Conspiracy

by Dana Black

  Raul had pulled back inside the curtain the moment he had seen the hit. He intended to leave the gun behind; it was of Spanish manufacture and would aid in the placement of blame. He turned away from the terrace and was on his way out when a 7.62—millimeter bullet crashed through the glass terrace door and caught him in the left leg. He stumbled and fell.

  In the parking lot below, the young guard in the truck with Groves shot two times more. Both shots were aimed for the hole in the window. Both bullets were accurate; they hit the fallen Raul.

  Now bleeding from a massive wound in the shoulder and another in his side, Raul dragged himself away. More bullets tore through the curtain, but they did not hit their target.

  Dazed, rapidly going into shock, losing blood, Raul got to his feet. He took a few faltering steps toward the door and collapsed.

  Realizing escape was now impossible, he struggled toward the Prietos’ telephone.

  4

  Cindy Ling had been watching the Camera Nine monitor. “Wesley,” she said into her headset mike, “roll that shot of Keith Palermo on Baker, would you?”

  Taggart had put up Camera Seven, Dan Richards and the American team milling around in front of the entrance to the players’ tunnel. “Palermo’s limping,” he said over his headset mike to Dan. “Find out how badly he’s hurt.”

  A few moments later he was interrupted by Cindy. “Wayne, look at this on the Baker monitor! Watch Palermo’s left leg!”

  Wesley froze the image at the spot Cindy had seen during the first replay. “There,” she said. “Serrano hasn’t hit him yet, but already something’s making a mark on his leg. Something right out of the air.”

  “The man’s been shot at! For God’s sake!” Taggart opened the switch to Bill Brautigam’s headset in the Seville TV booth. “Watch your monitor, Bill,” he said, his voice rising with excitement. “Have we got something for you!”

  Lying on the trainer’s examining table, Keith listened to the whoops of joy coming from the locker room outside. He smiled. You couldn’t very well go around screaming, “We’re number three!” but the victory felt good all the same. He winced as Bill McGafferty, the trainer, cleaned the dirt from the abrasions of his bare legs.

  The door to the trainer’s room opened. Jack “Fireball” Farber came in. When he asked McGafferty for a minute’s private talk with “his boy,” the old trainer obliged him. “Gonna let this spray dry before I put on the dressings,” he said to Keith. “Be back in a minute.”

  “Terrific, Keith,” Farber said after the trainer had gone. “You were just the best.”

  Keith thanked him and waited. It was true that Farber meant a substantial amount of extra income to him, but Keith really didn’t have much to say to the man.

  “ ’Spect you’re feeling kinda tired about now,” Farber said. “Probably like you’ve felt after all the other games over here.”

  Keith nodded.

  “Well,” Farber said, “there’s a bunch of reporters outside. If you want to be feeling up to par again real quick, just drink this.”

  From behind his back he held out a paper cup of Gatorade. “Swallow this down and you’ll feel just as peppery as you did out on the field in the second half. And you want to know why?”

  Keith stared as he took the paper cup.

  “I fixed it up with the medical people,” Farber went on proudly. “So the tests wouldn’t show. And I put it into your drink at halftime, every one of your games. Wanted you to have a little somethin’ extra going for you out there—something even better than Far-Lites.” He chuckled a little at his own joke.

  Keith held the towel over his middle and sat up. “What are you talking about?”

  “Simple,” Farber said with a smile. “Cocaine. Some right in that cup there.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Go ahead and drink it if you don’t believe me. You’ll see.”

  Keith realized Farber was telling the truth. The man had risked getting Keith disqualified, risked having the American victories disallowed, tainted Keith’s own personal memories of some of the best games he had ever played—and he was boasting about it!

  “You meddling bastard,” Keith said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Get out of my sight.”

  “Aw, hey, now—” Farber started to protest. Keith threw the cup of Gatorade and caught him in the center of his chest.

  The green liquid soaked into Farber’s shirt and tie and trickled down his legs.

  McGafferty opened the door.

  “I just wanted you to know who your friends are,” Farber said unhappily as he left the room.

  Ross Cantrell glared at the speakerphone on his desktop as he berated the American State Department flunky, Elliott Strether. “Dammit, I don’t care whether you’ve had a policy meeting! I want you to tell the American people what their government thinks! Fifteen million Americans saw our boy get shot at right there in the stadium, and another American citizen is in critical condition, and it was a Spanish gun! I’m gonna have to put something on the air for tonight’s prime-time broadcast, and I don’t want Uncle Sam to be conspicuous by his absence. You see what I mean?”

  At eight-thirty that evening, Elliott Strether stepped behind a speaker’s lectern at the American Embassy and squinted behind his wire-rimmed glasses into the TV lights. He read a brief statement that deplored violence and praised rational thinking.

  Then the reporters in the room began with their questions.

  After about three minutes of finding it impossible to say with certainty that any Spanish agency was behind the attempted killings, and not knowing whether the American government would launch an investigation of its own on Spanish soil, Strether said, “Last question.” He pointed to a man from the New York Post.

  “Once again, we Americans are getting kicked around,” the reporter said, his tone sarcastic. “Once again it looks as if the administration intends only to turn the other cheek. When are we going to do something that people will respect?”

  Strether cleared his throat amid scattered applause. “We deplore the grave injury suffered by our countrymen in Seville,” he said, “and I can assure you that the United States will not stand idly by.”

  Having made that point, he nodded at them and clicked off his microphone.

  5

  A quarter moon hung pale yellow in the night sky over the ruins. Two thousand years ago, Groves reflected, this had been a half-size replica of the Colosseum in Rome. Here were the rows of chiseled stone seats, now pitted and darkened with corrosion. Here were the tunnels that led to the outside of the structure, where the crowds of Romans who helped rule the outpost of the Empire had once moved. Here in the center of the field was the pit where they had kept wild beasts, and the sloping ramp from the pit up to ground level, where the beasts had charged at their human prey when the gate was lifted.

  Groves took his time, seeing it all in the moonlight. He had a half hour before Helen was due to arrive, and another half hour before Raul would come—if Raul was coming. The other guard had emptied two rifle clips into that terrace window after seeing Groves fire his warning shot. No way to tell whether Raul had been hit behind that curtain. And Groves had not wanted to stay around to get the full report. Even assuming that the security officials were willing to tell what had happened when they rushed that tenth-floor apartment, Groves did not want to be there listening. Too much would go wrong if Raul told his real name.

  Having thrown his uniform away, changed clothes, and disposed of Raul’s papers, Groves was now in no danger from the police. Raul knew neither Groves’s name nor that his home was in Marbella. The little Basque could tell everything he knew, for all Groves cared.

  In fact, if he spoke of the Cobor, that would fit in with Groves’s plan very nicely.

  Groves was thinking of the call he would make to Madrid, when he saw Helen. The white of her dress caught the moonlight. Against the darkened stone of the arena she was unmistakable. He watched from the opposite end of the ancie
nt field as she climbed the stone steps and took a seat on one of the pitted stone slabs. He supposed the white handbag she carried held Raul’s money—which she had promised Groves— and a weapon of some kind, in case there was trouble with Raul. That meant he would have to catch her off guard.

  He walked across the field, his knife a comforting weight in his pocket. When he knew she saw him, he waved. He came to a stop at the edge of the field and looked up to where she sat, feeling as though he were a gladiator or a matador. A shame to kill her, he thought, but it had to be.

  “Early for the game,” he said, and grinned up at her.

  “Two thousand years late,” she replied, smiling. “I think the moon is such a turn-on. Especially in a place like this. It makes me think of emperors.”

  Groves hoisted himself up over the stone wall and crouched beside the first row of seats. As he dusted off his trousers, he palmed the knife. His fingers touched a button and the long blade slid noiselessly out of the handle.

  “Well, we’ve got about forty-five minutes,” he said as he stood up and set himself to throw.

  He was about to ask her if he looked like an emperor in the moonlight when he noticed a round dark hole suddenly appear in the white handbag on her lap, and felt a hammer-blow catch him in the teeth. The bullet expanded as it traveled through the back of his head, taking with it the lower portions of his brain.

  Groves was dead instantly.

  His body staggered back one step and fell over the stone wall, landing crumpled on the moonlit field.

  Helen’s face remained expressionless as she saw the knife he had carried fall from his hand.

  Taking no chances that he might still be alive, she glanced at the opening in his skull before she left the ancient stadium. Earlier that evening she had learned that Raul was dead. Now only three people knew about the Cobor. Soon there would be only two.

  She walked quickly to her car, parked between two gnarled olive trees. She disconnected the bomb she had rigged against an attempt by Groves to leave her stranded. Then she looked at her watch.

  Nine-fifteen. An hour to drive to the airport before her plane departed for Madrid.

  6

  “I would not call it hopeless, Miss Quinn,” said the surgeon outside Alec Conroy’s hospital room in Seville. His dark eyes showed sympathy, however, and his somber formality belied the verbal message. “There have been recoveries from similar wounds. It is still too early to tell how much damage the spinal cord has suffered. Daily manipulation can help retain the muscle tone, even if he never walks again. And perhaps there are surgeons in the United States—”

  Rachel shuddered, not really listening anymore. She was remembering the way Alec had clung to her, the fear in his voice as he had repeated her name and begged her not to leave him, ever, ever.

  And now this doctor was saying he would need daily nursing care. That he would never walk again.

  “I can’t handle it,” she whispered to herself.

  “You said something, Miss Quinn?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing, really. I’m just scared.”

  “It is normal. Why don’t you go home and rest? Mr. Conroy is under sedation and there is nothing you can do for him now. You can return in the morning if you wish.”

  She opened the door and saw him: a mass of white, immobilized by bandages and drugs so that he could not turn in his sleep and do his spine further injury.

  He had screamed at her in the ambulance. “Don’t touch me I can’t feel my legs don’t leave me! I don’t want to die!”

  Now he breathed noisily, mouth open, a tube protruding from his nose.

  “I really can’t handle it,” Rachel whispered again.

  Outside the hospital, she got into a cab. “Take me to the airport,” she told the driver.

  She arrived in time to catch the ten-fifteen flight to Madrid.

  7

  In Madrid at about ten-thirty, Yuri Zadiev was informed that the press had begun calling about Katya Romanova. He cursed softly under his breath and immediately canceled plans for the evening. Instead he took a taxi to the Hotel Lope de Vega. He went directly to the room that Katya shared with Tamara Filatova.

  There Yuri told the two ladies of the vicious slander spread by the UBC newscaster. Obviously, he said, the remark had been timed to affect world perception of tomorrow’s game, and to disturb Katya’s brother Sergei emotionally, to prevent him from playing well. The Americans had used the same tactic earlier in the tournament, he pointed out, against a British player, by slandering the man’s wife. And against the British, the ploy had worked. It was up to the Russians to show they were not so foolhardy.

  To counter the American lies, they would change plans somewhat, he told them. Katya would remain in the hotel until an hour before the game tomorrow, refusing to see any reporters. Tamara would ensure that Katya reached Bernabeau Stadium without being badgered by the press.

  Then, in order to show the world that Katya was filled with natural and patriotic affection for her country, they would make what Yuri termed a “media gesture.” Katya would watch the game, not from the stands, but directly from the Soviet bench. She would sit between Tamara and Yuri himself, where the TV cameras could get a good view of her.

  And she would hold her head high.

  Tamara’s heart leaped with enthusiasm at the prospect of being on the field with the players to see the game. She felt emboldened to offer an idea of her own.

  “But we shall need to make a stronger statement than that, surely,” she said. “A public denial, medical tests and records—”

  “After the game,” Yuri said firmly. “When we have returned to Moscow. Until then, we shall not dignify their lies with a rebuttal.”

  That much established, Yuri left Katya to brood on her betrayal by the capitalist scandal-mongers, and on the impossibility of escape. He went downstairs one flight to the room of Sergei Romanova, where he repeated the same information and instructions in a private conversation with that robust young man.

  Sergei’s eyes danced with anger, eager for combat. His slow grin revealed three missing teeth. “Okay if I tell the others?” he asked Yuri. “If they know why Katya’s on the bench with us, they may want to fight harder.”

  Yuri thought that information would do no harm, so he gave his consent. However, to guard against the possibility of Katya’s suddenly getting the urge to confess all to her brother, he asked Sergei. to show his confidence in Katya by leaving her undisturbed until after the game.

  While he was at the hotel, Yuri stopped by to see his own brother, substitute forward Dimitri Zadiev, who shared a room with his first-string counterpart, Anton Volnikov. He learned that in the game with Argentina, the roles were likely to be reversed; because of the stress fracture in Volnikov’s foot, young Zadiev would probably see action throughout the entire game. Yuri wished both men good luck.

  Before he left, he happened to mention the decadent capitalist attempt to upset their teammate Sergei by defaming the honor of his sister. He told them of Sergei’s patriotic response. Both men appeared moved.

  Yuri then returned to his office. There, using his private phone, he made additional security arrangements that would prevent any last-minute UBC maneuvers to help Katya escape to the West.

  8

  Flying on the same plane with Rachel Quinn and Helen Bates, Keith and Sharon sat side by side on their way back to Madrid to see tomorrow’s final. Unlike Rachel and Helen, they rode in the coach section. Both of them were paying for their tickets. Keith had passed up the team plane to travel with Sharon; Sharon, of course, was no longer on a UBC expense account. Since they were now engaged and on a budget, they had decided not to splurge on first-class seats.

  During the flight they debated what Keith should do. He was determined to tell his story to the press, and to return the third-place World Cup ring he had been given. Winning with drugs, he said, was just as illegal whether you knew you had taken them or not.

  Sharo
n countered with a number of objections. Her most basic argument was that right at the moment Keith wasn’t up to par. If Farber had been telling the truth, Keith would be suffering from the after effects of cocaine: fatigue and depression. So he would not be able to think as clearly as he should. Sharon believed he was being too hard on himself.

  When the plane landed, Keith remained set in his plans to tell all. He was willing, however, to go back to Sharon’s room and spend some time in bed before making any final decision.

  9

  The parking lot outside the uplink antenna building was nearly deserted at 3:30 a.m. Helen Bates stopped her car near the entrance. She remained inside.

  From the passenger’s seat, she lifted the cover to a small videotape recording unit. Its built-in monitor screen came on when she pushed the power button, showing the UBC signal that was being broadcast from inside the nearby building.

  Helen watched until the image of Elliott Strether, behind his speaker’s podium, came on. Then she pushed the “record” button.

  Five minutes later, when Strether’s image had switched off the mike and turned away from the camera, Helen pushed the “stop” button. She rewound the tape. Then she reached into the back seat, retrieved a small transmitter, and connected it to the VTR unit with two vinyl-coated patching cables.

  She extended the antenna of the transmitter, directing it at the uplink antenna budding. Pressing the “play” button of the VTR, she held the transmitter antenna in place for thirty seconds. The VTR monitor showed Strether behind his podium, beginning his prepared statement.

  Slightly more than a half hour later, Helen parked on the street near Bernabeau Stadium. Once again she pushed the VTR “play” button as she remained inside her car. This time, however, she used a different transmitter. A larger unit, this one had a multiple-frequency dial and broadcast through the rooftop antenna of Helen’s car radio.