Prelude to Terror

by Helen Macinnes

  Cut that out, he warned himself for the third time, or else you’ll lose any friendly persuasion you once possessed. And it did succeed, sometimes—just often enough to keep alive your belief in human generosity. But even that phrase sounds too sarcastic. Preserve me from becoming the middle-aged grouch with a permanent sneer and jaundiced eye, he thought as he cleared up the kitchen: without beliefs and enthusiasms, our daily bread would turn to a diet of ashes. Now, why didn’t I tell that to the Congressperson?

  * * *

  All clear in the kitchen. Desk in the living-room put in order, ready for some more immortal passages of impassioned prose in the morning. Nothing more to be done here, in this empty apartment. Or should he forget about duty, and skip the party? The exhibition had been his idea originally, but Martin Carfield had taken it over, and a cocktail party had been tacked on. Max Seldov, who usually supported Colin, had backed down and decided that a party was in the Dali tradition. Old Schofeld, of course, thought anything that pleased their clients was good for art, as well as for the Gallery.

  An empty apartment to match an empty life, he thought as he stood in the bedroom, peeling off his damp shirt, preparing for another shower, his eyes on Jennifer’s photograph. It stood on the chest of drawers, always there, always watching his moods with those teasing blue eyes and a smile just breaking on her lips. Her head was tilted slightly, as it used to be when she was listening to something preposterous, her smooth dark hair falling over her brow. In another moment, she would speak, saying something equally preposterous, and they’d both burst into laughter.

  He had chosen this particular photograph of Jennifer to keep beside him, and blot out the memory of a face almost unrecognisable, cruelly smashed by a bullet in the side of the head. A late September afternoon, a small quiet street in Washington. A boy speeding on roller-skates. Jennifer walking far ahead. The boy—fifteen perhaps, one of the two witnesses said, maybe sixteen; thin and tall, all arms and legs—steadying himself with his two skates drawn parallel as he drew near Jennifer. “All too quick,” the nearer of the witnesses had said. “Only saw dark blue clothes and the hair. I thought he was going to veer around her, scare her, they do that, you know. I didn’t even see a gun until I heard the blast.” One shot, and the skater was flying on his way, down to the corner where the busier street began. And was lost. And never found.

  Colin Grant touched the photograph. “You’re curing me,” he told it. He could now, objectively, almost coldly, let himself recall the witnesses’ accounts. The wound was healing, although the scar was permanent. Then he began dressing. He’d arrive at the Schofeld Gallery ahead of time, even if he walked the six blocks, choosing the shaded side of the street, from here to Madison Avenue. What else was there to do? Besides, Schofeld’s had air-conditioning.

  As he waited for the elevator, he suddenly remembered, looked back quickly at his front door. The paper bag was gone. Now, who the hell—? The service man had been off duty since noon; the front elevator was automatic; the tenants opposite were away for the summer; the people next door had jobs that kept them absent until six o’clock. Ronnie—surely not. Yet who else? She’s telling me something, he thought angrily. She’s wiping out all reminders of a temper tantrum, and let’s forget today: it didn’t happen. My God, did that woman never get the message?

  * * *

  In spite of weather and late-afternoon traffic, he covered the six blocks in six minutes flat. His anger had receded. But he was still unaware of the thin middle-aged man, waiting near his apartment house, who had been hard pressed in keeping up with Grant’s stride. The stranger watched him disappear into Schofeld’s, made sure he stayed there, and then used the telephone in the bar-and-grill on the opposite side of Madison.

  “He’s there.”

  “Good,” said a woman’s voice, clear and decided. “Keep an eye on the place till five thirty. If he doesn’t leave by then, you can take off.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  An easy assignment, thought the thin man; it made little sense to him. Few of them did. Why waste money in making certain she’d find her quarry where she expected him to be? There could be no other explanation; and his agency would know nothing beyond his instructions and a good fee. He ordered a beer, took a table at the window, looked out at the street, and kept an eye on both his watch and Schofeld’s. Long ago he had given up speculating about women and their motives: one tenth on the surface, nine tenths below. He’d like to see this one, though. The cool decided voice had been concise in giving him ’phoned instructions that morning. She knew what she wanted, that girl.

  By five thirty, the trickle of individual arrivals at Schofeld’s had thickened to people in batches. He scanned the latest group converging from their taxis: two portly gentlemen and one tall young man with long waved locks; three women—separate: one old; one around thirty; one early twenties, in gypsy-style dress. He placed his bet on Ms. Thirty, chic as all-get-out. It was the turban she wore, all wrapped around her head: couldn’t tell what her hair was like, or who she’d be without it concealed. Yes, she was his choice for a cool, determined voice.

  Five thirty and two minutes over. Time to knock off. The thin man rose and paid, and vanished from the scene.

  2

  The Schofeld Gallery stretched far beyond what it seemed from the street. From a single shop-front, fifty years ago, it had expanded—once the Depression and the War were over—to double windows, a solitary picture displayed in each of them against a background of grey velvet. The tone was set before anyone ventured beyond the door: restraint, taste, privacy, and great expense.

  Inside was a further study in greys, from silver carpeting to pale oyster walls, a combination that was carried up the wide staircase to each of the three floors above. “The pictures give the colour,” Maurice Schofeld had said. And modern technology had given excellent lighting and elaborate alarms against fire and burglary. He was a cautious Swiss, highly intelligent in art and skilful in business, and not entirely convinced that the machine age was perfect. So there were guards, one to every floor, trying to look merely part of the background. Today, Colin Grant noted, there were two additional guards inside the entrance. They, at least, seemed as cool as the air-conditioning. Everyone else was at boiling-point.

  “Why the frenzy?” he asked Max Seldov, sombre in dark suit and tie, who managed the Gallery along with Martin Carfield. Schofeld himself, pushing eighty, now made only occasional appearances, although his pronouncements still came loud and clear from his hotel suite. Like Jove on Mount Olympus hurling his thunderbolts. “The pictures were all in place two days ago, the lighting was arranged yesterday, and—”

  “That’s what we were worried about.” Seldov looked up the staircase at the second floor where the exhibition had been installed. “Martin thought that the Dalis should have more general lighting.”

  “When I saw them in Venice, they were exhibited in the Doge’s Palace—down in the cellars, in a room that was as black as the Night Court itself. Keep the room fairly dark and the lights on the pictures.”

  “Pinpoint them?”

  “How else? They’re meant to scare you.”

  “A bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “So is Dante’s Inferno.”

  Seldov was hurrying off, bound for the second floor and some last-moment agonising. He’d probably leave the lights the way Carfield had changed them. And where was Martin Carfield, smooth of face and manners? There he was, instructing the waiters on the subjects of drinks. (“Keep it down to one apiece, we don’t want champagne sloshed all over the carpet.”) Next, telling Miss Haskins to leave those flowers where they were, and why weren’t they white roses as ordered? After that, fussing over the invitation list with the girl (the prettiest one, naturally, with the sincere smile all primed to welcome) whom he was installing at the entrance-desk with two polite young men from the junior staff to make sure invitation cards were produced and collected. I’m the only
man in the room, thought Grant, who isn’t in dark suit, dark tie. What the hell am I doing here, anyway? He edged away, but not quite in time. Or perhaps Carfield had had him in his sights all along.

  “Colin! Good to see you. Glad you decided to come. What do you think of it all?”

  “Very impressive.” If it weren’t for the pictures in this lower gallery, Raeburn with his pink-cheeked girls, Turner with the Thames on fire, some lesser English School landscapes with billows of green elms and summer skies, the place would look like a funeral parlour.

  Carfield paid a long moment’s attention to Grant’s light grey summer-weight suit, then eyed the pale blue shirt and dark red tie. “There will be a lot of the media here. The Times and the Post, a couple of magazines. TV reporters too—some girl for the eleven o’clock news. I think you should handle them.”

  “They’ll need more than one drink apiece.”

  Carfield didn’t seem to hear that. “We’ll let Seldov deal with the old ladies. I’ll be with Mr. Schofeld.”

  “Of course,” Grant murmured. Carfield looked at him sharply. “When is he due?”

  “At six. You’ll stay until the end?”

  That’s an order, thought Grant. He smiled, hid a sudden attack of depression, and repeated, “Of course.”

  Carfield nodded his approval, and even extended some of it to the light grey suit. It was of excellent worsted material and well cut. Probably belonged to Grant’s more affluent days in Washington. “Could be worse,” he observed, and looked round at the progress of his preparations. “But where’s Seldov?”

  “Upstairs. Judging the lights.”

  “In the Dali room?” Carfield’s voice rose slightly. “I want them left exactly as we decided this morning.” He was already half-way to the staircase.

  At least, thought Grant, we’ll all have some peace down here for the next ten minutes or so. He walked over to the small group of staff members, gathered together in the frozen huddle of waiting. “Who’s for tennis?” he asked, and raised a smile from four of them, polite disapproval from two. (Future Carfields?) That was the trouble around here: everyone so damned polite, all customer-trained. Didn’t anyone look at the far end of the gallery and see a Rembrandt, a possible Velazquez, a definite Rubens on the wall outside Maurice Schofeld’s most private office, and feel something beyond a price tag and an impressive name? Now come on, he told himself: some of them must, or why spend their lives here? Never underestimate a man because he dresses like an undertaker.

  He felt the pull to the Velazquez, unauthenticated or not, and drifted towards the end wall for the rest of the waiting time.

  * * *

  There was a scattering of prompt arrivals, a slight clotting of the stream by half-past five. These were the wise ones, able to examine the Dali drawings before the explosion of visitors made viewing impossible. To be seen, however, was perhaps as important as to see. Most of them followed the guard’s directions and trooped upstairs. But there were always some who would decide they’d do that when they were good and ready, fortified by a glass of champagne which was to be served on the ground floor. One of Carfield’s useless precautions to keep the Dali room unsloshed, thought Grant as he waited glassless (staff rules) for a member of the media to materialise at his elbow with Miss Haskins. Rather than scan the passing strangers like one of the private detectives who were wandering around, he concentrated on the Turner, a partially finished work—a study for a larger canvas—and tantalising in its unfulfilled dream. Several guests drifted past him. One stopped.

  He glanced sideways and saw a woman, beautiful enough to change his glance into a stare. Something stirred in a deep memory, couldn’t come to the surface. Perhaps this was just the typical face, with high cheekbones and clearly outlined chin, that he had seen a hundred times on the covers of fashion magazines. If he could only glimpse her hair, he might place her, but her head was entirely covered by a grey-green turban, neat, not bulky, more like, an inspiration from the Great Gatsby’s twenties than anything from India. Amber earrings emphasised the strange colour of her eyes, almost a golden brown. Her lips smiled. Softly she said as she turned back to admire the painting, “You don’t remember me, Mr. Grant?” Softly, and yet with a precise clarity, nothing slurred or flattened.

  The voice was the key. Quickly his private computer recalled the facts: Arizona—spring of 1974—visit to Victor Basset, multi-millionaire—fabulous art collection—lunch on a terrace—a girl with golden hair, a face and figure to match its splendour, large round sunglasses leaving eyes an enigma—girl? Woman, rather, no more than thirty, indispensable apparently, quite efficient, obviously trusted by Basset to keep his correspondence and guests in good order. Trust old man Basset in turn, all six hundred million dollars’ worth of him, to make sure his superior secretary had beauty as well as brains. Westerbrook, Lois Westerbrook, that was the name. That was her voice. So he could say, about to shake hands, “Miss Wester—”

  “No! Not that. We don’t know each other.” She was pointing at the Turner picture, seemingly absorbed by its flaring colours. His hand, half-raised, dropped back to his side. He felt awkward and stiff, and more than annoyed. “I’m here in New York as Jane Smith.”

  “That’s original.”

  “On business for—well, you know for whom I am talking. Let’s not mention his name. And keep our voices well down. You’ll show me some pictures and we’ll seem to be discussing them.”

  “Why?” he asked bluntly.

  “Stop looking at me. Look at the Turner. Please,” she added, glancing briefly at him with such an enchanting smile that her commands seemed more like pleading. “We didn’t want anyone to know we were contacting you, so I couldn’t be sent to your apartment. What I have to tell you couldn’t be said over a telephone. It’s too long, too involved. Too private. Could you meet me later tonight—my hotel? We can have supper in my room.”

  “Aren’t you nervous about anyone knowing I am contacting you?” he asked lightly.

  “You don’t have to advertise your visit.” She left that where it fell. More gently. “Time for you to move us towards the Constables and show me what to admire in them. Please.” Again, that appeal in her smile.

  “I don’t get it—” he began, as they left the Turner for greener pastures.

  She said, for anyone to hear, “Now, this isn’t by Constable, is it?” She stopped before an eighteenth-century bucolic scene. Her voice dropped once more. “I’ll give you my hotel and room number, if you are interested. It’s about a job—an assignment that our friend in Arizona thinks you could carry out for him. With discretion and good judgment. That’s what he needs. Also with a knowledge of art. Two weeks in Vienna, expenses paid, first-class all the way, and a fee of five thousand dollars.” She walked on to the next picture on view. “Interested?”

  He recovered himself and followed her. “Just what is this assignment?”

  “It’s completely legal.”

  He wasn’t questioning Basset’s integrity. “Five thousand is a hell of a lot of money.”

  “To him? You’d charge a stiff fee anyway, wouldn’t you? As I said, he needs someone with judgment. And discretion. It’s a business deal that has got to be kept quiet meanwhile. Meanwhile,” she repeated.

  As he stood in silence beside her, she added, “It’s your turn to do some talking.” She laughed as though they had been exchanging a small joke.

  “When does he want me to leave?”

  “At the end of this month. Could you manage that?”

  He nodded. The Gallery closed for the summer vacation in mid-July. He was free until after Labour Day. But he still couldn’t quite believe this conversation.

  She sensed his doubts. “If you come to see me tonight, we can really talk and you can ask a hundred questions.”

  “If I don’t turn up?”

  “I’ll have to make contact with the next art expert on our list. You were the first on it. Our friend’s own choice. Flattered? You should be.”
>
  Yes, he was flattered. “Astonished, too. I didn’t even get to first base with him.” Grant’s visit to Arizona, pleasant as it was, had been a failure in the art of persuasion. Victor Basset’s enormous and first-rate collection of pictures was not for exhibition, kept safely in storage. (Where was storage space for a collection as large as that? The ranch near Prescott was not big enough to house any except a few of Basset’s own special favourites.)

  “Oh, he agreed with your ideas more than you think. Do you know Basset Hill?”

  It was one of the millionaire’s houses, only fifteen miles outside Washington, a vast mansion in spreading grounds, seldom used since Basset had settled in Arizona for his health. “I’ve seen it.” Who hadn’t, if they had been driving around the Virginia border? “From the outside.” Like everyone else. Even abandoned, except for an army of caretakers, it was an impossible place.

  “You should see it from the inside now. All redecorated, reshaped where necessary, heating and humidity just at the right setting for the preservation of pictures.”

  “He’s taking them out of storage?” Grant was startled, unbelieving.

  “And not for himself.”

  “For whom?” he asked quickly.

  “For the public.”

  He couldn’t believe it. “When I met him three years ago he wouldn’t even consider—”