(1982) The Almighty

by Irving Wallace

  ‘You can depend on me, madam. Do you want to tell me where she can reach you?’

  ‘She knows where to reach me,’ said Hannah. ‘Be sure to have her phone me first.’ With that, she hung up.

  Throughout her short life Victoria Weston had been a young person, and death had been far away. It had been an intellectual reality one did not have to deal with emotionally or in the foreseeable future. Last time Victoria had encountered death for the second time. One minute she had listened and spoken to a drunken but vibrant living human being, and minutes later she had looked down upon that human being and found a corpse, lifeless forever.

  This experience had been even more shocking than the one with the Carlos informant in Paris.

  Another consideration, almost as frightening, had come to her shortly afterward. The possibility that the gunman had been ordered to murder the occupant of the apartment -herself - and had mistakenly killed Kim Nesbit instead.

  Of course, the police had theorized that the killing had been haphazard, an accident committed by a trigger-happy, perhaps drugged intruder and thief. If Victoria could have believed that, she would have been less fearful. But she had not believed it. A robber robbed. Kim’s unseen killer had not lingered to steal a thing. He had entered with one purpose, to kill, and he had killed and vanished. This Victoria had believed from the first, and believed still.

  Someone had been ordered to liquidate Victoria Weston.

  By sheer luck she had escaped death, but she knew that death would not be disappointed.

  Her survival instinct had told her to flee, and late last night she had fled. Her instinct had told her to disappear from sight, flee from the place that was known, hide out somewhere in the city until she could decide what to do. She had remembered a second-rate but homelike hotel that would give her temporary anonymity and safety, the Royalton on Forty-fourth Street, where she had once stayed several days with her father on one of his business visits to New York. She had thrown together some things for overnight, abandoned the company car, appreciated the escort of two police officers and their patrol car, and checked into the Royalton Hotel as Barbara Parry.

  All of last night and into the early morning hours, even with sedatives, she had not been alone. The specter of death had been at her shoulder. The specter had resembled Edward Armstead, accompanied by his invisible hoodlums. She had wanted to resign from all scoops, investigative do-gooding. She had wanted to tell him she’d quit if he would quit. But she knew that he could never quit.

  And so death was near, and she was afraid. She wanted to cry into her pillow last night, and she did cry. It was so unfair, so unfair to have to die. How could you die so soon, when you had never possessed a man you loved, or carried a growing child in your belly, or tasted grapes in the lovely Napa Valley, or cozied up before your own farmhouse fireplace on a Vermont Christmas morning, or seen the Taj Mahal in a summer’s moonlight, or watched the dawning of a new day from a balcony in Venice, or read the poems of Shelley you’d always meant to read, or sat in the dark enrapt by Great Garbo as Camille one more time?

  What had put her onto these images of things that would never be? She remembered. An elocution class in high school. A short story by Aldous Huxley, a story called ‘The Gioconda Smile.’ Detached from its reality, she had memorized the passage to recite it, and word for word it passed through her head once more. ‘Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with tears - he wanted so passionately to live … There were still so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer delightful people still unknown, so many lovely

  women never so much as seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet southern wines - Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas - others would drink them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty perfume of good literature, peering at strange titles, discovering unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He would be lying in a hole in the ground.’

  She would be lying in a hole in the ground.

  No, no, no. It must not be. Not yet. Not so unfairly.

  She was too young. She deserved her white oxen, her straight cypresses, her southern wines, her dusty perfume of strange titles.

  She dozed and dreamed.

  After a frightful night, she had slept and awakened, and finally slept again until ten-twenty in the morning. She had awakened with hysteria somehow exorcised.

  After breakfast in her room, eating hungrily while she read the morning papers, Victoria’s confidence had grown. She was alive and young, and death was far away. Yet she had been unable to decide what to do next, stay or run. She would think it out during the day. Meanwhile she decided to call her parents, in case they read about what had happened in her apartment, to let them know that she was well. She had telephoned her father in Washington, D.C., and her mother in Evanston and told them about what they had not read, and reassured them she had been a peripheral figure in a not uncommon New York story. Then she had called Nick Ramsey, not only to tell him that she was well, but to seek his advice. She had been told that Nick was out of the office and would not be back, since he was flying to London at nine o’clock the next morning. She had not left her name.

  She had realized that this time she was on her own, all on her own.

  Now, wondering why the telephone did not ring, it occurred to her that it wasn’t supposed to ring. Except for the two policemen who had escorted her here, no one knew where she was. This by design. Then Victoria remembered the

  arrangement she had made last night when leaving her apartment. The policeman who would be on duty in her apartment today, an officer named Flaherty, would answer her phone and take any messages for her. He would pass them on to her when she called in.

  Victoria had forgotten to call in, and now she did so.

  Officer Flaherty answered her phone. Victoria identified herself, and learned that there were four messages for her. The first three were from the media - two from television stations, one from a radio station - and Victoria told him to tear them up.

  The fourth message was from Mrs. Hannah Armstead.

  Hannah Armstead was ready to see her!

  Victoria’s last vestige of fear dissolved into thin air. Her sluggish adrenaline was flowing. Her decision was made for her in those moments. No more running. She was staying. Kill or be killed, she was staying.

  She dialed Hannah Armstead’s number.

  She expected the voice that answered the phone to be old and wavering. Instead, it was strong and resolute.

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Mrs. Armstead? This is Victoria Weston. I have your message.’

  ‘Good. I want to see you. To what end I do not know, but we shall find out.’

  ‘I can come right over.’

  ‘No. Not yet, Miss Weston. I take it you do not want to see or be seen by my husband. Well, I’ve had word he will be coming by briefly to pack before going out of the city overnight. We will have to wait until he comes and goes. That should be sometime this afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll stand by, Mrs. Armstead.’

  ‘You wait until I call you. Where should I call?’

  ‘I’m registered in the Royalton Hotel under another name - Barbara Parry.’

  ‘I see.’ There was a long pause. ‘Are you afraid, Miss Weston, that my husband wants to kill you?’

  ‘Well-‘

  ‘You probably should be,’ said Hannah Armstead dryly. ‘You wait for my call.’

  It was not until after seven o’clock in the evening that Victoria received the all-clear summons from Hannah Armstead.

  ‘You can come over now,’ said Hannah.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ said Victoria.

  On the way, in the taxi, Victoria’s entire being tingled with anticipation. Not until she
arrived at the entrance to the Armstead penthouse was her enthusiasm for the quest dampened by any feeling of wariness. Her hand hesitated before touching the doorbell.. Could Hannah be in league with her husband to bring Victoria here and end her investigation? Or could Hannah, acting under duress, have been forced to lure Victoria into a trap? Possible, but unlikely, she reassured herself. Her finger pressed the doorbell.

  Seconds later the entrance door opened inward. An elderly lady in a rose-patterned bathrobe, seated in a wheelchair, had opened the door.

  T am Hannah Armstead,’ she said.

  Victoria observed a woman whose features were withered, her entire aspect frail, yet the eyes were alert and bright and the small mouth shrewd.

  ‘You are Victoria Weston?’ she said.

  Victoria Weston nodded.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Hannah, ‘he’s not here. No one else is here. We’ll be quite alone. Do come in.’

  Victoria’s guard fell, her apprehension totally disarmed. Sheepishly, she followed the moving wheelchair into the living room. ‘He came and went an hour ago,’ Hannah said over her shoulder. T don’t expect him back until tomorrow. Tonight we can talk together in privacy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs. Armstead.’

  ‘You can make that Hannah. I’ll call you Victoria. I expect this meeting will be personal, and first names should make it easier for both of us. Sit there, Victoria.’ She pointed to a high-backed wing chair turned toward the fireplace with its carved eighteenth-century mantel and Carrara marble surround. As Victoria seated herself in the armchair, Hannah guided her wheelchair to one side of the fireplace and pivoted it to face Victoria directly.

  ‘Very well,’ said Hannah, ‘let’s lose no time. Why did you want to see me? What is this matter of utmost importance that you wrote to me about? Obviously it concerns my husband.’

  ‘Yes, it concerns Mr. Armstead.’

  ‘In case you find this difficult, I can allay any hesitation on your part,’ said Hannah. ‘I don’t like my husband anymore. This was not always so. But it has become so in recent years, and increasingly so in recent weeks. He has discarded all civility, until his behavior sometimes is that of a beast. Or, more correctly, that of a madman. I’ve reached the point where I am afraid to see him come home. With that background in mind, perhaps it will be easier for you to proceed.’

  Victoria’s heart went out to this intelligent, kind lady. ‘Much easier, Mrs. - so much easier, Hannah.’

  ‘Tell me - why are you here?’

  ‘Because I think your husband might be the brains behind an international terrorist group.’

  Hannah offered” no reaction, only a rhetorical question. ‘The man portrayed on Time magazine as journalism’s Almighty, the most discussed publisher of modern times, the leader of terrorists?’

  T know how improbably it sounds -‘

  ‘No, no. Go ahead. I want to hear exactly how you arrived at this conclusion. You have evidence?’

  ‘Circumstantial,’ said Victoria hastily, ‘but most persuasive.’

  ‘I’m eager to hear,’ said Hannah.

  ‘I’m eager to tell someone who might be sympathetic. If you’re ready, I’ll go on.’

  Victoria hurried through her observations, deductions, a recital of her growing suspicions of the man who was her employer.

  She spoke of the series of tremendous scoops that had sent Armstead’s newspaper circulation soaring and driven the ratings of his television stations upward. All of these scoops had been credited to Mark Bradshaw, a person who did not exist. Each of these scoops had been preceded by Victoria or her colleague Nick Ramsey’s being sent to the scene of a forthcoming terrorist event. In every instance, she or Nick had been assigned to investigate the scene of violence in advance and file background material on it. In one case she thought that she had seen a person, a Gus Pagano, a criminal type who had been on Mr. Armstead’s payroll as an informer,

  in the area of a terrorist attack. An American named James Ferguson had acquired a detailed map of Lourdes in Paris before what may have been an aborted kidnapping of the Pope, and she had recalled seeing the name James Ferguson in the register of a hotel in Nyon, Switzerland. Victoria went on and on, to the experience of witnessing the kidnapping of Carlos by strangers, reporting it to Mr. Armstead and not being allowed to follow through.

  When she had talked herself out, she awaited Hannah’s reaction.

  Throughout, Hannah had listened closely without a single comment or interruption. Her eyes held on Victoria, her lips working almost imperceptibly as if she were masticating, her veined hands folded motionless in her lap. Having heard Victoria’s every word, she looked off absently as if pondering.

  She spoke finally, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the possibility of all this had occurred to me once or twice recendy. There could be no other explanation for Edward’s run of good fortune -‘

  ‘Except to conclude that he might be inventing the news?’

  ‘Inventing the news,’ Hannah repeated. ‘But I put it out of my mind as something inconceivable. Until yesterday, when my husband tried to poison me.’

  Victoria was astounded. ‘Mr. Armstead tried to poison you - kill you?’

  ‘Yesterday morning he insisted upon personally making breakfast for me. A rare treat and a gesture of consideration, I assumed. He left for his office, and I ate my breakfast contentedly, and shortly afterward I was in agony. I was able to get to the telephone and call my doctor, and to unlock the penthouse door before I fell unconscious. I was saved in the nick of time.’ She paused. ‘No, Victoria, it was not ptomaine. Poison had been put in my food, accidentally or deliberately. I choose to think it was done deliberately - by my husband.’

  ‘But why would he do such thing? Of course, I don’t know your relationship -‘

  ‘We’d had an ugly quarrel the night before. I had let him know what I had suspected of his long absences, that he was involved in a love affair with Kim Nesbit.’

  Victoria was surprised to hear Kim’s name from Hannah’s lips. ‘How did you find that out?’ she inquired.

  ‘By the most obvious means,’ said Hannah. ‘I hired a private detective agency and had Edward followed for several weeks.’

  ‘You told your husband you had him followed?’

  ‘Not exactly, but I implied it.’

  Victoria considered this, and measured what she had to say next. ‘Hannah, he didn’t try to kill you because you had found out about his other woman. He tried to kill you because you were secretly having him followed.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘By having him followed, you could become a threat to the hidden activity in his life. You could have learned about a lot of people he might be seeing - criminals or terrorists - and found out wha’t he was really up to. He had to stop you before you learned the truth.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Hannah slowly. She addressed Victoria straightforwardly. ‘At any rate, he tried to poison me. Of that I was sure. But I didn’t know what could be done about it, since I had no proof. I didn’t know where to turn. Then, this morning, reading and seeing the news of the killing in your apartment, the killing of Kim Nesbit, I was firmly convinced that Edward might be behind it. He was the common denominator for the one and one who made two in your apartment. Kim had been his mistress. You were his employee, suspicious enough of him to risk sending me a note. I don’t know if he meant to kill you or Kim - or why -‘

  T don’t know for certain either,’ said Victoria, ‘but I think I know why. Somehow, your husband learned I was suspicious of him and trying to get evidence on him from Kim. He ordered someone to get me out of the way, and they got Kim instead. Perhaps I would have been killed, too, if it had been known I was in another room.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Hannah, ‘the note from you, after my being poisoned, coincided with the tragedy in your apartment. I guessed you were onto something of utmost importance, as you had written me. In my intere
st in my own survival, I had to find out what you had in mind.’

  ‘Now you know,’ said Victoria.

  ‘I know.’ Hannah shook her head with conviction. ‘We can’t let him go on. You heard me characterize his behavior in

  recent weeks as that of a madman, possibly that of a homicidal maniac’

  ‘And the leader of the most active of terrorist gangs.’

  ‘That you believe?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Hannah stared at her visitor. ‘But you can’t prove it.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been able to prove it. My last hope was that you could help.’

  Hannah did not speak immediately. She stared into space, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she spoke. ‘I can help,’ she announced. T can help prove - or disprove - Edward’s involvement.’

  ‘You can?’ Victoria was on her feet, electrified, to learn what Hannah Armstead had in mind.

  Hannah raised a hand and crooked a finger toward the corridor leading off the living room. ‘Follow me,’ Hannah said. She began rolling her wheelchair rapidly toward the corridor and into it, with Victoria right behind her.

  At the doorway of the first bedroom, Hannah gestured for Victoria to wait. Victoria watched her roll herself up to the bedstand, fumble for a cane leaning against the headboard. Using the cane for leverage, Hannah pushed herself up and out of the wheelchair and onto her feet. Unsteadily, she crossed over to her dressing table. To the left of her mirror, she pulled out a lower drawer. She sought something difficult to find, apparently well hidden, and triumphantly found whatever she had been seeking. Victoria could not make out what she had found, but it appeared to be more than one object, possibly two, which she placed in a pocket of her dressing gown.

  Hannah hobbled back to where Victoria was standing. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘If proof exists, I’m going to show you the only place we could find it.’

  Leaning on her cane, Hannah led the way up the corridor, with a curious Victoria at her heels. They passed the second bedroom and came to a halt before a formidable oaken door with an impressive burnished brass doorknob and dead-bolt lock. ‘Mr. Armstead’s private study,’ said Hannah. ‘No one else is allowed inside without him there. I’ve never been in it with his permission. I’ve been in it once without his