The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Hastily leaving Harry’s Bar, Brennan made his way to the busy San Marco station. Ignoring the gondoliers, he sought a motorboat for hire, and soon found one. Stepping down into it, he asked the pilot to take him to the railway depot as speedily as possible. He received the usual complaints in Italian about the traffic regulations, nodded patiently, and ducked into the dimly lighted cabin. Once the boat was underway, rocking through the Basin, wheeling into the wide opening of the Grand Canal, Brennan felt claustrophobic. Crouching, he went back to the open rear of the craft and settled on the low bench, offering his face to the rushing air and the Venice night.

  For a while, Brennan gave his attention to the Gothic and Renaissance façades of the palazzos flashing by on either side of the Canal. After passing the dining terrace of the Gritti Palace hotel, he could make out the imposing design of Sansovino’s Corner della Ca’ Grande, the mammoth Rezzonico Palace, the Mocenigo Palaces, where Lord Byron lived in the period when he had met and taken for mistress the Countess Guiccioli, and then the two palaces of the Municipio which Ruskin had praised, and at last Brennan closed his eyes to the sights so often seen and visited. Without Lisa beside him, they were of no interest.

  Once, when the motorboat churned to a stop, Brennan opened his eyes, hoping that they had reached the station. He was irritated to discover they had only stopped for a traffic signal, an overhead red light (it had always amused him, a traffic light above a canal, but tonight it irritated him). The light changed, and their progress resumed. And shortly, when he heard the craft bumping against the cement quay, he opened his eyes, and sat up to find himself before the railway depot.

  Rapidly coming to his feet, he paid the pilot the 3,000 lire, leaped ashore; and dug out a tip for the ganzer who was waving his outstretched palm and hooked pole. Speedily Brennan started across the sweeping square that led to the interior of the railway station. He had always enjoyed this walk, and he enjoyed it now, the white stretch of it from the water and up the steps to the depot and the sounds of mellow Italian voices upon which were superimposed the musical strains of “Ciao, Venezia.”

  As Brennan attained the top of the stairs, he saw a beaming, swarthy young Italian in military-type service cap and immaculate white uniform break off from a cluster of hotel greeters and solicitors and start toward him.

  The young Italian touched his fingers to the brim of his cap beneath the band reading ROYAL DANIELI EXCELSIOR, and inquired solicitously, “Good evening, Mr. Brennan. Anything I can do for you?”

  “Nothing at all, Alfredo, thanks. I’m seeing a friend off for Paris.”

  Inside the station, Brennan sought the clock. He still had ten minutes before Lisa’s departure, and now he was ashamed of having come empty-handed. He swerved toward the brightly lit shops, paused before the kiosk, hastily scanned the latest periodicals and settled on two glossy Italian fashion magazines and a copy of the day’s Rome Daily American for Lisa’s train reading.

  Ready to start for the train shed in the terminal, he involuntarily glanced at the front page of the Rome Daily American for news of a world that was no longer of interest to him. The headline, the leading stories, concerned the convening of the representatives of the earth’s five major powers in Paris for the Summit. A large three-column-wide photograph in the center of the front page held Brennan’s attention. Above the picture was the heading:

  RUSSIAN LEADERS PREPARE TO LEAVE MOSCOW FOR CRUCIAL PARIS CONFERENCE.

  Automatically, he dropped his gaze to the figures lined up in the official Tass photograph. These were the different faces of a new USSR, the benign countenances of a younger generation of Russian Communists who had come to understand that their future interests were as one with America’s interests, and that the common obstacle to their prosperity as well as to world peace was the People’s Republic of China.

  Brennan recognized the face in the center of the picture at once, the chubby visage of Premier Alexander Talansky. The sterner face next to the Premier’s, Brennan guessed, belonged to a military hero of the Soviet Union, the First Deputy Premier, Marshal Zabbin. The other faces, so reasonable and benevolent-looking (until you met them at the bargaining table, Brennan remembered), were those of persons unfamiliar to him, members of the Presidium or physicists or specialists, no doubt. And then, as his gaze reached the end of the row, his eyes narrowed upon the last face—fixed on it, staring—and instantly, he felt the skin from his temples to his cheeks tighten and prickle. It was uncanny, the resemblance, but he knew it could not be, that it was simply impossible.

  Quickly, he brought the picture close to his eyes. The newspaper was grainy, the face of the one at the end of the row now clear enough to be better identified. Yet, there it was, so like the youthful Gorki’s, the primitive Cro-Magnon face, the rough muzhik face with its hidden intelligence and erudition, the Zurich face, the Varney-scandal face, the face that had disappeared from the earth’s face and his own life four years ago. Was it possible? Or was it a twin?

  Brennan’s eyes darted down to the caption and across it. This was the USSR delegation to the Summit, expected to arrive in Paris tomorrow morning. “Front row, L to R: Asst. Minister for Far Eastern Affairs N. Rostov—”

  Rostov.

  Confirmed. True. Rostov, no other. He was restored to public power. He was en route to Paris. He was alive, he was available, he was hope incarnate.

  Rostov!

  Brennan could feel his heart pounding wildly. He tried to control himself. He tried to think clearly, but all the past, the present, the future—now the future, too—rushed to his head, buffeting his brain, until his mind was out of joint.

  Dazed, he sought the depot clock. Four minutes remained.

  That instant, it was as if he had been charged by a loose electric wire. Galvanized, he spun toward the railway-station entrance, and trying not to run, striding swiftly, he hastened to the top of the outdoor steps.

  “Alfredo!” he shouted.

  From nowhere, it seemed, the Danieli representative materialized, puffing, as he doffed his service cap. “Mr. Brennan, sí—”

  “Alfredo, listen to me—” He grasped the Italian’s shoulder tightly with his free hand and pulled him closer—“and don’t forget a thing I say. There’s an emergency, and I’ve got to leave for Paris at once. I haven’t had time to pack, or notify the hotel, or do anything. Now you get on that phone over there and call the manager and tell him I had to take off for Paris like this, and tell him to hold on to my rooms. Then speak to the concierge. Tell him to send a couple of his boys up to Suite 116, take out my two largest suitcases, the brown leather ones, and pack three suits—no, four—two evening ones, two for afternoon—and shirts, shorts, shoes, pajamas, my toilet articles—and get those suitcases over here and on the first train that leaves for Paris tonight. Address them to me at the—the—California Hotel, 16 Rue de Berri. Got that?”

  “Sí—sí!” Alfredo was already scribbling notes on the back of a hotel rate card.

  “Tell the concierge I’ll phone him tomorrow from Paris, and—” He fumbled in his coat pocket, and handed Alfredo a key. “My safe-deposit box in the hotel. Tell him I authorize him to open it and airmail—the lire, checkbook, travelers checks, and—”

  He was interrupted by the public address system. Brennan halted, listening to the other-worldly voice chant, “The Simplon Orient Express now departing from Track 14 for Milano, Lyon, Dijon, Paris!”

  Brennan released Alfredo’s shoulder. “I’ve got to hurry. Do you understand it all? I’ll take care of you when I come back.” He started to go, then asked anxiously, “Can I get on without a ticket?”

  “Sí—sí—you pay the conductor after—”

  Brennan wheeled and ran, dodging between passengers and vendors, through the depot to the track shed, and then, searching up ahead, he cut his stride.

  He saw her on the platform, almost the only one left on the platform, four cars down, still waiting, still peering off but about to give up. He resumed running as fas
t as he could, waving one arm, calling, “Lisa! Lisa!”

  She saw him, and her face brightened with relief, and then he had her, grabbing her up in his arms, kissing her, gasping, panting, trying to tell her. “Lisa, I’m going with you—Paris—something happened—I have a chance—I’ll explain—”

  But her mouth was pressed against his, and her vibrantly alive body was against his, and there was no more need to speak. He felt the Wagons-Lits conductor prying them apart, pushing at them, and Brennan hurried her to the car, bodily lifted her onto the steep step-up, and he followed her onto the train and into the corridors as the Simplon Orient Express jolted forward and began to move.

  Only later, after he had explained, was he able to sit back, one hand covering hers, and gaze out the window, and realize that the last yellow lights of the causeway were in the distance, and the neons and buildings of Mestre were receding, and that they were on terra firma once more. The isolated fairyland was behind them. This was the real mainland, solid ground, and his feet were on it, and he was in the open, exposed, revealed, engaged.

  For a split second, he felt a doubt, and the premonition that, having abandoned Venice, he might never be so safe again or know the euphoria of its illusory protectiveness again. Briefly, he mourned the loss, and the last of a canto from Childe Harold entered his head, and being of a single voice with Byron, he recited it to himself:

  And of the happiest moments which were wrought Within the web of my existence, some From thee, fair Venice, have their colours caught: There are some feelings Time cannot benumb, Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and dumb.

  Yes, whatever tomorrow would bring, there was this. But there was more. In Venice hope had been dead, and without hope he had been no better than a corpse. But now hope was alive, and he was alive.

  He brought Lisa’s fingers to his lips and kissed them gently, and he thought of her, and he thought of his son, and he thought of Rostov, and then he sat back to wait for Paris…

  II

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, the fifteenth of June, the weather in Paris was 21 degrees centigrade, and the early morning mist had been penetrated by the high, full ball of the sun, and the day would be warm and lovely.

  During the morning, between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty, the four of them arrived.

  At Orly Airport, Jay Thomas Doyle, after a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Vienna, and despite his lack of sleep and his obesity, bounced cheerfully down the ramp of the Austrian Airlines jet plane. The pageantry that met his eyes stopped him in his tracks. Above the airport, French flags rippled in the breeze. At his feet, a long red carpet ran to the salon d’honneur, and the blue-smocked women who had been sweeping it now made way for the passengers. Ahead, members of the Garde Républicaine, in red-plumed gold helmets and black boots, swords still sheathed, were assembling. Beyond the roped-off sections, the crowds were gathering, the blue-uniformed agents of the CRS were circulating. Then Doyle remembered. These preparations were for Premier Talansky, who would be arriving shortly from Moscow for the Summit conference. Hugging the attaché case containing his precious manuscript, Doyle proceeded inside the air terminal, took a diet pill at the first water cooler, cleared his luggage through customs, and, once outside again, directed the driver of a Renault taxi to take him to the Hotel George-V.

  At the Gare du Nord, Emmett A. Earnshaw, after the six-hour train and Channel-steamer trip from London’s Victoria Station, waited in the green armchair in his compartment while his niece, Carol, after rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, carefully combed her hair. There had been little rest the night before, once Sir Austin’s call had awakened Earnshaw to tell him there were now two Golden Arrows, and that one left at five in the morning and the other at eleven in the morning. Earnshaw, preferring to arrive in Paris in the late morning rather than the late afternoon, had awakened Carol, and both had dressed immediately and departed from London. Now, leading Carol out of the train to the platform, Earnshaw stood uncertainly before the legends on the sleeper, which read GOLDEN ARROW and FLECHE D’OR. Almost immediately, the United States Embassy foreign service officer, introducing himself as Callahan, appeared, followed by another Embassy official and a Secret Service agent. Bemused, Earnshaw hardly heard Callahan’s apologies on behalf of the absent Ambassador, who was tied up with the recently arrived President and the Secretary of State. However, the Ambassador’s personal car was outside, waiting in readiness, and entirely at Earnshaw’s disposal during his stay in Paris. Before the Gare du Nord, a saluting chauffeur held open the rear door of the Cadillac limousine bearing a miniature Stars and Stripes, and Earnshaw got inside. When he inquired where they would be staying, Callahan replied that the Embassy had been fortunate enough to obtain exactly what Earnshaw had requested, an excellent suite at the Lancaster Hotel, which was handy to everything.

  At the Porte d’ltalie, Medora Hart, after almost sixteen hours on the road, braked her Mercedes sports car to a halt beside a stoplight, lifted her sunglasses to her dust-caked forehead and consulted the Michelin Guide, with its map labeled “Sorties de Paris” She had her bearings by the time the light changed, and she shifted gear and headed for the Place d’ltalie, trying to remember that she must turn right there to reach the Quai d’Austerlitz, and then follow the avenues along the left bank of the Seine until she reached the Concorde bridge. Only now did she realize how far she had come and how fast she had driven since leaving Nardeau, making her phone calls, and checking out of the Provençal hotel. She had followed Route Nationale 7 all the way, with just the briefest of stopovers to eat and rest at Montélimar and Dijon. Her speedometer registered over 900 additional kilometers. And only now, stopping and starting the car in Paris traffic, did she realize that the calf of her right leg was cramped and her right foot was numb. She could not wait to reach her hotel, and shower and nap, and she was grateful that the proprietor of the Club Lautrec had been influential enough to reserve for her a choice room in the Hotel San Régis.

  At the Gare de Lyon, Matt Brennan and Lisa Collins, at the end of their fourteen-hour journey from Venice on the Simplon Orient Express, refreshed after sleeping in one another’s arms most of the night, climbed down into the vast station. Since Brennan had wired the California Hotel from Milan requesting rooms and someone to meet them, they waited alongside the blue Wagons-Lits sleeping car to see if anyone would come for them. Then Brennan noticed a uniformed hotel porter advancing, searching among the exiting passengers, and when the porter came closer, the woven lettering hotel California was clearly visible above the breast pocket of his jacket. Brennan hailed him, and the relieved porter explained that he had held the taxi that had brought him here. After locating Lisa’s luggage, the hotel porter guided them through the milling passengers, past the ticket cubicles, to the taxi, a shining new Citroën, waiting before the Gare de Lyon. The porter helped Lisa and Brennan into the rear, and himself got into the front seat next to the driver. He ordered the elderly driver, in French, to take them to the California Hotel in the Rue de Berri, and the driver grunted, and complained in French that Paris was too crowded for this time of the year, especially with all those foreign Communists arriving who wanted everyone else to give up their nuclear stockpiles so that they could later take theirs out of hiding and conquer the world, meaning conquer France.

  This was Paris, this June morning, history’s City of Light, but tomorrow’s City of Hope or Despair…

  BRENNAN HAD WANTED Lisa to see Paris her first time, as he had seen it his first time, and as he always liked to see it on each new arrival. He had asked the taxi driver not to bother with the short cut up the Avenue Gabriel and the Rue Ponthieu that would take them directly to the hotel, but to take, instead, the slightly longer approach up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. The driver, conscious of his ticking meter, had grunted approval.

  Holding Lisa’s hand in his lap, Brennan watched through the rolled-down window as they swung past the Obelisk of Luxor and through the Place de la Concorde, where the traffic was li
ght because it was early and it was Sunday.

  The hotel porter’s arm had swept out toward the Concorde, as he expounded in heavily accented English that this had been the site, during the Revolution, where the guillotine had stood and where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had lost their heads. Neither Lisa nor Brennan was listening, for they had entered into the broad rising slope of the Champs-Élysées, with the majestic Arc de Triomphe, a gigantic tricolor floating from its center, in the distance. And figuratively, they had lost their heads, too.

  Lisa, wide dark eyes scanning what lay before them and what passed beyond their windows, wanted no guide’s instruction, but only a chance to assimilate these sensory pleasures, and so she was silent. A true Frenchman, the hotel porter became respectfully silent, too. And Matt Brennan was free to bring the city into the privacy of himself, at last.

  Slumping back in the taxi seat, Brennan found it amusing the way he constantly permitted the city to surprise him. In recent years, since the time of his trouble, he had always approached Paris with dread, fearing the place where he had once been accepted with honor and where he would now be reminded of disgrace. He had always come with dread, and every time, upon entering the Champs-Élysées, he had been seduced into helpless love.

  It had happened to him again, as always, these moments of this Sunday morning.

  He savored the sight of the chestnut trees, at attention along the grandest of the grand boulevards, and behind them he could see French children at play on swings and romping beside the goat carts. There was the familiar Théâtre Marigny beyond the trees, and the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées, with its clumps of evergreen foliage and public fountain, and a short distance off, the busy open-air gathering of philatelists, selling and trading their stamps this Sunday morning.