Jerichos fall, p.2
Jericho's Fall, page 2
Cars were scattered in the forecourt, dusted with varying amounts of snow. The silver Prius probably meant that Pamela was here, the younger of Jericho’s daughters, although both were older than Beck, a distinction that had put the fat in the fire from the first. The battered brown van would likely be Audrey’s, borrowed from the abbey where she was cloistered, or whatever they called it. Rebecca, who despite her churchgoing mostly kept a careful distance from the overly religious, was none too sure of such details. Outside the garage stood a shiny pickup truck, and pickup trucks were what Jericho liked, although it was difficult to imagine that he did much driving these days.
Jericho had an unforgiving son named Sean, who helped run an environmental foundation in New York, but Sean would no more attend his father’s final days than he would fund a coal mine. Besides, Sean would not be caught dead in a pickup. Jericho used to have friends spread over his mountain, quiet, self-reliant men who attached themselves to the land and sported National Rifle Association decals on their bumpers. Maybe the truck belonged to an old acquaintance. But the snow lay thick on the hood, and the same instinct that had counseled Beck to hide from the helicopter proposed that the pickup truck had another significance entirely, one she had not fathomed. It was Jericho’s, and there was a reason it was not in the garage.
Never mind. Not her business.
Rebecca parked her modest rental next to Audrey’s decrepit van. Climbing out, she was struck by the silence. In the old days, Jericho would have bounded from the house to sweep her, literally, off her feet, and pepper her with ribald jokes in four languages about her mode of transport. The house had always been boisterous, the forecourt thick with the cars of visitors who wanted his wisdom or his money or his liquor or his connections, or just to shake his hand. He would have dragged her inside and forced her into whatever party he had going, even if the party consisted of two or three cold-eyed men from the clandestine services division of the Central Intelligence Agency, discussing a project in Malaysia or Peru or Iran. That was what Jericho called them, projects, even after the men stopped coming to the house.
Her good humor began to fade. She wanted an excuse not to go inside. If Jericho was not partying, he was not Jericho. The bounding, energetic, globe-straddling man she had loved, if love was what they had shared, was upstairs suffering in a bed from which he would never rise. The house was lonely now, merely the residence of a rich but no-longer-important man, whose encroaching demise rated not even a television truck at the bottom of the hill. The attendants of his last days were few, and, although Jericho had been the epitome of the man’s man, all were female: a pair of daughters who were distant from him, and, mounting the steps, the woman who had wrecked his career.
Except that another observer was present.
As Rebecca stepped onto the gravel, noisily dragging her suitcase, her friends in the helicopter whup-whupped overhead once more, then circled back, dipping the dark nose briefly as if in salute.
(ii)
The woman who opened the heavy door was tall and slim and so pale that one might have been forgiven for thinking her the patient. She wore aged jeans and an ageless sweater, neither bearing a designer label, and pearls that didn’t need one. Her feet were bare. Her dark hair was comfortably awry. Her clear eyes were appraising. She had achieved that ethereal beauty that attaches to certain coolly distant women from their late thirties onward after having eluded them most of their lives.
“I see you made it,” she said, in the sullen voice of one already seeking out your faults.
“Sorry I’m late. Hello, Pamela.”
“The drive from Denver’s only two and a half hours. It’s almost midnight.”
“My flight was delayed,” said Beck, already on the defensive; but, with Pamela, she always was. The two women had spoken on the phone twice over the past twenty-four hours, and, so far, Pamela had yet to concede the possibility that Rebecca might do anything right. “The storm.”
“You should have called.”
“I couldn’t get through.”
Pamela said nothing to indicate what she thought of this pitiful excuse. She had inherited from her father the effortless assurance of a person with more important things to do, and when she stepped aside her body language said she was doing Rebecca a favor.
Beck crossed the threshold. She had to hold her breath to do it. The vast space was as empty as she remembered, and as sad. The wide plank floors were ancient, and devoid of rugs, creaking with every step, because Jericho, as he used to say, wanted to hear them coming. This was what Jericho called the great room. A central fireplace dominated the space, but although logs were heaped in the grate, no fire had been lighted. The ceilings were two stories high, bordered by colorful clerestory windows salvaged from a burnt church. At human height, attractive seating arrangements stood near picture windows, but near the stairs, a handful of stout wooden chairs were scattered haphazardly, obstacles over which invaders might stumble. They looked like the same chairs from fifteen years ago, when Jericho had fired the maid for moving them.
“How is he?” said Beck, not daring to meet Pamela’s eye.
“Dying.”
“Are they sure?”
A snicker of disdain from the prim mouth. “You’re here, aren’t you? That means you’re sure.”
Rebecca moved toward the wide windows that, during the day, provided dizzying views down into the valley, but at night were bright with the wash from the floodlights Jericho required. Where there were no windows, bookshelves covered the walls, crammed with thousands of volumes, most of them hardcover and dog-eared. Jericho used to point his young lover to a shelf and command her to pull a book at random, and give him a report by the end of the week. He had loved these little games. But tonight the room pulsed with animosity. Pamela had been twenty-two and about to graduate college when her father announced that he was leaving her mother for a nineteen-year-old.
“Audrey said he was asking for me,” Rebecca said.
“He’s been asking for you for years,” said Pamela from behind her. “That never got you up here before.”
Beck said nothing. She looked up at the balustrade. She heard a door slam. She assumed that Jericho was in his old suite, commanding the magnificent views suitable to a man of his station. In the Rockies, if you angled your windows just right, the mountains went on forever, and his windows were angled right. Her own, smaller suite had been next door, but she spent most nights in his.
“Rebecca?” said Pamela. “Hello?”
Still Beck did not speak. She stood very still. She did not want to go up there. She wanted to be back home in Alexandria with Nina and their cat, Tom Terrific. She wanted to be back at the office, listening to Pfister’s rants while pretending not to be as smart as he. At this moment, she would even rather be down in Florida, sitting across the living room from her poisonous mother, soaking up the gospel according to Nancy Grace. Anything to avoid seeing Jericho again. Not because he had wrecked her life: after all, she had wrecked his, too.
No.
Beck was beset by the same emotion that had flattened her yesterday, when she got the call. Jericho was supposed to be immortal. His distant presence, not just in her memory but here in his mountain fastness, had formed the background of her adult life. They might never again be lovers, but a world where he did not exist seemed unimaginable.
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.
