The Assassin (27 page)

It was stronger than all the conventions of her upbringing, which had never permitted a man prepared to kill for money to be a human being worthy of another human being's love. She had said it to him that afternoon, weeping and desperate in her fear of losing him. She didn't care what he was or what he had done.

If he went ahead and pulled the trigger tomorrow and still found a way to join her at the airport, she'd go with him.

It was as simple as that. As primeval and inevitable as the meeting of the first man and woman who loved each other in defiance of the law.

St Patrick's Cathedral was closed at ten o'clock at night; it was nine-fifty and little knots of worshippers were still inside the building, resisting the efforts of the sextants to get rid of them. The lights above the main nave were being switched out; the side doors were already locked with the exception of the exit leading into Madison Avenue. Monsignor Jameson had been on his feet since 6 a.m.; there had been no time for the afternoon doze which he felt was such a necessity at his age. He had been with the Cardinal most of the afternoon, making the final draft of his sermon for next day. Patrick Jameson was not an excitable man, but he attributed his splitting headache more to his anxiety over that speech than to his lack of sleep and general fatigue. Every time the Cardinal revised it, it came out more controversial, more fiercely uncompromising, than before. Jameson had given up trying to get it watered down; he had thrown his hands in the air, which wrung a smile out of the Cardinal, and said simply, ‘God help us, your Eminence, I'll get it typed by this evening.'

It was one of the most scathing attacks upon a political ideology that Jameson had ever heard, not even excepting the thunderbolts of abuse hurled at Nazi Germany during the war. As a cautious man, with a dislike of politics and politicians, the Monsignor cringed at the verbal grenades his Cardinal intended to fling at John Jackson the next morning. But there was a ringing splendour about the denunciations which found a response in his Celtic spirit, never quite proof against the power of a great phrase. While he typed the speech that evening, eating a sandwich instead of the substantial dinner he needed, and upsetting his digestion with cups of coffee, Jameson deplored what the Cardinal was doing, and fought down his pride in being part of it at the same time. He didn't resent the long hours now; he worked them without grumbling to himself and found them less burdensome than they once were. He would never understand Regazzi; it was like watching lightning. You could see the flash but you couldn't hope to catch it for analysis. But before he had misunderstood him. Perhaps, Jameson wondered, perhaps all saints were as difficult as this man; perhaps those who loved God and humanity in the mass were as remote and lonely as his Cardinal.

With that great burden of love upon his shoulders for those who had no other advocate in the courts of power, perhaps it was natural for him to forget the comfort of those working with him. Now, he embarrassed Jameson by sometimes telling him to go to bed. But not often, and then the Monsignor suspected it was because he made a special effort to remember. The Cardinal too was anxious about his sermon, but his fear was that it said too little, rather than the worry of his secretary that it said far too much. Jameson had finished typing, and he was making his last round of the cathedral for the night. One of the worshippers got out of his pew and pushed hard against him as he hurried down the aisle. Jameson suppressed the unchristian impulse to call him a rude sonofabitch and walked back down the central nave, St Patrick's was his favourite day in the Church's calendar; he hardly dared admit it, but he liked it more than Christmas. His parents were first generation immigrants from County Kerry; he, like Cardinal Regazzi, was one of a large, poor family. But the expatriate Irish were ambitious; they worked hard to evolve from the poverty which had driven them from their homes. America was said to be the land of opportunity. Whether this was true or not, they set about to make it so.

Jameson's father was a hard man; he disciplined his children with his fists and a strap, but he worked for them all, and three out of his four sons went to college. The fourth, and two of his sisters, died in early adolescence from the Celtic scourge, T.B. It was his brother's death which brought Pat Jameson to the priesthood. They had been very close as boys, and the younger had always wished to be a priest. At his death, it seemed as if the desire had passed directly to his brother Patrick. For his father he had respect but no affection—he was an impossible man to love; bitter, ignorant and autocratic. His mother, Patrick Jameson spoke of as a saint. She was gentle, simple, obedient to the dictates of her religion and her husband. She made a strength out of submission, and her children literally confused her in their minds with the image of the tender Virgin whose picture was above every child's bed. Later, long after her death, when the confessional had educated him in the vagaries of human behaviour, Jameson wondered whether the infamous cult of ‘Momism' hadn't originated with the Irish as much as with the Jews.

He spoke to the two vergers on duty at the main door, and to the officer of St Vincent de Paul who manned a special collection plate. Lastly, Jameson went to two men who had been in the body of the church for the last hour.

‘Everything all right?'

‘Harry has checked all the side altars and I went through the confessionals an hour ago,' the F.B.I. agent answered. ‘There's nothing been left anywhere and nobody hiding. Are you satisfied Monsignor?'

‘Sure. You won't find any bombs in the pulpit!' He made a joke of it, but neither man smiled. He thought, irritably, that they were unnecessarily wooden and grim, like characters out of a bad gangster movie.

‘Harry and I will stay till around the six o'clock Mass in the morning. Then two more of us will take over before the main group arrives for the High Mass.'

‘In my opinion,' the Monsignor said, ‘this is a whole lot of nonsense. Nobody's going to do anything inside St Pat's. I don't know why your people don't leave us alone and concentrate on the procession.'

‘Because none of the priority targets will be walking in it,' the man called Harry answered him. ‘Nobody in public office dares to walk the streets any more. You ought to understand why. The last time I was on duty here was the Requiem for Bobbie Kennedy.'

Jameson walked back down the long nave; he was tired out, but still had to deliver the speech to the Cardinal.

Martino Regazzi was in his study reading a paperback detective novel. The first time his secretary found him doing this he kept trying to read the title of the book upside down. Regazzi turned it right way up and remarked that it wasn't as good a murder story as the previous one. It was his only relaxation; that night his nerves were tense and his brain refused to quiet. His whole system raced at full throttle; nothing but an hour of the leisurely mystery story with its classic formula and list of suspects would slow him down enough to get a little sleep.

He put the book away when Jameson knocked and came in. He may not have noticed the older man's weary expression, the forehead creased with the niggling ache behind the frontal bone, but the secretary forgot himself enough to say abruptly:

‘Eminence, if you don't get to bed tonight, you won't make any speech tomorrow. I've a good mind to take it away again and not give it to you till the morning!'

‘Don't fuss, Patrick,' the Cardinal said. ‘I'm in the middle of a really good murder story. Look—
The Mystery of the Boston Bean
—I'll lend it to you tomorrow.'

‘I can't read those things,' Jameson said. He laid the typed sheets on the Cardinal's desk. ‘I can't read detective stories or holy books. So there's not much I can read these days but the newspapers. It's all finished; I made three copies.'

‘Good.' Regazzi began reading the first page. He would have gone on through the whole speech if Jameson hadn't cleared his throat.

‘Did you see the N.B.C. programme tonight—the Sons of St Patrick?' Regazzi asked suddenly.

‘No,' Jameson said. ‘I was working—was it good?'

‘No,' the Cardinal answered. ‘It was a lot of green soap. All the big politicians, the millionaires, the old racketeers. And the Church was represented by at least four bishops and two cardinals. If that's all St Patrick can claim, God help him! Somebody discovered John Jackson had an Irish great-grandmother. So we had a snap profile of him too. Very clever propaganda. Like coming here tomorrow. Do you know, Patrick,' the black eyes blazed with the rage of his Sicilian ancestors, ‘do you know if it hadn't been such an opportunity to attack him personally, I wouldn't have allowed him in my church?'

‘He thinks he'll get votes,' the secretary said. ‘Much good it'll do him with the coloured Catholics. They know where he stands.'

‘After tomorrow,' the Cardinal said, ‘please God they'll know where the Church stands too. Right up there with them. You went round the cathedral—everything quiet?'

‘Just as always. Except for the cops and the plain clothes. They've been poking round, looking for bogies.' Nothing had altered Jameson's irritation at government precautions in the cathedral. The facts of political murder so recently in memory meant nothing to him. It was nonsense to suggest it could happen in his church. Regazzi knew his attitude. He appreciated Federal and City Hall anxiety as Jameson refused to do, but he despised precautions. Death came when it was time, and nothing could refuse it entry. This attitude, with its Sicilian fatalism, made him a very difficult man to protect.

‘The only murder that'll be done is when you start preaching, Eminence,' Jameson said. ‘I just hope the Holy See doesn't pull down the roof on you.' He sighed; he had his generation's doubts about the liberal attitudes of the Church's centre of government in Rome. ‘They're all for the diplomatic touch; nobody's going to like the way you throw your punches.'

‘That's where I think you're wrong,' Regazzi said. ‘I believe the Holy Father will be delighted. One of those copies you made is going direct to him with a letter from me, explaining my motives.'

‘But you'll have delivered it all before he gets that,' the Secretary pointed out. Regazzi's thin face relaxed for a second in a very narrow smile.

‘Exactly,' he said. ‘This isn't just internal politics, this is a universal principle, applying to every human being made in his Creator's image. There are no inferior races, only ignorant, prejudiced individuals who are so busy looking at themselves they can't see God's imprint on their brothers. One day, Patrick, there'll be a black man on my throne on the high altar, just as there's been a Catholic in the White House. Evil doesn't triumph, because the soul of the people is good. With God's help, John Jackson will crawl out of our cathedral tomorrow on his hands and knees.'

‘You'll be accused of losing him the Presidency,' Jameson said.

‘That's my intention.' Regazzi glanced down at the speech and quickly wrote something in the margin. ‘Thank you, Patrick, I'd forgotten to make that point emphatic enough.'

‘Shall I go to bed, then? Will you want me again, Eminence?'

‘No, no, there's no more to be done. Tomorrow will be a long day for us all. Good night, and God bless you.'

And you too, the Monsignor said to himself, as he walked slowly away from the Cardinal's apartments to his bedroom. Men have been lynched for what you're going to say tomorrow. It was not a happy thought on which to fall asleep.

Keller left his room at eight-thirty on Monday morning. He carried the money re-wrapped in a parcel under his arm; it was just a neat brown paper package, no bigger than a large box of stationery. He was freshly shaved, and he wore the dark suit in which he had travelled to America. He looked clean and unobtrusive, a foreigner who only lacked his tourist's camera to be perfectly in character. The money had presented him with a problem. He couldn't be sure of coming back to the room. If he left anything there, the room would be searched by the super, who must have a duplicate key. Yet his instructions made it clear that nobody would be admitted to the cathedral carrying anything which hadn't been vetted first. It was a cold morning; he shivered, turning up his coat collar, wishing the overcoat he had bought at Elizabeth's insistence was thicker and warmer. He felt the cold acutely; he stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep the fingers supple. The cotton gloves were no protection.

He had given himself the maximum time, allowing for getting lost, and the delays for which an inexperienced traveller in this confusing city was unprepared and unequipped. He had memorised the subway route. By nine-fifteen he was in a self-service cafeteria just down the block from the cathedral. He was hungry, but his stomach closed against the ham and eggs. He felt as if the sight of another ophthalmic egg on its bed of sweet pink American ham would make him heave over the table. He drank the coffee, which was weak by his standards, and ate a doughy roll. There were doors marked ‘Toilet' at one end of the long sandwich-and-hot-drinks counter. A waitress clearing away dirty cups pointed out one as the men's room. It was a curious expression; he had never heard it before. He hid his parcel of money behind the cistern. For a couple of hours at most, it was a reasonable place to hide something. He came out and went back to finish his coffee. He could have left the money behind; he could have dropped it in a trash can on his way over. But he would see them damned first. Money was part of the bargain they had already broken. This part of it, at least, Keller meant them to keep. He had been paid to kill a man, and he was going to do just that. Professionals have their pride; the mercenary soldier fights as hard for his employers as the patriot, or he soon loses his commission. The killer takes his fee, and kills as he had undertaken. Even the scum have their code. But it's unwise to trust them if you break it. They can turn very nasty. Keller had bought a paper. There was a large picture of John Jackson on the front page; it was a cheap tabloid, screaming sensationalism from every by-line. He didn't bother to read it; most of the items meant nothing to him. He studied the picture of Jackson instead. It all made very good sense; he had been thinking it out carefully, keeping his emotions over Souha in the background, trying to assure himself that what he was going to do would really damage the plan inherent in the death of the Cardinal. There was a photograph of him, too, smaller than the Presidential Candidate's—even the cheap journal described him as a champion of the poor and a fighter for the rights of coloured people. When Elizabeth told Keller he was working for the communists, she used the word in a sense that meant nothing to him. It was just another description for the other kind of professionals; the politicians, the princes of graft and grab. All Keller knew of communism was what he had seen at Dien Bien Phu, and he was not impressed. The small fry did the fighting and stopped the bullets; the cry of universal brotherhood seemed a particularly empty slogan when it was accompanied by a bayonet thrust in someone else's gut. Communists were like the rest; purveyors of the familiar opium by which the poor and down-trodden were kept drugged into quiescence. The good things of the earth would soon be theirs, provided they didn't try to anticipate by taking them on their own initiative. Keller hated all organisations; he believed they only worked to the benefit of those at the top. The communists talked about representing the people, but that hadn't stopped them sending in the tanks just like the rest to keep the people in their place. Keller had no more feeling towards communism than any other ideology, civil or religious. He mistrusted them all. If they were genuine in their beliefs, a man like Cardinal Regazzi should have qualified for honorary membership. But they were going to kill him, because he belonged to the opposite side. They wanted a racialist President in America, with the bloodshed and misery of a civil war as useful adjuncts in their political strategy. So much for their bloody crusade, he thought bitterly. A million lives wouldn't mean any more to them than the life of one Arab girl, throttled to death on their instructions. For that one murder, the man King and all he represented in the world were going to have their global plan frustrated by someone as expendable and insignificant as Souha Mamoulian and all her kind. The displaced person of the twentieth century; the human ammunition, the breathing targets, for ever falling casualty in a game of war they didn't ask to play.