The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Although still reluctant, Brennan found that Neely’s enthusiasm had persuaded him. Especially, the Rostov part.

  He stood up. “You win, Herb. Take me to your leader’s Palais.”

  As they walked to the mustard-colored army sedan idling in the contre-allêe, the narrow, brick second street or lane running between the sidewalk and the strip of grass parallel to the Champs-Élysées, Neely gestured toward the car. “Not one of ours,” he said. “We have fifteen in the Embassy pool. But our delegation from Washington has taken most of those, so we borrowed a dozen military vehicles from EUCOM, our base out by St.-Germain, a post-de Gaulle restoration. The cars came furnished with noncom chauffeurs. Not bad.”

  Once settled in the rear seat, Neely gave directions to the Negro corporal. Then, rolling down the window, he offered Brennan his pack of Gauloises bleues, and when Brennan refused, he lit one for himself and relaxed with it.

  The car swung around into the Champs-Élysées and headed toward the Arc de Triomphe. “Paris in June,” said Neely, exhaling. “My favorite place and time in the world.” He pointed out the window. “Look at those girls, Matt, those wonderful hair bobs, urchin faces, so pretty, wistful, fun-promising, and the easy way they dress and walk, and how they look at you, those French kids, straight at you. What a wonderful place to grow up, and be seventeen, and fall in love, right here on a Sunday on the Champs-Élysées.” He squinted out the window again. “Well, I’m satisfied with my old girl at home, but those French femmes are a welcome diversion, especially when you’re so plumb overworked you want to die.” He turned to Brennan. “This Summit has made it real mean for a person in my job, Matt. At least fifty more correspondents, besides the regulars, are here now, and it’s like trying to organize, direct, satisfy a battalion of anarchistic, spoiled prima donnas” and tenors. Absolutely awful.”

  “Do the delegates give you much trouble?”

  “Nothing but. Mostly, it’s the President’s personal staff. They behave like emissaries from the Shah and as if I were their messenger-eunuch, especially the ones who still have fuzz on their chins and are fresh from Poli Sci, like that youngster, Wiggins, who’s with the President, so officious and snotty. I reckon what I’ve forgotten about press relations, he’ll never learn. And then unscheduled things happen, like The Ex’s arrival—”

  Brennan showed his surprise. “You mean Earnshaw?”

  “None other. Our generation’s answer to Warren G. Harding. Whenever I look at your old friend Earnshaw, I see genial and generous President Harding, and I’m reminded of what Harding’s father once said to him: ‘If you were a girl, Warren, you’d be in the family way all the time. You can’t say no.’”

  Brennan chuckled, then was serious again. “What’s Earnshaw doing here?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” said Neely. “In the middle of last night we received a frantic call from our London Embassy. The Ex is on his way to Paris. The gimmick? He’s coming as an accredited correspondent for the Ormsby chain and for ANA—500 syndicated words a day—I didn’t know he knew that many words in all. So now we’ve got the man on Olympus looking down at the Summit. ‘Course, I don’t know why he’s really here, Matt, unless he wants attention. Well, he’s getting it. The entire morning, reporters have been pounding my door to get me to arrange interviews with Earnshaw. But I couldn’t and I can’t. I’m representing the President-that-is, not the President-that-was. I’ve got to keep Earnshaw silent and out of the way. If he opens his mouth, he might embarrass our delegation and our policy at the Summit. So I’m busy trying to get him lost. This morning, I arranged for Callahan to take Earnshaw and his niece on an extended sightseeing tour, followed by lunch at the Quai d’Orsay, and more sightseeing. I’ve got to wear him down before his presence wrecks us… Oh boy, Matt, you got an extra cell on that island of San Lazzaro?”

  Their military vehicle had made a harrowing half-circuit of the Étoile, and Brennan was able to breathe again as they entered the quiet residential elegance of the Avenue Foch. They proceeded between the stately setback mansions of French aristocrats and the glossy modern apartments of American and European millionaires, until they slowed at the blue street sign announcing the intersecting Avenue Malakoff. The corporal turned the car sharply, and braked to a halt at the open gates in the high black iron fence before No. 122-124.

  Behind the fence, off the large courtyard, Brennan could see a massive, palatial two-story building, although he had heard that there were actually three stories in the wings. The front of the Palais Rose consisted of a series of great vaulted windows set into pink marble. The main entrance, beneath a second-floor grilled balcony, featured three arched doors and was reached by a flight of five wide stone steps leading up from the broad courtyard.

  “Drive inside, Corporal,” Neely ordered the driver.

  Their car backed up, then passed through the gates, and immediately, they were surrounded by uniformed French police while a group of plainclothesmen, evidently a mixture of American, Russian, English, and Chinese, watched curiously from beside the entry staircase.

  As Neely showed an agent of Services de la Sécurité Présidentielle both his identity card and Embassy Summit credentials, Brennan heard his own name mentioned by Neely and saw the officer nodding. Through the windshield, Brennan observed a husky plainclothesman hurrying toward them. The French security agent was directing their chauffeur toward the line of parked automobiles, when the plainclothesman reached their car, and walked alongside it as they cruised into a parking slot.

  “Hi, Hal,” Neely said. “This is a friend of mine—Mr. Brennan.” He turned to Brennan. “Hal’s Secret Service.”

  “You’ve got a real mob in there waitin’ for you, Mr. Neely,” the Secret Service agent was saying. “Those reporters been streamin’ in for half an hour. We got them contained in the big downstairs hall. But glad you’re here, ‘cause they sure are gettin’ mighty restless.”

  Neely and Brennan left the car hurriedly and walked with the Secret Service agent across the courtyard. Leaving him, they went up the short flight of stone steps, and entered the Palais Rose through the center door.

  Although forewarned, Brennan was surprised at the great jam of humanity stretching before them in the immense and soaring hall, with its rectangular green-veined white pillars and vaulted ceiling. The members of the American press, at least sixty in number, covered every foot of the marble floor, obscuring its pink and white squares, and the overflow spilled down several granitelike steps and up another rise of steps to the edge of an elevated marble deck with an inlaid star in its center. From the middle of the landing, across the way, marble staircases rose to the first floor above.

  So captivated had Brennan been by the grandeur of the Palais Rose that he had not realized that something was going on. The members of the press, their backs to Neely and Brennan, were giving their attention to a tall, elderly, familiar-looking man who was standing alone on the star pattern of the marble deck, near the staircases.

  “Oh, Christ,” Neely muttered, and his features showed disgust as his eyes met Brennan’s. “It’s that damn worrisome thorn, Earnshaw, giving an off-the-cuff press conference. How in the hell did this happen? Where’s that stupid Callahan?” He craned his neck, exploring the crowd for his Embassy colleague.

  Brennan returned his gaze to the speaker. At this distance Earnshaw’s words were inaudible, but his appearance was exactly as Brennan had remembered it from their last meeting before Zurich about four years ago. The same Earnshaw, the bush of white hair, pug nose, seraphic smile, Everybody’s Kindly Grandfather. Brennan tried to decide whether he still hated Earnshaw, or whether he had simply no feelings about the man. But then he remembered that he had never really hated Earnshaw—could you hate a marshmallow or a mound of Jello?—that he had only resented him once for weakness and cowardice.

  Because of Madlock—and always in Madlock’s presence—Brennan had met with the President several times to confer on disarmament. He had found Ea
rnshaw affable and slow-witted, and relatively uninformed. At the time, Brennan had possessed a mild affection for Earnshaw because the President had seemed to respect him. After the Zurich debacle, and Madlock’s death, Brennan had expected Earnshaw to come to his aid. He had believed that the President would be loyal to one of his appointees. He had believed that the President knew, from Madlock, of Brennan’s private concern about having Varney on the delegation to Switzerland. Yet, during the entire Dexter hearings Earnshaw had remained remote and unavailable. Brennan had not allowed for the possibility that the President might not know that his appointee was innocent. Brennan believed that Earnshaw had gauged the mood of Congress and the public—the need for a scapegoat—and had accepted the consensus, subscribed to it, and permitted Brennan to become that scapegoat. In short, Earnshaw had refused to oppose popular opinion, and so had himself emerged from the political fracas unsullied and still pure.

  At the time, Brennan had not hated his superior, but he had been embittered by the President’s weakness of character and lack of integrity. In the years since, as Earnshaw faded from his memory, as certainty of The Ex’s knowledge of his innocence had been replaced by uncertainty, Brennan had ceased to have any strong feelings about the former Chief Executive. And right now, watching Earnshaw’s choppy gestures, Brennan felt more sorrow for The Ex than contempt or anger. Briefly, he wondered whether or not Earnshaw would recognize him if they should come face to face.

  He realized that Neely had located Callahan and brought him back to the immediate area of the entry. Neely was plainly furious, and Callahan was plainly wretched. Brennan tried not to listen, but he could not help hearing their abrasive whispered exchange.

  “What in the hell is he doing here, holding a press conference?” Neely was demanding to know.

  “Herb, listen, it’s not my fault,” Callahan was pleading. “I’m as upset as you are.”

  “Oh, sure, but the President who is President is going to eat my ass out, not yours.”

  “I couldn’t prevent it,” Callahan insisted. “You said take Earnshaw on a tour, keep him out of the way, so I tried to. But the first thing, right off, the girl—his niece, Carol—wanted to see where the Summit was being held. So he said okay, and told me to show them through the Palais Rose. What could I do?”

  “If we were able to keep Khrushchev out of Disneyland, you could’ve kept Earnshaw out of the Palais Rose,” said Neely with venom. “You knew I was fixing to have the press here at one o’clock.”

  “Herb, sure I knew, but be reasonable—he’s a former President, and he gave me an order. And besides, I figured it was early enough to go through this joint quickly and get out before your gang turned up. But Carol is a Sightseer, capital S. She’s got to see everything, know everything, and the tour dragged on and on until I had ants in my pants. I still thought we’d slip out in time. And we would’ve made it, but your wolf pack assembled early. So I hustled Earnshaw and his niece down the stairs—and smack, bang, right into the fourth estate. Everyone shouted for The Ex to talk, and he hasn’t shut up since.”

  “We’d better find out what the devil he’s saying,” said Neely, and he eased his way around the fringe of the crowd, followed closely by the distraught Callahan and by Brennan.

  They could hear clearly now, the correspondents’ questions and Earnshaw’s grandiloquent but muddled answers. Someone had asked him for a comment on the agenda of this Five-Power Summit, and Earnshaw was replying that Summit conferences were usually good things in these tense times, in this age we lived in. Several correspondents tried to interrupt with pointed questions about this particular Summit, but Earnshaw did not hear them, or would not, as he rambled on like a senile New England schoolmaster, discoursing on the evolution of the modern Summit.

  “You may or may not know, my old friends, that the entire idea of—uh—a Summit conference attended by powers who are—uh—powerful—that is, powerful and in conflict—is a new idea,” Earnshaw was saying, his sentences interspersed with the “uh” pauses that always plagued him when he was under public pressure. “Way back in the horse-and-buggy days, I should say horse-and-coach days, that is, before the Second World War, the heads of state did not meet like this, in this way. They sent off their leading diplomats to Vienna or Rome or St. Leningrad—uh—that is, Petersburg—to confer—moving the knights and bishops out ahead of the kings, as we say—and there was a reason, you see. In the old days, a head of state, an emperor or king, was supposed to be of divine origin, so anything he said, maybe offhand, on the spur of the moment, became the last word, the law, the rule, and it might not be what he really wanted to say at all, if he’d thought it out, so in those days it was considered better to have diplomats, ministers, princes do most of the work, and later, let the heads of state meet merely to affirm what had been settled. But the Second World War, mechanization, airplanes, all that, changed diplomacy. Conflict developed too fast, and there was a necessity for faster communication among top men with full authority to make quick decisions. Also, in the Second World War, our ally, Russia, was ruled by one man, one-man rule, Stalin, and only he could make any real decision for Russia. I mean—uh—well, now—there is no second-in-command—I mean, a Molotov had no right to act independently, could make no decision; whatever was said, he would have to go back to Stalin for what should be done, and you know, that took time, and there was no time. So, to get things done fast, the Summit conference as we know it was invented, where a Stalin could meet across a table from a Roosevelt and a Churchill and together they could make decisions speedily and—uh, well now—that explains the Summit here, and answers your questions, I’m sure.”

  Someone was inquiring if Earnshaw had been requested to come to the Summit as an elder statesman, and Earnshaw was replying good-naturedly that he was only in Paris as an observer, a journalist like the rest of them, and he had taken the job simply because he wanted to find out, once and for all, what it was like to be someone who knew more than the President and his Cabinet and the Department of State thrown together. To this, there was an outburst of pleased laughter from the press, and Earnshaw stood beaming happily.

  Neely leaned over closer to Callahan and Brennan and whispered, with a gust of relief, “We’re off the hook. He’s in his best form, saying nothing, thank the Lord. It’s okay, Callahan, we can relax.”

  But suddenly, from nearby, a shrill, grating female voice called out, “Mr. Pres—Mr. Earnshaw, I have a question!”

  Brennan tried to locate the speaker but was unable to do so. He heard Neely whisper, “Hazel Smith, ANA. This could be trouble.”

  “The question,” the high-pitched female voice went on, “concerns your own responsibility for this critical Summit meeting. To what extent, Mr. Earnshaw, do you feel that your Administration contributed to the international crisis that forced this Summit—made this Summit necessary?”

  Brennan felt a clutch near his heart, a fear that his own name might be brought up, and he heard Neely whisper to Callahan, “This is trouble. I’m going to stop it.”

  Brennan saw the press attaché push through the crowd; then he directed his attention to Earnshaw once more. He could see that Earnshaw’s face had reddened and his lips had compressed. “Young lady,” The Ex said tartly, “except for the work of my Administration, there might not be this Summit. There might be war and devastation. We—Mr. Madlock and myself—tried to inculcate in our foreign counterparts abroad the idea that only reason and reasoning can maintain peace, and I think we succeeded—uh—succeeded admirably. As a matter of record—”

  Earnshaw droned on and on, discussing his Administration as one child embellishes a fairy tale for another, half believing it, casting himself and Madlock as the twin good princes, and casting Red China as the fiery dragon they had tamed and caged. Then he capped it off with one inaccurate quotation from Luke, which he attributed to Mark.

  As Earnshaw paused, before resuming, Neely burst through the front platoon of correspondents, climbing toward him, g
reeting him, thanking him, pumping his hand. While Earnshaw muttered in bewilderment, Neely pivoted toward the press gathering, telling them that Earnshaw’s submission to this inquisition had indeed been generous, but that the former President was here to ask questions about the Summit, not be questioned about it, and that he deserved a Sunday of rest. It had all been handled swiftly and adroitly, and Brennan observed Neely with admiration, wishing that he himself possessed the same talent for applying authority.

  Still holding Earnshaw firmly by the arm, Neely announced to the throng, “A two-minute break while I escort our former President to his car! Smoking is permitted down here, but not upstairs! I’ll be right back, and then we’ll go upstairs for a look at the conference room!”

  The correspondents fell back as Neely opened a path for Earnshaw, who had been joined by his niece. Progress was slow. Earnshaw, obviously reveling in the attention, waved to old acquaintances and paused here and there to shake hands with journalists he had known in his White House days.

  They emerged a few feet from where Brennan and Callahan were standing, and Brennan, feeling uncomfortable at Earnshaw’s nearness, tried to slide away but was wedged in against a pillar. In the open at last, Earnshaw halted to mop his brow. He glanced around, smiling aimlessly, to be sure that he was not overlooking or neglecting anyone. His eyes lighted on Brennan, and his smile broadened, although his eyes were vague.