The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “Yeah,” she muttered, “good luck.”

  They parted once more, and she tucked her purse firmly under her arm, banished introspection from her mind, and in rapid, businesslike strides, she hastened to the Santa Maria restaurant.

  Inside, she stood beside the map on the wall bearing the legend PER MARE MARIAM, and tried to orient herself. The attractive restaurant had been decorated to resemble a ship. The small bar opposite where she stood was lighted by bulbs from three glass openings made to resemble portholes in the ceiling above. There was a telephone down here, but its location had slipped her mind. She went to the bartender and inquired. He pointed out the public phone, and added that there was another one near the dining rooms upstairs.

  Hurrying across the moquette-covered floor, hospitably the color of her own hair, she took hold of the nautical-style rope that substituted for a railing” and ascended the steps spiraling toward the story above the ground floor. At the head of the stairs, a waiter directed her to the public telephone, and she was relieved to find that it was relatively private.

  Determined not to hesitate, lest she weaken altogether, she deposited her jeton and dialed the Élysée.

  Hazel heard the French operator answer indistinctly above the sounds of numerous other operators in the background.

  “Please connect me with the Silver Salon,” Hazel commanded in English.

  In heavily accented English, the French operator responded. “That is reserved for the Soviet delegation, madame.”

  “I know. I must speak to someone there on a pressing matter.”

  There followed a mechanical jangling like the shifting of toy gears. For a second, Hazel thought she had been disconnected, but a female Russian voice came on speaking French.

  Hazel inhaled, and blurted, “I must have a word with Minister Nikolai Rostov. It is of importance.”

  The Russian operator’s voice had switched to English. “What is your business?”

  “It is personal,” said Hazel, “but the Minister is expecting my call. Please inform him—” The pseudonym and password escaped her an instant and returned. “Inform him that Monsieur Gerard’s secretary is on the line and must speak to him on a matter of great importance.”

  “I do not know if it is possible…” The Russian operator’s voice had drifted away, as if she had turned to search the salon, but now it was back at the mouthpiece: “I do not see Minister Rostov, and I am afraid he may be in the conference.”

  “Can you find out?” said Hazel. “If he is in the conference room, pass him a note that Monsieur Gerard’s secretary is on the telephone and must speak to him at once.”

  “Monsieur Gerard’s secretary. I am writing it.”

  “If he cannot leave, try to learn at what time I can phone him back in the Élysée, and I shall do so. But it would be better if I might speak to him right now.”

  “I do not know. I will send someone. It may be several minutes. You will wait?”

  “I will wait.”

  The other end of the telephone went blank, silent except for a mechanical humming, that indicated the Russian operator in the Silver Salon of the Élysée had pressed the “Hold” button.

  Hazel timed her wait.

  A half minute. One minute. A minute and a half. Two minutes. Two and a half minutes. Three. Four and—

  And the Russian operator’s voice came loudly through the earphone. “You are there?”

  “I have been standing by.”

  “It is fortunate. The ministers’ conference was adjourned, and Minister Rostov was still in the hall outside, in conversation. Your message was delivered. Minister Rostov said he would come right to the—ah, here he is—coming into the room. One moment, please.”

  A click.

  A new voice, male, deep, rasping, familiar. “Yes? This is Nikolai Rostov. You wish to speak to me?”

  Automatically, Hazel lowered her voice. “This is Monsieur Gerard’s secretary.”

  “Of course, madame.” Rostov’s tone had become more subdued and concerned. “Is there anything further on our negotiations?”

  “Yes. Something terribly important has come up. I was entrusted to pass it on to you. It is vital that you know of this at once. I am in my apartment.”

  “Surely, this can hold over until tomorrow, madame? I have little time. I must go to the state dinner at Versailles.”

  “I’m afraid it can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  “No?” Rostov’s tone had become more troubled than curious. “You are certain of that?”

  “I am certain,” said Hazel.

  A brief silence. “Is there anything that you can speak of this matter now?”

  “Well—” She knew that the Élysée telephones might be tapped or all calls monitored, but she had to chance it. As guardedly as possible, she said, “This involves Monsieur Gerard himself. Since he is so close to you—”

  “Yes. Go on, please.”

  “His wife has just found out about the other woman who is his friend. His wife is wild with rage and trying to verify what she has learned. If she can verify it today, she vows to leave Monsieur Gerard and sue for divorce”—Hazel paused for effect, knowing Russian divorce law and knowing Rostov’s greatest love and weakness—“and take his children from him.”

  Rostov’s voice quavered. “Where did you hear this?”

  “I cannot speak on the telephone.”

  “Very well. But you are sure of this?”

  “Positive. Monsieur Gerard needs help. If you will come to my apartment, even for five minutes, I will explain, and perhaps you will find the means for Monsieur Gerard to refute the malicious lie and prevent a divorce and preserve his home. There may still be time, you understand?”

  “I think so.” He sounded stricken.

  “I admire Monsieur Gerard too much to see him ruined,” Hazel said quickly. “I only want to help him.”

  “Your apartment, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “I shall be there as soon as possible, quite soon. Thank you. Good day.”

  She heard him hang up, and after a few moments, she listlessly hung up, too.

  Turning away from the scene and the instrument of shame, she went slowly down the winding staircase to the ground floor of the Santa Maria restaurant.

  She headed for the bar, set her purse on the dark wood counter, and stepped up and sat down on the first of the half-dozen vacant stools. She ordered a beer, and when it came, she drank deeply from it. The beer was malty and full-flavored, but it did not soothe her. She tried not to think. Once again, she kept her eye on the time.

  After fifteen minutes, Jay Doyle finally loomed in the doorway, sucking for air. As he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, he saw her and came directly to her.

  “Our boy just left the Élysée,” he announced in a tremulous whisper, and he reached for Hazel’s beer stein and gulped from it.

  “He left?” she said dully.

  Doyle glanced at the bartender. “Let’s find a table, honey?” He helped her off the stool, took her stein, and they followed the jovial and matronly lady proprietor to a table near the kitchen door.

  The moment they were seated, Hazel asked, “What happened?”

  Doyle accepted the menus, but waved off the waitress, before he bent toward Hazel. “I was watching from the Galerie. About five minutes ago, Rostov came out of the Élysée on the double, I mean fast. Two men were kind of trotting after him. I think one was a chauffeur and the other probably a security guard. He said something to them—I guess that he wanted to take a short walk and would be right back—and away he went, alone, coming toward the Galerie where I pretended to be engrossed in a Giacometti. Then he turned sharply into the Rue de Duras. I gave him a few seconds, and popped out of the Galerie and up the side street just as he was flagging down a taxi. I watched for him to take off in it, and then I came straight here. Well, you did your job, Hazel. It worked great.”

  “Did it?” she said bitterly.

  Doyle ha
d never appeared more bluff and cheerful. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and brought his fingertips together in mock piety. “Man, oh man, if I wasn’t so damn hungry, I’d spend the next hour praying.” His lumpy hands separated and eagerly retrieved the menu. “Well, now, I think we’ve both earned a good high-calorie dinner.” He scanned the menu. “Modest but healthy. Potage portugais. Steak au poivre. Fromage. What do you say, Hazel?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Aw, come on, you’ve got to have something in your pretty belly. We’ve both got to be trekking out there to Versailles soon to cover somebody’s Last Supper—”

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said.

  “Sorry, sorry. I know it was tough, honey. But it’s over. Now, what’ll you have?”

  “Nothing, I told you,” she said sullenly. “Get me another—make it a martini—but don’t ask for a martini or it’ll be vermouth—ask for un dry.”

  She watched him, her gross child, beckoning for the waitress, ordering her drink, then reading from the menu with the passion of a Jesuit reciting from the New Testament. She watched him wearily, her gross and only child, and she bade a silent farewell to M. Gerard’s faithless secretary and she bade a silent welcome to Mr. Doyle’s faithful wife or mistress or mother or whatever the hell she was going to be. She watched him finish, and smile at her sweetly, and she allowed him to take her hand, remembering how nice he could be when he was happy.

  “Why so glum, Hazel?” he was inquiring. “What are you thinking about?”

  “No maid today, and I was trying to remember if I cleaned the apartment,” she said, and then she knew that it all mattered, somehow, and she held his hand tightly.

  MATT BRENNAN no longer bothered to consult his wristwatch. The last time he had looked, the long and short hands had formed a straight vertical line, telling him it was six o’clock. Now he did not know exactly. He only knew that he felt as if he had been here, in this position, an eternity.

  Nor did Brennan any longer listen for the ring of the telephone resting on a side table next to the showcase of Limoges and Meissen pieces. For the better part of an hour, he had expected it to ring, and worried that it would, and dreaded hearing it. But the telephone had remained mute, and by now Brennan believed that it would not interfere with his last, best hope.

  He sat unmoving in the light armchair that he had earlier moved to a position which would be behind the apartment door, when and if that door was opened. He had ceased staring at the sliding partition of the small dining area that opened into the kitchen. He had ceased reviewing, over and over again, what must be said, if the opportunity came. Like a yogi, he had cleansed and emptied his mind of all but a disciplined consciousness of one object and one objective.

  He sat in readiness, not marking time as it floated past.

  But, gradually, Brennan found himself marking time once more, and the consciousness of suspense began to unnerve him. Time had ceased floating past. Time dragged, and what it dragged was Hope. Worse than despair, worse than the bitterness of death, is Hope. Shelley had known, as he, Brennan, had also known and knew right now.

  His every sense was attuned to one sound—the knock on the door beside him—and then he caught himself, remembering it would not be a knock but the metallic scraping of a spare key in the lock. A key. He warned his senses to alert themselves to the sound of a key.

  He tried to recall key sounds, and realized the range was wide, from the anger of Stefani’s key when she had returned home to Georgetown from the theater to find him still at work, to the eagerness of Lisa’s key when she had come to join him in bed in Venice; from the sharpness of the key owned by the CIA agents entering his hotel room in Zurich, to the shaking of the key by which he himself had entered Joe Peet’s hotel room here in Paris.

  He wondered whether he dared get up and go to the bathroom. He wondered whether the sitting room was getting too dark as it got darker outside. He wondered whether he should turn up more lamps. He wondered whether he should visit the kitchen.

  Suddenly, he stiffened and edged forward in his chair.

  There was a creak, another creak, a steady creaking of the corridor floorboards that led from the elevator to the door.

  He listened hard. The creaking had stopped.

  Then the expected sound came, swift and terrifying as a bolt of lightning at his feet.

  A metal key struck the metal lock of the door, grated against it, sank into the keyhole, revolved in a single turn, and the door gave slightly.

  Time hung throttled, and Brennan held his breath.

  The key rattled free of the lock, and the door widened in an arc toward him. The cuff of a shirt, the back of a hairy, stubby hand, the length of a sleeve, were visible.

  Brennan meant to rise, but he did not. Intellect had overruled instinct. He must have his visitor inside, fully. Brennan gripped the arms of his chair.

  And Nikolai Rostov came into the room, shutting the door softly behind him.

  Himself unseen, Brennan could see Rostov plainly for an instant petrified in profile, like an animated figure made motionless by the snap of a shutter and trapped in a camera box. It was strange to see the Russian so close and unaware after so many years, months, weeks, days of seeking him, after hundreds of hours of remembering him, evoking him, needing him, after countless unspoken dialogues with him. For Brennan, he had become more a myth of the mind than a man, an elusive, vaporous shape that had become more the tick of a dream than a reality. But here he was, Nikolai Rostov, and he was real.

  He was very real, the Slavic, Gorki, Cro-Magnon features, the muscular, chunky body. He was familiar, the friend of four years ago, larger, fleshier, grayer, but familiar. And he was human, and therefore vulnerable.

  First his profile, now his back, as he crossed the room, anxious, distraught. Near the sofa he stopped, looked toward the dining area, the kitchen, the stairs to the second level.

  “?” he called out.

  No response.

  “Hazel, I am here,” Rostov called out again.

  Brennan’s heart leaped, and he came quickly out of his chair. The slight stir of movement, the rustle of his rising, was enough. Rostov spun around, fast and nimble as an alerted jungle animal.

  Brennan stepped between the door and his visitor, offering the ghost of a smile. “Hello, Nikolai. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  The shock of the unforeseen mashed Rostov’s broad face. His eyes, his mouth, reflected the emotions of total amazement and confusion, as yet unjoined by understanding.

  “Brennan—” he said.

  Automatically, one hand groped for someone beside him, as if to summon a bodyguard, but there was no one there. His features flattened, widened, with the realization that he had chosen to come here hastily, secretly, to answer the call of his mistress, and now by his own choice he was caught off guard and unprotected.

  “I’m sorry to startle you this way,” said Brennan. “I know this is the last thing you expected. But I had to see you privately.”

  Rostov’s confusion was beginning to recede. He glanced about him. “Where is Hazel? Is she here?”

  “No, she’s not here. I have no idea where she is.”

  “She telephoned for me to come.”

  “I know,” said Brennan.

  “You know?” said Rostov incredulously. He looked slowly around the apartment, and when his gaze fixed on Brennan again, he understood. “You and Hazel arranged—this?”

  “She didn’t want to, but—”

  “She called me, knowing you would be here instead?”

  “At my request Hazel loaned me her apartment.”

  “And agreed to bring me running here to meet you?”

  Brennan nodded. “Yes, but don’t be too hard on her. There’s a reason—”

  “How could she?” said Rostov, more to himself than to Brennan. “I’ve always—” He raised his head, eyes narrowing. “In all these years, she is the only American I have come to trust. Now, this. What i
s she? One of the ones your CIA has corrupted, like yourself?” He shook his head. “I should have known, from the day we arrived here.”

  “There was nothing to know, Nikolai. And there’s still nothing to know. You’ve been close enough to Hazel to realize that she hasn’t a thing to do with the Government. And you’ve been close enough to me to know that even if I wanted it, my Government would have no part of me. Don’t look at me that way, Nikolai. Why must every mistrust or suspicion a Communist has immediately convert the one suspected into a government agent? Because this is so in your country? You know better. You know people like Hazel and me can act out of our own personal feelings.”

  “Your own personal feelings,” repeated Rostov bitterly. “Hazel deceives me, entraps me to see someone I have no wish to see, and you hound me and finally catch me with a typical American deceit, and you say that it is merely selfish personal whim you satisfy? You expect me to believe that?”

  “I hope you’ll believe that, because it’s absolutely true, Nikolai. I’m a friend of Hazel’s. That’s the extent of my relationship with her. I came across information that I believed you should be told in private. I convinced Hazel of the importance of my information. She finally agreed to arrange this meeting because she felt what I have to say may be as meaningful to you as it is to us.”

  “I see, Brennan, so now it is her concern for me, your concern for me, that motivated this—this reunion. Comrade, you have missed your true calling. You have the mealy mouth, the twisting tongue, that would have made you a prosperous capitalistic clergyman. I have no more time to waste on you.”

  “Nikolai, I suggest you hear what I have to say first. It may involve your—your life.”

  Rostov snorted contemptuously. “My life or yours, Brennan? Do you think I’m a fool? I know why you are here. You have bothered me for years with your pitiful paper missiles, beseeching me to support you, to save you, to pull you out of the hot water you boiled for yourself. I saw from the moment I met you in Zurich that you were a child with your head in the clouds and your feet off the ground, just like Varney. I saw you for a weakling, politically naive and inept, and self-destructive, and always ready to drag everyone else down with you. Well, Brennan, you had your one success. You killed yourself, and almost managed to pull me into the grave with you. You gave me years of suffering, but I was strong enough to rise again. I don’t intend to have you pull me down a second time.”