The Glendower Legacy (23 page)

Fennerty had often thought of that speech, treasured it in his memory, wished he’d had a recording of it, because it could have been him talking about his own job. It could have been Andrew Fennerty telling somebody what it was like to work for The Company. But you could never do that. Never. And nobody ever stood and cheered for The Company.

In any case, that was how he felt lying there at the Ritz in the dark with the light from the bathroom glowing softly. Grown man who always slept with a night-light. What would happen if he had to go up against one of the really good ones? One of the Russians’ number one boys? Or, God forbid, one of the Nazis’ lads from Texas or South America or South Africa? He sighed doggedly and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His mind was wandering and he’d have to get a grip on himself. He and Liam had their hands full with these two jerks, Lum and Abner, and a Harvard professor and a woman …

“Liam,” he said, “Liam, old sock, time to get up …”

Chandler woke up slowly hearing the surf and Polly breathing through her mouth on the other bed, not quite snoring. The rest had done him good: his mind felt sharp again, he knew exactly where he was and why and what he had to do. It was just past eight o’clock. He got out of bed gingerly, happily aware that the stiffness wasn’t half bad and the boxed ear felt better. He went to the window, looked out into the gray light filtering through the clouds hanging low over the steely Atlantic. The surf threw itself halfheartedly at the rocky-layered shingle dropping away below the roadway. Lonely gulls dipped and swooped against the cold opaque gray sky. It was quite the loneliest, emptiest vista imaginable.

“It’s obviously a hoax,” he whispered in the stillness. “The British were trying to set him up. Maybe blackmail him … or maybe it wasn’t a hoax, maybe they were already blackmailing him and he had to go along with it, feed them useless information.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Maybe he could even pick up helpful bits and pieces for his own cause …” Polly moved and turned onto her back, covering her eyes with a hand. Still asleep. No point in waking her yet. He tiptoed across the small room, picked up his bag, and beetled off down the hall to the cold comforts of the unheated bathroom.

In the calm reflections of morning the certainty of the document’s validity seemed to fade, though his memory of the shock at the first sight of the signature remained clear, like the memory of jagged lightning crackling across the innocent summer nights of boyhood. It was quite impossible for him to cope with the
fact
of George Washington’s treachery: how could it be? He had no more of an answer in the morning than he’d had at night.

He returned to the bedroom, gathered up the documents and the Winthrop Chandler portrait, all of which Polly had brought up and carefully arranged on the chest of drawers. The woman’s face was arresting even across two centuries: it was as if she were watching him. His subconscious was, he knew, addressing itself to the historical problems raised by the documents, while he consciously turned over the more immediate difficulties of his and Polly’s situation.

Downstairs he found Percy Davis in the kitchen banging a couple of black cast-iron frying pans about on the stove. The smell of bacon frying hung tantalizingly in the large room and Percy Davis waved a good morning with a spatula. “I’ve already breakfasted and had a stroll down by the water,” he said with a wintry smile, “I’ll run you up some bacon and eggs, soon as you give me the word.” He drained a cup of tea and jiggled a teakettle on the back burner. “Sleep well? Behave yourself?” His watery eyes danced an instant.

“Too damned tired not to, sir,” Chandler said.

“Mustn’t let Harvard down,” Davis said, straight-faced.

“No need to make this a matter of that import. I do need a telephone.”

“Use the one at the desk. No charge, either.” The dry voice rustled with pleasure. “Excitement does me good. Feel damned fine this morning—takes me back, all this business. Sorry Bill had to die … Ah well, use the phone at the desk. I’ll get some bacon over a low heat.”

“Colin Chandler, as I live and breathe!” Prosser’s ripe sarcasm flooded across the telephone line, fruity and intensely welcome. So worldly, so peculiarly reassuring. “You’ve been a rather naughty boy of late, you know. Harvard doesn’t mind its name in the papers but not as part of this
grand guignol
farce … bodies all about, the last act of
Hamlet.
How are you, my boy? And where are you? Well and in a safe, comfy nook, I hope …”

“Well enough and safe enough for the moment,” Chandler began, smiling eagerly as he spoke. Prosser in all his remote, well-heeled, elegant trappings still had something about him of the father Chandler had had to do without most of his life. It was to Bert Prosser that he had brought the trophies of his accomplishments, his scholarly successes, his popular books and articles, and it was Prosser who had sat him down and poured the brandy and shared the congratulatory cigar. It wasn’t that he was close to Prosser: the great man was too much the confidant of heads of state to allow easy access, but Chandler was as close to him as anyone from without the real corridors of power. “But as you’ve been reading, I’ve gotten mixed up in something pretty damned sticky. Frankly, I need your advice … I’m at the end of my string.”

“Nonsense, it only feels that way. But take it from me, there’s always more string than you think—however, I’m at your service, Colin. What’s the story? I’ll help if I can.”

Twenty minutes later Colin’s recital ended leaving him breathless and doubting if he’d made any sense. “God help me, it’s all true,” he said.

“Indeed, I’m sure it is. Most importantly, you and Miss Bishop are safe. Secondly, you have the document everyone seems to want—I think perhaps I can help you there. And there seem to be several people searching for you and it … Delicate situation, on the whole.” Chandler heard him sipping coffee, heard the rustle of papers. “Always a way out, always a way out. As to this piece of paper, well, I hardly know what to think—is it real, or isn’t it? I’ll have to have a looksee and I still won’t know, I expect. As to what you should do, let me tell you I think speed is of the essence … you must get away from this Seafoam place at once. These birds on your tail, don’t be too sure you’ve left them behind—in my experience, that’s often more easily said than done. They have their means, ways you’ve never dreamed of, connections you’d hardly countenance. Take my advice without so much as a moment’s quibble, dear boy. I’ve got a summer home up north of you, way up there … Johnston, Maine, on the far side of town.” He described the house: “You can’t miss it. It’s empty now—I always leave a key under the stack of wood closest to the door outside the woodshed itself. You’ll find it, just feel around for it. Then get inside, get settled, get a fire going, open a bottle of wine … both of you, of course, make yourselves at home … I’ll be there as soon as I can, just hang on and wait for me. Have you got all that, Colin?”

“Yes, Bert, and I don’t know what to say—I knew you’d have the answer …”

“Hardly the answer, dear boy. But at least we’ll have some time to think and see what we’re about. Now, get going.”

Half an hour later Polly and Chandler were tucking into scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions, the better part of a pound of extra-thick bacon, English muffins running with melted butter and strawberry jam, and New England coffee served “reg’lar” as Percy Davis called it, meaning with lots of cream and sugar. Percy was quizzing Polly about her job and Chandler was thinking ahead, wanting to get back on the road. Bert Prosser knew about these things; God only knew what kind of inside jobs he’d done for the government back during the forties, and if Bert said not to be too sure the bastards had lost you, then he was right, it was time to get a move on.

Percy walked outside with them: “Now take care of yourselves,” he said. “You remember what I said about getting to Johnston? You didn’t leave anything behind, did you? Well, I’m going to miss you two—now you let me know how this all turns out, Professor. Call me. Or come up here for a weekend … Don’t make me get my news on the television, y’understand?” He finally rapped on the top of the bedraggled brown car, the signal to pull out. “Take care, young lady.” He waved as Chandler swung the car in a tight circle and headed down the driveway. “Take care …” Chandler nodded, giving him thumbs up, and they were back on the road.

They clung to the slower, less traveled highway which skirted the coastline and wound through one town after another. It was tedious going but he figured that the crucial thing was simply to get away from their last stopping place; once they’d gotten clear, it struck him that any follower would assume they’d head for the quicker freeway route—though how they’d recognize the brown car wherever it was was beyond him.

The sky stayed gray over a gray knifeblade ocean. The ground was still spotted with sadly discolored snow or with the dirty brown earth and matted-down grass that sprouted through rather grimly. What would have been a lovely drive in June or October was now something mainly to be gotten through.

The conversation came in patches too.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think after a good night’s sleep?” There was no hint of the justified adversary in her voice, a fact which proved to be a considerable relief. “Is it real or a fake?”

“I’ve been at work on that in the back of what passes for my mind.” He glanced over at her: “And I took your advice, I pulled up my socks and looked at it from the standpoint of a dispassionate historian, not a guy grinding an ax for George Washington.”

“And?”

“I keep trying to fit him into the situation, put myself in his shoes. England was such a reality to those people and by all odds they should have won the war … And the Americans were so English themselves. In June of 1775 Congress appointed a dozen generals besides Washington, a dozen—and Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island was the only one who hadn’t held a commission under the crown! And of the twelve, Richard Montgomery and Charles Lee and Horatio Gates had all been born in England and had served in the British Army.

“Now Washington was an American through and through, but that was more a matter of the specific circumstances of his life. He could very easily have been on the other side. For instance, there was the case of Beverley Robinson—he grew up with George in Virginia, his dad was acting governor of Virginia under the crown. Beverley raised troops for the expedition against Canada in 1746 and while passing through New York he met and married Susanna Philipse … After Braddock’s defeat, on the way back, George met Susanna’s sister Mary who was a very prominent heiress to the family’s holdings in Westchester and Dutchess counties. Washington courted her but for one reason or other, it came to nothing—
but
, if he’d married her he would almost certainly have become a loyalist officer under the crown. Which was precisely what Beverley Robinson did.”

He stopped for a light in a buttoned-down village where nothing stirred. The trees were bare and snow melted, stained the gray sidewalk. Polly was listening intently. He moved through the quiet village, past an early gardener scratching at his wet, muddy lawn with a spindly rake.

“Beverley couldn’t bring himself to side with the rebels,” Chandler went on, as if he’d known the man, as if it had all happened only yesterday. “So he hung on quietly at his estate in Dutchess county until 1777 when John Jay put it to him, one gentleman to another, that he simply had to choose which side he was on. Well, Beverley said no, he couldn’t take the oath of allegiance as required, so he was obliged to pack up and move his entire family within the British lines in New York—his decision was made.

“But later in the war, when the colonists seemed to be winning, Beverley became the perfect emissary to try and arrange a peace stating that it was time to call a halt and end the fighting with a fair share of honor and safety and leniency.”

“And you think this was the sort of thing Washington was faced with?” Polly chewed a fingernail, stared ahead at the cramped countryside between towns. Clouds seemed to be pushing down on them. A dog watched as they sped past. He was turning, walking away before the brown car was fully by him. No bark, no flicker of interest. “It was that common?”

“Oh my, yes,” Chandler said, “it was that common. People were always making dippy little overtures to Washington—he always gave ’em the gate, but he was so goddamned important, so visible, that there were always rumors, innuendos, smears.”

“Has there ever been any documentary evidence that Washington was ready to join the British?”

He shook his head: “Not a trace, not a shred.”

She tapped a finger on the package in her lap. “Are there
any
pieces of paper, anywhere, like the one we’ve got?”

“It all depends on what it is we’ve actually got. If I knew what exactly this thing is, then I could tell you—”

“Don’t be infuriating and obscure,” she said. “You must know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know what you mean, all right. Let’s have some lunch.”

He pulled across the highway to a Howard Johnson. They were surprisingly hungry, ordered fried clams to start and then a couple of steaks. They poured copious amounts of coffee into their stomachs, and they kept talking in low voices. It was Chandler who did most of the talking while Polly finished her steak and began to nibble at his.

“Look,” he said, “the point is this—George Washington was not a traitor, not a British spy. Any other conclusion is outright absurd. No, there has never been any valid evidence indicating that Washington was anything but utterly, absolutely, indisputably
incorruptible …
” He raised a palm to stop her: “Don’t talk with your mouth full, please. No
valid
evidence, that’s what I said … which is not to say that there hasn’t been
invalid
evidence. Because there hasn’t been a lack of that—”

“Never taught me that in school,” she said primly.

“Some history major!”

“It wasn’t American history. It was English history … I came late to George Washington. Late and just on the surface.” She made a face. “The Plantagenets I know. Can I finish your baked potato, my dear?”