Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Haussermann, who had stopped and was looking around.

  “It’s yours,” Graham said, placing it on the flower-seller’s head.

  “Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no!” he protested as Graham stood back to admire him in it, just far enough to see Haussermann move inside the doorway to number forty. Graham waved goodbye to the flower-seller, who pleaded, “Ah, monsieur! It is so expensive! Please …!” The Australian walked briskly back to his car and got in.

  Two hours later Philpott and the crew emerged from number forty in a hurry and got into the station wagon. Graham was in two minds now. Should he follow Philpott, or wait for Haussermann? Philpott’s car veered right of Avenue Mahon toward the air terminal, indicating that the American might be heading for the airport and the U.S. Graham pulled the car away from the curb. The furtive figure of Haussermann jumping into the back seat of another taxi made Graham’s mind up. He would follow the fugitive.

  Five minutes later Haussermann was dropped off at the Hotel Roosevelt close to the Champs Elysees, where he checked in for two nights. When he had moved to the elevator Graham also checked in and immediately put a call through to airline reservations. Then he rang Revel.

  “I’m pretty certain Haussermann has given Philpott the tape and there has been a filmed interview. They met for a couple of hours. Philpott’s probably on his way back to the U.S.”

  “Thanks, Ed. I can get things moving at this end.”

  “Good. I’m still on Haussermann’s tail. We’re both checked in at the Hotel Roosevelt.”

  On the flight from Paris back to Washington, Philpott was feeling particularly satisfied. Everything seemed to have gone according to plan. He had the Haussermann tape tucked away in his combination-lock briefcase, and the film of the interview was safely in the can. Philpott was set to produce the most important show of his career. He expected it to clinch a presidential election for Mineva. These gratifying thoughts swept him happily from Dulles airport to FBS’s Washington studio and Bilby’s office. But the ashen face of the network president blacked them out.

  “Christ! Have you got it?” he asked.

  Philpott nodded and began to unlock the case. “What’s wrong?”

  “There is a big doubt about the tape’s authenticity.” Bilby grabbed the small metal canister from Philpott. “Apparently someone in Paris tipped off the White House that you had managed to get the tape from Haussermann. Now my board has called a meeting.” He opened the door. “I’ve got to play it to them right now. They also want to view the rushes of your TV interview with Haussermann as soon as they’re in….”

  Haussermann stayed in his room in the Roosevelt the rest of Sunday. Graham relieved the boredom by having a light snack and coffee, and taking an occasional stroll without venturing too far from the hotel. At 1:00 A.M. he paid the concierge two hundred francs to alert his room should Haussermann check out suddenly in the night, and then went to bed.

  “At 4:00 A.M. he was startled awake by a steady buzz from the telephone. His first thought was that Haussermann must be on the move again. But it was Revel.

  “Cary Bilby has been fired by his own board. Carruthers is now acting president of FBS.”

  “Is it over the tape?”

  “Yes. Bilby insisted it should be played along with the Haussermann interview as an exclusive on Philpott’s show tomorrow night. Not one member of the board supported him. They took a vote on suspending his position as president. And he was out!”

  “What about Philpott and the show?”

  “He has to confront the FBS board himself tomorrow morning.”

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3

  Rickard was last to enter the White House conference room just after 9:00 A.M. He still looked very ill as he waved the others to be seated. Present were Attorney General Roger Cardinal, Secretary of State Grove, Vice President Cosgrove, FBI Director James Dent, his secretary, Rachel Dyer, and a doctor. Rickard greeted them all cheerfully and seemed to be hiding a nervousness as he looked at a portable tape recorder in the middle of the long table opposite James Dent.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Rickard said, looking at the FBI director. “Let’s hear the damn thing.”

  There was a frigid silence as Dent reached across and pressed the starter button. The tape reel began to move. The first sound was the voice of Haussermann apparently in mid-sentence: “… admit that you ordered the death of Ronald MacGregor. You could be impeached for that.”

  Rickard’s voice was then heard: “Look. I don’t want any argument, Haussermann. You’re finished.”

  H:

  Just like Ronald MacGregor.

  R:

  Just like Ronald MacGregor.

  R:

  Is there anything else you want to tell me? Anything else you want to say?

  H:

  You’re wrong.

  R:

  I want your resignation by tomorrow … [unintelligible] … you … [garbled!] … submit … FBI and CIA …

  H:

  I see [unintelligible] … Gestapo tactics. Well, I will not go as easily as MacGregor.

  H:

  Why don’t you admit you had MacGregor assassinated?

  R:

  [slowly] I had MacGregor assassinated.

  H:

  He would have beaten you. So you had an assassin strike him down.

  R:

  I’d like you to leave now, Mr. Haussermann.

  H:

  I have evidence on MacGregor’s death.

  R:

  If you do have evidence, you had better give it to me.

  H:

  Oh, yes. So you could be smart and destroy incriminating evidence. You must be joking.

  R:

  You are talking about a very serious situation. I [unintelligible] personally ordered MacGregor’s death. It’s my responsibility … hand any relevant information to me.

  H:

  I have evidence you killed MacGregor.

  R:

  I killed MacGregor … If you have evidence then hand it in. Rachel, send in a security guard.

  Rachel Dyer (over intercom): Is everything all right?

  R:

  Absolutely. Just send one in…. Show him out, will you?

  H:

  You’re a murderer.

  R:

  I’m a murderer.

  The tape ran out. All eyes flashed to Rickard. He met each look in turn.

  “Well, as you heard, it could never have worked. Fortunately, we were tipped off about the tape.” He leaned back in his chair and pointed to the recorder. “That is what Philpott had gone to so much trouble to get for his television program tonight. Luckily FBS had their doubts about it. Electronics experts have already found anomalies.” He paused and added thoughtfully, “It makes you wonder what they may have up their sleeves.”

  “But what could they possibly hope to gain from it?” Cardinal asked. It’s so crude …”

  “I don’t think they ever intended to play it. My hunch is that it was part of a wider campaign against me.”

  “Are you going to take action against the network?” Cardinal asked.

  “I could sue them. But I’m going to sit tight for the moment. James figures that whoever is responsible for this quaint little fabrication may be linked to MacGregor’s assassination.”

  “You want Haussermann arrested and extradited?”

  “Yes, that’s our first action on this. Get him back here as soon as possible.”

  “Mr. President, if I may …” Rachel Dyer chipped in.

  “Yes, Rachel?”

  “I’m intrigued by the way Haussermann managed to tape the conversation.”

  Rickard smiled. “I wondered about that too.”

  He took a pen from his coat pocket. “He apparently used a pen-sized recorder, which he held in front of him like this for a lot of the conversation. I always wondered why he used that goddamn thing whenever I was in his presence.”

  “Did
you notice the big compliment whoever edited the tape paid Haussermann?” Grove asked the President.

  “Yes. He didn’t stutter once!”

  The President held his hands up to indicate that the meeting was over. “Roger, Ted,” he said to the attorney general and the Secretary of State, “could I have a quick word.”

  As the others left the room Cardinal and Grove moved close to the President. “I spent four hours yesterday reading the PICS report,” he said, opening a thick folder in front of him. “There is a strong case for a criminal investigation into Lasercomp. I want action on this before January. No matter what happens tomorrow we are going to give them hell well into the new year!”

  Philpott emerged from a fierce half-hour confrontation with the FBS board at noon. It had been a shattering ordeal. His hands were trembling and he felt weak at the knees.

  Philpott had tried to reason with the board. That had been useless. Any further reference to the tape, or the Paris interview, the FBS board had told him, could ruin the network. He was under orders to change the entire script for his last program, or the show would not air, and he would be fired immediately. Philpott now had to meet Carruthers at 5:00 P.M. with a completely new script.

  His first instinct was to let Huntsman know. Minutes after the confrontation, he was speeding with his script in his dark green Lamborghini toward Lasercomp’s offices.

  When Philpott reached Huntsman’s suite, the PR man and Brogan Junior were there waiting for him. He threw the script on a desk.

  “I can’t help you any more.”

  “Oh, yes you can!” Huntsman said fiercely.

  “But Mineva may lose now we can’t use the tape! I’m not going to stick my neck out and ruin everything I’ve built up …”

  “He will win!” Brogan Junior thundered. “Our calculations say there’s practically nothing between him and Rickard now!”

  “But without the tape and the interview there’s no show!”

  “Look, forget about the tape,” Brogan Junior said. “We never wanted to use it anyway. It was just part of our program to defeat Rickard.”

  Philpott was stunned and confused. For the first time he realized fully how the Brogans and Huntsman had used him as a pawn in the election battle.

  “I don’t know if I can … go on …”

  “You’re in this up to your neck,” Brogan Junior said vehemently; “you’re going through with it!”

  “Doug, you can help tip the balance. We’re going to show you how,” Huntsman added. “Think of that one and a half million in your Swiss account. I authorize it on election day.…”

  “And don’t forget your new job once this has all cooled down next year,” Brogan Junior said persuasively but with less hostility as he saw Philpott wavering. “Mineva will appoint you director of government communications. You’ll earn more money and you’ll have more power than you ever dreamed of….”

  Graham had bribed the Hotel Roosevelt concierge to alert him should Haussermann attempt to leave the hotel. Late on Monday night it paid off. Haussermann emerged from the hotel for the first time in thirty hours, and Graham made it downstairs just in time to see him get into a taxi at the front entrance. Graham ran for his Peugeot and followed Haussermann across the city to Pigalle. Haussermann got out at 4 rue Brunei, and let himself in through the large wooden door of the five-floor block of flats.

  Graham waited at the top of the avenue. When the taxi drove off, he eased about forty yards past number four at the end of the street and then turned the car around. Now what? he wondered, as he switched off the engine. Should he try to speak to him? At that moment it seemed futile. Haussermann could simply refuse to see him.

  It had begun to rain. He switched on the Peugeot’s windshield wipers. As their whirring sound accompanied the rain in a harmonious, repetitive symphony, fear struck Graham. Going over and over in his mind was the possibility of the Lasercomp-Haussermann link, and the connection between the corporation and an assassination squad. Was the triangle complete? Were Haussermann and the Director in there together?

  Inside the fourth-floor flat, Haussermann was having a double brandy. He had just told the Director of his last thirty hours.

  “Christ! I’ve been so worried that my bowels have not worked for three days!” he said, and then laughed as he let go a loud fart.

  “Ah,” he sighed, sinking back into his chair, “that’s better.”

  Seconds later he said, “Excuse me,” got up from his chair, and headed for the toilet off the hallway, taking his brandy with him.

  When he was out of sight, the Director walked over to a bureau and quietly slid open a drawer. He took out his Walther and deftly screwed on a silencer. Moving down the hall he could hear Haussermann shuffling around and humming. The moment he sat down, the Director swung the door open and took a step forward into the toilet. The assassin fired twice and the top half of the victim’s head was blown off in every direction. Little bits of hot brain, blood and bone hung from every part of the closet as Haussermann, with a sickening stench, finally relieved his constipation. Involuntarily.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Could you just pretend to be signing that again,” the White House press photographer said as he took Rickard from another angle. He was sitting at his desk in the Oval Office with Cardinal and Cosgrove. It was Monday evening, and press secretary Emmery had arranged a “business as usual” scene for release to the morning papers in his efforts to feed the media with evidence of Rickard’s recovery.

  The President, in fact, was feeling ill. The excitement and activity since the weekend had drained his limited energy. His doctor had repeatedly urged him to rest, telling Rickard not to read or watch anything to do with the election.

  Strictly contrary to this advice, the President invited Cardinal and Cosgrove to stay at the White House to watch Philpott’s program to be broadcast live from Washington. They joined him in the yellow room, the formal living room in the family quarters.

  Sitting back in a rocker, the President asked for the television set in front of him to be switched on.

  “Relax, gentlemen,” he said with a wan smile, “let’s see what our friend Mr. Philpott has done to his program.

  Three miles away in the exclusive suburb of McLean, Brogan Junior, Huntsman and Strasburg were gathered at the chief legal counsel’s home. They sat quietly in the living room as Strasburg ordered his Chinese manservant to switch on the television.

  At Black Flats, New York, Brogan Senior sat alone in the war room, exhausted after one of the most hectic days his long memory could recall. In the morning he had taken a trip to Wall Street to meet his stockbroker for a discussion about the strong rise of Lasercomp stock since its victory in the court over the government. The corporation had risen to more than 450 points for the first time in its history and was still moving up when he took a brief visit to the Exchange itself to watch the stampede to buy the stock. That exhilarating experience put extra spring into the Old Man’s step for the rest of the morning.

  He was feeling on top of the world by midafternoon when the latest Gallup Poll had Rickard’s lead down to 0.3 percent and closing. By 5:00 P.M. Brogan Senior was back to the thing he loved best—wheeling and dealing in millions of dollars, this time with a series of coded telexes from Moscow. Precisely at seven he turned up his hearing aid and began to watch the last Philpott show….

  In FBS’s studio, dressed in an unobtrusive light gray suit and floral tie, Philpott sat with legs crossed and script in hand in the middle of the brilliantly lit set. He waited, ready for the cue that would bring him into twenty million American homes.

  Behind him was a huge backdrop with two big photos of Mineva and Rickard. Around him at the ready were twenty technicians and four cameras. An assortment of cables and wires crisscrossed the studio floor in an ungainly pattern. High in the booth in front of Philpott sat frizzy-haired program director Bob Maloney, and his bespectacled young female script assistant. Above their heads were ten screen monito
rs.

  The countdown for the show began. Maloney had been instructed to keep a tight rein on the revised script of the program which had been scrutinized and approved by Carruthers. There was no reference to the tape, the Haussermann interview or any other controversial issue concerning the President and Mineva. At the first sign of any attempt by Philpott to divert from the script, Maloney was ready to take action. He was in ear-microphone touch with everyone on the studio floor, including Philpott.

  “Ready to go,” he said softly.

  The floor manager called quietly, “Okay, studio, thirty seconds to air.”

  Philpott looked up at the autocue, and was away: “Good evening, America …”

  By midnight Paris time, Graham had been sitting in the Peugeot for nearly an hour. He decided to try to get into the flat and see if he could find some clue to who was in there. But he had nothing with which to protect himself. He looked around the car, and took a jack handle from a tire-change kit in the trunk.

  Seconds later, he stood outside number four and looked at the five intercom buttons for the flats. The first three had French names. Four and five had no names. If he rang the wrong one and the Director was in there …

  He would pick one of the named flats—number three, Lefroy—and press button number two. He pressed and pressed again. A disgruntled voice said, “Oui?”

  “Lefroy,” Graham mumbled.

  The front door buzzer sounded. He pushed the door, and was in. He moved into a darkened hallway. There was a light at the elevator ten yards away and a circular stair running around it. He crept up the stairs to the floors—each one eerily lit with false Roman candles.

  Reaching the fifth floor, he stood staring at the wood-paneled door to the flat. He decided he couldn’t take the risk of the assassin’s being in there. Best, he thought, to alert Revel to Haussermann’s whereabouts and perhaps wait outside to see who eventually came out.