whole thing. That way we’d want to keep it quiet to protect you, and we’d be less likely to make a federal case out of it. We know they went back to your apartment that night. We’ll know pretty soon if they planted something there, but it doesn’t look like they took anything.”
The pounding in his head was worsening, and reliving the weekend’s ordeal wasn’t helping him feel any better. “So what are you going to do?” Noah asked.
“We won’t involve the authorities.” It was the first time the old man had spoken in a while. “But there have already been… repercussions… for the people who’ve done this. And there are many more to come.”
“Yeah, don’t worry, kid, we’ll make ’em sorry,” Landers said, and he clapped Noah on the shoulder a little harder than required for a simple friendly gesture. “Hey, at least somebody got laid out of the deal, am I right?”
At that moment Noah had never felt any more like punching another man in the face, nor any less physically capable of doing so. So he only sat there, eyes down, thinking how good that might feel.
“Gentlemen,” the old man said, “could you leave my son and me alone?”
Landers gathered his things and on his way out he paused to whisper for a few seconds at Arthur Gardner’s ear. Charlie Nelan stayed where he was, in the chair next to Noah.
“You too, Charlie, if you would.”
“I’d like to stay.”
The old man had been cleaning his pipe and was now refilling it, and he let his silence provide his answer. Charlie got up, put a hand on Noah’s shoulder and squeezed, then left the room and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER 31
Arthur Gardner’s office suite was rumored to be the quietest place on the island of Manhattan. It had been designed that way, as an environment of uninterrupted solitude, completely free of unwanted outside sounds. There was no street or city noise, not a whisper from the heating or cooling vents, no intrusion on the ears from the bustling office floor outside.
The reading rooms of the New York Public Library just across the street were as loud as a bus engine by comparison. This place immersed you in a deep-space quiet you might imagine to exist within the thick steel walls of a bank vault or the inside crypt of a sealed mausoleum. All that echo-dampened stillness made any interior sound seem exaggerated and unnaturally distinct-the scritch of the flint in his father’s lighter, the hiss of the glowing tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, the steady metal workings of the ancient mantel clock on the corner shelf.
Most people missed the meaning of this peculiarity. It wasn’t simply the quiet that was important to Arthur Gardner. His own sounds were probably music to his ears. It was the noise of other human beings-the reminders of their existence-that was what he wanted to avoid. He’d said it more than once: if he stepped out of the house one morning and by some miracle all the people were gone, that would be his fondest wish come true. That’s how much he loved to be alone.
The two of them had been sitting for over a minute in that dead, cottony silence when Noah finally mustered the courage to speak.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“There’s no need to apologize to me.”
“Really, I’m sorry-”
“No need, I said.” His father set his pipe in its rest and leaned back in his chair. “It was more an insult than an injury, the idea that they managed to use you in an attempt to damage our company and our clients. We’ve known of these people, of course, and we’d thought we were adequately prepared, but they surprised all of us, didn’t they? And I must say”-now there was a strange little smile on his face-“this avenue they chose, the seductive infiltration by this girl, it shows a great deal more ingenuity than I would have expected, given the source. It was inspired, really. Ruthless though it was.”
“I should have known better.”
“Nonsense. Wiser men than you have fallen, and to far less able enemies. Monarchs, captains of industry, senators, sitting presidents, very nearly.” He picked up his pipe, tapped it on the desk, and set about the ritual motions of lighting it again. “Let’s put it behind us. I’m afraid we have other pressing matters to discuss.”
In a quick look back over the years Noah was certain he could have counted the number of actual, heart-to- heart conversations with his father on the digits of a single hand. Now it looked like another one was coming, and frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. The shock of it all was fading and now he was angry, and hurt, and sick, and in dire need of a meal and a long rest to try to wash this giant mess away.
“I’m not a hundred percent right now, Dad. What is it that we need to discuss?” His father had made threats of retirement many times in the past, but somehow this didn’t feel like one of those.
“Something is going to happen tomorrow morning, Noah. Something that will be the beginning of quite a change in the way things are. This weekend’s developments, this theft and the accompanying threat of exposure, have served only to further convince the parties involved that now is the time for this-this course correction.”
“What’s going to happen?”
For a few seconds the old man seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words.
“This young woman-this Molly Ross and her people. Do you understand the difference between the world as they see it and the world as it really is?”
“I’m not sure I understand very much right now.”
“If they spoke with you at all then I’m sure you received the full picture from their warped point of view. Their proud ethos is generally the first thing to pop out of their mouths, or some variation on the theme.” The following words were delivered in a deep tone of mocking reverence. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal-that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights-life, liberty,’ and so on. That is the rallying cry of the modern-day American armchair patriot, and it’s a stirring turn of phrase, I must admit.
“But I came to understand at an early age that Thomas Jefferson himself couldn’t really have believed what he’d written in his Declaration. No slave owner could. Nor could any man with his intelligence, and his great knowledge of history, believe himself to be equal in any way to the ignorant masses of his time. He was preparing to do battle with an empire, making his case against the divine right of kings, so he brazenly invoked the Creator on his own behalf. He proposed that God was the source of these inborn rights of man, and that, contrary to the popular mythology of the times, the Almighty would not be on the side of the British royalty if the conflict came to war.
“That these rights were granted by God, it wasn’t the truth, you see, it was what Jefferson needed to say to give his revolution the moral authority to proceed. But he also must have known he was putting far more faith in the common people than they’ve ever shown the courage to deserve.”
Noah was trying to imagine what possible urgency this subject could have right now, though he didn’t see a choice but to sit there and stay with it. “You think Jefferson was wrong, then.”
“Oh, I think he was right to try. There’s a tale from those days, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, in which someone asked Benjamin Franklin what form of government the people would be given, a republic or a monarchy. Do you remember what Franklin replied?”
“ ‘A republic,’” Noah said, “‘if you can keep it.’”
The old man nodded. “If they could keep it, yes. Such a thing had never been attempted before, not on the scale these men proposed. It was a bold experiment whose outcome was far from certain, and it could have worked. But its founding premise was also its great weakness: that these common people of the United States, for the first time among all the people in recorded history, could somehow prove capable of ruling themselves-to hold on to the fragile gift they’d been given. And time and again they’ve proven they’re not equal to the task.”
“So what are you telling me, Dad?”
“Let me ask you, Noah. Put their complete incompetence in self-government aside for the moment. Do you believe that people, human beings, are basically good? That-as your loyal friend Molly would no doubt preach to us-all they must do is awaken and embrace liberty and the highest potentials of mankind will be realized?”
