The Assassin (10 page)

‘He's an egghead, right-wing Republican. The magazine is an influential monthly, mostly concerned with politics. Why? Does he smell?'

‘Never mind why,' Leary said. ‘He just does. That's what interests us in Miss Cameron. Would you say they were sleeping together?'

‘Unlikely,' Mathews said. ‘It took all my charm to make it; maybe he's got a lot of charm. But it doesn't sound like her. She never went for older men and this guy's well in his fifties, isn't he?—I don't know, of course, but I wouldn't think so.'

‘Could you go and see her? Talk to her—would she talk to you?'

‘I don't know,' Mathews hesitated. ‘I could try, anyway, if that's what you want. Just brief me.'

‘Okay. Sound her out about King. If she's involved, leave it alone. But strictly alone, understand. If she's not, get her to come round and see me. I have something to show her which might interest her. But keep that to the last. Just make contact and scout the land first.'

‘All right, Mr Leary. I'll call her this morning. Ask her out to lunch.'

When Mathews had left his office, Leary got out a file from his top drawer. It was a new file, with a green sticker, marking it extremely confidential and most secret. The name of Eddi King was printed on a little card slotted in the cover. There was not much inside. Everything Leary had been able to gather about King was on the three sheets of paper. He had begun the investigation in a hurry, and these things needed lots of time and patience. He glanced through it again. King came from Minneapolis; his birth date was given as December 9th, 1918. Educated at Minneapolis High School and Wisconsin College. Parents died in late '28, King being the only child inherited the whole estate. Worked for ten years with a publishing firm in New York, now extinct, and then went to Europe; interned in France during the war. Returned to the U.S. in 1956. Not married, started magazine in '58. Has address in New York, and a weekend house at Vermont. Close friend of Huntley Cameron and frequenter of right-wing circles. Ref.
Time Magazine
Nov. '67 issue. No scandals or deviations apparent from the first checking. Lately escorted Elizabeth Cameron, with whom he flew to Beirut for a week's holiday. And that was all his people had uncovered. And there wouldn't have been a file on King at all except for a report received from Leary's own agent in the Sûreté in Paris. The C.I.A. were often accused of penetrating and subverting the intelligence services of other countries and inducing agents to act for them. It was accused of many unorthodox and ungentlemanly acts, and it was Leary's private boast that much of what was said was true. He had men working within the French intelligence who passed on anything they thought might interest the C.I.A. And it was one item in just such a report that was pinned to the bottom of the last page on Eddi King. The proprietress of a fashionable Paris brothel had mentioned in her report to the Sûreté that the leading French communist Marcel Druet had visited the establishment in order to meet an American called King. Leary's man had followed the lead right up to the cab which took King back to his hotel, the next morning, and identified him from the hotel register. That was the smell Leary had in his nostrils. Druet was one of their top men. He didn't go to brothels to meet anyone but another top man. Eddi King, the wealthy intellectual publisher. It didn't just smell; in Leary's view it stank. He just hoped that Miss Elizabeth Cameron didn't have the same kind of odour. It was possible that she might know a lot more about Mr King than his people had been able to uncover. And what she didn't know she might be able to find out, right from the inside. He hoped Peter Mathews didn't ball it up. He made a note on the file, and closed it. He had men working on it in Minneapolis, going through the school records, checking at the college. Somewhere, someone had got at King. Most probably during his internment in France. The French would follow that one up. In the meantime Leary had ordered a thorough check on everyone who worked for
Future
. His superior might think that this activity was going too fast and too far on a single lead, but Leary had one argument which silenced every protest. An election was coming up. Anything could happen.

Keller had been a week in America; he thought of it with amusement, but like all his jokes the humour was thin and inclined to bitterness. One week, spent cooped up in the luxury apartment with the Magritte painting staring at him from the wall, reading the books he found in the guest bedroom, one after another, watching television and waiting for a call that didn't come. Nobody had contacted him, Elizabeth Cameron came and went, pretending to act normally while the strain grew more apparent every day. She cooked for him; she went out for lunch and disappeared during the day to do whatever rich women did to waste their time, and then they spent the evenings together. At first he had gone to his room early, thrown himself on the bed and tried to sleep.

After the fourth day he gave in; he felt stifled, savage with tension and uncertainty. He was a man who couldn't bear confinement and inactivity. He let her take him out and show him New York, and in spite of himself he began to relax and enjoy what he saw. It was a fabulous city; it couldn't be compared to Paris, which was the only European capital he knew, and the cities of the Middle and Far East were so different that they might have existed on another planet. She was right when she described New York as an exciting place; it reminded Keller of an enormous glittering hive, peopled by a species of human he had never met before. Always hurrying, driven by time, by that curious American word hustle, which couldn't be translated and yet described so much, living at a pace that frayed the nerves and made the Martini into a national emblem. It had a beauty which was peculiar to itself; the glacial buildings, towering into the sky, the two great rivers, the Hudson and the East, running through the asphalt island like twin arteries, the oasis of Central Park—above all the unbelievable panorama of the city at night. She had taken him driving one evening, and as they crawled through the long traffic jams, Keller was reminded of a firework display, a city of Golden Rain, where the lights were squandered on the night, dispensed like a sackful of jewels over the heads of the moving crowds.

‘It's beautiful, isn't it?' Elizabeth said. ‘Not like Europe, but it's not meant to be. It's so essentially American. I love it!'

‘You have a lot of enthusiasms,' Keller said. ‘It must be good to feel like that about a place.'

‘You've never cared about your country?'

‘I have no country,' he said. ‘I was born in France, but that means nothing. I could have grown up anywhere; one orphanage is the same as another.'

They had stopped at a traffic intersection. When the lights changed they moved on; he noticed that she drove very well. She had told the truth when she said she was efficient and resourceful, but what had surprised him was the erratic feminine streak, the sudden hesitancy that made him grab her arm to cross the street. He had never felt protective about a woman before; his attitude to Souha was almost paternal, as if he were dealing with a child whom the world had already knocked to the ground too often and he were angrily determined to prevent more bruising. But there was nothing of that in his feeling for Elizabeth Cameron. She was a mixture that confused him, constantly arousing new impulses which he had not experienced before. She didn't need protecting, not like the. Arab girl who had been born on the defensive. She was rich and self-assured, she could do most things as well as most men, but whenever he was near her he wanted to take her arm, or carry her parcel, or just stop the car and turn her to him. He watched her as they drove. She was unselfconscious about her beauty, as if she didn't realise how he was affected by her. But when they came close or touched by accident, there was a pleading in her eyes that begged him to be gentle, not to take advantage of her. He understood desire; he knew what it could do to a man's nerves and how it could distort his judgement, albeit temporarily. He knew because that was what he felt for her; but resisting the temptation to just walk into her room at night and take her in his arms was only possible because of other, unfamiliar feelings which he refused to name, even to himself. Love was not a word he would admit. When she went out he prowled round the apartment, bored and irritable, waiting for the sound of the elevator and the click of her key in the lock.

When she was with him he forgot why he had come to New York, he forgot to listen for the telephone call which still hadn't come; he forgot about Souha and the Lebanon as if his past were a dream, and the days spent with Elizabeth were the only reality.

They were back at her apartment; they got out of the car and the doorman climbed in to drive away. Keller was accepted; he even rated the head doorman's salute. Elizabeth turned to him in the hallway and smiled.

‘Would you like a drink?'

‘No.' Keller took her coat as she slipped out of it and for a moment his hands closed over her shoulders. It was a mistake to touch her, a dangerous indulgence in something he had promised both of them would never recur. He felt her stiffen and immediately he stepped back.

‘You don't have to be afraid of me,' he said. ‘I told you that.'

‘I'm not afraid of you,' Elizabeth said. ‘Only myself.'

‘I can't go on staying here,' Keller said suddenly. ‘It won't work. It could be a long time before anyone contacts me. And I can't answer for myself much longer. I've got enough money, I can go to a hotel. You can take a message for me. It would be better that way. Better for you.'

‘Please don't go.' She came close to him; he looked down at her and saw her eyes had filled with tears. ‘Don't go away. I don't want you to leave. All right, I know what it'll mean if you stay, but I don't care. Do you understand that—I don't care what may happen. I'm in love with you.'

She put out her hand and he caught it. They moved towards each other and he closed both arms round her.

‘You mustn't say that,' he said. ‘You don't know anything about me. You don't know what you're talking about;-you should have a good man, someone to marry you.' With one hand he stroked the blonde hair back from her face. ‘If I ever got my hands on the one who left you, I'd beat his head in.'

‘You wouldn't need to,' Elizabeth said quietly. ‘I thought I was in love. I thought that making love to him was real, but now I know it wasn't. I guess you're the only real man I've ever met in my life. When I think about him, all I wish is that it hadn't happened.'

‘If you regret your nice clean-living American,' Keller said slowly, ‘how much more are you going to regret me?'

She put both arms around his neck; immediately his hold tightened, gripping her body against his.

‘I don't know,' Elizabeth whispered. ‘If I lose you, probably for ever.'

‘Where did you get those marks?' Elizabeth leaned over him, tracing the savage scars down one side of his chest. There was no shyness, no inhibition left in her now. Every day she learned more about love. It wasn't all passion; it was just as much the slow contentment of lying close and talking in the half-light. It was the way he kissed her now, after they had made love, and soothed her to sleep in his arms. Mathews had never been gentle afterwards. He had separated quickly and made jokes, as if he was afraid of being taken seriously. With this man it was all different. So many contrasts, from the fierce masculine possession to the silent tenderness that made her love him more each day. It didn't seem possible that they had become lovers only a week before. She repeated the question.

‘How did you get those scars? Tell me.'

He put his finger on a jagged weal that ran down from his left shoulder. ‘That was a fight in a brothel in Algiers.'

‘I don't want to hear about the brothel,' Elizabeth said. ‘Tell me about the fight.'

‘There was this German Legionnaire—he called himself Beloff,' Keller said. ‘But that wasn't his name. He was a bastard. A mean one. He hated my insides and I hated his. He was supposed to be an officer in one of the S.S. regiments. We had a fight over one of the whores in this place. He was no officer—he used his feet too well. Not as well as I used mine, so he found himself a bottle.'

‘Don't,' she pleaded, closing her eyes against the picture of the jagged glass tearing into his skin. ‘Please don't …'

Keller laughed. ‘He was in the sick bay for a month,' he said. ‘If he was a war criminal I did him a favour. His own mother wouldn't have recognised him. Most of us were Germans on the run anyway. The non-coms were French; they were bastards too.'

‘You were in the Foreign Legion?' She sat up a little, staring at him. ‘I can't believe it. I thought that was just something they made movies about with Gary Cooper.'

‘Who do you think was doing the fighting at Dien Bien Phu?'

She shook her head at him and smiled. ‘I never heard of it.'

‘It's a place called Viet Nam,' Keller said. ‘Now you must have heard of
that
! That's where I got these two holes.'

He put her fingers against his ribs. ‘I was three months in hospital in Saigon. When we pulled out I'd had enough. I deserted. I'd spent my whole life looking at the world from the gutter. I wanted to get some money and see if it looked better from a different angle.'

‘You know something,' Elizabeth said. ‘I've told you everything about myself. I know practically nothing about you, Bruno. I want to know what happened before I met you. I want to hear about the orphanage and afterwards and the Legion. Will you tell me?'

It was true that she had told him everything about herself. She had lost all reticence; it seemed to have disappeared with her reserve and all the inhibitions which Peter Mathews had left intact; the first night spent in Keller's arms had blown them up as if they were dynamited. Elizabeth had told him about her childhood, her parents, intimate details of her life which she had never imagined sharing with anyone else, and he had listened to it all.