by Lewis Orde
Hall grabbed a handful of hair. Hawtrey started to rise from the chair. Katherine waved a hand, and Hall released his grip. “You know me, Mr. Hawtrey. I’m not the police. I’m just a reporter after a story, the same as last time. I know most of the story already. If you help me fill in the last couple of squares, I promise that we’ll let you go before the story comes out. Then you can find your own hole to crawl into.”
Whether Hawtrey got away or not was of little concern to Katherine. At Cadmus Court she had unwittingly settled for a minnow and only half the story. This time she wanted the entire story and all the big sharks.
“John and his right-wing friends had figured out a way to save the country —”
“Right-wing friends?”
“Those MPs, Cooper and Johnson. Sir Donald Leslie, Jeffrey Dillard, that whole crowd John was friendly with. They were always discussing ways to bring Britain around to their way of thinking. They played politics like other people play chess or Monopoly. Finally, they came up with one idea they thought would work. It was as complicated as hell, and it was a long-term project, but they were all for it. They put a proposition to me. They wanted me to organize an extremist party for them, a hate group. They wanted me to find the leaders for it, then they wanted to channel funds through me to get it going.”
“So you went out and found Alan Venables, Neville Sharpe, and Trevor Burns. How did you get them interested?”
“With money, how else? John and his friends are loaded. Some of them can cough up a million pounds and not miss it.”
“Why Venables, Sharpe, and Burns?”
“We wanted an intellectual who could speak, who could really work people into a frenzy like Hitler used to do. That was Venables. We needed a communicator; that was Burns. And we needed a man who was good with finances to cover everything up, and that was Neville Sharpe.”
Katherine looked up at Barnhill standing behind her. “Remember telling me about the navy captain you met in Vietnam?”
Barnhill nodded. “The guy who’d served with George Rockwell? Looks like you’ve found your Icelandic wife.”
Katherine returned her attention to Hawtrey. “Venables, Sharpe, and Burns, they don’t have any strong political feelings, do they?”
“They learned to have them. Take Venables, for instance. He was as liberal as anyone when I first met him. He could afford to be — he was broke and living in a furnished room. I gave him a few right-wing ideas when I waved a bundle of money under his nose.”
“And the others? Burns and Sharpe?”
“For the right amount of money, they all became supporters of the master-race theory.”
“How long was this charade supposed to last?”
“Until next week.”
“Next week?”
“That’s right, election time. Edwin Johnson and Daniel Cooper head a clique of a dozen or so right-wing Conservative MPs. Four years ago . . .”
Hawtrey talked on and on, from the British Patriotic League’s initial recruiting campaign — “getting together a group of tough young thugs who’d punch and kick their way into the headlines” — to the League’s ultimate objectives. As she listened to the low monotone, Katherine saw more pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
Just after ten o’clock, Hawtrey stopped talking. Katherine turned away and gazed at the window. What had Deidre said four years earlier? Yes, that was it — before marrying John Saxon, she should have seen that he already had three loves: his business, his country, and himself. Especially his country, Katherine reflected. Deidre’s biggest bastard ever to walk this earth was looking more the part with every passing minute.
There was a telephone in the living room. Katherine dialed the number of Saxon’s London home. The call was answered on the second ring, and Katherine recognized William’s voice.
“Is Mr. Saxon there, William? This is Katherine Kassler.”
If the chauffeur was surprised at the caller, he showed no sign of it. “I’m afraid not, miss.”
“Do you know what time he’ll be in?” She looked at Hawtrey sitting in the chair. Sid Hall had a hand pressed to the fat man’s mouth in case he tried to shout a warning. “It’s urgent that I speak to him, William.”
“You might catch him at Saxon House. He said he’d be working late tonight.”
“Thank you.” She pressed the receiver rest, then dialed another number. “Lawrie, what have you got for the front page?”
“Campaign news. It’s becoming a real mudslinging fight. A Labour MP started a riot by accusing the prime minister tonight of glorying in the slaughter of the Falklands war, and seeking votes on the backs of dead and injured British troops.”
“Cut it to a paragraph and stick it inside. Then get file photographs of John Saxon, Sir Donald Leslie, Jeffrey Dillard, Edwin Johnson, Daniel Cooper . . .” She ran through the list of every notable she had ever met through Saxon. “Also photographs of the British Patriotic League executive committee. And some graphic shots of the riots they were involved in. I am going to give you a front page, and a turn to pages two and three, that will make the rest of the street throw their typewriters out of the window in absolute despair.”
Stimkin’s response to this news was a gruff “When?”
“Soon. I need to see just one more person.”
“One o’clock, Katherine. That’s as long as I’ll give you.”
Hanging up, she turned to Barnhill and Hall. “I’m driving to St. James’s Square. After that, I’ll return to the Eagle. Once I’ve got my story written, and it’s too late for anyone else to get wind of it, I’ll telephone you here to release Hawtrey.”
“If you think I’m going to let you see Saxon on your own,” Barnhill said, “you’d better think again.”
“Your job is to stay here and guard Hawtrey.”
“Sid can take care of him. I’m coming with you.”
Barnhill took two steps in Katherine’s direction. She speared his chest with a rigid index finger. She started to say “I can do this by myself,” before changing it to “This is something I have to do by myself.”
“Because of what you and —”
“Precisely. Make yourselves comfortable and listen for my phone call. I’ll ring twice, then hang up and ring again. Don’t answer for anyone else.” She hurried downstairs, climbed into the Lotus, and sped away.
As she wove in and out of the heavy traffic, her mind raced. God, how could she have been so naive? How could she have missed all the clues, all the coincidences that had punctuated her life since meeting John Saxon? She’d been so infatuated with him, and so confused with everything else, that she’d been unable to see. And even when the infatuation had worn off, had changed to irritation as she recognized his arrogance, she’d remained blind.
She slotted the Lotus into a parking spot on the east side of St. James’s Square, got out, and walked across the road to Saxon House. Looking up, she saw lights in Saxon’s top-floor office. The windows to the balcony were open. Did he admire his front garden at nighttime as well?
A night doorman was on duty. “May I help you, miss?” he asked, as Katherine sailed through the revolving door.
“I’m going to see Mr. Saxon.”
“Is he expecting you?”
“Yes.” She walked across the lobby to the elevator. Waiting for the door to open, she saw the doorman fiddling with his telephone. On the sixth floor, the elevator opened out into the reception area Katherine remembered so well, with its proud paintings of properties owned by Saxon Holdings. She recognized a new one: Saxon Tower in New York City, the curving black glass edifice on West Forty-second Street.
At this time of night, there was no receptionist to guide Katherine to Saxon’s office. She didn’t need one. She marched along the corridor flanked by glass-fronted offices and pushed back the heavy oak door. Saxon was sitting at his desk. A gold fountain pen was poised in his hand as he studied a set of blueprints.
“Hello, Katherine,” he said without looking up.
“William phoned to say you were asking for me. The doorman also warned me that a young woman was on the way up. What can I do for you?”
She opened her handbag and pulled out the photographs she had shown Hawtrey. “What do you have to say about this, you despicable bastard?”
The pen dropped from Saxon’s hand. His head shot up from the blueprints. His astonishment at being addressed so rudely was nothing compared to his shock at seeing the photographs. He picked them up. Eyes wide in stunned surprise, he looked at Katherine.
“It’s you, isn’t it, John? You and your friends. You’re the ones behind the British Patriotic League. All those clues you gave me, and I was too stupid to see them. Remember the night the pendant was stolen? When I got to your home in Marble Arch, you were watching the football riot on television. You never watched television as a rule, but you were watching that! Something important, that’s how you described it. Damn right it was important. It was the start of the League’s campaign to kick its way into the public eye.”
Saxon regained some composure. “Are these photographs supposed to signify something to me, Katherine?”
She ignored his question. “The Eagle started its probe of soccer hooliganism. We made the link between the thugs and the League. That’s when you started criticizing the work I was doing. You said by publicizing the League I’d only help them get more recruits. And when you saw you couldn’t stop me, you tried to persuade me to quit the Eagle altogether, remember? I thought you were genuinely concerned about my career, but all you were doing was trying to stop me digging further. Your friend Jeffrey Dillard, he was in on it, wasn’t he? He’s a part of this, so it was easy to offer me a job on ‘Fightback’. Then later, when I was taking over the show from Jeffrey, and I was dithering about poaching Derek Simon and Heather Harvey from the Eagle to be my research assistants, you urged me to go ahead. And why? Because you knew Derek and Heather had taken up where I’d left off on the League investigation. Congratulations, John! I took your advice, and the investigation was sabotaged again.”
Katherine rested her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned over Saxon. “And what you did to Sidney Glassman was shameful. He was a good man, and you helped to ruin him. Who gave Jeffrey the information about Sidney Glassman’s son Melvin? Was it William, who made a science of discovering blackmail secrets among your business competitors?” She saw Saxon flinch at that, and she smiled coldly. “Oh, yes, I spoke to Deidre again. This time I picked her memory clean, and I believed every detestable thing she had to say about you. It wasn’t a case of Jeffrey wanting revenge on Glassman for some election defeat back in 1964, was it? You all wanted the total destruction of Glassman because he’d helped my father organize those rock concerts to combat the League’s ‘Youth for Britain’ rallies. After I’d turned down Jeffrey’s original suggestion for the Glassman story, you made damned sure he got the opportunity to run it by persuading me to go to New York with you!”
Katherine stepped back a pace, and caught her breath. “And the worst thing of all, you swine, was Brian Waters. Why did Brian die, John? Was it because of his feud with Ginger, like you tried to convince me it was? Or did he die because you knew he was my source within the League, within the British Brigade?”
She did not expect Saxon to answer, but he did. “Ginger warned Venables that Brian wasn’t to be trusted. Venables had to be sure, though. I found out the truth for him. From you.”
“Who decided Brian had to die?”
“We all did, Katherine,” Saxon stated in a remarkably calm voice. “My associates and the League’s executive committee. Each of us had as much to lose as the other. Venables and Ginger saw to it. Then, while we were thinking of a way to make sure Ginger never talked, old Archie Waters obligingly helped us out.”
“What about the personal attacks on my father? Were they joint decisions as well?”
“That was Venables’s doing. He wanted revenge on you for the way you made him look a fool that morning at the BBC. And he wanted revenge on your father because of the manner in which the Eagle had hounded him. I tried to warn you during the Falklands business, only you weren’t in the mood to take advice. But that’s all in the past now, isn’t it?” Saxon said as he stood up. “What we have to concern ourselves with now is how you intend to use all this information.”
“How do you think I’m going to use it? In a front-page story, of course! But first, let me make sure I’ve got it all straight. I wouldn’t want to damage your reputation by libeling you, would I?” she asked sarcastically. “Those bigots who actually support the British Patriotic League — all the candidates for the election, and the morons who’ll vote for them — they don’t realize that they’re being used. They think they’re part of a genuine political movement, when really it’s nothing more than a carefully constructed charade. A prop to help a clique of reactionary Conservative MPs, led by Edwin Johnson and Daniel Cooper, gain influence within the party. The League was never supposed to win any seats, was it? It was just meant to indicate a groundswell extremist support, so that the Johnson/Cooper clique could push Conservative policy and thinking further and further to the right. Just how far to the right did you and your friends intend to take the Conservative Party, John?”
Saxon made no attempts at denial. “Until supreme power rests in the hands of the industrialists. Until the unions are abolished. Until we have a productive country where able-bodied people work, and where only the sick and helpless are given a free ride.”
“That’s classic Fascism. The corporate state.”
“Give it any name you like, Katherine, but it’s the only chance this country has.” Saxon’s voice turned sharp. “For God’s sake, you should be able to understand that. Look at your father, and look at me. We’re two very similar men. We built something, and we have to protect it constantly against those who would steal it from us.”
Outrage flared within Katherine. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to my father! He would never dream of doing the things you’ve done.” She forced herself to be calm again. She wanted all the answers before she could afford herself the luxury of anger. “Tell me something, John. All those times you said you loved me — was that the truth, or were you using our relationship as yet another method of throwing a spanner into the Eagle’s investigation?”
“I did love you, Katherine. If you hadn’t been so damned loyal to a handicapped husband, I would have married you. But you wanted to stand by that cripple, didn’t you? You spent all your time dreaming up alibis for the evenings you were with me, events you needed to cover for the newspaper so Franz’s feelings would not be hurt. You cared more about sparing his feelings than you ever damn well cared about mine! That was why I came to the house. I wanted him to see me, because I wanted him to think that you and I were having an affair. Then he might do the decent thing and kill himself. Did he, Katherine? Did Franz somehow set that fire, or did we just get lucky?”
“You bastard!”
She jumped at him. He shoved her back, sending her crashing to the floor. “You’ve done enough talking; now it’s my turn.”
As Katherine struggled to get up, Saxon reached into the center drawer of his desk. His hand came out holding a small automatic pistol. “I’d give anything to turn back the clock, Katherine, but we both know that can’t be done. And we also know that I can’t afford to allow you to walk out of here to publish your story. There’s far too much at stake.”
In the brown eyes that had once expressed compassion, Katherine now saw only madness. “You’d kill me?”
Saxon nodded slowly.
Stunned by the sight of the gun, Katherine forced her mind to function. “And how would you get rid of me, John? Throw me over the balcony into your front garden, and hope the police are stupid enough to think I fell from a different floor? And what about the gun? Do you think the police couldn’t match up the bullets from it? They’ll know within five minutes that any bullets in me” — she felt herself shiver — “would have come from
your gun.”
The telephone on Saxon’s desk began to ring. He ignored it. “Do you take me for a total idiot, Katherine? This gun doesn’t belong to me. It’s yours.”
“Mine?”
He kept the gun pointed unwaveringly at her chest. “It’s not registered to me. I don’t have a certificate for it. It was something William came by one day. He thought I should keep it here, in case something happened on one of the nights that I worked late. Like tonight, for instance. But it was you who came up here with this gun, wasn’t it, Katherine? You came with the gun looking to kill me. I tried to wrest it away from you, and in the ensuing struggle, the gun went off. Unfortunately, it was pointed in your direction at the time.”
Katherine kept her eyes fastened on the weapon. The moment it moved, the instant Saxon’s hand trembled, she’d leap for it. Try to knock it away from him and hope that in the time it took him to recover, she could run or scream for help. Until then, keep him talking. “Why would I have come looking to kill you? What motive would I have had?”
“Jealousy, of course. The curse of the rejected woman.”
Despite the terrifying predicament, Katherine laughed. “I threw you out, John, don’t you remember? How could you possibly convince even the most naive police investigator that I was jealous of you?”
He stepped back to the desk, felt behind him until he found what he wanted. “Here.” He flipped a white card to Katherine. “Read what’s on there, and you’ll see why you’re jealous.”
Very slowly, she picked up the card. It was a wedding announcement. John Saxon to Susan Beasley. “You met her once, Katherine. At the Mayfair Hotel, when you were with that American. We’re getting married next month. Aren’t you going to wish me good luck? No, of course you wouldn’t wish me good luck. You’re jealous, you’re mad at me for marrying another woman, and that’s why you came up here with this gun. To kill me. If you couldn’t have me, then no woman could.”
The telephone continued to ring as Katherine desperately sought to stall for time. “I’m happy to see your ego hasn’t shrunk at all, John. That was what I liked most about you, your ego. It was big enough for both of us, with enough left over for the rest of the country.”
