The Assassin (30 page)

‘A burst from that little toy would've carved you up like a side of beef. Drink this down, and you'll feel better.' She did as he told her. It was a relief to have him take command, to lean on him, even for a few moments. It was exactly what Mathews wanted her to feel; he bent down and put his arm round her. ‘Look,' he said gently. ‘Look, Liz, I don't want to be a bastard. I have to do my job, you know that. You've just seen the kind of people Leary's up against. We had to get Eddi King, and, honey, I've got news for you. We got him. He was arrested last night.'

‘You've got him? You're sure?'

‘He's being questioned now,' Mathews said. He was very close to the soft mouth, and the scent was in her hair. That son of a bitch must have made hay with her, shut up alone in the apartment for two weeks. He must have really enjoyed himself, getting her so hooked on it that she would go away with him, knowing he was no different to the killer lying behind the kitchen door. Maybe killers were good at making love, maybe the two skills had something in common. Maybe women just found the extra thrill in going to bed with them.

‘You really love this guy, don't you?' Mathews said. He could see her watch too. It was ten-twenty; time was passing.

‘Yes,' she whispered it. ‘I love him, Pete, And he loves me.' A wild hope brought her round to him, almost in his arms.

‘You wouldn't let me go to him? Oh, Pete, I beg of you, let me go to him!' He didn't answer immediately; he pretended to think about it.

‘I don't think I can, Liz. My orders are to bring him in for questioning.'

‘But you don't need to do that—I've told you everything, look, I wrote a letter to Mr Leary, explaining everything. You don't need Bruno. He doesn't know as much as I've already told you! Oh, please, if you've any feelings, Peter, if you've ever cared about anyone—let me leave here, and don't follow me!'

He went on holding her; he patted her shoulder once or twice and let her beg and plead, giving a little more and a little more. When he got up she thought she had won him over.

‘I was always soft on you,' Mathews said. ‘Maybe I was scared to marry you, Liz, but there must be something left. I've never cared a damn for anyone, except you. Okay. If he means this much to you, he must be worth something. I'm going now. I'll take the letter to Leary, and fix the police about our friend through there. You take your bag and just slip through the door. Don't let me see you do it.'

She came up to him and threw her arms round his neck. She kissed him on the lips and left the taste of her tears for the other man in his mouth.

‘Thank you, Peter.'

He went into the kitchen and slammed the door. The tradesman's entrance at the back was bolted top and bottom. He opened it and ran out into the corridor. Both elevators were still at the floor; he was inside the nearest with the gates closed when he heard Elizabeth's front door slam. He reached the lobby a minute ahead of her; the porter was not in sight. He was trying to move the T.V. repair van from its position in the driveway, watched by an angry tenant whose car could not get through. Mathews was in his own car and on his way out before Elizabeth had come down to the lobby.

7

The Cardinal was smaller than Keller had expected; on the TV screen and in newspaper photographs he had appeared a tall man. He had passed within a few feet of him and he looked slight and borne down by the weight of his scarlet robes and the long train. The face was much more alive, thinner, with a sallow Southern skin and bright black eyes that seemed to burn like coals. It was the face of an aesthete, of the gaunt, medieval martyrs engulfed by pagan fires. Keller didn't even notice anyone else; the single small figure in blazing scarlet reduced his attendant priests, even the child acolytes in their white linens and dark cassocks, to a dim mediocrity. The procession pace was slow and dignified; a tall gold cross was carried in front of the Cardinal. It swayed and glimmered in the lights above his head. Keller had stepped back into the shadow, as close to the wall as possible. This was the moment when he had a perfect target; the skull-cap in bright scarlet bobbed ahead of him like a little ball on the tree in the Lebanese orchard. He could have killed the Cardinal with a single shot. He began to walk with the rear of the procession; he found himself level with the three priests in their gorgeous white and gold vestments who were to celebrate the Mass. They went down the short flight of steps leading to the main body of the church; the Cardinal had already turned left to the high altar to take his place on the throne. The priests followed slowly, keeping time to the stately organ music. Keller went down the steps after them and slipped among the crowd standing in the side pews. Behind him, the detective Smith, who waited by that door to 50th Street, fingered his gun and raised himself on the balls of his feet to get a look at what was happening below. The timing was wrong. The shot should have been fired before the Cardinal descended the steps. It should have been over by now. He couldn't see the assassin; one moment he had been in position, waiting by the wall, shielded from the lights, the next he had gone and the procession was dispersing at the high altar. The magnificent choral
Kyrie Eleison
was just beginning; the two thousand people in the congregation were on their knees. The Cardinal was now out of range of anything but a direct shot from in front of the altar. The man looked round him quickly. Something had gone wrong; the killer had baulked at the last minute. He began to walk away from his post, down towards the steps and the nave. ‘Hey!' He turned, finding one of the C.I.A. men right beside him. ‘You're not to leave that exit …'

‘Okay,' he glared back at him. ‘Okay, I just wanted to have a look …' He didn't try to move away again. He had been with the Police Department for fifteen years, and he had never made it beyond the detective grade. He was forty-three, greedy, sour and disillusioned. For the last four years he had been taking bribes. His fee for planting the gun and the sextant's robe in the confessional was a mere thousand dollars. He had been promised ten thousand for shooting Regazzi's assassin before he could get through the exit door into the street. He had put the gun in its place as soon as he came on duty that morning at 8 a.m. Someone else must have cut the ledge and made the hiding place some time back; probably when the confessional was discontinued. Whoever was behind this business, they worked like real professionals. Shooting a man down didn't worry him; he had killed at least eighteen people in his career, including a woman who happened to get in the way during a hold-up. He regarded his opportunities to assert himself as one of the few compensations in a lousy, badly paid job. If he regretted anything about himself it was the length of time it took him to get bent, and make some money out of the badge. The thought of the kind of money the professional ghoul must have been paid for putting a hole in Martino Regazzi made him so sick he would enjoy blasting him, just for that. But if he had ratted on the killing and didn't try to run through that door, he wouldn't get the chance. He wouldn't get his ten thousand. He retreated right back into the doorway, and slipped his gun out of his pocket. The safety catch was ‘off'; the hot sweat in his palm had made the stock greasy. He wiped it with a handkerchief, swearing in furious panic. Ten thousand. For Chrissake, why hadn't the bastard fired—why had he let the chance go by—knocking him off on the way back would be much more dangerous; it meant firing at him face on. The detective could have cried with frustration.

In the body of the cathedral, Keller was watching the Mass. He had no time for memories; there was so little behind him that was worth remembering and so it was much easier to forget. It was the smell of the incense that brought back the chapel in his orphanage so vividly. It used to make him sick every time there was a High Mass. It didn't go well with an empty stomach; he could remember the feeling of light-headedness and the slow heaving inside him. The chapel had always been cold; the floors were stone and the nuns didn't indulge themselves with cushions to kneel on. He knew the words of the
Kyrie
by heart; he knew everything the choir sang in response to the priest's intonement on the altar, amplified throughout the huge building by microphones. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Gloria in excelsis Deo
. People round him were singing. The men who had hired him didn't believe in God. He had that much in common with them. Souha had believed; the only time she had ever questioned his word was in her childish attempt to defend the name of Allah when he dismissed her Muslim precepts as a myth. She had believed in her God; so had the nuns who looked after him and all the other rejects in the orphanage. So did the priests in the scarlet robes. It wasn't a comparison prompted by sentiment. It was a fact, like hunger and poverty and vengeance and wanting one woman more than anything else he could imagine. He had never quarrelled with facts. The congregation was standing for the Gospel. One of the officiating priests came down from the altar and read it out through a microphone. Keller didn't listen. He had moved near the steps again, taking a position by the pillar with the statue of the saint suspended; its stone feet were right above his head. This gave him John Jackson at a range of about ten yards. He was in the front row, with two large men on either side of him with florid, barbered faces and a look of prominence in the way they held themselves and the cut of their dark suits.

One wore some green stuff in his lapel, like cress. Jackson's spectacles glittered in the lights, hiding his eyes like shields. Then the whole mass of people made thunder again as they sat down, and from his throne near the high altar the Cardinal began to speak.

Mathews phoned through to Leary's office. What he had discovered was so important that he dropped the cover. He was told that Leary was engaged on another line; Mathews insisted. He knew his chief. He was still so sore-headed that he didn't want to talk to him direct. It was one of the signs of being in disfavour. ‘I've got to talk to him,' Mathews said. ‘Tell him I've broken it.' There was a long wait; he passed a second set of traffic lights, keeping a close tail on Elizabeth's taxi. It wasn't difficult; the traffic was like treacle. He couldn't have got separated if he'd wanted to do so.

‘Leary here!' The voice sounded rough and irritable; Mathews guessed he hadn't been to bed.

‘It's Mathews, sir. I've got a report to make; I can't come in. I'm following my client. How's King coming along?'

‘He isn't,' Leary said. ‘But it's early yet; he seems pretty confident. But I'll crack him. I'm taking the next session myself. Report in and make it brief. I'm busy.'

He was still bitter towards Mathews. Everyone was permitted one mistake before he tossed them out, but he hadn't forgiven him for it. Nor would he, till Mathews did something outstanding to make up for it.

‘Huntley and King were planning to knock of J.J. That's what this was set up for. The guy was brought in exactly as we thought. But he won't be operating. She's on her way to meet him now. I only got to her in time; there was a contractor with a Schmeiser outside her front door. She said King must have sent him; she also said he murdered Huntley's piece of tail, Dallas Jay, thinking it was her. He knew she'd found out everything and he wanted her mouth shut. She gave me a letter for you; I promised to let her meet the lover boy and look the other way.'

‘You've done a good job, Pete.' The use of his Christian name was Leary's way of saying he was back in favour. He sounded different now; intimate, friendly. ‘A damned good job. Now I've really got something to use on Mr King. And don't lose her, whatever you do. I want that guy and I want her. I want to bring them face to face with this bastard here, right at the end.'

John Jackson. Leary put the phone back and poured himself the dregs of the coffee. He had drunk so much during the hours while he waited his team's report on Eddi King that he was too jacked up to feel tired. That was who the target was. Personally, he thought it was a good selection. But it was curious to find Huntley Cameron planning the death of a man who was dedicated to the principles of white supremacy and right-wing reaction. A more obvious victim for King, the communist, to choose. But politics were like marriage; he had thought of the saying himself and he often used it. They brought some ill-assorted partners into the same bed. He heaved himself out of his chair and stretched. There wasn't any point in waiting; now it was his turn to take Eddi King on. He was really looking forward to it.

In the slow line of cars creeping along Park Avenue, Peter Mathews stopped in yet another jam and lit a cigarette. Women were such fools; a little flattery, the suggestion that they were still important to you, and vanity could persuade them to any improbability, Like the chance of his keeping his word and letting Elizabeth and the killer get away. But it would be interesting to see him. To see what it was that Elizabeth had found in this one man which was so different. It must be sex, Mathews decided. With a capital ‘S'. Sex on such a scale that the well-bred, self-contained girl he had known and never succeeeded in arousing properly had lost all sense of proportion or even of personal safety. She talked about love; the memory made him a little uncomfortable; it was so obviously what she thought she meant when she begged him to let her go. To let them both go. He loves me. That was what she had said, and she believed it. Mathews wondered what would have convinced her that the word was not in such a man's vocabulary. Maybe the sight of someone lying in their own blood after he had gunned them down. He picked up speed, keeping the cab in full view. She had lost one of Leary's best men when she was being followed for exactly the same purpose. She was not going to slip away from Peter Matthews.

In the cab Elizabeth looked at her watch again, and called through to the driver. ‘Can't we find a different way out—I'm going to miss my plane?'