was as sterile as the house and I wouldn’t accept that.”
“That’s not what you said. You told him his phone, his office, might not be sterile. From everything you’ve learned over the years, everything you’ve seen, you made the logical decision. And I still believe there are paminyatchiki in your State Department who would lie for this man, tap an office for him.”
“You know, a paranoid named McCarthy said things like that and tore this country apart thirty years ago. Tore it apart with fear and frenzy.”
“Perhaps he was one himself. Who could have done it bet—ter?”
“It’s possible. The paminyatchik is the total patriot. He’ll call for a loyalty oath every time because he has no compunction about signing one.”
“That’s what you have to look for now, Mikhail. A total patriot; a man with an unblemished record. He will be the mole.”
“If I could find out what it was Bradford was waiting for yesterday, I think I’d have both. He said he wouldn’t know until ‘late morning.’ That means he expected something that would tell him where a man wasn’t, proof someone on the fifth floor wasn’t where he was supposed to be. The security desk said Bradford received a package at twelve-twenty-five, but no one knows what it was, and, naturally, it wasn’t there later.”
“There was no return address or company name?”
“If there was, nobody noticed. It was delivered by messenger.”
“Check the firms who provide those services. Certainly someone can recall the color of the uniform; that would narrow it down.”
“She wasn’t that kind of messenger. She wore a fur-collared tweed coat, and the only thing Security remembers is that she was pretty high-toned for delivering packages.”
“High-toned?”
“Attractive, well-spoken, direct. I think that covers it.”
“Someone’s secretary.”
“Yes, but whose? What sort of person would Bradford go to, what kind of proof?”
“What was the size of the package?”
“The guard who took it up said it was a large, padded envelope with a bulge on the bottom, and thick throughout. Papers and something else.”
“Papers?” said Jenna. “Newspapers? Could he have gone to a newspaper?”
“He might have. Four-month-old clippings that would describe an event or events during that time. Or he could have pulled in data from the CIA; he had friends there. Something from the files that pertained to the evidence against you, or perhaps Costa Brava … something we’ve overlooked. Or he could have been checking hospitals, or ski lodges, or hometown, small-town neighborhoods or divorce-court dockets—representation in absentia—or Caribbean resort reservations—signatures on meal and bar checks, a maître d’ or a beachboy who makes his money by remembering. All of it’s possible because everything I’ve said pertains to someone in these records.” Michael touched the sheaf of pages on the desk, running his thumb along the edge. “And a dozen other possibilities I haven’t even thought about.” Havelock leaned back in the chair, folding his hands under his chin. “Our man’s good, Jenna. He’ll cover himself with a layer of invisible paint.”
“Then go on to something else.”
“I am. A doctor in Maryland. Talbot County’s most revered physician.”
“Mikhail?”
“Yes?”
“Before … you were reading the reports of your own therapy at the clinic. After the Costa Brava.”
“How did you know?”
“Every now and then you’d close your eyes. Those pages weren’t easy for you.”
“They weren’t easy.”
“Did they tell you anything?”
“No. Other than describing your execution and my reactions to it, nothing.”
“May I see them?”
“I wish to Christ I could think of a reason to stop you. I can’t.”
“Your not wanting me to is reason enough.”
“No, it’s not. You were the one being killed; you have to know.” He opened the drawer on his right, reached in and pulled out a thick, black-bordered manila envelope. He gave it to her, their eyes briefly locking. “I’m not proud of it,” he said. “And I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life. I know what that means now.”
“We’ll help each other—for the rest of both our lives. I believed them too.”
She carried the envelope to the couch, sat down, and opened it, removing the file folders inside. They were in sequence; she picked up the first and leaned slowly back, looking at the object in her hands as though it were some horrible yet holy thing. She opened the cover and began reading.
Havelock could not move, could not concentrate. He sat rigid in the chair, the papers in front of him blurred, dark lines without meaning. While Jenna read he relived that terrible night; images flashed across his inner vision and exploded inside his head. Just as he had watched her die, she was now witnessing the naked thoughts of a mind in chemical therapy—his mind, his deepest emotions—and was watching him die also.
The phrases—the screams—came back to him; she was hearing them too. She had to be, for it was she who now closed her eyes and held her breath, a tremor developing in her hands as she went on … and on. She finished the third folder, and he could feel her staring at him. It was a look he could not return. The screams were pounding in his ears, thunderbolts of intolerable violence, unforgivable errors. Betrayal.
Go quickly! Die quickly! Leave me quickly! You were never mine. You were a lie and I loved a lie but you were never part of me! … How can you be what you are, yet so much that you are not? Why did you do this to us? To me? You were the only thing I had and now you’re my personal hell.… Die now, go now! … No! For God’s sake, let me die with you! I want to die … but I won’t die for you! … Only for myself, against myself! Never for you. You gave yourself to me but you gave me a whore and I took a whore … and I believed in the whore. A rotten slut of a whore! … Oh, Christ, she’s hit! She’s hit again. Go to her! For God’s sake, go to her! Hold her! … No, never to her! It’s over! It’s all over and it’s history and I won’t listen to the lies any longer. Oh, Jesus, she’s crawling, crawling in the sand like a cut—up, bleeding animal. She’s alive! Go to her! Hold her! Lessen the final pain—with a bullet if you have to! No! … She’s gone. There’s no movement now, only blood on her hands and streaked through her hair. She’s dead and a part of me is dead, too. Still, it’s got to be history, as the early days are history … Oh, my God, they’re dragging her away, dragging the lanced, dead animal away. Who? Who are they? Have I seen … photographs, files … it doesn’t matter. Do they know what they’ve done? Did she? Killer, slut, whore! … My once, my only love. It’s history now, it has to be history. A killer is gone … love gone. A goddamned fool survives.
She had finished. She placed the last file on the coffee table in front of her and turned to him; she was crying silently. “So much love and so much hatred. Hatred and self-hatred. I wasn’t forced to go through what you did; perhaps it was easier, if more bewildering, to be the victim. But when the bewilderment was replaced by anger, I felt the way you did. Hating you so very much, yet loathing myself for the hatred, never forgetting the love that I knew—I knew—had been there. It couldn’t have been false, not so much, not all of it. The anger took over at the border and later at the airfield in Col des Moulinets when I thought you had come to finally kill me. Kill me with the violence you had shown that woman on the pier at Civitavecchia. I saw your face through the window of the plane and—if there’s a God, may He forgive me—you were my enemy. My love was my enemy.”
“I remember,” said Michael. “I saw your eyes and I remember the hatred. I tried to shout, tried to tell you, but you couldn’t hear me; I couldn’t hear myself through the sound of the engines. But your eyes were weapons that night, more frightening than any I’d ever faced. I wouldn’t have the courage to see them again, but I suppose in a way I always will.”
“Only in your memory, Mikhail.”
The telephone rang; Havelock let it ring again. He could not take his gaze off Jenna. Then he picked it up.
“Yes?”
“Havelock?”
“Mr. President.”
“Did you get the information on Emory?” asked Berquist, the Minnesotan’s voice laced with sadness and exhaustion, yet forcing an illusion of strength.
“Nowhere near what I need.”
“What you need is a liaison. I’ll pick someone here at the White House, someone with authority and a man I can trust. I’ll have to bring him on board, but that can’t be helped. Bradford’s gone and you do need a funnel.”
“Not yet, sir. And not anyone at the White House.”
There was a pause from Washington. “Because of what Rostov told you in Athens?”
“Possibly. The percentages are minor, but I’d rather not test them. Not now.”
“You believed him?”
“With all due respect, Mr. President, he was the only one who told me the truth. From the beginning.”
“Why would he tell you a truth like that?”
“I’m not sure. On the other hand, why did he send Cons Op that cable? In both instances the information was sufficiently startling to force us all to pay attention. That’s the first step in sending a signal.”
“Addison Brooks said very much the same thing.”
“He was talking diplomatically, and he was right. The Voennaya doesn’t speak for Moscow.”
“I understand. Bradford—” Berquist paused, as if he suddenly remembered he was referring to a dead man. “—Bradford explained it to me last night. So you really believe there’s a Soviet agent operating inside the White House?”
“As I said, I’m not sure. But there may be—or more than likely, may have been. I don’t think Rostov would have brought it up unless he could have substantiated the reality, present or past. He was probing, looking for responses. The truth provokes the most genuine answers in this business; he learned that when he brought up Costa Brava. In this case, I don’t want to take the risk.”
“All right, but then, how can you function? You can’t be seen walking around questioning people.”
“No, but I can question them without being seen. I can use the phone if it’s set up properly. I know what I want to ask and “I’ll know what to listen for. From these conversations I’ll refine whom I want to see and set up contacts. I’m experienced at this, Mr. President.”
“I don’t have to take your word for it. How is it set up—properly?”
“Give me a name, and call me an assistant counsel to the President, or something like that. It’s not unusual for the Oval Office to make its own discreet inquiries into certain matters, is it?”
“Hell, no, I’ve got a staff for that, and it’s not necessarily discreet. Hundreds of reports are sent to the White House every week. They have to be checked out, experts questioned, figures substantiated. Without it all, responsible decisions can’t be made. In Lincoln’s time he had two young men, and they took care of everything, including the drafting of letters. Now we have scores of aides and assistants to aides and secretaries to assistants and they can’t half handle the volume. The answer is yes.”
“What happens if someone is called by an aide or an assistant aide and that someone doubts the authority of the person questioning him?”
“It happens a lot, especially at the Pentagon; there’s a simple solution. He’s told to call the White House switchboard and ask to be connected to the aide’s or the assistant’s office. It works.”
“It will work,” said Michael. “Along with the lines already on this phone can you add another one, listing me in the White House index, the extension routed here?”
“Havelock, one of the more exotic pleasures in being President, or close to a President, is the trunkful of electronic gimmickry available on short notice. You’ll be indexed and patched into the switchboard within the hour. What name do you want to use?”
“You’ll have to choose one, sir. I might duplicate someone already there.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Mr. President, before you hang up—”
“What is it?”
“I’ll need another one of those things that may not be in your lexicon. A context backup.”
“It sure as hell isn’t. What is it?”
“In the event someone calls the White House index and wants to know exactly what I do, there should be someone else there who can tell him.”
Again there was the pause from Washington. “You were right, down on Poole’s Island,” said Berquist pensively. “The words say exactly what they mean, don’t they? You need someone to back you up in the context of what you’re presuming to do, or be.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Call you back.”
“May I suggest something?” said Michael quickly.
“What?”
“Within the next few days—if we have a few days—someone is going to come up to that someone else in the White House and ask where my office is. When he or she does, hold him-or her-because whoever it is will bring us a step closer.”
“If that happens,” said Berquist angrily, “whoever it is may be strangled by a Minnesota farm boy before you get a chance to talk to him. Or her.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. President.”
“I’m not going to throw a nuclear warhead on Leningrad, either. Call you back.”
Havelock replaced the phone and looked over at Jenna. “We can begin narrowing down the names. We’ll start calling in an hour.”
“Your name is Cross. Robert Cross. Your title is Special Assistant to the President, and all inquiries as to your status and functions are to be directed to Mrs. Howell—she’s counsel to White House internal affairs. She’s been told what to do.”
“What about my office?”
“You’ve got one.”
“What?”
“You’ve even got an assistant. In the security area of E.O.B. You need a key to get in the main corridor over there, and your man is instructed to take into custody anyone who comes around looking for Mr. Cross. He’s a member of the Secret Service detail and if anyone does show up asking for you, he’ll alert you and bring that person down to Fairfax under guard. I assumed that’s what you wanted.”
“It is. What about the other offices in that area? Will the people in them be curious?”
“Unlikely. By and large those assignments are temporary, everyone working on his own quiet project. Curiosity’s discouraged. And if it surfaces, you’ve got your man in place.”
“It sounds tight.”
“I think so. Where are you going to start?… Emory showed me the list of the items you wanted and assured me you’d have it all in the morning. Did you get everything?”
“Everything. Bradford’s secretary to first, then the doctor in Maryland. MacKenzie’s death.”
“We were extremely thorough with him,” said Berquist. “Under the circumstances, we were able to bring in the Central Intelligence Agency and those people were aggressive. What are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. Someone who’s not around anymore, perhaps. A puppet.”
“I won’t try to follow that.”
“I may need your direct intervention in one area, however. You said before that the Pentagon frequently balks at being questioned by White House personnel.”
“It goes with the uniforms; they’re not worn over here. I expect you’re referring to the Nuclear Contingency Committees. I saw them on your list.”
“I am.”
“They’re touchy. Rightfully so, I’d say.”
“I have to talk to every member of those three teams; that’s fifteen senior officers. Can you get word to the chairman that you expect them all to cooperate with Mr. Cross? Not in the area of maximum restricted information, but in terms of—progress evaluation.”
“One of those phrases again.”
“It says it, Mr. President. It would help if you could work Matthias in.”
“All right,” said Berquist slowly. “I’ll lay it on the great man. It’s not in character, but he can hardly deny it. I’ll have my military aide convey the word: the Secretary of State wants those committees to provide an in-depth progress report for the Oval Office. A simple memorandum ordering cooperation within the limits of maximum classification should do it … They’ll say there’s a crossover, of course. You can’t have one without violating the other.”
“Then tell them to err on the side of classification. The final report’s for your eyes only, anyway.”
“Anything else?”
“The psychiatric file on Matthias. Bradford was to have gotten it for me.”
“I’m going to Camp David tomorrow. I’ll detour to Poole’s Island and bring it back with me.”
“One thing more. This Mrs. Howell; outside of calling in the Secret Service if anyone approaches her about me, what has she been told to say? About me, my functions?”
“Only that you’re on a special assignment for the President.”
“Can you change it?”
“To what?”
“Routine assignment. Researching old agendas so White House files can be completed on various matters.”
“We have people doing that. It’s basically political—how is this position defended, or why did that senator buck us and how do we stop him from doing it again.”
“You’re in it. Good luck … but then you’ll need a great deal more than luck. This world needs more than luck. Sometimes I think we need a miracle to last another week.… Keep me informed; my orders are that whenever Mr. Cross calls, I’m to be interrupted.”
Bradford’s secretary, one Elizabeth Andrews, was at home, the sensational death of her superior having had its emotional impact. A number of newspaper people had telephoned her, and she had relayed the events of yesterday morning sadly but calmly, until a gossip-oriented reporter, noting Bradford’s marital track record, hinted at a sexual entanglement.
“You sick bitch,” Elizabeth had said, slamming down the phone.
Havelock’s call came twenty minutes later, and Elizabeth Andrews was not inclined to tell the tale again. He suggested she call him back at the White House when she felt better; the ploy worked. The phone in the study in Fairfax rang six minutes after Michael had hung up.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cross. It’s been a very trying time and some very trying reporters.”
“I’ll be as brief as possible.”
She recounted the morning’s events, beginning with Bradford’s sudden and unexpected emergence from his office shortly after she had arrived.
“He looked dreadful. He’d obviously been up all night and was exhausted, but there was something else. A kind of manic energy; he was excited about something. I’ve seen him like that lots of times, of course, but somehow yesterday it was different. He spoke louder than he usually did.”
“That could have been the exhaustion,” said Havelock. “It often works that way. A person compensates because he feels weak.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so, not with him, not yesterday morning. I know it sounds ghastly, but I think he’d made up his mind … that’s a horrible thing to say, but I believe it. It was as though he were exhilarated, actually looking forward to the moment when it was going to happen. It’s ghoulish, but he left the office shortly before ten, said he was going out for a few minutes, and I have this terrible picture of him out on the street, looking up at the window … and thinking to himself, Yes, this is it.”
“Could there be another explanation? Could he have been going to see someone?”
“No, I don’t think so. I asked him if he’d be in another office in case a call came for him and he said no, he was going out for some air.”
“He never mentioned why he’d been there all night?”
“Only that he’d been working on a project that he’d fallen behind on. He’d been doing a fair amount of traveling recently—”
“Did you set up the transportation arrangements for him?” interrupted Havelock.
“No, he usually did that himself. As you probably know, he often … took someone with him. He was divorced, several times actually. He was a very private person, Mr. Cross. And so very unhappy.”
“Why do you say that?”
Ms. Andrews paused, then spoke firmly. “Emory Bradford was a brilliant man, and they didn’t pay attention to him. He was once very influential in this city until he told the truth—as he saw the truth—and as soon as the applause died down, they all ran away from him.”
“You’ve been with him a long time.”
“A long time. I saw it all happen.”
“Could you give me examples of this running away from him?”
“Sure. To begin with, he was consistently overlooked when his experience, his expertise could have been of value. Then he’d frequently write position papers, correcting powerful men and women—senators, congressmen, secretaries of this and that—who had made stupid mistakes in interviews and press conferences, but if one out of ten ever responded or thanked him, I never knew about it, and I would have. He’d monitor the early-morning television programs, where the worst gaffes are made-just as he was doing yesterday, right up to the end—and dictate what he called clarifications. They were always gentle, even kind, never offensive, and, sure enough, ‘clarifications’ were usually issued, but never any thanks.”
“He was watching television yesterday morning?”
“For a while … before it happened. At least, the set was rolled out to the front of his desk. He moved it back … before it happened. Right up until the end he couldn’t break the habit. He wanted people to be better than they are; he wanted the government to be better.”
“Were there any notes on his desk that could have told you whom he was watching?”
“No, nothing. It was like his final gesture, leaving this world tidier than he’d found it. I’ve never seen his desk so neat, so clean.”
“I’m sure you haven’t.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I was agreeing with you … I know you were at lunch, but were there any people in the vicinity of his office door who might have seen someone go in or out?”
“The police covered that, Mr. Cross. There are always people milling around; we all have different lunch breaks, depending on what’s happening in what time zone, but no one saw anything unusual. Actually, our section was pretty much cleared out. We had a secretarial pool meeting at one-thirty, so most of us—”
“Who called that meeting, Miss Andrews?”
“This month’s chairman—then, of course, he said he didn’t, so we sat around drinking coffee.”
“Didn’t you get a memo about the meeting?”
“No, the word was just passed around that morning. It frequently is; that’s standard.”
“Thank you very much. You’ve been most helpful.”
“It’s all such a waste, Mr. Cross. Such a goddamned terrible waste.”
“I know. Good—bye.” Havelock hung up and spoke, his eyes still on the phone. “Our man is good,” he said. “Invisible paint.”
“She couldn’t tell you anything?”
“Yes, she did. Bradford listened to me. He went outside to a booth and called for whatever it was he wanted. The number we need won’t be found charged to his office phone; it’s among a couple of million lost in the underground trunk lines.”
“Nothing else?”
“Maybe something.” Michael looked over at Jenna, a frown on his face, his eyes clouded. “See if you can find a copy of yesterday’s paper around here, will you? I want to know the name of every senior official at State who was interviewed on the morning television programs. It’s crazy. The last thing on Bradford’s mind was television.”
Jenna found the newspaper. No one from the Department of State had been on television that morning.