The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  Feeling unkempt and rumpled and out of place amid this elegance, Brennan paced restlessly in the Italian loggia under the stony stares of the busts of classical composers and the suspicious surveillance of the ticket takers. From the theater inside, he could hear the strains of music accompanying the ballet, Giselle, and it made him feel uneasy to be breaking in on Earnshaw like this, especially if his errand should prove to be a waste of everyone’s time.

  Yet, when he saw Earnshaw, so dignified in his formal attire, descending the white marble staircase and coming worriedly toward him, Brennan felt relieved and reassured as to his purpose. At once, Earnshaw dismissed Brennan’s apologies, even thanked Brennan for an interval of escape since he neither understood nor appreciated the ballet.

  Brennan handed over the cartridge of tape, which Earnshaw promised to pass on to Sir Austin. Then quickly, but cryptically, as he had done with Doyle, Brennan explained the imperative necessity of a conference tonight. Not hiding his curiosity, Earnshaw promised to appear at La Calavados by one o’clock.

  Returning to his car, Brennan was satisfied that now they were three. Doyle, Earnshaw, himself. One more was needed. He hoped that he would find Medora Hart at the Crazy Horse Saloon, and prayed that she would be well enough to attend his meeting.

  After turning his car back to the attendant in the Garage Berri, Brennan crossed the Champs-Élysées and walked to the Crazy Horse Saloon in the Avenue George-V. He entered through the tunnel and descended into the overcrowded, darkened cabaret—decorated to suggest a saloon in America’s old Wild West—where he slipped the captain fifteen francs.

  Immediately, Brennan was assigned a shirt-sleeved waiter as his guide. In the blackness, with only the brightly lit stage and the beam of the waiter’s miniature flashlight to guide him, Brennan squeezed down among the jammed tables. On the stage a tawny nude German girl, wearing nothing but a G-string, was rising from her couch and beginning a languid and titillating striptease in reverse. She was rolling the first sheer black stocking up her fleshy thigh when Brennan bumped into the motionless waiter and realized they had arrived at Willi von Goerlitz’s table.

  In an undertone he greeted Willi and Carol, and bending low, he made his way to Medora and crouched beside her. He had, he said, already given the copy of the tape recording to Earnshaw, who had promised to present it to Sir Austin Ormsby in the morning. But right now, he whispered, he needed Medora’s assistance on another matter. Flushed by a feeling of celebration, she was agreeable to anything. Brennan explained the meeting that he had called, reeling off the participants, the time, the place. “You know I’d do anything for you,” Medora whispered back to Brennan, and she planted a soft kiss on his forehead.

  Outside again, Brennan found there remained forty minutes before they were to meet. He was impatient, but he was also hungry. He strolled back to the Champs-Élysées. The waiters at Fouquet’s were beginning to put chairs up on the tables, but Brennan caught the eye of one waiter whom he had known for years. He ordered a cheese sandwich and tea, and the waiter hurried inside as Brennan sat at a table several rows behind those occupied by the evening’s last customers.

  A grizzled Algerian came hawking the next morning’s Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, and Brennan bought a copy. Nervously, he scanned each page for an item about the accident in the Rue de Ponthieu. There was no reference to the death in any column. Brennan tossed the paper aside, realizing that a routine traffic fatality involving one who was apparently an unknown vagrant was hardly news for an expatriate American newspaper. He felt safer, although he suspected that tomorrow’s French press would carry some kind of story. But for tonight, the KGB agent’s death was a secret belonging only to Lisa and Brennan, at least until one o’clock.

  Thinking of the notes in his pocket, Brennan ate his sandwich without relish, finished his tea absently, and glanced at his wristwatch once more. He found his check under the sugar bowl, paid it, and hastened up the Avenue George-V toward the intersection which would bring him to La Calavados and his fellow delegates.

  They were already gathered together at the farthest and most isolated table along the wall, ordering drinks, when Brennan arrived. From inside the doorway, from the bar to his right, from the full distance of the long, narrow, oblong café-restaurant, Brennan studied them.

  There were three—Jay Doyle, in a wrinkled gray business suit, loosening his belt as usual; Emmett Earnshaw, in a white tie and tails, unwrapping a cigar; Medora Hart, in a low-cut clinging cocktail gown, smoothing her coiffured hair with one hand, as she read from the drink list held in the other. There they were, his allies. Tonight, he desperately needed their reassurance, as well as their pledge of assistance (should he need their help in the hours ahead). And tomorrow, perhaps, many, many more than he would need them, need them and himself.

  He started forward. Except for a half-dozen late customers at the bar, and two tables occupied by other latecomers—one group being serenaded softly by the three Spanish guitarists—Brennan and his fellow delegates would have La Calavados to themselves.

  Doyle struggled to his feet to shake Brennan’s hand, eager to begin. Earnshaw was no less eager. Medora, still flushed, was only confused and desirous of pleasing.

  “What’ll you have, Matt?” Doyle wanted to know. “Medora’s having some Spanish sherry, Emmett’s having a cognac. I’ve ordered Grand Marnier.”

  “Cinzano,” said Brennan. He sat down in the empty chair beside Doyle, and across from Earnshaw and Medora, who were against the wall. He glanced around him. “Not exactly the Palais Rose, but more comfortable.”

  “I spoke to the proprietor,” said Doyle. “Nobody’ll disturb us.”

  Brennan nodded. “I’m grateful you could all make it. What I have to say, I think, affects not only me but every one of us.”

  “When do we begin?” asked Doyle.

  “Now,” said Brennan.

  “You’ve got the gavel, Matt,” said Earnshaw gravely.

  “Very well,” said Brennan. “The first and final meeting of the delegates to the Little Summit is herewith called to order.”

  A waiter came with the drinks, quickly set them down, and as quickly disappeared.

  “As each of you knows,” resumed Brennan, “one week ago, I came to Paris to speak to Nikolai Rostov. While I was unable to reach him personally, my quest for Rostov continually confronted me with persons and names that seemed suspiciously and inexplicably connected with him. I need only refer to Joe Peet, Marshal Zabbin, Igor Novik, Boris Dogel, Ma Ming. My quest also provided me with information I had not, from the start, been seeking. I began to learn that while the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was aligned with the United States, Great Britain, and France in public and at the conference table in the Palais Rose, and was openly opposed to the policies and aggressions of the People’s Republic of China, there appeared to be a wholly contradictory Russian behavior toward China behind the scenes. I continually acquired information—some of it by myself, most of it through my friends and your friends, or from each of you—that the two greatest Communist powers on earth, while paying lip service to peace and disarmament at the Summit, were quietly making mutual plans out of sight of the Summit. By siding with the West instead of with its onetime Communist partner, Russia had made the Summit possible and future disarmament and peace a possibility. Yet, disturbingly, there were continuing clues that Russia and China were also preparing a long-range partnership in private, a secret partnership of these two old international Cominform members with policies that would supersede those agreed upon at the Summit. These isolated clues, each meaningless in itself, began to mount, until tonight they have assumed, at least for me, a grand design that is alarming because it is threatening to the future of all mankind.”

  “You’ve been insisting on that, Matt,” said Earnshaw, “but I must say, never so definitely or emphatically. I gather something happened today to—”

  “Something did happen today,” said Brennan. “Six hours a
go, for the second time, an attempt was made on my life. Only today there was no subterfuge and there could be no doubts. The attack on me was direct and it was public. The attack was clearly witnessed. The attack was made with the object of murdering me. And the attacker was a Russian KGB agent from Moscow.”

  Brennan’s announcement created an immediate sensation among the other three. Doyle’s rotund face was bathed in perspiration. Earnshaw’s mouth became a study in alarm, Medora’s eyes blinked.

  Doyle’s voice cracked, as he spoke. “A Soviet agent tried to murder you?”

  “Yes. The one Medora first brought to our attention. The one Hazel Smith identified as a KGB man. The one I found out was named Boris Dogel. He made an attempt on my life outside the Lido Arcade. Lisa Collins witnessed the entire incident.”

  Hastily, without wasting words, Brennan recounted the terrifying experience in the Rue de Ponthieu that had sent Boris Dogel to his own death. As he related the story, Brennan could see that the shocked reactions of his listeners were devoid of any disbelief.

  By the time Brennan finished, Earnshaw had become grimly thoughtful and Doyle had become the quivering journalist on the scent of an international newsbeat. Only Medora, apolitical and less involved, reacted like a playgoer at the suspenseful second-act curtain of a matinee.

  “But why, Matt?” she blurted out. “Why would anyone want to do you in?”

  “I asked myself that after the first attempt, and I’ve asked myself the same question again,” said Brennan. “The first time, I’m still convinced, I was the intended target for murder instead of that young Englishman in the Bois de Boulogne. But I’ll never be positive. Six hours ago, there was no mistaking who was the intended victim and who was the killer. But as you asked, Medora, why me? What was the Soviet motive? I think I can answer that now. It’s obvious to me that all the clues I’ve been gathering were valid and the conclusion they were leading me to was a true one—or close to a true one—and therefore seriously threatening to the Russian delegation. If that weren’t so, the Soviets wouldn’t have bothered about me. They’d have merely written me off as a crackpot. But if there was an actual secret conspiracy, and I had stumbled upon it, I would be considered extremely dangerous. To prevent my exposing their scheme, I would have to be eliminated. So, six hours ago, the Russians did try to eliminate me. And six hours ago, I knew that I was in the possession of facts.”

  Earnshaw gravely nodded. “There can no longer be any doubt, Matt, that you’re onto something very serious.”

  “Only one point continues to mystify me,” said Brennan. “It did the first time they came after me. It does again. How on earth did the Russians come to know I had all this damning information about their secret designs? Only a handful of you know.” He paused, and looked around the table. “Unless one of you, inadvertently, spoke of this to some Russian?”

  Earnshaw sat erect. “But of course we did, Matt, or at least I did, at your own instigation.”

  Brennan was puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “In order to help Medora, you invented the title of a book and requested me to use it on Sir Austin Ormsby at the Hotel de Lauzun dinner,” said Earnshaw. “You told me to tell Sir Austin you were preparing something called The Secret Civil War Inside Russia Today. So I did it, I repeated it, as a come-on to bring Sydney Ormsby to—”

  Brennan clapped his hand against his forehead. “My God, I forgot all that nonsense.”

  “When I was speaking to Sir Austin, the room was crowded, and there were Russians and Chinese around us. And—now I’m recalling something else, no, two things—when Sir Austin and I parted, he bumped into someone behind him, and apologized, and apparently, the one he bumped into was Rostov—because later, when the President told Wiggins to introduce me to Rostov—yes, I’m sure of this—Wiggins said he thought I’d already met Rostov, because Rostov was standing beside Sir Austin and me.”

  Doyle poked a finger at Brennan. “And you forgot something else, Matt. Don’t you recall what I told you at Maisons-Laffitte? How I attended the gourmet dinner at Lasserre last night, and got to talking to Igor Novik of Pravda, and tried to get him to bring me together with his old pal Rostov? I told him I was helping a friend, a former diplomat, finish a book about—well, exactly the one you had Emmett describe to Sir Austin. That makes what happened doubly clear. Igor must have trotted straight back to the Russian Embassy to tell Rostov, or the KGB, or someone, that a former American diplomat was onto them. And at the same time, Rostov, fresh from the Hotel de Lauzun, already knew that you were that former diplomat. Motive? Oh boy, they sure had it by then.”

  Brennan nodded. ‘That’s it, no question.”

  “The thing that concerns me now,” said Earnshaw, putting down his cigar, “is simply this—if the Russians tried to get you out of the way because you knew too much, precisely what did you know too much about? Until now, you’ve generalized about clues that indicated something fishy was going on behind the Summit. But that’s not enough. What I mean is, knowing the Russians as well as I do, it’s not enough to drive them to committing murder. They’re decent people, most of them, despite their atheism and authoritarian state. They’re not ruthless or violent unless seriously provoked. So I keep wondering—what is it of the material you’ve amassed, exactly what is it that they feared, that drove them to attempt an act of murder?”

  Brennan sipped his Cinzano, allowing Earnshaw’s inquiry to dance in his mind to the soft strumming of the Spanish guitars behind him. Finally, he set his glass on the table.

  “It is because we must find the answer to the question you’ve posed, Emmett, that I called this meeting.” Brennan locked his fingers together on the table, contemplated them, and at last looked up. “I’ve given considerable thought to the answer. I believe I have it. But first, before giving you my conclusion, I thought that I should check my clues once more with the three of you, to be certain these clues are facts. I want to review them for you, briefly as possible—I know how late it is—but I want your comments when you have any to make. And when I’m through, I want your conclusions, whether they concur with mine or not. I have more than a sneaking suspicion that one way or another tomorrow, Sunday, may not be a day of rest. Shall I proceed?”

  “By all means, at once, Matt,” said Earnshaw.

  ‘The faster the better,” said Doyle.

  “I—I’m not sure I’ll understand,” said Medora.

  Brennan smiled at her. “I think you will. In any case, you can be helpful.” He reached into his pocket, extracted his folded notes, and flattened them out on the tablecloth. “These jottings—I haven’t organized them to make points. I’ve put them down as simply as possible, but whenever possible, in chronological order.”

  “Good enough,” said Doyle, trying to look over his shoulder. “Go on, Matt.”

  Half reading, half improvising, Matt Brennan began the case of the Little Summit against the validity of the Big Summit.

  “Clue one. I arrived in Paris seven days ago. I met with Herb Neely in a café. We discussed Nikolai Rostov. Now, in Zurich, when I knew Rostov, he was perfectly representative of the Soviets’ line. Rostov was, one might say, anti-Chinese. When Varney escaped us and defected to Peking with the neutron bomb secrets, both Rostov and I were accused of being pro-Chinese and traitors to our governments. Rostov was punished by being sent to some obscure post in Siberia. Yet, four years later, Rostov, who’d been accused of being treasonably sympathetic to China, was recalled by the anti-Chinese Soviet Government and rewarded by Premier Talansky and Marshal Zabbin with a key appointment to a sensitive post, a post involving negotiations with China at the Summit. It made no sense. I thought it strange when I first heard about it. I still do.”

  Brennan looked up. The others were silent, waiting.

  “Clue two,” said Brennan. “Jay got me some clippings on Rostov. I was reminded that Rostov collected rare books, among them those written by Sir Richard Burton. I remembered Rostov’s favorite rare-book s
tore on the Left Bank. I went there. All the Burton items in their latest catalogue had been sold. They were being picked up by a young American of dubious literacy named Joe Peet. Among the three Burton titles that Peet had requested and paid for, and eventually took away with him, was an 1890 edition that had never been published, because Burton’s wife had considered Burton’s enlarged translation of this volume salacious and she burned the manuscript immediately after his death. This was odd, this American of questionable intellect acquiring a nonexistent book authored by one of Rostov’s favorite writers, and acquiring it from Rostov’s favorite French bookstore.” Brennan glanced up at Medora. “Hardly the type to collect rare editions, wouldn’t you agree, Medora?”

  “Nudie magazines—that was his speed, according to Denise,” said Medora.

  “Which I confirmed later,” said Brennan. “All right. Clue three. I drove out to Gif-sur-Yvette, near Saclay, the French nuclear research center. I had a long talk with the French physicist, Professor Isenberg. I learned that the reactor in the Nuclear Peace City that Goerlitz Industries were to build for the Chinese in Honan Province was capable of being easily converted to producing ingredients for nuclear bombs. I also learned Professor Isenberg had visited Peking recently and had come upon Russian scientists there. That, too, was odd, I thought.”

  Earnshaw nodded his agreement.

  “Next clue, number four,” said Brennan. “Jay Doyle accidentally turned up information on Joe Peet, and someone else, a friend, Herb Neely, gave me more. I learned that Peet had a Russian girl behind the Iron Curtain whom he wished to marry. He had persistently appealed to the Soviet Union to let him become a Russian citizen so he could be reunited with his love. But he had been denied this citizenship. I thought it unusual of the Russians to reject an American who wanted to defect to them.”