The Assassin (31 page)

‘You won't be the only one, lady,' the driver answered, glancing at her in his driving mirror. She looked agitated, almost dishevelled. He wasn't interested in her one way or another. Passengers were another species to him, slightly less than human. ‘There's no quicker way out today. You forgotten it's St Patrick's?'

‘No.' Elizabeth sank back against the seat. ‘No, I couldn't forget that.'

Perhaps Keller was as delayed as she was. He had promised to leave the hotel early and get to the airport by eleven. How long would he wait for her—an hour, two hours—outside the East Airlines' office, that was their arrangement? He wouldn't go without her. He would surely believe that she was on her way to join him, that something she couldn't control had kept her late. She lit a cigarette, and shivered. If Mathews hadn't come she would have been lying in front of her own splintered door, as dead as the Arab girl who had been strangled. They had arrested Eddi King. The man sent to kill her had been killed himself. She paused a moment to give her Uncle Huntley his due for being right. She hadn't been safe in the apartment, but she was safe now. Now there was no danger to her, only to Keller. Mathews had given them a chance; she cried suddenly, almost hysterical in her gratitude to him. But unless she and Keller left America that morning Leary would have them found and brought in. He wouldn't be moved by anything but his professional duty. They came out of F.D.R. Drive through to the Triborough Bridge and she relaxed, seeing the clearway ahead of them. Kennedy Airport lay about eight miles ahead of them. She tried the driver again. ‘Please,' she said, ‘please hurry as fast as you can. I'll give you double fare.'

‘Okay,' he said. ‘But I ain't got wings, remember.'

He put his foot down and the cab began to travel at its maximum speed.

Martino Regazzi stood on the top of the crimson carpeted step, framed against the magnificently carved canopy of the throne. He held the speech in his left hand. He didn't read from it; he spoke direct into the microphone facing the congregation.

‘My dear children in Christ,' he said gently. ‘Today is not just the feast of a great saint in the Church's calendar. It's a special day for America and Americans because St Patrick came to our shores as surely as to the shores of Ireland, brought here in the hearts of an immigrant people, driven by want and injustice from the place of their origins, seeking,' his arms opened for emphasis, ‘seeking the chance of a good life. Seeking freedom, and opportunity. Dignity, liberty of conscience. To the Irish, to my people the Italians, to men and women all over the world, America has been the Gentiles' promised land, a country unsullied by old tyrannies, bright with a new Christian spirit of universal brotherhood.'

He paused for a moment; there was not a sound in the body of the cathedral. Not even a cough, or a movement. The Cardinal had caught them as a great actor does his audience. ‘A century ago, my dear children, the leaking ships of profiteers brought Christ's poor to our country, with nothing but hope to sustain them, and faith to give them strength. Faith that for their children life would be full and good in God's sight. They brought us much of what we have today; some would say all. Their culture, their talents, their individuality, their music, their saints. St Patrick, St Stanislaus, St Anthony—we honour them and know them. They are part of us, part of America. That is surely the genius of our nation! To unite through love and Christian fellowship, instead of conquest!' Again he paused. In the choir stalls, a few feet away, Monsignor Jameson couldn't take his eyes from the Cardinal. The theatrical diction used to irritate him. Now he appreciated the performance for what it was, a beautifully honed and polished weapon designed to transfix the enemies of God. His own parents had travelled to America exactly as Regazzi had described. Even though Jameson knew the speech by heart, the way the Cardinal said it made him hot behind the eyes.

‘But long before the immigrant ships from Europe—a whole hundred years before their coming—other ships dropped anchor here.' The Cardinal pointed, almost accusingly, at the field of faces below him, upturned, listening. ‘Ships bearing our black brothers in Christ into bondage, not liberty! In the living death of slavery instead of the life of the Spirit—which is man's right to dignity and freedom. And that right has been denied these same people ever since.' He took a step forward, both hands outstretched towards them now, pleading, not denouncing, the passion of a passionate race in every movement, every tone of his voice.

‘“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.” That is the message of our country, carved on the Statue of Libery. America! The Motherland. But not to one race, one colour, one creed, but to
all!
America, her arms outstretched to all in need of shelter, owes to these, the first of her suffering children, that liberality she gives so generously to the rest of us. And no man,' the burning eyes turned downwards, the gesturing hand dropped until it seemed to point directly to the place where Jackson sat, ‘no man, proclaiming himself a Christian and an American, can deny to his fellow Americans, his fellow Christians, the fruits of our great liberal tradition. To do so is to damn our society and defile our nation. Any man who preaches the continuance of hate, social injustice, and repression must at all costs be returned by the people of America to the obscurity—the darkness—from which he came!'

Above the Cardinal the TV camera concealed in the passage way over the high altar zoomed in close to John Jackson. He showed no reaction; throughout the whole speech so far he hadn't moved or made a comment; several people sitting near were looking uncomfortable; two of his supporters were whispering. His wife, a large dark woman heavily swathed in a fur coat, was as still and impassive as her husband. There was such a silence, such a shocked expectancy, that when someone sneezed it was like a gunshot.

Up by the 50th Street exit door. Smith the detective listened to the words coming over the amplifiers, and felt his temper bubbling. He lost it over insignificant things; a trifling mistake in the office brought it seething over into yelling and swearing. All that sentimental hogwash about the Irish and the immigrants. What about Tammany Hall, what about the Mafia—culture and music and saints? He answered the lilting voice over the loudspeaker with obscenities of his own. And the poor. All the yapping about them. The hell with the poor; they made trouble, and Smith hated them for it. He hated most people, but the Negroes occupied a special place. When the Cardinal talked about the Negroes and slavery, Smith's nervous system jumped, as if he'd been given an electric shock. Black shit, that's what they were. The right place for them was where shit ought to be—in the gutter, off the sidewalk. He loved arresting them; he loved the way their eyes rolled up when they were hit. A numbness came over him; it was like a fog, closing him in with his hate and the raging, erupting fury in his mind. The Commie Cardinal. By Christ, a nigger-loving Red—he should have a hole in his head bigger than his big mouth—where was that dirty fink who'd lost his nerve—he'd lost Smith ten thousand bucks by losing his nerve—where was he? He'd fix him, the fink. He'd find him and fix him—he'd knock the Beejesus out of him.

Martino Regazzi let the silence hang for a moment. He waited, as the two thousand people in the church were waiting, for history to be made. For the Catholic Cardinal to throw his challenge down in the arena of a Presidential election. He was about to do it, and it must be done with due solemnity. He spoke at last; evenly, quietly, in contrast to the ringing oratory of a moment earlier. He spoke as one man to another, and he looked down at John Jackson as he did so.

‘In my church today, before the Altar, in the very presence of Almighty God, there sits a man who publicly proclaims himself the enemy of Christian love. To this man, before you all—I say this. Renounce the doctrine of hate and ignorance. If you believe in our great country, if you are fit to offer yourself for leadership—tear prejudice and repression from your heart! For if you cannot represent
all
the people of America you're not fitted to represent any of them.'

There was a massive gasp, a sudden involuntary movement among the congregation. The Cardinal raised his right hand.

‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.' He turned and took his seat on the Episcopal throne.

That was when Mrs Jackson rose from her seat; at a nod from her husband she picked up her handbag, and looking straight ahead began to move out of the pew. There was a rustle and a murmur; it started in the Jackson vicinity and quickly spread. People here and there in the side aisles stood up to see what was happening. Keller saw the woman get up; she was nearing the end of the pew, easing past the embarrassed public worshippers from City Hall, and then John Jackson moved to follow her. Everyone in the cathedral who was in sight of the altar and the front pews was watching Jackson. Nobody saw Keller bring the gun out of his pocket. He took careful aim at the head, its white toque of hair shining under the lights. When the muzzle was in exactly the right place allowing for trajectory and recoil to put the bullet into the left temple, Keller pulled the trigger. No silencer had been fitted because it made the weapon more conspicuous and difficult to hide; the original plan for Regazzi's assassination counted upon the organ anthem muffling the sound of one shot. There was no music at the moment Keller fired. There was a single sharp crack and then a loud scream. Jackson fell sideways against the back of the pew; his spectacles slipped off, hanging for a second grotesquely caught on one ear. His body slid and slumped, unable to collapse out of view because of the narrowness of space, caught up on both sides by people grabbing at him, shouting in horror. The single scream had become pandemonium. The aisles were filling with people, the security men were punching and fighting their way through; still the screaming continued as the hysteria spread, as the shriek went up. ‘He's dead. He's been shot!' At that moment the victim's identity wasn't clear. But the fact of assassination was enough. Keller stood with the crowds rushing past him, holding himself against the pillar for support to avoid being dragged into the mob. Police and plain-clothes men were in the middle of the group in the pew; the people were being pushed back. Somebody shouted at him. ‘For Christ's sake get them back; put up the ropes!' Keller didn't understand what they meant. He stayed where he was, the pistol hidden under the skirts of the sextant's robe. He had got Jackson right in the left temple; he had seen the little hole appear as if a fly had settled on him, just before he fell. He was dead. As dead as Souha; as dead as Mr King's plans. He had killed a lot of men in battle whose names he would never know. He felt nothing about killing the man Souha's murderers wanted in power. The time had come to get to that exit door. King's man would be on duty there, and he would need his gun again.

When the shot was fired, Smith was on his way down the passageway at the side of the altar. The massive mahogany screens concealed what was happening. All he could hear was the hysteria and the shouting; he saw men from his own department, and from the F.B.I., run past him, weapons in their hands, and he began to run with them. He didn't even see Keller in the mob. ‘What's happened?' he kept on shouting it as he struggled to get through. ‘Jackson,' somebody yelled back at him. ‘He's been shot.' He had his gun out, and he was using it like a club, swearing and foaming with aggression. He didn't know it but he was screaming at the top of his voice. ‘Where's that bastard—where's that fucking bastard …' He didn't even know who he meant.

When the shot was fired the Cardinal leaped to his feet as Jackson began to fall, pushing aside the priests who ran to crowd round him acting as a living shield against a second bullet. He came down the steps with his scarlet robes flying out behind him, forcing his way through to where the stricken man was lying, propped up on the pew. Blood seeped steadily from the hole in the side of his head.

‘Get back from here,' a detective turned on the Cardinal and bellowed at him. ‘You want them to get you too!' Regazzi didn't seem to hear; he was beside Jackson, bending over him; the spectacles splintered under his feet. He was praying, holding the slack hand between his own. He didn't hear the angry warning, but close behind him, shaking with horror, Patrick Jameson did hear it and turned round. Smith reached the perimeter of the crowd surrounding the front pew. The noise was a crescendo, broken by high-pitched sobbing, and the repeated shouting for a doctor. The emotion hit Smith like a sea wave; it hurled against him, battering him with the hysteria all round him, tearing his emotions up by the roots. He wasn't a Jackson supporter; he had never bothered about politics or taken the trouble to vote since the war. But if there was nothing he loved, his life was full of hates, of unsettled scores, of faces he had wanted to beat in, bodies he had wanted to pump full of bullets, institutions he had resented and wanted to tear down. He saw the scarlet robes of the Cardinal, washing over the body of Jackson; he saw him bending close over the lolling white head, and suddenly something broke loose in his mind. It was like the fraying of a rope so tautly held that as it breaks it cuts down everything in its way until it falls, spent and useless, to the ground. He pointed his gun and screamed. ‘You bastard, you nigger-lovin' bastard …' That was when Jameson turned round. He didn't think; he leapt with the wild agility of an old man finding his last reserves of strength. The bullet meant for Martino Regazzi hit him in the chest.

The exit door to 50th Street was unguarded. Keller had almost reached it when two men on duty by the rectory door ran up to him.

‘Where you think you're going?'

‘A doctor,' Keller said. ‘He's still alive. I must get through here. The other doors are blocked.' He bluffed for his life. ‘It's like a mad-house down there.'