Premier Talansky released the President and Earnshaw from his hold, continuing with them toward the screen, as his hands beat time to the amplified music dinning into the room.
Premier Talansky slapped his thighs. “We drink to that toast once more!”
From the corner of his eye Brennan saw an arm raised on high. It belonged to the maître d’hotel, signaling his staff to begin serving. Immediately, the rows of waiters broke out of their lines, going in every direction to dispense refreshments. And immediately, as Brennan turned his attention back to Premier Talansky, he became aware of another oscillating arm rising behind Talansky. And that arm, Brennan could see, belonged to Nikolai Rostov.
Brennan went up high on his toes. Rostov was signaling someone near the windows.
Brennan’s head spun in that direction.
Waiters in black ties and tailcoats, and suddenly, a waiter shorter, stranger than the others, yet as familiar as an apparition spawned by a half-remembered nightmare. The plastered chestnut hair, the thin, sallow, pimpled face, the tailcoat hanging loose on the small, wiry body.
Joe Peet.
Joe Peet; his face drawn tight as a rubber mask, carrying an empty tray in front of him, was advancing quickly behind Premier Talansky, Earnshaw, and the American President.
Hypnotized, Brennan watched Peet’s progress.
Ten feet away from the trio, Peet abruptly halted. His left hand dropped the tray down to his side to reveal a black Luger clutched in his right fist.
Slowly, Peet lifted the long-barreled automatic pistol, aiming it at Premier Talansky’s back—and that instant Brennan slammed wildly at the screen, shouting, ‘Talansky! Look out!”
Frightened, Peet turned his head toward the outcry and the racket of the toppling screen. As Talansky wheeled around, Peet’s shocked face went back to his target, and his trembling fist brought the pistol up fast. Brennan lunged forward, charging, throwing himself at the assassin, smashing into him full force as the Luger exploded once, twice, loud as a cannonade.
Brennan hit the floor hard, eyes blinded, ears deafened by the reverberation from the gunfire. He felt the abrasive rip of a shoe across his cheek and tried to open his eyes. Only Joe Peet was in his vision, Peet weaponless, Peet crawling, Peet trying to scramble to his feet to make his escape toward the door. And then another figure came into Brennan’s dazed view. Rostov. Nikolai Rostov, frenzied, screaming, “Stop the assassin! Kill the assassin!”
Peet staggered to his feet, panting, panting, and KGB agents, three of them, and French security police, a half dozen, were beside Rostov. Three guns flashed and thundered, and as they discharged, Peet squealed, “No—no—no!” Then, clutching his stomach, he slowly folded into a courtly bow and pitched forward into a heap, his blood oozing into the carpet.
Sitting up, Brennan saw that Ma Ming, revolver in one pudgy fist, had violently knocked Chairman Shu-tung to the floor. Elsewhere, from every corner, the occupants of the salon, immobilized by the horror of those seconds, were coming to life. They began to race toward Peet, toward Premier Talansky, who was clawing at his shoulder as Earnshaw and others propped him upright.
And then Brennan heard a burbling sound and turned his head, and incredibly, the sound had come from Joe Peet. Somehow, Peet had rolled over on his back and was trying to lift his head, trying to find someone, his glazed eyes searching the gathering semicircle of faces.
With effort, he lifted a feeble hand and pointed to Nikolai Rostov. “Goddam—goddam—goddam you—you an’ Zabbin—you promised me—you cheated—you promised—” He spat blood, and tried to go on.
Aghast, Rostov had gone white. He grabbed at a KGB agent and tried to push him forward, commanding, “Get rid of the assassin!”
Obediently, the KGB agent had raised his revolver, and Brennan, leaping to his feet, started to cry out “No” when someone beside him bellowed, “Nyet! Wait!” It was Premier Talansky, supported by the President of France and Earnshaw.
“Let him speak!” roared Talansky. The KGB agent lowered and quickly holstered his revolver.
From the floor, Peet groaned and weakly shook his fist at Rostov. “Goddam—damn you—Rostov—Zabbin—promised to help me—promised Ludmilla—if I—I—but you didn’t protect me—you murdered, you murderer—” He was sobbing as blood trickled down his chin. He whined, “I don’ wanna—don’ wanna die.” His hand dropped to his reddened shirt, his head fell back, his eyes closed.
Brennan looked at Premier Talansky and saw that Talansky was staring at Rostov.
“Arrest him. arrest Minister Rostov.” The Premier’s voice was low and harsh. “And Marshal Zabbin—put him under arrest this minute.” He glanced up at the French President “Your police with mine will arrest. I do not know which of ours to trust, but I will know, I will know soon enough.”
Physicians, followed by a pair of stretcher-bearers, were pushing through the crowd. They came directly to Premier Talansky.
“You must go with them to the Escalier de la Reine,” the French President was saying to Talansky. “We have there the first-aid station.”
Angrily Premier Talansky brushed the physicians aside. “Later for me. It is my shoulder, nothing more. It is superficial, and I am an ox.” He pointed down at Peet’s body. ‘That one. Take him. Make him live. I must know everything, if we all are to live.”
As the stretcher-bearers moved speedily toward Peet, Premier Talansky glanced around, and his eyes rested on Earnshaw. “Where is the one who saved me?” he demanded.
Brennan saw that Earnshaw was reaching for him, and he came forward. “Premier Talansky, this is Matthew Brennan,” said Earnshaw. “He is an American. He is the one who saved you.”
“I thank you, comrade,” said Premier Talansky gruffly. Then he offered a crooked grin. “Not for saving my old carcass. But for saving the Summit. Now our children will have children, and for them I will thank you, too.”
As he started to stumble away, agreeing at last to visit the first-aid station, Earnshaw stayed behind.
“Better hang around, Matt,” he said. “They’ll want to interrogate you. You’ll have to tell the whole story.” He smiled. “Shouldn’t be hard, when it was your own story from the start.”
Briefly, Brennan watched Earnshaw hurry after the Russian Premier and the others, and then he turned back, and his eyes sought the one who had brought him on his long journey and to this place.
But Nikolai Rostov was no more.
The plot was ended. At least, for now.
PARIS.
A quarter of an hour before midnight. The City of Light darkening, cooling, resting, before another dawn, a new sun.
Fifteen minutes yet of this Sunday, fifteen minutes of this day still alive.
HAZEL SMITH.
Hair in disarray, blouse half out of her skirt, she sat hunched over her Underwood standard typewriter, fingers flying over the keyboard.
Around her desk, in the main editorial room of the Paris bureau of Atlas News Association high above the Rue de Bern, members of the nightside staff, reinforced by the day staff, whispered, dictated, discussed the art work, moved silently. Nearby, the teletype machines hammered steadily. And undistracted, Hazel continued to write the big beat for Jay Doyle, the exclusive, the definitive, the inside story, replete with hero, villains, intrigue, suspense, all of it factual. There would be 2,500 words of it, and the hungry teletypes in the next office were waiting to consume it and spew it out in New York, and from there to every major capital of the world as well as to every subscribing newspaper in America.
Coolly, objectively, swiftly, she wrote. Like the machine under her fingers, she too was a machine. This was the big one, for Doyle (for both of them); this was fame, honors, praise, bonuses. Only once had she faltered, two-thirds of the way through, when she had typed out Rostov’s probable fate. But then she had gone on, again a machine, like the typewriter on the desk, like the clock on the wall, whipping the typewriter, racing the clock.
She hit the period ke
y, punched in the black dot after the second to last paragraph. One more paragraph remained.
She stopped, reached for the glass of water, drank from it, and as she set down the glass, her gaze fell on the pile of wire reports already filed. She peeled them off, one after the other, rereading the bulletins hastily:
ANA A3N FLASH PARIS, JUNE 22 (ANA)—ASSASSIN FIRED TWO SHOTS AT RUSSIAN PREMIER TALANSKY IN VERSAILLES.
ANA A4N FLASH—PREMIER TALANSKY ONLY SUPERFICIALLY WOUNDED. ASSASSIN YOUNG AMERICAN WAR VETERAN JOSEPH PEET WHO WAS INSTANTLY SHOT DOWN BY KGB ALSO VERSAILLES PALACE SECURITY GUARDS.
ANA A5N FLASH—ASSASSIN PEET’S WOUNDS POSSIBLY FATAL BUT HE IS STILL ALIVE.
ANA A6N BULLETIN—ASSASSIN JOSEPH PEET CONFESSED TO FRENCH SECURITY POLICE AND PREMIER TALANSKY HE WAS EMPLOYED BY RUSSIAN
CONSPIRACY GROUP TO KILL PREMIER TALANSKY WHO FAVORED DEMOCRACIES AND BY THIS ACT PAVE WAY FOR MARSHAL ZABBIN AND CONSPIRATORS TO TAKE OVER SOVIET GOVERNMENT. ZABBIN’S PLAN WAS TO POSTPONE SUMMIT INDEFINITELY AND GRADUALLY REVIVE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST ALLIANCE WITH RED CHINA AS RUSSIA’S MAJOR NUCLEAR ALLY. IN RETURN FOR ASSASSINATION, JOSEPH PEET WAS PROMISED SAFETY THROUGH PRETENDED ARREST BY CONSPIRATORS AND LATER PARDON AND RELEASE INSIDE USSR WHERE HE DESIRED TO BE CITIZEN AND WED A RUSSIAN GIRL FRIEND.
ANA A7N FLASH—ASSASSIN JOSEPH PEET DIED OF GUNSHOT WOUNDS AT 10:04.PARIS TIME REPEAT PARIS TIME.
ANA A8N BULLETIN—FORMER PRESIDENT EMMETT EARNSHAW AND PREMIER TALANSKY JOINTLY ANNOUNCED THAT THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT WAS THWARTED AND TALANSKY’S LIFE SAVED BY A FORMER AMERICAN DIPLOMAT MATTHEW BRENNAN REPEAT MATTHEW BRENNAN.
ANA A9N BULLETIN ADD—BRENNAN WAS STATE DEPARTMENT DISARMAMENT EXPERT WHO WAS CENTER OF ZURICH PARLEY SCANDAL FOUR YEARS AGO WHEN PROFESSOR ARTHUR VARNEY DEFECTED TO CHINA. DESPITE PROTESTING INNOCENCE, BRENNAN WAS CONDEMNED BY DEXTER CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE, DECLARED SECURITY RISK, FORCED TO RESIGN. BRENNAN HAS BEEN LIVING ABROAD SINCE, RECENTLY IN VENICE, ITALY. HE CAME TO PARIS WHEN SUMMIT CONVENED HOPING TO CLEAR HIS NAME THROUGH MARSHAL ZABBIN’S PROTEGE, NIKOLAI ROSTOV, ASSISTANT SOVIET MINISTER FOR FAR EASTERN AFFAIRS. ROSTOV WAS SAID TO BE ONE OF THE CONSPIRATORS.
ANA A10N BULLETIN MATTER—PREMIER TALANSKY ANNOUNCED IN VERSAILLES PALACE THAT
MAIN PLOTTERS WERE ZABBIN AND ROSTOV, THE LATTER INDOCTRINATED TO SUPPORT WORLD REVOLUTION DURING EXILE IN SIBERIA. PREMIER ANNOUNCED THAT ZABBIN, ROSTOV, FOUR OTHER UNNAMED CONSPIRATORS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED AND ARE BEING FLOWN TO MOSCOW TONIGHT TO STAND TRIAL. PREMIER SAID OTHER ARRESTS ARE IMMINENT.
ANA A11N BULLETIN MATTER—CHAIRMAN KUO SHU-TUNG OF PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA TOLD PRESS HE HAS HEARD ROSTOV IS CONFESSING DETAILS OF PLOT THAT MAY IMPLICATE HIGH LEVEL CHINESE WHO WERE INVOLVED IN A SIMILAR CONSPIRACY TO OVERTHROW CHINA’S PEACE LEADERSHIP. CHAIRMAN KUO ADMITTED THAT MARSHAL CHEN IS BEING HELD AND INTERROGATED. CHINESE CHAIRMAN HINTED HE WOULD MAKE A FORMAL STATEMENT TOMORROW.
ANA A12N URGENT—LEAVING THE PALACE OF VERSAILLES, THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE TOLD THE ASSEMBLED PRESS THAT HE HAD CONSULTED WITH THE OTHER FOUR CHIEFS OF STATE AND THEY HAD AGREED THAT THE SUMMIT TALKS WOULD BE RESUMED TOMORROW AND PRESSED TO A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION.
ANA A13N BULLETIN FIRST LEAD CONFERENCE ASSASSINATION PARIS, JUNE 22 (ANA)—RUSSIAN PREMIER ALEXANDER TALANSKY SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT BY A DEFECTING AMERICAN WAR VETERAN WHO PERFORMED AS GUNMAN FOR A SECRET GROUP OF MILITANT SOVIET CONSPIRATORS. AS THE PREMIER LEFT THE STATE DINNER IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS AND ENTERED THE GILDED SALON NEXT TO IT,—WAS ATTACKED…
Conscious of the clock on the wall again, Hazel Smith ceased scanning the wire reports and threw them on the desk. She returned her attention to the sheet of paper in her typewriter, and then she smiled. The abbreviated wire reports were the barest bones of the plot and its hero. What she was writing for Doyle, and would file in minutes, was the pulsating mind and heart and flesh of the conspiracy. No other correspondent on the scene, or anywhere, possessed the information that she had poured into her dramatic news story. Not even the security agencies of the various powers possessed as well-rounded a picture as yet. She was reminded of her interview with Superintendent Quarolli of the French Services de la Sécurité Présidentielle over a week ago, when he had stated, “We know of every foreigner in Paris at this time,” and he had demonstrated it. Yet, tonight’s events had proved him wrong, for when Peet materialized in the Palace of Versailles, it had been Brennan and not Quarolli or any DST agent who had thwarted the assassin. Quarolli had not known as much as Brennan, or as much as she herself had known all along and knew this very moment. Generously, she forgave the Frenchman for his arrogance. Undoubtedly, he had known of everyone who had arrived in Paris, when they had arrived, but he had been unable to follow through on everyone. He had made choices, and they had not been the correct ones.
No matter. In the morning, he would read the complete story. It was on paper now, almost all of it, not a fact missing. From Doyle she had every facet of Matt Brennan’s incredible detective job. From Brennan himself she had the eyewitness report of the attempt on Talansky’s life, of Peet’s confession, of Peet’s slaying. From Earnshaw, who had been present, she had summaries of the confessions made by Rostov and Marshal Chen, as yet unannounced. From her own painful memories, she had—well, she had all else that was to be known of Nikolai Rostov.
No exclusive beat in her recollection had ever been more exclusive.
One paragraph would finish it off. She bent over the typewriter, resuming her pecking, completed the final paragraph, typed in the “—30—” and it was done.
She stared at the last page. Jay Thomas Doyle’s manhood, by way of Hazel Smith. An engagement present, to him from her.
The minute hand on the wall clock jumped, and she acknowledged it “apologetically. There was no more time to lose. She had refused to file her copy in short takes, and she knew that the teletype puncher on the outgoing machine was in a frenzy. She tore the last page from her machine, placed it behind the other pages, and picked up a heavy black pencil. If Doyle, who was still nosing about Versailles, called in with any more material, she would gaily tell him that they had quite enough, that the story was off and winging.
Holding the pencil, she swiveled to the cleared section of her desk, placed the story in front of her, and beamed down at the first line. It was the by-line. It proclaimed: “By Jay Thomas Doyle.”
Wielding her sharp pencil, she began to proof the news story. Reading with an expert eye, she made minor changes, a paragraph mark here, a deletion there, a comma here, a more colorful word there.
She reread the sensational scoop as if she had never seen it before. It was all on paper, all of it, angled from Matthew Brennan’s point of view as the protagonist. The wire reports had already trumpeted the assassination attempt, but had given sparse information on the incredible story behind it, and that part of the story, the better part, was Brennan’s own. What was fascinating to Hazel personally was how closely the facts confirmed Brennan’s earlier conjectures. But even more fascinating were the answers to the many questions about seemingly unrelated mysteries that Brennan had posed the entire week.
The plot had had its beginnings, of course, in Vienna during 1961, and the target had indeed been Khrushchev. It had been instigated by Marshal Zabbin who, as a youth, had known Mao Tse-tung after the Long March, and who had grown up to believe that the goal of Lenin and Stalin—world Communism—could be achieved only by a confederation of Communist nations, principally of Russia and China. Such an accord alone, Zabbin thought, could guarantee peace. When Khrushchev had become a revisionist, weakened by the siren songs of the Western imperialists, and had turned Russia away from China and toward the democracies, Zabbin had initiated the plan to liquidate him. This end had been accomplished without violence; but disappointingly, the Premiers who had followed Khrushchev had been no better. Zabbin had determined that the last of these betrayers of the international Communist dream would be Premier Talansky, and Zabbin had continued to build and expand his hard-core underground a
nd develop his conspiracy. Meanwhile, in China itself, Zabbin had found a young man with a large following who was of one mind with him. Marshal Chen had been a secret Maoist, even though pretending to support the moderate Premier Kuo Shu-tung, who had deviated from Mao’s ideas and had become conciliatory toward the West, believing that China’s domestic prosperity and survival in a nuclear age depended upon membership in a world community of nations and not in a Communist club.
Recently, an agreement had been reached. Zabbin would arrange to have Premier Talansky deposed, and would himself take over the leadership of the Soviet Union. And in Peking, Marshal Chen, backed by a friendly Moscow, would gradually ease out Premier Kuo Shu-tung, and take over the government of Communist China.
A plot so grandiose had required not only plotters but performers.
Zabbin had kept his eye on many candidates, and when an accident of history had played into his hands, he had his right-hand man. Although Nikolai Rostov, an intellectual and China specialist, had been in the opposition camp, working against bilateral agreements with China and working for a union with the democracies, the defection of Varney at the Zurich Parley had changed all that. For after Zurich, Rostov had been suspected of being a traitor. Indeed, he had been riddled with guilts about his role. Zabbin had seen him as a ripe possibility. Zabbin had saved Rostov’s life, and got him off to exile in Siberia. There Zabbin had arranged for Rostov to live among other political exiles, all of them Zabbin men, all of them part of the long-range conspiracy. And there, feeling guilty and bitter about the events at Zurich, grateful to Zabbin and resentful of Talansky, Rostov had been susceptible when they tried the next step. He had been “politically re-educated.”
The Plot Page 110