Hillary

Chapter Twenty

Hart was not sure whether to take Jean Valette at his word or err on the side of caution. Valette caught the look of indecision.

“Perhaps it would be better if you kept it. After everything that has happened, I can understand why you might feel reluctant to trust me.” He turned to the plainclothes guard, waiting with his hand on the door as Hart got in. “Come with us, Marcel. We’ll give you a lift to your car. It’s too far to walk, and besides, there are a few things we need to discuss.”

The limousine started down a winding, narrow street, around the back of the cathedral to the village in front and, beyond it, to the causeway across the river. There were tourists everywhere, crowding onto the steps up to the famous place where kings and queens had come to worship, pushing into the shops that sold souvenirs to remind them later of where they had been. For a few brief moments, Jean Valette viewed the scene with grim amusement, as if, like someone come to honor a long dead relative, he had discovered the cemetery taken over by a visiting troupe of puppeteers, come to give a children’s show. With a distant smile, he turned to his guest.

“If I had known for certain you were going to be here, Mr. Hart, I would have tried to speak with more intelligence. As it was, with this audience…” The thought finished itself. Then he tried to explain. “And I only do it, you understand, because of this strange obligation I feel to try to keep certain things alive. But enough of that! I’m very glad you came and we finally have the chance to- But you must be exhausted, and-how thoughtless of me-terrified, after what happened last night. No, that is the wrong word, the wrong emotion. You don’t strike me, Mr. Hart, as someone who would ever be terrified of anything. Still, after what you’ve been through… Poor Austin Pearce! He was remarkable, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you; one of the most-one of the few really intelligent men I’ve met. I can’t believe he’s gone, and murdered like that! Incredible!”

Valette shook his head in disgust. He leaned back in the corner of the seat and lit a cigarette and for a short while watched the thin trail of smoke spiral into the air. And then, cracking open the window to let the smoke out, shook his head again, but this time with an air of resolution.

“What do we know so far, Marcel?” With a sudden, helpless shrug, he looked at Hart. “Where are my manners? This is Marcel Dumont, Mr. Hart: Inspector Dumont, chief detective of the Surete Generale.” He had anticipated Hart’s surprise. “You thought he was there to provide security, a private guard? You could probably do that, couldn’t you, Marcel?” He turned back to Hart. “Marcel was on our Olympic boxing team.”

Marcel Dumont grinned modestly.

“Nearly thirty years ago, and I did not make it past the quarterfinals.”

“He lost to the one who went on to win the gold medal.”

“As I say,” insisted the inspector, “thirty years, and about fifty pounds, ago. But about last night,” he went on, becoming serious. “You’re lucky you’re still alive, Mr. Hart.”

Valette lifted his chin and tapped his fingers together. His mouth was shut tight and his eyes half-closed in the way of someone used to calculating probabilities.

“I doubt Mr. Hart feels very lucky, do you, Mr. Hart? The whole world thinks you’re a murderer. No, I don’t imagine Mr. Hart right now thinks he’s been very lucky at all. But go on, Marcel-what do we know about this? Austin Pearce and the head of the embassy’s political section-he was a kind of spy, wasn’t he?-were murdered. One of the gunmen was killed, and the other one wounded, but got away. You did that, didn’t you, Mr. Hart? Go ahead, Marcel: What else do we know? That woman-the landlady-she told the police that Mr. Hart here was downstairs with her when the shooting began. It’s a good thing she was there; otherwise, everyone would think you killed both of them. Although I’m not sure that would have made things any worse for you than what’s happened instead. I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Go ahead, Marcel.”

The driver turned into an alleyway on the other side of the river and pulled up next to where the chief of detectives had left his car.

“Mr. Valette is correct. The landlady gave us a very precise account of what happened. You came there looking for Mr. Wolfe-Aaron Wolfe. You told her you were expected. Is that true, Mr. Hart-did Mr. Wolfe expect you?” he asked, exchanging a glance with Valette.

Hart noticed the glance. They knew something he did not. He began to worry that he had stepped into a trap.

“I went there to see Wolfe. That’s true.”

“But did he expect you? We know that you were about to be arrested at the embassy, and that you got away. Did Mr. Wolfe warn you, did he tell you that was about to happen, or did Mr. Pearce do that? You came over on a private plane, and Mr. Pearce and the ambassador were old friends, were they not?”

Hart looked to Valette for an explanation, but Valette lit another cigarette and said nothing.

“What difference does it make if I was expected? I went to see him; that fact has been established. I went to see him, heard the shots, told that woman-the landlady-to call the police, ran upstairs and found Wolfe dead and Austin Pearce dying. Wolfe had shot the first one, and I picked up the gun, and Austin warned me, and I looked behind me and saw the second one and I fired and hit him in the shoulder.”

“Did the man you shot say anything? Could you tell where he was from? Was he an American?”

“No, he didn’t say anything. So if you’re asking whether he spoke French or English, I don’t know. But I was chased in the streets after I left the embassy, and I can’t be sure, but I think he was one of them.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows and nodded as if that fit with what he knew.

“The dead one, the first one through the door, the one Wolfe managed to shoot, was an American, but we couldn’t be absolutely sure about the other one.”

“He had identification? You found something that told you who he was?”

“They were in a hurry. They probably started chasing you as soon as they discovered you had left the embassy. They didn’t have time to plan anything. So, yes, we found identification on the body. He worked at the embassy, a ‘cultural attaché,’ which means in his case someone with one of your intelligence agencies. That’s why I’m asking whether Mr. Wolfe expected you. How did they know to go there? They could not have been following you; they were already there when you arrived.”

“Well, Wolfe wouldn’t have told them, would he?”

“Then he did expect you? Before you left the embassy, you had made some arrangement.” With a knowing look, the inspector turned to Jean Valette. “Which means that Wolfe had some reason to believe that the charges against Mr. Hart weren’t true, and that Mr. Hart was somehow being used. Is that what happened, Mr. Hart? You have some evidence that you weren’t involved in the murder of the president, Robert Constable?”

Hart’s first reaction was to ignore the question, but then he changed his mind. He was tired, confused, and fast losing patience.

“Maybe he just believed me. Maybe because I had come all the way to find out who was behind the murder of the president, and whether or not The Four Sisters might be involved,” he added with a quick, questioning glance at Jean Valette that stopped just short of being an accusation, “he realized that the suggestion that I might have wanted the president dead did not make any sense.”

Inspector Dumont did not show any surprise. He turned to Jean Valette.

“The Four Sisters?”

Valette stoked his chin as if he were considering the possibility.

“Everything you’ve learned leads back to us, doesn’t it, Mr. Hart? The Four Sisters, I admit it, reaches almost everywhere. There would be no reason not to think that we might be involved in something like this. We wouldn’t be the first financial institution to help get rid of someone or bring down a government we didn’t like. But the question, Mr. Hart-the immediate question-is what Marcel has just now asked: How did anyone know that after you left the embassy you would be at that apartment?”

“It’s what I said before,” said Dumont, referring to an earlier, private, conversation.

“Yes, I think you must be right,” agreed Valette.

“Right? About what?” asked Hart.

“They didn’t go there for you,” replied the inspector. “You had gotten away, lost them in the streets of Paris. That’s when they decided they had to clean up the loose ends. It would not have been difficult to figure out that you had been warned-told you were about to be arrested-when you were at the embassy. They had to believe that Wolfe knew something, and that Pearce, who was in the room, had to have known the same thing: the name of the person you thought was really behind the murder of the president. They could not afford to let them talk to anyone. That was the reason they went to Mr. Wolfe’s apartment: to kill them both. If they had gone there to kill you, they would have waited for you, but they didn’t do that, did they? Not only did they not expect to find you there, you ruined their plan when you showed up.”

“Ruined their plan? They did what you said they had gone there to do. Both Aaron Wolfe and Austin Pearce are dead!”

“Yes, unfortunately, that fact is true. But, you see, I’m almost certain that they planned to blame both murders on you.”

“Me? But why would I kill Austin Pearce? Why would I kill Aaron Wolfe?”

“You?-A fugitive from justice, someone who arranged the murder of a president? What would stop a man like that from killing two people who might have known where he was heading, or who might have refused to help him get away? The question of a motive would never have entered into it.”

Something had been bothering Hart since he first found out that Marcel Dumont was the chief detective of the Surete Generale.

“Why were you here today? Why were you waiting outside the door? Of all the different places I could have gone, how did you know I would be coming here?”

The inspector exchanged a glance with Jean Valette and then opened the door.

“Do you think anyone recognized him?” asked Valette.

“He was sitting in the back, and we got him out before anyone had a chance to really notice. So, no, I don’t think so. Still, there is a risk…”

The inspector got out of the car. Valette followed him and closed the door behind him. They stood together, talking earnestly, and while Hart could not hear what they were saying, he could tell from the way they were gesturing that it was about him. After a few minutes, Valette got back in the car and told the driver to start.

“You’ll come home with me,” he explained to Hart. “You’ll be safe there.” He paused, and then added with a serious expression, “At least for a while. Marcel wanted to arrest you, take you into custody. He is an old friend, but he’s a policeman, and you, I’m afraid, are the most wanted man in the world. Every police organization in Europe has been told to look for you.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing!” protested Hart, letting all his pent-up frustrations burst forth.

Jean Valette had a way of tilting his head back at an angle that made his gaze seem distant, remote, detached from any feeling of common sympathy or understanding. It was the look of someone completely analytical.

“That, of course, is not, strictly speaking, true.”

“You think I had something to do with-?”

Valette stopped him a quick movement of his head, a look of disapproval for an obvious mistake.

“What you did was to let yourself be used. You came here to discover who, or what, was behind the murder of Robert Constable. You, a single individual-an important one, it is true-but not part of some investigative unit of your government! And you did this before there was any investigation, any official investigation; before there was so much as a public announcement that the president had not died, as first reported, of natural causes. That means, does it not, that someone knew, or had reason to know, that the president had been murdered and had some reason to ask you to look into it?” A shrewd, knowing smile crossed his lips. “I can understand why Hillary Constable would want someone to do that; the more interesting question is why she chose you. Do you think it was because someone intended to blame you from the beginning?”

“I didn’t tell you that Hillary Constable asked me to look into it.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“And you still haven’t told me-your friend, the chief inspector, didn’t tell me-why he was here.”

“He came because I asked him to come. I knew you would come, Mr. Hart. You had to come; there was not anything else for you to do. There isn’t anything mysterious about it. Austin Pearce called me yesterday, just after you left the embassy, just after you made your escape. He was very agitated. That is a serious understatement: He was angry. He accused me of all sorts of things. I had a very difficult time getting him to calm down. He told me why you had come, what you thought I had done.”

In the failing light of late afternoon, the limousine raced down a tree-lined country road. Sunlit shadows cast a dappled pale glow on Jean Valette’s finely formed auburn-colored face. He had to be over sixty, but he looked almost as young as Hart, even though Hart, still in his forties, also looked younger than his age. There were differences, of course. Hart did not yet have any of the gray hair that, in the right proportion, added a certain distinction, and none of the web-like lines around the eyes that made Jean Valette’s face, even in repose, look so serious.

“He told me why you had come,” he repeated in a way that suggested not so much astonishment as a deep curiosity. He seemed intrigued by what Austin Pearce had told him. “He demanded-there is no other word for it-demanded that I tell him if it was true; demanded to know if I had had anything to do with this plot to murder Robert Constable.”

Valette seemed almost to enjoy it, the memory of that accusation. If Austin Pearce had not been murdered, if he were still alive, it is quite possible that Valette would have laughed out loud as he recounted their strange conversation. Hart, on the other hand, did see anything even the slightest bit amusing in any of it.

“And did you?-Did you have anything to do with this, the murder of the president, the murder of Frank Morris, the murder of Quentin Burdick, the murder of-?”

“Mr. Hart! I promise you, I’m not what you seem to think.” Valette’s eyes flashed with contempt. “What did I care whether Robert Constable lived or died? What did I care about any of this? I’m not interested in what happens to this person or that person; I’m not interested in individuals. I’m not interested in what happens today or tomorrow; I’m interested in what is going to happen fifty years from now, a hundred years from now.”

The look in his eyes changed. Contempt vanished; something more hidden, more enigmatic, took its place.

“Though I could have told you that what happened to Constable, and what is happening now, was all but inevitable; perhaps not in that form-murder-but in some other. We can discuss that later. Let me finish what I was telling you about what Austin said to me, let me-”

“You’re not concerned with individuals-you’re only interested in what might happen a hundred years from now!” exclaimed Hart as he leaned forward and jabbed his finger in the air. “Austin Pearce was murdered! He died looking into my eyes, and you don’t care what happened to him? I’m supposed to believe you-Austin was supposed to believe you-when you insist you weren’t involved in any of this?” His gaze sharpened and became more intense. “Did Austin tell you where he was going? Did he tell you he was going to be at Wolfe’s apartment?”

“You think I sent those people-? If I had done that, why would you be riding in my car? Why wouldn’t I have just let Marcel take you away, turn you over to the Americans and let them dispose of you? By this time tomorrow, I can almost guarantee that you would be dead.”

“Why didn’t you-let your friend, the chief inspector, arrest me?”

“Austin Pearce, of course.”

“What did Austin do that made you-?”

“He asked me-after I gave him my word that I didn’t know anything about what had happened, that I did not even know Constable had been murdered until he accused me of being involved-he asked me, or rather he insisted, that I do whatever I could to help you get to the bottom of this.”

Jean Valette looked out the window at the rolling hills in their patchwork colors and the river that ran not far from the road, out to the dark green forest that marked the beginning of where he lived; the forest that, if he could not yet see it with his naked eye, would be there, in full view, in just another few minutes. There was a certain satisfaction, a sense of possession, in seeing things that others could not yet see.

“You knew Robert Constable, of course,” he remarked after a long silence. “But how well did you know him?”

Hart thought about it, wondering how to answer the question that, in the last few weeks, he had often asked himself. He gave the one answer he was sure about.

“My wife did not know him at all.”

Valette’s head snapped up. His eyes brightened with approval.

“That’s exactly what Austin told me. He had seen the papers, read the story, said that no one who knew you both would believe a word of it. Good for you, Mr. Hart; good for you. A man who doesn’t doubt his wife! I once had that privilege. But never mind. How well did you know him, Robert Constable?”

“I never thought I really knew him,” confided Hart. “He was too elusive, always calculating what he wanted and how he was going to get it-and how you were going to help him-to be someone you could really get to know. And now, after what I’ve learned-after what I’ve learned about his connection with you, with The Four Sisters-I’m not sure I knew him at all.”

The line across the bridge of Valette’s prominent nose deepened and became more pronounced as he drew his eyes together into an attitude of the utmost concentration. He scratched the side of his face with the back of three fingers. A smile that barely broke the line of his full mouth seemed to reflect a considered judgment that nothing could now change.

“Then you knew him as well as anyone did; better, really, because you knew him for what he really was: a man who, when dealing with others, thinks only of himself; a man who, when he tries to understand himself-if he ever does that-thinks only of what others believe. He was an actor, someone who always played a role-the only thing important that everyone else believe he was important, so that they would always want to see and hear him. That’s why he wanted money: so he could continue to occupy center stage. And that, of course, is why he came to me.”

“He came to you? You-The Four Sisters, the companies you control-didn’t go to him, didn’t offer him millions in exchange for making it easier for you to do business in the United States?”

“When you want money, Mr. Hart-when you ran for reelection the last time-did you wait for people to come to you, or did you ask them for their support? Yes, I understand there is a difference: that you weren’t offering to do anything specific in exchange. I understand the difference, Mr. Hart; we both do. But Robert Constable did not. The truth is that Robert Constable did not really understand much of anything.”

Valette stared down at his manicured hands, folded neatly in his lap, troubled, as it seemed, by this last remark, not so much for what had been said as by what had been left out. He closed his eyes and shook his head as if there were no point going on with it: that nothing he could say would explain what he meant. But then, because he thought it important, he turned and searched Hart’s waiting eyes.

“Though obviously from a distance, I have watched your career with some interest. You seem-how shall I say this?-more grounded than the rest of them, the ones like Constable who only run for office because they would not know what to do with themselves without the attention of the crowd. You were going to quit a few years ago, I understand; go back to California and live a private life-something having to do with your wife, if I am not mistaken. I understand you have even been known to read a serious book. It’s no wonder you don’t seem to have many friends. We have at least that much in common.”

It seemed at first a strange remark, but then, a moment later, Hart thought he knew exactly what he had meant: reading anything, but especially about the past, took you away from what people in the present thought important. He tried to use that thought to penetrate deeper into what for him was still the mystery of Jean Valette.

“You must have read a great deal to be able to do what you did back there, at Mont Saint-Michel: speak without notes for nearly an hour and then answer questions.”

Valette’s eyes filled with irony.

“The best thing that happened to me as a boy was to have a tutor who would scarcely let me read anything until I was nearly sixteen. Among the other interesting results, my memory was much improved.”

Hart did not try to hide his astonishment.

“You didn’t read anything until…?”

“One book: Robinson Crusoe. My tutor was very strange. He had read Rousseau’s Emile-and believed it! Rousseau said Robinson Crusoe was the only book a boy should read because it teaches the lessons of necessity and the advantages of freedom; teaches you to see things with your own eyes and not the eyes of others. Perhaps that is the reason that I have always liked it here so much,” he added with a look of mischief, “cut off from the outside world like Crusoe’s island, and yet less than half an hour from all the luxury and madness of Paris.”

They had come out of the forest and were approaching a massive iron gate. Behind it, stretching through a double row of poplars, was a driveway, a two-lane road that went on as far as the eye could see.

“It’s only a few miles to the house,” said Valette, explaining a fact without importance. He pointed to a rock outcropping on the right. “There is a path that leads to a small lake on the other side. I used to swim there as a boy. They say that buried somewhere at the bottom is a chest full of gold and silver, precious jewels, brought back from the Crusades. But I searched all over one summer and never found it. ‘St. John’s Treasure,’ is what they called it, whoever started the legend after that other Jean Valette, my long dead ancestor, came back from Malta.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he smiled to himself, and then looked closely at Hart.

“The Order of St. John. Some of what I told that audience today is actually true.”

“But not all of it?”

This produced a look of vast amusement in Jean Valette.

“That’s one sin of which I think I can claim never to have been guilty. Although I’m not sure it really makes any difference,” he said as the smile on his face faded into obscurity and his gaze became more thoughtful. “I try to be careful, not go too far, in what I say, but I sometimes wonder why I bother. Those people I just spoke to-members of the Order of St. John-I could tell them exactly what I thought and they still would not understand it, and even if they did, they would think I was being ironic. They think I’m too intelligent not to believe exactly what they believe.”

Hart remembered his own reaction, his sense that Valette kept his real meaning hidden, sometimes by putting it out in plain view.

“The suggestion that great things can be done again, that what was done in the past can be repeated, that there could even be another Napoleon? You don’t think anyone believes you really mean it, and that is the reason you can say it? Everyone thinks you’re only talking about some remote possibility, something that, if it were ever to happen, is not going to happen any time soon: this war between Islam and the West, to take another example.”

Valette nodded in agreement with what Hart was saying, but stopped abruptly at this last remark.

“That war never stopped! If Robert Constable had only understood that, he’d probably still be alive!” he exclaimed in apparent frustration.

Hart stared at him in disbelief.

“What do you mean-he’d still be alive? What does this war you keep talking about have to do with his murder?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shrug. “And everything. If he had understood what was at stake, the whole future of the West, he might have decided to do something important, something that history would remember, instead of just trying to become what he thought other people-the great, anonymous crowd-wanted him to be.”

Hart wanted to laugh out loud. It was crazy, insane; he was trying to find out who was behind the murder of the president, trying now to clear his own name, and he was being told that Constable had brought it on himself by not being sufficiently serious. He did not laugh out loud, but he might as well have done. Valette had understood at once Hart’s reaction.

“You think I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, consider this: All this money he got from The Four Sisters, all those millions-do you think that would have happened if I had not thought that it would, one way or the other, bring about his destruction?”

Hart did not know what to think. He was about to demand that Valette explain what he meant when the driver suddenly hit the brakes and Hart was thrown forward onto the floor. Valette helped him back onto the seat.

“There,” he said, pointing to an enormous stag standing in the middle of the drive. “Isn’t he magnificent?” With proud indifference the stag stood there, daring anyone to try to move him, and then bounded off the road and into the dense forest. “The park is full of animals now, wild boar and deer that used to be hunted. I put a stop to it. I never understood this desire some people have to kill things that cannot fight back.”

He leaned forward and rapped gently on the glass, a signal to the driver to move forward again. The road, this endless driveway from the iron gates miles behind them, began a steep ascent, winding through one hairpin turn after another, climbing high above the valley floor and the river that in the distance glowed blood red and orange under the soft, dying light of the twilight sun. They reached a clearing several miles square, bordered on the other side by another forest and another, taller range of hills, and passed through yet another iron gate, smaller and more ornate than the first. They were now on a great stone paved circle that led past a series of spouting fountains and close-cropped lawns and hedges to what Hart could only think was a much older, if slightly smaller, Versailles.

“It was built about the same time as Mont Saint-Michel, a thousand years ago,” explained Jean Valette. “Like the cathedral, it has been rebuilt and restored who knows how many times. They burned it to the ground, or tried to, those great believers in equality, in the early days of the Revolution, and murdered-cut the living hearts out of some of them-the people who lived here. The wonder, I suppose, is that we ever got it back. We wouldn’t have, if we had not learned the secret of this new world of ours.”

“The secret?” asked Hart as they got out of the car.

Jean Valette stood in front of the ancient stone chateau that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction, inhaling the sweet, clean air. His eyes glittered with the remembered knowledge of something perhaps taught to him as a child, or learned later, somehow on his own.

“The secret of the age of equality: the more equality there is, the more desperate people are for something that seems to set them apart, makes them different, better, than the rest. That’s why money has become the only thing anyone believes in anymore. It isn’t because of what it can buy; it’s because of what it tells everyone about you. Want to see a completely miserable human being? Introduce someone worth a hundred million to someone worth twice that amount. Every age has its own form of insanity, Mr. Hart. Money is ours. That’s what got Robert Constable killed, and, directly or indirectly, it’s what is likely to get you killed as well. But let’s go inside now. You must be famished.”