Last Snow

TWENTY-FOUR

“IRAN,” PRESIDENT Yukin said, “is a topic of the utmost strategic importance.” He shook his craggy head. He had eyes like nuggets of coal that had been burned deep into his face. The bulb of his nose was pocked and cratered, possibly from a childhood disease. “I have said this before, President Carson, but I see that I must say it again in order to underscore the weight the Kremlin reserves for such matters.”

“You needn’t bother,” Edward Carson said. “I am well aware of the special status between Russia and Iran.”

“Special status?” Yukin mashed his fleshy lips together, as if he wished to grind Carson’s words to ash. “No, no, you misunderstand us. We have certain business dealings, yes, but as for—”

“Such as sending them nuclear reactor parts and refined uranium.”

That statement hit the room, or more accurately, Yukin’s ears, like a detonation. An awkward silence ensued. Carson, Yukin, General Brandt, and Panin, a high-level Kremlin apparatchik who had not been further identified, were sitting in a palatial room inside the Kremlin. The ceilings, twenty feet in height, perhaps more, were arched as in a cathedral, a comparison whose irony wasn’t lost on Carson.

“Since the debacle in Iraq your fact-finding spies have been notoriously inaccurate,” Yukin said at length. “This lie is but another example.”

At Carson’s gesture the General removed a dossier from his briefcase and handed it to his commander in chief. Without a word the president opened the dossier and spread half a dozen photographs on the table. One by one, he turned them so they faced Yukin.

“What’s this?” Yukin said, not even bothering to look at them.

“Surveillance photos of enriched uranium being transferred from Russian transports to Iranian transports.” Carson’s forefinger tapped a photo. “Here you can clearly see the symbol indicating radioactive material.”

Yukin shrugged. “Photoshopped.” But something was caught in his eyes, a shadow mixing anger and embarrassment at being caught out.

“I have no intention of making these photos public.” Carson gathered up the photos, shoved them back in dossier, and slid it across the table to Yukin. “But I must be clear: The position of the United States on the security accord will not change from where it was an hour ago, or yesterday. You cease your dealings with Iran and we dismantle the missile shield around Russia, we become security allies. We are done making changes; it’s time for us to sign the accord that will prove to be invaluable to both of our countries.”

Yukin sat very still for some time. The breathing of the four men seemed to come in concert, inhalations and exhalations caught on the tide of tension that had sprung up in the room moments before. Then the Russian president gave a brief nod. “You’ll have my answer within the hour.”

_____

“THIS HAS become a perilous game,” General Brandt said as he and Carson strode the frigid Kremlin corridors, the president’s usual entourage strung out behind them. “If you had told me you were going to show Yukin those photos I would have cautioned you to find another way.”

“There was no other way,” Carson said shortly.

“Mr. President, may I point out that you’re on the verge of signing the most historic accord with Russia in the history of the United States, one that will ensure the safety of the American—”

“I seem to be more concerned with the American people than you are,” Carson snapped. “I won’t sign the accord with the points that Yukin has insisted on.” He didn’t care for Brandt’s admonishing tone, the inference that he, a neophyte when it came to the Russians, had acted rashly, that he should have deferred to the old Russian hand. “I get the feeling that Yukin is playing us to see how far he can push us, how many of his demands we’ll accede to. I won’t have it. I won’t be pushed around, either by him or, quite frankly, by you, General.”

“GENERAL BRANDT,” Benson said.

“Where to begin with General Brandt?” Thomson said as if he hadn’t been interrupted. He sighed, as if stymied by the enormity of the task before him.

“We recruited Brandt some time ago,” Benson said helpfully.

“Three years, more or less,” Thomson leapt back in. “Midway along in the second term. We saw the handwriting on the wall. The president and his other senior advisors were hell-bent on continuing down the same path we’d all started down when he was first elected.”

“It wasn’t working anymore,” Benson said. “The commanders were telling us that privately, and the troops were worn down. The stop-loss program, though increasingly necessary, was, in practical terms, a disaster, plus it was a PR nightmare.”

“Just the fact that we needed stop-loss should have sent a signal to the president’s advisors, but they ignored it, just like they ignored every news event or incident that contradicted their vision.”

Paull was familiar with stop-loss. It was a program instituted by the military, who, running short on recruits, abrogated the rights of its members to be rotated out of service. Stop-loss kept them in and fighting on the front lines in Felluja or Kabul, or wherever the power that be deigned to send them.

“How does this information tie in with General Brandt?” Paull said.

Again an expression of discomfort briefly crossed Thomson’s face. “In the waning days of the administration we found ourselves without power, or nearly so. The fact is we’d been effectively blocked from the president.”

“By whom?” Paull said, wondering if they’d divulge this secret, a yardstick by which he might judge both their sincerity and their veracity.

“Dick England,” Thomson said at once. England had been the director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, a unit set up by Carson’s predecessor and now, happily, dismantled.

“England hated our guts,” Benson said with some venom. “He was a power freak, he formed an alliance with the secretary of defense, on whom the president relied for much of his foreign policy.”

“The war,” Thomson said heavily, “was the secretary’s idea and he pushed hard for it.”

“I thought the war was your idea,” Paull said, “and Benson’s.”

“Even to the point of fabricating evidence of WMDs,” Benson said, with the stoic intonation of the seasoned warrior.

“He couldn’t have done that without the connivance of the director of the CIA,” Paull said.

Benson’s smile was bleak and far from friendly. “He couldn’t and he didn’t.”

“Though we tried hard, the three of them proved too much for us,” Thomson said, “and we were shut out.”

“It was time to abandon ship,” Benson continued, picking up the thread of the original conversation, “so we decided to cast our net into the private sector. Eventually, we decided on Alizarin Global.”

“Which is where General Brandt comes in.” Thomson sighed as he poured more coffee for Paull and for himself. “We didn’t particularly like him, but because of his ties with President Yukin we needed him to help us fast-track a deal with Gazprom, crucial to Alizarin, before a competitor could sew it up. Bottom line, we thought we could trust him.”

“We were wrong.” Benson stood up and walked to the piano, stood staring at it for some time, as if hearing an oft-played melody—possibly a martial air—in his head. Or perhaps he was fantasizing the methods by which he’d murder Brandt. He turned back abruptly, his face tense and grim. “And now he’s left us hanging by the short hairs. This is something neither we nor President Carson can permit nor withstand.”

Thomson put down his cup. “This is why we brought you here, Mr. Secretary. We had neither the time nor the means to engage you in any other way.”

Paull found he had no more taste for coffee, or for any of the food, for that matter. “What is it you think I can do?”

“Wait,” Thomson said. “You haven’t heard the worst part.”

EDWARD CARSON sat alone in temporary seclusion, as much as any American president can be alone. He sat in his suite at the hotel across Red Square from the Kremlin, a generous pour of single-malt scotch at his elbow. Peering out the window he could see that it had begun to snow again this late in the season, as if he were in Wyoming or Montana. Astonishing, really. He watched with a kind of detached interest as the snowflakes swirled and spent themselves like moths against the windowpane.

Then he pulled out his cell phone and called Jack.

“Jack, where the hell are you?” Carson said. “More to the point, where the hell is my daughter? Lyn tells me that she bundled Alli off on you. I could be pissed off at her but, frankly, it’s easier to yell at you. Did you think about what a security risk this poses?”

“It’s never left my mind, Edward. I argued against taking her, but I don’t have to tell you what Mrs. Carson is like when she makes her mind up about something.”

“What was she thinking?”

“She was terrified that Alli would slip her handlers and take off for parts unknown in a city she scarcely knows, a city, I might add, that’s far more dangerous than the aircraft she and I took to Kiev.”

“I take it she’s not still in the aircraft,” the president said.

Jack’s long relationship with Carson allowed him to shrug off the sarcasm. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, spill it. How’s my daughter?”

“The Ukrainian air has done her a world of good, she’s much improved.”

This welcome news instantly deflated Carson’s anger. “Well, dammit, it’s about time. Lyn will be relieved, let me tell you.” He grunted. “She’s not getting in your way, is she?”

“On the contrary, she’s proved extremely helpful.”

“Well, that’s a surprise. But look here, Jack, I don’t want her put in harm’s way. I think you should ship her back here.”

“She’s not a package, and anyway there’s isn’t a chance in hell that she’ll come.”

“She listens to you. If you insist—”

“Edward, listen to me, this may not be the safest place for her, but what is, the rehab facility she was in? You already know she won’t talk to anyone there, but she’s talking to me. Whatever she went through has to come out, it’s eating her alive.”

Carson was silent for a moment. “All right, dammit. If she’s making progress to being normal again that’s the important thing.” Not knowing how else to respond, he tackled a topic he could handle: “Now, have you found out whether Lloyd Berns’s death was accidental or premeditated murder?”

“I’m making significant headway, but I don’t yet have the shape of the situation.”

Jack’s voice seemed thin and attenuated, as if it was coming from the dark side of the moon, but the president began to absorb the details of Jack’s journey through Ukraine, and what he had uncovered to this point.

“You’ve made good progress, Jack,” he said with a sigh. “Keep me informed. And, Jack, give Alli my love.”

“Will do.”

Carson disconnected and put away his cell. It was times like this, he reflected, weighed down by events, realizing that he was a constituency of one, when he fell back on his beloved Shakespeare. He’d always been drawn to the kings, even as a college student. And no Shakespearean monarch had captivated him more than Henry V, a humane ruler who understood what it meant to be isolated by his royal blood. But, cannily, he also knew that royalty was differentiated from the common man merely by pomp and circumstance, or, as Shakespeare put it, ceremony. This was never made more clear to the reader, or viewer, than when Henry disguised himself in a cloak and hood and sat among his troops on the eve of battle, talking with them, sharing stories, arguing with them as if he were one of them. Nothing would better prepare him for the coming deathly morning than trading barbs with his troops, treading the same ground, muddying his boots in the same muck, having them reach him with their lewd and tumultuous voices.

But who did he have? He felt alone and isolated, no longer trusting General Brandt, but having been given no valid excuse to dismiss him or to send him home. Denny was half a world away, immersed in his clandestine research. For every selfish reason he could name he bitterly regretted sending Jack away.

He stood up, sipping his scotch while he gazed at the Kremlin with a jaundiced eye. He was also beginning to regret staking the first ninety days of his presidency on this Russian accord. It had been General Brandt who had talked him into it, Brandt who had pointed out that what the American people wanted and needed most was a sense of heightened security, an outcome that shutting down the Iranian nuclear program would accomplish. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be done without Yukin’s help.

Brandt might be right about all that, he thought now, but the fact was he didn’t trust Yukin, and now he didn’t trust the General either, which was why he’d resolved to bring the surveillance photos into play now, rather than keep them in reserve.

Not that he himself was innocent—he had no illusions on that score. This was why he loved Shakespeare—because his kings were so self-aware. Not for them the delusions of lesser mortals; they were clear-eyed even in their madness. They knew their hands were covered in blood, that they had committed murder, that they had given difficult orders on which lives rose and fell, hung in the balance, and were ultimately plowed under the bloody fields of battle. Neither had they conveniently forgotten the plots and betrayals that had paved their way to the crown.

Into his wandering mind now came one of his favorite lines from Henry V: “What infinite heart’s ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy!”

He lifted the glass to his lips, but he’d already finished the scotch. The remainder of the Talisker was in the bottle on the other side of the room, but instead of going for it, he put down the empty glass and headed for the connecting door.

A youngish, gangly individual who looked uncomfortable in his boxy suit looked up at the president’s appearance, startled and pale beneath his African-American brown. He was already reaching for the portable defibrillator as he said, “Sir, are you feeling—?”

“Relax, I’m fine.” Carson sat down in the chair opposite the person known colloquially as Defib Man, the doctor who trailed after him in case he had a heart attack. “Sit, sit.”

The president looked over at the ultraportable computer Defib Man had set back on his lap. “Catching up on the news in the real world?”

“No, Mr. President, I’m e-mailing my daughter, Shona.”

“What school is she in?”

“Well, it’s a special school. She’s crazy about horses.”

“Does she ride English or Western? My daughter rides—”

“Neither, Mr. President. She’s got Asperger’s syndrome. She concentrates very well, especially on the things she likes, and in that sense she’s something of a genius, but she has no emotions.”

The president’s brow furrowed. “I don’t follow you. Surely she loves you and your wife.”

“She doesn’t, Mr. President, not in the normal sense, anyway. She doesn’t feel anything—joy, sorrow, fear, love.”

“And yet you said that she’s crazy about horses.”

“Yes, she’s discovered a way to breed them that’s some kind of breakthrough, though to be honest I don’t get it. They fascinate her, but on a level neither my wife nor I can fathom. Maybe they operate on her level, who knows? Basically, she’s in a world of her own making. It’s as if there’s a glass bell jar around her that nothing can get through. What makes it all the worse is that she’s perfectly self-aware. She’s a prisoner of her own mind, and she knows it.”

With a pang the president thought of his own daughter who, in hindsight, had been lost to him a long time ago, there was no use pretending otherwise. He couldn’t understand her the way Jack seemed to; worse, he was losing patience with her. Whatever she had gone through was over and done with, why couldn’t she put it behind her like a normal human being? There was only so much time he could devote to her and her issues. He was used to solving problems, not having them continue to unwind like an endless ball of twine. How the devil had he and Lyn given life to a creature who seemed to feel nothing toward them except contempt? Of course that begged the question of what he felt about her. Of course he loved her, he had to love her, she was his daughter. As such he would protect her with his life, but that didn’t mean he had to like her, or that he should accept who she was. What did she know of the real world, anyway? She exhibited only disdain at the compromises he had been forced to make in order to gain and retain his political power. These days his emotions tended to swing from praying she’d pull out of her depression or whatever the hell she was wallowing in to being fed up with her unacceptable and childishly narcissistic behavior. Lyn had always been in the habit of acceding to her whims and threats, never more so than now, but he was coming to the end of his tether.

Defib Man stirred uneasily causing Carson to think, Heartache here, too. We’re both unlucky fathers, there is no real difference between the two of us. He said, “I’m truly sorry . . .”

He was groping around in his memory when Defib Man said, “Reginald White, sir. Reggie.”

“Yes, of course. Reggie. Very good.” He trusted his kilowatt smile to burn away his lapse. “I’m hungry, Reggie. Are you hungry? What say we get something to eat?” He reached for a phone, but one of his protectors got there first.

“What can I get you, sir?” the Secret Service agent said.

“How about a burger—no, a cheeseburger deluxe. How would you like that, Reggie?”

White seemed slightly terrified, as if his world had been turned upside down. “Surely, Mr. President, you have more important things to do than have a burger with me.”

“As it happens, Reggie, I don’t. And even if I did, this is what I want to do now.” He turned to the agent. “A pair of cheeseburgers deluxe. And French fries. Do you like French fries, Reggie? Good, who doesn’t. We’ll share a large order then. And a couple of Cokes.”

Then he turned back to Reginald White. “Now I want to hear all about Shona and her breakthrough. You have good reason to be proud of your daughter.”

“IT GETS worse?” Paull said.

Thomson nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

As if on cue Benson returned to the chesterfields, but now he sat beside Paull, rather than opposite him. “Now comes the chapter and verse on General Brandt.”

“Not until I see my daughter and grandson,” Paull said.

“We don’t have time—”

“You’re the one who brought my family into the mix, Benson.” Paull stood. “I have enough to go to the president, which will save him, but not, unfortunately, the two of you.”

Thomson, alarmed, rose as well. “If you let us explain fully—”

“Be my guest,” Paull said, “after I see my family and after I tell them that I’m not dying.”

“Consider,” Benson said. “They might not then wish to see you.”

Paull shook his head. “You really are a piece of work.” He cocked his head. “Now I think about it I’m not going to make this easier for you. You’re going to tell them I’m not terminal. It’s your lie, you wriggle out of it.”

Benson looked bleakly over at Thomson, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Then he got up heavily, straightened his jacket, brushed down his trousers, and sliding open the pocket doors, led the way across the hall to a somber study, devoid of sunlight.

Paull was at once terror-stricken. He hadn’t seen his daughter in seven years, hadn’t ever laid eyes on his grandson—Aaron, he had a name to which Paull was about to put a face. He realized that he could take Claire’s rejection, she had become for him a shadow, an image in a photo, slightly faded from time and the slippage of memory. She had become, in a way, like Louise, shut away in her own private Petworth Manor, as if she, too, suffered from Alzheimer’s, her forgetting him not of her own volition. It was easier, or at least less painful, to think of her as debilitated, ill, not in control of her mind or her emotions. In this way he had frozen her like a butterfly in amber, a small child he could still remember sitting on his knee while together they recited the words to Goodnight Moon.

But now here she was, rising from the floor where she had been sitting beside Aaron, smoothing down her skirt as Benson had smoothed his trousers, a small but telling gesture both of propriety and of nervousness. He both recognized her and didn’t recognize her because the photo in his mind had become faded and fragile, thin as rice paper.

They stood looking at each another, silently assessing the damage and wear time had assessed on human flesh and the human heart. Claire was older, yes, but also more beautiful, as if when he’d last seen her the Great Sculptor hadn’t quite finished his work.

“I’m sorry about Mom.” She spoke first, her voice subtly deeper and richer than he remembered it, but also stiff and awkward, as if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing.

“It’s for the best. She’s peaceful now, herself again.” His voice was just as stiff and awkward, and he realized with astonishment that it was quite possible, likely, even, that he had faded from her consciousness as surely and inevitably as she had from his own.

“My grandson,” Paull said, almost against his will, because it would be Aaron’s rejection he could not bear. His throat felt tight and parched.

She looked down at the boy with a jerky little motion of her head, as if her mind and her body were not quite in synch. “Aaron, please stand up.” Her voice changed, became clearer, declarative when she addressed her son.

The boy—Aaron—unfolded from his position on the floor, where he had been using an iPhone application and turned, stood facing Paull in ranked row with his mother.

“Aaron,” Claire said, “this is your grandfather. His name is Dennis.”

“Hello,” Aaron said.

The boy was taller than Paull had imagined, but then he had no expertise with seven-year-old boys, no frame of reference except his memories of Claire at that age. Much to Paull’s relief he didn’t look like his father, or rather Paull’s rancid memories of his father. Rather he looked like Paull himself, which made Paull’s heart stop momentarily; it was as if he were looking into the face of immortality, another him just starting out along life’s rough road.

“Hello, Aaron,” he said, his heart in his mouth, and then despite what he’d said to Benson, he added eagerly, almost avidly, “Mom may have told you that I’m ill, but I’m not.” He found that he could finally smile. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Dad,” Claire said, “is that true?”

But Paull remained mute, entranced by his grandson. It was difficult to know whether he even heard her.

She turned to Benson, her face flushed with anger and resentment. “Is this true, Mr. Benson? You said my father was terminal.”

“Yes, well, that was something of an untruth.”

“Something of an untruth?” Claire echoed. “Good God, man!”

She was leaning forward at such an angle that she was forced to take a step toward him, an aggressive step, it seemed to Paull, who had come out of his near-trance, a threatening step, as if it were a prelude to an assault. Benson faced her like the ex-military man he was, ramrod straight, but his eyes were filled with battlefield humiliation.

“You lied to me and my son, added to our anguish and . . . My mother just died, you unspeakable toad!”

Benson held his ground, but made no reply because there was nothing he could say, no excuse he could fabricate in the face of her wrath—and wrath was the right word, Paull thought, because there was something old-fashioned, unfashionably traditional about her anger, and this made him proud of her. And it was precisely in that moment when the faded and fragile image he had of her collided with the Technicolor force of her actual presence and became concrete, past and present dissolving into each other and, by some mysterious alchemical process, leading him home.

He turned to Benson now and said, “My family and I would like some time alone.”

Benson opened his mouth, possibly to reiterate that time was of the essence, but between the looks on both Paull and his daughter he ended up keeping his mouth shut.

After Benson departed, Paull was alone with the ghosts and demons that had bedeviled him even as he valiantly and vainly tried to push them far down into his subconscious.

“So,” Claire said, her voice once again thin and terribly strained, “you’re okay, you’re well.”

He nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

“But how is it that you’re here, what do these people want?”

“I don’t know yet.” Paull felt safe talking about Benson and Thomson.

“These are important men.”

“Well, they were,” he acknowledged. “Perhaps they still are, who knows. They kidnapped me, more or less, and once I was here told me that I could see you and Aaron if I listened to them.”

“I notice you didn’t listen to them.”

“I turned the tables on them, instead.”

“That’s so you, Dad.”

He cleared his throat, wished he had a glass of water to hide his question behind. “Are you . . .” He felt a fresh rush of terror, as if he was entering a haunted house, or the lair of a dangerous animal. “Are you married?”

“No, I’m not.” It was a simple, declarative statement, devoid of ruefulness or self-pity. “Lawrence never came back, he hasn’t seen Aaron. I wouldn’t want him to.”

“I see.” He had been right about that privileged bastard.

This flow of information was followed by a self-conscious silence during which Aaron looked from one to the other, his brow furrowed in a distinctly unchildlike manner, as if he were trying to parse the currents and undercurrents of emotions swirling around him.

“It must have been tough those last months with Mom,” Claire said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get to see her more often.”

“That’s all right, I—” He stopped in mid-sentence. It would be so easy to keep, and even embellish on, the fantasy she had of him spending time with Louise when he hadn’t. Guilt and remorse were powerful foundations on which to reunite, to ensure that she would love him again. Initially he’d had that impulse, the same selfish inclination that had kept him away from Louise. It was possible, he thought now, that Claire had succumbed to the same impulse. But he could not go through with it. This wasn’t a time for selfishness or for lies. It occurred to him that, difficult though it might be, he could manage to bear Claire’s and Aaron’s rejection far better than he could a lie that brought them together under a false flag.

“Honey, the truth is I did what you did. I spent far less time with your mother than I should have. The truth is . . .” He looked away for a moment, at Aaron, who was watching him with a child’s disconcertingly piercing gaze. And it was this gaze that gave him the courage to continue. He smiled in gratitude at Aaron before he got on with it. “The truth is I couldn’t bear to see her in that state. She didn’t know me, didn’t respond to the songs we loved together. She didn’t even know where she was. She was locked away in a place that had no key.”

There were tears glittering in Claire’s eyes. “I spent so much time hating you, shutting you out . . .” She paused long enough to catch her tears with a slender forefinger. “I put you in the same horrid room where Mom was. I couldn’t bear to see either of you, I didn’t want Aaron to see his grandmother like that, to remember her only as . . .” She took a hesitant step toward him. “Now she’s gone and I realize that nothing can bring her back, nothing can bring back the days before . . .” She couldn’t help but glance at her son. “But here you are, Dad.” And then, rather defiantly, “Aaron is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I can see that so clearly, so very clearly,” Paull said, meaning every word.