The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Reviewing these familiar questions, as fascinated as ever by their implications, Jay Doyle could not resist engaging in more literary narcissism. Why was the behavior of the experienced Dallas police force, after the assassination, so disoriented, inconsistent, and baffling? Why did some members of the Dallas police force repeatedly misrepresent or conceal certain evidence, and publicly claim to possess other evidence that they were never able to produce? Why did Sheriff Decker issue an alert to the police five minutes before a single shot was fired? Why did neither the police nor the FBI cover the rear exit of the Depository until twenty minutes after the assassination, and why did they not follow through on the statement of a witness, Worrell, who saw a man leave the rear exit and run away? Why, as Bertrand Russell demanded to know, was Oswald’s description as the murderer of Officer Tippit broadcast over the Dallas police radio at 12:43, when Tippit was not shot until after one o’clock? Why did the Dallas police settle on Oswald’s guilt so fast, and why did they not bother to hunt for possible accomplices along the motorcade route or bother to check airports and train and bus depots for fleeing suspects? Why, after two days of interrogating Oswald, were the Dallas Chief of Police and the FBI unable to furnish a single record or scribbled note of the questions and Oswald’s answers? Why were the medical notes made during the autopsy performed on the President’s corpse at Bethesda Hospital destroyed? Why were 580 files of the Warren Commission records classified as secret, and not shown to the public or to investigators like Doyle himself?

  These were questions that Doyle had put to paper, and there were many more. Perhaps some were important and some were not applicable, Doyle saw, but all of them were mysterious and hence deserved thorough investigations which had never been made. Why was the secondary witness to the murder of Officer Tippit, an auto dealer named Warren Reynolds, himself murderously attacked in his office not long after Kennedy’s death? Why had his attacker’s girl friend, Betty MacDonald, who had worked for Jack Ruby as a striptease dancer, and later, been jailed for a minor cause, finally committed suicide in her cell? Why had thirteen persons who testified before the Warren Commission, or who had some connection with the tragedy in Dallas, as Texas editor Penn Jones, Jr., pointed out, died of murder, suicide, accident, and other unnatural causes within two years after the assassination? Why was Jack Ruby allowed into the Police Department basement at the exact time Oswald was to be brought through there for transfer to the county jail, when even Secret Service agents had to display credentials to enter the basement? Why was Marina Oswald’s sudden prosperity, after the killings, not investigated by the Warren Commission? Why was her business manager, who was said to have known Ruby, introduced to her by the FBI? Why was Marina’s story, the only source for evidence that her husband had once tried to assassinate General Walker, accepted without further question or corroboration?

  Why and why and why?

  Based on his personal researches and investigation, Doyle knew that many other persons, like himself, wondered about the answers and had their suspicions. Some had come to definite conclusions. Léo Sauvage, the American correspondent for the respected Le Figaro of Paris, had written that “it is logically untenable, legally indefensible, and morally unacceptable to assert that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy.” This dissenting judgment, Doyle knew, like so many others, had been based on unanswered questions alone. For Doyle and the world, questions were not enough. One had to have answers—the one big answer, really—and in the world that lay outside the conspiracy Doyle knew that only two persons on earth had the answers—the one big answer, actually. There was Hazel Smith, of course, and there was himself. The two of them, alone, knew that as early as 1961 an international Communist conspiracy was in the making and in 1963 it had been carried off successfully. The conspirators, needing a smoke screen, had worked on Oswald, had cleverly set him up as dupe and scapegoat, had created a series of circumstances that would incriminate him and make his arrest inevitable. Then the conspirators had committed the carefully planned crime themselves and left Oswald holding the gun bag, so to speak. Once Oswald had been arrested, and killed (by accident or plan, Doyle did not know which), the real assassins were safe with their secret.

  They had miscalculated on only two counts: the frailty of all secrets, and the persistence of a journalist of the caliber of Jay Thomas Doyle.

  Squatting on the divan, Doyle had fallen into a state of complete joyous reverie. In his waking dream he visualized his beautifully bound published book. He visualized the worldwide sensation it would create. He saw it as one of those rare books that become earthquakes, upending the minds of men and altering their outlooks forever. It would jolt American complacency, his book would, and kindle the fire of justice in men’s hearts, as had Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Henry Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street. And because of its political revelation, it might shake the world as strongly as had Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, although in a different way. And with its publication, in a single stroke, Doyle would lift himself from the abyss where has-beens dwell to the highest reach and ultimate pinnacle of success, his wealth and influence restored, his name immortalized.

  Doyle realized that an earthly hammering was disturbing his sweet silent daydreaming, and abruptly, his mind stumbled down and back into the here and now. He listened. The sharp knocking on his hotel door had resumed. Laying the precious manuscript aside, Doyle heaved himself to his feet, and then, wondering, he waddled to the door and pulled it open.

  A beardless young bellboy, in a natty bright uniform like that of a cadet, stood in the doorway, offering Doyle a silver tray on which lay a solitary envelope. Digging into his pocket for the tip, Doyle produced a handful of Austrian coins, sorted out five schilling pieces, and handed them to the grateful boy, as he accepted the envelope.

  Closing the door, studying the thin plain envelope marked “For Mr. J. T. Doyle” and “Deliver by hand,” he was apprehensive. Could it be from Sydney Ormsby, canceling their dinner? Could Ormsby have run into a fellow publisher from America who had told him that Doyle’s manuscript was improbable and oft-rejected? Or had Ormsby received an urgent call to go on to Paris or return to London, and could he be sending a message postponing their meeting indefinitely?

  Breathing heavily, nasally, Doyle ripped the envelope open and unfolded the two pages inside, and instantly, his breathing came easier. The first page was a brief note from the manager of Demel’s, one of the world’s foremost confectioners, apologizing for the delay but enclosing the recipe that Doyle had requested for inclusion in his new cookbook. The second page contained the neatly typed recipe for Topfenpalatschin-ken, a sweet pancake dessert that was stuffed with a toothsome cottage-cheese mixture. The reading of the recipe had a Pavlovian effect on Doyle. His mouth watered. And then he hated himself for this, this weakness, and for how that damn recipe symbolized his present station in life.

  Angrily, he made his way back to the divan, trying to avoid looking at his manuscript, The Conspirators Who Killed Kennedy, as he went directly to his bulging briefcase. Searching the back of it, he tugged out the thick manila folder, as overstuffed as he himself, with its tab reading notes and recipes for cookbook. Opening the folder, he tried to avoid the title page but could not, and so had to read again, The Old World’s Best New Recipes—by Jay Thomas Doyle.

  Quickly, Doyle flipped through the English and French recipes and notes on restaurants already collected, and reached the Austrian section, into which he shoved the Demel’s dessert recipe. He was about to close the manila folder when a page slipped out. Lifting it from the divan, Doyle saw that it was his epigraph for the cookbook. It read: “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star,” and, typed beneath the quotation, the source, Brillat-Savarin. Blushing at the frivolity of it, and at his degradation in having committed himsel
f to the project, Doyle shoved the offending page back into the folder and jammed the folder as far back in his briefcase as he could.

  Standing there motionless before the divan, he was filled with intense hatred for the cookbook and with complete self-loathing. He could not imagine how he had ever descended to this, but in reality he knew.

  His syndicated column had been at its height when, in fatigues and combat boots, he had been able to cover violent events firsthand—the police action in Korea, the Hungarian revolt several years later, the Algerian convulsion in 1960, the blockade of Cuba, the early part of the Vietnam conflict—and to report colorfully on them and to philosophize about their importance for Everyman. But as small conflicts in unpronounceable areas replaced actual wars, and as these conflicts began to repeat themselves monotonously, the reading public, despite the entreaties of the Department of State, began to identify with them less and less, lost interest and became bored, and so, too, had they gradually become bored with Doyle’s column. As he lost newspapers and readership, Doyle began to eat compulsively, and then quite naturally, not only as a diversion for his readers but because eating had become his main interest, he began to write occasional pieces about the food and restaurants in exotic places. When finally, he lost his column, there were still loyal magazine editors who remembered his most recent writings about food and assigned him articles to write on gastronomy. Then, recently, a book publisher had suggested the cookbook, offering a reasonable cash advance and a travel-expense account, and Doyle, still smarting from the rejections of his assassination manuscript, had succumbed to the cookbook project and the cash advance.

  A little short of a month ago, he had arrived in Europe to eat, to write about his culinary experiences, and to earn enough for his immediate self-support and his eventual Moscow trip. But frustration had turned him into a glutton, ever indulging his digestive tract, ever living beyond his expense account and his means. By now he knew that while the dreadful cookbook would keep him alive, it would not bring him one inch closer to Hazel and the solution of his magnum opus.

  It was shameful, he knew, that one as talented as himself, who had told the world of the recapture of Seoul, who had interviewed General MacArthur after President Truman had relieved him of his Far East command, who had dissected the Puerto Rican nationalists after they had turned their guns loose in the House of Representatives, who had marched with Fidel Castro in the take-over of Cuba, and fought with guerrillas in Laos, it was shameful that he was reduced to hacking out monstrously calorific recipes to include in a gift book for overweight housewives. It distressed him that the renowned standing head of his column “Inside and Straight,” once read and admired by Presidents, would soon be cheapened by its appearance on the jacket of a cookbook. He did not belong here in Vienna this week, consorting with pompous Herr Obers and beefy chefs in steaming kitchens of overexpensive restaurants. He belonged, this moment, in Paris, there consorting with statesmen and interviewing the Ministers and Heads of State of Soviet Russia, Great Britain, France, the United States, and the People’s Republic of China, who were assembling in the magnificent Palais Rose to save the world or see its ending, now that intractable China was in possession of the devastating neutron bomb.

  On the verge of sinking into a depressive mood, Doyle was rescued and lifted upward by the remembrance of what he had almost forgotten—that a savior named Sydney Ormsby had come to this city to join with him in a common cause. By midnight tonight Doyle would have bountiful support for his crusade, would be able to abandon the damned cookbook and return the advance payment for it, and with his new ally’s riches be able to go forward to ultimate victory and greatness. Remembering Ormsby, Doyle was reminded that he had forgotten the hour completely. He looked at his travel clock. There were only twenty minutes left before his appointment. He must not affront a patron by being tardy, and this fear galvanized him into action.

  Quickly, Doyle stripped down to his plaid shorts. Then, rushing into the bathroom, he took up his electric razor, removed the shadows from the vast expanses of his moon face, washed it, dried it, wet his hair, combed, doused himself with lotion and cologne. In the wardrobe he found a crisp monogrammed Italian shirt, and once he had it on, he examined his three pressed suits. The first, he decided, had the rubbed shine that reflected failure, and he returned it to the hanger. The second, his favorite, had, here and there, the faint but permanent stains of food on the coat front and upper trousers, the sartorial scars of countless engagements with vinegar-and-olive-oil dressings, demiglace, mayonnaise, Bearnaise sauce, marinades, Worcestershire, that no cleaner could remove. Reluctantly, Doyle returned this suit, also, to its hanger. One garment remained, the custom-made suit tailored in Rome for his appearance at the Zurich Parley four years ago. It was fresh and spotless because he had outgrown it and wore it infrequently. It would fit him like a scuba diver’s wet suit and cause him much discomfort, providing no room for his stomach to expand during dinner, but it would make him appear prosperous and independent. There was no choice. He must sacrifice his comfort for this protective armor.

  When he was ready, the relentless hands of the clock conceded him nine minutes to rendezvous. Taking up the folder that held his manuscript, slipping it into a wafer-thin imitation-leather portfolio, Doyle hastened out of the room.

  Once outside the hotel, standing splendid but constricted beneath the canopy of the Imperial, he decided that the distance to the Hotel Sacher restaurant was short enough to make it on foot within the time left him. Waving off a taxi, he proceeded up the broad Kärtnerring, appreciating the promisingly warm and soothing night air. When he reached Vienna’s main thoroughfare, Kartnerstrasse, he turned right, joining the crowds waiting for the light to change, then going with them. In short fast strides, hardly aware of the massive dark pile of the State Opera House that filled a square block across the way, ignoring the lure of the shops—except for the distracting aroma of hot sausages and onion that came from one tiny Gastwirtschaft, which teased after him briefly—Doyle reached the corner unhindered. Swinging left, he darted between taxis and bicycles with the grace of a dancing bear to the opposite side of the busy Kartnerstrasse. Presently, gasping for oxygen, he slowed past the outdoor café terrace and arrived at 4 Philharmonikerstrasse, the canopied entrance leading into the shabbily regal three-story hostelry of the Hapsburgs, the Hotel Sacher, and its restaurant inside.

  Pausing to pull himself together, then gripping his portfolio as tightly as if it contained a winning lottery ticket, Jay Doyle entered the hotel lobby and continued to the restaurant anteroom with its gallery of photographs autographed by Romberg, Lehár, the Duke of Windsor, and countless uniformed hussars.

  He was pleased when the captain recognized him immediately and greeted him with “Willkommen, Herr Doyle.”

  “Guten Abend,” Doyle replied in his self-conscious German. Like so many old-time opera bassos, whose only knowledge of foreign languages was confined to memorized lyrics, Doyle was ill at ease with German, French, Italian, except where they related to special dishes and drinks, and then his use of these languages and his accent were confident and unfaltering.

  Pleased that he was known from his two previous visits to Sacher’s when he had interviewed the restaurant’s management and its chefs for his cookbook, and sampled the haute cuisine (at a generous discount), he reverted to English. “I’m expecting an important guest, the English publisher, Mr. Sydney Ormsby,” said Doyle. “I hope he hasn’t arrived before me.”

  “No, not yet, Herr Doyle. But I promise you, everything will be perfection. May I show you to your table?”

  “I guess so. I’ll wait for him there.”

  Following the captain through the long, narrow, red-carpeted and red-draped Marmorsaal dining room, sparkling with its circular chandeliers and its silver service and white damask tablecloths, sedate yet lively with its wealthy tourists and well-dressed Viennese couples (the old intimacy of another day still in the air, a day when archdukes met their mistr
esses from the opera ballet in this room), Doyle felt reassured that he had selected the best setting for his appointment.

  Seated at a table beside the marble wall, his precious portfolio propped next to him, he refused a drink, fiddled with his napkin, half listened to the lulling soft music, his eyes constantly on the dining room entrance. Briefly, his attention roamed to a young, attractive, pert Austrian brunette, being affectionate to her companion, an obviously affluent older man, and briefly, Doyle suffered an aching nostalgia for his own affluent past. When he turned away and looked ahead, he realized that the captain was approaching, nodding, closely followed by a surprisingly short young man, with the young-old face of a jockey, who was fingering his drooping incongruous mustache and swinging an umbrella cane.