The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  For the first time, Hazel Smith offered him a friendly smile. And then she offered him her hand. He leaned over the table to shake it.

  “Okay, Brennan,” she said, “let’s call this an option on each other’s friendship. Maybe you’re not the heel everybody, myself included, thought you were. Maybe I could come to like you. Right now, Brennan, you’ve got two pluses going for you: first, Jay likes you; second, Medora moves you. So you can’t be all bad. Let’s watch it and see if we both want to pick up the option.”

  “It’s a deal,” Brennan said.

  As he turned to leave Fouquet’s, he heard Hazel exclaim to Doyle, “My God, look at the time! Someone’s expecting me for an interview. I can’t be late for this one.”

  And Brennan, departing, wondered who would be the next lucky one to have to endure Hazel Smith’s serpent tongue and grudging goodwill…

  BREATHLESSLY, Hazel Smith left the taxi that had brought her to the Porte Maillot at the northeast corner of the densely wooded Bois de Boulogne, which was the entrance to the combination children’s playground, fun fair, and zoo known to Parisians as the Jardin d’Acclimatation.

  Joining the line before the ticket booth, Hazel felt certain that the acceleration of her heartbeat came not from physical exertion or fear of being tardy (for she was on time), but from anxiety over her new dual role. Moving forward with the line, she had sympathy for Gertrud Margarete Zelle, who had become both Mata Hari and Agent H.21 at one and the same time. Here she was, to a certain American a woman named Hazel Smith, and to a certain Russian a woman who was the nonexistent secretary of a nonexistent M. Gerard. This would be her first trial as a person of divided allegiance, and she was not sure she could carry it off. Once more, the muggy French air felt full of poniards.

  She had arrived at the cage of the booth, and she purchased her ticket for the miniature railway. There was a quicker entrance into the Jardin d’Acclimatation, one made on foot, but Hazel had chosen this way because it was slower and more picturesque. She wanted the extra minutes to calm her nerves and regain her poise. She wanted, also, the most soothing and nostalgic entrance into the fun fair.

  Since earliest childhood, when her father had introduced her to American Legion carnivals on the Milwaukee beach front and the honky-tonk streets and dizzy rides of White City in Chicago, Hazel Smith had become a connoisseur of these retreats to happier, simpler years. As a grown woman, she had allowed no artificial playground to escape her presence. She had reveled in Anaheim’s Disneyland, in Brooklyn’s Coney Island, in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, in Vienna’s Prater, in Moscow’s Gorki Park and Sokolniki Park. But her favorite of them all was this little section of the Bois outside Paris given over to the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Whenever she was in Paris, Hazel let others dutifully visit the Louvre, the Sacré-Coeur, the Luxembourg Gardens. For herself, time and again, she preferred the diminutive train that whisked her through the enchanted forest into her favorite fairyland.

  She had never been able to discern why she enjoyed a visit to the Jardin more than the world’s more magnificent playgrounds. Certainly, it possessed none of the grand attractions of its lavish competitors—offered nothing comparable to the giant Ferris wheel in Vienna’s Prater or the pavilions in Moscow’s Gorki Park—yet it had always proved infinitely more satisfying. On second thought, she supposed that other amusement parks, like so many children’s toys, were designed primarily to attract the eye and pocketbook of the adult. Their pretense was an offer of juvenile pleasure, but their lure was for the adult sophisticate. The Jardin d’Acclimatation, on the other hand, made no concessions to jaded maturity. It made no claim to being more than it was, a modest outdoor playroom with ordinary rides, inexpensive game booths, unpretentious snack stands, a limited zoo, just enough diversion and no more than might be absorbed in a few feverish hours by the dancing mind of an eight-year-old. Hazel liked it because in this easy haven of the French working-class family, she could be young again and enjoy the dreams of childhood, and still believe in the illusion that some part of life was meant to be carefree and pleasurable.

  Passing through the gate, she took a wooden seat in the last open passenger car of the miniature train. As the stationmaster blew his whistle and the tiny locomotive began to pull the sparsely occupied cars through the scenic forest, she remembered why she had come to the Jardin d’Acclimatation this early afternoon. It was not her need for a pink juvenile palliative or for an even stronger sedative that would settle the turmoil in her mind. It was the need for a safe place, one unlikely to be visited by delegate tourists, especially on a Wednesday lunch hour, yet a site public enough and distracting enough to remove the pressures that an intimate, private rendezvous would hold. The intimate rendezvous would come soon. But first she must be ready for it She must understand her new dual role. And she must understand where her allegiance lay. She must be positive.

  It surprised her that the miniature train had pulled to a stop on the circle of tracks that was the end of the line. Never before had she made the short trip without any awareness of the funny train and green woods along the route. Leaving the coach, she knew why. Today, she was not escaping into childhood. Today, she was facing up to adulthood, and what remained of it. With regret, she surrendered her ticket, and her youth, to the gateman. Never again, she knew, would the Jardin be the same.

  She went swiftly up the main entrance street, thinly populated at this hour of a midweek day. At her left, she passed the artificial river, where oarless boats floated magically around miniature islands, all propelled by a single churning water wheel, and she saw again the stunted replica of the Eiffel Tower. To her right was the riotously colored banked garden with a floral clock in its center, and after that the stage and entrance of a sideshow.

  She had reached the heart of the Jardin, a semicircle of snack bars and game stalls that looked out upon an enclosed diminutive French highway, where youngsters drove small cars at fifteen miles an hour, guided by French traffic-safety police. Here and there, at the stalls, she could see parents watching their offspring engage in rifle games and ball-rolling games. She could see a nursemaid and her three charges, all nibbling away at barbe à papa, papa’s beard in French, cotton candy in English. But she could not see the one she was to meet.

  Then, searching the last curve of the semicircle of booths, she saw Nikolai Rostov.

  From this distance he appeared much smaller in stature than he had yesterday during their brief reunion, or in Moscow during their long years together. Starting toward him, she realized that it was not the distance that made him seem smaller, but the measuring of him, in her mind’s eye, against the enormous bulk of Jay Thomas Doyle.

  As she closed in, Nikolai Rostov grew in size. He was of medium height, chunky, brawny, and though his charcoal suit was too dark for the time of day and too heavy for the weather, it had a better fit than the suits on most Russian men. The broad and deceptively peasant face was partially hidden behind some kind of paper-wrapped food. The shrewd, penetrating eyes looked up and off, and a free hand brushed back an untidy forelock of gray-flecked black hair. Suddenly, the hand rose high and waved, as he saw her approaching.

  She reached him. “Hi, Niki.”

  Quickly, one thick arm encircled her, almost lifting her from her feet, and then, still chewing his food, Rostov kissed her cheek. “Milochka, sweetheart, my precious.” In the day she was always milochka, his sweetheart, his darling. In the night she was usually lyubov, his love. Rarely was she Hazel, which he found awkward on his tongue. “You are well?” he asked.

  “Fix your tie,” she said. “What are you eating?”

  “A crêpe au confiture with jelly inside,” he said, holding up the crêpe folded within a paper wrapping. “Come, you will have one. You are starved.” Arm around her, he began to lead her to the food stand.

  She touched the fingers grasping her ribs. “Niki, aren’t you being a little reckless? What if your wife should see you here like this?”

  He laugh
ed throatily, refusing to release her. “My wife—what is your song?—is going to the country, hooray, hooray—is that what you taught me? Natasha is already on her trip to the châteaux with Tania Talansky and maybe a hundred French guards. They will be busy.”

  At the food stand Rostov ordered two more crêpes au confiture. Hazel stood close to him as, with childish delight, he watched the old French lady spill the batter on the sizzling griddle.

  “When is Natasha coming back to Paris?” Hazel asked.

  “Not today, not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, on Friday.”

  He observed the brown crêpes being filled with jelly, folded in two, and wrapped in paper. Quickly, he brought out a fistful of coins, sorting among the kopeks and rubles for francs, and then he paid. Handing Hazel her crêpe, he began munching his own, as he led the way along the row of game booths, each with its shelves of cheap prizes. “Hungry,” he said, biting off another mouthful. “This is true passion, milochka, to give up one’s proper lunch to meet one’s love.”

  He was a rough bear who’d been tamed, she thought, or no, better yet, a nice bull, sometimes. “You’re sweet today,” she said. “You can be sweet.”

  “Because I think ahead to tomorrow. You telephoned a message to me, but even before I received it I planned to telephone you. When I knew Natasha was going, I could only think of my milochka I was going to invite myself to come to you tonight. But—nyet. Today, with the meetings, is very much work. I could only use the lunch time to come to here.” His eyes prospected their surroundings. “Fun place. Good place. The French know how to make pleasure.” He stared into her eyes. “Sometimes some Americans, too. But tonight, no, I cannot see you. I am crazed with desire, but the Premier, he is crazed with the debates in the Rose Palace. So tonight, many of us, we must work.”

  Hazel’s disappointment was genuine. “That’s awful, Niki.”

  Now he wore a wide grin. “But tomorrow night it is different. I am free. I will come to the apartment. Maybe nine o’clock. We will have the night together.”

  “Oh, Niki, that’s wonderful.” She clutched his hand, massaging the furry hairs on his knuckles. “That’s really why I called you. That’s the only reason. We had fifteen minutes yesterday, and it made me so lonely for you. I wanted to see you again, right away, to find out when we could really be together. It’ll be such fun. We can talk and—”

  He drew her to him. “We can do better than talk.” He kissed her on the lips.

  She tried to pull away, and finally succeeded. Despite the crêpe, his breath still bore the faintly acrid smell of pickled herring. She glanced about nervously. “Really, Niki, even if your wife is gone, someone might see you. How could you explain this?”

  He cackled. “The same as I would explain if they saw us on Kirova Street. I am a cossack. I always kiss pretty women, especially the one who makes a press interview with me.”

  “Very neat, Niki. I’m beginning not to trust you. I bet you’re not doing a bit of work at the Palais Rose. I bet you’re in Paris to size up the French girls. That’s it, isn’t it? French girls. That’s why I’m not seeing you nights.”

  Rostov snorted, as he wheeled her around and started her in the opposite direction. “French girls, you keep. Matchsticks. They are matchsticks only, fancy hair, fancy clothes, wigs, pads, stinking perfume instead of water, buttons not breasts, no normal love only decadence, either harlots with wide-open legs or priss Catholics with tight-crossed legs, but no strong honest women. No women like Russian women.

  You are a Russian woman, milochka, your family blood is from Moskva Matushka. I have always told you. It is true. You are a true woman for a man.”

  Somewhat taken aback by his fiery outburst, then dismayed, and finally feeling guilty over her disloyalty, Hazel walked silently beside Rostov. At last, she murmured, “I appreciate all that, Niki. Spasibo. I thank you. I appreciate your coming here.”

  She cast a sidelong glance at him. He could excite her. He was no Adonis. The thick eyebrows, the Mongolian aspect of his features, the rough face of one who had shaved with a blowtorch, the sloping shoulders, the burly body. No Adonis. Not even the appearance of a bolshaya shiska—a big pinecone, a big shot. Physically, he was unprepossessing. Physically, he was coarse, primitive. Physically, he evoked the image of virilia. She felt weak and hot inside, and ashamed, and once more suffused with guilt.

  “I only wish I could stay more time,” Rostov was saying. He dug the battered brass watch he had inherited from his father out of his vest pocket. “Almost the hour to return to save the world.” He wrinkled his nose to show he was joking, slipped the watch back in the vest pocket, and said, “Maybe ten minutes more. I do not know where I go, but I think there was a zoo I could see.”

  “There is one straight ahead.”

  “It is good to look at animals after looking at people,” Rostov said.

  “Niki, what does that mean?”

  “People of five countries meet in one room. People of five backgrounds, five feelings, five ideas. People who look at one world globe, and each sees it a different shape. But it can be only one shape. People become ugly, very ugly.”

  “Yes, I can understand that. I—I was teasing before about French girls. Poor dear, I know you’ve been working hard.”

  “Hard days, hard nights.”

  They paused before a toy house enclosed by a wire fence, which contained a little kingdom of hamsters, some dozing, some cavorting in play. “Aren’t those hamsters cute?” said Hazel. “Look how nicely they play.”

  “Put a cat in their cage and they will not play,” said Rostov.

  She looked at him. “Are you alluding to China?”

  Rostov shrugged. “I name no names.” He took her arm and they resumed their promenade. “Sometimes, in a nation of hamsters, there are some who think all others outside are hamsters, too. They do not believe in cats. Who knows who is right?” He released her arm. “But the work—yes, it is difficult”

  She questioned him softly, not as a journalist but as a woman who had shared so many nights of his life, and gradually but guardedly, he discussed his activities at the Palais Rose, and at the ministerial meetings that followed daily at the Quai d’Orsay. Mostly, he spoke of the conflicting disarmament proposals and the problems standing in the way of achieving compromises, and finally of the suspicions that the leaders and delegates had of each other, and of the clash of their personalities.

  At the peanut stand he purchased two small bags, one for each of them. He cracked several shells, for her and for himself. “Enough of politics,” he said firmly. “That I have the whole day. You are the only one who gives me pleasure. I cannot waste you with politics. What have you been doing yesterday and today?”

  “Politics,” she said with a teasing smile.

  Rostov grimaced. “Naturally,” he said. He glanced across at the pit of bears. “We have enough of them at home. For now, I prefer the monkeys. They amuse. It is good to laugh at yourself.”

  They strolled to the enclosure of monkeys, who were swarming across an artificial hill ringed by a moat. The monkeys were captivating as they begged for food, and gayly Hazel and Rostov began to toss them peanuts.

  Leaning on the rail, feeding the monkeys, Rostov said, “You have not told me how you spend your time.”

  “Like you, Niki, mostly work, as I explained yesterday. What crazy people a Summit conference attracts.” She pitched a peanut high, and an agile baboon caught it and did a somersault. “Most of my interview subjects are more peculiar than those animals.”

  “Yes? I have no hours to read your stories. One I saw. Of President Earnshaw’s niece. She sounded nice to have so stupid a relative. Both Premier Talansky and Marshal Zabbin wondered why he is here.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “But I have found out. It shows you I should be the journalist, not you.”

  “If ever you’re out of work again, I’ll hire you.”

  “I shall never be out of work aga
in,” he said seriously.

  “Why is Earnshaw here, Niki?”

  “Because Dr. von Goerlitz is here. Goerlitz is seeing our—our difficult Chinese delegation. He is building for them a peace nuclear reactor. It is a good sign. He is also to make contracts for his memoirs. There he is warlike against Earnshaw’s past idiocies. Earnshaw is trying to stop him… Milochka, look at that ape down there. He hoards his peanuts like a capitalist, even when his children starve… So, what other monkeys fill your hours?”

  “Oh, anyone and everyone, mostly people not directly concerned with the Summit. You know, lighter stories to balance the heavy political stuff the wires are carrying.” She tried to divert and interest him with anecdotes about her interviews with Legrande, the fashion designer, Claude Goupils, king of the gourmets, Maurice Quarolli, French special security officer.

  When she had finished, he was silent, continuing to feed the monkeys until his bag was empty. He threw the bag away. “And pleasure, milochka. Whom do you see for dinner when I am so busy?”

  His last question disconcerted her. She tried to determine whether it had been asked casually, conversationally and without motive, or whether he was toying with her, hinting that he knew about Jay Doyle, since the Russian Embassy was composed of a thousand eyes and ears. Yet, his kulak face was open, only mildly curious, and his behavior since they had met this afternoon had revealed no suspicion.

  Quickly, she evoked the names of several old journalist friends in Paris, all female. She remembered Medora Hart, and briefly told Rostov of Medora’s tribulations.

  He listened attentively, taking the last of the peanuts from her bag, breaking and eating them. When she was through, he said, “But only women you see? You do not mention one man?”