The Machiavelli Covenant Read Free Page A

everything. The White House.
    At that same moment the tragic loss of Caroline caught up with him. And against the rain and the dark, and with no shame whatsoever, he wept.

MONDAY
APRIL 3

4

    • 8:20 P.M.

    It was still overcast and drizzling.
    Nicholas Marten sat behind the wheel of the rental car parked just down and across the street from Dr. Lorraine Stephenson's Georgetown residence. The three-story house, in this leafy, upscale neighborhood, was dark. If anyone was home they were either already asleep or in a room to the rear. Marten chose to assume neither. He had been there for more than two hours. Someone asleep would have had to have gone to bed about 6:30. Possible, of course, but unlikely. Alternatively, over that same two hours, someone in a room to the rear would most likely have left it for one reason or another: to go to the toilet, another room, the kitchen, something; and because of the time of day and the dreariness of the weather that person in all probability would have turned on a light to illuminate their way. So common sense told him Dr. Stephenson had not yet come home. Which was why he was waiting. And would continue to do so until she did.

    * * *

    How many times that day had he taken the note from his jacket pocket and read it? At this point he could quote it from memory.
I,
Caroline Parsons, give Nicholas Marten of Manchester, England, full access to all of my personal papers, including my medical records, and to the personal papers of my late husband, United States Congressman Michael Parsons of California
.
    The note—typed, signed in a shaky scrawl by Caroline, then dated, witnessed, and stamped and signed by notary public—had been delivered to Marten that morning at his hotel. The day and date of its writing and the timing of its delivery were telling. This was Monday, April 3. Caroline had called him in Manchester late in the day on Thursday, March 30, asking him to come, and he'd left for Washington the following morning. Her letter had been written and notarized that same day, Friday, March 31, but he had known nothing about it until this morning. On Friday she had still been lucid, and knowing her time was short and unsure that he would get there before she died, had called for a notary and had the piece done. Yet he had known nothing of its existence and it had not been delivered until after her death.
    "That was as she wished, as I wrote you, Mr. Marten," Caroline's attorney, Richard Tyler, told him over the phone when he called to inquire about it. Tyler's cover letter had informed him that Caroline's letter was indeed valid. Just how far the authority she had given him might go if challenged in a court of law was difficult to say. Nonetheless it remained a legal document and Marten could use it as he chose. "Only you would know her intentions for writing it, Mr. Marten, but I take it that youwere a very close and dear friend and she trusted you implicitly."
    "Yes," Marten had said, thanking Tyler for his help and asking if he could call on him later if legal questions arose, before hanging up. Clearly Caroline had not discussed her suspicions or fears with her attorney, which probably meant she had shared them with no one but him. That the delivery of the letter had been delayed until after her death would have given Marten an opportunity to reflect and to see how very serious she had been about her allegations that she and her husband and her son had been murdered. The letter and the timing were everything, designed with the sense that Marten might not fully believe her allegations because of her physical and mental state, but knowing too that if he did, he would do everything he could to find out about them.
    He would do it because of what they'd meant to each other for so many years, regardless of the divergent roads their lives had taken. He would do it too because of who he was and what he was made of. The letter would help convince him she'd been right. It would also help