(1982) The Almighty (15 page)

‘What do you think he’s found out?’

‘Some hint of Carlos’s next move, I hope.’

‘God, I’m nervous.’

‘Let me treat you to a drink.’ He started for the refrigerator.

‘Maybe this could be our big break, Nick.’

‘Sure. The Pulitzer, at least.’

The time was six minutes to five o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at the entrance to the California Hotel.

They paused briefly under the glass canopy of the hotel while Victoria took the compact out of her leather purse, snapped it open, examined herself in the mirror. She licked her upper lip, put away her compact, pushed back a strand of her long blond hair.

She became aware that Ramsey was eyeing her critically. ‘What’s the matter?’ she wanted to know.

‘Next time, do your hair up in a bun or something before we go out,’ he said..

‘Why? Is it unattractive to you?’

‘The opposite. The long hair attracts too much attention. You don’t look like a wife - or an undercover agent.’

‘I’m neither,’ she snapped, but he had her arm and was leading her inside.

The stretch of lobby, caught between day and night, was dusky. They went past the nearest desk, where a uniformed concierge was marking directions on a map of Paris for a tourist, on past the reception desk largely obscured by a registering company of Japanese, to the metal grille of the elevator.

Ramsey pressed the button. ‘Remember, this is the ground or first floor. You’ll find Room 110 on the next floor.’

‘Nick, I’ve been to Paris as many times as you have. I know how they count floors here.’

‘Sorry. Now, when you get to his room the door will be unlocked. Go straight in. You have the money?’

She patted her swollen purse.‘Right here. Nick, what if he’s not there? Do I hang around?’

‘No, come back.’ He watched the elevator descending, ‘Don’t worry, Ahmet will be there.’

‘I’m to write down what he has to say first, and then I’ll pay him.’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘What if - if his information isn’t anything much?’

‘Pay him anyway. He’ll mean well. We want to keep the contact.’

The elevator had ground into place. Ramsey opened the grilled outer gate to let her inside. About to enter, she said, ‘Nick, where will I meet you?’

His head indicated an archway behind him. ‘The dining room and bar are back there. I’ll be in the bar.’ He closed the grille. ‘Push the button for the first floor. Good luck.’

She saw his comforting figure disappear as the elevator rose and seconds later jarred to a halt at the first floor. She left it, read the sequence of room numbers, and walked down the dim corridor to Room 110.

The door was closed. She wondered whether she should rap. She gripped the doorknob and turned it. The door opened. She stepped inside the bedroom and closed the door.

The old-fashioned room was obscured in shadow, no windows except the drape-covered french doors undoubtedly overlooking a court below. She could hear the monotonous splashing of a fountain in the court. Some sparse illumination was coming from a low-wattage bulb in the lamp standing between the door and a large brass double bed. She could make out a mirrored green-painted armoire and a stiff settee covered in maroon velour. The room seemed unoccupied, and then her gaze lighted on him. He was on the other side of the bed, in an armchair, bent forward, apparently changing his shoes.

‘Ahmet,’ she called out, ‘it’s Mrs. Ramsey -‘

She went around the brass bed, unclasping her purse to bring out her notebook and pen, and was halfway there when she became aware of the silence. He had not acknowledged her.

‘Ahmet,’ she said again, and stopped midway, waiting for his response.

Silence.

He had not moved, not straightened up to greet her. He was immobile.

She edged several steps closer to him. She could see him clearly now, the top of his head, his shoulders.

The hilt of the knife stuck in his back.

She strangled her scream. Her body went numb. She froze. The one sound in the room seemed to be her thumping heartbeat.

‘Oh, God,’ she gasped.

At once, cold fear. Was there someone else in the room? The assassin? She animated herself to find him. There was no one, just herself and the corpse.

She forced herself unsteadily nearer until she could make out the darkish drying blotches around the knife, everywhere around his torn sweater, numerous stab wounds.

She backed off, willed herself to kneel so that she could see his face, to make out if he was still alive. His eyes were white sunken ovals in his brown flesh, the pupils almost gone, the eyes sightless. The mouth hung gaping, a thick trickle of blood from it clotted on his chin.

Horror-stricken, she recoiled to an upright position, spun about on rubbery legs, her foot hitting the cowboy hat on the carpet, and rushed to the door. At the last moment, conditioned by years of murder-mystery movies and novels, she held back, hunting in her purse for a handkerchief. With shaking hand she wiped her fingerprints from the doorknob, pulled the door open, searching to left and right in ,the corridor. There was no one in sight. She stepped into the hall, shut the door after her, and wiped the knob on the outside of the door.

Trying to regain her poise, she fled.

A half hour later, still trembling, she was in the secure haven of the Plaza Athenee suite with Ramsey. Pouring herself a straight gin at the refrigerator, drinking it, she could

hear Ramsey on the telephone with New York. He had awakened Edward Armstead at his private home number, and had been telling him of the informant contacted and the informant found dead.

Victoria continued drinking as she walked into the sitting room of the suite.

Ramsey was saying into the telephone, ‘Okay, Mr. Armstead, we’ll stay in place until we hear from you. Goodbye.’ He hung up.

‘I - I’ve never seen a dead person before,’ Victoria said.

Ramsey sat on the sofa, staring at the carpet. ‘I guess Carlos has given us his answer,’ he said. ‘Armstead says stay away, research other terrorist groups, until we hear from him with a definite assignment.’ Ramsey looked up at Victoria. ‘You’ve never seen anyone dead before? You’ll see more.’ He placed his flattened hands on his knees, pushed himself up and off the sofa. He reached for Victoria’s glass and took a swallow, and handed it back. ‘I’d better have a couple on my own. And your hair - yes, do it up next time.’

The reality of the murder in faraway Paris had not penetrated Edward Armstead’s mind until that evening at dinner in New York.

He had invited Harry Dietz to join him at Nanni Al Valletto after work. It was a cozy, quiet Italian restaurant on Sixty-first Street, not far off Park Avenue and a short walk from the office. It was a nice place to talk, and Armstead wanted to talk tonight to the one person in the world he could fully trust. He guessed that it might be the most important talk he had ever had with anyone in his life.

Watching Dietz being served, Armstead regarded his confidant with affection. He knew full well now that Dietz’s dedication to him was the meaning of Dietz’s life. Before embarking on this crucial conversation, Armstead once more assessed his associate’s loyalty and their relationship to each other. Dietz’s selfish, disinterested mother, a spare hatchet of a woman, had raised her son through correspondence with a series of boarding school headmasters. Dietz had grown loveless and friendless to maturity, and not until Armstead (who understood such deprivation) had seen valuable qualities in him, and given him a job in Chicago that provided

faith and respect, had Dietz been so close to another human being. From the start, Armstead had perceived, Dietz had loved him, even worshipped him, and would have done anything to please him, even kill his own mother (whom he hated, anyway) or himself for the authority figure who had given him identity and purpose. In turn, welcoming a subordinate who could be an ally, a sounding board, an errand boy, Armstead had been unfailingly considerate of his assistant. Both men understood that their relationship gave each of them someone, and it worked. Now that Armstead had at last come to a position of power, inherited a great enterprise, he felt that he had the confidential companion and alter ego he would require readily at hand and groomed for a great role.

Yes, Armstead reassured himself, his plan was safe with Harry Dietz.

Not until he was consuming his spaghetti - Armstead had ordered spaghetti and meat sauce for his entire entree - did he begin to relate to Dietz what had happened to Ramsey and Victoria in Paris.

‘The informant had something about Carlos that he was ready to pass on to Ramsey for the money,’ Armstead was saying. ‘The informant wanted Victoria to be the go-between. So she went up to his hotel room and found the informant all right, only he couldn’t tell her anything. He was sitting there dead, murdered.’

Harry Dietz’s eyebrows shot up. ‘No kidding? Murdered?’

‘Stabbed between the shoulder blades. Stone cold dead. There was nothing Victoria could do but get out of there fast. Empty-handed.’ Armstead brought a napkin to his lips, replaced it neatly across his lap. ‘That’s the big leagues we wandered into, Harry. They play for keeps.’

‘They sure do.’

‘I knew it was for real from the beginning,’ said Armstead, eating once more, ‘yet I didn’t. It was an assignment. Even the murder sounded like a paper murder. But it’s finally got to me. That was a human being they killed.’

‘It was, Chief.’

‘It also made me realize that they were sending me a message. Stay away. Don’t poke around in Carlos’s affairs. Unless you want to get killed, too.’

‘I guess that’s the message.’

‘With no uncertainty,’ said Armstead. ‘And I’m sure every other active terrorist group will have the same message for us.’

‘No question,’ agreed Dietz.

‘That’s what gave me my great idea,’ said the publisher. ‘That’s why I wanted to have this talk with you tonight.’

‘What do you have in mind, Chief?’

‘A tremendous idea. Actually I got the idea, the glimmerings of it, after our Yinger beat. The Yinger success made me realize that exclusive stories don’t just happen. You have to make them happen, the way we did, and that way we trounced the Times and every paper in town.’ He rested his fork and tablespoon on the plate and leaned closer to his assistant. ‘You see, Harry, even before sending Ramsey and the Weston girl to Paris, I anticipated that nothing positive would come of their investigation. I sensed right away that no terrorist group anywhere would give us anything. But I wanted to be certain. That’s why I sent our reporters over there. To find out. So they found out all right.’

‘They sure as hell did.’

‘Terrorist groups do their own thing for whatever reasons. They’re not interested in us or our problems. To them, we’re only obstructionists. They prefer to be on their own. Once they do what they plan to do, it is news of course, big news, but it is news that every paper in the world publishes at the same time. Those terrorists are not handing out exclusives to anyone.’

‘They’re useless,’ said Dietz.

‘Exactly,’ said Armstead. ‘Just the way most of the upcoming news is useless for our purposes. I was going through our future file the other day to see what’s coming up. There’s a lot coming up, certainly. The king of Spain is scheduled for a visit to the Basque country. There’s going to be a nuclear disarmament conference in Switzerland. The prime minister of Israel is arranging for another meeting in Cairo. There’s talk of the Pope going to Lourdes. All of it news. None of it exclusive. We’ll report it, the New York Times will report it, everyone will report it. Some papers will exaggerate or distort their stories to make them seem newsier, exclusive, but none of them will be. They’ll all be exactly the

same stuff in print and on TV.’ Armstead unpeeled’a cigar, and pointed it toward Dietz. ‘Harry, there’s no real news -unless you make it yourself.’

‘I’m trying to follow you, Chief.’

‘Follow me closely. The whole impact of it, of what should be done, hit me last night after I finished screwing Kim. How did we get the big beat on Yinger? By making it happen, by making it become our exclusive news. You saw the results. We zoomed to the top. I saw at once that I had to pick up where I left off with that one. I thought of trying to work with some well-known terrorist group. I had a gut feeling that this was the wrong way to go. Now my feeling has been confirmed. It is the wrong way to go. But there’s a right way. When a story happens, it’s your own. Do you get the idea, Harry?’

‘Vaguely. How - how do you make it happen, Chief?’

‘By having your own terrorist group to make news for you,’ said Armstead quietly. ‘The existing groups won’t cooperate. So we buy our own. Our own does what we tell it to do. The news it creates is exclusively our own. That could keep us Number One in New York and make us the top-selling paper in the world. What do you think, Harry? Is it harebrained? Yinger wasn’t. Is this?’

Dietz was shaking his head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not, Chief. It is a big idea, the biggest. A perfect concept. I think you’re on the right track, but -‘ He hesitated.

‘But what?’ Armstead wanted to know.

‘Can it be done?’

‘It has been done - with Yinger.’

‘I mean, getting a terrorist group. Where do we start?’

‘With Gus Pagano,’ Armstead said instantly. ‘There’s where we start. Presuming we still have the goods on him.’

‘We have.’

Armstead smiled complacently and held a flame to his cigar. ‘Then that’s where we start.’

All through the night, Edward Armstead slept and awakened with the notion that he was onto something earth-shattering, a big idea that Gus Pagano could make possible. The immediate question was: Did Pagano have any important criminal connections or would he be acquainted with only the

underworld small-fry? Given the important criminal connections, the more vital question was: Could he be trusted?

Then Armstead remembered the file folder on Pagano that Dietz had left for him. Having read it, Armstead knew that Pagano could be trusted. Reassured, he had fallen into a sound sleep.

Early the next morning, Armstead received Pagano in his office. Armstead knew that he would have to be frank with Pagano, but at the outset he was satisfied to nurse the informer along. They were drinking the coffee that had been placed on the desk between them. They had little in common with each other except for the fact that Pagano was on the payroll of the Reco.d, so they talked about that: