The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  He stood in the lobby, immobilized by the restraints of guilt, until another feeling overcame these restraints. He was not, this morning, an ordinary citizen. Circumstances had cast him in the role of private investigator—for what?—one wanted moral approval—well, for good, for Good.

  Matt Brennan turned toward the elevator.

  Starting to pass the busy concierge’s desk, he heard a rasping voice with an unmistakable Russian accent, and cautiously, he turned his head around. He saw the big browless man, pomaded flat hair and misshapen nose and mottled cheek, leaning against the counter. Brennan recognized the Tartar giant at once, for he had seen him yesterday morning in the auto court of the Palais Rose, and here he was again—Medora’s discovery, Joe Peet’s friend, Hazel’s Soviet KGB agent.

  Brennan’s instinct was to duck out of sight, but curiosity subverted caution. He slowed, and hung back.

  The big man waited, elbows on the counter, until the concierge returned to him with an envelope.

  “You are Mr. Boris Dogel?” the concierge asked.

  “I am.”

  “He left this for you, Mr. Dogel.”

  The big Russian took the envelope, tore it open, removed a slip of paper, read it, snorted, and stuffed both the paper and the envelope into his suit-coat pocket.

  As the one named Boris Dogel began to turn from the concierge’s desk, Brennan turned away from him. He waited several seconds, then glanced over his shoulder toward the interior of the hotel. The KGB agent was not to be seen. Carefully, Brennan glanced over his other shoulder. He caught a last glimpse of Dogel as the Russian, lightfooted for one so heavy, started to leave through the revolving door.

  Brennan relaxed his compressed lips and exhaled.

  For the time being, he felt safer. Without losing another moment, he hurried past the reception desk and gift shop to the elevator, which was half filled.

  “Deuxiéme étage, s’il vous plaît,” he directed the boy at the control lever.

  At the second floor, Brennan stepped out, quickly cut back to the staircase near the front of the hotel, then ran down the stairs to the first floor. From the ground floor and the lobby below, he could hear continuing sounds of activity. He left the sounds behind and proceeded up the corridor, removing the key from his pocket and casually twirling it as if he were a guest going to his room.

  He counted off the room numbers. Soon he was nearing number 55. His step faltered, but he forced himself ahead. His thoughts had gone to the Bois, to the demise of the man who might have been he, to his reflections on danger after leaving the Bois. For a solid citizen, he reminded himself one last time, he was committing himself to a foolhardy endeavor. He had no idea where Peet was or when he would return. He had no idea whether Peet’s KGB friend, Boris Dogel, had left the hotel for an hour or a minute. He had no guarantee of safe espionage. He might be cornered by Peet,‘or Peet and Dogel, or surprised by a maid or valet, while inside the room. He had provided himself with only one explanation if he should be caught. The key—by mistake, the concierge had given him the wrong key. But then, those who came upon him could verify that he was not a guest of the hotel. Then who was he? He had no answer, and now there was no time to invent one.

  He stood before number 55. He looked up and down the corridor. Not a soul in sight. He shoved the key into the keyhole and tried it. A click. The door unlocked. He opened it, entered, closed it behind him. He was committed.

  He was in the center of a confining entry hall, surrounded by doors. The one he had closed behind him. One on either side of him. Two straight ahead.

  Brennan tried the door to his left. It revealed a shallow closet. Only an inexpensive trench coat with epaulets hung inside. He tried the door to his right. It opened into a small bathroom, a curtainless shower over the bathtub, a washbasin with bottles of deodorant and after-shave lotion on the glass shelf above it, and a bidet folded beneath the sink. Nearby, hanging next to the toilet, was a blue terry-cloth bathrobe monogrammed with the hotel’s initials.

  Softly Brennan shut the bathroom door and advanced to the two doors ahead. He turned the knob of the first. It was locked. He guessed it opened by option of the hotel should a guest wish to add a sitting room to his quarters. Brennan moved to the last door, twisting the knob, and he entered into Joe Peet’s single room.

  Brennan’s gaze explored the room. There were twin beds separated by a telephone stand. The twin beds were already made up for the day, and for this Brennan was grateful. The drapes drawn across the large window were of pale green brocade to match the upholstery of the three chairs placed about the room. Near the window stood a modem reproduction of a Louis XVI writing desk with a white-enameled top. Next, the coiffeuse, and finally, the armoire.

  It was a comfortable room, Brennan thought, one that might be taken by a lone traveler of means. Yet, it was an oddly impersonal room, as if it were being used only for its bed and bath and was otherwise left abandoned. There was no stamp of its occupant upon it.

  Slowly, Brennan crossed the oblong rug to the telephone stand between the beds. He picked up the scratch pad. On the upper half, in ink, were doodles of something resembling a bird or an airplane surrounded by linked circles. Beside that was scrawled “Club Lautrec” and then “D” and beneath the “D” were two larger circles with dots in the middle of them. On the lower half of the pad, written in soft pencil, were the words, “Novik—Pra—noon.” Instantly, Brennan recognized the name “Novik.” He had heard it from Jay Doyle several times. There was a renowned Soviet correspondent, Igor Novik, connected with the Moscow Pravda, who was Doyle’s gourmet friend. But any reason for a relationship between Peet and Novik was difficult to establish, unless Peet had been interviewed by the Russian journalist in Moscow and was now being interviewed again. Or, possibly, Peet had sought out Novik to intervene on his behalf in an effort to obtain a Russian visa or citizenship. The name did not seem significant, except that just as the Julien bookshop episode and the - friendship with the KGB man had tied Peet in with the Russians, this did, too.

  Brennan dropped the pad and walked to the desk. On one side, propped against the marble base of the lamp, was a frayed snapshot. Brennan bent low. The picture was out of focus, but still Joe Peet and the girl could be made out. Peet had an arm around the girl’s waist. His hair was a slick pompadour, his expression solemn, and he was attired in a buttoned sweater and khaki trousers. The girl was plump, making Peet seem slighter. She had braided hair and Slavic features, and wore a forced smile and a cotton dress. At the bottom of the snapshot, written in a stilted hand, was For My Joe, For Always, Yr Ludmilla, Moscow.

  Thoughtfully, Brennan considered the snapshot. Strange pair, the errand boy from Chicago and the factory girl from Moscow, and yet not so strange. Ludmilla looked earthy female and sensible, and for some men home was where they found affection and safety, and often the haven was not a place but a person.

  Brennan directed his attention to the opposite end of the desk. He became aware of what he had not noticed before. Several books were neatly stacked on top of a dozen magazines. He moved to study Peet’s portable library. He began to remove the books, one by one, considering the titles. There were seven in all: Michelin’s Paris and Principal Sights Near By, English Edition; French Phrase Book; The Female Form, Studies in the Photographing of Women; Plan de Paris; Versailles and the Trianons; Paris by Night; 101 Ways to Play Solitaire.

  There was, Brennan observed without surprise, no title by Sir Richard Burton.

  He began to go through the periodicals. Except for the weekly hotel pamphlets—Allo Paris and Une Semaine de Paris, guides to the city’s entertainment—every magazine appeared to be devoted to a single subject. That subject was the unclad female. There were three different issues of Lui, le Magasin de l’Homme Modern. The other magazines bore such names as Continental Nudist, Paris Tabou, Regal, American Sunbather, and Eden.

  The diversions of a lonely man, Brennan thought, and poor substitutes for faraway Ludmilla.


  Putting down the magazines, stacking the books atop them again, Brennan felt more charitable toward the tenant of this room. And because his brief search had been so ludicrously unproductive, Brennan began to feel more ashamed of his invasion of another’s privacy.

  As he turned from the desk, his shoe hit the wastebasket and knocked it over. He stooped to right it and became aware of the discarded trash inside. Reminding himself that a Sam Spade or a Philip Marlowe would not overlook such a potential treasure trove, Brennan took up the wastebasket and emptied its contents on the desktop. Beside the wrappers from two empty gum packages and the blunted stub of a pencil, there were four crumpled balls of paper and the fragments of a card kneaded into a spitball. He opened the three smaller balls of paper, flattening the creases out of each by pulling it tightly down across the edge of the desk. Now he began to examine the Burton collector’s ephemera.

  The first two sheets he had flattened—one a laundry bill, the other a receipt for the Michelin guidebook from Librairie Galignani, located in the neighborhood—were of no interest. The third piece of paper, although also a receipt, struck him as unusual. It acknowledged advance payment for the rental of full-dress evening attire “to be delivered.” The contents of the future delivery were itemized: white shirt, bow tie, shirt studs, cuff links, trousers, tailcoat.

  As before, when confronted by Peet’s dealings, Brennan was perplexed. He tried to translate the wrinkled paper in his hand into a picture of Joe Peet in formal dinner tails. The picture was as incongruous as the other of Peet poring over his rare Sir Richard Burton books. Had this receipt been for a mere tuxedo, Brennan would have been less surprised. In Paris one was required to wear black tie on special nights to certain places open to the general public, the Opera, Maxim’s, or to a private dinner. But tails were required most often for more stately, less plebeian occasions. For Brennan, it was impossible to envision Joe Peet, reader of girlie magazines and the French Phrase Book, at any such affair.

  Mystified, Brennan turned his attention back to the desk. The spitball and one larger crumpled paper remained. Carefully Brennan began to peel apart the spitball. When he had the six shreds free, he pieced them together on the desk. The tiny jigsaw represented an embossed calling card. The lettering read:

  MA MING

  Foreign Representative

  Hsinhua Peking

  At once, Brennan could picture the owner of the calling card. The yellow beach-ball head. The almost perpetual grin. The New China News Agency correspondent and friend of Chairman Kuo and Professor Isenberg. Ma Ming’s calling card in Joe Peet’s trash. This was the most incongruous and puzzling find so far.

  Peet and the Russians—that at least made some sense because of Ludmilla. But the thought of Peet and a Chinese—that was impossible. Yet, here it was, Ma Ming’s card. Obviously, the card had been no treasure to Peet. He had ripped it six times, molded the fragments into a spitball, and cast it into the wastebasket.

  And then another puzzle offered itself to Brennan. Overnight, Peet had departed from his reserved rooms at the Plaza-Athénée, leaving no forwarding address, and had settled into a different hotel. Brennan had undergone a great trial to obtain information of Peet’s whereabouts. Yet, suddenly, a small parade of people knew Peet’s seeming hideout. There was Boris Dogel. But that was understandable. There was Igor Novik. Less understandable. And now, Ma Ming. And that was incomprehensible. What conceivable interest could a Red Chinese journalist have in a nonentity of an American? Certainly, not for a press interview. How many among China’s 850 million would care to read about the frivolous romantic quest of a lovesick Chicago errand boy for a Russian girl mechanic?

  This was no time for speculation. One larger crumpled paper remained. Brennan opened it, flattened it, and found himself looking at a single page of the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. It was the third page, dated the day before yesterday, and its only point of interest was a jagged hole near the top where something Peet had wanted to keep, a news story or a photograph, had been torn out. Because what was missing was still unknown, and therefore not yet disappointing, Brennan enjoyed his first moment of optimism since his search had begun.

  He glanced at his wristwatch. More than ten minutes had passed since he had entered Peet’s hotel room. So far he had everything his way, and mentally, he crossed himself and knocked wood. Returning the debris to the wastebasket, he wondered how much more time he could afford. He listened for the verdict of his second sense. It told him: make haste.

  In haste, yet without creating disorder, he searched the desk drawers, the wardrobe drawers, every nook and cranny of the room. They offered him nothing new about Joe Peet beyond the fact that Peet liked his shirt collars starched. Brennan opened the closet. Except for two suits (pockets empty) and a folded luggage rack, it contained nothing providing the remotest clue to Peet’s presence and activities in Paris.

  As he left the closet, one thing nagged after Brennan, until he was able to define it. There was one odd omission, one that might be likened to the incident that had piqued Sherlock Holmes in “Silver Blaze.” Colonel Ross had inquired, “Is there any point to which you wish to draw my attention?” Sherlock Holmes had replied, “To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.” Colonel Ross had said, “The dog did nothing in the nighttime.” And Holmes had said, “That was the curious incident.” True. It was not unusual when a dog barked at the approach of a nighttime visitor. It was only unusual when the dog did not bark. Similarly, it was strange to find a luggage rack folded and unused in a transient’s closet, especially when there was no other rack to be seen in the room.

  Peet’s luggage. Brennan realized that this was the one possibility he had completely overlooked.

  He tried to survey his surroundings with keener eyes. There had been no suitcase in this closet or the hall closet, none in the bathroom, and nothing even resembling a valise was apparent from where he stood. He studied the room. He had covered every inch of it. His eyes fell on the two beds, and he dashed toward them.

  Dropping to his knees, Brennan lifted the fringe of one white bedspread and peered beneath the bed. No suitcase. He crawled to the second bed, and peered beneath. Suitcase! He had found the last of Joe Peet.

  Taking the handle, Brennan pulled the lone piece of luggage out into the open. It was a new rawhide-colored valise, plastic, lightweight, meant for air travel and for a man in a hurry. Praying that it was not locked, Brennan pressed the brass buttons on either side with his thumbs. The lid of the suitcase sprang free from the bottom, and eagerly Brennan lifted the lid off his last hope.

  As he reached down to dig under this second cache of starched shirts and shorts, some still bearing price tags, his arm stiffened, and his spine arched and froze. Faintly, from the hotel corridor, came the voices of two persons engaged in conversation. The voices grew louder, until they were at the outer door. He waited for the voices to recede. They did not. The dialogue continued at the door.

  I’m dead, he thought, and it was interesting, the trivia that passed through the mind before death, the inconsequential that superseded intellect. For his intellect, which might organize the means to fend off death and seek survival, was paralyzed. He thought what a pity it was that no one knew where he was at this moment, and there would be no one to identify his dismembered remains when they were fished from the Seine, and he would be buried in some French potter’s field, instead of in the handsome family mausoleum outside Philadelphia. He thought of the ten thousand lire he had forgotten to pay back to the monk on San Lazzaro. He thought of Robinson Crusoe: “It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked around me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything… terrified… looking behind me… mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump… to be a man…”

  Brennan
measured his fright. Crusoe had at least been able to fortify himself. But Brennan, kneeling on the floor at another’s open suitcase, was helpless. He crouched, waiting for Joe Peet and Boris Dogel to fall upon him.

  He heard the key being inserted in the outer door. He heard the door creak open. He heard a man’s voice speak in French: “Well, see you later. I’ve got this room to do.” He heard another man’s voice speak in French: “That room’s done, all done, Gabrielle and I did it early this morning.” The first voice: “My thanks. Then I’ll join you for a glass of wine.”

  The outer door was pulled closed again. A ring of keys jangled and the jangling faded, and the conversation of the two valets de chambre receded, and there was silence.

  Brennan looked down. The footprint in the sand was no longer there. It had been a mirage. But the very illusion of threat had been enough to bring perspiration to his forehead and to quicken his pulse. Time was running out. His shaking hands burrowed back into Joe Peet’s suitcase.

  From beneath the newly purchased clothes he removed whatever his fingers touched, and hastily, he piled the trove on the rug beside him. When the traveling bag was emptied of all but the apparel, Brennan considered the mute witnesses to Joe Peet’s daily existence and hoped that one would communicate to him enough to dispel or solve the mystery of the owner.

  Carefully Brennan examined each of Peet’s personal effects before returning it to the suitcase. There was a cellophane-wrapped box of condoms, to tell Brennan of Peet’s concern about personal hygiene. There was a maroon imitation-leather medicine kit, and once unzipped, it revealed a neat row of patent medicines and one small bottle of sedative. There was the very latest Polaroid camera, a subminiature version of the camera that not only takes but also automatically develops colored photographs. There were two envelopes packed with the pictures Peet had already taken in Paris.

  Brennan extracted the photographs from the first envelope. Six of them were nude shots of Denise Averil, sprawled and wakeful on a double bed in the Plaza-Athénée. Twelve more of the pictures were also female nudes, some taken in the room at the Plaza-Athénée, some taken in this very room, all utilizing two other female subjects, probably French hotel maids who had agreed to strip and pose for a rich and generous American. This art, Brennan conceded wryly, represented Joe Peet as a person of fine taste and sensibilities, an esthete of the natural, a connoisseur of Montes Veneris.