The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Earnshaw offered Brennan a friendly nod. “Hello,” he said. “I seem to remember you.” He hesitated. “We have met before?”

  Brennan swallowed, stood straight, and said tightly, “Yes, Mr. Earnshaw. We met when you were in the White House. I’m Matthew Brennan.”

  “Brennan, yes—” Earnshaw’s brow had furrowed ever so slightly, and suddenly, it creased into a hard frown, and the smile disappeared as full recognition came. “Yes, of course,” he said coldly. “I remember. I guess I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “No more surprised than I am to see you here,” said Brennan.

  About to say something more, Earnshaw checked himself. Nodding quickly at Brennan, turning his back on him, he took his niece by the elbow, and, accompanied by Neely, they marched out the door that Callahan was holding open.

  In seconds, Neely returned. “Sorry, Matt,” he said. “One of those things.”

  “It was nothing,” Brennan reassured his friend. And, indeed, he told himself, it was nothing, for once more he felt vindicated and anyone’s equal, anticipating the clearance that he would soon have, after leaving Rostov.

  “I’ve got to show the demoniac hordes the upstairs,” Neely said. “Sure you don’t mind? I mean, you can take off if you still feel uneasy.”

  “I feel fine,” said Brennan defiantly.

  “Good. I’ll lead the charge. I suggest you bring up the rear.”

  Brennan waited as his friend began to lead the way up one of the marble staircases with the chattering, unruly correspondents trooping after him. Brennan hung behind until the last contingent started the climb to the first floor, and then he climbed after them.

  At the top, the journalists formed into an irregular column, wending their way around a corner and into a long spacious gallery. They crossed the parquet floor, between tall windows and beneath a white, gilt-rimmed arched ceiling. From far up ahead, Brennan could hear the reverberation of Neely’s voice.

  “You’re passing through the Salle des Glaces, the Hall of Mirrors, a miniature copy of the gallery in the Palace of Versailles,” the press attaché announced. “We’re heading straight into the grand salon of the Palais Rose, where the heads of the five powers will be sitting in conference tomorrow. This Palais was built by an American, Anna Gould, daughter of the famous railroad magnate, Jay Gould. She and her husband, the Marquis Boniface de Castellane, entertained 4,000 guests on the day that they moved in here. Anna Gould abandoned the Palais in 1939, and not long after, when the Nazis occupied Paris, the German military governor of France, General Karl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel, made this his residence. But I understand that to play it safe, he had a huge bomb shelter dug beneath the Palais. It’s not open now… Well, here we are. This mirrored door leads into the grand salon. When we’re all inside, sort of form a circle around the walls, and I’ll be fast with my spiel because French security is giving us only five minutes in there.”

  More attentive and orderly now, the correspondents filed into the grand salon. Brennan was among the last to squeeze inside. He propped himself against the mantel of a fireplace while the American journalists jostled and elbowed to form their double circle around the perimeter of the Salon. While his friend Neely chatted with various more prominent members of the press corps, Brennan surveyed the room itself.

  With an ache of nostalgia, Brennan found himself peopling this magnificent room with delegations, and their memorable meetings, of his career past. There had been so many of these conference rooms up until Zurich—awesome palace rooms in London, Bonn, Geneva, Rome—when he had been a participant, sitting beside an American Ambassador or Secretary of State, listening, making notes, often being called to advise upon or reinforce a policy statement with facts, or to clarify and expand upon a line in the Department of State’s black-bound Position Book. It had given him not only pride but deep satisfaction to collaborate with the movers and shakers of men, to be one of the representatives of humanity trying to eradicate the madness of war and killing. He had known that his brother, Elia, a good lamb sacrificed to this madness, would have been proud of him. But now, at this site in Paris, he realized that nostalgia had led him down a mean path. It was hurtful to be an outsider, helpless, useless, no part of this, when so much work desperately needed to be done. Inner rage and inner self-pity lay immediately ahead, his private Scylla and Charybdis, and with determination he avoided them and devoted himself to the superficialities of his surroundings.

  There had been other rooms in other royal manors, yes, but none ever quite as impressive as this one. Dominating the grand salon of the Palais Rose, occupying most of its center, was the largest round table that Brennan had ever laid eyes upon. A thick felt tablecloth, of a tobacco color, had been laid over it like a tarpaulin over a gaming field, and surrounding the huge circular table were—he counted them—twenty chairs. Fifteen of the chairs, he could see, were gilded, straight-backed, armless. And five were velvet-seated, cane-backed, armed thrones, fauteuils for the mighty, the quintet of extraordinary men selected by millions of their fellows to determine man’s destiny on earth.

  Since Neely was moving toward this table, and a hush was falling over the room, Brennan hastily scanned what was left to be seen—four crystal chandeliers hanging heavily from the ceiling, six doors decorated with carved, gilded moldings marking the gray-pink marble walls, four mammoth white plaster medallions high on the walls engraved with representations of the four arts, three great French doors opening out on what appeared to be a garden.

  A bizarre atmosphere, thought Brennan, for three Democrats and two Communists who were to debate about nuclear explosives.

  Neely was holding up one hand for attention, as he adjusted his rimless spectacles with the other. Correspondents were readying their pencils, pens, and note pads.

  “Since this will be your only opportunity to visit this room, where the stories you will write in the next ten days will originate, I know you will want to observe carefully what is here and learn what you can about it, to give your stories color and background,” Neely began. “We haven’t much time—the Russian press will be arriving here shortly, and after them, the British—so why don’t I proceed? This grand salon was used only once before as an international conference room. In 1949, the French Government asked Anna Gould if it could rent the Palais Rose for a four-power Ministers’ conference. She offered its use for free. In 1949, the United States, Great Britain, France, Soviet Russia, represented by Acheson, Bevin, Schuman, Vishinsky, held meetings here. In the several decades since, the Palais Rose has lain empty. Now, once again, the French Government has borrowed it, and for this Summit meeting has furnished it with chairs, tables, desks moved in from the Élysée Palace in the city and from the Petit Trianon in Versailles.”

  Neely paused, offering a needed interval while the reporters jotted their notes, once catching Brennan’s eye, as he surveyed his audience. At last, he resumed.

  “In case you are interested, outside the three French doors there is a formal garden, very beautiful, the stone urns decorated with cupids and filled with flowers, and the main statue out there is a nude Venus. Make, what you want of that. There are benches in the garden. Hopefully, all of this beauty will have a salutary effect, a calming one, on the heads of state.”

  There was mild laughter, and Neely acknowledged it with a crisp smile and went on.

  “I might add, the garden is on the Avenue Foch side, just to orient you. All right, I reckon we’d better proceed to the main business, the conference table. It’s made of a rare soft wood, and was especially designed and constructed for this historic Summit. Each of the five leaders will sit in one of these Louis XIV fauteuils—you can see the armchairs are upholstered in red velvet and the wood is gilded—and each leader will have three members of his team in three of the side chairs—two interpreters and his leading Minister or assistant. Then, tonight, five small tables will be placed, one behind each leader’s armchair, and at each table a secretary will sit making a record of th
e talks in shorthand or on a stenotyper. Of course, there will be place cards directing each group to its proper chairs—”

  “Mr. Neely,” a shrill and insistent female voice broke in, “where are all the other delegates to be?”

  Neely seemed startled. “I was coming to that,” he said, adding parenthetically, “Of course, it was understood, there wouldn’t be time for me to answer any questions during our tour. If you have questions, you can call me or see me at the press attaché’s office in the United States Embassy. But as for the other delegates and negotiators, yes, they’ll be spread throughout this upper floor—you can see the telephones and cables all around so they can be summoned from adjacent rooms or from anywhere in Paris. I mean, if Premier Talansky needs information to reply to a question raised by the Chairman of Red China, Kuo Shu-tung, why, he can summon his Far Eastern experts for a quick consultation by phone or by sending a huissier with a message. Of course, most of that kind of thing goes on privately inside each embassy at night. The daily meetings themselves tend to be rather cut-and-dried and formal. As the Ambassador told me, when you have more than two or three at a conference table, each delegate tends to make speeches, orate, rather than participate in a give-and-take conversation. The main progress is made during informal meetings between the various leaders, discussing matters over drinks, in their embassies or ambassadors’ residences or in hotel suites.”

  Using his finger as a pointer, Neely indicated the six doors.

  “Those doors lead to other rooms of the Palais Rose which have been converted into offices for the Summit delegations. The American delegates will take over a green bedroom once used by a duke. The Chinese will have, for their headquarters, appropriately, a red-brocaded bedroom, now a red-brocaded workroom. The Russians will have a white-and-gold bedroom in—again, appropriately—in the left wing of the Palais. And so on. As we leave, I’ll walk you through those rooms. You’ll see that the French Government has not neglected the fourth estate. A dining room and a smoking room, furnished with desks, telephones, teletypes, snack and drink bars, have been converted into press rooms for the few of you, and a select number from the other four nations, who are actually accredited to cover the Palais Rose part of the Summit.

  “The first plenary session of the Summit is scheduled to open in this Salon at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Diplomatic protocol will follow the form codified in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The first meeting is expected to adjourn round about noon. Then, in the afternoon, at three o’clock, the foreign ministers from each delegation will convene at the Quai d’Orsay, while the heads of state take part in special ceremonies at the Mayor’s Hotel de Ville and observe the usual wreath-laying formality beneath the Arc de Triomphe. I suggest that all correspondents accredited to cover the Palais Rose be in the press rooms here no later than nine-thirty tomorrow morning, for last-minute briefings and handouts. I think that does it. I’ll show you the delegates’ individual workrooms as we leave, and after that, at least for today, we stand adjourned. Thank you, and when you write, find time for a prayer—for yourself, for all of us, for the whole worrying world.”

  Someone shouted, “Amen!” and Neely began leading a serpentine of journalists out of the grand salon, and again Brennan hung back and was among the last to follow.

  Twenty minutes later, the tour was completed, and Neely herded the corps of correspondents downstairs into the chilly main hall. Most of the journalists departed immediately, but a handful lingered to chat with their colleagues and rivals before going, and Brennan tried to find an inconspicuous place by the front doors to wait for Neely.

  Eager to escape unnoticed, Brennan nervously sought his friend. At last, he saw Neely removing his spectacles to rub his eyes, as he listened to five journalists, two women and three men, who had detained him. Suddenly, Neely said something, offered a gesture of farewell, and broke away from the ambush. He had seen Brennan and was hastening toward him, but he was not alone. An energetic redheaded lady, with an overstuffed handbag slung by its strap over the shoulder of a brown suit, was pursuing him, striding alongside him, jabbering away. Plainly distressed, obviously determined to escape, Neely kept walking, as he made some curt reply.

  When they were almost upon him, Brennan could hear Neely say, with a trace of sharpness, “That’s absolutely all I can tell you now, Miss Smith. If I hear anything more about the President’s wife, I’ll leave word for you at ANA.”

  They had come to a halt before Brennan, and Brennan recognized her at once because he had seen her likeness in the newspapers in recent days. In fact, Lisa had once pointed at the woman’s photograph and said that she wished she could have been a foreign correspondent like Hazel Smith, who had such a romantic and adventurous career. This was Hazel Smith, no doubt about it, Brennan concluded.

  Despite the piercing quality of her strident voice, the obviously dyed red hair, the facial features as jagged as a cubist’s drawing, the severely tailored suit, Hazel Smith was, inexplicably, more feminine than Brennan had expected. Perhaps, he thought, it was the wariness of her quick eyes, or the smallness of her desperately painted mouth, or maybe the flare of her broad hips, that contradicted all else and made her seem, finally, a woman.

  The quick, curious eyes had gone toward Brennan, held on him, wondering, and then dismissing him, they had turned themselves on Neely again. “I’ll take your word, Mr. Neely. I’ll expect to hear from you. - I’m doing a series on the big shots’ wives, and I’ve got to include our First Lady. Now remember—”

  “I gave you my word, Miss Smith,” Neely said impatiently. Abruptly, he turned away and gripped Brennan’s arm. “Okay, Matt, let’s get going. We have—”

  Before they could start for the exit, Hazel Smith intercepted them, planting herself almost between them. “Did you say Matt?” she demanded of Neely, as she stared directly at Brennan. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers. “Old photographic-memory me,” she said to Neely, her gaze still relentlessly fixed on Brennan. “I thought he looked like someone I’d seen, but I wasn’t—”

  “We’re late, we’ve got to leave,” Neely said urgently, trying to push Brennan past her, but Hazel Smith held her ground as firmly as a concrete roadblock.

  Ignoring the press attaché, Hazel Smith said, “Matt is for Matthew and in my time Matthew was not from the Gospels, it was from the Dexter hearings. You’re Matthew Brennan, aren’t you?”

  Brennan tried to remain contained. “Yes,” he said quietly, “I’m Matt Brennan.”

  “I mean, the Matthew Brennan.”

  She had released the last like an arrow from a bow, shafting him, as she might impale the Julius Rosenberg or the Klaus Fuchs, and Brennan gave a resigned smile. “None other,” he said. Neely was anxiously worrying his arm, trying to push him to freedom, until Brennan said from the corner of his mouth, “It’s okay, Herb.”

  “I’m Hazel Smith of ANA,” she was saying, “and I—”

  “I know who you are,” Brennan said.

  “Good. Then you know I’m here doing feature stories about the unusual people who’ve been sent to Paris or been drawn here by the Summit.” She was fishing excitedly in her cluttered handbag for a pen, which she found, and notepaper, which she could not find. “What a wonderful break,” she continued. “You’ll make a marvelous story. It’ll be great.” She looked up from her purse briefly. “You know the sort of angle, the ghost of a famous diplomat revisits scenes of his old triumphs—the self-exiled unofficial delegate rises from the bog of the long ago—oh, don’t look like that, Mr. Brennan, you don’t have to be scared of Hazel Smith. This’ll be useful for you, too. Give you a chance to speak out on your own behalf to millions of readers. Matter of fact, to give you an idea of what I think of this, I have an appointment to do another interview in an hour, an interview with that little English chippy they’re headlining over at the Club Lautrec—you know, Medora Hart—but I’ll put that off. Her tired old-hat scandal doesn’t have half the human interest this does.” She resumed searchin
g in her handbag. “Why don’t we just walk over to a café and—”

  “Don’t bother,” said Brennan. She paused, and looked up surprised.

  “What?”

  “Don’t bother looking for notepaper,” said Brennan. “I can’t give you anything to put on it. I’m not here to engage in interviews.”

  “Are you refusing me? Because if you are, it’s a mistake. I told you a sympathetic story right now could be useful to you. And if you cooperated, well, it would only be natural for me to be appreciative, feel more kindly disposed toward you. I’m sure my story would generate considerable goodwill. And God knows, you need it, Mr. Brennan.”

  “No, thank you, Miss Smith. I’m sorry.”

  Hazel Smith shrugged, deliberately held her pen high before dropping it into the handbag, then fastened the purse clasp shut. “Your funeral, Mr. Brennan.” She looked at him pityingly, and she shook her head. “Very unwise, your behaving like this. Everyone knows your responsibility for the present world crisis. You’d be smart to have the press on your side. Go on behaving like this, and—well—you may really be sorry, I mean really.”

  “Miss Smith, I appreciate your concern,” Brennan said steadily, praying his demeanor hid the ague he suffered inside. “Your so-called press used me for target practice four years ago. There is no future in being a target, I have learned. So now, when I see an archer, I keep moving.”

  With that, Brennan started past her, once more filled with the urgent need to confront Nikolai Rostov and, through him, bring an end to this punishment.

  As Brennan went out the center door of the Palais Rose with Neely, he could hear Hazel Smith’s last comment trilling after him.

  “Well, at least that chippy singer at the Club Lautrec has enough good sense not to be self-destructive.”

  And hearing this, as he left, Brennan thought: Good luck, poor chippy singer, wherever you are. For while he was still sorry for himself, he somehow did not envy Hazel Smith’s chippy singer, whoever she was.