Program for a Puppet

by Roland Perry

  Just as he turned to go downstairs, he heard the whirr of the elevator. Someone had called it. But from which floor? Graham got halfway down the stairs to the fourth floor and then froze. Below him and through the wire mesh of the shaft, he could see a man standing at the gate. He was pulling on gloves. Graham crouched down to see the man’s face. It resembled a description and Identikit photograph embedded in his memory forever. It had to be the Director! His first thought was to rush down and bash him with the jack handle. But Graham knew he would be spotted easily if he moved just two more paces down. The elevator reached the fourth floor. The Director placed a suitcase in it and got in. Graham could see him push the ground-floor button. The elevator began its descent. Graham leaped down and struggled with the gate. It wouldn’t budge. He wedged the jack handle into it and pushed with all his strength. The locking device broke. The gate opened, and the elevator halted with a hideous grating sound that reverberated up and down the shaft. It was stuck between the second and third floors.

  The Director ran his fingers across the buttons for each floor and the one marked Emergency. He shook the elevator gently at first, then hard.

  Graham’s fear turned into exhilaration. He had him! He had to get the police!

  “Get me out!” the Director yelled in French. He yelled again, and then cursed in German. Seconds later a woman on the second floor opened the door to her apartment.

  “What’s wrong?” she called.

  “I’m stuck,” the Director said.

  Graham made a sound on the shaft cage and yelled in French: “What’s going on?”

  “I am stuck in this thing!” the Director called, as he looked up to where the voice had come from. ‘Can’t you see?’ Please get me out!”

  “Ah! Mon Dieu! Another failure,” Graham said, as he moved down the spiral staircase. “Do not worry, monsieur, we shall get you out in no time!” As he scurried past the Director he waved two reassuring hands at him so his face was partially hidden. He reached the woman on the second floor. She was standing in a doorway clutching her dressing gown.

  “I’ll need help,” he said, and beckoned her to follow. When they reached the first floor, Graham said urgently in a half whisper, “Do not go near that man! Do not help him! He is a murderer!” The woman started with horror.

  “I am going to get the police. If anyone tries to help him, stop them. Scream your lungs out! But don’t go near him!”

  She nodded, wide-eyed and mouth open.

  Graham raced to the front entrance and sprinted down rue Brunel to the Peugeot. He fumbled the driver door open and grabbed the radio-telephone.

  “Help! Please help!”

  “Who is this?” the radio control officer at Paris police HQ said. He was surprised at not getting the normal signal on a top priority frequency used by French Intelligence.

  Graham had to say something sensational to get somebody there. “There has been a murder! Get somebody to four rue Brunel, Pigalle, fast … please! Four rue Brunel. I have the murderer trapped in the elevator.”

  “Monsieur, please, your name?”

  “Graham. For Chrissakes get someone here!”

  “Gray-Am?”

  “Yes!”

  “How did you get on this frequency?”

  “I helped Colonel Guichard get Rodriguez. He gave me this car and the radio link …”

  “Colonel Guichard?”

  “Yes! Are you getting help here?”

  “As fast as we can, monsieur.’

  Graham swung around to face the building as he heard a gun report.

  Inside, the Director, still trapped, was desperate. He had fired up the shaft to get attention again. Those two people who went to get the elevator going; where were they? He shook the elevator violently. A half-dressed man poked his head out of a door on the first floor. The woman Graham had left shivering there screamed at him, “Don’t help him! He is a murderer! He has a gun!”

  “I’ll get the police!”

  “Yes! Yes! Call the police!”

  “Come in! He may shoot you!” the man said.

  The woman obeyed. The man looked in a directory and phoned the local police.

  Outside, Graham was still trying to get help. “The man is armed! I heard a shot!” he yelled.

  “Who, monsieur? Who is armed?”

  “The man trapped in the elevator … God! If he gets out… can you get Guichard?”

  “There is help on the way.”

  A police car, siren blaring, hurtled around the corner into rue Brunel. Graham jumped from the Peugeot and ran around to the driver’s side. Urgently but precisely, he explained that an armed man was trapped in the elevator. Then they heard another shot. The two policemen in the car groped for their holstered guns, clambered out and ran toward the doorway of the building. Graham scuttled back into his car as another police car appeared. The first two policemen on the scene shouted to the other car which radioed for more help.

  Graham grabbed the radio-telephone again. “Hallo. This is Graham again. The police are here. But I think you should try to get Colonel Guichard.”

  “Mr. Graham, I’m on the way,” a voice said. It was the colonel. “Who is it you have trapped?”

  “The Director! It’s him! I’m sure!”

  Seven minutes later, Guichard arrived with several of his men to take control. Two police were at ground-floor level with guns trained up the shaft. The elevator was still perched between the second and third floors. There had not been a sound from it since the second shot. The Director inside was waiting and listening, his Walther at the ready.

  Graham briefed Guichard at the entrance to the building and the colonel went quickly into action. He turned to one of his men. “Get in through the fifth floor. Take five with you.”

  It took them ten minutes to scale the outside façade of the building with the help of people on each floor who had stayed in their rooms when they heard gunfire and the arrival of police cars. Weapons were passed up. A few minutes later the six men were crouched, guns at the ready, in the hallway and on the stairs at the third-and fourth-floor levels, waiting for Guichard’s orders.

  He edged toward the elevator at ground level.

  “The building is surrounded,” Guichard called. “We are above you and below you. You cannot escape. Are you going to surrender?”

  The Director, crouched low in the elevator, didn’t reply.

  “You have a choice,” Guichard said. “You can either surrender, or we’ll come and get you. What’s it to be?”

  There was no response. Beckoning to one of his men, the colonel whispered, “Go up the stairs, but don’t take any risks. Be careful.”

  The man, gun at the ready, edged his way up step by step. He reached the second-floor hallway. The Director spotted his shadow on the wall. The split second the man appeared, the Director fired and hit him in the shoulder. He staggered back to the ground floor and was helped outside to a waiting ambulance.

  The colonel decided to move in. He sent word for the gate to be closed on the fourth floor. All guns trained on the shaft as the gate was slid across. The elevator recommenced its descent. But only a foot, as the Director pushed the stop button. A police officer rushed up to the second floor and fired up the shaft at the Director, and missed. The Director returned fire and hit him in the stomach. He tumbled back down the stairs. Guichard pushed the call button again. The Director scrambled to stop the descent once more, and the elevator shuddered to a halt after going another two feet.

  Guichard saw the second injured man carried out on a stretcher. He gave a silent hand signal, waited thirty seconds, and then pushed the call button.

  The Director had his left hand over the stop button. He turned and fired up as he heard a shuffling sound on the stairs above him. The distraction gave five others just enough time to get a bead on him. The Director, quick as a cat, pivoted around to see figures coming at him up and down the stairs. He fired blindly as shots were angled into the elevator from every direction.
Seconds later there was silence.

  “We got him!” one of Guichard’s men yelled.

  The colonel pushed the call button for the last time, and the elevator made a painfully slow descent to ground level.

  At Guichard’s request, an officer hurried out of the building and called Graham in. Without a word, the colonel led him over to the elevator. The first thing Graham saw was the Director’s right hand which still gripped the Walther. He looked at the bullet-ridden body, then the bloodied face, and quickly jerked his head away to avoid vomiting. A stray bullet had snapped open the suitcase the Director had with him. Photographs were scattered on the floor of the lift. Graham slowly picked one up, looked at it for several seconds, and then handed it to Guichard. It was a hazy Polaroid shot of Les Innocents restaurant.

  Across the Atlantic, Philpott’s makeshift show was running smoothly to a finish. Program director Maloney considered it had been as fair and balanced as the FBS board had wanted.

  “Three, move in now,” he ordered the camera to Philpott’s right so that the commentator’s face filled the screen. Despite the heavy make-up, he appeared drawn and blanched. The mouth was taut and a little line of sweat beads had appeared on his top lip. After an uncomfortably long pause in which Maloney was nearly compelled to switch to a longer shot with another camera, Philpott looked up.

  “Tomorrow ninety million Americans go to the polls …” he said hesitantly.

  Maloney was alerted to an improvization, and the strain in Philpott’s voice. He grabbed the script from his assistant as the commentator stared down the lens.

  “Are you okay?” Maloney yelled into the microphone.

  Philpott didn’t register a flicker as Maloney punched a button. The commentator leaned forward speaking quickly and precisely.

  “I have proof that Rickard had MacGregor assassinated. The tape I brou—”

  Philpott’s head disappeared. A sign appeared: Due to a technical fault we are temporarily off the air. Seconds later there was a commercial. The sound track began: “Fighting for tomorrow today, and your future: The Lasercomp Corporation.”

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4

  Philpott’s accusation shocked America. Television, radio and newspaper switchboards were jammed as people tried frantically to find out more.

  FBS’s Carruthers was quick to make a statement refuting Philpott’s comments. But Lasercomp’s PR network quickly counteracted this. Bilby released a press statement saying that he fully defended Philpott’s editorial freedom to present important issues “in the public interest.” He said they had both been the victims of a “conspiracy” by the White House to interfere in FBS’s independence, and that was why he had been forced to resign his job.

  All Lasercomp’s influential media connections kept the speculation about the veracity of Philpott’s accusation going well into election day. This forced other media outlets to carry the sensational story and continue to investigate it. The corporation was using all its media muscle to exploit the situation it had created.

  The nation’s leading newscaster had forsaken his neutral position and made real political news himself. Everyone wanted to speak to him, but he had gone into hiding. Every few hours a statement was released by a Philpott “connection” supporting his comments, which added that he would break the details of the story within a few days. He was in hiding, the report said, because he feared for his life. Reports of Haussermann’s brains being blown out in a Paris apartment appeared to back up Philpott.

  Rickard had been confined to bed at the White House following a slight relapse. Fortunately for the President, his doctor had been close at hand when Philpott’s show was over. He had managed to quickly calm Rickard and drug him to sleep. He was not allowed to receive any more information about Philpott’s comments or the progress of the election. The White House went into a panic trying to cover up the President’s illness, saying he was resting completely until the result of the vote was known.

  How much the whole Philpott affair had affected the vote as 136,700,000 Americans went to the polls became the number-one news point concerning the election. By 10:00 P.M. Eastern time on election day, television newscasters were predicting that their network’s computers would soon be telling them the result as the electoral college votes for the states rolled in.

  In the war room at Black Flats, the Brogans, Huntsman and Strasburg were watching the four networks on sets beneath the large screen which showed the PPP’s prediction that Mineva would win. As each state’s final score came up it was checked against the Cheetah PPP prediction.

  “That’s most of the states in and the PPP right every time,” Brogan Senior said, intently leaning forward in his seat at the semicircular table facing the screen.

  “It hinges on New York, Texas, and Illinois now,” Huntsman said nervously. “Mineva has to win two of them. And he is home.”

  “We say he takes Illinois and Texas,” Brogan Junior said calmly.

  The lights went up for Rickard in New York and Mineva in Texas. The tension mounted. Minutes later, all the television network’s computers gave Illinois to Mineva. He had won.

  The Program for a Potential President was over.

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5

  Graham switched on the radio in the Peugeot as he sped along the Autoroute du Sud on the five-hundred-mile journey to Montpellier, and Françoise.

  A 6:00 A.M. news report told him of Mineva’s victory, now official in the U.S. Lasercomp had won.

  All Graham’s feelings of relief after the liquidation of the assassins evaporated. He flicked off the radio in disgust. The Australian began to worry about the consequences of the result, but quickly tried to put them out of his mind for the moment. Colonel Guichard had given him the car for a couple of weeks in gratitude for his help in finding and eliminating Rodriguez and the Director. He had got away to an early morning start in search of some real relaxation in the south of France. As the dawn of a clear day broke and the first signposts for Montpellier came up, Graham was brightened and excited by the anticipation of seeing the loving and warm Françoise. After his vacation he would turn his mind to the daunting task of writing the story of the whole investigation. Perhaps the story was not yet over.

  About the same time, the wheels of an Aeroflot jet from Moscow screeched to a halt at Charles de Gaulle airport, and the smoke from the tires wafted along the runway. Minutes later the passengers, mainly Russians and French, were filing down the steps. Almost indistinguishable in the long line of innocent-looking businessmen was the stocky, baggy-suited figure of KGB assassin Anatoli Bromovitch.