Palace Council (42 page)

“Any prospects?”

Eddie knew his hesitation was obvious. Was this really the object of the exercise? Had the President of the United States traveled to the Mall and plucked Eddie out of the crowd hoping to talk about Junie?

“No prospects,” said Eddie, watching him closely.

“But you'll keep looking. Kind of thing a brother does. Good for you.” Was this permission? Eddie said nothing. “Never met her,” Nixon continued. “Never talked to her. All I know is what's in the reports I get. They tell me she's chasing her kids. Hope she finds them.”

“So do I, sir.”

“Come see me. After you make your speech. After things calm down. Come see me. There are things we can do together that would—”

He dropped his fork.

Two aides rushed to pick it up. A waiter brought a new one, but the White House staff was faster. They took advantage of the hiatus to get the President moving. Eddie stood up, not sure what was expected of him. There was no way he was getting back into that car. Fortunately, the staff had reached the same decision. A deathly-pale young man engaged him in conversation, thanking him for his time, swearing him to silence, filling the air with faux-friendly babble until the President was safely out the door. Only then did the pale young man ask if Eddie needed a ride.

Eddie said he would make his own way, thanks.

The young man paid the tab. Eddie watched the motorcade depart. He shoved his hands into his pockets and began the long walk through the hazy dawn back to the Lincoln Memorial. Clusters of troops stood here and there. Eddie could not bring himself to hate Nixon, and suspected that, had he never met the man, his feelings would not be much different. Eddie had trouble finding space in his heart for hatred, even toward his enemies. He believed in justice and historical forces. He was skeptical that any problem could be resolved by finding the nastiest name to call the people on the other side. Wesley Senior had preached countless sermons on love of neighbor, especially through times of trial, and a younger Eddie used to sit there rolling his eyes. Now he was horrified to realize how much of his father's teaching had rubbed off on him.

He waved to the soldiers as he passed. One or two waved tentatively back.

A couple of students had taken over his tent. Eddie let them sleep. He retrieved his backpack and snuck off to the Marriott, where he had never quite canceled the reservation Gary Fatek had made. Eddie's real luggage was in the room. He slept two hours, then showered and shaved and, dressing, watched the morning news.

And all the while, he reflected on his peculiar morning with Nixon. Eddie considered himself a shrewd judge of character. Nixon was harder to read than anyone he had ever met, but Eddie did not think the President had lied. Nixon had never met Junie, and knew nothing of her whereabouts.

The dirt he was afraid Eddie would dig up had to be something else.

CHAPTER
58

Reunion

(I)

E
DDIE CLOTHED HIMSELF
conservatively for his big speech. He had been a guest of sorts at many a demonstration, but never anything like this. He imagined his father preparing to address his congregation. Even though you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, Wesley Senior used to say, everybody does. So Eddie wore a suit. He was in his forties, after all, to these kids already an old man. He had published six books, five of them fiction, and most of the kids had read one or two in high school or college, and even written essays on them: that made him older still. So he would dress the part. Let others wear shirts sewn from American flags or prance about in ragged jeans. Eddie would be an adult. The suit was summer-weight, powder blue, from a tailor in Hong Kong. His tie was red, white, and blue. He thought of a flag pin in his lapel, Nixon-style, but decided the students would miss the irony; besides, he didn't have one.

He wondered if Junie would be watching.

Eddie took a taxi to the Mall and had to walk the last four blocks, fighting his way through the crowd. At the assembly area, there was bother about checking his badge. The pigs, a helmeted woman told him, were sneaking in saboteurs. Past the barriers, the atmosphere was celebratory. Alleged music deafened him. Kids danced in the Reflecting Pool. Their joy surprised him. He tried to imagine Junie at his side, smiling encouragement, but he saw her instead hiding in some safe house, exhausted and wan. He noticed the Yippie flag, marijuana leaves and red star. He shook his head. The left of fifteen years ago had been ideologically serious, believing its task was to persuade, not to self-indulge. These kids seemed to miss the point. They had no interest in appealing to anyone who did not already agree. Yet he loved them for the purity of their intentions.

Eddie waited, listening to the superstars. Dr. Benjamin Spock spoke. Jane Fonda, newly recruited to the cause, electrified the crowd. At last Eddie ascended the platform. The writer had just returned, according to the student who introduced him, from a tour of centers of colonialist oppression all over the world. Even now, the young man continued, Edward T. Wesley's sister is on the run from the pigs—

Eddie, trembling, tuned him out.

Thirty seconds later, the introduction was done. Eddie stood behind the microphone and gazed out across the largest crowd he had addressed in his life.

Later, he would not remember a word. The events of the next twenty-four hours would prove too tumultuous. There were cheers galore, but by that time the kids were cheering everything. Public speaking had never been Eddie's best thing. He expressed himself best in writing. When he opened his mouth, especially to large groups, what emerged was often prolix to the point of inanity. He stumbled through the speech, hurried off the platform before the applause died, and practically ran the dozen blocks back to his hotel.

He decided not to stay the night after all. He would brave the traffic and the roadblocks and drive home to Albemarle Street. He had just finished checking out when an aging hippie in dark glasses, smeary hair past the shoulders of his military jacket, slouched across the lobby to congratulate him on his speech.

In a voice he knew well.

“Where can we talk?” whispered Professor Benjamin Mellor.

(II)

“H
OW MANY TIMES
are you going to pull this trick?” Eddie asked, steering his Cadillac up Sixteenth Street. He had no intention of taking Mellor anywhere near Albemarle Street. He was thinking of poor Teri, and Mellor's wife, and, most of all, Junie. “What do you do, wait until some girl's in trouble and then disappear?”

The professor had slipped off his glasses. Worry had etched fine lines into his face. “I couldn't have done anything for her, Mr. Wesley. They came for me just before our meeting. I had a gun, I had some luck—I escaped. I was outside when you drove up. I was going to flag her down, but she was already down the block, and then—well, they were waiting. They had her, and I got away.”

“Leaving other people to be tortured,” Eddie muttered, fighting the image of filthy water rising.

“I'm not here to argue with you, Mr. Wesley. I'm going to disappear again, and this time I won't be back.”

“That sounds like a very good idea.”

Mellor looked out the window. The farther north they went, the thinner the ranks of soldiers and police. “I've been living here and there, Mr. Wesley. A commune. A crash pad. Here and there. I've had a lot of time to think. And I want to do the right thing before I vanish for good. I want to finish our conversation from Saigon. You'll remember, I was going to tell you—”

“Why your life was at risk. I remember, Professor.”

A hard look, as if suspecting an insult. “You think you're alone. You're not. The Council itself is divided. It has been ever since—well, ever since it began to change membership from the original twenty. There are members who oppose the Project, Mr. Wesley. Good people, no matter what you think. Decent people. You have to get in touch with them. The loyal opposition, you might say. They can help you. I believe they might have been helping you already.”

“Are you going to give me a name?”

“No, Mr. Wesley. That I can't do.”

Eddie slammed on the brakes. They were on U Street, near Twelfth, one of the city's roughest neighborhoods. He leaned toward his passenger. “If I were to knock you around up here, nobody would notice.”

Mellor visibly shrank against the door. “It's not that I don't want to tell you, Mr. Wesley. I don't know. Genuinely. I don't know who the dissenters are.”

“Then how do you know there are any?”

“Little things. Things Perry mentioned in Vietnam.”

“But that's not who's after you, is it? The dissenting members of the Council. You said in Saigon that there's a third force. That's who you were hiding from.”

“They think I know where Junie is. I don't, but they think I do, and, well, if they catch me—you get the idea.” Mellor shuddered. “Perry hid me from them. I told you that. But he can't help me any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because he and this third force have thrown in together. The Council has been decimated, but Perry is trying to put it back together.”

Eddie had hold of the professor's collar, but now released him. He was remembering the note he had found in Mellor's flat in Saigon. Junie had wanted Mellor to stop them. Eddie had found the message confusing, but now he saw the trick.

“You're not the father, are you? Of my sister's baby. It wasn't you.”

Mellor shook his head. “It wasn't me. I was asked to step in and help.”

“By the Council?”

“Essentially.” His eyes grew fervent. “I believed in those days, Mr. Wesley. I truly did. I had the politics from my father. He taught me that the most important thing is reaching the right result. Fighting for justice with whatever tools come to hand. You have to understand that the group we're calling the Council—well, it's older than that meeting in 1952. The Council goes back fifty years or more. But its members were all powerful white men, until Burton Mount and my father—well, let's say they integrated it. With this crazy idea.” The fire faded again. “They put their Project together. They designed Jewel Agony. They recruited your sister. And you know the rest.”

“I don't know the rest,” Eddie protested. “How did it all come apart?”

“My father and Burton Mount were hoodwinked. They thought they were in charge. They thought the whole scheme was to achieve racial justice. They were fools, and so was I. The Council never belonged to them, and it never cared about justice. The third force was running things all along.”

“And the search for Junie—”

“She can stop them. Or they think she can. I'm not entirely sure why, to tell you the truth. I was never a true insider at the Council.” His hand was on the door. “I must apologize, Mr. Wesley. I seem to be out of time.”

“Wait—”

“I know you have more questions. The best way to get answers is to find your sister. As for me”—he opened the door—“I am now out of your life for good.”

He faded into the mass of pedestrians, and was gone.

Eddie drove across town and up through Rock Creek Park. When he pulled into his driveway, Aurelia was sitting in a rocker on the front porch, luggage at her feet.

She stood up. “Gary sent the plane for me,” she said.

“What?”

“Dick called.” Out of doors, she was unwilling to say his full name. “He said you needed me. He said I had to get down here fast. I called Gary. He knew where you were staying, and he sent the plane, and I took the kids to my neighbor, and, well, you said if I ever needed an autograph—Eddie, are you okay? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Would you like to see the house?”

Inside, Aurelia tried to enforce her rules.

But not for long.

(III)

T
HEY HAD A LOT
to catch up on.

Eddie had never told Aurelia about Benjamin Mellor, or what happened in Hong Kong, or the details of his suspicions about Lanning Frost and, more important, his wife. Aurie had never told Eddie about Kevin's files, or his fears the year before he died, or the translations she had worked out with the help of Tristan Hadley. They compared notes and pooled resources and, in between, rediscovered each other. Emotionally as well as physically.

“The presidency,” said Eddie at one point, marveling. “Lanning?”

“Just like you thought.”

“But he's a dunce.”

“Margot isn't, and she's close to Perry Mount.”

Break in conversation.

“I never thought of Richard Nixon as a matchmaker,” said Eddie at the next intermission.

“Dick's a romantic at heart.”

“How would you know?”

“I know men.”

Another time, she asked what had really happened with Torie Elden. “I hurt her very badly,” said Eddie, honestly. “I found it impossible to pretend.”

“If you hurt me very badly, I'll scratch your eyes out.”

They dozed. Played. Talked some more.

“I can't believe you didn't tell me that,” each said, more than once, about their feelings as well as their evidence.

Eddie swore he had never slept with Mindy.

Aurelia swore she had never slept with Tristan.

“I was tempted, though,” she confessed.

“So was I.”

Around midnight, Aurelia decided she was hungry. She hopped out of bed. In the kitchen, they scrounged a meal from leftovers. As they ate, Eddie asked her why she had changed her mind.

Aurie was smoking. She took her time.

“I didn't,” she finally said. “Not completely.”

“I don't understand.”

“Dick said you needed me. Not
wanted
me.
Needed
me.” She lifted his right hand from the table, kissed his knuckles. “Kevin needed me before. You only wanted me. I need to be needed, Eddie.”

His turn to think about it. “All right. I accept that. And I do need you, Aurie. Desperately, as a matter of fact.”

“I noticed.”

“That's not the kind of needing I mean. Or not the only kind.” He took his hand back. “So, then, tell me. What part of your mind did you not change?”

“I'm not going to marry you.”

“Did I ask?” he said, crestfallen.

“If I don't warn you,” said Aurelia, smoking hard, “you will.”

Eddie considered. “What if I said I don't want you this way?”

“You'd be lying.”

(IV)

I
N THE MORNING,
they sat in the kitchen and put their research together and, once more, kicked each other verbally for not having done it sooner. They even worked out a rough chronology. They wrote each event on an index card, then laid the cards on the table and switched them around until the order worked.

Early 1950s: Burton Mount and Hamilton Mellor discuss the creation of a radical organization to scare America. Burton arranges a meeting at his summer home on Martha's Vineyard to discuss this idea. Among the twenty men present are Philmont Castle, Matthew Garland, and, probably, Joseph Belt. All three are now deceased, as are Burton Mount and Hamilton Mellor.

Early 1950s: Inspired by Milton's
Paradise Lost,
the founders call themselves the Palace Council, and, sometimes, the Twenty. Their leader is the Author, Milton's word for Satan. The first author is Burton Mount.

Mid-1950s: The Council begins to bring in others, including Perry Mount and Kevin Garland, now deceased. Perry in turn brings in June Wesley, who is supposed to be one of the leaders of the radical organization, apparently because her commitment to nonviolence is expected to provide a moderating influence. She works closely with Phil Castle, who apparently helps pay for the creation of the radical group but later has second thoughts.

Mid-1950s: Phil Castle is killed. The Council discovers that he left a testament behind, probably describing their activities. Kevin Garland is assigned to find the testament.

Aurelia needed a moment. Eddie understood. He did not touch her. Still in bathrobe and slippers, he took himself off for a walk in the backyard. As far as he could tell, they were alone. When he returned, Aurie had used the bathroom and washed her face and looked, if not radiant, at least prepared.

“Okay?” he said.

“Let's get back to work.”

Late 1950s: The Council's plans are slightly upset when Junie becomes pregnant. She gives up the baby for adoption. Hamilton Mellor's son Benjamin confesses to being the father.

“Wait,” said Aurelia. She tapped the page. “Mellor told you he wasn't the father.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know to ask?”

Eddie was delighted at the chance to show off his literary knowledge to a professor of English. “Phil Castle loved literature. Langston told me. The note in Castle's envelope said ‘Not as in a tragic age,' right? And the first sentence of
Lady Chatterley's Lover
is ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.' See? ‘Not as in a tragic age' means that what happened in the real world is not what happened in the novel.”