The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  “I still think it’s unusual,” said Doyle.

  “Neely thought Peet was probably here to appeal to the Russian delegation for citizenship, and that they might soften and take him in, especially at a moment when they might make propaganda hay of it,” said Brennan. “Anyway, clue five, and a big one you all know about. My fiancée, Lisa Collins, deserves the credit. She overheard two wives of Chinese delegates speaking of throwing Goerlitz’s German personnel out of the Nuclear Peace City in Honan, nationalizing it, and taking in Russian engineers to help them run it That was a jolt, the strongest evidence that the two Communist powers, hostile to each other in public, were holding hands behind everyone’s back.” He looked at Earnshaw. “You still consider that to be credible, Emmett?”

  “Absolutely,” said Earnshaw. “If you could have seen Marshal Chen’s face when I accused him of that kind of bad faith, you’d never question Miss Collins’ information again. We’re lucky to have got out of the Chinese Embassy with our necks intact.”

  “Clue six,” said Brennan. “An anonymous phone call advised me to come to the Bois de Boulogne if I wished to meet Rostov. I was to wear dark glasses, carry a pipe. I got to the rendezvous late. Someone else, resembling me, was already dead there. He’d worn dark glasses, carried a pipe. Incidentally, the last time I’d smoked a pipe was when I was with Rostov in Zurich.” He paused. “The only thing about that whole damn incident that troubles me is how, at that time, the Russians even knew I was collecting these clues. Well, anyway—”

  “I’m sure they were after you in the Bois, Matt,” said Doyle.

  “Well, I wish I could be certain, absolutely certain,” said Brennan. “Now, where was I? Yes. Clue seven next. To help her friend Denise, our Medora met Joe Peet in the Club Lautrec. When Peet began to drink, a Russian, whom Hazel later identified at the Palais Rose as a veteran KGB agent, whisked Peet away. Shortly after, when we tried to see Peet at his hotel, he had suddenly been moved to another hotel. There you have two mysteries. An American nonentity befriended by or guarded by a Soviet police agent. An American made to change his residence to another hotel. Odd. Any comments?”

  There were none.

  “Okay,” said Brennan. “Those were the first seven clues that got me started. But others followed, and there are exactly double that number by this time. I’ll give you clues eight to fourteen, the most recent ones, in a lump. Thanks to Hazel, I learned a secret that she learned from Rostov, that a group of wives of Russian leaders, including Zabbin’s wife and Rostov’s wife, will tour China right after the Summit. Then, thanks to Medora’s friend Denise, I found the new hotel where Peet was, in effect, lading out. I’ll confess to a misdemeanor. I entered Peet’s room uninvited. Nothing much there, at first look. As Medora said, lots of nude girlie magazines. A scratch pad with the name of the Soviet journalist, Igor Novik, scribbled on it. An order for a tail coat, which is usually worn at state functions. A torn calling card belonging to Ma Ming, correspondent for the New China News Agency. A newspaper clipping with a girl in a bikini on one side and the leaders of the Soviet delegation on the other. I don’t know which of these pictures interested Peet, or if both did. And then, in Peet’s room, another side of his personality, an avid interest in the châteaux and palaces and splendors of Paris and environs, with a special interest in Versailles. Curiouser and curiouser, and one clue following another after that. There was Emmett’s visit to the Chinese Embassy, and Chen’s undiplomatic revelation that implied that Summit or no Summit, One World or no One World, Russia and China would find one another again and join against their common enemies. Emmett, is that substantially correct?”

  “It is entirely correct,” said Earnshaw.

  “More clues,” resumed Brennan. “Last night, at Lasserre, Jay learned from the Soviet journalist, Novik, that six months ago, Rostov entertained Marshal Zabbin and a party of visiting Chinese at his Moscow residence. Nearby, in the Kremlin, the Premier was thundering against the Chinese, but in Rostov’s home a minister and a marshal hosted the Chinese as friends. Last night, also, at a dinner given by a fashion designer, I met a Swiss psychoanalyst who purported to be an expert on the psychology of traitors, real traitors and potential ones. He described the background and characteristics of a traitor to me, intending it to be my portrait. When he was done, I realized it was not I he had described, but more accurately Nikolai Rostov.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Doyle. “Very interesting.”

  “Very,” said Brennan. “And so we come to today—well, it’s long after midnight, so by now today is yesterday, but let’s call it today. Anyway, today Jay covered all five press conferences at the Palais Rose. The words in the Chinese and Russian press announcements were identical, but different from the others, which indicated a secret collaboration. Today, at Maisons-Laffitte, at the races, I thought I saw Rostov, which is not significant, but I did see Joe Peet with Boris Dogel, his KGB friend or guard, which might be significant, but which offered me no immediate clue. Also, at the races, I saw Ma Ming, which brings the Chinese into it, and Mr. Ma’s knowledge of Peet and Dogel is another mystery.” Brennan halted, and then he said slowly, “And today, after the Russians again heard about my researches, my amassing of these facts, they sent their veteran KGB agent, Dogel, to track me down and kill me. There is the evidence to date. Do you have any comment?”

  Medora shook her head. Earnshaw and Doyle shook their heads.

  “But I do have a question,” said Earnshaw. “What are you leading up to?”

  “I’m leading up to one conclusion,” said Brennan. “Let me—well, let me be frank and put it to you this way. Each of us sitting here, and perhaps many other persons we don’t even know—certainly each of us was drawn to Paris because of the Summit, because someone else brought here by the Summit might be useful in helping us resolve what was still unresolved in our personal lives. I hope you don’t mind this, any of you?”

  “We’re listening,” said Earnshaw.

  “Consider the four of us. Jay Doyle came to see someone who could give him the final evidence for an exposé which might restore his professional standing. Forgive me, Jay, but I think that’s it. Former President Earnshaw came here to persuade a German industrialist to remove material from a memoir that might damage Mr. Earnshaw’s reputation beyond repair. Medora Hart came to exert pressure on the English delegate who is responsible for having kept her in exile for three years, and to force him to allow her to return home. As for me, I came here because the one person on earth who could possibly erase the word traitor from after my name was here. Each one of us, one way or another, came to Paris on a mission of personal salvation. Each one of us was, and with good reason, pursuing a selfish end. Each of us had his story and each of us was determined to resolve his little plot. And I am suggesting that in our searches in pursuit of resolutions to our little individual plots, the four of us unwittingly stumbled upon a bigger plot, involving not only each of us but the whole world and the immediate future of man. Right now, our personal plots and their resolutions are minor compared to the major plot we’ve come upon, and it is this big plot which must be exposed immediately if our personal lives are to have any meaning.”

  “A big plot that must be exposed immediately?” echoed Doyle. “Do you mean something is going on that we might be able to stop? Exactly what are you talking about?”

  “I’m trying to say that every clue we’ve unearthed indicates that while the fate of the world may hang on the success of the five-power Summit, there are those who are using the Summit as a fraud and a sham because they intend to ignore its result. But—beyond that—every clue I’ve presented so far leads me to believe that there is a more specific conspiracy going on, in this place and at this time.”

  “Be explicit, Matt,” demanded Earnshaw. “What actual conspiracy do you think is going on?”

  “Yes, what conspiracy, Matt?” asked Doyle. “What’s the climax to the big plot you say we’ve stumbled on? What does all you’ve been
saying add up to?”

  Brennan looked at Doyle, at Earnshaw, at Medora, then he stared down at his empty glass.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said slowly. “I think it all adds up to one terrible moment, perhaps the last terrible moment in modern history—an assassination in the Palace of Versailles tomorrow night—an assassination, a slaying, a single act of violence that will wipe out the Summit, shatter the world as we know it, and destroy free men on earth forever. That’s what I think it adds up to for tomorrow night. That, fellow delegates, is the plot.”

  IX

  IT WAS SUNDAY MORNING in Paris, and the full circle of the week had been closed.

  From the parted drapes and curtains of his hotel room, Matt Brennan could see the soft cerulean sky above the misty green water splashing in the courtyard fountain below.

  He could picture the Champs-Élysées on an early Sunday morning like this one. It would be as placid and lovely as it had been in the time of Louis XV, when handsome and fashionable Parisians strolled beneath its stately trees and arbors and gossiped lazily in sunny garden cafés and magnificent coaches rolled up the thoroughfare toward the Palace at Versailles. Now the same sun and trees would still be there, with French couples, French families, in their Sunday best, promenading on the broad walks emptied of vehicles, pausing at each special periodical stand, watching the cafés coming to life, enjoying their city, their capital of civilization.

  It would be Sunday in Paris, mankind’s caress, smile, laughter, tranquillity, contentment, Eden.

  To imagine violence seemed blasphemy, and suddenly last night, before and after midnight, seemed less real and more improbable.

  Brennan turned away from the windows.

  He stared across the sitting room at the telephone, and there it stood, like a cocked pistol, not yet friend, not yet foe, but in twenty minutes, it would announce itself, and that was reality. And then he knew that this was not Sunday but an extraordinary and supernormal eighth day of the week where time was suspended until men decided whether it should resume or end for all eternity.

  He continued to stare at the telephone. When it spoke, he would know if his Little Summit, adjourned only five hours earlier, had been a success or a failure. He told himself that he had better be ready for either.

  Unbuttoning his pajama top, Brennan went quietly back into the bedroom. Lisa had moved with the peal of his eight-o’clock alarm, but he suspected that she had fallen asleep again. In the shaded room he could see her curled on her side, still hugging his pillow.

  As he continued noiselessly to the bathroom, her muffled voice caught him. “Matt, did you make it for two?”

  “What?”

  “Breakfast.”

  “Yes, darling, but try to sleep.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Never better.”

  “Good.”

  In the bathroom he removed his pajamas, started the tub shower, and stepped under it. He tried to remember the dialogue that had followed his sensational announcement in La Calavados.

  They had all been in agreement that Brennan had developed a sound argument indicating concealed political activity between the Soviet Union and Red China that might sabotage any Summit accord. Even Earnshaw, conservative and ingenuous, had concurred on that point, swayed by an apparently government-authorized attack on Brennan’s life. But what Earnshaw had maintained serious reservations about was Brennan’s conclusion that a plot to commit a political assassination at Versailles or anywhere else was in the making. Earnshaw had been reasonable, yet stubborn, in his belief that if there was trouble, the nations would work it out after the Summit, behind their own frontiers and in their own ways. He had been unable to see any clear motive for anyone at the Summit to try to get rid of anyone else in a public act of violence. Brennan had speculated on a variety of possibilities, but they had been so contradictory and so hypothetical that he had been unable to lessen Earnshaw’s skepticism in any way. As for the others, Medora had long been out of her depth and too sleepy to care, and Doyle had been ready to accept anything that Brennan stated if only it would provide him with a major newsbeat or a book.

  Recalling all of that, as he left the bathtub to dry himself, Brennan also recalled that Earnshaw had put his finger on the one weakness of Brennan’s conclusions. Preparing to leave the restaurant, Earnshaw had said, “It comes down to this, Matt. If you think our CIA or the French DST would believe your conclusions and act on them, then I think you’ve got a case. Are you prepared to go to them with your warning?” Brennan had said that he was not prepared to go to the authorities, because he doubted that they would believe him. “That’s right, they wouldn’t,” Earnshaw had said, “because while you have evidence of potential political shenanigans, you don’t have a single piece of concrete evidence that points to violence. Until you obtain that, I’m afraid there is nothing that either you or I or any of us can do.”

  Apparently, Brennan had expected, and unconsciously prepared himself for, this one unanswerable challenge. For no sooner had Earnshaw flung it at him than Brennan had turned to Doyle and made the one request that might lead him to the concrete evidence that would prove his case. Doyle had promised to do what could be done. And what was left was the telephone call that would come at eight-thirty.

  Hurriedly, Brennan finished dressing.

  When he returned to the sitting room, Lisa was already at the breakfast table that Room Service had set up. She was scrubbed and pretty in her negligee, and she was completely awake.

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back, and then she pushed him away. “We’d better not start that, or we won’t have breakfast.” She began to pour his tea. “Now, sit down before it all gets cold. Doesn’t it look delicious? Let me practice my French. Omelette aux fines herbes. Brioche and croissant for you, and ditto for me. Beurre. Confitures. How’s that?”

  He chuckled. “Send the food back to Berlitz.” He glanced at the telephone behind her and began to eat his eggs.

  He ate in silence, and then, looking up, he realized she was not eating but was watching him worriedly.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I was thinking of last night, the things you told me in bed. I must have been knocked out, but now they’re beginning to come back to me. It frightens me, Matt. The whole thing does.”

  “The plot I’ve been uncovering? It frightens me, too.”

  “Not the plot, you dumbhead. It’s you. I’m half ill with fear about what might happen to you. Yesterday the Russians tried to kill you before my very eyes. So what do you do about it? Now you accuse them of planning another assassination.”

  “I’m not accusing them or anyone specifically.”

  “Well, you did say somebody’s going to assassinate somebody else.”

  ‘To me, that’s what everything seems to be adding up to.”

  “To me, what it’s adding up to is that, if you go on this way, you’re liable to be the one assassinated. Matt, listen to me. I don’t want to be a widow before I’ve been a wife. Can’t you find yourself some other hobby, something harmless, like free-fall parachuting or swallowing swords?”

  Brennan was about to make a joke when the telephone rang.

  He leaped from his chair and snatched up the receiver. To his surprise, it was Jay Doyle and not Hazel Smith who greeted him from the other end.

  “You did see Hazel?” Brennan asked anxiously.

  “I went straight to her apartment after I left you.”

  “Did you tell her what this is about? I mean, why I want to meet her?”

  “Only that it concerns our Little Summit. I told her all I could about that. And I told her you wanted to speak to her this morning, that you needed a favor, and if she would help you, well, you would return the favor by granting Hazel and me exclusive rights to the story if you happened to be right, but you could promise nothing else if you were wrong.”

  “How did Hazel react?”

  “She wasn’t interested in any pa
yoffs. She just didn’t know if she could see you, or even should.”

  “She didn’t think I was crazy, or anything like that, or did she?”

  “I don’t know, Matt. She didn’t say. She only made it clear that she wasn’t too happy about becoming involved in whatever you might be up to. We left it that she’d think about it and make up her mind by morning. Well, she’s just made up her mind. She had to run off somewhere now, so she asked me to call you. She said, Tell Matt I’ll meet him at the Pont de la Tournelle on the Île St.-Louis side at nine-thirty sharp.’ She said that the Île St.-Louis is quieter than the Île de la Cité and it’s a better place to walk and talk. She’ll be there, Matt, so now it’s up to you. Be sure to let me know what happens.”

  Brennan thanked Doyle profusely and went back to the breakfast table filled with anticipation.

  Lisa had assumed an air of resignation. “More of the plot?”

  He buttered his brioche. “I hope so. If Hazel can help, I’m still in business. If she refuses—” He shrugged.

  “In the business of what? Hunting assassins?”

  “Could be.”

  “Matt, you still haven’t told me. Who is killing whom?”

  “Lisa, I wish I knew. I have a few ideas, but I don’t know if they make sense yet. The only thing I do feel I know, and do believe might be true, is that there is some kind of terrible struggle for power inside the Russian delegation, and that there may be Outs who want to be In, so that they can blow up the Summit and have a partnership with Red China and revive the Comintern, and escalate nuclear armament and a cold or hot war against the democracies. I just suspect there’s rebellion brewing. But where and when, I’m not sure. My guess is Versailles and tonight. As to who’s involved, I truly can’t say. In fact, I can’t say anything for sure yet.”

  “Matt, if you’re even half right, that would be horrifying.”

  “Catastrophic is the word.”

  “And you think it will happen?”