The Matarese Circle (67 page)

“No, I don’t think anyone ever did. Please, Mrs. Appleton, I
must
see that room. Allow me to.”

“It’s nice that you ask. People rarely ask me for anything anymore; they just tell me. Very well, help me to my lift, and we’ll go upstairs. You understand, of course, we’ll have to knock first. If he says you can’t come in, you’ll have to stay outside.”

Scofield guided her through the living room arch to the chair lift. He walked beside her up the staircase to the second floor landing where he helped her to her feet.

“This way,” she said, gesturing toward a narrow, darkened corridor. “It’s the last door on the right.”

They reached it, stood in front of it for a moment, and then the old woman rapped lightly on the wood. “We’ll know in a minute,” she continued, bending her head as if listening for a command from within. “It’s all right,” she said, smiling. “He said you could come in, but you mustn’t touch anything. He has everything arranged the way he likes it.” She opened the door, and flipped a switch on the wall. Three separate lamps went on; still the light was dim. Shadows were thrown across the floor and up on the walls.

The room was a young man’s room, mementos of an expensive youth on display everywhere. The banners above the bed and the desk were those of Andover and Princeton, the trophies on the shelves for such sports as sailing, skiing, tennis, and lacrosse. The room had been preserved—eerily preserved—as if it had once belonged to a Renaissance prince. A microscope sat alongside a chemistry set, a volume of
Britannica
lay open, most of the page underlined, handwritten notes in the margins. On the bedside table were novels of Dos Passos and Koestler, beside them the typewritten title page of an essay authored by the celebrated inhabitant of that room. It was called:
The Pleasures and Responsibilities of Sailing in Deep Waters. Submitted by Joshua Appleton, Senior. Andover Academy. March, 1945.
Protruding from below the bed were three pairs of shoes: loafers, sneakers, and black patent leathers worn with formal clothes. A life was somehow covered in the display.

Bray winced in the dim light. He was in the tomb of a man very much alive, the artifacts of a life preserved, somehow meant to transport the dead safely on its journey
through the darkness. It was a macabre experience when one thought of Joshua Appleton, the electric, mesmerizing Senator from Massachusetts. Scofield glanced at the old woman. She was staring impassively at a cluster of photographs on the wall. Bray took a step forward and looked at them.

They were pictures of a younger Joshua Appleton and several friends—the same friends, apparently the crew of a sailboat—the occasion identified by the center photograph. It showed a long banner being held by four men standing on the deck of a sloop.
Marblehead Regatta Championship—Summer, 1949.

Only the center photograph and the three above it showed all four crew members. The three lower photographs were shots of only two of the four. Appleton and another young man, both stripped to the waist—slender, muscular, shaking hands above a tiller; smiling at the camera as they stood on either side of the mast, and sitting on the gunnels, drinks held forward in a salute.

Scofield looked closely at the two men, then compared them to their associates. Appleton and his obviously closer friend had a strength about them absent in the other two, a sense of assurance, of conviction somehow. They were not alike except perhaps in height and breadth—athletic men comfortable in the company of each’s peer—yet neither were they dissimilar. Both had sharp if distinctly different features—strong jaws, wide foreheads, large eyes, and thatches of straight, dark hair—the kind of faces seen in scores of Ivy League yearbooks.

There was something disturbing about the photographs. Bray did not know what it was—but it was there.
Instinct.

“They look as if they could be cousins,” he said.

“For years they acted as though they were
brothers
,” replied the old woman. “In peace, they would be
partners
, in war,
soldiers
together! But he was a coward, he betrayed my son. My beautiful Joshua went to war alone and terrible things were done to him. He ran away to Europe, to the safety of a chateau. But justice is odd; he died in Gstaad, from injuries on a slope. To the best of my knowledge, my son has never mentioned his name since.”

“Since?… When was that?”

“Twenty-five years ago.”

“Who was he?”

She told him.

Scofield could not breathe; there was no air in the room, only shadows in a vacuum. He had found the shepherd boy, but instinct told him to look for something else, a fragment as awesome as anything he had learned. He had found it. The most devastating piece of the puzzle was in place, the quantum jump explained. He needed only proof, for the truth was so extraordinary.

He
was
in a tomb; the dead had journeyed in darkness for twenty-five years.

He guided the old woman to her bedroom, poured her a final brandy, and left her. As he closed the door she was sitting on the bed chanting that unsingable tune.
Appleton Hall … way up on Appleton Hill.

Notes picked out on a harpsichord more than a hundred years ago. Notes lost, as she was lost without ever knowing why.

He returned to the dimly lit room that was the resting place of memories and went to the cluster of photographs on the wall. He removed one and pulled the small picture hook out of the plaster, smoothing the wallpaper around the hole; it might delay discovery, certainly not prevent it. He turned off the lights, closed the door, and went downstairs to the front hall.

The guard-nurse was still unconscious; he left her where she was. There was nothing gained by moving her or killing her. He turned off every light, including the carriage lamps above the front steps, opened the door, and slipped out into Louisburg Square. On the pavement, he turned right and began walking rapidly to the corner where he would turn right again, descending Beacon Hill into Charles Street to find a taxi. He had to pick up his luggage in the subway locker in Cambridge. The walk down the hill would give him time to think, time to remove the photograph from its glass frame, folding it carefully into his pocket so that neither face was damaged.

He needed a place to stay. A place to sit and fill up pages of paper with facts, conjectures and probabilities, his bill-of-particulars. In the morning, he had several things to do, among which were visits to the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Public Library.

The room was no different from any other room in a very cheap hotel in a very large city. The bed sagged, and the single window looked out on a filthy stone wall not ten feet from the cracked panes of glass. The advantage, however, was the same as it was everywhere in such places; nobody asked questions. Cheap hotels had a place in this world, usually for those who did not care to join it. Loneliness was a basic human right, not to be tampered with lightly.

Scofield was safe; he could concentrate on his bill-of-particulars.

By 4:35 in the morning, he had filled seventeen pages. Facts, conjectures, probabilities. He had written the words carefully legibly, so they could be clearly reproduced. There was no room for interpretation; the indictment was specific even where the motives were not. He was gathering his weapons, storing his bandoliers of ammunition; they were all he had. He fell back on the sagging bed and closed his eyes. Two or three hours sleep would be enough.

He heard his own whisper float up to the cracked ceiling.

“Taleniekov … keep breathing. Toni, my love, my dearest love. Stay alive … keep your mind.”

The portly female clerk in the hospital’s Department of Records and Billing seemed bewildered but she was not about to refuse Bray’s request. It wasn’t as if the medical information held there was that confidential, and a man who produced government identification certainly had to be given cooperation.

“Now, let me get this
cleah
,” she said in a strong Boston accent, reading the labels on the front of the cabinets. “The Senator wants the names of the doctors and the nurses who attended him during his stay here in ’fifty-three and ’fifty-four. From around November through March?”

“That’s right. As I told you, next month’s sort of an
anniversary for him. It’ll be twenty-five years since he was given his ‘reprieve,’ as he calls it. Confidentially, he’s sending each of them a small medallion in the shape of the medical shield with their names and his thanks inscribed on them.”

The clerk stopped. “Isn’t that just like him, though? To
remembah?
Most people go through an experience like that and just want to forget the whole thing. They figure they beat the
reapah
so the hell with everybody. Until the next time, of course. But not him; he’s so … well, concerned, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.”

“The
votahs
know it, too, let me tell you. The Bay State’s going to have its first President since J.F.K. And there won’t be any of that religious nonsense about the Pope and the
cahdnells
running the White House, neither.”

“No, there won’t,” agreed Bray. “I’d like to stress again the confidential nature of my being here. The Senator doesn’t want any publicity about his little gesture.…” Scofield paused and smiled at the woman. “And as of now you’re the only person in Boston who knows.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. As we used to say when we were kids, my lips are sealed. And I’d really treasure a note from Senator Appleton with his signature and everything, I mean.” The woman stopped and tapped a file cabinet. “
Heah
we are,” she said, opening the drawer. “Now,
remembah
, all that’s
heah
are the names of the
doctahs
—surgeons, anesthesiologists, consultants—listed by floor and O.R. desks; the staff nurses assigned, and a schedule of the equipment used. There are no psychiatric evaluations or disease-related information; they can only be obtained directly through the physician. But then you’re not interested in any of that; you’d think I was
tahkin
’ to one of those damned insurance sneaks.” She gave him the file. “There’s a table at the end of the aisle. When you’re finished, just leave the
foldah
on my desk.”

“That’s okay,” said Bray, knowing better. “I’ll put it back; no sense bothering you. Thanks again.”

“Thank
you.
”

Scofield read through the pages rapidly to get a general impression. Medically, most of what he read was beyond his comprehension, but the conclusion was inescapable. Joshua Appleton had been more dead than alive
when the ambulance had brought him to the hospital from the collision on the turnpike. Lacerations, contusions, convulsions, fractures, along with severe head and neck wounds painted the bloody picture of a mutilated human face and body. There were lists of drugs and serums used to prolong the life that was ebbing, detailed descriptions of the sophisticated machinery employed to stop deterioration. And ultimately, weeks later, the reversal began to take place. The incredibly more sophisticated machine that was the human body started to heal itself.

Bray wrote down the names of the doctors and the attending nurses listed in the floor and O.R. schedules. Two surgeons, one a skin-graft specialist, and a rotating team of eight nurses appeared consistently during the first weeks, then abruptly their names were no longer there, replaced by two different physicians and three private nurses assigned to eight-hour shifts.

He had what he needed, a total of fifteen names, five primary, ten secondary. He would concentrate on the former, the last two physicians and the three nurses; the earlier names were removed from the time in question.

He replaced the folder and went back out to the clerk’s desk. “All done,” he said, then added as if the thought had just struck him. “Say, you could do me—the Senator—one more favor, if you would.”

“If I can, sure.”

“I’ve got the names here, but I need a little updating. After all, it was twenty-five years ago. Some of them may not be around any longer. It would help if I got some current addresses.”

“I can’t help,” said the clerk, reaching for the phone on her desk, “but I can send you upstairs. This is patient territory; they’ve got the personnel records. Lucky
bahstaads
, they’re computerized.”

“I’m still very concerned about keeping this confidential.”

“Hey, don’t you worry, you’ve got Peg Flannagan’s word for it. My girlfriend runs that place.”

Scofield sat next to a bearded black college student in front of a computer keyboard. The young man had been assigned to help by Peg Flannagan’s girlfriend. He was annoyed that his office-temp job had suddenly required him to put down his textbooks.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Bray, wanting a temporary friend.

“It’s nothin’, man,” answered the student, punching the keys. “It’s just that I got an exam tomorrow and any piss ant can run this barbarian hardware.”

“What’s the exam?”

“Tertiary kinetics.”

Scofield looked at the student. “Someone once used the word ‘tertiary’ with me when I was in school around here. I didn’t know what he meant.”

“You probably went to Harvard, man. That’s turkey-time. I’m at Tech.”

Bray was glad the old school spirit was still alive in Cambridge. “What have you got?” he asked, looking at the screen above the keyboard. The black had keyed in the name of the first doctor.

“I’ve got an omniscent tape, and you’ve got nothin’.”

“What do you mean?”

“The good doctor doesn’t exist. Not as far as this institution is concerned. He’s never so much as dispensed an aspirin in this joint.”

“That’s crazy. He was listed in the Appleton records.”

“Speak to the lord-of-the-
phi’s
, man. I punched the letters and up comes
No Rec.
”

“I know something about these machines. They’re easily programmed.”

The black nodded. “Which means they’re easily deprogrammed. Rectified, as it were. Your doctor was
dee
-leted. Maybe he stole from Medicare.”