by Anna Porter
“You’ve talked to David?”
“Not directly. Policemen are several departments below mine—no offense, still kidding. The good Detective Inspector didn’t know about the RCMP involvement till he began his own investigation and literally ran into them while tracking Adrian Hall’s mom. Then they ordered him off the case. Too many cooks, and all that.”
“Does he know about the kidnapping?”
Allan shrugged.
“He knows something’s screwy because the RCMP have asked him a lot of questions about you. They were expecting trouble. In fact, the night you apparently called him from Sibelius Park he came with an RCMP chap, in case you were about to reveal something the RCMP ought to know…”
“The same man who’d shadowed me before?” Judith interrupted, thinking of the creased face behind the wheel of the sedan.
“Your guardian angel—and a damned sight more experienced than the young CIA man out there. Still, he hadn’t expected the kidnapping. It was you they were concerned for, not the children.”
“Do they know who kidnapped them?”
“Yes and no. They arrested the man who followed you to the airport. He hasn’t admitted anything, but the police know he was also at the Rosedale subway station the night Harris was killed.”
“Which one was he?”
“Muller. Parr knew him instantly. He chain-smokes. The other kidnapper was Mrs. Hall. Embarrassing as it has proved for my colleague, Adrian, his mother has been MacMurty’s cat’s-paw in Canada. She’s been a prominent peacenik since Hiroshima—met MacMurty around 1970 and has worked for him ever since. Adrian knew she was deeply involved in the peace movement, but he thought she’d joined some version of Moral Rearmament. All along she probably believed she was acting in the public good.”
“When she kidnapped my children?”
“They weren’t harmed.”
“When she killed Harris, then?”
“We don’t think she actually pushed him. But she did organize the group on the platform. All but the young girl—she was cover. The police have had her in for questioning and let her go.”
“Who did push him?”
“They think Muller. Does it matter? Mrs. Hall put them up to it. She paid off two of them; two others work for her; the girl was incidental.”
“And the Jamaican woman? Did Mrs. Hall arrange that too?”
“That’s the assumption. Though there is no proof. No witnesses have volunteered yet.”
Marsha came in, flapping her arms and waving at the living room. “It’s all over CBS. Don’t you want to see it? You two have been cooped up in here for ages. What’s going on?”
“Don’t you feel just a little bit guilty?” Allan asked her lightly.
Marsha hovered uncertainly for a moment.
“Yes,” she said. “They may have meant well, but I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
Allan nodded.
“Why didn’t David tell me he was with an RCMP man? I thought…” Judith was still struggling to accept what she had heard.
“I suppose because you didn’t ask,” Allan said.
Judith turned to Marsha.
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you tell me The Dealer was using the RCMP to leak information to MacMurty and the others?”
“He said they were the thinnest security service in the world. But he said a lot of things…”
“Isn’t that how MacMurty knew you had left copies of the documents in London?” Judith persisted. “That was the information I passed to David, which he was to convey to the Mounties…”
“The Dealer had so many ways to let them know. I think he set that up to make me think I was safer than I was. The six copies of the manuscript were never delivered to those lawyers. Does it matter, now?”
“It would to the Justice Department,” Allan ventured, “but as for me, I’d rather have the toast you promised, and jam if you can spare some.”
“Me, too,” Jimmy said, slouching in the doorway in his tough-guy pose. “Or don’t we rate breakfast today?”
Thirty-Three
“COVER ONE IS, primarily, a selling surface. An attention-grabber. There’s no point trying to force it to tell the story. It’s a waste of effort. It is most effective when it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Content is not a serious consideration. Content will only interfere with what we are trying to do here. Our job is to sell the book. This cover will be up there among a wallfull of paperbacks. It will occupy only one pocket out of five hundred. What will make it stand out?
“The casual browser sure as hell isn’t going to pick a book up because the author has a way with words. I don’t want to hear that the author’s prose is ‘breathtaking, spare, witty, delightful.’ Let the reviewers do that. I want a cover which will leap off that wall and land in your hands.”
David Markham looked around the room. He had been addressing one of Marsha’s new recruits, a fiction editor fresh out of Farrar, Straus who had taken her editorial training seriously. She still believed in stories.
“Cover four,” Markham went on, “is a horse of a different color. By the time the buyer has turned the book around to see what it’s about, you’ve got his attention. Now, sell him! Tell him it’s the best read he’ll ever have. Tell him to grab it and run. But don’t tell the goddam story. If you tell him the story now, why would he layout $3.95 to read it?”
Marsha searched the room for signs of life. There were sixteen people around the small boardroom table. At least ten, including the copy chief, the art director, the man from production and the guys from the wholesale division, had heard this speech half a dozen times. Marsha knew that Lynda Manning, who seemed to pay rapt attention to every word, could do a lively imitation of Markham delivering it. Yet nobody interrupted. No one told him to shove it. The two weeks Marsha had been away were apparently long enough for Markham to have been appointed VP, but surely not long enough for him to be taken seriously.
“What I’m telling you, Jaquie,” Markham went on enthusiastically, “is that you’re wasting our time with all this bullshit about what the author’s intent was and how brilliant the book is. Plot summaries, dear, are purely for Eng. Lit. courses. This,” he waved his arm around to include everyone, “is a cover conference.”
Marsha took a deep breath. If she was to retain the remnants of her power and rebuild the edifice, she would have to challenge the little bastard. It couldn’t wait until tomorrow. She had already lost too much ground.
“For example,” Markham continued, “if I were to present this book…”
“Point is, though, you’re not.” Marsha jumped in with both feet. She’d work on her strategy as she went. “And I want to hear the end of the story.”
“What?” Markham flashed.
“I said I want to hear the end of the story. Your cover theories I’ve heard before. The story is new, so let her tell it, will you?”
“With due respect, Marsha, I don’t see how that will help us find a cover. We need to establish the market, the angle, the audience…”
“Listening to the story might help.”
“Trouble is we ought to know all that before we buy. Not try to figure it out at cover conferences.”
Marsha sighed theatrically.
“I believe I’m still in charge of the buying and your job is to sell. Or are you planning to join the editorial department?”
Markham threw his pencil down in disgust but didn’t say anything. Marsha turned to the young editor from Farrar.
“Let’s get on with it, Jaquie,” she said softly.
Lynda Manning grinned. The art director made vigorous strokes with his broad-tipped felt marker. Fred Mancuso blew his nose loudly. Round one to Hillier.
Jaquie finished her presentation. They decided on a French Lieutenant’s Woman type of approach, a cover painting. A serious woman’s novel—“so we might as well go to the heart of the market and evoke an all-around classic,” Marsha summed up. “Next one on the list is The Mission Con
spiracy. Is that title firm?”
The editor shook his head in despair.
“I tried to change it, but the author wouldn’t. Says his mother likes it. Really.”
“There’s been a glut of conspiracy books,” Marsha said. “Don’t you think people are getting tired of being threatened?”
Markham joined in again.
“I think it’s got something,” he mused. “Mission has a religious note, brings in a whole different perspective.”
Marsha tuned out. She was still recovering from a major bout of conspiracies. She had been debriefed and briefed by a host of self-proclaimed guardians of US society, dogmatic and humorless, each in turn satisfied by the rich array of justification for his growing paranoia about the media and Soviet intervention in America.
Earlier this morning Bob had finally left, though Marsha still felt watched and followed, no doubt with reason.
There was to be a Senate investigation into all the activities of Nelson Roberts Jr. and Ethan MacMurty. A law regarding ownership boundaries in communications had been hastily drawn up. The Committee wanted to call Ferenc Jozsef but could not find him. There was talk of a big public trial for treason that would center the debate on what the three had done and why. There had been more stories, photographs, editorials and arguments by learned and ignorant panelists.
Nelson Roberts’s application to enjoin further publication of excerpts from the Manifesto, the minutes of meetings and the diary had not been granted.
BREAD jokes were in at fashionable parties.
Anthony Billingsworth-Powell had not returned from Prague. In a televised interview with a stringer from the Associated Press he had expressed only grief that he couldn’t. He declared loyalty to his country and its people. He hoped that his wife and grown children would be able to visit him in Czechoslovakia while he made plans for his own future.
Marsha’s name had not been linked with the revelations surrounding BREAD, but Judith had asked if the two of them could spend a few days in Eleuthera in early May and discuss the possibility of Judith’s writing a long magazine piece out of the story. As usual, Judith was short of money, and this time she wanted a real holiday without borrowed provisions. “Has sudden fame ever harmed a woman of my age?” she had asked Marsha.
Romance had certainly been healthy for her. David Parr had arrived in New York the same day Allan Goodman left.
Judith reported that Jimmy was about to start talking to him. The accumulated bribes of badges, earrings, bubblegum and tickets to the last Stones concert were beginning to take their toll. Now it was Anne who was putting up resistance. She thought it dishonest for David to buy Jimmy’s tolerance.
Marsha herself thought Allan a more suitable companion for Judith. He was friendly, funny and realistic about himself. But the past few weeks had suggested to her that she, herself, was a mediocre judge of men’s potential.
Marsha had not yet returned Jerry’s keys to her apartment. Maybe she never would.
There had been a letter from Peter Burnett. It came with the package Marsha had inadvertently left at his house the night she drove back to London: the tiny porcelain elephant. She had made it the centerpiece of her collection, even though its happy, turned-up trunk had not yet brought her luck.
“You’ll be glad to know,” Peter said in his letter, “that Jane MacIntyre has decided not to take advantage of her early retirement privileges. She has returned on a part-time basis…”
About the manuscript he said that, on reflection, he regretted not having told her more. He had thought she would abandon the project once the leads ran dry. While he understood what she had done, he would have chosen, and indeed did choose, a different path. There was no evil comparable to the evil of global nuclear war…
Marsha had never mentioned Peter’s involvement to her various questioners. Let the CIA track him down for themselves, if they had to find the London connection.
Fitzgibbon & Harris, together with the feisty Alice Roy, had been sold to Douglas & McIntyre.
Marsha’s mother had sent a note and an invitation to her annual May 3 garden party in Boston. To make sure she had focused Marsha’s attention, she hinted that Jerzy Kosinski and John Irving were both expected, as well as the crème de la crème of Boston society, several senators, and an assembly of congressmen. Maybe the president would make it this year. Marsha should buy a new outfit—something outrageously expensive but understated.
Eleuthera with Judith sounded much more attractive.
“Marsha,” David Markham said loudly. Then, again: “Marsha,” in a voice as sweet as molasses, “perhaps you could tell us what you think.”
Damn. There was nothing on the table to give her a hint of what they had been talking about. No leads propped up against the window. She tried to see the art director’s pad, but it was too far away. Everyone was looking at her—some expectantly, a few sympathetically, but mainly they looked embarrassed. No doubt the son-of-a-bitch knew she hadn’t been listening. Question was: would she admit it or should she try to bluff her way through and risk a fatal mistake?
While she pretended to consider the problem at hand—whatever it was—she noticed that the young editor from Farrar, Straus had half-cupped one hand in front of her mouth and placed the index and middle fingers of her other hand inside it. Her eyes fixed on Marsha with grave intensity.
What the hell, Marsha thought, she’d take a chance.
“You know very well, David, I pick number two. That’s the only way to go.”
There was a tiny sound, like a communal sigh of relief. Markham grinned with gritted teeth and held up two cover roughs that had been lying face-down in front of him. Fools’ Game was the title. One of the covers was an imitation Ruth Rendell; the other showed a single black spider against a white background, with the title splashed blood-red across the top.
“For once, I must agree,” Markham said, and tossed the one with the spider at the art director. “That’s it. Next?”
Marsha smiled at Jaquie. Smart kid, she would go places.
The phone next to Marsha’s elbow rang.
“Miss Hillier?” asked the switchboard.
“Yes,” said Marsha curtly. Cover conferences were not to be interrupted by phone calls except in emergencies.
“There’s a man on the phone, insists he must speak with you now. I told him you were in a meeting, but he says it’s imperative…”
“What’s his name?”
“He says it’s Mister Joseph. Should I put him through?”
She had been expecting him. She had been hoping he was far away manipulating some eager new quarry, yet she had known all along he would contact her. No sense trying to avoid it now.
“Yes.”
Click.
“Marsha?” The unmistakable accent, transforming her name into that of a romantic heroine direct from the steppes.
“Hello,” she said, tentatively.
“A thousand pardons for the interruption. I am told you are in the midst of a most important meeting. Yet I had confidence you wouldn’t object since, as you know, we have still some unfinished business.”
“We have?” Marsha whispered, her throat suddenly dry, the air thin around her.
“The trouble with unfinished business, my dear Marsha, is that it renders one rather nervous, edgy. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. Well…” “Edgy” didn’t do justice to Marsha’s constant sense of foreboding since she had not returned the documents to The Dealer’s messenger.
“In the beginning I had misgivings about you, but you already know that. You do remember, I stressed that you were your own choice, not mine. Yet, contrary to my expectations, you have played your role to the limit and beyond. Your remarkable tenacity is surpassed only by your ingenuity when faced with a difficult problem. It was a gamble worth taking and we have both won.”
“We have?”
“I have more than I had bargained for and you…you must admit you have been substantially more
fortunate than your fellow publishers who were granted the dubious pleasure of reading Better Red Than Dead?”
Marsha remained silent.
“You will find a small token of my appreciation in the top drawer of your desk. And that, as they say, concludes our business. Until next time…” The Dealer hung up.
***
His gift was a small brown ink-and-wash sketch, study for a 1669 Rembrandt Self-Portrait. Or so it appeared.
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1
HE HAD BEEN COMING to the Gerbeaud for thirty years, but he never tired of it. During the summer he liked to sit under its wide, grey umbrellas on Vörösmarty Square, enjoying snippets of conversation at adjoining tables and watching life go by. It was a cozy respite from the nastiness of work. He didn’t much care whether the service was slow, the chrome tabletop wiped clean, or his espresso lukewarm, he loved the tangy black coffee oozing across his tongue and the reassuring normalcy of unfolding the daily paper on its wooden holder. He savoured the familiarity.
Although pretty much everything in Hungary had changed since the advent of the “market economy,” the Gerbeaud’s sole concession to the winds of capitalism had been a steady increase in prices. The new owners had left the rest of it alone. He could still sit here as long as he wished, nursing the single espresso that cost him a quarter of a good day’s wages, and the waitresses never pushed him to reorder.
There had been a time when the manager, sleek as a young trout in her fitted black dress, had refilled his delicate china cup and hadn’t charged for it, but she had long gone to greater fortunes in the States. Her name was Klari, now probably changed to Claire, or maybe Clara to preserve a touch of the Continent. She would have discovered by now that it cost a damned sight more than an occasional refill of coffee to buy a policeman in the so-called home of the free. Even in Budapest, bribery was no longer a bargain.
