The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Earnshaw wanted his brandy desperately, but he knew that his hand would not be steady. His cheeks were hot and his lungs parched. “You mean, Austin, you really give this—this thing by Goerlitz—credence?”

  “Emmett, I’m at a loss. I can only tell you what I’ve read and seen.”

  “Where is it, that stuff your man sent you? Do you have it on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see it, please.”

  Sir Austin’s hand had already gone to the pocket of his dinner jacket. He tugged out a folded envelope, straightened it, and removed what appeared to be four or five sheets of paper. “The synopsis,” he said, “and a sampling of the documentation attached.”

  Earnshaw took the sheets, pushed himself to his feet, and circled to the desk for his spare reading glasses. Hooking them on, he stood beside the desk and read the synopsis of the Goerlitz memoirs in silence. When he was done, he examined the photocopies. Two were reproductions of the last pages of official White House documents, plainly orders for goods from the Goerlitz Industriebau to be shipped to Albania and thence to Shanghai. Both of these last pages were signed by Emmett A. Earnshaw, President of the United States.

  After a while, dazed, he slowly shambled toward Sir Austin, aware that his English friend was watching him closely, and he prodded the velvet footstool toward the fireplace and sat down on it. He wanted to dispatch his mind back through a corridor of memory, but it would not move because the corridor was dark. Looking at the signed documents again with unseeing eyes, he wanted to protest that these signatures had been forged, but he knew in his heart that they were his own, they were authentic, they were his autographs.

  “Yes,” he said at last, “these are my signatures.” He dropped the papers on the chair he had vacated and he swung back to Sir Austin. “I—I can’t remember signing them. Certainly, this is not the sort of thing I would sign. But evidently, I did, unless it is the most adroit forgery on earth, which I doubt.”

  “There must be some explanation,” said Sir Austin softly. “You read in the synopsis—Goerlitz charges that you had abdicated the Presidency to your adviser—let him go off on his own in foreign affairs—and that either he persuaded you to come along on Chinese loans or deceived you into signing these orders.”

  “No.” He thought about Simon Madlock, then added, “He never tried to persuade me on any subject about which I was reluctant to be persuaded. And he—he never deceived me.”

  “But, Emmett—”

  “Only one possibility comes to mind. There were so many papers to sign in those days, and sometimes I was so sick of it, that I signed whatever was placed before me. I plead guilty to—to that—to disinterest in detail. But not in important matters. On vital decisions, I always had the problems screened, evaluated first, and had Simon brief me—but I don’t recall any briefing on this business, except that we had kicked around our views on Red China, how to handle the Chinese—yes—and while not in the same context, Simon had mentioned Goerlitz—or—or maybe it was in relation to this and I wasn’t attentive, and maybe he had assumed that I was agreeable and so he went ahead—and that might be how I signed this with hundreds of other papers.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.” Absently, he reached for his brandy and drank.

  “Well, there it is,” Sir Austin said quietly. “You know you are innocent, and I know you are, but there it is on paper, and once it is out in a bound book, out for the world to see, you will be undeservedly damaged. You’ll have no legal case against Goerlitz. You can’t enjoin publication of the book or demand a retraction. You can only make explanations to the press. As a publisher, I can tell you that won’t be enough. Your political enemies at home will seize upon this to cover their own sins, make you the scapegoat responsible, in large part, for China’s being a nuclear threat and for any difficulties arising at this Summit meeting. You must be ready for that, Emmett.”

  He nodded wearily, his mind unable to concentrate. He wanted extra minds to supplant his own poor mind, Isabel’s or Simon Madlock’s, but he was alone. “Yes,” he said finally, “I can see what will happen. I dread it. I dread it more than anything that’s come up in years. But I don’t know what I can do.”

  “You can stop it,” Sir Austin said firmly. “You can stop it from being published.” He jumped to his feet and stood over Earnshaw. “That is the only course you can follow. You have no other choice. None.”

  Earnshaw was confused. “I—I don’t understand.”

  Sir Austin had walked to the center of the sitting room. Suddenly, he wheeled around. “Dr. Dietrich von Goerlitz is in Paris. He arrived in Paris this morning. He’s at the Ritz Hotel. He is going to be in Paris a week and a half. I have my pipelines, you know, both as Foreign Secretary and as a publisher, and this I’ve learned. Goerlitz is in Paris for two reasons—first, to meet with some of the Chinese Communist delegates, to sign final contracts with them for a nuclear reactor plant and a prefabricated city that his engineers are going to construct for the Chinese, a complex for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, that sort of thing—and second, instead of waiting for the Frankfurt Book Fair, he is going to turn his memoirs over to a French literary agent, who will negotiate international publication rights with foreign publishers gathering in Paris. You must prevent the release of the memoirs in their present form, Emmett. This you must do.”

  Earnshaw rocked on the footstool and finished the last of his brandy. “I want to prevent it,” he said helplessly. “But I don’t know how.”

  “By canceling your trip to Scandinavia and going to Paris instead. By going to Goerlitz and having it out with him, man to man—you are old friends, after all—give your explanation, the other half of the truth, and persuade him to modify or drop that chapter about you. I know you can succeed in doing this. You have a relationship with him. You have enormous prestige. And—let’s be perfectly honest, Emmett—you have great natural charm, and when you wish to, you can melt steel into liquid. It’s the one sensible solution left you, Emmett. Paris.”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You can’t equivocate about this. If you care one iota about your future, your place in history, you must go. I know your situation in America, what the opposition has tried to do to you. But you’ve started to overcome them. Your Library. Your autobiography. Your coming here to receive the Order of the British Empire. All the right steps, in the right direction. But all wasted if you falter now. However, once you’ve seen Goerlitz in Paris—”

  Earnshaw interrupted. “Surely, Austin, as a Government Minister, you can see the impropriety of it. The elected President of the United States is in Paris, representing every American, as he convenes with the world powers. To have a former President arrive, uninvited, unannounced, a former President who once advocated different policies, might be inhibiting to him, certainly a terrible embarrassment. And it could be—could be embarrassing for me—”

  “I understand. Still, there are times when we must ignore protocol and even personal feelings. You could slip in quietly, stay a day or two, see Goerlitz privately, slip right out again, and resume your Scandinavian jaunt.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy,” Earnshaw protested. “The President would have to know that I was there, underfoot. The press would know. I can’t tell you how I’d hate that. You—you don’t entirely understand the background.”

  He fumbled for his used cigar. Then, beginning to light it, he saw Sir Austin shrug and walk to the liquor cabinet for another gin-and-tonic. Miserably puffing at his soggy cigar, Earnshaw tried to examine the protocol barriers that stood between him and such a Paris visit.

  Then he realized, in honesty, that it was not protocol that made him resist the suggestion of Paris, but rather his deep resentment of the incumbent President of the United States. Pursuing this resentment, he fastened on one incident that had occurred about four weeks ago. Before that incident, one of the President’s staff, one of the few who had been held over from Earnshaw’s own term in office, “happened
” to be in the vicinity of Rancho Santa Fe and had called upon him. Casually, the President’s aide had leaked out the privileged information that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, due to mounting infirmities, would resign by autumn. The President was casting about for an American of stature to fill the expected vacancy. It had been an obvious “feeler.” Although Earnshaw had concurred as to the importance of the high seat on the highest bench in the United States, he had been otherwise noncommittal. When the unofficial emissary had departed, Earnshaw felt that the emissary would report to his leader that the ex-President was receptive.

  Earnshaw had not known how receptive he really was, disliking as he did the responsibilities of decision that every Chief Justice must assume, yet being attracted by the honor of such an appointment and by the fact that such a role might revive him in the public eye.

  Four weeks ago, there had come the telephone summons inviting him to call upon the President at the White House.

  Such courtesies had been rare in recent years, and Earnshaw agreed without hesitation to see the President. At first, he had thought that the President wished to see him to tender him the seat on the bench. Later, he had decided that this would be premature, and another reason for the White House invitation had suggested itself. The Five-Power Summit Conference in Paris was forthcoming. American public opinion was divided, mostly along party lines, on whether to trust the People’s Republic of China in any international disarmament agreement. Aware of this, the Peking delegates would appear in Paris feeling assured that the American imperialists, being divided in their feelings, would more readily make compromises and concessions. Therefore, the President had invited the elder statesman from the opposition party in order to offer him a position on the American delegation to the Summit. With a former President and a current President seated side-by-side at the bargaining table, America would present a solid, unshakable front at the Summit, and Chinese arrogance and rigidity would be reduced to reasonableness. This had been the sense of it to Earnshaw, and the chance to serve again, help his country, restore his name, had excited him. He had flown to Washington in high spirits.

  To his surprise and gratification, his return to the capital city had been widely covered by the press. Once inside the Oval Office of the West Wing, he had felt not nostalgia but the stimulation of being in the center of power (such as he had not felt when he himself had been the occupant of Hoban’s elliptic room). The Rose Garden, visible through the French doors to his left, had been in full bloom, and through the windows behind the incumbent President’s desk, he had been able to see that the white birches planted during his own term had grown considerably.

  Best of all, the President, usually remote and formal, had been almost affable. Disarmed by his hospitable reception, Earnshaw had been relaxed and loquacious. They had discussed many matters, mostly of little consequence. When the President had begun to discuss a recent case tried before the Supreme Court, Earnshaw had waited with wonder. But the President had made no mention of the forthcoming vacancy on the bench, and Earnshaw, while a trifle surprised, had not been disappointed, for it had been too early for that.

  When the incumbent President had at last come to the subject of the Summit conference, Earnshaw eagerly awaited the invitation. The President had gone into the agenda, the obstacles that must be overcome if a nuclear disarmament agreement among the five powers was to be achieved, and then he had said that the American delegation would need all the wisdom available to make this critical meeting a success. With this in mind, he had brought the former President here to sound him out on his views on several of the disarmament schemes and on the trustworthiness of the ruling Communist Chinese hierarchy.

  Enthusiastically and at great length, out of his knowledge and experience, Earnshaw had discoursed on these grave matters. But gradually, and then certainly, after ten minutes, Earnshaw had realized that the restless President was hardly listening to him, was, in fact, rudely inattentive. The moment that Earnshaw had finished, the President had stood up, briskly thanked him, and buzzed for the photographers to be sent into the Oval Office.

  It was then, posing beside his successor in the midst of the carnival of cameras and exploitation, that the truth behind this confrontation had struck Earnshaw. He had not been invited to the White House to receive an appointment as a delegate to the Summit. It had not even been mentioned, as the Supreme Court vacancy had not been mentioned. He had not been brought here to offer advice to the one who must represent their beloved country in a Summit that would determine the future of man on this planet. He had been brought here to be used—politically manipulated—brought here merely to pose for the photographers, to give the partisan President a bipartisan, Great-White-Father-of-all-Americans look before he went to Paris.

  Leaving the Oval Office, Earnshaw had never felt more rejected and angry, and the humiliation of the incident rankled still in his memory.

  Now, in this London hotel suite, conscious of Sir Austin Ormsby settling in the chair across from him, Earnshaw was forced to shake his head vigorously. “No, Austin, I doubt if I could go to Paris while the President is there at the same time. There are circumstances that you—you are not aware of.”

  “If it has something to do with your pride, Emmett,” the Foreign Secretary said shrewdly, “I’d suggest you put pride aside. You’d be less wounded right now than you will be in the near future if you permit that chapter to remain in Goerlitz’s memoirs. How your successor feels about you, or you feel about him, is simply of no account at this time. All that matters is Goerlitz and how he feels—”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s it, after all,” Earnshaw conceded. And then he understood fully that his deepest hidden resistance to Paris was not the presence of the incumbent Chief Executive but the presence of the German industrialist. Earnshaw realized that he had been evading his real fear, and he determined to speak forthrightly of it. “I must be as honest as possible with you, Austin. Otherwise, my reluctance to try to save myself may make no sense to you. You see, if my fate is in the hands of Dr. Dietrich von Goerlitz, then I don’t think I can save myself. The whole Paris detour would be a foolhardy waste of time.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that Goerlitz would have every reason not to cooperate with me in any way. His view of it would be that I had refused to help him in a moment of need, and now, shoe on the other foot, he’d have no reason to help me. Goerlitz has an unsentimental barter mentality. He’d trade favors. That he might do. But I have no favors to exchange. You see, when they finally indicted him as a war criminal, on some flaky evidence—questionable evidence in terms of his personal participation in the Nazi cause—well, Goerlitz was desperate for character references, that is, from personages of standing. He appealed to me privately, in two communications, asking that I speak up for him at the trial, by affidavit or as a witness, to affirm to the best of my knowledge that he had never been an active Nazi. Well, dammit, Austin, I was being considered for President, and I couldn’t make up my mind about helping him. I wasn’t sure if he had been a Nazi or not. And—well, I wasn’t sure how my standing up beside him would affect my candidacy. I kept debating it in my mind, and before I could decide, well, the trial was over and he was found guilty and sentenced. I guess I—uh—I never got back to him, and I’d say, just from his tone in his memoirs, he’s never forgotten that. And there’s more, Austin. After a while, Goerlitz’s attorney approached our Government to instigate pardon proceedings. I was in the White House then. And you know, I couldn’t decide, and so Goerlitz’s attorney gave up waiting for me and turned to the Russians. And for their own reasons, to utilize Goerlitz’s industrial genius, the Russians agreed that he should be pardoned, and they put on pressure and he was pardoned. Well, there you are, and I won’t say I’m proud of my equivocating, but those are the facts. Now, how do you think Goerlitz will feel about seeing me in Paris and—and giving me a hand?”

  Sir Austin contemplated the highball glass
that he had been twisting in his fingers. “I think he’ll be tough, hard as nails, but I think he’ll give in.”

  “You do?”

  Sir Austin looked up. “Yes, I do. All right, you are one of the people he hates. He’s put them all down, myself included, and got all the venom out of his system. That’s done. Now you come to him, and in a manner of speaking, you humble yourself before him. You bare your soul. You admit to your mistakes. In effect, you concede his present power over you. This gives him a sort of divinity. Alexander Pope, you know: ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’ This has got to soften the old Prussian, Emmett. And then you explain the facts behind those documents he wants to publish, how they do not represent the entire truth of your personal behavior in the Presidency or your policy as President, and how they would be misinterpreted. That would give him a new view of the whole chapter. I’d wager he would revise and modify the chapter, perhaps drop it altogether.”

  “You’re persuasive, Austin. You make it seem almost possible.”

  “I think it is possible.” Sir Austin stood up. “And even if it seems impossible, I’d urge you to try. No man on earth can afford a low blow like this against his reputation. You must make every effort to defend yourself, as if your very survival is at stake.”

  Earnshaw ground his cigar butt into the glass tray. He rose to his feet, smiling wanly at his English friend. “Well, I don’t know if there’s enough left of me to be worth defending. I don’t know if it’s worth going to Paris to face a humiliation and a defeat—if I wouldn’t be better off to go on to Scandinavia and then creep back to California and let happen what may. History determines its own flow. I’m not sure any individual can change that flow.”