The Patriots Club Read Online Free PDF Page A

with honor.
    It was a sentimental farewell.
    Two hundred twenty-odd years later, the room had been re-created from top to bottom on the second floor of a Virginia country estate. From the aged wood floor to the chiffon yellow paint. From the wood-burning fireplace to the Quaker chairs, everything was as it had been that night. Even the table was said to be a replica of the one Washington had sat at that momentous evening, when one after another he had shaken his loyal officers’ hands and bid them a tearful good-bye.
    “Has there been any change?” asked Mr. Washington. “Is she willing to join our ranks?”
    “None,” said Mr. Jay. “Senator McCoy refuses to reconsider. The woman is as stubborn as a deaf mule.”
    “But it’s not a matter of choice,” said Mr. Hamilton, his cheeks reddening. “It’s an obligation. A God-given duty.”
    “You tell her that,” said Mr. Pendleton. “She’s made a career telling people like us to go to hell. For some reason, the voters seem to like her for it.”
    Six men sat round the table. It was a tradition for each to take the name of one of the six founders. Oil portraits of their namesakes hung on the wall, staring down at them like moody ancestors. George Washington. Alexander Hamilton. John Jay, first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Robert Morris, the gentleman financier who had paid for much of the Continental Army’s rifle and grapeshot out of his own silk-lined pockets. Senator Rufus King of New York. And Nathaniel Pendleton, distinguished jurist and Alexander Hamilton’s closest friend.
    “Does she really know who ‘people like us’ are?” asked Mr. King. “I’m wondering if you made yourself sufficiently clear.”
    “As clear as I can until she joins us,” said Mr. Jay. “There’s only so much we can tell her without jeopardizing our position.”
    “It’s the same approach you made to me,” said Mr. Washington. He was a tall and distinguished man with thick silver hair, the envy of other sixty-year-olds, and an inquisitor’s black gaze. “Most people would take it as an honor. That isn’t the problem. She’s made her name as a renegade. It’s what got her elected. To join with us would go against everything she stands for.”
    “And if she doesn’t join?” asked Pendleton.
    “She will,” said Mr. King hopefully. “She must.”
    Mr. Pendleton dismissed the younger man’s idealism with a grunt. “And if she doesn’t?” he repeated.
    When no one answered, he looked toward a glass cabinet in the corner. Inside were relics left them by their predecessors. A locket of Hamilton’s hair, the color of honey. A splinter from Washington’s casket (obtained by an earlier member when the Father of His Country was disinterred and reburied at Mount Vernon). A Bible belonging to Abraham Lincoln. Like him, they had been realists, wedded to the possible.
    “It’s symptomatic of the times,” said Mr. Jay. “The people aren’t used to their government stirring things up. They like America to settle things down. To put out fires, not start them. Senator McCoy looks at us and believes that we’ve caused the problems.”
    Mr. Washington nodded. “Two oceans don’t separate us from the rest of the world like they used to. If we want to protect our interests, we have to act, not react. God didn’t put us on this map to bow and scrape at the hem of every second-rate dictator.”
    “Not problems,” said Mr. Pendleton. “Opportunities. For once, we’re in a position to shape the world in our image. It’s a question of manifest destiny. It’s time we make the most of it.”
    “ ‘You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill cannot be hid,’ ” said Mr. King. A journalist and historian, he had written a Pulitzer prize–winning biography of John Winthrop. At forty, he was the youngest of the group, or the Committee, as they called themselves. Only one man in their history had been younger: Alexander Hamilton, who had founded the club