The Assassin (32 page)

‘I'll go,' one of the men said. ‘You stay on duty by this door.' He opened the exit door and Keller caught a glimpse of a second man outside. He waited for little more than a minute. Then he slipped the gun out of his pocket again and gripped it by the barrel. As he opened the door, the man on duty turned round.

‘Nobody's allowed to leave, bud,' he said. Keller didn't move, and the man did what he hoped. He came closer to him. He wasn't expecting an attack.

‘Is that a doctor coming?'

He turned round to look as Keller asked him; the butt of the little gun cracked down on his head. The sextant's robe dropped in a heap. Keller walked away and turned left towards Madison Avenue. It was eleven-twenty, the sun was shining, but the cold was intensified by an unpleasant wind which patrolled the wide street in long gusts, driving the crowds before it. The café where he had hidden the money was only a few minutes' walk away on Madison itself. But at the end of the street he saw the crowds, gathered in density, with the red flashing lights of ambulances and police cars winking above them. The sirens wailed, the fluctuating note growing louder as he came closer to them. Twenty-five thousand dollars were hidden behind a lavatory cistern. They were also protected by half the police force in the city. He felt little sense of disappointment; his mind was insulated against emotion. He didn't even care about the money. He felt a fierce, sick longing to be with Elizabeth. Further than that he was unable to think or to feel. He walked part of the way back and then out down the block till he came to Madison Avenue. After waiting for a long time—he didn't know how long—on the sidewalk, Keller picked up a cab.

‘The airport,' he said.

‘Which airport?' the driver asked him. ‘What the hell's goin' on back there? They got enough sirens for the San Francisco fire …'

‘The Kennedy Airport,' Keller said. He saw his own face in the driver's mirror. It was grey and expressionless. ‘There's been some kind of accident. Hurry, will you, I have to catch a plane.'

He would be late. He was already late. Perhaps she had tired of waiting for him and gone away. Perhaps she had changed her mind and not come at all. He leaned back and closed his eyes. He felt very tired; it was his only nervous reaction now that the worst danger had passed. His chances were very high now. He had got out of the cathedral. That was the miracle he needed in order to escape. By the Eastern office; that's where Elizabeth would be waiting for him. He didn't care about not being able to get the money. He had never cared, not since she told him what had happened to Souha, not since he had decided to strike a blow on his own account, to pull the trigger for himself. The money didn't matter. Nothing mattered but to find Elizabeth and get away.

They had carried Patrick Jameson behind the marble altar rail and laid him on the ground. There were several doctors in the congregation of distinguished Irishmen; two had examined John Jackson and declared him dead. The assassin was in the vestry behind the High Altar yelling and fighting with the police who had managed to handcuff him; his crazy shouting could be heard from a distance, and it went on until a senior detective from his own precinct smashed a fist into his mouth and shut him up. A third doctor was with Jameson. He was unconscious; he knew nothing after the split-second pain in his chest. Martino Regazzi was on his knees beside him, and his scarlet robe was stained with the old priest's blood.

‘He's dying, Eminence,' the doctor said. He had examined the bullet wound and its position was mortal; the man's fluttering pulse and feeble respiration would soon stop. It was extraordinary that his heart could go on beating even for those few minutes.

‘He should have the Sacraments; there's not much time.' The Cardinal didn't answer him. He didn't pray for his secretary as he had done for Jackson, whom he had hated. He stayed on his knees and watched his life seeping away, and before them all he bowed his head and wept. In the limbo before death Patrick Jameson, the son of a labourer from County Kerry, received the last rites of the Church he loved from the Cardinal he had also loved, albeit without understanding very much about him. He never regained consciousness, but during the anointing he smiled. The smile remained on his lips at the moment he died.

The chief of the New York Police Department gave orders to clear the cathedral and draw the crowds outside away from the exit leading to the rectory. He had worked it out that Smith could be hustled through into the rectory and from there taken away to the police station.

When the body of the cathedral was clear he saw Smith borne out of the door towards the rectory surrounded by police. He was still struggling and yelling. Crazy like a dog. Thank God for that, the chief said privately to himself. Thank God he hadn't been bribed, and gone political. Any department could have an officer who suddenly went berserk. When a junior detective came up to him he brushed the man off angrily. He was trying to complain about being knocked out by someone in the crowd. The chief didn't listen. Neither had his captain, or anyone else but a harassed C.I.A. man who had told him to report it. Nobody listened or cared about the sextant who clubbed him and disappeared after the two shootings. It wasn't until well into the afternoon that he got himself a hearing, and the authorities realised that there had been more than one killer in the cathedral.

‘Tell me, Mr King, how long have you known Huntley Cameron?'

This was a new man; the teams had been changed over in so short a time that Eddi King was worried. The lightly built man sitting behind the table, a percolator full of fresh coffee set in front of him, had a hard, triumphant look on his face. But that too was an old trick; pretending to know everything, playing the cream-fed cat to the victim's cornered mouse. King looked surprised. ‘For a number of years. We're close friends. He won't be pleased to hear about this.'

‘I don't suppose he will,' Leary said. ‘I guess he'll wonder how long you'll be able to hold out. If you're obstinate, of course, he'll probably get out of the country. A man with his money can usually find some place to hide in. So you'll just have to carry the can for the both of you.'

I don't know what you're talking about,' King said. ‘You're not making sense.'

‘Then let's try something else, shall we? When were you planning to have Jackson killed?'

King had been well trained; his self-discipline didn't desert him. He didn't change his colour or show any sign of the terrific shock he had been given. Elizabeth Cameron had got her information through. He hoped she was dead, because at least she couldn't be a witness. But she had given the whole plot away; that was why he'd been arrested. He hoped the man he'd sent to kill her had shot her in a way to make her suffer. He hoped she had lain alone for a long time, in agony, before she died. He just hoped the girl hadn't been taken in for her own safety. That brought a few drops of chilly sweat out on his face, above the line of his hair. He turned his eyes on Leary; they were stony with his determination not to give way. He still didn't know what time it was.

‘I want to see my lawyer. I want my constitutional rights. You can't keep me here, throwing these crazy accusations at me!'

‘I don't intend to,' Leary said. ‘I know you're not Edward King from Minnesota; you don't have any constitutional rights, because you're not an American. You're a Russian agent. I know that. You know I know it.'

The door opened; all of them turned round, including King. A woman came into the room; she didn't look near him. She went straight to Leary and said something. He sprang up, his face grey-white. He turned on King like a snake.

‘You did it, you son of a bitch! You sat here stalling, and you brought it off!' They were all looking at King now. He glanced from face to face, ending with the man who a moment ago had been taunting him in his confidence. Now it was his turn to show that elusive glint of triumph which could never be pinned down in words.

‘What's the matter,' he said. ‘Bad news?'

Leary was shaking. The caffeine was playing a devil's toccata on his nerves. He looked into the good-looking face of the man in front of him, a little beard showing through the smooth skin, the light eyes watching him beneath that vaguely Slavic forehead, and he felt sick with himself. He'd been too late, too slow. Not seeing the date screaming at him from the calendar. If he'd clamped down on King as soon as he was arrested the murder in St Patrick's might have been prevented. He hated the enemy in front of him at that moment with an intensity enough to kill him, but he hated himself more.

‘You got him,' he said slowly. ‘Right in the middle of the Mass. You bastard.' He stepped forward and suddenly hit King. For a lightly built man he struck hard. King's head jerked back and his lip split. He brought out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth.

‘If you're going to do this I'd better make a statement,' he said.

It was over for him now. He couldn't hope to hold out against them; he had done what he had been ordered to do. He mightn't see that Moscow flat and write a letter at his expensive French
bureau plat
for a few years, but he could wait. His own people would get him out. All he had to do was admit to running an espionage ring under the cover of his magazine, and deny that he had done more than listen to Huntley Cameron's assassination plot. Elizabeth Cameron was the key; Huntley could only implicate him at the cost of his own safety. Only Elizabeth could bear personal witness against them both. And the word had gone out for her. If she hadn't been reached already, she'd never live to testify in court against him.

‘I'm ready to make a statement,' he repeated. There was blood on his handkerchief. Leary watched him; he was rubbing his fist.

‘Okay,' he said. ‘Okay. We'll take it down.'

No questions were asked of King; Leary wouldn't allow him to be interrupted. He talked for some time, admitting espionage, admitting his identity as a Soviet agent. He even gave his real name, Alexander Turin, major in the Soviet Army. He implicated three minor agents, two in West Germany and one in France. Beyond that, he had nothing more to confess. He expected them to have his statement typed and brought back for him to sign. But nothing happened. Leary stayed where he was drinking coffee, tapping a pencil against the table surface until it began to get on King's nerves.

‘I've told you everything,' he said. ‘I'll sign my statement.'

Leary's tired eyes considered him with dislike. ‘I'm not charging you on that,' he said. ‘I don't give a damn whether you're a K.G.B. man or Eddi King from Minnesota. You're not going to get rapped for spying, Mr King. As far as your function as an agent is concerned, we don't give a damn. I'm passing you on to the police. For the murder of a woman called Dallas Jay.' He got up and walked towards the door. Before he went through it he turned round. ‘You'll get a life sentence,' he said.

Two men came towards King; he stood up without them having to touch him. He swallowed with some difficulty; the room seemed very much smaller and darker than when he had come into it. ‘I had nothing to do with it,' he said. ‘I didn't kill anyone. I didn't kill the Cardinal either. He can't do this to me.'

‘Nobody killed the
Cardinal,'
a man's voice said, quite close beside him. ‘You got it wrong, Mr King. It was John Jackson who was shot dead today.'

It was five minutes to noon when Elizabeth walked through into the Eastern Airlines building at Kennedy. The doors were operated electrically; they swung open to let her through and silently closed behind her. She had always found the innovation eerie. Less than a month ago she had stood waiting in the Arrivals Building surrounded by much the same human maelstrom which flowed perpetually through all airports, waiting for someone to take charge of Keller. Nobody had come, and they had left the building together, his hand on her arm to prevent the escape she was contemplating. It was less than four weeks, but it seemed as if her whole life had been lived out within that period.

They had come together like characters in a Greek play, with the same inexorable Fate directing them. Elizabeth had never believed in a predestined future; she wasn't sure what she believed about the purpose of human life. It was a common escapism for the uncommitted to protest they were too busy living to wonder about life itself. Before she had met Keller she might have said this. But not now; not as she pushed her way through the crowds, looking for the place they had arranged to meet, the place where their tickets would be waiting.

She was so late; she felt a return of the impulse to break down and cry which had come on her during the taxi ride out. If he had given up and gone away. If he had just taken another plane, thinking she had changed her mind. If, by the malignancy that dogged the Greeks, to whom she had likened herself and him, they were to come this far, defeating all the obstacles gathered against them, and then miss each other. People turned to look at her as she brushed past them. She had always caused attention because of her elegance and her beauty; she appeared the glossy American socialite with the extra burnish associated with successful models. Now the Yves St Laurent suit, and the black mink coat falling off her shoulders, only emphasised the desperate look, the frantic struggling to get somewhere ahead of time. She came round a big bookstall, crammed with magazines; there were crowds round it, she didn't notice the fact that they weren't buying anything. They were listening to a transistor, giving a newsflash. Elizabeth didn't hear it; she was way past, running towards the ticket desk. She would have picked him out of any crowd. He wasn't there. She stopped for a moment, fighting back the tears of disappointment. She mustn't be a fool, imagining the worst immediately. There might be a message for her. It was difficult to gain attention. There were half a dozen people lined up for their tickets; she joined the queue and waited, watching from all directions in case he came. ‘Two tickets to Mexico City booked in the name of Miss Elizabeth Cameron,' she said. She was trembling so visibly she had to hold on to the counter. The clock directly in front of her said noon. An hour; an hour late. He must have come and gone away again. Unless he was delayed by traffic. And of course he would be; he would have started so much later, not realising what the St Patrick's Day procession did to the transport system. She was so relieved, again she could have cried; her only reaction to anything, she thought hysterically, was tears. Of course he was late. They would miss the flight, but it didn't matter. They could take another plane to Mexico City. Where was he—Oh God, where was he?