The Assassin (25 page)

He reached her with the speed of an animal springing on its prey. His fingers drove into her arms, he shook her.

‘Souha! What do you mean, what's happened to Souha!'

‘Don't hurt me,' Elizabeth said quietly. ‘Let me tell you how it happened. She was strangled; another man was dynamited in his car, with his whole family. He worked for the airport as a kind of guide.'

‘Fuad,' Keller said. ‘Fuad Hamedin. How do you know it was Souha—who told you this?'

‘My old lover, Peter Mathews. He's with American Intelligence, the C.I.A. He only contacted me to find out about this man Eddi King. I promised to watch him and report. I saw Mathews this morning and he told me about the murders. He said her name was Souha. She had a big bank account, so had the guide. Mathews said this is what always happens; they pay off the little people first to wipe out any clues. Just as they were going to do with you.'

‘The guide was Fuad,' Keller muttered. ‘That makes the girl my Souha. I gave her ten thousand dollars before I left. I thought she'd be safe if I didn't get back.' He sat down on the bed, his hands clenching between his knees. ‘I'll get whoever did it,' he said. ‘I'll kill them.'

‘You won't get the chance,' Elizabeth said. ‘This whole plan is about to blow up. I've only got to tell Peter Mathews what I know and everyone will be arrested. I can do that tomorrow, after you've gone.'

Keller wasn't listening. Souha was dead. Strangled, that's what she had said. He could imagine it; he knew the professional Arab killers, with their lengths of knotted cord. He hadn't cried since he was a child in the orphanage. He wanted to get his hands on somebody and squeeze and squeeze them round the throat as the murderer's cord had squeezed Souha's little neck. They had killed her, and Fuad too; he had seen the wife once and the fat, overindulged little children. The car had blown up under them like a firework. Very clever. Real professional work. He would have been paid the last part of his price, in the same efficient way, after he had left the cathedral. Maybe even before …

‘You can get on a plane tonight,' Elizabeth said. She had kept control very well until then; she had been calm and gentle and determined. But all her bolts were shot and none seemed to have penetrated. He hardly seemed to hear what she was saving.

‘You say you know all about it?' He looked up at her. His eyes sunk deep in their sockets. ‘You're wrong about one thing. Two things. The plan isn't going to blow up because it's timed for tomorrow morning. And the target isn't this Jackson you keep talking about, it's Cardinal Regazzi.'

‘It's not possible!' Elizabeth cried out. ‘My uncle told me it was Jackson! He wouldn't want to kill the Cardinal! He doesn't want Jackson running for President …'

‘Then this Mr King is making him pay for the wrong killing,' Keller said slowly. ‘Here, look at this.' He gave her the plan. ‘The Cardinal is the one your communists want put out of the way. He seemed a good man to me. Maybe that's why they don't like him.' He put his head down suddenly and she heard a strange sound.

‘Why did they have to hurt her?' he said. ‘She knew nothing; she couldn't have talked to anyone. Why did she have to die like that?'

Elizabeth got up and came to him; she sat beside him on the bed and put her arms around him. ‘I didn't know you loved her,' she said slowly. She felt sick and stricken inside, for her own selfish reasons. ‘I'm so sorry I had to tell you. Please let me comfort you, turn to me a little.'

‘I was sorry for her,' Keller said at last. He had let Elizabeth hold him. ‘I wanted to take care of her because she trusted me. She'd been kicked and pushed around by everyone. I thought I was doing something good for her, giving her some money, and a passport. But I brought her bad luck. She never had anything in her life.'

‘She had you,' Elizabeth said slowly. ‘I believe that's all she could have wanted. I know it's all I want.'

He looked at her then; he seemed older, the lines by the eyes and mouth scored deeper since she had come into the room.

‘You? What could I give a woman like you? I gave Souha things she'd never had, things you were born with.' It wasn't a reproach, it was a statement of fact. Tears came into Elizabeth's eyes.

‘I said I loved you. You talk about giving me nothing; don't you know what it means to be fulfilled—to be loved and able to love the way you've taught me? Bruno, please look at me, listen to me! I can't tell you the difference between your girl Souha and me, maybe it's not so much as you think. I only know you mean more to me than anything in the world. I don't want to live without you!' She found her bag and riffled through it with shaking hands; when she took out the cigarette he had to light it for her.

‘Even when I knew you'd come over here to kill a man for money it didn't make any difference to the way I felt. I didn't care, darling. I didn't give a damn. All I want is for you to be safe and for us to be together.'

‘That isn't possible,' Keller said. ‘You ought to know that. If I don't do what I'm told I swear they'll kill me. If I do do it—you know the answer to that better than I do. There's no way out for us.' He tightened his arm around her. ‘There never is in this kind of dirty mess. I should have stayed where I belonged—in the gutter, looking up.'

‘You belong with me,' Elizabeth said fiercely. ‘You never had a chance in your life—you told me that. Now you're going to get one. We can leave here now, my darling. We can walk out and go to Kennedy and be on a plane for anywhere in the world in two hours. You've committed no crime—you've got a passport. I've got money. Bruno, please! Come away with me!'

He didn't answer her; he only held her closer. He had never believed that she loved him before. She had said so, but he had never been able to accept it. There was nothing to love for a rich woman who had everything and could have taken any man she chose. The wretched stray fainting with hunger in the gutter at Beirut was different; she had reason to love the man who fed and housed her, and treated her with gentleness. Elizabeth was crying. He had seen a lot of women cry; women in villages weeping over their dead, victims of the brutality and waste of war, prostitutes afraid of being beaten up because they'd robbed their customers—tears had never moved Keller. But he couldn't bear to see Elizabeth cry. Now he turned her to him and threw the half-smoked cigarette away.

He kissed her and his powerful hand gently stroked her hair.

‘Don't do that; I don't like to see it. Don't cry for me.'

‘Come with me,' Elizabeth begged him. ‘Don't you see they can't have their killing without you?'

‘Somebody else will do it if I don't,' Keller said. ‘The world is full of men who'll kill anyone for fifty thousand dollars. My running away won't stop them. And it won't bring back Souha or Fuad's children.'

‘Nothing will do that,' she whispered. She was keeping control of herself with difficulty. She hadn't been able to move him, to persuade him. Why not—why, why, wouldn't he give up the whole horrific venture and just go away with her? Then, when he was safely out of reach, she could tell Leary everything. Then the Cardinal could be protected. King arrested—even her uncle. She didn't care what happened to anyone now if only she could keep Keller alive. If this was what being in love really meant, how lucky it happened only once in a whole lifetime's span.…

‘You're not going to kill the Cardinal?'

He looked into the desperate face, so distraught with tears. ‘No,' Keller said. ‘I promise you that. Not the Cardinal. They paid me half the money. It came this morning. Why did your uncle want this man Jackson dead?'

‘Oh, darling, I don't know—what does it matter? Oh, because he said he'd destroy America if he was President. There'd be race riots, and terrible strikes—all the trouble you can think of—it isn't important to us. It's none of our business.'

‘That would please your friend King, wouldn't it—to see your country torn to pieces from inside?'

‘Bruno, what are you thinking? Bruno …' She saw the direction of his thoughts and cried out to him in despair. ‘Leave it alone—what do you care about American politics—none of this is anything to do with you. Or us,' she went on. ‘The C.I.A., the police—they're the people to deal with all this. Not you, going on some crazy crusade you don't even understand.'

‘I understand a bad bargain,' Keller said quietly. ‘You hire someone and then you kill his girl and plan to murder him after he's done the job for you. I understand that very well. It's not difficult.'

‘I won't let you.' She twisted round and began to kiss him; he could taste the salt of tears on her mouth. ‘I won't let you try it, Bruno. You're coming away with me—we're going to be happy together …'

He had never intended making love to her; at one point he tried to stop, but she cried and clung, and he couldn't control himself. The sleazy room began to blur around them, the background fading as the sense of time and place receded. They might have been back in Elizabeth's apartment the first time they had come together. But then she had been nervous; shy of her own passion and dominated by the force of his. Now she met him equally, fired by more than a physical need, impelled by the female belief that through this medium it was possible to change the purpose of a man.

When it was over they didn't speak for some moments; he seemed more exhausted than she, as if for some reason his enormous strength had failed him.

‘Will you come away with me? I have a house in Mexico; its a place called Cuernavaca. It's very beautiful, Bruno. It belonged to my mother. We'll be safe there. It's tucked away below the Empress Carlotta's gardens. She loved it so, and she left it to me. We'll be happy there—we can start a new life. Nobody will ever find us.'

Keller didn't answer her.

‘Come with me, darling. Please.'

If he ran and tried to cheat them, the organisation which had taken the trouble to blow up Fuad Hamedin and have Souha murdered would see he didn't get very far with twenty-five thousand dollars of their money. Even if he left Souha to lie in her grave unrevenged he couldn't risk involving Elizabeth in what must end as a sentence of death passed against him.

‘Someone would find us,' he said. ‘Mr King's friends. It wouldn't work.'

‘Yes it would,' Elizabeth said fiercely. ‘Nobody knows about my house, I've never been to Mexico—my mother bought and furnished it but she never lived there! All we have to do is take a plane tomorrow and just disappear! You might even marry me one day,' she said, and tried to smile at him.

He reached up for her and kissed her. Mexico. It might be possible; it just might be possible to get away with it. But not on her terms. Not as a coward running away, leaving the way open for them to try again with someone else. He couldn't live in Mexico or anywhere else with that on his mind.

‘I'll come with you,' he said. ‘I'll meet you at the airport. Where do I wait, and what time?'

‘The Eastern Airlines building, Mexico flight counter.' She clung to him for a moment, trying to keep calm. Relief made her want to laugh and weep at once. ‘Say eleven o'clock, darling. I'm so happy, Bruno. I'm so terribly happy you've said yes. And don't worry about King. I'll fix him after we've gone. I've been holding out on our C.I.A. because I couldn't tell the truth without leading them to you. But when we're in Cuernavaca they can pull them all in; my uncle included.'

‘And you said nobody would know where we were,' Keller said.

‘A letter, posted here tomorrow morning before we go—that's all I have to do.'

‘You'd better go home,' Keller said. ‘It's getting dark and this is a bad area. It's not safe for you to go through the streets.' He helped her with her coat and for a moment held her close to him.

At the door of his room she turned to him.

‘You'll come to the airport—you won't go back on this and do anything crazy? Promise me?'

‘I'll come,' Keller said. ‘Whoever is first will wait for the other. I promise you I'll come.'

He went down the grimy stairs with her to the front door. For the last time, sensing that the superintendent was spying on them from the upstairs landing, he kissed her.

‘Goodbye; take care.'

‘I'm going to pack, my darling,' Elizabeth said. ‘Eleven tomorrow, the Eastern Airlines building. I'm not even going to say goodbye.'

Keller closed the front door and started back up the stairs. The sketch of the cathedral lay on the floor of his room. He picked it up and set light to it with a match. He crumbled the black wisps of paper into dust between his fingers. He had spent the morning at St Patrick's, at his first Mass since he left the orphanage. He knew exactly where to go next morning.

In his apartment on Park Avenue, Eddi King had been making preparations for a journey. His bags were packed, his papers had been put through a shredder which he kept specially for this purpose and the remains flushed down the lavatory.

He looked round the apartment with some regret. He had lived there nearly seven years. There was a beautiful seventeenth-century Italian Nativity, bought for its exquisite use of form and colour and the serenity of its composition; the religious significance offended him no more than any other allegorical subject. He had been tempted to cut the painting out of its frame and take it with him, but he decided it was a foolish thing to do. If his bags were opened, and in Argentina they probably would be, the canvas would only call attention to him. It would have to stay behind, with the rest of his possessions, to be photographed and pawed over by the authorities after he had gone. It was five o'clock. His plane left for Buenos Aires in two hours. It seemed extraordinary that after all the years of exile he was really going home. His memories of Russia were dim and even distorted by time. He had left a country blasted by war and ruled by the Stalinist terror which was now officially denounced. He would find many changes; no familiar faces. It was a daunting prospect in one sense but an immense relief in every other. His time had run out; his luck was about to follow. Killing Cameron's niece was the signal. When a man in his position had to resort to the methods of the petty cut-throat, it was time he headed home. His nerves had been shaken by that incident. He hadn't realised until he was on the way back from Freemont, and he found his hands sticking to the steering wheel with sweat, and his limbs shaking.