Jericho's Fall (3 page)

Now, standing beside the cold fireplace, Rebecca began to tremble. She remembered stepping into this house for the first time, squealing delightedly as she ran across the floor—
You bought this for us?
—
Not for us, my dear. For you
—pressing her face against the sparkling windows like the child she had so recently been, then turning into his bearish hug. She remembered the times she had danced for him in front of the lovely fire, slowly removing her clothes and his own, and the way the flames playing over their bodies had heightened their intimacy. She remembered, too, the night their fun was interrupted by a trio of hard-faced men from the CIA’s Office of Security, who had led them to separate rooms and interrogated her for an hour and a half, growing particularly angry when she had trouble remembering the name of her fifth-grade Spanish teacher. Afterward, Beck complained to Jericho that the men had refused to let her dress and made her spend the whole session wrapped in a blanket. He confessed that he had co-authored the manual that suggested precisely that form of humiliation for getting answers out of reluctant women.

But what do they want?
she had asked.
Why did they come?

Until last year, I was Director of Central Intelligence
, he had answered calmly.
Before that, I was Secretary of Defense. Before that, White House National Security Adviser. You’re in my life now, my dear. You’ll be in their files forever
. Making this sound like an honor.
To most people, sex is just sex. In my profession, unless we see proof to the contrary, we have to assume that an affair is a cover for something else
.

He had wanted to resume their conjugality, but Rebecca marched upstairs to her suite, locked the door, and showered for what felt like a week, then put on about three layers of pajamas. That night they slept apart.

And Jericho had been right about their files. Five or six times over the years, always without warning, another couple of visitors from Security had dropped by her home or office, never calling first,
although occasionally they apologized. Once, they surprised her during lunch on a Caribbean cruise. Another time they had showed up at a pub in Edinburgh. Beck had trouble believing that every ex-girlfriend of every ex-Director was treated this way, and now and then she asked them what made her special.

Their pitying smiles were the only answer she ever received.

“Yes,” said Pamela, still behind her. “He’s been asking for you.”

“I should go see him.”

“It’s late.”

Beck turned her head, trying to make peace. Pamela was halfway to the kitchen. “Still. I should see if he’s awake. I won’t keep him long, I promise.”

“Fine.” Her voice was crisp, in charge, even satisfied, as if she had cinched a deal: for Pamela, who used to make indie films, now coproduced disaster movies with her husband, and lived in Beverly Hills. She pointed toward the balustrade. “Dad’s in the master suite. I’m sure you remember where it is. Audrey and I are on the main floor. I’ve put you in the back.”

What Jericho used to call the grandchildren’s suite. Coincidence or insult? With Pamela you could never tell.

“Thank you.”

“I hate this place,” said Pamela, arms crossed over her sweater, rubbing her own biceps. “I never lived here. It was never my house, Rebecca. Never Audrey’s, never my mom’s. We grew up in Virginia. This place—well, this place was his.” A pause.
And yours
, Pamela was saying, wordlessly. “Dad should have sold it long ago.”

Again memory teased her. “Does he still booby-trap the doors after dark?”

“Not that I know of.”

They shared a laugh, tinny and forced.

Pamela cocked her head, the two women listening to the same sound. “Damn helicopter,” she muttered. “It’s been buzzing us all night.”

“The press—”

“Like hell. It’s just a troublemaker. We’ve had all these people up here, the ones who used to do the protests everywhere Dad spoke? They’re ready to dance on his grave.”

Rebecca glanced at the window, the floodlit grounds. “In a helicopter?”

“Any way they can. You should see what’s on the Internet.”

“I probably shouldn’t.”

Beck was climbing the curving uncarpeted stairs, hand on the rail, when she heard Pamela’s voice behind her, unexpectedly sad. “Rebecca, look.” She never used the nickname. “My father doesn’t have much time.”

“I understand.”

“I’m not sure you do, Rebecca. It’s just the three of us. Audrey and Dad and me. Sean’s not coming. There’s no nurse. Dad keeps firing them. He thinks they’re spying on him. Besides”—again she seemed to wrestle—“well, there’s not much a nurse can do at this point.”

“I see,” said Beck, over her shoulder.

“Dad knows he doesn’t have much time left. Aunt Maggie’s been here and gone. She’s not coming back. Dad’s office in Denver is closed. Mrs. Blumen died last year.” Jericho’s longtime assistant. “There’s nobody else.”

“I said I understand, Pamela.”

“What I’m saying is, I don’t know how he’ll react to your being here, Rebecca. Please try not to disrupt things again.”

This, finally, was too much. But when Beck rounded on her old adversary, ready to tussle, Pamela had vanished into the kitchen. She seemed to be the only one who knew how to walk Jericho’s creaky floors without making a sound. As Beck climbed the stairs, her phone rang again. Unknown number, and a digital whine. But by this time she was no longer surprised: when she checked the bars, she had no service.

CHAPTER 3
The Sickroom

(i)

Like the rest of the house, the second floor was brightly lighted, so that Jericho could see the bad guys when they came. Beck stood at the top of the stairs. The balcony ran along the three main bedchambers, including the master suite and her own old room, now occupied by Pamela. The hallway ran to Jericho’s study in the back of the house, then made a right turn to the remaining suite, tucked away in a corner, because Jericho wanted to keep future grandchildren as far from him as possible.
I’ve put you in the back
.

As Beck approached the double doors to the master suite, they swung open and out stepped a smiling Audrey—Saint Audrey, as Jericho liked to sneer, always so sweet, and therefore, in Beck’s tortured mind, even less trustworthy than her younger sister. Audrey enfolded Rebecca in thick arms, drawing her against ample breasts. She was a large woman, more squarish than round, with a plump, somehow grandmotherly face. Her dark hair, frosted at the edges with gray, was more organized than styled. In green pajamas and brown robe, she could have been part of the mountain.

“You look great,” said Audrey, exhausted eyes less delighted than the fulsome greeting. She was a nun, Beck reminded herself, marveling. An Episcopal nun. Until Audrey joined her order ten or twelve years ago, Beck had been unaware that the Episcopal Church had nuns. “How do you stay so thin?”

Rebecca offered her standard answer: “I’m too busy to eat during the day, and too tired when I get home.”

“You work too hard.”

“So my mother says.”

A momentary hiatus, both women perhaps thinking about Audrey’s late mother, eight years dead. Audrey’s mother, Jericho’s ex-wife. The one he had left for a college student.

“And how’s that darling little girl?” said Audrey brightly, who had never met Nina in her life.

“She’s wonderful. She’s perfect.”

“Sean says she’s as gorgeous as her mother.”

Were those eyes mocking her? Rebecca could not be sure. She looked away. “Thank you,” she muttered.

“You’re so blessed,” said Audrey, hands still clutching Beck’s shoulders. “You have so much to be thankful for.”

“I’m thankful, Aud. Believe me.” Beck bit her lip, hoping Audrey would not start babbling about God, as she often did; although another part of her longed for any distraction that would postpone the moment when she had to walk into the sickroom. “I’m content with my life,” she added, as if to bat away weightier emotions.

But the nun was hardly listening. Keeping a heavy arm locked around Beck’s shoulders, Audrey drew her away from the master suite. “He isn’t the Jericho you remember, Beck. Try to keep that in mind.”

“I will.”

“I’m not talking about the illness.” Audrey was brisk, even impatient. And no matter how welcoming the words, the eyes were watchful and withholding, as if she worried her guest might steal the silver. “He’s been waiting for you, Beck. He’s too happy about the fact that you’re here. He has the look that always used to mean he was up to something. Be very careful. He’ll fool you. He’ll seem to be himself. He’ll be brilliant and funny and sarcastic. He’ll taunt you and argue with you and play with your words for hours. He’ll charm you, Beck, and then he’ll scare you, and then he’ll charm you some more. Same as in the old days. You’ll think, other than the cancer, nothing’s the matter. But don’t fall for it. The cancer’s moved into his brain. Even before it got there,
my dad wasn’t right. Now he’s worse. Everything he says is going to seem logical. It isn’t. Bear that in mind. It isn’t logical, and it isn’t necessarily true.” She kissed Beck’s cheek. “I guess you should go on in. He’s waiting for you. Just try to remember that he’s a madman.”

(ii)

At first glance and even second, Jericho Ainsley looked the picture of rosy-cheeked health. Oh, there was an oxygen tank beside the bed, but the rest of what Rebecca had expected was not there. No tube in his nose, no monitors bleeping forth their useless data, no hospital-style bed, none of the cloying odor of sickness and death that she had imagined must attach to the departure of even the very rich, and the very secret.

Beck advanced upon the bed cautiously, the way she had in the last days of their relationship, when neither of them quite knew whether the next touch would ignite the fires of passion or the explosion of warfare. The furnishings were as lush as ever. More bookshelves, new since her day, had been built into the walls. A desk near the bay window was cluttered with files. In the background, the first movement of Mendelssohn’s
Italian
Symphony—one of his favorites—played softly. Moving closer, she expected to find Jericho ravaged by the cancer. But he looked as powerful and handsome as ever, the curiously golden eyes open and alive, flicking from face to hands and back, alert to her every move. Only the viselike grip on the bedclothes, and the line of sweat on his lip betrayed his battle against the pain.

“How are you?” she said, once she trusted herself to speak. She stood beside the bed, hands fighting each other nervously, wondering if she should be offering water from the plastic cup with its little straw. The question, she knew, was absurd, but nobody had ever worked out the proper protocol to greet the openly dying. Perhaps that is why we tend to be so quiet in the company of those who will not be long with us: we are waiting for them to tell us what to say.

Jericho frowned—that is, the lines of his face flexed and tautened,
more a memory of emotion than the genuine article. He whispered a few words in return. She could not hear, and leaned close. His breath was hot, and damp, and rich with pain and fear.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he croaked.

Beck kept her face near his. On the table beside the bed was a thick volume by a Nobel laureate, which tried to explain the collapse of the financial system. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’d be here.”

“Why?”

She hesitated. If she said she was here because he called for her, she might offend him. “I miss you,” she said, wondering if it was true.

Again he whispered something she did not catch. She discovered that she was holding his hand, or, rather, he was holding hers, the fingers strong as talons.

“You should go,” he said.

“Go where?”

“Home.” He coughed and squirmed and could not get comfortable. “You can’t be here, Beck. This is insane.”

Remembering Audrey’s caution, she wondered whether he might be reliving their arguments back when she first began spending her nights with him. She said, covering both possibilities, “I’m here because I want to be. No other reason.”

He lifted his head and shoulders, trembling from the effort. “They’ll kill you,” he said, distinctly.

She blinked. “What did you say?”

“Have you gone deaf? I said, they’re going to kill you. You watch. Not now. But as soon as I’m out of the way, they’ll kill you.”

“I don’t—”

“Will you listen to me? For once in your life just listen?” His cheeks reddened further, and, if only for an instant, his old strength returned. He jerked his hand free, waved toward the closed door. “They’re going to kill you. The girls, too. Idiots. Sentimental idiots. Take them with you, Beck. Don’t be a fool. Take them and get out of the house.”

Everything he says is going to seem logical
, Audrey had warned.
It isn’t. It isn’t logical, and it isn’t necessarily true
.

“Who’s going to kill me?” she asked softly.

“What difference does it make? Is there somebody by whom you’d particularly like to be killed?” He tilted his chin. “Get my PDA. I have a whole list of killers for hire. I’ll arrange one for you if you want.”

“That’s not funny.”

“They’re very good, Beck. The killers on my list. Short and sweet. A quick bullet to the head and you’re pleading your case to Saint Peter. It’s better than the alternatives, believe me.”

She kissed his forehead, gentled him to the pillow. It occurred to her that he was talking about what he wanted for himself. “You need to rest.”

“You don’t believe me. Silly girl. You should pay attention to what I tell you.”

“Please, honey” The endearment came automatically to her lips. “Try to conserve your energy.”

The clever eyes held hers. Again the apparent health of his face challenged her perceptions of death. “Why? Will I live longer?”

“It’s late. It’s past midnight.”

“Especially for me.”

Beck needed a second. She made eye contact with the signed photographs of Johnson and Nixon, twinned devotedly above the bed, but neither President offered her any help. Three more Presidents graced other walls, but the men who had presided over Vietnam were his favorites. “Jericho—”