The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “You mean, that’s all of it? M’dear chap, you’re not having me on—?”

  Doyle’s face twitched beyond control. “I don’t know what you mean. The whole thing is here—”

  Sydney Ormsby’s features had hardened. “My good fellow, if that’s the whole of it, then you’ve brought me to this miserable village under false pretenses. What you have there might be suitable, with sufficient revisions, for a juvenile series we publish called ‘Young People’s Fairy Tales From Many Lands.’ Because that’s all your bloody manuscript amounts to, as it stands, a goddam fairy tale. Your letter promised me a fully documented exposé, and because of your word and reputation, I went to considerable expenditure of both money and time to fly out of my way to see your bloody masterpiece. Instead—well—what is it in fact? A stack of warmed-over, rehashed, twice-told innuendos and deductions about faults in the Warren Commission Report, leading up to the claim that Oswald was not the culprit.”

  “But he wasn’t—he wasn’t!” Doyle cried out. Then aware that he had attracted the attention of other diners, he tried to lower his voice. “Oswald wasn’t guilty. It was an out-and-out Communist conspiracy. You read the first chapter and the outline. I heard the truth firsthand, right here in this city in 1961—and it’s authentic. I heard about the plan to kill Kennedy, and he was killed—”

  Ormsby’s tone was full of shrill contempt. “Your President was assassinated by one man, one psychotic screwball. There is not a shred of proof in your book that anyone else did it or that it was a conspiracy. What you fell for was the silly gossip of some deranged female—”

  Doyle was reduced to beggary. “Mr. Ormsby, listen,” he pleaded, “I swear it’s all fact, it’s—”

  “It’s worthless rot, it’s nothing,” said Ormsby with anger. “If it’s fact, then what is the name of the woman who passed it on to you, and what is the name of her highly placed Russian informant, and what are the names of the conspirators who planned to kill your President? Where is that kind of fact, and where are the affidavits and documentation to back it up?”

  As Ormsby reached for his umbrella cane, Doyle tried desperately to stay him. “But, Mr. Ormsby, can’t you see? I mean, can’t you see it’s possible for me to get what you want, all the names, affidavits, everything that you require? If I just have a contract with a sufficient advance to—to buy me time to get to the right people, to pay them off—that’s all I need. There’s enough in the manuscript to justify a contract and to give me a chance—”

  Sydney Ormsby was on his feet. “M’dear chap, Ormsby Press Enterprises, Limited, is not a charitable institution. We do not dole out guineas and pounds to alchemists to encourage their insane schemes. We are in the business of supporting real authors who write real books, not obsessed fanatics.”

  Listening to him speak, Doyle could see how incredibly unattractive Ormsby was, after all, and who it was in ancient Rome that Ormsby resembled. The twenty-third Emperor of Rome had been Elagabalus, a sadistic, detestable, effeminate fourteen-year-old who used eye shadow, and rouge on his cheeks, and kept a burly male slave beside him for his mate. Definitely Elagabalus, that tiny and dainty painted creature who never wore the same robe twice, that shrill and gaudy hysteric who used his power to murder helpless children and who celebrated by having sycophants served feasts of pheasant eggs, beans covered with pearl dust, tongues of larks, heels of camels, and who, when his time came, was dragged kicking and screaming from his hideout in a latrine, and then butchered and cast into the Tiber.

  Doyle looked up at Ormsby with disbelief that he was Ormsby and not Elagabalus, and that he had not been butchered and cast into the Danube.

  As from a distance, Doyle could hear the shrill Mayfair voice. “I’m sure I need not thank you for the price of the dinner, Doyle, considering what you really owe me for the expense of this wild goose chase and what you owe me for trying to bring you back to your senses. Good night.”

  Alone, at last, Jay Thomas Doyle sat too numbed to think.

  His bursting stomach groaned. Automatically, he sought to soothe it. He ate his Sachertorte. He drank his coffee. He ordered and ate another basket of rolls, another Sachertorte, and he gulped down two more cups of coffee. When he felt ready to faint, he croaked out, “Zahlen, bitte,” and the Ober came at once with the silver platter bearing the bill.

  Glassily, Doyle examined each item, and shuddered at the total of the check. Had he obtained the contract and cash advance from Elagabalus, as he had expected, the bill would have been reasonable enough. Although it would further deplete his budget in any case, it could have been regarded as a successful investment in his immediate future, a future which would have brought him much more money. But in his present condition, with no future except the damn cookbook, this bill represented a serious outlay.

  Doyle coughed, and said to the puzzled headwaiter, “May I see the captain?”

  The headwaiter hesitated. “If there is anything wrong—any mistake, sir—?”

  “Let me see the captain.”

  Uneasily, Doyle waited, wondering if his pose should be offended arrogance or sorrowful wheedling. By the time the worried captain appeared, Doyle had decided upon offended wheedling.

  He held up the bill. “Herr Captain—”

  “Yes, Herr Doyle?”

  “—there seems to have been a slight error, and omission. You—you’ve neglected my twenty per cent discount.”

  “Discount?” The captain had taken the bill but did not look at it. “I do not understand?”

  This was embarrassing, and Doyle found it difficult to go on—but every penny counted now. When a man was down and out, anything—begging, borrowing, stealing from prideful better days—was justified. “I—I only mean, the times I was here before, you gave me a twenty per cent discount automatically. I mean—you understood that my dinners were to your best interests in terms of future promotion, publicity. I’m giving Sacher’s a good deal of space in my cookbook, and the book will be widely circulated. I—”

  He stopped, shamefaced, because he could detect that the captain’s professional respect had been replaced by personal scorn. They were no longer guest and servant, but equals haggling like fishwives in the marketplace. “I could refer this to the management, sir, but I doubt if you would receive an answer other than the one I give. The policy of most first-class restaurants in Austria is to cooperate with those of the visiting press, but only up to a point. You have been our dinner guest twice in a week, and we saw fit to show our appreciation. However, it is usual that on a third visit a guest would expect—”

  Humiliation had colored Doyle’s puffy face, and he sought to retain a last vestige of dignity through invoking justice. “As you wish, Captain,” he said, “but it seemed to me only fair that since I intended to do so much for you, you should continue to be cooperative. The money itself is of no interest to me. It is a matter of principle. However, if you don’t see fit to cooperate, we’ll forget it.”

  The captain had been pretending to study the bill. When his head lifted, his features had resumed their servile politeness, but his tone of voice could not fully conceal his contempt. “Very well, Herr Doyle. We will stretch our policy this one time. Let us compromise. Let us say that the discount shall be ten per cent.”

  With a pencil, the captain adjusted the bill and dropped it on the table. After according Doyle a stiff bow, he departed.

  Doyle, counting out his schilling bank notes, knew that this had been only a shabby victory for his soul. Rising from the table and waddling away, he was oblivious to the fact that there was no one, not even the captain, to wish him good evening. Because for no one had it been a good evening.

  Outdoors, the air, despite a drop in temperature, did not refresh Doyle. It was one of those black nights of the mind and heart when a human being could not see ahead. He walked blindly along Kartnerstrasse, as if in a desolate community divested of all life but his own.

  It surprised him when he had reached the neon brightnes
s of the Hotel Imperial. He had no idea how he had been propelled there. Briefly, he was again conscious of his bodily existence. Physically, his compulsive gluttony had debilitated him, and breathing was difficult, and his stomach and legs ached. Mentally, he was in the lowest depths of despair that he had ever known. His manuscript of the conspiracy and assassination had as much chance of seeing publication as the Book of Jasher or any other of the lost books of the Bible. His hopes for the final solution had vanished, because, considering his financial situation, Moscow was now on Mars. There was nothing left except the cookbook, which would allow him to eat himself to death, but it was an oblivion he now despised because of its slowness.

  He entered the hotel lobby, went to the concierge’s desk, and accepted his room key and the morning’s international edition of the New York Herald Tribune, (He, like most old Paris hands, persisted in calling the newspaper by its former name, loyally refusing to acknowledge the Washington Post in the masthead.)

  Out of habit, and not interested, since the world held no attractions for him, he unfolded the newspaper and automatically scanned the front page, as he crossed the lobby to the elevators. The lead story told him that the ministers of the five powers had arrived in Paris, in advance of their leaders, and were meeting in the Quai d’Orsay to lay out an agenda for Monday’s first Summit conference. Another story told him of preparations at Orly for the arrival of the President of the United States and his staff that afternoon, and of plans for receiving the Prime Minister of Great Britain on Sunday morning, and the Premier of Soviet Russia and the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party on Sunday afternoon. The headlines near the bottom of the page referred to a dock strike in New York, the opening of the fashion shows by the foremost French couturiers in two days, and the arrival of the retired former President of the United States, Emmett A. Earnshaw, in London to receive some honor or other from the British-American Friendship Society.

  It was all as remote and unrelated to Doyle’s life, these people, these events, as if he were reading the Boston Gazette of June 14, 1777.

  Turning the front page and folding it back, he entered the elevator and gave the operator his floor number. As the elevator doors closed and entombed him, Doyle’s gaze fell disinterestedly on the third page of the international edition of the Herald Tribune, and then he blinked, but ceased blinking as his eyes widened with astonishment.

  There, out of the mass of newspaper print, was the long-elusive, familiar female face staring up at him. And then, beneath the face, the bold caption thundering at him:

  HAZEL SMITH, ANA’S STAR CORRESPONDENT, IN PARIS TO COVER SUMMIT.

  ANA has summoned its leading correspondents from around the globe to guarantee readers the fullest coverage of the most momentous international conference in history. Among these is the celebrated Hazel Smith, veteran of ANA’s Moscow Bureau, who arrived in Paris yesterday to give readers close-ups of the colorful personalities surrounding the Summit. Enjoy Hazel Smith’s feature stories daily, beginning with her first one datelined Paris today (see column 8).

  His eyes almost out of their sockets, Doyle’s head jerked, forcing them to the right-hand column. Yes, it was true. There was the by-line, “By Hazel Smith.” There was the dateline, “PARIS, JUNE 14 (ANA).” There was her lead:

  Everyone’s second city, the City of Light, is brighter than ever today because the shining promise of peace on earth is in the air. Shortly after landing at Orly yesterday, I dined lavishly in Maxim’s with several wives of Russian delegates, whom I had known in Moscow. They were unanimous in their belief that Premier Alexander Talansky and the entire USSR delegation are determined to cast their lot with the West in the conviction that this will guarantee nuclear disarmament and future peace. Ever since Communist China tested its first neutron bomb and displayed its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the Russians have leaned West, knowing that the New China could not go it alone and would have to submit to joining a peaceful community of nations in disarmament. And so the Russian wives were celebrating, and in Maxim’s, their talk was not of politics but of feminine fashion and haute couture and the designs of Yves St. Laurent, Marc Bohan, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and Legrande, who will have their collections shown concurrently with the opening of the Summit Conference. Also—

  Doyle felt a hand touch his arm, and he looked up, startled.

  It was the elevator boy saying, “Your floor, sir.”

  Doyle realized that the elevator doors had been open some time at his floor. Dazed, he once more peered down at the newspaper in his hand, at the insert cut of Hazel Smith (solemn, and suddenly beautiful), at her by-line (friendly as an RSVP).

  His mind, so deadened by the evening’s defeat, had leaped back to life, reeling and dancing with excitement.

  Hazel Smith in Paris! For the first time in all these years, Hazel Smith within his reach!

  In the wink of a second, his hopes, his dreams of glory, were restored. Suddenly, everything, anything, was possible.

  “Take me down to the lobby,” he ordered the elevator boy.

  “The lobby?”

  “Fast!”

  The frightened operator whirled to punch his buttons, and metal doors closed, and the elevator began its descent. As it dropped, Doyle’s spirits soared as if freed of ballast. Good God. Praise God, he thought, he would be saved yet. He needed no cash advances. He needed no Moscow. He needed no one, he needed nothing, except Hazel, and she had emerged from hiding, she was at hand, almost underfoot. He need not appeal to her purse, only to her heart. All women had hearts, and all women’s hearts were frail and forgiving. He would be attractive for her. He would diet, crash-diet, lose twenty pounds in a week. He would be young and attentive again. He would love her. He did love her; he loved her more these moments than he had ever loved anyone in his life.

  “The lobby, sir,” the boy was saying.

  Jay Thomas Doyle crumpled his newspaper under his arm and rushed across the red carpet to the concierge, who was waiting for him. Tugging his money clasp out of his pocket,

  Doyle peeled off three 100-schilling notes and shoved them into the bewildered concierge’s hand.

  “For you,” Doyle said. “Now here’s what I want you to do for me. Get me on the first jet plane leaving for Paris tonight—tonight, you understand? I’ve got to be at a Paris conference by morning.”

  “You mean the Summit, Herr Doyle?”

  “In a way, yes, I suppose you could call it that,” said Doyle. I’ll be upstairs packing. Do your best.”

  Then humming and wheezing happily, swinging his leather portfolio, Jay Doyle headed back to the elevator to prepare for his Summit.

  AS HIS AUDIENCE APPLAUDED his last remarks, former President of the United States Emmett A. Earnshaw paused, smiled warmly, and reached for the tumbler of water set on the lectern beside him. Taking a swallow of water to ease his hoarse throat, Earnshaw stood nodding his acknowledgment on the dais of the Dorchester Hotel ballroom in London, enjoying almost the first public appreciation he had received in many months.

  Rocking slightly on his heels, Earnshaw did not want to interrupt the clapping hands. It was wonderful to be approved of, and wanted by someone somewhere. Clearly, even after three years out of the White House, he was still honored here, by a civilized and good people who dwelt an ocean away from his home. Warmly conscious of the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack draped behind him, the row of dignitaries that included his sponsors, Sir Austin Ormsby and Lord Eric Blenkinsop, seated behind him, and happily conscious of the long tables crowded with 400 members of the British-American Friendship Society stretching before him, ex-President Earnshaw’s self-esteem was briefly restored.

  The applause was waning. He decided that he’d better not spoil a good thing by excessive oratory. Earlier in the day, in Buckingham Palace, Great Britain’s reigning monarch had bestowed upon him the K.B.E., which made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. This evening, the award ceremony had been celebrate
d. And now, for twenty-five minutes in his homey, unpretentious style (which spiteful political detractors had called “his circumlo-quacious style”), he had reminisced about his cordial relations with British Prime Ministers, whether Labor or Conservative, about the rich heritage the United States had received from its Motherland, about the necessity for the two nations to continue to stand as one, as models of democracy, free enterprise, civilization for those nations who must soon be brought into the Free World.

  All of this had been spoken, unrehearsed, from a single page of notes. This lack of a prepared text was one of Earnshaw’s few conceits. He liked to think that he refused to write out his speeches because prepared texts made words stilted, devoid of the human touch, as if echoing the clatter of a typewriter instead of the beat of a heart. He refused to admit that he disliked prepared speeches because he disliked the strain of organizing his thoughts and the struggle to phrase those thoughts creatively, which speech-writing entailed.

  He glanced at his cryptic notes through the tortoiseshell spectacles now low on the bridge of his nose, made up his mind to skip the next suggested headings and instead go directly to the conclusion. Removing his spectacles, folding them into the breast pocket of his dinner jacket, he surveyed the hushed Dorchester ballroom.

  “My good friends,” he resumed, his native Western accent softened by his years in the Eastern states and by the mellowness of sixty-six years, “my very good friends and hosts, let me say that your kindness, your hospitality, as well as the Order of the British Empire and the honorary title which your Monarch has seen fit to bestow upon me, and which your Foreign Secretary, Sir Austin Ormsby, has spoken of this evening, have all made this night a memorable one for a public servant now in the autumn of his career. I cannot thank you enough. I mean it. At home, I have often spoken of the ideal of good old-fashioned Americanism. Here, in London, I am sure that you understand I meant nothing chauvinistic or provincial by such remarks. By Americanism, I meant morality and decency in the way men treat one another, and I’ve always known this Great Tree of Freedom had its first kernel and roots in English soil. Tonight, we are met here on the eve of a momentous five-power meeting, a meeting at which the foremost powers of the world are meeting—are gathered to—uh—to meet—in the Palais Rose of Paris. Your Minister leaves for that crucial Summit tonight. Our President is already there. They represent our belief in the possible future still to be shaped. That future? What is it? You know, we once had a Secretary of State named John Foster Dulles. Yes. And—uh—when I was President, my right-hand aide and assistant, Mr. Simon Madlock, God bless memory, was an admirer of Dulles as was I. And how often Madlock used to quote to me the words from Dulles’ last public paper, and these are the words I quote to you tonight: ‘I was brought up in the belief that this nation of ours was not merely a self-serving society but founded with mission to help build a world where liberty and justice could prevail.’”