The Assassin (15 page)

Freemont was too familiar to Elizabeth to arouse the revulsion that overcame the discerning visitor; its vulgarity, its pretentiousness, its disgusting opulence, were simply part of Huntley Cameron; part, too, of her father, who lived in comparative simplicity but with a total disregard for anyone's opinion.

She had once heard her mother say that Freemont was the worst crime against good taste that Huntley had ever committed; it reminded her of being force-fed cream and chocolate cake, every time she went there. Even the lavatory chains were hand-wrought gold. Elizabeth hadn't been able to disagree; it was all true but at the time it didn't seem important. Freemont was like Huntley: larger than life, impossible by ordinary standards, detestable and irresistible at the same time. Only Huntley would have given a staid New England name to such a place. He had no wife at the moment, only a mistress who had been clinging on for the last three years in the hope that he might revert to form and marry her. Her name was Dallas Jay and she had been a singer in a Los Angeles night-club. Nobody knew how or where she had met Huntley; he never went to nightclubs. But she was installed at Freemont one day, given minks, sets of jewellery and a personal maid, and summoned to Huntley's bed by an electric buzzer operating in her room. Elizabeth hadn't seen her for some weeks, she had been holidaying in Florida before Elizabeth and Eddi King went to Beirut. Huntley placed no restrictions on her; she could go where she liked, spend what she liked, but if she went with a man she'd be out on her ass. It was his choice of words and her choice of conduct. In three years, with every columnist and scandal-sheet spy watching her, Dallas had never made a single boob.

As Elizabeth approached the wrought-iron entrance gates to Freemont, she slowed down. The guard on duty recognised her car, and after a few moments' inspection operated the electrical system which opened the gates to admit visitors. There was a telephone link with the castle; nobody got in unless Huntley gave authority. She eased the car up the long drive; as the four grey turrets appeared above the trees the road developed a steep incline. Elizabeth took the last five hundred yards up to the man-made prominence in second gear. The drive levelled up as suddenly as it had begun to climb. It ended in a wide gravelled sweep before the entrance to the castle. As she got out of the car and walked through the portcullis entrance, Elizabeth remembered Keller's words: ‘Who is your uncle? I've never heard of him.' It was a pity Huntley Cameron would never hear that said. He assumed everybody knew of his existence, like God. It would never occur to him that the world was full of people like Keller, to whom his name meant nothing; still less would he imagine that his niece would come any closer to one of them than passing in a closed car down a poor and dirty street. But that was why she had come to Freemont; her word was given to Leary, Peter Mathews would be waiting for information, their quarry was Eddi King and she was as anxious to trap him as they were. But first she had to know how far her uncle Huntley was involved, how much he really knew, what Keller's role was going to be; only then could she decide how to protect one or both if Huntley needed protection, and still guide Leary towards King. Above all, she needed enough information to be able to judge how best to lead them all away from Keller.

She didn't find her uncle immediately. She went up to her room first and changed out of the trouser suit she wore for driving. Huntley hated women who wore pants; he only tolerated shorts and then on condition that the woman's legs were worth looking at. After she had changed Elizabeth sat down at the dressing table. Every guest room was fitted out with toilet articles for both sexes, gold and enamel brushes matched the exquisite Venetian looking glass and the seventeenth-century Florentine table. A bed which had belonged to one of the Visconti princesses stood in the middle of the room, a towering monument of carved and gilded wood. Elizabeth began to brush her hair. It still hung loose. She closed her eyes suddenly, remembering that Keller had played with it, drawing it over her face, twisting it through his fingers. ‘Oh God,' she said out loud.

‘What's the matter, honey? Aren't you feeling well?'

She hadn't heard the door open; she turned round quickly and saw the woman standing there, looking at her. All Huntley's wives had been brunettes; Dallas Jay was dark too, and in a good light she looked as if her face matched her splendidly curved body.

‘Hi,' she said. ‘I just heard you'd arrived and came to say hallo. So hallo. It's nice to see you.'

‘Nice to see you too, Dallas.' Elizabeth got up. ‘I wasn't sure if you were back from Florida. You look marvellous.'

‘I got a good tan,' she said. ‘Hunt was pleased to see me.'

‘I'm sure he was,' Elizabeth said. Across the room Dallas passed for what she had been: a pretty professional singer with more bust than talent. Close up, she was too brown, a little too lined. It occurred to Elizabeth that she must be a lot older than anyone thought. She had always got along with her, if only because Dallas wouldn't have done anything to alienate Huntley's niece and because Elizabeth was always very careful not to play on that. She couldn't have said she liked or disliked the woman. She was so pleasant and accommodating that she wasn't quite real.

‘Is my uncle around?'

‘He's in the music gallery, honey. He's got that nice publisher friend Mr King with him. Come on downstairs and we can have a drink while we're waiting. He said he didn't want to be disturbed for a while.'

‘Thanks,' Elizabeth said slowly. ‘I'll come with you, Dallas. You can tell me all about Florida.'

‘Everything,' Eddi King said, ‘is going just as we planned it. Smooth as mother's milk.' He gave Huntley Cameron his confident smile, showing his white American-capped teeth. Before he came to the States they had had an American dentist go over his entire mouth. King was not a coward, but he remembered those long visits to the clinic with real horror.

‘You're certain this man knows his business?' Huntley Cameron had a way of speaking words as if they were bullets; they came out at high velocity. He was a tall man, thin and big-boned, with deep-set eyes of indeterminate grey-brown, a blunt nose and carefully combed white hair. His face was long with an angular jaw-line and a thin sanding of freckles. He dressed in immaculately cut suits and handmade shirts. He was fond of making jokes at the expense of fellow millionaires who indulged in eccentricities like tee-shirts and dirty sneakers. Everything about him suggested power and wealth and a degree of autocracy that took itself for granted on a manic scale. He stared hard at King as he stared at everyone; most people couldn't take it and looked away.

‘He knows it.' King spoke reassuringly. ‘I watched him use a pistol on a very awkward target; much more awkward than the real one on March 17. The range was the top one. He got it with the first shot. Don't worry, Huntley, I've got the right man for the job.'

‘You want a whisky?' Huntley said. ‘Go and help yourself. Tell me more.'

‘I don't want a drink,' King said. ‘It's too early for me.'

‘Well, it isn't for me,' he said. ‘Make it three fingers high and straight. How did you get our marksman? They're not easy to come by without going to the criminal element. And I told you,' the fierce eyes swept over him, baleful and dangerous, ‘I told you not to touch them.'

‘I didn't.' King handed him the glass of whisky. This was one item about Huntley Cameron that the gossip columnists had never printed. He drank like a fish without any visible effect at all. ‘I have friends in the Middle East—business interests. All the scum collect round there, the deserters, the mercenaries out of a job. Our man had been in the Foreign Legion. He was one of their top marksmen in Indo China.'

‘Maybe we should send him out there now,' Cameron snarled into his glass. ‘Maybe he could pick off some of our fool generals out there—when I think what that bastard Hughsden did, kept us in that war—how much money did he want?'

‘He agreed to fifty thousand dollars,' King explained. ‘And he wanted papers for himself and a passport. I fixed it all through these friends of mine.'

‘And how do you know they can be trusted?'

King smiled. ‘Because they never knew who was employing them. I was very discreet, Huntley, you must believe that. After all, this is my neck as much as yours.'

‘I'm not worried about my neck,' the other man said. He held out his glass. ‘Fill it up. I'm worried we might not get the business through. I'm worried in case that bastard lives long enough to do any more damage to our country. When I think of a punk like that in the White House—Christ! I lie awake nights as it is!'

King decided to join Huntley; he found the old man an ordeal when he was in this sort of mood. He poured a small whisky and drank it to steady his nerve. Cameron was not a fool; he spoke in the terms of an extravagant demagogue, he gave an impression of egomania which might have fooled someone less intimate with him into neglecting details. But not King. King wasn't taken in; he knew that a mind with the keenness and speed of a laser beam was operating all the time. Cameron talked as people expected him to talk; even the deliberate glare, the staccato question suddenly fired without warning, these were part of the persona the man had created for himself. King had seen him talking business once or twice. He was as quiet and reasoned as a company accountant. One false note, one careless word, and he would seize on it. King proceeded carefully, picking his way like a man in a nettle patch.

He eased into a chair, and lit a cigarette. He loved the music gallery because it housed two of the finest Vermeers he had ever seen, and a magnificent German virginal which had been presented to one of the Emperor Charles V's wives. Once Huntley had invited him to open the instrument and try it. The delicate, silver tones were as pure as if five centuries had never passed; King's soul was stirred by the ethereal beauty which was in that narrow rectangle of marvellously decorated wood and wire and goose quills. He had always been moved by the arts.

‘I don't want you to think that I'm cold-blooded about this,' he said. ‘After all, it's still a man's life. But I believe there's such a thing as patriotic duty which can ask even that. I believe we have to have Jackson assassinated or leave our country at the mercy of anarchy and civil war.'

Cameron turned his head a little and looked at him. He didn't speak immediately; he just considered King as if he had grown a second nose. ‘You must be out of your head,' he said at last. ‘Cold-blooded? I'd shoot that son of a bitch myself if I could get away with it. Stop talking crap, Eddi. He's got to be wiped out. Now, let's get this clear. When our man does his job he gets his money and the papers—right?'

‘That will be laid on,' King said. ‘He'll get everything we promised.'

‘I've been thinking.' Huntley said. ‘Suppose we can't get him out of the country—suppose he gets picked up?'

King's expression didn't change. ‘That'll be too bad for us,' he said. ‘I've been wondering about that. I don't feel happy about this escape at all.'

‘Then get someone to fix it,' Huntley said. ‘Right after the shooting. Have someone blow a hole in him.'

‘If that's okay with you,' King said. ‘I'd feel a whole lot more secure. You want me to arrange it?'

‘You've fixed everything so far,' Huntley said. ‘You lay it on the line and let me have the bill. Let's go down now, I want to see Elizabeth.'

King hesitated. ‘I'll join you in a minute,' he said. ‘I won't be long.' He turned as Huntley moved away, and he went upstairs to his room. He had no real reason for not going down with Huntley, except that on an impulse he wanted to be alone, to step off the stage for a moment. Also he wanted to congratulate himself a little, while he went over every detail, making sure he had forgotten nothing. King went over to the magnificent mirror on the wall, and pushed his thick hair back, smoothing it down. Edward Francis King. He had never seen the real King. The photograph taken after his arrest by the Gestapo had been a flat, staring likeness, full face and profile, made grotesque by the shaven haircut given to concentration-camp prisoners. The eyes remained in his memory; they were wide and fixed with fear. Edward Francis King had died before the Russians took the camp. All that was left of him was the file with his photographs and details, and a shovelful of ash in the crematorium. That file went into the K.G.B. index with all the other data captured at the same time. The dead had been a useful source of cover for short-term agents, mostly used in the Western sector of Germany after the war. But the identity of King, an American citizen who had died of typhus just before the camp was overrun, was too valuable to be wasted on some small-time operator. They had chosen him to impersonate the dead American because there was a slight facial resemblance and he was one of the brightest young men in the K.G.B. It had taken nearly ten years to train him and prepare the way for his return to the States as Edward King, but with such a chance for high-level penetration Moscow was patient. King had learned to think, speak, walk and react like an American; any slight oddity could be accounted for by his experiences in the camp and having lived so long in France. He had spent three of his years of training living in Paris, playing the part of Eddi King, establishing himself with members of the post-war American colony, laying his background with meticulous care. At last he had been ready to go over to the States, where the K.G.B. were ready to finance his fantastic venture into the inner circle of American reactionary power.

His magazine provided cover for a spy network which passed top-level information about United States policies through to the East. He got to know men of influence in every sphere; he became an influence himself, a means of manipulating people of importance in the way which the Soviets intended they should go. King was one of the biggest operators in the world. In fifteen years he had never made a single mistake or incurred the slightest suspicion. After the assassination on March 17th he would go down in history as the master spy of the twentieth century, when long after, perhaps a generation after, the truth leaked through.