Allan Folsom: The Machiavelli Covenant

Marten looked around once more. Past Mike Parsons's desk and through the open door to the living room he could see Richard Tyler, Caroline's attorney and executor of her estate, pacing back and forth talking on his cell phone. Tyler was the reason he was there. He had called him the first thing that morning and asked if, in light of Caroline's notarized letter giving him access to her and her husband's papers, he might not spend a few hours in the Parsons' home going through some of their personal things. Tyler had conferred with colleagues in his office and then agreed, with the proviso that Tyler himself be present when he did. Tyler had even picked Marten up at his hotel and personally brought him to the house.

The drive through the suburbs had been genial enough but in it there had been something odd, or rather something not discussed, something Marten had purposely left for Tyler to bring up, and he hadn't. The same way no one else seemed to have brought it up either, because it wasn't in the papers or on television or the Internet-the suicide of Dr. Stephenson.

In her own way Lorraine Stephenson had been a celebrity. Not only had she been Caroline's doctor, but Mike's as well. She had also been personal physician to many prominent legislators, men and women, for more than two decades. Her suicide should have been fodder for any number of news outlets, local, national, even international. But it wasn't. Marten had seen nothing about it anywhere. One would have thought that as executor to Caroline's estate Tyler would have been one of the first to know because under the circumstances, where Caroline had given Marten the legal right to examine her medical records, Tyler most certainly would have brought it up. That was, if he knew. So maybe he didn't know. And maybe the media didn't know either. Maybe the police were keeping it quiet. But why? Notification of next of kin? Perhaps. It was as good a reason as any, or maybe there was some other angle the police were working on.

If Stephenson had played it the way she could have and just told him she was sorry but she could not give him access to Caroline's medical records without a court order, he might very well have left it in Richard Tyler's hands and gone back to England. Troubled perhaps, but gone anyway, thinking Caroline had been very ill and in a terrible emotional state, and knowing there was little he could do until and unless Tyler got the court order. But she hadn't. Instead she had run from him and then committed suicide. Her last words about the doctor and none of you, had been said with icy resolve and were followed immediately by her horrifying final act.

What had Stephenson said to him just before she killed herself? "You want to send me to the doctor. But you never will. None of you ever will. Never. Ever."

What doctor? Who had she been so afraid of that she'd take her own life to avoid being sent to?

And who or what was the group or organization she had apparently thought Marten belonged to? The you in none of you?

Those blanks were enormous.

Marten stepped behind Parsons's desk and looked at the stack of working files on top of it. Most of it was legislative stuff. This bill, that bill, this appropriation, that. There were more files to the side, labeled LETTERS FROM CONSTITUENTS TO BE ANSWERED PERSONALLY. Another stack on a side table was labeled COMMITTEE REPORTS AND MINUTES. Taken together the material was mountainous. Marten had no idea where to start or what to look for once he had.

"Mr. Marten." Richard Tyler came into the room.

"Yes."

"I just received a call from my office. One of our senior partners has looked over Caroline's note to you and determined that the firm and myself could be open to major litigation by the Parsons family if we let you continue here without their approval and quite possibly the court's."

"I don't understand."

"You are to leave the premises right now."

"Mr. Tyler," Marten pushed back, "that letter is notarized. Caroline gave it to me for the purpose of-"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Marten."

Marten stared at him for a long moment, then finally nodded and started for the door. Why the message came now, after they were already there and under way meant one of two things. Either the senior partner was more protective of the firm than Tyler was, or somebody else had learned about Caroline's note and wanted Marten's investigation stopped. Marten had known Katy, Caroline's sister, but that had been years before, when he was LAPD detective John Barron, and as far as he knew neither Caroline nor Mike had told Katy what had happened since. That meant she would have no idea who Nicholas Marten was, and to try and explain, especially under the eye of Richard Tyler's attorneys, and/or the court's if it came to that, could reveal his past and make his situation as precarious as it might have been had he been confronted by the police over Dr. Stephenson's death.

Tyler opened the front door and Marten glanced around the house trying to remember it all. It was, he knew, probably the last time he would be in Caroline's home and in the presence of all she had left behind. Once again the reality of her death stabbed through him. It was awful and empty and hollow. They had never spent enough time together. And they never would again.

"Mr. Marten." Tyler gestured toward the door, ushering him out. Tyler followed closely, then closed the door behind him and locked it and they left.

• 2:05 P.M.

Victor stood looking out the window of a rented corner office in the National Postal Museum just across from Union Station. From where he stood he could see taxis pulling into the station from Massachusetts Avenue to disperse or pick up passengers going to or coming from the Amtrak trains.

"Victor," a calm voice filtered through his earpiece.

"Yes, Richard," Victor said as calmly, speaking into the tiny microphone on the lapel of his suit jacket.

"It's time."

"I know."

Victor looked like a middle-aged everyman. Forty-seven and divorced, he was balding and a little thick around the waist and wore an inexpensive gray suit and equally inexpensive black wing-tip shoes. The surgical gloves he wore were cream colored and available in any drugstore.

He stared out the window a moment longer, then turned to the desk beside him. It was an everyday plain steel desk, its top bare, its drawers, like the bookcases and file cabinets across the room, empty. Only the wastebasket under it held anything, a round two-inch piece of glass he had cut from the windowpane fifteen minutes earlier and the small cutting tool which he had used to do it.

"Two minutes, Victor." Richard's voice was the same steady calm.

"Acela Express number R2109. Left New York at eleven A.M.,due in to Union Station at one forty-seven P.M. R2109 is seven minutes late," Victor said into the microphone and stepped around the desk to where a large semi-automatic rifle with a telescopic sight and sound suppressor sat on a tripod.

"The train has arrived."

"Thank you, Richard."

"You remember what he looks like?"

"Yes, Richard. I remember the photograph."

"Ninety seconds."

Victor picked up the rifle-mounted tripod and moved it to the window, adjusting it so that the tip of the gun barrel sat squarely in the center of the circle he had cut from the window glass.

"One minute."

Victor brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, then looked through the rifle's telescopic sight. Its crosshairs were trained on the main entry to Union Station, where a wave of just-arrived passengers was coming through in a rush. Victor moved the gun sight carefully over them. Up, down, back and forth as if he was looking for someone in particular.

"He's coming out now, Victor. In a moment you'll see him."