by Morris West
‘And no man knows where he’s buried. What do you want from me, lover?’
Spada unbuttoned his shirt and took off the gold chain with the Proteus key on the end of it. He laid it in Feldman’s palm.
‘It’s yours now, Maury.’
‘After this, what am I supposed to do with it? When we first set up the organisation it was to build bridges of benevolence. Now you’ve blown them all!’
‘Do you really believe that, Maury?’
‘For Christ’s sake, John! Can’t you see . . .’
‘I’ll tell you what I see and what you know! Comes a time when benevolence is not enough. Comes a time when you stand on the crags of Masada and say: “You’ve pushed us far enough. Here we stand and die.” And maybe, just maybe, you don’t die and the legions fall back in retreat. The man who blew up the King David Hotel is now the Prime Minister of Israel. That’s history, Maury! If you die, you’re a criminal, and they plough your land with salt. If you survive, you’re a hero, and a statesman! Don’t fail me now, Maury.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you want!’
‘My day in court. And I want you there with me.’
‘If they give it to you . . .’
‘If they don’t, then all bets are off. You don’t have me as a client any more. You walk away clean.’
‘While you bring down the plague on innocent people!’
‘Half your taxes are paying for a new holocaust, Maury; and you’re voting for bigger and better bonfires every year! Don’t go soft on me now, please!’
‘Soft! I think I’m going crazy! Besides, what can I do?’
‘What does any good lawyer do? Mediate, interpret, plead! . . . And don’t tell me we have no case! Remember Yad Vashem and all the millions who died because there was no one to plead their cause and because the fight began too late!’
‘I have to think about it.’
‘Fine! I’ll call you after the vote in the General Assembly.’
‘I wish to God I could explain you to myself!’
‘It’s simple enough, Maury. I’m a stripped-down man. I’ve got nothing to lose except my life . . . Let’s go, eh?’
He paid the score. They stood up and walked out into the chill autumn air. At the corner they shook hands and parted. Maury Feldman stood on the kerb and watched him walk away, limping like Jacob after his wrestle with the Angel. He felt very near to tears, not knowing whether he loved or hated him.
The first disclosure was made, according to protocol, by the Secretary-General to a plenary conference of correspondents accredited to United Nations. The conference took place at nine in the morning, New York time, on the Monday before the third Tuesday in September. The date had been decided to give time for at least a preliminary test of world opinion before the vote in the General Assembly. The Secretary-General’s announcement was sedulously calm. Each correspondent received a copy of the letter of demand, the schedule of camps and inmates, a photograph of the phials containing the lethal material. The Secretary-General deposed briefly:
‘Ladies and gentlemen! The documents in your hands speak for themselves. The material has been inspected by experts and has been identified as a culture and a toxin, capable of wide dissemination and lethal results. Faced with this threat, all delegates to the United Nations have been instructed by their governments to vote in the General Assembly, which will commence at ten tomorrow morning. The purpose of this session is to hear the views of all member nations and to determine, by vote, whether the person who calls himself Proteus shall be admitted to address the Assembly or whether we shall refuse to receive him – with all the consequences that may entail. I have only brief comments to make. We accept the threat as genuine and not a hoax. We believe that Proteus has the means to carry it out. His identity is suspected; but, in default of final proof, we cannot at this moment publish it. We do not know, nor can we speculate, on the location or the method of disseminating the lethal material.’
They were normally restless and aggressive. Now they were quiet and abashed. The news had taken them unawares. Their usual tactics were now trivial and tasteless. The first question came from the Tass man:
‘This Proteus, whose identity is known, but may not be stated, is he an American citizen?’
‘No comment.’
‘Sir. Do you have any reaction from the major powers?’
‘None that I can disclose. Only their delegates are briefed to speak on their behalf.’
‘Sir . . .’ The woman from UP raised a respectful hand. ‘What would be the death-toll from a biological contamination of the water-supply of a city like New York?’
‘I have no figures, madam. I am told it would constitute a major catastrophe.’
The man from the Washington Post asked:
‘What measures are being taken to track down this Proteus and his associates and locate the toxic material?’
‘These measures are under the jurisdiction of the governments concerned. I can give you no details, because I do not have them. One presumes all are committed to a maximum effort.’
‘What is your own disposition, sir? Would you invite a blackmailer on to the floor of the Assembly?’
‘My own disposition? I have none that is relevant in this crisis.’
‘Have you any comment on the situation?’
‘I have a question.’ The Secretary-General was suddenly hard as granite. ‘A question which you may feel disposed to put to your readers and viewers. If you sit where we shall sit very soon, how would you choose? Would you treat with the blackmailer, or thrust him into confinement while you watch men and cities perish? . . . You must excuse me now. I know no more than I have told you. I cannot guess beyond the next two days.’
Everywhere, the authorities had expected a panic. There was none. It was as if mankind were satiated with horror, drunk and numb after an orgy of violent images thrust at it hour after hour without respite. There was no place to hide. There was no board on which they could read the odds for or against their personal survival. There was no enemy to provoke their fury – not even Proteus himself, because the very magnitude of his challenge touched some chord of elation, of desperate sympathy, deep within them. The issues of good and evil were too closely entwined to distinguish them clearly. There was no appeal to the law because the law was plainly impotent against this thunderbolt intervention in human affairs.
The one image which stuck in everyone’s mind was the metaphor of Russian Roulette; the pistol with one bullet and five empty chambers, passed from hand to hand at a drunken party. Click! . . . The hammer strikes an empty chamber. Thank God I’m still alive. Click! Click! Click! Thank God they are still alive. Bang! . . . He’s dead! Well, it was his own fault, poor clown! People shouldn’t play with loaded guns. It was only afterwards, and much too late, that anyone dared to ask: ‘What were we doing there, anyway; how did we arrive at that moment of lunacy; why didn’t someone stop us before we got too drunk to reason?’
After the first welter of sensational headlines and hastily prepared commentary, a tone of cool, if desperate, sanity began to make itself heard. The end proposed by Proteus was good. It was not beyond human accomplishment. It had been urged for years by wise and compassionate people – yea, by us too, of the Fourth Estate. If our urgings went unheard, it was because – and here the reasonings became diffuse and contradictory – a mélange of the philosophy of law, the sovereignty of States, commercial considerations, political expediencies.
Still, if the end was good, could not a good means be found to attain it? Proteus was wrong to hold the world to ransom like a highwayman . . . They had not dropped the emotive words: terrorist, blackmail, hijack; but at least, in response either to instinct or directive, they had begun to introduce qualifications that admitted some possible goodwill . . . No editor was prepared to admit that his hand was being guided; but when anyone fished out photographs of victims of random epidemics and said: ‘Let’s print those. Maybe that will stop the bastard,’ the
re was a howl of protest… ‘What do you want? Mobs inside United Nations . . .’
In the end, it was the fear of the hostile mobs that swayed the vote. At three in the afternoon, by a narrow majority, the General Assembly voted that: ‘In the hope of a speedy removal of a monstrous threat to humanity, we agree to invite the person called Proteus, under guarantees of immunity, to address members of this Assembly in an extraordinary session and to permit full news coverage of the occasion by all the media.’
At five, John Spada telephoned the Secretary-General and received news of the decision. At ten the next morning, he landed by helicopter within the precincts of the UN and was escorted with Maury Feldman to the Secretary-General’s office. Those who saw him remarked that, trimmed, barbered and dressed in a five-hundred-dollar suit, he made a most unlikely terrorist. To which one cynical wit answered: ‘Don’t you know all undertakers are well-dressed.’
The Secretary-General was polite, if less than cordial.
‘You will both be accommodated in the building until all this is over. Your immunity is guaranteed but, all the time you are here, you will be restricted to your own quarters. The press and possibly some delegates will wish to see you.’
‘No, sir!’ John Spada refused flatly. ‘I go on the record once and once only, in the Assembly itself. I shall make my speech, respond to delegates’ questions if they have any, then return to my quarters to await the outcome. I hope you will not have me on your hands too long.’
‘I hope so too, Mr Spada.’ He said it like a prayer. ‘In the event that the outcome is favourable, I presume you will wish to contact your – er – associates.’
‘That will not be necessary, sir. They are instructed how to act in either event. The only danger is that if any country – and I mean any country – imposes a blackout on news, my colleagues will be out of communication. In that case, they will distribute the contaminants to a fixed time schedule.’
‘My God!’
‘It must have occurred to you, sir, that certain governments would attempt to blackout or edit the news, as indeed they have done these last few days. It would be wise to tell them what will happen if they do it tomorrow.’
‘But you are setting them up for judgment by their own populace; they will not accept that.’
‘Then they will accept the consequence.’
The Secretary-General looked at Maury Feldman, who shrugged helplessly.
‘I’m sorry. This is Spada’s brief, not mine.’
‘A question, sir.’ Spada addressed the Secretary-General. ‘In the event that consent is given to my demands, are your observers ready to move? Remember the commencement date for release is a fixed feast, not a movable one.’
‘But surely, some flexibility . . .’
‘No, sir. I am familiar with the tactics used in dealing with terrorist groups – delay, discussion, new terms, new conditions. This situation precludes them.’
‘You must have very good nerves, Mr Spada.’
‘I assure you, sir, that I have. May I ask a service of you? I need a secretary to type up the final draft of my speech and run off copies for distribution.’
‘That can be arranged. Is there anything else?’
‘One matter only. I have instructed Mr Feldman here to draw a deed dedicating a part of my personal fortune, estimated at some ten million dollars, to a trust fund to be administered by United Nations. This fund will be used for the rehabilitation of released prisoners and their families. I shall sign the deed after the amnesty has begun.’
‘And if there is no amnesty?’
‘Then, I fear the money will have little value. It’s a curious commodity: an expression of confidence in the human condition. Once that confidence goes, you might just as well use it to light your pipe . . .’
‘Do you believe in God, Mr Spada?’
‘At the moment, sir, God is absent from me. I have prayed to find him again in this place.’
‘I pray with you, Mr Spada,’ said the Secretary-General. ‘The absence has been too long already.’
In the great chamber of the General Assembly, John Spada faced the delegates of the nations, the press of the world, the privileged audience of the potent who filled the public galleries. They were silent, grim-faced, clearly hostile to this interloper in their midst. They had not come to hear testimony but to look on the man who was to give it, to measure his strength, his resolution, his nerve as a gambler. So be it then. He himself must prove them: whether they would know a truth when they heard it, stand for or against a right when they saw it plain. But he must look beyond them, speak over them, to the world outside, where his image and his words would reach hundreds of millions who, even if they could not enforce them yet, would make their own judgments on the witness he was about to give.
The Secretary-General stood on the rostrum. His introduction was brief and bleak.
‘… We are here under duress and under protest. The man who will address you has no right to be in this place. Nevertheless, we have granted him immunity, guaranteed his security, while he is among us. In a forum held to ransom, we will grant him a free hearing. Ladies and Gentlemen. The man who calls himself Proteus . . . Mr John Spada.’
As he stepped down from the rostrum they applauded him. When John Spada took his place, the applause died instantly to an eerie silence. Spada arranged his papers on the lectern, adjusted the microphone and began to speak, calmly and persuasively.
‘… It is true that you are here under duress; but you are here, in comfort, in your own place, free to come and go at will, to debate openly, to eat well, to demand immunities in your persons and your houses. There are others, tens of thousands of others, in prisons, in detention camps, in torture-rooms, in psychiatric institutions, who are not free, whose simplest human rights have been abrogated. It is for them that I have come to speak. It is for them that I have, temporarily and very mildly, abridged your very great freedom. I remind you that, in a public document, I have permanently surrendered my own…’
They had expected something else – threats, exhortations, a tirade perhaps. They were not disarmed yet, but yes, they would listen. He began now to reason with them.
‘I stand before you, one man, alone. You are many. Behind you there is the serried might of nations, great and small, their wealth, their armies, navies, air forces, their police, civil and secret. You have, in short, a mandate of enormous potency. I, it would appear, have none.
‘I claim that I have. It is a mandate from the silent, to speak for them, from the imprisoned to plead for them, from the tortured to proclaim their wrongs, from the dead to write at least a decent epitaph. This is the meaning of the name I assumed: Proteus, the shepherd of those who live in an alien element; Proteus of the many shapes. When you look at me I want you to see many other shapes and faces: the schoolgirl raped and bleeding on a table, a great scholar reduced by drugs to mumbling lunacy, a journalist beaten to a bloody pulp, a long line of detainees, inadequately fed, inadequately clothed, working in sub-zero weather . . . You ask who gave me my mandate. They did. The hands that first offered it to me were the hands of my own daughter, tortured to extremity in Argentina. Then my wife, my daughter and my daughter’s husband were murdered . . . What more motive is needed for the action I have taken? . . . Is your own patent of authority so sound? Should you not accept mine, as I do yours, de facto; and ask, not how it was come by, but what use, good or bad, is made of it?
‘I will not insult you with any of the catchwords of politics: the right, the left, the centre, capitalist, communist, revolutionary, deviationist, dissident . . . You have heard them all, too many times, in this place and elsewhere. These are labels, hung on mannequins. I will use other words: man, woman, child; and I will show you what was done to this man, that woman, their child.’ . . . He sensed their restiveness and he challenged them sharply: ‘You are bored – or embarrassed? You know it already? Then why have you not risen in revolt against it? You did not do it? OF course not! There ar
e always vicars, deputies, surrogates to do the filthy work and leave you free in conscience afterwards. You will sit! You will be silent! You will listen! . . .’
He read the catalogue, country by country, figure by figure, detail by sordid detail, until he had cowed them again into silence. Then he tossed the papers on the floor of the chamber with a gesture of contempt.
‘Challenge it, if you dare! Refute it, if you can! Prove me a liar. I would welcome it! . . . You cannot. You know it. So what do you do? You say: we are delegates only, puppet voices, puppet figures! Blame our masters, not us! I blame them – dear loving God, how I blame them! But I blame you too, because you hide behind their skirts like lap-dogs, whimpering at their anger! And this is why I threaten you, put you under duress: to show you that, for every monster there is a mirror image, for every terror there is a response of terror, throughout all ages of ages. Amen!’
His voice was a thunder, rolling through the domed chamber. After the thunder came a silence, and after the silence, a passionate plea.
‘Look! Listen! Take heed, I beg you! These are your brothers and sisters! Their blood is your blood, crying not for vengeance, but for an end of this long iniquity. What are you? Savages, dancing round the fire, chanting while your victims burn? Mediaeval inquisitors wrenching irrelevancies from dying men? If you are, then the terror which I hold over you is less than you deserve. If you are not, then, in the name of whatever Gods you worship, make an end of this monstrosity! Remember, time runs out!’
He stood for one silent moment, dominating them, waiting for the questions they dared not ask. Then he walked out of the chamber to the room they had provided for him, threw himself on the bed and lay like a cataleptic, staring at the white ceiling.
A long time later, a long lifetime later, Maury Feldman came and sat on the edge of the bed, patted his head and said quietly:
‘Brother, little brother, you did well.’
‘Did it all go out?’
‘Here and in Europe, yes, it all went out. What they did with it in other places, how they edited it – too early to know.’
