Lovers and Liars Trilogy (56 page)

“And he mentioned Vietnam, during that speech? Jenkins told me. What did he say exactly?”

Gini told him. She gave Pascal a puzzled look. “And so he said the reporting of that war helped to end it. He said it changed America…Pascal, what is this? Why are you harping on Vietnam? It’s twenty years since the war ended, it can’t have any relevance to this.”

“Maybe not.” Again his face took on that guarded expression. Gini did not prompt, but continued her story, stopping just short of her return to her apartment, and her discovery of Napoleon. She did not want to reexperience that.

“And so,” she said finally, “I’m sure it was McMullen in the park and in the museum. I think he had hoped to speak to me, but Frank Romero was there too. The number he gave me is an Oxford number. For a moment I thought it was the number I called for Dr. Knowles. But it wasn’t. I checked this evening. Two different digits. I
wish
I could understand these messages he’s been sending, the books, that postcard. But I can’t. Still—” She paused. “We can call that number tomorrow at noon. I’m sure we’re close to finding McMullen, Pascal—or he’s close to contacting us. That’s progress, at least.”

Pascal frowned. “Oh, you’ve made a lot of progress, I think. I’m beginning to see a pattern at last, in all this. Or perhaps two patterns, one the true one, and the other a reflection designed to trick us, mislead us perhaps.” He rose and looked down at her thoughtfully, then held out his hand. “Come upstairs,” he said. “Let’s sit by the fire there, and I’ll tell you my side of things. It won’t take long, and I don’t want it to take long. You look exhausted. But if there’s any chance that we really are close to McMullen at last—that we might actually get to speak to him, there’s some things you should know first.”

“He isn’t the man we took him for?”

Pascal shook his head. “No,” he said slowly. “No, I think not. Some of the information Jenkins obtained may be misinformation—it’s hard to know. But one thing does seem clear. McMullen isn’t just Lise Hawthorne’s self-appointed protector. He lied to Jenkins—or lied by omission anyway. McMullen could be much more dangerous, and much more devious than we thought.”

Upstairs, Gini sat quietly and listened. Pascal spoke for several minutes. When he had finished, Gini gave a sigh.

“I begin to see,” she said. “That fool Jenkins. Why wasn’t he straight with us from the first?”

Pascal shrugged. “Come on, Gini. You know what he’s like. As a matter of fact, I revised my opinion of him this morning. I may not like him any more than I ever did, but he’s tough, and he’s not a fool either. Though I think he’d better watch his back.”

“All right, I was wrong. He’s not the lackey I thought he was. But even so, why the hell couldn’t he admit that it was Appleyard who first gave him the tip? I even asked him straight out, and he
still
went on denying it.”

“Well, in his view it wasn’t an outright lie.” Pascal gave a dry smile. “When he talked to Appleyard first, back in the fall of last year, all Appleyard had done was pick up on some of that Washington gossip. He’d heard Lise Hawthorne’s health might be cracking up. He’d gone snooping around her London doctors and got nowhere….”

“That
isn’t
all, Pascal,” Gini interrupted. “James McMullen had actually contacted Appleyard. It was Appleyard’s story. He was unwise enough to mention it to Jenkins, and Jenkins stole it. It was straightforward theft—”

“—Of the kind that goes on in newspapers all the time.” Pascal’s smile broadened. “Come on, Gini. You know that. Anyway, it wasn’t as simple as that. All McMullen had done was tell Appleyard that he should stop chasing Lise’s story and take a good hard look at her husband. He’d hinted at infidelities, no more than that.”

“Fine. Maybe I’m missing the point here. It still sounds like theft to me. Tell me again.”

“All right. This is the sequence. McMullen was playing Appleyard along. He must have heard about the inquiries to the doctors, so he
hinted
to Appleyard, but told him nothing specific. It’s the first indication we have that McMullen isn’t nearly as naive as Jenkins thought. Then, unfortunately for Appleyard, he decided to pass the tip to Jenkins. And he mentioned the name of his source.”

“At which point, Jenkins licked his lips. Because he actually knew this man. So he saw right away that he could get to the story without Appleyard’s help. In other words, he could cut Appleyard out.”

“True. But can you altogether blame him? Would you like to work on a really big story with Johnny Appleyard breathing down your neck?”

“No, I wouldn’t. Especially if I were Jenkins. Jenkins would want two things—first, he’d want an exclusive, and second, if the story
was
strong, he’d want to syndicate—worldwide. Meanwhile, Appleyard would be on the phone busily selling it everywhere from Sydney to Toronto. That’s how he worked. It made him rich.”

“Precisely. So Jenkins dispensed with his services. Apparently, it wasn’t difficult. McMullen and Appleyard had spoken several times by then, and McMullen hadn’t liked what he found. He was much happier to work with Jenkins, an Englishman, a former school friend. So McMullen stopped returning Appleyard’s calls—or so Jenkins thinks. We know differently. McMullen
must
have remained in touch with Appleyard. It was Appleyard who found Lorna Munro for him. And it was McMullen who organized the delivery of those first four parcels. So McMullen was playing some kind of double game from day one—” He paused. “What’s more, I suspect Lise Hawthorne helped him, and is continuing to help him. Even now.”

Gini frowned. “Now? That’s not what she said to me. She said she hadn’t spoken to him since he left London. She was in tears, Pascal. She was shaking. She said we had to find him, and she didn’t even know if he was still alive or dead. I had the strong impression—”

“Yes?”

“I thought she was afraid he’d been killed. And that Romero might have been used to kill him, that very weekend.”

“Then think about this.” Pascal leaned forward.

“Lise tells you she is
not
in contact with McMullen, yet she could have made a phone call from that wine bar, and she arranged to meet you this morning in Regent’s Park. She never showed, but McMullen did. Doesn’t that strike you as an odd coincidence? You think he’s been running in the park behind her house for the past three weeks? I certainly don’t. Come on, Gini. That meeting had to have been set up.”

“Not necessarily. She said she always used to meet him there, at that time. He might have gone there in the hope of seeing her….”

“All right. Maybe. Not proven. But I know what I think. There’s collusion here.”

“But we
know
that, Pascal—to some extent. We
know
Lise and McMullen are involved in this together. He’s trying to help her. You heard that first tape.”

“Yes. McMullen the knight-errant.” He gave her a cool glance. “So the man is in love with her, obsessed with her, determined to free her from that sadist husband of hers. Well, maybe. I’m prepared to believe that. Except McMullen has conducted a campaign against Hawthorne before. A long time ago. A very very long time ago.” He rose. “Do you have that postcard you were sent, Gini? The one signed Jacob? Let’s just compare the handwriting, shall we, with these photocopied letters I have here.”

“Letters? What letters?”

Pascal had picked up the large manila envelope Jenkins had given him earlier that day. From it, he took a thick sheaf of papers, some of which, Gini could see, were press clippings. He extracted three single sheets of paper and passed them across. Each was a copy of a neat, handwritten letter, sent from a London address. Gini stared at them. They were addressed to John Hawthorne, they were signed by James McMullen.

“The
dates.
” Gini looked up at him. “They’re 1969, 1970, 1972—that’s the year Hawthorne was first elected to Congress. Pascal, what
is
this?”

“You can see for yourself. They’re requests—markedly polite requests—for information about Hawthorne’s period of military service in Vietnam. It’s a matter of record anyway, and the letters were duly and politely replied to by one of Hawthorne’s secretaries. I have copies of their answers here too.”

“I don’t understand, where did Jenkins get this?”

“From Melrose’s security contact. Which means they could have come from anywhere—American security, British security, or even John Hawthorne himself. They could be forgeries, of course. But the match to the writing on your postcard is exact, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes, it is.” Gini stared at the postcard, then at the letters. “But I don’t understand, Pascal. Why should he be making inquiries about that—and at that time? It’s—when? After he left Oxford—”

“And before he joined the army. Yes.”

“In that missing period you mentioned? How
strange.
But why? What possible connection can it have with this story now? Appointments with blond call girls and the Vietnam
War
! It doesn’t make sense.”

“Not to us, perhaps, but I think it makes sense to McMullen. Look at this, Gini.” He passed her another sheaf of papers. “Those are copies of letters McMullen sent to an American senator in 1971. A Senator Melville—he’s dead now. At the time, he was head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was a well-known opponent of the Vietnam War, a dove from way back. McMullen bombarded him with letters and evidence. The letters mention enclosures, and none of the enclosures are here. Just the letters. He’s trying to persuade the senator to launch an investigation into the conduct of the American military during the autumn of 1968, in particular to the events that took place in a small village—” Pascal hesitated, and again she saw that closed expression come into his face.

“The name of the village was My Nuc.”

“My Nuc?” Gini looked up and frowned. “That’s familiar, but I can’t remember why.”

“That’s not surprising, Gini. You were two years old in 1968. You were—what—seven or eight when the war ended? I was in my teens and when I saw this, the name meant nothing to me. But My Nuc was celebrated, briefly. It became one of the examples of American heroism. A platoon was cut off, and holed up under Vietcong fire, for nearly two weeks. One lieutenant particularly distinguished himself. He was decorated as a result of his actions there. His name was John Hawthorne.”

Again, Gini saw that closed expression come upon his face. She stared at him. When she saw the sympathy, and the hesitation in his eyes, she had a second’s foreboding.

“I don’t understand. How do you know all this, Pascal?”

“Because when McMullen started raising questions about what exactly had happened at My Nuc, when he started alleging that what actually happened there was very different from the official military accounts, the senator was able to give him a very straight and very dismissive answer. The letter he wrote is there, Gini, in front of you. You see? It’s an angry letter. No rape, no pillage, no murder—and how can the good senator be so sure?”

Pascal handed her a press clipping, a long article. “He can be sure that the military’s version was accurate because there was an independent witness, a journalist, who was with Hawthorne’s platoon the entire time. That journalist wrote up the events afterward. It wasn’t the best of his dispatches, nor one of his most famous ones, but along with many others written that year, it helped win him a Pulitzer Prize.”

Gini stared at the papers in front of her. She closed her eyes. For a second, she heard Hawthorne’s voice just a few nights before:
Holed up in a foxhole together for three days; I drank the contents of his whisky flask, and he ate my rations. I’m not sure if it was courage or blind stupidity….

She looked up, white-faced, at Pascal. She watched this story loop, reshape, and close in on herself. She saw the concern and the anxiety in Pascal’s eyes. She threw the papers down on the floor.

“Then McMullen’s a liar,” she said. “I don’t give a damn what he alleged then—and I’m not sure I give a damn anymore what he’s alleging now. He’s suspect, Pascal. You said that yourself.”

“Darling, that
isn’t
exactly what I said….”

“You just listen to me.” She had risen, trembling with agitation. “If McMullen was suggesting my father would be party to any kind of cover-up in that war—he’s wrong, that’s all. I know you hate my father, I know what my father is. I don’t have any illusions. I know he drinks too much, and he boasts, and he got lazy later on. But when he was younger, even now…He would never lie, Pascal. He would never distort the truth.”

She hesitated. “He may not have been a very good husband to Mary, or a very good father to me, but he
was
a fine reporter. The best—he was the best!”

There was a silence. She turned away, and Pascal could see her fight to regain control. Quietly, he bent and replaced the papers in their envelope. Then he put his arms around her. The one thing he intended to avoid now, at all cost, was any conflict about her father. He had made that mistake once, twelve years before, and he did not intend to make it again.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Then let’s take it from there. If McMullen was deluded all those years ago about Hawthorne—and how he even came to be interested in those events I can’t imagine—then he can be deluded again. Or deliberately smearing Hawthorne for some reason. Either way…”

“Yes?” She turned back to him with new hope in her face.

“Either way, it helps us when we finally meet him. Which I expect to do very soon.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I think so. Let’s wait and see. Gini—” He broke off and looked down into her face. “You do know how much I love you?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then come to bed.”

At nine the next morning, Gini and Pascal were in the last of a sequence of taxicabs which they had used to transport themselves the short distance downhill from Hampstead to St. John’s Wood. At Pascal’s request, the taxi cruised first one way up a street near Avenue Road, then another. Several of the large houses in this street had To Let signs outside, to which Pascal paid close attention.

The taxi driver dropped them off some blocks farther on, near the Wellington army barracks. It was then nine-twenty. Minutes later, Pascal and Gini were in the company of a real estate agent, viewing one of the houses they had passed earlier. It was a miniature St. John’s Wood palace, fully furnished and in very bad taste. Pascal looked at Gini and repressed a smile. They had been upstairs, and were now back in the drawing room.