The Touch of Treason (7 page)

“Let us make an assumption. That’s always safe. Let’s assume—hypothetically, of course—that in the first section of Fuller’s work there was one paragraph, just one, that was fitted in at our request. If that paragraph reached the Russians, they’d immediately cut off contact with a certain agent whom we’ve turned. We’d know in a minute that they’d got their hands on a copy.”

“My God, that’s beyond chess.” Widmer wrung his hands.

Perry and Randall were looking at Leona Fuller, who had come back into the room and was waving away their help as she let herself down into a chair. “I can’t rest.”

“Please try,” Widmer said solicitously.

“I’m the living half of all this. I need to know what’s being planned.”

Randall looked at Perry.

“Of course,” Perry said.

Leona Fuller’s good left hand adjusted her bandaged right on the chair’s armrest. “Ned,” she said, and when he heard his name he felt the windchill of fright that he was going to hear something private. He wished he were alone in the room with Leona.

“Long, long ago, Ned, when Martin and I were on the other side, we were so often on the run we didn’t dare have a child. Once the movement got word to us in Mexico that the Federalistas were looking for a couple that fit our description. I went to stay with friends in Guadalajara and Martin lost himself in Mexico City. We were apart four months. I loved him so much. When we finally risked getting back together, it was as if we were struck by lightning while holding each other. We were flooded with insight. It was easier to avoid the authorities than our own former comrades. The authorities wanted to arrest us. Our former comrades wanted to kill us. To us, it wasn’t as if we had switched sides. We’d been forced to confront the imperfect ability of the human race.” Suddenly Leona was looking down at her lap. “I don’t mean to lecture,” she apologized. “When we finally met you, Ned, your innocence was a saving grace for Martin and for me. He needed to know that not everyone had worked in the jungle the way he and I did, and Mr. Perry and Mr. Randall still do.”

Leona lifted her eyes and looked over at Perry and Randall. “I don’t mean to derogate what you do. I hope you win your game. For Martin, and for me I must add, it was something different.” She turned to Widmer. “Please don’t misunderstand what I am about to say. Martin never put on blinders to the faults in our zoo. He was a specialist in their menagerie. He knew so much about how creatures in the totalitarian state leach, turn, twist, rise, fall, rise again. He understood Lenin’s
Who Whom.
For Martin the twentieth century hit bottom the day the Hitler-Stalin Pact was announced because he knew it would happen.” Leona turned to Perry and Randall so as not to exclude them from her final words. “But it wasn’t the bottom. In the pit were Gulag and Auschwitz. Ned, everywhere Martin saw Christian cheeks like yours turning, finding hope somewhere. His books were written for you.”

Leona struggled to complete her thought. “Martin saw himself as a soldier who studied the shapes of the enemy the way air-raid wardens studied the outlines of planes.” She coughed into her good hand. “Please go on with your talk, gentlemen. I won’t interrupt again.”

Widmer felt the silence as pain.

It was Perry who broke it, offering, “We have to deal with the three people up there. And the police. And the press. Are you sure you want to hear any of this, Mrs. Fuller?”

She sighed. “I’m eavesdropping for Martin. I’ll be quite all right. You see, I don’t need revenge. I suppose to appease society you must do something about this crime, but I’d rather the energy was devoted to protecting the living.”

For a fleeting moment, Archibald Widmer wished that his Priscilla, thirty years younger than Leona Fuller, was more like that woman. Priscilla, alas, was like himself.

“Since I’m the declared innocent,” Widmer said, directing his comment to Perry, “may I ask what’s to keep any of the three up there from bolting?”

“Their knowledge that if they do they’ll be communicating something they may not want to. Ned, Mrs. Fuller,” Perry said, “I won’t be able to talk as freely once the police are here. We’re hoping that the whole thing goes down as an accident.”

“I understand,” Leona Fuller said.

“I
don’t,” Widmer said.

“If it looks like Professor Fuller was killed,” Perry said, “there’ll be hell to pay. Our territory will be compromised. Everybody knows Irish terrorists operate with impunity in Britain. Arabs and Armenians and Turks work Paris all the time. In Italy they kill statesmen as easily as policemen. In Germany, there isn’t a high-level businessman who isn’t afraid. If you’ve read Claire Sterling’s book…”

“I haven’t,” Widmer said.

“It shows how all the strings ultimately run to Moscow. Right now our turf seems safe. The FALN lets a bomb go once in a while. Quaddafi’s had a hit or two here, but it quickly passes from memory. If Fuller’s death is seen as an assassination—particularly if it’s by an American and pulled off here—it’ll make us look helpless to the rest of the world.”

“I’m interrupting again,” Leona Fuller said. “Mr. Perry, don’t you think Americans are sick of cover-ups, which never work anyway?”

“Someone must be punished,” said Widmer.

“Oh Ned,” Leona Fuller said, “I’m glad you’re not a Muslim.”

Perry sighed. “I didn’t say whoever did it would escape punishment. We don’t want to see a public trial. If there has to be one—the police are going to be all over the place soon, and all they want are arrests and convictions—that’s where you come in, Ned. We’ll need your help in finding a local litigator who’s clever enough to get the case thrown out, or if it’s tried, to be sure there’s no conviction. We want to avoid appeals and all the attendant publicity. We want this buried.” He turned to Mrs. Fuller. “I’m sorry.”

Widmer was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What ever happened to our sense of law?”

“Nothing,” Perry said. “It’s always been an adversary system—them and us.”

“I suppose you don’t see this as cynical.”

“I see this as practical.”

“Who knows about these decisions? Is it at cabinet level?”

“I assure you we’re not free-lancing.”

“If I’m to have any further involvement, I insist you tell me who knows about this.”

“The President.”

In the stillness, Leona Fuller rose from her chair. Widmer rushed to help her. To Perry she said, “Please tell them Martin put most of the things that are important in the first third of the book.”

Widmer, holding her arm, saw the relief on Perry’s face. To Leona he said, “He knew this might happen?”

“Of course, my dear,” she said.

CHAPTER FIVE

Detective Cooper was glad April had come. People didn’t realize how much outside work a detective had to do. Just writing down license numbers of cars was a pain in glove weather. He didn’t need gloves to write down the numbers of the cars parked outside the Fuller house. Federal types ought to bodyguard the President or whatever else they did and stay off his turf.

He rang the doorbell twice, and engaged in his most common reflex, pushing his belly up with the back of both hands. Detective Cooper had been at least thirty pounds overweight for more than half of his forty-four years. The door was opened for him. He dropped his cigarette on the stone step outside and crushed it with his shoe before stepping into the house. He knew by heart what the surgeon general had said about cigarettes, but continued to smoke two packs a day. At night, in bed, he’d sometimes have conversations with the surgeon general. “If I stop,” he said, “I’ll be sixty pounds overweight.”

Cooper showed his ID to Randall, then asked to see theirs.

Randall produced his.

Cooper said, “I thought you guys were all in Washington. Where’s yours?” He was looking directly at Perry.

“He’s my boss,” Randall said.

“Where’s yours?” Cooper asked Widmer.

“I’m the family lawyer,” Widmer said.

“How come the lawyer gets called before the cops?” Cooper asked.

Cooper had blue eyes and black hair, a combination his wife, Meg, found attractive. She kept telling him he was really a very good-looking guy except for his overweight. Once she gave him a clipping from the paper about some new low carbohydrate-something-or-other diet and he’d said, “My mother was fat, my father was fat, it’s genetic. My mother liked herself so she married a guy who looked like her. If she’d hated herself she’d have married a real skinny like you, Meg, so I’d have had a chance. I married, you, skinny, to give our kids a chance.” His problem insoluble, he concentrated on solving other people’s problems.

“Who’s in the house?” Cooper asked.

“Mrs. Fuller,” Randall said.

“Anybody besides Mrs. Fuller?”

Randall told him about the three overnight guests.

“The deceased work for you guys?” he asked.

“He worked for Columbia University,” Randall said.

“You fellows always show up when a teacher dies?” Cooper asked.

Perry looked at Randall.

Randall shrugged.
It’s not my fault this cop is a pain in the ass.

Perry, his voice resonant with senior reason, said, “What we have here, Mr. Cooper, is a tragic accident in which perhaps the most accomplished man in his field, in the middle of important work, had his life cut short. It’s a blow to his wife, of course, but also to the people counting on his finishing the work. However, what happened happened, nothing will reverse it, and the sooner we tidy this up, the better for all concerned.”

“Nice speech,” Cooper said. “What’s this work Fuller was doing?”

“It’s really not relevant to the fact of his accident, is it, Mr. Cooper?”

“We don’t know that yet,” Cooper said. “Or do you? I don’t have to be a doctor to tell you he didn’t die of smoke inhalation. I saw the body in the hospital. He wasn’t singed. Parts of him looked like grilled steak. A guy don’t stay to get third-degree burns unless he can’t help it or unless it gets him all over at once, like in an explosion. I talked to the medical examiner. I ordered an autopsy.”

Cooper went to the door. Beyond the parked cars in the driveway, two policemen in uniform waited. Cooper motioned them to come in, stepped aside so they could enter.

“Mrs. Fuller doesn’t want an autopsy,” Perry said.

Cooper ignored him. “Please show us where it happened,” he said to Randall.

Cooper spent several minutes in the bathroom, then motioned Perry and Randall over to him. “If the fire was confined to that small space, and help came within a minute, and he was scorched like he was at Hiroshima, it doesn’t sound like an ordinary fire to me. I’ve seen people who were torched. Anybody in this precinct dies of natural causes, that’s not my bailiwick, but burning to death in a contained flash fire is not, in my book, a natural cause. I checked with Columbia from the hospital, Mr. Perry,” Cooper said, his whisper gone. “Fuller was no teacher. He was eighty-two years old. He was on the retired list. You fellows aren’t telling me everything you know. I’m here to do a job. What are you guys here for?”

Perry felt he had to say something. “I told you Professor Fuller was doing important work.”

“That’s a big help. What’s in this room next to the bathroom?” He jerked a thumb at the closed door of Fuller’s study.

“That’s where he worked,” Perry said.

Cooper used a handkerchief to try the knob. It wouldn’t turn.

Over Cooper’s hunched back, Randall mouthed to Perry, “I relocked it.” Perry nodded his approval.

“Somebody better find the key,” Cooper said.

*

Twenty minutes later Cooper asked to talk to the three people upstairs, one at a time. Jackson Perry suggested that Widmer be present. Widmer asked to speak to his old friend privately.

“I don’t have experience in police matters,” Widmer said. “Shouldn’t we get someone in?”

“There isn’t time right now. It’s either you or me or Randall. Neither of us is a lawyer. If we object to anything this cop does, it won’t carry the same weight.”

And so Widmer listened to Cooper ask a list of questions, first of Melissa Troob, then Scott Melling, then Edward Porter. Miss Troob objected to a third round. Cooper showed his badge. “This one’s official.”

The first questions were routine: Spell your name. Where do you live? How often have you slept over here? How did you get here yesterday? What means will you use to get home? In each case the questions then took a different turn. What time last night did you get to this room? Did you fall asleep right away? Did you wake up at any time during the night?

“Miss Troob,” Cooper said, “could I see the keys you have on you?”

“They’re in my purse.”

Cooper nodded, a patient man who expected all things to go his way in time.

She showed him the ring of three keys.

“What’s this one for?” Cooper asked.

“My apartment.”

“And this one?”

“That’s for the Fox lock, also my apartment.”

“New York’s a tough place to live, eh Miss Troob?”

“I’d rather have two locks there than no locks in a lot of other places.”