The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “Those Russians you met in Peking,” Brennan interrupted, “Was one of them named Nikolai Rostov? He’s the—”

  Isenberg held up his pipe. “I know, Brennan. He’s the other one who was mixed up in Varney’s defection. No, Rostov was not in Peking.”

  “He is in Paris now, you know.”

  Isenberg nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  “That’s why I came to Paris, Professor Isenberg. To see Rostov.”

  Isenberg removed the pipe from his mouth, stared at Brennan, but remained silent.

  “Only two men alive can prove my innocence,” said Brennan. “One is Varney. Even you couldn’t get to him. The other is Rostov. And he’s right here.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “I’ve tried.” Brennan shook his head. “No luck. He’s inaccessible to me.”

  “Ummm. Well. I suppose I am not surprised.”

  “I must see him,” said Brennan with passion. “My entire future depends on my seeing him. But I realize that I’ll be able to get to him only through an intermediary. That’s the real reason I came to you, Professor Isenberg. You believe in me. You’re a delegate to the Summit. So is Rostov. He would know and respect you. He might listen to you. I rather hoped you could try to—to arrange for the two of us to get together.”

  Isenberg laid his pipe carefully in the ashtray, not looking at Brennan. Slowly, he settled backward in his swivel chair, eyes closed, fingertips meeting before his lips, as he thought about the request. After almost half a minute, he opened his eyes, dropped his hands to the arms of the swivel chair, and rocked forward in it.

  “Brennan,” he said, “I would do anything for you that is possible. What you request, I fear, is impossible. My official position at the Summit, a delicate one, limits my activities. I am under surveillance, as are all of us connected with nuclear research, and if I treated with a Russian delegate without a directive to do so, I might be questioned or even arrested. I have not met Rostov, and it is unlikely I ever shall during this conference. He is a diplomat and politician from a secretive country. I am a scientist and adviser pledged to a certain secrecy by my country. Rostov and I have no common ground. We are assigned to different areas and different levels of activity. If I were to have the opportunity to speak to him officially, I would not forget to speak on your behalf at the same time. But such an opportunity is not likely to arise. My friend, I am sorry.”

  Brennan was embarrassed. “It was improper of me to bring it up—”

  “Not at all, not at all. In your place I should have done the same.”

  “—but, well, desperation drives men to behave as they would not normally behave. My request was unfair to you. I understand the restrictions surrounding you. I should have remembered from my own past.”

  Brennan stopped, aware that Isenberg had hardly been listening to him. The scientist had tilted back in his swivel chair once more, and he seemed to be concentrating on a light fixture in the ceiling. Suddenly, his features were those of a man who had been blessed by a revelation or had made a discovery. He slowly sat up. “Varney,” he mused. He yanked open a desk drawer, pulled out a leather appointment book, and thumbed through the pages. Holding one page, he nodded, slapped the book shut, and returned it to the drawer. “Yes,” he said to himself. He smiled apologetically at Brennan. “I’d almost forgotten, and it just came into my mind. The appointment—”

  Brennan started to rise. “I’m sorry. I know you’re busy. I’ve taken enough of your—”

  “No, no, it’s tomorrow, not now. Sit down. It concerns you. I was trying to think of people who might help you, and suddenly, it came to me. One name. He can’t be of any assistance in regard to Rostov. But he might get you some firsthand information on Professor Varney.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Brennan. - He shrugged. “But Varney, I doubt if Varney could ever—”

  “One never knows,” said Isenberg. “Always wise to have one more rabbit in the hat. If you should fail utterly to contact Rostov in Paris, it is quite possible that Ma Ming might intercede on your behalf with Varney one day, after he returns to Peking.”

  Brennan was not sure that he had heard the name correctly. “Ma Ming?”

  “Sorry, sorry, the way I skip along. Ma Ming, that’s right. Wonderful fellow. He came to interview me when I was in China, and we hit it off. Most friendly, and extremely well-informed and articulate. A fellow brimming with marvels. It was he who introduced me to the Hung Society. Ever hear of it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s a secret fraternal organization, harmless, rather like your Masons, with four or five million members throughout China. If a person belongs to the Hung Society, he converses with his brother members only through pantomime outsiders cannot notice, a language made up of hand movements, body postures, other actions, such as the way a cigarette is smoked, a cup of tea held, a package carried. Fascinating, and quite unheathen, the Chinese. I’m an honorary member of Hung, thanks to Ma Ming. Anyway”—Isenberg paused—“yes, I am almost certain Mr. Ma was the Chinese I first broached the subject of Varney to when I was over there. And he was the one who told me Varney was ill and incommunicado. Now, maybe all Chinese journalists were supposed to say that. Or maybe it was the truth. If it was, Ma Ming might know where Varney was being kept in China. If Mr. Ma liked you, and I think he would, and if he became interested in your plight, he just might look in on Varney and try to get you some sort of clearance, the sort of thing you want from Rostov. I don’t know. It would also depend on Varney’s being alive, being in his right mind, being willing or allowed to cooperate.”

  Brennan could not hide his skepticism. “Do you think a mere journalist could possibly—?”

  Isenberg shook a bony finger at Brennan. “No mere journalists in China, dear Brennan. No, sir. Ma Ming is the foremost correspondent with Hsinhua, that is the New China News Agency, the official bureau that one of their propaganda ministers once called the tongue and eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. I recall being told that Mr. Ma was very close to Chairman Kuo Shu-tung. At any rate, Mr. Ma was gracious to me in Peking, and I’m trying to repay him in kind while he’s here, although he is busy enough. I’m having him out to Gif-sur-Yvette tomorrow, and I’m giving him a little lunch. I’d like nothing better than to speak to him about you.”

  “I hate to have you bother. You’ve done more than enough already.”

  “If you don’t mind, I shall insist on this. I shall speak to Ma Ming of your case. If he is cooperative, would you see him?”

  “See him? I’ll embrace him. I’ll see anyone who—”

  “Very well. Do not forget the name, should he call upon you. Ma Ming.”

  Brennan smiled. “It’s not likely I’ll forget that name.” He stood up. “Professor, I’m deeply grateful for your—well, I’ll say it—for your friendship.”

  “You deserve more,” said Isenberg, troubled, as he rose to his feet. “I know it is Rostov, not Varney, who is your best hope. I wish I could suggest someone for you to enlist in my place. It should be someone who is an important diplomat—politician, really, someone above petty restrictions. Surely, you must know such a person. I hope so, and I wish you luck. Meanwhile, if there is anything else I can do—?”

  Ten minutes later, driving his dusty car out of Gif-sur-Yvette, heading back to Paris, Matthew Brennan still felt deeply discouraged. Yet, Isenberg’s last advice had not left his mind. To speak to Rostov on Brennan’s behalf, the French scientist had suggested an “important diplomat or politician,” a person “above petty restrictions.”

  And now Brennan admitted to himself that there was such a one in Paris, someone who knew him, who was a politician, who was unhampered by security. This was a person, Brennan reflected, who surely could get him to Rostov. This was also a person who, Brennan remembered, would just as soon see him dead.

  But if you were practically dead, Brennan decided, the other person might feel less threatened and more sympathetic.

>   Besides, he and the one he was now determined to see, to call upon without an appointment, had one thing in common. They were both forgotten creatures of the same past. Each of them in his own way, one as a leader, the other as a human being, might honestly be called The Ex.

  AS BRENNAN PLACED the thick binder of transcripts on the coffee table in the sitting room of Earnshaw’s Hotel Lancaster suite, and settled into the downy sofa, he could hear the former President saying, “I—I’m sorry I can’t give you any more than—uh—a few minutes, Mr. Brennan, but after all, your visit was unexpected. I—uh—it’s a busy day—Mr. Doyle is coming up shortly, so that I can dictate my column—then, uh, other matters. If you had called for an appointment first—”

  “If I’d called first,” said Brennan, trying to keep his tone light, “you might not have seen me at all.”

  Earnshaw scratched at a pointed eyebrow, and protested. “Come now, Mr. Brennan. If you had good cause to see me—

  “I don’t know if I have good cause,” said Brennan. “I only know I have a problem, one that involves you, and you’re the remaining person who might help me solve it.”

  “Well, in that case…” Earnshaw’s voice had trailed off, and he gripped a wing chair near him for support and eased himself down into it.

  Observing him, Brennan was surprised at how gray, aged, enfeebled the former President appeared. Only three days before, when they had encountered one another in the main hall of the Palais Rose, Brennan had thought Earnshaw remarkably well preserved and energetic. This afternoon, he was an old man, as frail and brittle as the hundred-year-old Civil War veteran and GAR survivor whom Brennan used to see in his youth, a dribbling relic in a rocking chair on a wooden front porch that the gang always passed on the way to the ice-cream shop. Brennan wondered what could possibly have happened to Earnshaw in three days to inflict this transformation, and then he ceased to speculate on geriatrics, since it might soften his approach.

  “I know my walking in on you like this, unannounced, is rude,” said Brennan, “and that my being here probably makes you uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have done it, believe me, if it weren’t necessary.”

  Earnshaw’s fingers drummed nervously on the arm of his chair. “You are mistaken, Mr. Brennan. I’ve nothing against you personally.”

  “Well, perhaps you still feel that I failed you in that whole Varney business, and that the sight of me symbolizes the one bad mark against your Administration. So be it. You needn’t answer. Let me put it this way. Whatever happened in the past, whatever you’ve felt about me or I’ve felt about you, there is one judgment I’ve had about you that has remained unchanged. I’ve always felt you were a man of goodwill and decency. I still feel that way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t dare to be here right now.”

  Earnshaw’s grave blue eyes wavered. Slowly, he rubbed his cleft chin. He waited for what was next.

  “As you probably recall,” said Brennan, “when I testified under oath before Senator Dexter’s Joint Committee on Internal Security, I explained that you and Simon Madlock had insisted that Professor Varney accompany those of us who were going to the Zurich Parley. Then I testified about a private meeting I’d had with Madlock. I had learned Varney was a poor security risk, and I felt his presence at Zurich might be dangerous to us. I asked that Varney be left behind. Madlock insisted I take him along. Do you recall my saying that in my testimony four years ago?”

  “Uh—I think so. Yes.”

  ‘Then I told the congressmen that the worst that I had feared did finally happen. Varney defected. The responsibility for this defection was Madlock’s. But when I returned to Washington, Madlock was dead. He was not around to accept the blame, which I am convinced he would have done. So I was blamed in his stead. I said all of that under oath. Do you remember?”

  “Vaguely. I’m not sure.”

  Brennan laid the flat of his palm on the thick binder of transcripts. “It’s in here, Mr. Earnshaw. This is the transcript of my days of testimony before the Congressional Joint Committee on Internal Security. Have you ever read it?”

  “No, no, I don’t think I have. A President rarely has time for that amount of reading. Besides, as I remember, I was too upset, in grief, over Simon’s passing. And there were numerous executive matters that had piled up and that required my full attention. However, I was briefed on the hearings, on the testimony of the various—various—uh—witnesses. I can’t say at this late date whether or not I recollect all of your testimony.”

  Brennan kept his hand on the binder. “I wish you’d read some of this, especially the part where I tell of the private meeting Madlock and I had, when he forced me to take Varney to Zurich over my protests.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll have the time, Mr. Brennan.”

  “Well, if you can, sir, I’d appreciate it. The fact is, there was that meeting, and I’ve always wondered why you didn’t come forward in Madlock’s place to back me up, after he was no longer alive to corroborate my statements. Certainly, Madlock must have told you of our talk.” Brennan paused. “He did, didn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure he did. I have no recollection of it.”

  “But he must have told you.”

  Earnshaw wriggled in his seat. “Not necessarily,” he said. “He was extremely busy—uh—devoted to his job—working to relieve me of many burdens—and he didn’t always have the time to speak to me of all his multiple activities.”

  Brennan overlooked this and went on. “If you weren’t a party to the advance warning I gave Madlock, you couldn’t have defended me. I understand that. And we know Madlock died before he could speak out for me. But if and when you read this testimony, you’ll learn that there was one other person who could have cleared me. Do you remember the name Nikolai Rostov?”

  “The Russian at Zurich. Yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “Rostov could have proved that while Varney duped us both, he left an apologetic note clearing us. Rostov had the note and disappeared with it. I tried to locate him, get the evidence from him, but I never could.” Brennan paused, then he said, “Do you know this same Rostov is in Paris right now?”

  “I may have heard.”

  “He’s on Premier Talansky’s staff. I’ve tried to reach him and I’ve failed. Yet, one word from him would not only clear me, but erase the single black mark against your Administration as President. I have the greater stake in getting to Rostov, but I’m suggesting you have a stake in this also. You are the only person left I can appeal to, the only person I know who can go to the incumbent President of the United States or our Secretary of State, and prevail upon him to speak to Rostov on my behalf, our behalf. Under such pressure, I’m sure Rostov would comply. We’d have the truth at last.”

  Brennan looked at Earnshaw, waiting, and what he saw embarrassed him. The former President was scratching and squirming, uncomfortable and worried. “Uh—yes, I see what you are after, Mr. Brennan—and while I wish for truth as much as you, I’m not all that certain I’m in any position to help you. If I intervened—uh—approached the President, that is, at a time like this, it would be regarded as highly improper. It wouldn’t be correct form, you see.”

  Earnshaw seemed to expect some understanding and relenting on his visitor’s part, but Brennan refused to offer him any such solace. Brennan sat stolid and uncooperative.

  Staring up at the ceiling unhappily, Earnshaw resumed. “Uh—there are many difficulties for one in my—uh—situation that you cannot possibly appreciate. Certain things are—uh—easier said than done, you know. It’s like, well—”

  Earnshaw rambled on and on, and Brennan listened to The Ex’s familiar circumlocutions, ambiguities, digressions, generalities, indecisiveness. With mounting disgust, Brennan realized that Earnshaw at sixty-six was no different from Earnshaw at sixty-three, or at any earlier age, and that trying to expect a molehill to have grown into a mountain was being unrealistic.

  “Mr. Earnshaw,” Brennan interrupted, “I do appreciate your situation. I hope you will
refresh your memory with this transcript, and then try to appreciate my situation. Look at me, sir. I am one last bit of unfinished business from your Administration. I am unfinished business that you and Madlock never resolved. If you are a man of good faith, you will try to resolve it, not only for me but for your own and Madlock’s places in history.”

  Earnshaw was twitching again, eyes rolling, avoiding Brennan. “Uh—well, now—I don’t know. I can’t promise anything, because, as I’ve said—still, one never knows—perhaps if the opportunity arises, let me see, let me keep my eyes open, ears open, and if anything can be done, at the appropriate time, well—”

  Brennan’s disgust was complete. He stood up. “Thank you anyway, sir. I know you’ll do what you can. Thank you for giving me your time.”

  Once he had left the suite and gone down the flight of stairs to the elevator, Brennan realized to what extent the meeting with Earnshaw had sickened him.

  The person he had just left was the very person who, only short years ago, had held the fate of America and the free world in his hands. The thought made Brennan shudder. If ordinary people only knew the frailties, susceptibilities, weaknesses of their revered leaders, if they could see the slack real faces hidden behind the confident public masks, not one of them would ever sleep easy again. Relating this thought to the leaders and ministers at the Summit, Brennan shuddered again.

  From cradle to the grave, he thought, no man dared depend wholly on other men, for all men were vulnerable and flawed. And it was that way from the first breath of life, he thought. If helpless infants, looking up at their godly parents through the tiny eyes of childhood, entrusting their innocent lives to the infallible wisdom of these parents, could only know how troubled was the mother, how complex the father, how insecure were both their guardians, each of the little ones would swiftly crawl back into the womb for eternity.