Brennan interrupted her. “When I was at the Zurich Parley with Rostov, and the professor defected, Rostov and I were brutally judged and treated. He was packed off to Siberia. National interest. In effect, so was I. National interest. Governments, or rebels inside governments, do what they believe to be holy by their own judgments.”
“But Rostov wasn’t killed. Nor, in fact, were you.”
“In a way, we both were, except Rostov was resurrected. All I’m saying is that when it comes to national interest, anything is possible, anything.”
“I suppose so,” said Hazel unhappily. She held up a fresh cigarette and waited for Brennan to light it, and to light his pipe. “Okay, let’s say I’m converted to your case. Okay, you’ve got your case. What do you intend to do about it?”
Slouching, he ambled on in brief silence. Finally, he shrugged. “There is nothing I can do by myself.”
“You can go to the CIA, to the American authorities.”
“You forget, Hazel, the mark is on me. I’m a traitor.”
“Go to the French police, then.”
‘To them I’d be not only that foreign traitor but that troublesome crackpot as well. Nope, no chance there, especially when my portfolio contains only circumstantial evidence without proof. As Earnshaw put it last night, I have nothing until I have concrete proof. That’s what I need, Hazel, proof, and I need it fast.”
They were passing the Pont Marie, entering the Quai d’Anjou, and she knew what was coming next. Once more, she wanted to run, escape decision, but there would be no escape from herself. Well, she told herself, let’s get it over with.
“Well,” she said to Brennan, “what’s all that got to do with me?”
“Everything,” said Brennan. He looked at her anxiously. “You’re my court of last resort, Hazel. You’re the only one who can help me obtain the concrete proof I must have.” He paused. “You’re the only one. I’m sure you know that.”
She stopped in her tracks, heart pounding, and she walked to the quay and stared down at the Seine. At last, she turned from the retaining wall. “It’s Rostov you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I see. That’s what I thought.” She watched Brennan advance, waited for him to come closer, and when he was directly before her, she bit her lip and said, “You know about us, about Rostov and myself, then.”
“A little, but yes, I know.”
“Does Jay Doyle know?”
Brennan nodded. “I’m afraid so. I found out through him.
One morning, he saw Rostov bring you back to your apartment. It was evident to him that you were—the two of you were—close.”
She shook her head, and kept shaking it. “Jay. Poor bastard.” She sighed, and straightened. “Oh, what the hell, the hell with it.”
“Of course, I have no idea how well you know Rostov,” said Brennan quickly, “but I assume—”
“Whatever you assume, you can double and redouble in spades,” snapped Hazel, but then, briefly lost in thought, she softened. “Matt, he’s a swell guy, you know, no matter what you’ve heard or think. Niki’s a gentleman, and he can be very nice. I’m not talking about politics. There I don’t know for positive. I’m strictly feature-page, women’s-page, not politics. Niki’s a good man, the kind of man who can be very good for a shriveled-up, lonely, lost American girl who’s got nothing to go home for.”
Brennan’s half-smile was understanding and kind. “I’m sure that’s true, Hazel. The little I knew of him in Zurich, I liked.”
Abruptly, she turned away and looked up the wide river. After a while, she began to speak, as much to herself as to Brennan. “You’re a male, a political animal, so you can’t possibly understand,” said Hazel. “You can’t know what it’s like. Doyle was the first when I was a nobody kid in New York, and he was riding high with his fat ego and vanity, and he was a son of a bitch. It was awful for me. Then, when I was on the beach, emotionally penniless, Rostov came along, so American in so many ways, so thoughtful and useful, whatever his shortcomings, and he half filled my emptiness and he gave me a career, a big one. It’s been going on—when it can, when we’re both in the same place—for a good hunk of a good number of years. A lot of years. It’s like having a husband.” Her thin smile was wry. “A husband who’s already got a wife. But still—” She shrugged. “So here we are, Matt. You come to me. You appeal to me, your court of last resort. You ask me to—to turn—my man to you—as material witness against himself.”
“For all I know, it may not be against himself. I don’t really have any knowledge of his role. But whatever it is, he must be aware of what is going on. If there is a plot, he’d know about it, as he knew of the earlier one when you met him in Vienna. Whatever comes out of this needn’t necessarily hurt him.”
Hazel’s eyes blazed. “Come off it, Matt,” she said angrily. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Up to now you’ve leveled.”
Brennan held up both hands. “Okay, sorry. Look, Hazel, after all, you have the right to say whatever you want to me, yes or no. You can say no.”
“I know what in the hell my rights are, and I’ll say whatever I want to say. And I also know what’s at stake—either you’re a fugitive from a booby hatch or you’re a goddam Robin Hood—and either I’m a miserable cretin or a goddam Joan of Arc, and either way, heads or tails, I lose.” She glared at him. “What’s in it for Hazel, lil’ ol’ Hazel, I keep asking me.”
Brennan chewed his pipe stem uncomfortably. “There’s Jay Doyle,” he said at last.
“Is there?”
“I believe so. He loves you.”
“You’re sure of that? You’ll underwrite it? Oh, hell, I’m sorry, Matt. I suppose he does, in his fashion. As Wilson Mizener once said, some of the greatest love affairs ever known have involved one actor, unassisted. There’s Doyle, same as an actor, there is he, himself, and—somewhere—I.” She stopped and shook her head. “Let’s not discuss Doyle. Of course, I love him. But Rostov, well, for whatever it amounts to—Rostov loves me… Let’s walk.”
She started off, and Brennan fell in beside her as they moved down the Quai d’Anjou.
Brennan emptied his pipe and began to refill it. “There is nothing more I can say, Hazel. You know where I stand. You know what I need. Anything more wouldn’t be fair. I won’t press you further. From here on in, it is entirely up to you. Whatever you decide, that’ll be it.”
They strolled slowly ahead against the morning’s fresh river breeze.
Hazel had retreated inside her head, where she silently performed as prosecution and defense, as judge and jury and defendant, in this time of trial. She wanted to invoke Important Words—Survival, Peace, Progress, Civilization, Man’s Heirs, Man’s Hope—but the words came out uncapitalized and sounded false. Her mournful words conjured up not the Summit, not nuclear mushrooms, unimaginable devastation and obliteration, but only pictures of a miniature self, her own self, wandering through the wreckage of her years. She thought of the old past and the recent past. She thought of the Doyle days in New York, and the Rostov years in Moscow, both before and after his Siberian experience. She fastened on Rostov and herself, that time at the Kurskaya Metro station, that time in the State Literary Museum, that time in the Tretyakov Gallery, that time in the Praga restaurant, that time on the overnight train to Leningrad, those times, and the times in her apartment, the vodka poured in the curtained kitchen, the card games played for kopecks, the jokes and the naked passion on her broken-down bed.
Her Niki.
Yet, if Brennan, madman or prophet, was anywhere near right, if there was a plot, Rostov and her life with him would be altered by it. If there were sides, and he was on the wrong one, she would never ,see him again. If there were sides, and he was on the right one, he might be elevated to supreme leadership, a position too lofty and too exposed for him to bring her up after him.
And Doyle—allegiance to Doyle offered little more that was promising. If Brennan was promoting a fiction, Do
yle would sink lower than he had already sunk, to become, without book or balls, an ineffectual travesty of a man. If Brennan, on the other hand, was promoting a fact, Doyle would rise meteorically to where once he had been, the elite world of celebrity, a world too limited for any love except self-love.
In Hazel’s head, the judge that was she charged the jury that was she. Summing up.
To accept Brennan’s plea, to vote for Doyle, meant Brennan right or wrong. There could be no more Rostov in her life. All her eggs would be in one new but untrustworthy basket.
To reject Brennan’s plea, to vote for Rostov, meant no more Brennan, no more Doyle, meant no harm done, no loss, no gain, but a safe half-life as it had been the week before this week.
And of course—damn judge in her addled head, damn built-in guiltmaker—there were, after all, those Important Words, from Survival to Man’s Hope, and if something did happen here tonight, she would know until the final hour of earth that she had been mankind’s Miss Judas. Yet, if nothing happened tonight, the Summit would save man from himself and she would be relieved not to have sabotaged the machinery.
Jurors, have you arrived at a verdict?
Hazel shaded her eyes and looked beyond the quay and river toward the Right Bank. The world of ordinary people with ordinary dreams was coming alive. She had forever aspired to belong to that world. And even now, at her age, she did not want to give it up.
She halted and faced Brennan.
“My mind’s made up,” she said. “I’m making believe this is Veracruz.”
“Veracruz?”
“When I was a kid in Wisconsin, I read Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico. I read about how Cortes landed in Veracruz, and how he knew that ahead lay the unknown New World and the unknown legions of the enemy. And he ordered his fleet of ships burned in the harbor so there could be no retreat. I was never more moved or more deeply impressed. I can still remember Prescott on Cortes addressing his troops: To be thus calculating chances and means of escape was unworthy of brave souls. They had set their hands to the work; to look back, as they advanced, would be their ruin.’ And Cortés said, ‘As for me, I have chosen my part. I will remain here, while there is one to bear me company.’ Whenever I’ve had to fade a decision I knew I must make, but shrank from it, I would remember that passage. I’m remembering it now, Matt.” She tried to smile, but failed. “As for me, I have chosen my part. I’m burning all my ships. Okay, Matt.”
“You’re on our side?”
“I’ll help you, if I can. You want me to speak to Rostov?”
“I want you to produce him, Hazel.”
“Produce him? For whom? For you?”
“For me. I want to see him face to face, in person.”
“When?”
“Today. As soon as possible.”
She worried. “I don’t know whether I can.”
“But you’re willing to try?”
“I’ve already said yes.”
Brennan took Hazel by the arm and led her to the old wall. “Then listen to me. I’ve thought about it a good deal, given it hours of thought. I have an idea. I think it can work.”
“Shoot,” she said. “I know you don’t like that word, but I’d suggest you better get used to it. Okay. I know the plot so far. But, Daddy, what happens next, Daddy?”
“I’ll tell you—”
He began speaking urgently, and although she listened, she could see behind him, in the water, the safe ships that had brought her this far, now aflame and going under, and she knew they were unreal, and beyond them, on the opposite quay, she could see a man and woman going into one another’s arms, embracing, kissing, and she knew they were real…
NOT UNTIL LATE AFTERNOON was Hazel able to act for Brennan and herself.
She had met with Jay Doyle in the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, as prearranged, and together they had walked to the Place Beauvau discussing their strategy, she speaking nervously, he with unrestrained optimism.
They had both been surprised, even unsettled, by the number of uniformed French police swarming through the area and by the number of majestically attired officers of the Garde Républicaine stationed before the entrance to the Élysée Palace up ahead. It had been understandable, this massive security, considering what had been going on this morning and this afternoon inside of what had once been Mme. de Pompadour’s town house and what was now the headquarters for the presidents of France. What had been surprising was the incredible bustle of activity on a Sunday. Even the shops in the Faubourg St.-Honoré, one for antiques, another for chinaware, another for jewelry, had been open.
They had crossed the Place Beauvau, and at the corner of the side street called the Rue des Saussaies and the Faubourg St.-Honoré, as earlier agreed, Doyle had parted from Hazel and gone on to the Palais de l’Élysée to scout for information in the temporary press section. After he had shown his credentials and disappeared from view between the two guardhouses, Hazel had restlessly moved away from the corner to inspect the immediate neighborhood.
She had continued along the Faubourg St.-Honoré and found no café or restaurant and therefore no public telephone. She had returned to her corner and gone around it into the Rue des Saussaies, and immediately had located two cafés with telephones. In the first, the public telephone was too public and. would not do. In the second, across the street, the Santa Maria, the interior was darker, more private, and the telephone had been better situated. Okay, she had told herself then, the Santa Maria it would be—hopefully, to take her into the uncharted future and into a New World.
Returning to her corner, she had been sorry for Brennan, for the delays that had made his morning so long and his afternoon probably unbearable. She had spoken to him an hour ago from her apartment, informing him that at last it was possible for her to act. If he did not hear from her again, she had said, the news was good. If she called once more, it would mean her news was bad.
The delays, of course, had been caused by the new disarmament proposal that Red China had unexpectedly submitted yesterday. This had been the reason for the emergency conference on a Sunday. She and Doyle had gone to the Palais Rose at eleven-thirty in the morning, but the Summit meeting, at the request of the President of France, had been transferred to his private domain, the Palais de l’Élysée, to accent France’s desire to act as neutral mediator, and at the same time try to achieve some kind of compromise accord that would put the five-power leaders back on the path to harmony.
Hazel and Doyle had rushed from the Palais Rose to the Élysée, only to learn that the Summit leaders had convened briefly and adjourned, and the talks would be continued by their ministers and advisers at four o’clock in the afternoon. These talks, usually held every afternoon at the Quai d’Orsay, had also been transferred to the Élysée, and for the first time that day Hazel had known definitely where Nikolai Rostov could be reached.
Patrolling her assigned corner, Hazel looked at the time. Doyle had gone into the Élysée at precisely six minutes to five. At this moment the time was twenty-two minutes after five. She had a clear view of the entrance, the arched portal and twin guardhouses that dignitaries passed before they walked across the white-pebbled courtyard and up the flight of steps to the huge transparent doors that opened into the Élysée. Doyle had taken this route to enter, and he would eventually return by the same route.
Impatiently, Hazel watched for him, wondering what was keeping him, worrying because the festivities in Versailles were only three hours off.
She gazed unblinking at the Élysée entrance until her eyes ached, but at last she relaxed her vigil and turned away in an effort to divert herself with an examination of the display in the window of the luxurious women’s shop behind her.
She surveyed the latest feminine knits, of both rayon and wool, draped around a papier-mâché replica in miniature of the Palais Rose. She wished that she could wear such sexily clinging clothes for—instinctively, her mind had entertained Rostov, out of habit, and she forced him to lea
ve to make the considerable room necessary for Doyle—well, for the man who would marry her. Unfortunately, she did not have the necessary figure now, or had she possessed such a figure when she was younger. The Maker gave every human being one advantage, no more. She would have to settle for brains, which were neither sexy nor the right filling for clinging knits. How odd of God, she thought, in dispensing His favors, not to have made all females feminine. But then, He was a male, and males never understood how women really felt.
She withdrew her attention from the depressing window display and pivoted on a heel to resume her watch of the Élysée. And there was Jay Doyle, like Jumbo except for the lack of a trunk, lumbering toward her.
“Well?” she asked quickly, even before he had reached her.
He wheezed noisily, and after an unnecessarily theatrical glance around to be sure they could not be overheard, he said, “Rostov’s in there all right. I didn’t see him, of course, but some of the other correspondents saw him arrive at four. The ministers are still locked up in the Murat Salon, in the section called the Foreign Sovereigns’ Apartment.”
“When do they break?” asked Hazel anxiously.
“No one knew for sure, but the best-informed guesses were that they’d adjourn in about fifteen minutes or a half hour. They have to get back to their residences and hotels to change for the President’s dinner at Versailles.”
“I’d better get right on it,” said Hazel, nervously brushing back strands of her freshly dyed rust hair.
“You’d better.”
“By the way. Did you find out what room the Soviet delegates are using for their staff?”
“Oh, yes, sorry. Yes, I did. They’re set up in the Silver Salon.”
“Okay, I found a little restaurant around the corner. The Santa Maria. That’s where I’ll be. Where’ll you be, Jay?”
He flicked his forefinger toward the Faubourg St.-Honoré. “Down the block. I’ll be looking at the exhibit in the Galerie Charpentier. It’s open. And there’s a perfect view, from there, of the Élysée. We’d better hustle. Good luck, Hazel.”
The Plot Page 104
