The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  She squeezed her eyes. “I think I see. Maybe I do. But you—us—what’s in it for you?”

  “Just as Goerlitz’ll be in Earnshaw’s debt for this information, so Earnshaw will be in my debt for helping him. Earnshaw will owe me something.”

  “What?”

  “A ticket to Rostov, dear. Do you understand?”

  Lisa looked at him blankly. “No,” she said. “Champagne doesn’t understand.” Then she said, “But all this mystery and trading, it’s good for us?”

  Brennan reached for her hand. “It’s very good for us,” he said. He was happy now, and glad that he had not told her earlier that this was their farewell dinner. For now it wasn’t. Now it had the makings of a celebration.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  “No. Do you love me?”

  “I love you. Want to try those swings in the bar?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Now,” he said.

  FOR HAZEL SMITH, thus far, it had been a divine evening, one of the best in several years of memory.

  A glass panel in the dome-shaped, bubbletop roof of the bateau-mouche, their luxurious Seine excursion boat, had been slid back, and a balmy breeze curled through the dining room, teasing the candle on each red-clothed table and caressing Hazel’s cheeks and shoulders. She sliced the last of her pinta-deau régence, and ate it, and the portion of baby guinea hen melted in her mouth. Lifting her eyes, she could see Jay Doyle, so neat and quiet and smelling of cologne, eating sparingly of his Chateaubriand, ignoring all sauces, and she was as proud of him as if he had been her husband.

  She supposed the enchanting river ride would be over soon—they had been talking and drinking and dining on the bateau-mouche for nearly two hours—and she hated to have it end. Sipping her wine, she listened to the organist playing a selection from Massenet’s Manon—and then recognized it as “Adieu, notre petite table” Manon Lescaut’s plaintive farewell to the little table where she and the Chevalier des Grieux had dined—and suddenly Hazel realized that it was more than this trip on the Seine that she did not want to come to an end.

  She looked off through the side of the transparent dome, and she could make out the vines cascading down ancient walls and the quays of the Right Bank into the river. She could see, on the weathered stone steps leading up from the bank of the Seine toward the city, a French boy and girl locked in an embrace, and overhead, above and beyond the green treetops, she beheld the spires of Notre-Dame shining against the darkened Paris sky.

  The bateau-mouche moved on through the water, and Notre-Dame was gone, and only the stars remained. They were passing the Quai d’Orleans on the Île St.-Louis, and in a moment they were under the Pont de Sully, and the illuminated white boat was making a wide sweeping turn, to return and pass the point where the evening had begun.

  She watched the weeping willows touching the water, and as they glided beneath the iron bridge connecting the Île St.-Louis and the Île de la Cité, she studied the islands she had always enjoyed.

  “Jay,” she said, still looking off, “there’s a statue on the Île de la Cité, at the tip. It’s King Henri IV on horseback. Have you ever seen it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I love the statue, because I’ve loved Henri IV ever since a guide told me the last time I was here that Henri changed his religion from Protestant to Catholic, to become King, explaining, ‘Paris is well worth a Mass!’ Don’t you love that? But you know what really made him popular? Henri IV, I mean. He once announced that he wanted every Frenchman to have a poule every Sunday. A poule means a hen, but in French slang it also means a chick, a whore. They adored him after that.”

  Doyle laughed, his chins shaking. “Great, Hazel, absolutely great.”

  “Jay, I’m so glad you took me out here for dinner.”

  “I am, too, but the credit is yours, Hazel. You were the one who suggested the bateau-mouche.”

  “Did I?” This was disappointing, but she refused to allow it to detract from her cavalier’s romantic judgment. “Well, I’d never taken the night ride on one of these boats, and I thought it was the kind of thing you’d want us to share.”

  “That’s right.” He was busy with his omelette norvégienne. Conscious that she was watching him, he suddenly ceased eating the souffle-and-ice-cream dessert, and firmly pushed it aside.

  Observing his new Spartanism, pleased with his strength of character, Hazel said, “I’ve never even had dinner on the bateau-mouche before, have you?”

  “No. But it was a great idea.”

  “Now I remember where I got the idea. I’ve been interviewing some of the delegates on their favorite eating places in Paris. This was one. So I thought I’d check into it for a possible feature. The publicity director met me at the top of the stairs, on the Place de l’Alma, and took me on a guided tour of one of the boats that were anchored. Colorful material, very good.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Like Paris was always a big boat city. But when the underground Metro was built, that was practically the finish of the passenger boats, except for a few beat-up excursion craft left over from the Paris Exposition of 1860. Anyway, in 1930 or so, a Sorbonne student named Bruel used one of these old river hulks to sleep in. He loved the Seine, felt it was the center of Paris, and later, when he became affluent, he created his flotilla of bateau-mouches. He named his first vessel after Jean-Sebastien Mouche, and even commissioned a statue of Mouche.”

  “Mouche? Who was he?”

  “The little man who wasn’t there,” said Hazel with delight. “He was an imaginary person—just right for an unbelievable boat to be named after. But you ask anyone in Paris today, and they’ll probably tell you Monsieur Mouche founded the French Navy.” She took up her wine glass. “Anyway, I thank Monsieur Mouche and I thank Monsieur Doyle for a marvelous dinner.”

  Doyle picked up his glass of Evian water. “And I thank you for being you—and I thank you, again, for seeing me after last night.”

  “I was just as sleepy as you, with all that food we’d put away,” she said. “Jay, I appreciated the way you tidied up my apartment. It was pristine when I returned this morning with those fashion editors I was interviewing.”

  “Whenever you need a day worker, call on me. I hope you had a good morning.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said quickly, guiltily, praying he would not ask her about the interviews.

  He did not pursue the matter. He seemed lost in thought, as he gazed out the window, and she was relieved. Lighting a cigarette, Hazel considered his porcine profile. He was nice, nicer even than on their last date. He had dressed with pathetic care, like a high school junior going to his first prom. He had dominated his appetite, controlled it, eaten normally and sensibly, perhaps for her rather than for himself. He had been a gentleman throughout the excursion, and he had been a gentleman last night, too. She wondered about last night: Whatever weakness and madness had induced her to go upstairs and change. She had not wanted him then, any more than she wanted him now. Perhaps she had been betrayed by the past, by a nostalgia for what had been but likely could never be again.

  Surreptitiously, she continued to scrutinize him. Well groomed he was, well behaved he was, but he was not the monument of a man she had once imagined him to be. He was a ruin, ravaged by gluttony, brought down by many failures and one obsession. There was not enough of him left for a woman to lean on, depend on; there was not enough strength to support another’s love. She had returned too late to preserve the monument.

  She mourned her loss, then fiercely, she resented it, hating to give up hope. Certainly, she told herself, there was more to him. There had to be a force beneath the flabby layers of flesh, else how could he have passed her test a second night? For not once had he brought up his assassination book or indicated that he was here to use her. Apparently, he possessed remarkable willpower, a virtue—or possibly, better yet, he possessed a matured affection for her, an endearment.

  Once more, she st
udied him, now with more kindly eyes. There he was, fat face at the window, silently absorbed, but she could not determine whether he was absorbed in self or in what lay outside. She gave her attention to the window, to see what he was seeing.

  There were houseboats docked along the banks of the Seine, and now their own boat was traveling under the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. It was turning in the river, and the small replica of the Statue of Liberty and the illuminated brown girders of the Eiffel Tower passed in review. They were heading back to the point of their original departure.

  She and Doyle came away from the window simultaneously. The music had stopped. The candle between them had burned out. And the fat face above the candle holder—definitely, it had been absorbed in self.

  She felt the faintest flush of shame. So determined had she been that he pass her test tonight, that she had purposely avoided asking him about himself or encouraging him to speak of his activities. And now the excursion was almost over. She had, because of her fears, been grossly unfair to him.

  “Jay,” she said, “you haven’t told me a thing about yourself. What have you been up to today?”

  He stared at her. “I—I’ve—well, I hate to say it, but there’s been nothing very much.”

  “Have you been working on your cookbook?”

  “I’ve been doing some research.”

  “What are you going to do after—well, after you leave Paris?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He had spoken the last so despairingly, so helplessly, that Hazel found herself shaken. No longer did she see before her the fat face of self-indulgence and weakness, but instead the lean and macerated face of the lonely and the haunted. It was a trick of the darkness, perhaps—all the candles were out, the lights of the landing dimmed—or perhaps her yearning heart now saw him more clearly than her colder eyes. He was lost, he was lonely, and this was the hidden language behind words that she understood, for so was she as lost, as lonely, as he. At once, all rationale was discarded, all reservations were shed. She felt empathy for him, because she felt pity for herself. She wanted to hold him, all of him, warm in her arms, and suffocate their loneliness forever.

  He was pushing back his chair. “We’d better go, Hazel.”

  Dazed, she joined him, following the line of people to the gangplank, barely aware of the passengers remaining behind to continue their drinking. On the narrow rim of deck she waited for him to tip the effusively grateful headwaiter, and then they were on the landing below the Place de l’Alma.

  For a moment, bewildered, she tried to remember where she had parked her car, and recalled that she had not brought her car, because it had seemed unromantic for her to drive on a dinner date. She had been tired of her strident independence, her career-dominated self-sufficiency, and she had wondered if she was still capable of allowing someone else to look out for her. She had wanted to be a woman wanted, not a redheaded journalist terror. Even in Moscow, so many years, so very many, this yearning part of her had not been satisfied. She had not been alone in those years, but she had been lonely. She had been made to feel female, but she had never felt feminine. Doyle was offering her an opportunity to learn whether any soft and pliable dependence was left in her. Perhaps this was why she had so rashly changed into her lingerie the previous night. Perhaps tr;is was why she had not taken her own car earlier this evening. Perhaps she was testing not Doyle but herself.

  Self-consciously, she held his arm as her free hand clutched the silly white, red-trimmed handkerchief imprinted with the menu of the bateau-mouche on one side and the emblem of the river cruise boats—a Zouave in blue jacket and red pantaloons, and bearing a rifle—on the other side. It was the first souvenir she had saved since she had been a schoolgirl in Wisconsin. Retarded femininity, she thought. But femininity, none the less.

  Doyle led her between the iron barriers guarding the benches, chairs, rows of flowerpots on the Seine side, and the rows of parked automobiles on the other side, toward the stairs leading from the quay to the Place de l’Alma above.

  “Jay,” she said, “did you really mean you don’t know what you’re going to do after you leave Paris?”

  “That’s true.”

  “But you must have something in mind.”

  “I’m not sure. It depends. It depends on what happens here.”

  Desperately, as they walked, she tried to interpret this. Upon what did his future depend? On making a success of the cookbook here? On doing a good job for Earnshaw here? Or on—on Hazel Smith—on winning her back, to give his life motivation and purpose?

  They reached the steps and ascended them in silence. At the top, they were confronted by the wild traffic spinning around the circles and triangles and illuminated corner posts of the Place de l’Alma.

  Still puffing from their climb, Doyle glanced about. “I’d better find a taxi. It’s eleven-thirty. I guess you’ll want to get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sleepy. What are you going to do?”

  “Well, I—I was just going back to my hotel. But if—”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said. He looked bewildered, and she added quickly, “You can treat me to a brandy, can’t you? Brandy makes me sleepy.”

  “Why, I’d love to, Hazel.”

  They survived the crossing of the Place de l’Alma and walked a half block until they found a taxi, and five minutes later, they arrived at the Hotel George-V.

  Hazel preceded Doyle through the revolving door, and they entered the vast lobby, with its black lacquered Louis XV desks and tables, its arrangements of brown velvet-covered chairs clustered together on the areas of marble floor not covered by the great central Oriental rug.

  Doyle pointed ahead. “The bar’s through that corridor.”

  Hazel did not move. “I don’t want to go to the bar,” she said. “I’d prefer to go to your room. I’d rather have privacy. Do you mind, Jay?”

  “Mind?” His hangdog expression was gone. “It’s what I’d like most. I can send for drinks, and we can kick off our shoes and talk. That is, if you’re not too tired.”

  “I’m not too tired.”

  She hung back while he asked for his key at the desk and received with it a telephone message slip from the concierge. In the elevator he opened the message, read it, and looked puzzled. Stuffing the message in his pocket, he became aware of her concern. “Nothing, Hazel. Matt Brennan phoned an hour ago. Asked if I could manage to arrange for him to see Earnshaw sometime tomorrow. Urgent. Said he’d explain in the morning.” He shrugged. “I can’t imagine what that’s about.”

  “Brennan and Earnshaw,” said Hazel. “Now, there’s a combination.”

  “I know. I’ll try to explain it someday.” The elevator had stopped. “Here we are. Fifth floor. Be it ever so humble—”

  When she passed before him into his room, she was surprised to find herself in a suite. She had quite forgotten that Jay Doyle had always lived beyond his means.

  He caught up with her and waddled ahead of her into the salon. Expansively, he gestured toward the window overlooking the marble courtyard, the sofa covered in rich brocade, the crystal chandelier gleaming above. He patted his portable typewriter resting on the table next to the green lamp.

  “My office,” he said.

  “For heaven’s sake, how many rooms are there, Jay?”

  “Only this and”—he indicated an open door—“the bedroom and bath in there.”

  She walked slowly past him into the bedroom. Tasteful, with a pink ceiling, light gray walls, a large bed, the headboard pearl-gray leather, the bedspread ivory-colored velvet, already turned back for the night. Next to the sumptuous bed, next to the silver candlestick lamp that held a smart white shade, stood Doyle’s own clock. It was a cheap and dented traveling clock. It was incongruous.

  He was across the room. “A million built-ins,” he said, expansively. “Even a built-in safe. How do you like that?”

  She joined him. “What’s in the safe?”

  “Nothing,” he
said sheepishly. “Except my passport.”

  “Passport,” she repeated hollowly.

  She pulled out a drawer beneath the safe. There were several shirts in it. The collar of the top one was frayed. She moved to the wardrobe that doubled as a closet, and opened it. It was empty except for two suits, shiny, oversized suits, the kind she had seen on struggling Russian laborers when they wore their Sunday best while strolling down Karl Marx Prospekt or munching hot pirozhki along Gorki Street.

  She had turned to speak to him, but he was leaving the bedroom and she was alone. Sadly, she surveyed the room, and for the first time she noticed the messy suitcase, the piles of notes and blank notepaper pads, the misshapen night slippers, the open telephone book, the heap of foreign coins, the half-filled bottle of Evian, the discarded tie hanging over the back of a chair. Suddenly, the bedroom was not luxurious at all but merely the prideful fan of a peacock’s tail. Suddenly, the bedroom was like any one of a hundred rooms belonging to those who were dispossessed, those who had no roots, those who belonged nowhere. Suddenly, the bedroom was another way station for those running, always running, destinations unknown. It was Doyle’s countless rooms and it was her countless rooms, and it was their lives, and she wanted to weep for him and for herself, for both of them.

  Her mind was made up. Resolutely, she went into the salon. He was on the telephone.

  “What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

  “Ordering brandy,” he said. “Haven’t gotten through yet.”

  “Hang up,” she said.

  Taken aback, he dropped the receiver into its cradle.

  “I hate brandy,” she said. “I didn’t come up here for brandy.”

  He looked at her incredulously, as she walked directly to him and stood straight before him.

  “But, Hazel—”

  “Jay, you damn fool, can’t you see? I want you.”