Conspiracy (38 page)

He shrugged modestly. “The other details are designed to keep the issue alive. The authorities who investigate later will find this grenade here in my office; they’ll find my plans with the grenade placements; and they’ll find another grenade in Rachel Quinn’s hotel suite. In Molly’s desk they’ll find notes linking her, and Rachel Quinn, and me to the CIA. Washington will deny it, of course, and they’ll be telling the truth, but the damage to America will already have been done.”

He stood up, stretched, turned to her. “Do you remember when you sat across from me in this office and speculated on the worst that could happen after the World Cup? At the time I was interested in your reaction; you see, I’d planned to have you downstairs in the producer’s chair right now. I needed someone who would keep the broadcast going at all costs, even though the sky appeared to be falling in. And your optimism when you spoke about the long-term results of a disaster here—that told me you’d function very well in a crisis. You’d believe that America would eventually come through it all stronger and better. Possibly you still believe that, even now as I’m speaking to you.”

He shook his head and smiled at her indulgently. “But you didn’t really see the big picture. You forgot that while America is struggling to recover economic strength, the Soviet Union will be flooded with new wealth. And we will not use that wealth to build luxury cars and swimming pools and other inducements for our people to become decadent. No, we shall invest in weapons research. While America is letting its defenses stagnate as it did during its last depression, we shall be the ones who are spending for the military. In a short while we shall be invulnerable to your Cruise missiles, as well as to your conventional ICBMs.”

“Then America will have only two choices. Either she will be annihilated by an attack from us that she can neither prevent nor avenge, or she will take her place as the largest of the Soviet colonies, a producer of goods and services for the New Socialist Empire of the World.”

Sharon shut her eyes, unable to listen to anymore. But Cantrell reached out for her.

She felt his fingers at her throat, tilting up her chin. The quiet, unassuming voice continued.

“You’d like to believe it couldn’t happen, of course. But it’s happening right now, Sharon. Those people you see out there in the stadium are going to die—just as you will. I didn’t plan to have you here; in fact, if you recall, I took some pains to remove you from the UBC payroll. Partly I was concerned about your preoccupation with the police and Palermo—we had planned for him to die in Seville yesterday in rather theatrical fashion. Since you were so stubbornly in love with him, it became clear that you’d have been too distraught at his death to function as a producer.”

He picked up the Cobor unit and held it inches away from Sharon’s face. “This little black box, you see, isn’t a radio receiver at all. Though it has no picture tube, nonetheless it’s a television receiver. And it’s programmed to detonate this grenade when it receives a certain few seconds of that news clip Wayne Taggart’s so positive he should broadcast. I’m afraid you won’t see the end of the game, Sharon.”

She stared wide-eyed as he put the grenade back down on the desk. 

“Then again,” he said quietly, looking out the window, “neither will anyone else. But you alone, among all the others, at the moment of your death, will know the reason why.”

Bowing from the waist, a gesture that struck Sharon as absurd to the point of madness, Cantrell touched her lightly on the cheek. 

“And now I must say goodbye. Because I like you, Sharon, I’ll tell you one last thing before I go, so you won’t die thinking that one of your fellow Americans betrayed his country. The real Ross Cantrell would never have done what I’ve accomplished. When our KGB determined that it would be useful to have a man in the upper-level circles of American petroleum management, we arranged for Ross Cantrell to come to Moscow. That was 1963. He was only a small-time operator then—virtually unknown outside of Houston, and no family.”

“We killed him, of course. I returned to take his place, and quickly made my fortune. Backed by the capital resources of the Soviet Union, I could not fail. And during my years in America, do you know that not once has anyone questioned my identity? I’ve really been surprised at how easy it is to put on the accent of the American South.”

He had crossed the carpet. Hand on the doorway to the hall, he paused. “Goodbye, Sharon,” he said.

Then he was gone.

From the television monitors came Bill Brautigam’s voice: “. . . ready to resume play for the second half in less than a minute now, with the score still knotted . . .”

16

Keith Palermo’s arrival created a small stir in the expanse of the Bernabeau Stadium press box. Along the four long tiers of chairs and writing surfaces, heads turned away from the action on the field. Typewriters were silent; descriptions of the opening ceremony and first half were halted in mid-sentence. 

Several dozen reporters got to their feet and came toward Keith, seeking interviews. Was his leg badly wounded? Was he still in fear of kidnappers and assassins? Were the rumors true about his impending marriage?

Keith smiled inwardly at the last question, thinking about the argument he’d had with Sharon about the “press conference” he’d been so adamant on having last night. Today, right here and now, he certainly had the opportunity he had wanted. Yet after a long sleep, from which he hadn’t awakened until early afternoon, he no longer felt the personal rage that had burned inside him against Farber. 

He saw the wisdom of what Sharon had pointed out. To speak of cocaine now would be to tarnish the American victory. A public confession might appease Keith’s own conscience, but it would do harm to the twenty-four other Americans on the team. The pride they felt at their own achievement, the pride their countrymen shared with them—Keith’s statement would blight that happiness and raise doubts that could never be settled.

Besides, Keith had thought of a better way to repay Farber for what he had done.

“I’ve got one statement to make,” he said. “You guys probably won’t be much interested, but I’ve decided to change my brand of shoes.”

“Somebody outbid Far-lite?” asked a sharp-eyed woman from the New York Daily News. Keith told her no, Far-lite was being very generous with their contract; it was their shoes that were the problem. He’d had an opportunity to try on a pair of another brand of American-made soccer shoes. They seemed to be of much higher quality. He had no contract arrangement with the other manufacturer, had never discussed one, and didn’t intend to. He was just going to wear their shoes instead of Far-lites. 

He wanted that on the record because there’d been a lot of Far-lite advertising lately that had used his name, and Keith didn’t want to mislead the public about his future intentions.

While he talked, he kept looking around for Sharon, but he didn’t see her.

“Going to watch the game with your TV friend?” asked the News woman, as though reading his mind. “Or are you going to stay down here with us proletarians?”

“Down here?”

“I saw her with Ross Cantrell, getting into his private elevator to ride up to his fancy glass penthouse. Just a few minutes before the game started.”

“I guess I’ll see if I can locate her,” he told the reporter.

17

“Eleven minutes remain,” Bill Brautigam’s voice chattered from the wall speakers in Cantrell’s office. “The defending champions of the world are desperately clinging to a two-to-one lead against the powerful Soviet offensive.”

Strands of perspiration-wet hair clung to Sharon’s forehead. Since the moment Cantrell had left her, she had struggled and screamed—but her muffled cries had gone unanswered. The adhesive tape that bound her to Cantrell’s big chair would not yield. Her fingers felt numbed; her arms and legs felt weakened, as though the gas had already begun its work.

Then she heard something. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. The door to the hallway, where Cantrell had gone out—the door was opening!

“Keith!” She cried his name into the tape as he came into the room. She cried his name again as with strong fingers he began to strip the adhesive from her face. The tape pulled at her skin and stung painfully as it tore away. Tears glistened in the corners of Sharon’s eyes. “Oh, Keith,” she whispered when she could finally speak. “Oh, darling, get my hands free!”

She went on, explaining as he loosened her bonds. Keith’s eyes widened in horror. “The
Patrón
!” he said. “Cantrell was the
Patrón
, and we came right back to him!”

The moment her arms were untied, Sharon reached for the Cobor grenade. “This thing will detonate in only a few minutes,” she said. “I watched a man from the Air Force take one like it apart not long ago—I hope this one is put together the same way. Hold your breath now—”

She twisted the detonator box counterclockwise, the way she had seen Dr. Ferguson do. Nothing happened. The box would not move. 

I can’t fail now,
she thought,
I just can’t
, and pulled at the box as she twisted.

Still nothing.

“It’s as if it was welded together—” And then she realized. A spring clip. They’d have to have some mechanism to keep the detonator box attached while the other mechanism was opening the valve. A spring clip. Like a childproof top on an aspirin bottle.

She pushed the box down onto the grenade, pushed hard, and turned it counterclockwise. The two pieces slid smoothly and came apart in her hands.

At the top of the grenade she could see the silvered metal wing nut, the valve that the doctor had said would release the gas if it was turned. The valve appeared to be closed, the wing nut tightened down as far as it would go.

Sharon put the grenade back on the desktop. Her hands shook with relief. “Now,” she said. “Now we call Wayne Taggart and tell him why he can’t play that newsreel tape.”

She knew the producer’s extension number in the control truck, and dialed it on Cantrell’s phone. She waited for the ring, listening. Only the clicks of the equipment. They echoed as though from far away. Then silence.

“Something’s wrong with the phone,” she told Keith, and dialed again.

Once more she heard the switches click open as the signal began to work its way through to the studio truck. Then, nothing. The call was being held up somewhere in the network of wires and relays. “We’ve got to get through to Taggart,” she said. “We can’t let him broadcast that tape!”

Keith removed the last of the adhesive from Sharon’s ankles. “I’d say we ought to go down there ourselves,” he said, getting to his feet, “but all three of the trucks are sealed off inside the tunnel. I thought you might have gone back down there earlier and tried to get in, but the guards wouldn’t let me past. I showed ’em my card and told ’em who I was, and one even recognized me. But they said they still had to follow their orders. It was all I could do to get one to open the elevator to this office with his passkey.”

“. . . and the scoreboard clock reads nine minutes, fifteen seconds of playing time . . .”

Sharon stared at the wall monitors, willing away the panic. Barely four minutes remained until Taggart would roll the tape to detonate the three grenades down there. Why wouldn’t this telephone—

Then she remembered.

“Molly!” Sharon ran for the door to the reception area. Molly knew the switchboard. Maybe there was an alternate routing that could get a call through.

Molly turned in surprise as Sharon opened the door. “Hi,” she said. “Where’s—”

“No time to explain,” Sharon interrupted. “We need you to get a call through to Wayne Taggart in the control studio. If he doesn’t hear from us within four minutes, we’re all going to die!”

Molly blinked as though she didn’t understand, but she pressed two buttons on her switchboard anyway, and picked up the receiver. She dialed Taggart’s extension.

After a moment or two she shook her head. “I remember now,” she said. “They sealed off telephone access to the studio truck when the game started. They were afraid someone from outside would know the numbers and interfere with the final telecast.”

“You mean we can’t get through?”

Molly shook her head. “I’m afraid not, honey. Now can you tell me where the boss went to, and what this is all about?”

Behind them, Sharon heard Keith’s voice. “I’ve found plans here for the stadium!”

He had spread them out on Cantrell’s coffee table. In moments, Sharon was at his side. Quickly she paged through the blue-tinted papers. “We’re looking for the field-level diagram,” she said. “That’s where—”

She had it. Not a field-level diagram after all, but a birdseye view of the stadium. Throughout the wide oval that represented the seats, small red dots had been inked in. Another red mark had been placed at the upper edge. “That’s the one in the penthouse, right here,” Sharon said, pointing at the paper. “And this dot on the field—that’s the storm drainage system. He said there were three grenades on the field level, so these two red squares must be—”

“The cameras,” Molly said from behind them.

Sharon and Keith looked up. Molly was standing in front of the door to the hallway.

The black cylinder of Cobor was in her hands.

“They’re in the field-level cameras,” Molly repeated. “And they’re going to go off without your interfering. If either of you moves, I’m going to open this valve.”

Her fingers were on the silvered wing nut.

Sharon stared, uncomprehending. “You—knew about Cantrell?”

“I was with him in Moscow twenty years ago, Sharon. I’m just as much a part of this mission as he is.”

“You’re a fool if you think that,” said Keith. “Cantrell left the grenade you’ve got there to kill you along with Sharon. If she hadn’t disconnected—”

“No.” Molly shook her head, her face obstinate. “Pyotr would not leave me here that way. He’s coming back for me. When he does, he’ll deal with the two of you, so don’t make a move.”

“I’m going to tear out this piece of paper,” Keith said evenly. “If you want to commit suicide over that, fine. Go ahead.”