by Anna Porter
Minutes of the most recent meeting were dated March 15, Nassau. On that day, it was agreed that they would authorize an approach to the USSR with a proposition: if they were to guarantee a continuation of their efforts, would the Soviet Union, given a free hand in Western Europe, guarantee, in return, a safe, though isolated, United States?
“Well?” Ferenc inquired.
“I haven’t read it all yet,” Marsha said.
“Of course you haven’t,” Ferenc said. “But you’ve read enough to know that it’s worth the money I’m asking.”
“Yes,” Marsha said. Sure, there would be some legal questions, some more documents to produce, but the story had to be published. There were still some strong newspapers left that would run with it, there would be major TV coverage, people would listen. The three men would be exposed. “But the last three publishers who said yes to this manuscript all died.”
“Please, Marsha, I’m an expert at survival. I assure you, had I known what Harris was up to, he and the others would still be alive.”
He had emerged from the shadows and stood over her.
“Trust me. You have nothing to fear, as long as you follow my instructions.”
“How did you get all these documents?”
He put his slim index finger in front of his mouth for quiet and said, “Trade secrets, my dear. We all have them.”
“And if our legal people need more?”
“I will provide whatever they need, though I think you will find them satisfied with this.”
“It could have been faked.”
“It could. But then you wouldn’t have to pay the money. Such are the terms—all in your favor.” He smiled. “You will have five hours to read it more carefully on your way home. First, though, in the interests of your personal safety, you have three telephone calls to make.”
He waved his hand at his assistants, who instantly came to life. One unplugged a telephone near the entrance and brought it to Marsha. He lifted the underside of the phone, inserted a small black device, put the cover back on, then plugged the phone into a nearby jack.
Ferenc lifted the receiver, listened, and replaced it. Marsha waited.
“You are going to phone Judith Hayes, Larry Shapiro, and Peter Burnett. The first with a message for the RCMP to guarantee your safety, the second for the contract, the third to ensure our friends believe you are staying in London.”
PART FIVE New York
Twenty-Eight
JUDITH WOKE WITH her arms around Jezebel and the telephone. The series of locks on Marsha’s door had seemed, finally, comforting.
On the way to the airport in Toronto there had been a Ford wagon keeping pace with them through the traffic, all the way to the airport. Judith had made no attempt to shake it. They had wanted her to take a holiday—she was following instructions.
Once on the 401, as the road opened up on all sides, she had managed to glance at his face in the rearview mirror. He had shiny black hair, small busy eyes, a pale expressionless face, unlined. He might have been in his early thirties. The fur collar was rolled up close around his thin neck—he must have been chilled after an all-night vigil in the car.
Now ensconced in Marsha’s apartment, she rubbed her cheek where it had pushed against the antique pattern on the dining room table. It had left a soft damp mark on the polished top. Jezebel stretched with a shiver, her open claws sliding into the crystal ashtray full of Rothmans butts. Judith stared at the white phone, hazy in the April light, and tried to remember everything Marsha had said this morning on the phone from London, the exact arrangement of her words. Marsha had asked her to repeat her instructions in the specific order she had chosen; her voice had been flat and unemotional. The essence of her message was that both she and Judith were in danger unless her instructions were followed. She would not engage in conversation, except to ask how the children were coping with the trip to New York. She sounded as though she had rehearsed her end of the dialogue and would not veer from the prepared text. Even her one small joke about shopping had been carefully phrased. Judith would have to think about that.
Meanwhile, if it was precision Marsha wanted, it was precision she would get. Any hidden agenda could wait.
She plugged in the kettle, ladled out Jezebel’s foul-smelling fishy rations, checked the street through the window, the door for signs of attempted entry, the children, her map of the New York City underground, her American cash and two credit cards.
After the second cup of coffee she was ready to call David. At 12:05, the police receptionist had claimed, Detective Inspector Parr would be at his desk.
He seemed delighted to hear her voice.
“God, woman, where the hell have you been?” he shouted. “I was beginning to think I’d gone mad. Only imagined you were real. I’ve scoured the whole damned city looking for you. Your answering service doesn’t even ask who’s calling any more—we’ve become buddies.”
“I’m sorry, David. I left rather suddenly.”
“Suddenly? You mean like a bloody mirage. Now you see me, now you don’t. You might at least have given me a tiny hint.”
“There wasn’t time.” Her script hadn’t suggested she wait for him to explain about his loose-skinned driver, but she gave him a second anyway.
“There wasn’t?” he yelled, ignoring his opportunity. “Why?”
Was he testing her to see if, despite their warning, she would tell?
“Marsha called. I had to be in her apartment by 4:00. She’s arranged for the walls to be ripped out, and she can’t be here to supervise. In New York you never leave your walls in the hands of strangers. She couldn’t come herself. You see, she’s found the manuscript. The one everyone else has been after. She’s staying in London while it’s set in type, and printed. When you consider what happened to the other publishers…”
“What’s in it?” he interrupted.
“The manuscript?”
“Yes, goddammit. What’s in the manuscript?”
“The story of three guys who want to save the world, so they trade it to the Russians.”
Pause.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. That’s the story. Marsha says it’ll be the instant-book sensation of the year. She’s worked out the mechanics; even had copies of the script lodged with six separate lawyers for her own protection. In another day the presses roll and she’ll come out of hiding.”
“Who are these guys?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Did she say how the hell she got the thing?”
“From the man who wrote it.”
“You’re being rather tight-lipped, aren’t you? Remember we were partners? That was your idea, right? Now who the hell wrote it?”
“He calls himself The Dealer. That’s all I know.”
“You’re going to need some protection. I’ll get the RCMP to help. It’s their case now. They took me off today. Loud noises from Ottawa. Security and all that stuff. Apparently they knew about Harris all along, but there have been bigger fish to fry… I had to drop the investigation. And only this morning we caught up with Marlene Little. She was on her way to Argentina to meet her boyfriend. Seems he left her with a wad of money.”
“What are the charges?”
“We have her in for questioning, that’s all. How long will you stay down there?”
“I don’t know. A few days. While the walls come down and go back up. We’ll do the sights…”
“Are you all right, Judith?”
“I’m fine. Really.” She had practiced saying that.
“You sound so remote.”
“I’ve been worried about Marsha,” Judith said, lighting another cigarette.
“And I worry about you. I want you where I can keep an eye on you myself.”
“Why?” Judith asked suspiciously.
“What do you mean why, stupid? Haven’t I told you already?”
That was all she needed for the tears to start.
“
Must run now…”
“Judith?”
“Uhhum.”
“Your address and phone number. Can’t have you drop out of sight again.”
Judith struggled through the number, choked goodbye and hung up. She hurried to the kitchen for a refill of coffee, and more tears—long wet sobs.
When the phone rang a few minutes later, she didn’t reach for it.
She rinsed her face with cold water and let it run over her hands for a while. She would have to pull herself together. There were three people relying on her judgment and ingenuity—Anne, Jimmy and Marsha, the people she loved the most. And so she would focus on the immediate, the practical: she needed someone she could trust, who would make Toronto safe again, and she needed cash.
She phoned Allan Goodman in Ottawa. She didn’t let herself be put off by the secretary.
“An urgent personal matter,” she had told her. “Untie him.” And Allan made it easy. When she told him she needed money, he offered to wire her a loan. “Same day, low interest,” he joked. When she told him why she was in New York and why she hadn’t asked the police for help, he listened. When she told him about The Dealer’s manuscript and what Marsha said it contained he didn’t laugh. He knew who The Dealer was. He would go through the Minister of Justice’s department and cash in some favors with the RCMP. “Then I’ll come straight to New York. I haven’t seen a Broadway show in years.”
Judith went into Marsha’s guest room. The children were sleeping—still exhausted by their ordeal, and this morning’s early start.
“Perfect timing for their school,” her mother had intoned. “I suppose you worked out what you’re going to do when Jimmy flunks his examinations and has to repeat the year?”
Judith hadn’t.
Jimmy lay on his back, his arms flung over his head, wrists crossed, fingers curved gently, graceful as a dancer. A lock of hair fell softly across his face. His lips opened to reveal a set of perfect teeth, the orthodontist’s masterpiece. Three years of all their savings, but it had been worth it.
Anne slept curled around her pillow like a cat. Her long thick hair spread out behind her in a dark cloud. The slim line of her hip still betrayed the child she had barely left behind.
With a sense of parental usefulness, Judith pulled their sheets up to cover them. She drew the curtains across the open window, then sat on the woven rope rug between the two beds. For a long, long time she listened to them breathe.
Twenty-Nine
MARSHA FOUND SHE had been booked on the 3:00 p.m. Concorde under the name of Angela Schwarz. The choice of name attested to Ferenc’s strange sense of humor. The adventure had begun at F.A.O. Schwarz.
“The black angel,” he explained, “was the brightest and best of all his tribe. He was a natural leader, and a gambler. Or haven’t you read Milton?”
“Wouldn’t you say he took one too many chances?”
“Depends on your version of what’s in Paradise. Harp music is an acquired taste.”
The passport was American and carried her own birthdate. Place of birth: Brooklyn—eyes and hair black. The photograph was definitely herself, though she would not have given it a second glance in a line-up. The shiny shoulder-length hair and fringe framed a face reminiscent of the early Elizabeth Taylor.
“Who is this?” Marsha had asked.
“Angela Schwarz. We used your old passport photo, some skillful retouching, and a couple of props.” The woman pulled a black wig from her coat, began to brush it. Ferenc gave Marsha a small plastic container with soft, dark-colored contact lenses. “It would generally take days to become accustomed to these, but you won’t have to wear them more than twice. Just in the airport and when you leave the plane. On the plane itself you can switch to these glasses.” He handed her a blue, pearl-embroidered spectacles case. They were plain glass, tinted to a fashionable dark gray.
To complete the disguise she would be traveling with a matching set of Samsonite luggage, small, elegant and filled with clothes, toilet articles, a couple of inexpensive mementos from Littlewoods. The clothes were worn. All labels had been removed.
“You’ve been fairly confident we would go along with your proposition,” Marsha remarked.
“You’ve shown unusual tenacity in your pursuit of the manuscript. The financial details you’ve known since Schwarz’s. If M & A had the money, it was only a question of delivering the article.”
Marsha had been amazed at Larry’s reaction to The Dealer’s proposition. She had expected him to protest about the amount, and the need to trust Marsha’s judgment that the property was indeed worth $1.2 million. She had given him only a sketchy outline of what the manuscript contained, without the names of the three protagonists (Ferenc had insisted on that). He had agreed to have the first check prepared and the contracts drafted. They would be deposited at the First City Bank, after Larry had seen the manuscript himself. The check could not be cashed until Ferenc Jozsef had signed the contracts and returned them. As Larry saw it, he wasn’t taking much of a chance. He’d had a slow week, several boring executive meetings, and he was enjoying the intrigue.
Everything would be ready for Marsha at 4:00 p.m. the next day, and he would tell no one she was coming back early. He agreed to circulate a memorandum saying she would be staying in London another week. He would gear up the machine to produce an instant book and alert both company lawyers to stand by. If all went according to plan, they would have books distributed by the end of next week—a day longer than Stevenson’s Entebbe book had taken, but Bantam had been able to solicit advance orders. M & A would have to forgo telling bookstores and wholesalers what the book was about. They would distribute the first 200,000 copies without orders and prepare for a massive demand on the reprint. A first printing of only 200,000 wouldn’t arouse suspicion in the plant—unless someone was expecting the book to surface in New York.
The calls to Judith and Peter, Ferenc said, ensured that BREAD’s agents would be looking for her in London. They would be watching lawyers’ offices, typesetting houses, plants with fast-moving web presses.
“Once you have published,” Ferenc said, “it will serve no purpose to kill you. They are not interested in revenge. They are murderers by necessity, not persuasion.”
They had left the National Gallery through a basement door, and were now traveling by car, a black sedan with glass between the driver and the passengers. The two men in trench coats sat in front, one of them openly displaying a handgun on his lap.
The woman crouched opposite Marsha on a low, pull-out seat. She had removed her horn-rimmed glasses and her tiny eyes darted from side to side, watching the street, paying attention to every car. When she was satisfied the wig had been brushed to perfection, she rested it on her knee. Her other hand reached, once more, inside her coat. Marsha wondered if she too carried a gun.
“And you?” Marsha asked Ferenc. “Do you kill by persuasion?”
“Good god, no,” he laughed. “I am strictly a professional. I operate a system based on supply and demand, purely pragmatic. I subscribe to no ideologies. I abhor nationalism, communism, idealism of any kind. It’s the zealots you have to beware of. I am a businessman. My product, information, is easily transportable, requires little space, cuts across national boundaries. Its value does not rise and fall with the Dow Jones, or with depression, inflation and monetary crisis. Its value increases with the level of insecurity felt by the buyer. I deal with banks, international corporations, oil companies, commodity traders, and some intelligence agencies.”
“Why didn’t you sell this information to one of them?”
“Because I want to see it published. The agencies would pay but they would not publish. They would use the information, but the poison would continue to spread. The Western world deserves a chance to make its own decisions—good or bad.”
Something didn’t add up. Though Marsha had grown accustomed to his florid manner of speaking, the explanation seemed too elaborate. She glanced to see if he w
as smiling his mocking half-smile. He wasn’t. He stared out the one-way window, relaxed but completely serious, his thin mouth slightly open.
His tanned hand rested on Marsha’s arm. Slim fingers, long simian thumb, tiny tufts of black hair. His nails were flat ovals. The thin signet ring on his middle finger displayed a round green stone. Marsha leaned closer to see what its markings were.
“It is rather old-fashioned,” he said. “The lion in the center signifies power, the snake around his feet cunning. The scythe around the lion’s head warns of the proximity of death.”
“Very cheerful,” Marsha said. “Did you have it engraved?”
“No. I inherited it from my mother. She, in turn, removed it from the finger of a sleeping nobleman. Rampant lions were customary rewards for sons of the nobility who relished fighting in wars. My family tradition does not run to wars or to causes. We were…wanderers.” He gazed at Marsha. “Your father was a great believer in causes. A man of honor and distinction.”
As they neared Heathrow, he once more reassured her that her own belongings would be packed and moved out of Green’s. The bill would be paid. The suitcases, with her name on them, would fly to New York the end of the week. By then it should be safe for her to collect them. Her remaining London appointments would be canceled. The two bodyguards would accompany her onto the plane and to the hotel they had booked in her new name near La Guardia. They would stay with her throughout the next six days.
Fortunately, he had agreed that she could buy a couple of decent dresses to survive the week. Whoever her new wardrobe had belonged to, she said she had no desire to wear the clothes.
The wig was loose but not uncomfortable. She could hold it in place with two of her own hairpins. The contact lenses were more of a problem. Several times she dropped them, before managing to insert them into tear-filled eyes. The woman gave her a box of tissues.
“You could pretend you have a bad cold. A lot of people do in April.” That was the first time she had spoken since she had ushered Marsha into her master’s presence.