The Assassin (34 page)

‘Shut your mouth,' Peter Mathews said. He caught Elizabeth's arm. ‘Leary wants to see you.'

She walked with him, watched by the customers; even the sullen barman looked shaken out of his determined apathy.

‘He cheated on you after all,' Mathews said. ‘He wasn't going to do it, was he? He'd promised you.'

‘Like you did,' Elizabeth said. ‘Just like you, promising to let us go.' They were at the exit door. She stopped for a moment, pulling back from him. On the far runway a giant jet engine began to whine and scream before take-off.

‘You're going to tell us where he's hiding,' Mathews said. ‘You never were going to meet him, were you—that was just a blind! But we'll find him, I promise you that.'

High above, the massive aircraft rose into the sky, its engines thrusting in a shattering roar of power, pulling the nose higher and higher in an almost vertical climb. Elizabeth glanced down at her watch. It was one o'clock, plus two minutes. Then she looked up at Mathews. ‘I don't care what he's done,' she said. ‘You'll never find him. That's all I'll ever tell you, Peter. Now I'll go and see Leary.'

A week later John Jackson was buried in his home state; his obituaries were mixed. The reactionaries mourned, the Left rejoiced, the coloured people said nothing, because they saw Jackson as a symptom of a disease which nobody had cured with that bullet through the brain. Detective Richard Case Smith was committed to the state criminal asylum, being found unfit to plead to the murder of the Presidential Candidate and of Monsignor Patrick Jameson of St Patrick's Cathedral.

Rumours that the bullet which had killed Jackson was a different calibre from the one fired at the priest were ruthlessly suppressed. The State Department had sent word. There was not to be a political scandal; relations with the Soviet Union were entering a crucial phase with the President about to make a prestige visit to Moscow. Smith was a paranoid schizophrenic who had committed both murders. There was a greater sensation over the trial and conviction of Edward King, publisher, socialite and millionaire, for the killing of Huntley's Cameron's mistress. One of the maids at Freemont testified to seeing Dallas go into his room in the early hours. The fear of being blackmailed provided him with the motive; instructions from his own people and ruthless pressure by Leary prevailed on King to plead guilty and accept a life sentence. Not long after his trial a cleaner found twenty-five thousand dollars in notes in a bag, hidden in a men's lavatory in a cafeteria off Madison Avenue. It was never claimed. By the end of May, Leary stamped and closed the file on Eddi King. He called Elizabeth Cameron personally and told her she was free to travel anywhere she pleased. She wouldn't be seeing him or Peter Mathews again.

About the Author

Evelyn Anthony is the pen name of Evelyn Ward-Thomas, a female British author who began writing in 1949. She gained considerable success with her historical novels—two of which were selected for the American Literary Guild—before winning huge acclaim for her espionage thrillers. Her book,
The Occupying Power
, won the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize, and her 1971 novel,
The Tamarind Seed
, was made into a film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif. Anthony's books have been translated into nineteen languages. She lives in Essex, England.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1970 by Padua Investments, Ltd.

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2464-8

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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