The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “They’ll believe the little whore once they have a good look at the picture of the big whore lying there waiting for it in the grass!” Medora screamed. “You’ll find out in forty-eight hours, if you don’t—”

  But Lady Fleur Ormsby had turned on her heel and departed from the Café de Flore.

  And then, alone, ignoring the stares of the customers and waiters, Medora realized that her bluff had been called and she had lost.

  There was so little left that she wanted to cry. And then, finally, not giving a damn, she covered her face with her hands and wept.

  He had been forty minutes on the road, driving leisurely southwest of Paris through rolling green countryside, and now the rectangular sign ahead, giving the route number and the department of France in small lettering, announced to him in large lettering: SACLAY.

  Matt Brennan slowed the dusty new Chevrolet coupe he had rented in Paris (at thirty cents per kilometer) into the main thoroughfare of Saclay. It would be, his friend and concierge, M. Dupont, had warned him, an ordinary and undistinguished small French town. Yet, guiding his car slowly through it, Brennan was captivated by the quaint shops and church and atmosphere of unhurried rural peacefulness. It gave him a start to realize that this lazy village near the winding Seine was the center of France’s atomic research program.

  He had been told by the concierge that Saclay was thirty-two kilometers from Paris—and his speedometer now confirmed this—and also that his actual destination was eight kilometers beyond the town. Steering with one hand, he hung out the open coupe window, searching for some marker that would lead him to where he was going. At last, he saw one, and with more assurance but some reluctance, he left Saclay and accelerated, heading for the chateau and buildings at Gif-sur-Yvette that contained the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques, where Professor Maurice Isenberg awaited him.

  Beyond the village, the countryside presented sights that were strange and contradictory. There could be seen houses, well set back from the road, as modern and new as those in any California suburb. Between these structures and the road stretched a vista of green fields that was definitely French provincial. Then, startlingly, between the edge of the fields and the highway were barbed-wire fences. And at once you remembered where you were in history and what was going on in Paris these minutes, and that, depending upon the decisions of five men, this might not be here tomorrow or, again, it might be here for centuries to come. Coexistence or nonexistence, Herb Neely had said last night.

  The dashboard clock, presuming it was accurate, promised Matt Brennan plenty of time. He lightened the weight of his foot on the gas pedal and permitted his mind to wander back to the previous night, remembering the conversation in which Herb Neely had encouraged him to make this trip.

  Last night, Brennan and Lisa had been invited to an informal dinner at the Neelys’. Despite his assurances that she would feel comfortable and at home, Lisa had been anxious about the impression that she might make on his friends. But from the moment that Herb and his wife, Frances, had enthusiastically welcomed them to their sparsely furnished apartment in Neuilly, on the far side of the Bois, the evening had gone as well as or even better than Brennan had predicted it would. Perhaps it was because Brennan had brought along someone who was good-humored and friendly, someone eager to like and be liked, rather than his former wife, Stefani, who had been sour and sarcastic, condescendingly superior toward the Neelys, whom she had considered Kentucky hillbillies.

  Brennan had meant to keep the evening purely social, determined not to intrude his personal business upon a night of serious fun talk. Only until dinner, and through dinner, had he succeeded.

  After dinner, when the four of them had settled down around the liqueur tray in the living room, it was Frances Neely who, with the support of her husband and Lisa, had coerced Brennan into discussing the progress of his hunt. Frances was, she had said, simply intrigued, and she wanted to hear everything.

  Beginning reluctantly, then talking with growing enthusiasm to his captive and fascinated audience, Brennan had paraded his dreary failures. He had, he admitted to his host and hostess, reached an impasse. He had no idea what his next step should be. At once, his listeners had been full of ideas. Unanimously, they had agreed it would be difficult for him to reach Rostov without getting an important intermediary to arrange the confrontation. The talk had then centered on names of qualified intermediaries, at first loosely, then practically, so that at the end it had become as challenging as the solution to a super-acrostics puzzle.

  Finally, Neely had summarized the best possibilities. Someone on the staff of the President of the United States could be helpful, a person who had the President’s ear, so that the President might be persuaded to speak to the Russian Premier, who in turn might order his Assistant Minister, Nikolai Rostov, to receive Brennan. Such a person, Neely thought, might be Thomas T. Wiggins, one of the President’s youngest and most faithful White House aides, a man whom the President often listened to, and who was now staying at the American Ambassador’s residence in Paris.

  Next, Neely had suggested that Brennan must find someone, no matter what his nationality or vocation, who was officially connected with the Summit, was sympathetic toward Brennan, and had ready access to Rostov so that he could intercede. Try as he might, Brennan had been unable to think of one such person. In the end, it was Neely who had thought of a perfect go-between.

  “Matt, during the Congressional hearings, when you were being condemned, wasn’t there a well-known French nuclear scientist who gave a feisty interview blasting Senator Dexter’s joint committee and defending you?”

  Instantly, Brennan had remembered. “Isenberg. Professor Maurice Isenberg.”

  Neely had exclaimed, “That’s the one! He’s with the French nuclear advisory group at the Summit. His lab is at the CNRS headquarters—Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques—near Saclay. He’s Mr. Big. If anyone can get you to Rostov, I reckon he can. You’ve got to try him.”

  Brennan had agreed that Professor Isenberg was a possibility. Then Neely had gone on looking for other likely intermediaries, especially someone who had some sort of stake in wishing to have Brennan’s name cleared, a person who might wield influence over other Summit delegates. Someone like Earnshaw. After all, in the past year the Administration of Earnshaw and Madlock had been under a barrage of fire from the press, and perhaps by now The Ex had come to realize that the present crisis was mostly the result of his own defection from responsibility, rather than due to any dereliction of duty on Brennan’s part. “He just might be more responsive to you at a time like this,” Neely had suggested. “He could get to the people who’d get you to Rostov. He might pitch in, Matt.”

  And Brennan had replied, “I doubt it, but I’ll see how desperate I’ve become by tomorrow.”

  Last night had ended on an affirmative note. Neely had promised to arrange, first thing in the morning, for Brennan to meet young Wiggins, the President’s aide. Brennan would, on his own, telephone Professor Isenberg for an appointment. As to Earnshaw, Brennan had preferred to avoid him if possible. But all in all, the evening had been a success. It had charged both Brennan and Lisa with fresh hope.

  Early this morning, Neely had telephoned with good news. Wiggins had been agreeable to seeing Brennan briefly. He would expect Brennan at the United States Ambassador’s residence, 2 Avenue d’léna, by a quarter to eleven.

  Inspired, Brennan had determined to compound his good luck by locating Professor Maurice Isenberg. After several local calls, Brennan had learned that Isenberg would be, the entire day, in his office at Gif-sur-Yvette. Brennan had hesitated before putting through this last call. He had never met Isenberg personally. Four years ago, there had been that interview in Le Monde, picked up by the wire services, in which Isenberg had publicly doubted Brennan’s traitorous intent, had minimized the importance of Varney’s defection to China, and had flatly stated that Brennan was being used as a political scapegoat. Moved to have an
yone in the public eye, especially a famous scientist whom he did not know, proclaim his innocence, Brennan had written a grateful thank-you letter to the Frenchman. And Isenberg, in a short but kindly note, had replied that he had been quoted correctly and that he wished Brennan well.

  That had been the extent of their exchange. After four busy years, Isenberg would probably not remember him, and even if he did, Brennan somehow felt that any effort to trade on this man’s long-ago impersonal championing of him was presumptuous. Nevertheless, Brennan had placed the long-distance call. A lively voice, ageless and nonpedantic, had identified the speaker as Professor Maurice Isenberg. Brennan had no sooner given his name than the Frenchman recognized it. Of course, he would be pleased to see Brennan! When? Why, this very day; perhaps after lunch would be best. What had pleased Brennan most was that Isenberg’s invitation had been made without curiosity, only with hospitality.

  Driving the Chevrolet that he had rented for the day, Brennan had gone first to the American Ambassador’s residence, a dignified three-story stone mansion hidden behind black gates in the Avenue d’léna. Once Brennan had entered through the doors beneath the enameled oval seal of the United States, he had been led to a sitting room, where he waited beside the fireplace and tall mirror above it for the United States President’s youngest and most influential adviser.

  From the moment that Thomas T. Wiggins strode into the room, announcing that he had only five minutes to spare and suggesting Brennan get right to the point, Brennan had known it would go poorly. Wiggins, callow, runty, officious, too recently out of Harvard Law School, too successful too soon to understand either failure or charity, had been disagreeably impatient from the outset.

  When Brennan, before posing his request, had attempted to outline the truth about the Varney defection and his own role in it at Zurich, the young Presidential aide had cut him short. Wiggins had studied the affair while taking graduate work in political science. He had been satisfied by the objectivity of the scholars who had written the textbooks. The Standard Version would do. He would not require Brennan’s Revised Version.

  Annoyed, Brennan had persisted briefly with the Revised Version, explaining that if the Varney defection had helped China gain nuclear power, the fault had been far less his own than that of Earnshaw’s Presidential aide, Simon Madlock. In any event, if Wiggins or his chief, the incumbent President, could try to bring Brennan together with Rostov, it would be an act of decency, and history would be served by this truth-seeking.

  “Sorry, Mr. Brennan,” Wiggins had said, “but neither the President nor I have time for ancient history, when we are in the midst of making new and more important history.”

  “But the strength of our history is in its truth,” Brennan had said. “If a lie has crept in that you can now rectify—”

  “Like our helping prove you a saint and Simon Madlock a devil? No, thank you. If there is one thing I cannot abide, it is the disloyalty of a subordinate to his superior. I’m sorry, Mr. Brennan. Good day.”

  Departing, more angry than defeated, Brennan had wondered why the supercilious boy had bothered to see him at all. And then Brennan had perceived why the meeting had come about. Wiggins had wanted to see him for the same reasons people want to see a freak show, to reinforce their own superiority and to collect a conversation piece. Successful young men. Brennan had thought, so far from death, so invincible and immortal, possessed of too few years on earth to have experienced the disenchantment all men must endure before they come to human understanding. He had been sorry for young Wiggins, for how far he would have to fall, and only finally had he been sorrier for himself, whose history could not be revised.

  Brennan’s mood of self-pity, and the familiar despondency he had known in the Venice years, lay heavily on him the remainder of the morning and through lunch. But once he had driven beyond the city limits of Paris into the countryside, toward the appointment with a relative stranger who had displayed adult consideration for him, his depression had lifted. Perhaps the old English proverb—he who lives on hope will die fasting—was the correct view of things. But in the drive to Saclay, and beyond, his hope for a solution had revived again.

  The eight kilometers had gone by, and he was in Gif-sur-Yvette.

  Shouting out to a cyclist, he learned that the chateau and woods of the atomic research center were directly ahead.

  At once, there were the hoary trees of the park, partially obscured by old but sturdy stone walls. The huge iron gate was wide open. Brennan drove through it and followed a winding road between the trees, catching only an occasional glimpse of the chateau, until he emerged into a clearing, a quiet compound surrounded by squat and intensely modern buildings that appeared to hold offices and laboratories.

  A concierge with a writing board under one arm flagged him down and approached his car window. Brennan stated his name, mentioned Professor Isenberg, and gave the time of their appointment. The concierge consulted a sheet on his writing board and was satisfied. He gestured Brennan to a parking spot and indicated the one-story building sprawling out before it.

  Leaving the car, Brennan stretched, then hurriedly caught up with the concierge, who was already hobbling into the building. Brennan passed through a large scrubbed entrance hall, walked up an empty corridor with freshly whitewashed walls, then abruptly came upon a laboratory filled with counters on which complex miniaturized machinery hummed, as white-coated male and female technicians checked the readings on dials and made calculations.

  On the opposite side of the laboratory there was a door, set so flush in the wall it seemed camouflaged. The concierge rapped twice, tentatively tried the door, peered inside. He opened the door wider, beckoning Brennan to follow him. Once in the spacious, austere office, the concierge announced, “Isenberg est ici” and he backed respectfully out.

  The severity of the white-walled square office surprised Brennan, until he observed in the far wall a sizable window looking out on the woods, which made the room seem warmer and more serene. The oak desk had a jar of sharp yellow pencils, several writing pads, two opaque Lalique ashtrays on the dark gray blotter. To one side of the desk were four light gray metal file cabinets, each locked with a vertical security bar. On the other side stood a portable blackboard, its slate face pocked with countless incomprehensible formulas. Except for a telephone on a carved faux-marbre console, with a heavy bergère upholstered in velour beside it, and a bookcase with five shelves tightly packed with worn scientific books and journals, there was little in the room that gave a clue to its occupant’s personality.

  Then Brennan noticed a large framed display of photographs hanging from a wall beside another door. Lighting a cigarette, he moved toward it. The dominant portrait was that of Albert Einstein, taken in his younger days, and signed by him. There were photographs of Marie Curie, Max Planck, Enrico Fermi, all autographed to Professor Maurice Isenberg. The last picture, the smallest, was a snapshot of Isenberg and J. Robert Oppenheimer, both in sweaters and slacks, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder, both smiling with mutual affection. And immediately, Brennan knew. He would get on with Maurice Isenberg.

  Suddenly, the door beside Brennan was wrenched open. A tall, ungainly man, with the burning eyes and craggy gaunt face of a Jewish prophet of the Book, someone El Greco might have put onto canvas, burst into the office, slamming the door behind him.

  Brennan had stepped back, but Professor Isenberg was upon him at once, slapping his back, shaking his hand, pouring out a torrent of words, English words but French-accented. “Brennan? You are Brennan? Forgive me, forgive me, my dear sir. Mon Dieu, fool that I was, I agreed to dine with a group of visiting students from the Polytechnique and take them on a guided tour of our establishment. But I do not blame them for my lateness. It is I who am at fault. Once I begin to speak, and I have those who listen, I cannot cease. Yet, how could I resist my Polytechnique? It was the university from which I graduated as a specialist in thermonuclear physics, and whenever they summon, it
is like the summons of one’s father, and I am honored and respond. I am apologetic for not having been here to receive you. Forgive me, forgive me—” Forcibly, he began to lead Brennan toward the desk.

  “There’s nothing to forgive, Professor Isenberg,” Brennan said. “It is I who should apologize for breaking in on your day.”

  “No, no, definitely no. Here, sit, please sit.”

  He pushed Brennan into the armchair, hastened to the desk, removing his baggy sport jacket but leaving on his sleeveless blue sweater. He began to roll up his shirt-sleeves, as he pulled his swivel chair into place. “A cigar, my dear sir? Ah, no. I see you prefer cigarettes. A drink? Something to drink?”

  “Nothing, Professor, thank you.”

  Isenberg had opened a desk drawer, rummaged through it, while carrying on an inaudible dialogue with himself, until at last he found a pair of bifocals and set them high above the bump of his nose. Next, he produced a well-burned, smelly meerschaum pipe and a half-pound can of Dutch Cavendish Amphora pipe tobacco. Sloppily, he filled the pipe.

  Now, with the spectacles tilted on his prominent nose, the ornate pipe clenched between his discolored teeth, his bony fingers massaging his protruding jaw, his entire appearance seemed to undergo a metamorphosis in Brennan’s eyes. The fervent look of the Jewish Old Testament prophet was gone, and in its place sat hunched the wise man of science, one resembling a thoughtful Nuclear Age Sherlock Holmes.

  “We will talk,” said Isenberg, contentedly puffing. “You are in Paris on business or pleasure?”

  “On business which, if I can resolve it, will provide pleasure,” said Brennan. “You remember my trouble in America four years ago? Well, without complaining at length, life has been somewhat altered for me since that time. I’ve been a recluse in Venice most of these years.”