With the approach of the crucial Five-Power Summit Conference in Paris, Premier Talansky had become concerned that Soviet Russia, long isolated from China, possessed few advisers who understood the Chinese. Zabbin had volunteered Rostov’s name, emphasized the fact that the real culprit at Zurich had been Brennan, pointed out Rostov’s good record while in exile, and personally vouched for Rostov’s loyalty and ability. And so, overnight, Rostov had been returned to the Kremlin and the central government.
He had been a China expert still. But with a difference. He had become pro-Chinese, a collaborationist, a conspirator. And in him the Zabbinists had, at last, the architect of the assassination.
Premier Talansky must be dispatched, Zabbin believed and Rostov agreed, by a murderer who was not Russian or Communist, but a foreigner. A hundred names had been screened. Rostov had kept coming back to one, an unknown American, Joseph Peet, who had inundated Soviet embassies with his pleas to be allowed inside the Soviet Union. Peet’s background had been investigated by the KGB, and he had twice been discreetly interviewed by a Russian delegate to the United Nations. It had been evident that Peet would do anything to be allowed back inside Russia to marry—and sleep with—his Ludmilla. It was Peet’s primitive motive that had convinced Rostov that he had his assassin. Sexual desire, Rostov had counseled Zabbin, was a more powerful force than political idealism.
Peet had been quietly brought to Paris. From the beginning, the conspirators had led Peet to believe that it was Premier Talansky alone who opposed Peet’s entry into Russia. Constantly, the conspirators had inflamed Peet’s hatred of Talansky until his passion to eliminate the one obstacle between Ludmilla and himself had become as intense as the conspirators’ desire to eliminate the one obstacle preventing an accord between Red China and themselves.
Once in Paris, Peet had picked up his expense money and a list of contacts at the Communist-owned bookshop in the Rue de Seine. To avoid any suspicion of him by the French DST or any other foreign security force, Peet had not been permitted to associate openly with Russians or Chinese. However, when he had proved unstable in his relationship with women, he had finally been assigned a part-time KGB guard.
Rostov’s design for the climax of the plot had been simple. The Premier would be assassinated at one of three sites where he had been scheduled to appear—the Hotel de Lauzun, the Maisons-Laffitte racetrack, or the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles Palace—and Rostov had pledged protection to Peet after the killing, promising him a safe arrest and his release once he was flown to Russia. However, it had been privately agreed by the conspirators that Peet would have to be liquidated moments after the Premier’s death.
The post-assassination activities had also been planned with care. Zabbin would go before the delegates at the Palais Rose and accuse the United States of having hired a Chicago gunman to kill Russia’s beloved Premier. This, of course, would be for Soviet home consumption, disseminated by a minor player, the journalist Novik, to build acceptance of Zabbin’s new policy in the Soviet Union and create distrust of the United States as an ally. When the Americans had refuted Zabbin’s charges, had proved that Peet had been a psychotic acting on his own, the Soviets would then insist that the anti-Communist climate in the United States had produced such an assassin. Zabbin would demand a dissolution and postponement of the Summit.
In the year to follow, Zabbin would solidify his leadership of Russia, quietly continue to reinforce the Russian alliance with Red China, although publicly, he would pay lip service to nuclear disarmament, to an international community of nations, to another Summit. And during this time, Premier ; Kuo Shu-tung would fall ill, Marshal Chen would succeed him, while foreign trade and investments would continue to be encouraged. At the right moment China would expel all non-Communist foreigners and nationalize foreign factories, including the Nuclear Peace City, which would be converted into a wartime plant.
And together, Zabbin and Chen would reject future Summits with the imperialist West, stage their own tremendous convention of Communist powers, and create the Fourth Communist International, thus reviving Lenin’s Comintern dedicated to resolving the class struggle through world revolution. And thereafter, the world would not know peace again, except when the Comintern had triumphed.
This was the plot, and this was the plan, that a dispossessed and disgraced former American diplomat, Matthew Brennan, had stumbled upon, understood, pursued; and at personal risk (Rostov had confessed that twice the KGB had tried to kill Brennan, and once arranged to have him arrested) this was the plot Brennan had thwarted.
The former American President, Emmett A. Earnshaw, had presented evidence clearing Brennan of earlier treason accusations, and the incumbent President had announced that Brennan would be cited at the White House for his patriotism and bravery.
Premier Talansky had indicated that Zabbin would be put on trial for his life, and that extenuating circumstances—the drills in revolutionary Marxism to which he was forced to submit, the turning state’s evidence—would be considered in determining Rostov’s sentence, which might be limited to twenty years in a Soviet labor camp.
Chairman Kuo Shu-tung, in private, had revealed to Brennan that the chief of Hai Wai Tiao Cha Pu, China’s secret intelligence apparat, was none other than the affable Ma Ming, who had used his role of foreign correspondent as a cover. From his Russian counterparts Ma Ming had learned of Brennan’s suspicions, and after meetings with a French physicist and Brennan himself, after observing Marshal Chen’s behavior during the meeting with Earnshaw and young Goerlitz, Ma Ming had begun to follow some of Brennan’s leads and even to shadow Brennan. This afternoon, Ma Ming’s suspicions had been as grave as Brennan’s own. There had been one difference. Ma Ming had anticipated that any attempted assassination would be directed against Chairman Kuo rather than Talansky, and Ma Ming had come to the Hall of Mirrors prepared to cope with that eventuality.
Following this disclosure to Brennan, Chairman Kuo Shu-tung, again in private, had made an impassioned address to the other four Chiefs of State. He had assured them that Marshal Chen would be dealt with mercilessly, that other pro-Maoist conspirators inside Peking, Canton, Nanking, and Shanghai would be arrested and tried. And then he had concluded by saying that the People’s Republic of China, led by moderates and men of goodwill, would continue its participation in the Summit and not falter in its determination to be a signatory to a disarmament pact that would guarantee tranquillity within its own frontiers and permanent peace throughout the world.
Hazel Smith had finished her proofreading, and that was the sum of the story she had written, facts as yet unknown to the world.
But in hours, the truth would girdle the globe, be read in newspapers, heard on radios and television sets in every city of the United States from New York and Washington to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in every city of the world from London to Moscow to Rome to Cairo to Bombay to Peking to Tokyo.
And wherever men read it or heard it, they would know the name of truth’s author—Jay Thomas Doyle.
Straightening her pages, Hazel suddenly felt chilled. A satanic thought had entered her mind, and it would not leave.
She examined the by-line on the first page: “By Jay Thomas Doyle.”
She remembered what she had tried to repress but had never forgotten. A time in New York, so long ago. Doyle to her: Hazel, listen, we can’t go on like this. It’s for your sake, too, believe me. A time in Vienna, so long ago. Doyle to her: Well, listen to me, baby—no, thanks, I’m not buying, not that way. So why don’t we call it quits, and thanks for the memory.
The arrogant bastard.
In that long ago, his by-line and fame had been awesome, and he had been bloated by fame not food, a fathead not a fat belly, and she had been a convenience, one small trophy of his success.
Doyle was one of those people who, when they were self-sufficient, when they needed no one, were at their worst. He had loved her here and now, not because he had grown up, gained maturity, b
ut because he desperately needed someone, not as a mere physical convenience but as a permanent crutch-companion to sustain him emotionally. But this story, this by-line, would restore him to fatheadedness and self-sufficiency. And she would be—what? A middle-aged biddy with hennaed hair, my old friend Hazel, friend, not companion and wife. He would be too busy with the young ones, the celebrity collectors, the name-fornicators, and their warm flatteries and hot beds.
She had given up half her life, and Rostov as well, for this.
Impossible. She had wanted insurance. She had paid the premiums. She would not be deprived of the payoff.
She stared at his hateful by-line.
What if she did it? She could blame it on a mistake in the Paris bureau, in the transmission, in the New York office. She could get the Manhattan office to support her. And after that, after a personal talk with the executives in New York, she could wangle a solid job for him, a weekly “Inside and Straight,” a gourmet column, something he could do when he traveled with her.
She hated it, hated what it would do to him, yet he would only be once more, as he had been all the past week, a little ruined, slightly pitiful, and oh so nice. Above all, he would be her own.
Should she?
Her last doubt had disappeared.
Quickly, she separated the first page from the rest and ran it into her typewriter. Quickly, she began tapping the X-key, and it sounded like machine-gun fire. One moment there had been:
By Jay Thomas Doyle
The next moment there was:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
And now, above his X’d-out by-line, she typed:
By Hazel Smith
She jumped from her swivel chair before she could have second thoughts. She hurried into the next office. The puncher was waiting impatiently at his outgoing machine. She withheld the story one last moment.
“How are you handling it? Continental wire? London retransmitting to New York?”
“For this one? God, no! New York ordered all systems tied into us for the balance. It’s going out on every circuit simultaneously to every machine in existence.”
“Great.” Hazel looked down at the pages in her hand.
In seconds, the glass windows of ANA machines around the world would reflect the clatter of the Paris puncher’s keys.
URGENT NIGHT LEAD CONFERENCE ASSASSINATION BY HAZEL SMITH ANA STAFF CORRESPONDENT.
“Great,” she repeated. She handed the teletype puncher her story. “Here it is. You can file now.”
And then, picking up her coat, she walked out of the bureau office, not happy, not sad, simply solved. She must get back to the apartment before he returned from Versailles. He would be famished and weary, and he would appreciate a hot meal and a warm bed.
EMMETT A. EARNSHAW.
There had been three consecutive telephone calls in the last half hour, and tired as he was, Earnshaw had welcomed and enjoyed each one. The first had been from Medora Hart, to tell him her entry permit to England had arrived and to thank him. The second had been from Herr Direktor Schlager to report that he had already heard from Chairman Kuo Shu-tung that China would go ahead with the Nuclear Peace City on any terms, and that Schlager and Willi had agreed that now it would be a Peace City and therefore it could be constructed safely inside China. The third call had been from the President of the United States.
After five minutes, Earnshaw was still listening to the President. Seated on his sofa in the Hotel Lancaster, Earnshaw sipped his brandy, and realizing the President had finished repeating his offer, he set the brandy down and held the telephone closer.
‘Thank you, thank you very much for those kind words and your generous offer, Mr. President,” Earnshaw said. “But I must stick to my first decision. I must say again, I cannot accept. If I should change my mind in the near future, I’ll let you know. Good night, Mr. President.”
During the last, he had heard the outside door open and close, and he guessed it was Carol. Some friend had called up from the lobby and asked her to come downstairs, and she had gone. Now she was back, bright and cheerful as ever, and carrying a ream-sized stationery box she had probably acquired from the concierge.
“Another call,” he said to Carol. “Guess who. The President himself. All graciousness and fawning. He offered me the Supreme Court appointment. Finally.”
“Did you take it?” asked Carol eagerly.
“No, Carol, I did not. I think I’d always intended to accept it, if the appointment was offered, but that was before the Summit. A good deal has happened since. I’ve made up my mind I’ve got too many important things to do for the party, the people, that I didn’t do when I had the chance. And God willing, I’d like to do them soon. But Goerlitz unwilling, I probably won’t get that second chance. Anyway, I’d like to keep a free hand, maybe work behind the scenes a little. In any case, I don’t want to be benched by the Opposition.”
Carol went to him and kissed his brow. “The way you put it, I’m sure you’re right, Uncle Emmett.”
“Who was it downstairs for you?”
“Willi von Goerlitz. He brought something. He didn’t want to come up. He just asked me to give it to you.” She handed the box to Earnshaw. “There’s a note on top, under the rubber band, that Willi wrote you.”
Earnshaw placed the stationery box on his lap, removed a small folded sheet, opened it, and found a brief handwritten note on the stationery of the Hotel Ritz.
Slowly, he read it aloud: “‘Dear Mr. Earnshaw, My father’s attorneys impounded the manuscript of his memoirs from the agent. Their decision was that they must hold it until my father recovers, and if he does not recover from his aphasia within a year, they are duty-bound to publish the memoirs exactly as written. These gentlemen are my father’s lawyers, but I am his son, and I know more of what my father is truly like than do they. I know that had my father been able to see what you have done for him and for our firm, and see the wonderful things you have done for the world, he would have revised his limited view of you and his judgment of your place in history. Therefore, on my father’s behalf, I have found a means of unimpounding what has been impounded. I enclose in this box the original and the carbon, the only copies in existence of my father’s chapter on you. I have removed them from his memoirs, and I deliver them to you. They do not reflect the true Emmett Earnshaw and so they do not deserve publication. Do with them what you wish. I send you my deepest thanks. I am proud to have known you. Perhaps, when I visit America next year, you will allow me to call upon you and your wonderful niece in California. Respectfully yours, Willi von Goerlitz.’”
Earnshaw dropped the note on the sofa, and he stared down at the box, deeply moved. He knew that his eyes were full, and he disliked his niece’s seeing him this way.
Without raising his head, he said gruffly, “I wish that young fellow had allowed me to—to tell him how much I appreciate his freeing me to—to have a second chance.”
“Oh, he’s still down in the lobby, Uncle Emmett. I’ll be glad to tell him what you said. He was hoping to take me out for a sandwich.”
Earnshaw looked up. “Well, what in the devil are you hanging around for? Don’t keep the young man waiting.
There aren’t many like him around these days.” He stood up. “Now get along.”
“I won’t be late.” And she ran for the door and rushed out.
He was glad to be alone. Now he was free to go into the bathroom, to tear each page of the chapter into shreds, and piece by piece, drop his past into the toilet bowl and flush it away forever.
It might take some time. But he possessed nothing but time, time and a reputation. He promised himself, and Isabel, he would use them well.
MEDORA HART.
She had been busy, crazily busy, the entire evening.
From the moment that she had received her re-entry permit by special messenger from the British Embassy, she had been in an ecstatic daze. Not until some time after she had ordered the concierge to book her on the first flight
to London tomorrow had she remembered that she had promised to return to appear in the Club Lautrec show the next night. She had realized that she must get out of it.
She had hurried to see Alphonse Michaud backstage, and had explained that she could not go on. She had her freedom to return to her home, and she was determined to return tomorrow. Michaud, charming as ever, had gently reminded her of her contract. In France a contract was a contract. He would not release her, it would cost him too much. If she walked out, he would be forced to sue, and he would hate for her to receive such poor publicity at a time like this. Of course, if she wished to buy up her contract, that was another matter. She had been prepared for this. She had asked what he wanted for the contract. He had told her. She had considered it, and decided it was cheap. She had followed him to his penthouse office, and she had given him what he wanted. An hour later, she’d had her release. So easy.
Back at the hotel, she had tried to contact Earnshaw to thank him for the permit, but had failed to reach him. Then she had telephoned her mother long-distance with the fantastic news of her liberation. Her mother had been pleased. It would be wonderful to have Medora home at last. Especially, at this time, when her arthritis was acting up, when she needed a new doctor and a daughter’s tender care, and someone to help watch over Medora’s sister. Above all, she hoped that Medora had learned her lesson, and would concentrate on her beautician’s course, and open a respectable shop, and find a nice neighborhood boy. Medora had hoped for skyrockets, and there had been only this. Hanging up, she knew that this call, to which she had looked forward for three years, had been curiously dismaying.
Because it was growing late, she had turned her attention to emptying the chest of drawers and packing. She had dialed the wireless for music, and got the news instead, and understood why Earnshaw had not been in his rooms. But later, half packed, she had reached him by phone and thanked him profusely.
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