The Machiavelli Covenant Read Online Free PDF Page A

been in junior high school until he left for college on the East Coast. Years later he had been best man at Parsons's marriage to Caroline and then helped him in his run for a congressional seat. In return Parsons and Caroline had been hugely supportive of his own senatorial and presidential campaigns in California. And both had been exceedingly kind and supportive of himself and his wife, Lori, during a long and exhausting battle with the brain cancer that took her life just a week before the presidential election. That long personal history made Mike and Caroline Parsons, along with their son, Charlie, about as close to family as people could get and their tragic deaths at such a young age and so hurriedly following each other had staggered him. He had attended the funeral of Mike and Charlie and would have gone to Caroline's memorial service had not this vastly important European trip already been scheduled.
    Now, as seemingly a thousand cameras clicked and whirred and he and President Géroux approached the microphones, he could not help but think of the tableau when he had entered Caroline's hospital room that final night to see her illness-ravaged body lying deathly still under the bedcovers and the young man at her bedside looking up at him.
    "Please," he'd said softly, "give me a moment alone with her. . . . She's just . . . died."
    The memory of it made him wonder just who this man was. In all the years he had known Mike and Caroline he had never met or even seen him until that moment. Yet he was clearly someone who knew Carolinewell enough to be the only person with her when she died and be moved enough to ask the president of the United States for the privacy to be alone with her for a few moments longer.
    "Mr. President," French president Géroux guided him to the microphones, "this is Paris on a glorious day in April. Perhaps you have something to say to the people of France."
    "Je vous remercie, M. le Président."
I do, Mr. President, thank you, Harris said in French, smiling comfortably as was his nature. It had all been rehearsed of course, as was the short speech he would give in French to the Gallic people about the long tradition of reliance, friendship, and trust between their nation and the United States. Still, as he stepped to the microphones, a part of him was thinking of the young man who had been with Caroline when she'd died, and he made a mental note to have someone find out who he was.

7

    • WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:15 A.M.

    Nicholas Marten walked slowly through the wood-paneled study of the Parsons' modest home in suburban Maryland trying to do nothing more than look around. Trying not to feel the gaping hole of Caroline's absence, trying not to let himself think that nothing had happened and expect she would walk through the door at any moment.
    Her touches were everywhere, especially in the abundance of house plants intermixed with carefully placedbrightly colored ceramic knickknacks: a tiny shoe from Italy, a glazed platter from New Mexico, two small pitchers from Holland sitting back to back, a brilliant yellow and green ceramic spoon holder from Spain. The effect was a cheeriness that was clearly Caroline. Yet for all of it, this was unmistakably her husband's room, his home office. His desk was a maze of books and papers. More books were crammed every which way into two large bookcases with the overflow stacked on the floor.
    Everywhere were framed photographs: of Mike and Caroline and their son, Charlie, taken at various times over the years; of Caroline's older sister, Katy, who lived in Hawaii and took care of their mother who had Alzheimer's, and who had just been in Washington for Mike and Charlie's funeral and who might or might not be returning for Caroline's memorial service scheduled for tomorrow—he hadn't been in touch with her and so didn't know. There were pictures too of Mike in his professional role as a congressman: with the president, with various members of Congress, with