The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “Whatever is preferable to you,” said Willi.

  Earnshaw fell in beside Schlager, following the other two into the Chinese Embassy. They went into a small hall, one wall made of marble, the other plastic-covered, where a Frenchman was filling out a form at the reception desk. Liang rattled off something in Chinese to the female receptionist, and quickly reached for the telephone.

  Liang Ted them toward an elevator. Beyond, Earnshaw could make out a narrow staircase, the steps carpeted in maroon-colored grass cloth.

  They crowded into the cramped elevator and were carried up to the first floor, Liang apologizing profusely to Willi for the discomfort of the elevator. Spilling out of the elevator, they were in a constricted gray corridor decorated with modern light fixtures.

  Liang leaped ahead. “First room,” he called back. Excusing himself, he opened the door and preceded them inside.

  The room was low-ceilinged, spacious, bright, cheerful, despite the thick cerise drapes and dark carpeting. In the middle of the room a dozen men, Chinese and German, several of the latter in shirt-sleeves, were gathered around a large rectangular table upon which had been built a toy city including futuristic models of industrial plants. A placard attached at one side of the table read in Chinese, in German, in English: NUCLEAR PEACE CITY—LANKAO, HONAN PROVINCE—MODEL DESIGNED BY GOERLITZ INDUSTRIEBAU, FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN—SCALE: 1 CENTIMETER EQUALS 20 METERS.

  From the moment of their entrance every occupant of the room except one had frozen into a posture of respectful attention. The one exception had turned to regard them with lazy curiosity, and then, stubbing out the cigarette he held in his left hand, he had started toward them.

  This, Earnshaw suspected, was the redoubtable Marshal Chen, the Vice-Chairman and youngest member of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. He looked more formidable than his height, which Earnshaw guessed to be five feet eight or nine. His wiry black hair was combed straight back. His rigid, unsmiling visage was handsome except for a walleye and definitely reflected his Mongolian origin. His body was slender and athletic. Alone among the Chinese in the workroom, he did not affect Western dress. To Earnshaw his attire was unusual yet not unfamiliar. It was neither civilian suit nor uniform. It consisted of a loose gray tunic with a soft high collar and baggy trousers of the same color and material, and glossy brown military boots. And then Earnshaw remembered where he had seen a similar outfit, long ago. It was the one that Mao Tse-tung had always worn.

  Liang had jumped ahead to intercept the man in the gray tunic, whispering to him, as he brought him forward.

  Now Liang pivoted to address them. “Gentlemen, I have the pleasure of introducing you to Marshal Chen… Marshal, this is Mr. Willi von Goerlitz, the son of Dr. Dietrich von Goerlitz, who is for the present the head of the firm.”

  Marshal Chen nodded solemnly. “I am pleased to meet you. I offer you my country’s sympathies.”

  “And Herr Direktor Schlager, whom you have met before,” Liang continued.

  “Yes, of course, Herr Direktor” said Marshal Chen. “This is a day we have long awaited.”

  “And, Marshal,” Liang went on hastily, “I would like to present the Honorable Emmett A. Earnshaw. Mr. Earnshaw formerly served as—”

  “I know how Mr. Earnshaw formerly served,” said Marshal Chen sharply to Liang. He faced Earnshaw. “A pleasant surprise. Mr. Earnshaw. How do you do?”

  Nervously, Liang intervened. “We owe the unexpected pleasure of former President Earnshaw’s presence to Mr. von Goerlitz, who wished to have a friend of his father’s beside him during our final talks and the signing.”

  Only half of Marshal Chen’s walleyed gaze remained fixed on Earnshaw. “Understandable,” he said slowly. “Again, it is our pleasure to have you in our Embassy to witness the signing. I fear you will find little else to occupy you. Certainly, there is no more to talk about.”

  Marshal Chen turned toward Willi. “I am happy to say, Mr. von Goerlitz, that your legal representatives and our own are in full agreement on the several minor changes and deletions we have suggested. These pages are now being typed and will be prepared for our signatures in fifteen minutes.” He gestured over his shoulder. “I had not seen the entire model assembled before. Most impressive. In two years. I trust, we will meet in my country to see it a reality.”

  Willi swallowed. “It can—can be a reality, if we both work together to—to fulfill the contract.”

  Schlager had a fit of coughing, and once having controlled it, he hustled forward. “Marshal Chen, have our experts explained to you all of the innovations in the complex?”

  “I believe so. I have no ear for scientific jargon. But since our Dr. Ho Ta-peng approves, I am satisfied.”

  “It will be a wonder,” said Schlager with a salesman’s heartiness. “If you can spare me five minutes, I should enjoy clarifying several of the operations.”

  “Five minutes,” agreed Marshal Chen with a curt nod. “After that, I should think we can sit down to conclude our agreement.”

  They started for the model of the Nuclear Peace City, with Liang, Willi, and Earnshaw trailing behind them. The Chinese and Germans at the table parted, greeting them with deference. Marshal Chen indicated a paunchy, rumpled hunchback, a bemused Chinese with an ageless countenance, as the notable Dr. Ho Ta-peng. Next, Marshal Chen introduced a plump, beaming little man as Mr. Ma Ming, of the official Hsinhua news agency, who would prepare the official press release of the deal at an appropriate time. After the introductions, Marshal Chen gestured for Schlager to take over.

  Picking up a rubber-tipped pointer, Schlager, his enthusiastic drummer’s voice booming, swept his wand over what resembled a wealthy child’s miniature play city.

  “Our village for the workers and technicians and scientists is the most advanced yet most economically constructed prefabricated community on earth,” Schlager announced. “It exceeds, in every respect, the prefabricated towns our competitor Krupp developed in Tunisia and India. It is an improvement even on the atomic-powered town of Farsta, in Sweden, which cheaply produces electricity and pumps its water supply for 35,000 citizens by means of a nuclear power station. But your Lankaoville, as we have been calling it, will be provided with electricity from the nuclear power plant for next to nothing, so that your Chinese workmen and our own specialists will live here with their families amid the highest standards and at a minimum cost.”

  Earnshaw watched with fascination as Schlager’s pointer lifted the tiny roof off a miniature model house.

  “This is the typical residence for your average worker and his family,” Schlager continued. “The Goerlitz-Fertighaus Number 225-B. Consider it. Living room, dining room, Küche—that is, kitchen—two bedrooms, one for Eltern, the other for Kinder—five beautiful rooms and a work shed, all taking up no more than 120 square meters of ground. Each of these houses preconstructed in Frankfurt, erected overnight in Honan Province, and not one costing your Government more than 8,000 yuan Chinese or 16,000 marks German or 4,000 dollars American. A bargain?”

  Marshal Chen grunted. “A temptation to the luxury-minded and softheaded who might think of themselves as capitalists.”

  There was some tittering around the table, but Schlager seemed to ignore it, as he answered seriously, “But you must have the best for the best products of your technical schools.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Marshal Chen. “Go on, please.”

  Schlager moved along the table. His pointer tapped a larger miniature building that, to Earnshaw’s eyes, bore some resemblance in design to an elongated armory.

  “Here,” said Schlager, preening, “the most remarkable steel plant on earth. Here are the oxygen furnaces that replace the old open-hearth technique, and here are the most advanced hot-strip mills. And our continuous casting operation is entirely computer-controlled. The production capacity will be two million tons of steel a year, at a cost of half that in a conventionally powered steel mill. I remind you, Marshal, there are only three nuclear-pow
ered steel factories on earth, and this is the fourth and by far the largest. I am sure you understand the operation. Rapidly produced, inexpensively produced finished steel for China’s 850 million. Our Goerlitz metallurgists, many owing their training to Professor Ivan Bardin, who first conceived this Leap Forward, will efficiently and expertly oversee your plant.”

  “Very good,” said Marshal Chen.

  Schlager had gone to the end of the table and was lovingly admiring a group of minute buildings encircling an oversized sphere. His pointer touched the ball-like structure.

  “The heart of the entire complex,” announced Schlager theatrically. “The huge containment sphere that harbors the nuclear reactor vessel. Centering about it are the atomic furnace, the neutron shield, the coolant tank, the heavy water, the control devices and so forth. Within this cylinder, uranium conversion provides the nuclear energy for the city, for the steel plant, and above all gives China its radioactive byproducts. There is almost no limit to what this nuclear reactor, and others you will add later, can provide. As byproducts, you will have radioactive isotopes of chemical elements for your medical laboratories. You will use them to make drugs and fertilizers and genetically altered agricultural foods and plastics, all these marvels at practically no cost. Once this Goerlitz reactor and the others are operational, China’s standard of living will drastically improve.” He paused, out of breath, and looked at Marshal Chen. “I hope that I have clarified—”

  “You have,” Marshal Chen interrupted. “Most impressive, as we have known for a year. Now it is time to execute the documents that will make this miniature our servant.” He beckoned to Willi von Goerlitz, to Liang, and finally to Earnshaw. “Follow me.”

  As they went into the corridor, Earnshaw once more tried to understand why Schlager had gone to all this trouble to sell the miracles of the Nuclear Peace City when he knew that it had already been bought and when he secretly knew that it could not be sold as had originally been agreed. At first, to Earnshaw, Schlager’s propaganda had seemed irrational, for it made Willi’s immediate task and his own more embarrassing and difficult.

  But as they all filed into another corridor, Earnshaw had a glimmer of understanding. Schlager was not feebleminded. In the world of international cartels, his shrewdness was legend. And now Earnshaw began to perceive his strategy. With his pitchman’s spiel, Schlager had sought to dramatize through his exhibit how necessary this project was to China. When the truth was out, when the nuclear project was withdrawn, was no longer for sale at the old price, he wanted Marshal Chen’s desire for it so whetted that he would pay any price rather than forego its purchase. Brilliant, Earnshaw admitted to himself, brilliant of Goerlitz to have hired and delegated authority to one so crafty as Schlager, and brilliant of Schlager to have so perfectly maneuvered Marshal Chen before the kill. With a silent prayer, Earnshaw beseeched the Maker to endow him with the gift of brilliance, too, if only for the next half hour.

  They had entered a conference room of modest dimensions. Along the wall inside the entry door sat the German male stenotypist, his machine perched on his knees, and beside him the senior Goerlitz attorney, Walther Jaspers, an attaché case at his feet, and then two Chinese with contracts on their laps, the pair presumably the legal representatives of the People’s Republic of China.

  On an end wall, in solitary splendor, hung a carved frame holding a patriarchal photograph of Premier Kuo Shu-tung. Across the way were shuttered windows, with two benches upholstered in a beige material beneath the windowsill. On the remaining short wall were three gilded frames containing collages of graceful Chinese designs made up of bird feathers and synthetic grass.

  “You may be seated here, gentlemen,” Marshal Chen announced.

  He stood in the center of the room, behind a magnificent long table with a glistening rich black-lacquered top adorned by a bowl of goldfish and a variety of ashtrays. The effect of the table, somewhat lower than the ordinary conference table, was to invite sociability rather than business conversation. There were five straight teakwood chairs on either side of the table. Marshal Chen directed the Germans and Earnshaw to the chairs on one side, and he himself took the middle chair opposite, between Economics Minister Liang and Dr. Ho Ta-peng, with the cherubic journalist, Ma Ming, sitting next to the physicist.

  Earnshaw saw that Willi had taken the chair directly across from Marshal Chen, and was gesturing for Earnshaw to occupy the seat at his right, while Schlager was already at Willi’s left.

  The atmosphere of formal sociability continued. A young Chinese male retainer, with extremely slanted eyes, dressed in white quilted jacket and black trousers, was carrying a tray holding a steaming pot of aromatic tea and pink-and-white cups without handles. He glided around the table, serving. At once, he was followed by another menial offering cigarettes from a red-lacquered metal box.

  Although desperate for one of his own cigars, Earnshaw, conscious of his host’s eyes upon him, accepted a Chinese cigarette. When the box reached Willi, he, too, took a cigarette, and then he pointed to the gold engraving on the red box. ‘The old Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City, is it not?” inquired Willi of Marshal Chen.

  The Chinese Vice-Chairman stared at Willi, impressed. “You are correct. Except the Imperial Palace was in the Forbidden City. Peking no longer has forbidden areas for anyone who is a friend. The Palace and our capital are open for all who come to us in peace.”

  After that, Marshal Chen lapsed into silence, sipping his tea, watching the goldfish, listening as Liang cheerfully discussed the sights and inhabitants of Paris with Willi and Schlager. Ten minutes of this inconsequential conversation went on, and just as Earnshaw was beginning to wonder how long the polite exchange would continue, he saw the Marshal crook a finger toward his attorneys, who were standing off chatting with Walther Jaspers.

  Instantly, the social prelude to the business meeting was ended. A Chinese attorney busily began to distribute copies of the bulky contract for the Nuclear Peace City, one to each of those around the table. From somewhere, Earnshaw realized, note pads and sharpened pencils had materialized on the black-lacquered conference table. And he also noticed that a stand of gold pens had been set before Marshal Chen.

  “I think that we are ready to conclude the business at hand, are we not?” said Marshal Chen. He held up the contract. “Mr. von Goerlitz, your father read and approved the contract in this version the day before his illness. However, he dictated a few minor revisions, and we ourselves suggested a few minor revisions, and orally, we agreed on these. I believe your Mr. Jaspers will confirm what I am saying.”

  Willi and Earnshaw glanced at Jaspers—who had moved to a seat at the end of the table—and he bobbed his head in assent.

  “All that your father personally was not able to approve was the exact language of these last revisions,” Marshal Chen went on. “This morning, Mr. Jaspers and his colleagues studied this language on your behalf and gave their final approval to the completed contract… Is that not so, Mr. Jaspers?”

  “It is,” said Walther Jaspers. He leaned toward Willi. “The contract is as your father wished, Mr. von Goerlitz.”

  Marshal Chen gripped the edge of the table. He addressed himself to Willi. “Unless you wish to review the minor revisions—each such page is marked with a paper clip—then I believe that we can agree every clause is in perfect order. In that case, I would suggest that we are both ready to climax our protracted negotiations by affixing our signatures to the contract. Are you so prepared to proceed, Mr. von Goerlitz?”

  Earnshaw’s gaze was fixed on Willi von Goerlitz’s profile. The ridges of Willi’s jaw muscles were visible. Suddenly, his lips moved. “No,” he said. “I am not prepared to proceed.”

  A flick of surprise touched Marshal Chen’s face, and his walleye seemed to take in the entrance door while the other eye disconcertingly held on Willi. “You are not?… Ah, hun how, I see. You do wish a moment to check the contractual changes?”

  “No,” said Will
i.

  Marshal Chen’s brow wrinkled. “No?” Then, half to himself, he said, “Wor bu ming ba?”

  “The Vice-Chairman says he does not understand,” Liang interpreted quickly.

  “I cannot sign this contract for Goerlitz Industriebau until one clause is entirely removed and a new one added,” said Willi. “Before we go ahead, I should like paragraph A, including subsections I, II, and III, on page eight, eliminated in its entirety.” He paused. “Once this is done, we will submit the new clause to replace it.”

  Across the way, Marshal Chen’s head was bent low, as he leafed through the contract. Beside him, Liang and a Chinese attorney were also turning pages. They found page eight, and they began reading silently.

  Marshal Chen was the first to look up. “I am afraid, Mr. von Goerlitz, you have confused me. I have reread the clause to which you seem to object. It merely states that the Nuclear Peace City you agree to build is specified to be in the area of Lankao, in the Province of Honan, in the People’s Republic of China. Is this the clause to which you refer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But to what can you object? It was the site surveyed and selected by our Government as most suitable for a project of this kind. Your own engineers agreed a year ago that it was suitable and qualified for your construction. Beyond that, our choice of location can be no concern of yours.”

  Willi’s jaw muscles quivered. “I am sorry, sir, but the location must be our primary concern and shall continue to be. The site we mutually agreed upon a year ago was based on mutual trust. However, lately, certain intelligence has reached us that undermines our trust in this transaction, and because of this new information, I feel we must protect the future of our investment by changing the location of the Nuclear Peace City.”

  Marshal Chen’s face offered no more emotion than that on a wax statue. “What are you talking about, Mr. von Goerlitz?”

  “I am speaking of our investment, Marshal Chen. We are a private company financing a more-than-one-billion-mark industrial complex and city for a foreign Government. We have reason to believe that a customer—such as the Government in question—could see fit not to honor this contract, this agreement, in a year or two. We would be helpless, and we would be nearly bankrupt, in that case.”