The Assassin (19 page)

‘I'm going to bed,' Elizabeth said. ‘I feel awful.'

‘You keep your mouth closed.' Huntley Cameron looked up. He wasn't worried about her any more. She wouldn't say anything. She wouldn't ever destroy herself and him. He wondered how in hell she had tricked him into thinking that she might, even for a few minutes. ‘You go and take a trip,' he said. ‘A long trip. I'll tidy up this little mess.'

She went out and walked back down the corridor to her own room. They were going to kill Keller after he'd assassinated Jackson. There was a terribly familiar ring to that. She opened the door of her bedroom. The handle clicked; the small noise sounded loud out of all proportion because of the silence over the rest of Freemont.

On the stairs below, King, one arm supporting Dallas, stopped and waited. On the thick carpet he and the drunken woman made no noise. He heard the door close in the corridor above and knew that Elizabeth had gone back to her room.

Normally he slept well. Normally he would have gone to bed and perhaps read for a while before turning off the light, but for some reason he couldn't relax at all. He had undressed and wandered round his bedroom, restless and irritable. He vented it in his mind on Huntley Cameron and that so-familiar French thriller he had been forced to watch for the umpteenth time. Thank Christ it wasn't
Gone with the Wind
again. It was one in the morning and he hadn't been able to concentrate on the travel book he had begun reading—travel bored him anyway—and it was too late even by Freemont standards to ring for what he needed. He got up and went downstairs to find himself a nightcap. And in the library, with all the lights switched on, he found Dallas Jay, sitting on the floor with a glass of vodka in one hand, crying while she tried to get drunk. He had almost turned back; he wasn't a man who liked scenes. He had nothing but contempt for the woman herself, for her cringing personality, and the total lack of intelligence which was no longer compensated by her looks. Dumb blondes should never be more than twenty-five and a dumb brunette had even less margin for error. He almost turned back and crept away, and then he changed his mind. Huntley must have kicked her out. King had distinctly heard her leave her room to go to him. He came into the library and pretended to be surprised.

‘Why, Dallas! What's the matter?' She was already quite high; part of it was Stolnichnaya 80% proof, the rest a violent emotional agitation.

‘It was going so well,' she wept. ‘He was getting all worked up, and saying nice things to me an' all, and then—Wham! That bitch comes walking in—she just comes and bangs on the door and walks right in on us!' She sobbed, interrupting herself long enough to take a wild swallow at her drink.

King got her up from the floor and on to a couch. He gave her a cigarette, filled up the glass again, and sat beside her. She was hysterical and a lot higher than he had first judged. ‘Who came in?' he said. ‘Who are you talking about?' She turned her head, the eyes red, mascara ringing them in little inky streaks of tears; she looked leathery and worn, like a chair which had been sat on by too many people, careless how they scuffed and kicked.

‘That fucking niece,' she said, with the clear enunciation of the drunk for angry words. ‘The great God Almighty Miss Cameron. She just had to talk to Huntley. She just had to talk to him tonight. You know something, Eddi? We were going to make it tonight. We really were. He was all ready to go when she bust in.' She bent her head and the tears dribbled down and fell off her face. ‘He hasn't buzzed for me in months,' she said. ‘We were getting on great. Then she came knocking. Knock. Knock. The little shit. The fancy little shit-face.' King had never heard her swear; he found it repulsive in a woman. But this didn't concern him. He didn't care what she was saying now; he let her cry and maunder on; when she tried to lean against him, he edged back. Elizabeth had gone to her uncle after saying she was tired and going up early. She had waited till midnight, when she thought everyone would be asleep, and then gone to Huntley's room to see him. And that could only mean one thing. She hadn't believed his story about Keller. And she had broken her promise not to tell Huntley the truth about Beirut. King looked down at the weeping woman, repeating her obscene complaints to herself. How lucky for him that she had been with Huntley. How lucky he hadn't been able to sleep and had come down to find her. How lucky everything had been, considering that one piece of fundamental bad luck, which could mean disaster. Uncle and niece might have liaised. If Elizabeth Cameron had found out what they were planning she would never stand by and let it happen. He knew the type: assassination wouldn't be excusable, no matter who the target was. And if she told Huntley of her part in it, then the sooner Eddi King got out of Freemont, the safer he would be. ‘Come on,' he said. ‘Come on, you can't stay here. Huntley wouldn't like it. I'll help you up and you go to bed, Dallas. There'll be another time. Tomorrow night. Don't worry, just stand up, that's it.'

Dallas hadn't got into that state in a few minutes. That meant they had really been talking. How much had either told the other?—he didn't know but he was sure that it would be enough to ruin everything. He helped Dallas up the steps and guided her very quietly to her own door. He opened it and eased her inside.

‘I like you,' she said. ‘You know, I always thought you were a bastard, Eddi, but now I like you. How'd you like to come in for a while?' She stood supporting herself on the lintel of the door, making her defiant, tragic little gesture against Huntley Cameron.

‘No thanks,' King said softly. ‘You want to marry him, don't you? I wouldn't let you take the risk.'

He passed Elizabeth's door and for a moment he hesitated. For a moment red rage blazed in him; his hand reached out, the tips of his fingers brushed the gleaming handle. He could break her neck with one blow. He was fully trained in all aspects of his work. He knew how to silence, how to kill in a single movement. She was the one who would stop it if she knew. She would go to the police or the F.B.I. if Huntley Cameron had made the ultimate mistake and let her know or even guess the truth about the man she had brought in from Beirut. But going in and killing her was not the way. His hand dropped down and his feet went on, away from her door, towards his own room. First, make sure she didn't telephone. He went inside and found what he needed on his dressing chest. It was gold, like all his personal things: key ring, St Christopher medal, bought by one of his girl friends as a memento, swizzle stick for de-fizzing champagne. The penknife had sharp strong blades. He went out into the corridor again. He knew the main geography of Freemont as well as if he lived there. He also knew where the indoor security patrol operated; two men patrolled the house at night, but they had orders not to make themselves intrusive. He made his way down the enormous staircase and through the Great Hall, where centuries ago the German barons had kept their courts, watched by the ancient portraits on the walls, his shadow lost in the tapestries. In the outside passages he met one of Cameron's security guards.

‘My telephone's been ringing,' King said. He sounded querulous. ‘I pick it up and nobody answers. There must be a fault somewhere. It's keeping me awake.'

‘I'll come and check it, sir.'

‘I've already done that,' King said. ‘There's nothing wrong with the instrument. Where's the internal system—that's where it's gone wrong.'

They went together, the guard leading the way. The main telephone system was linked to a separate switchboard inside the house; this connected all the extensions in the bedrooms and living rooms, including the swimming pool and the conservatory. This was one place King had never been before. Every extension was marked. There were eighteen main bedrooms, tabbed by names. His eye flicked along the line, searching for the little plate with the name Visconti bedroom on it. He had already found his own. The Medici. The rooms were named for their furnishings. ‘Okay, I can check here myself,' he said. ‘You'd better get back to your patrol. Damned telephones. Lucky I know something about them.' He waited for the guard to disappear. He waited two full minutes by his watch. Then he unplugged the little cable connecting the Visconti bedroom with the switchboard, and cut through one of the twin wires. He replaced the plug; nothing showed. That would stop any attempt to call tomorrow morning, from her room. Or even that night, which was the greatest danger. And the first thing in the morning he would make sure she didn't get a chance to call anyone about anything. He turned off the lights and closed the door. Everything looked normal if the guard came back. Then he went up to his room and packed his clothes. Huntley slept late at weekends. He never came down or saw anyone before eleven. And by that time King would have disappeared and there'd be no more to fear from Elizabeth Cameron.

It was all worked out; he didn't congratulate himself. He had made a monstrous mistake, and being able to correct it was no reason to be smug. All it enabled him to do was fall asleep for a few hours.

5

The telephone woke Peter Matthews up; he never switched the extension off. At two in the morning it brought him wide awake. He had a moment of panic and reached out his other hand in the dark while he fumbled for the light and the receiver. The bed was empty. Of course, he'd been the gentleman and driven the lady home. They'd met at a private view in one of his friends' smart galleries on 23rd, gone out to dinner and come home to bed. She had short red hair, all curled and lacquered till it looked so natural he had just wanted to run his fingers through it. From such small beginnings …

‘It's Leary,' the voice said in his ear. ‘Get down to the office, will you. Something's broken.' Mathews didn't even have time to answer before he hung up. How lucky the redhead hadn't wanted to stay the night. He was dressed in ten minutes and on his way down town as the clock on Times Square moved to the half-hour.

Leary was in his office, the windows shaded, the lights on, and a jug of coffee sent a little stream of heat into the air.

‘Haven't you been to bed?' Mathews said.

‘No. I got a message around nine this evening. Through our Middle East section. Sit down and have a cup. You're going to need it.'

‘What's happened?'

‘On the face of it, the first thing wasn't much. An Arab girl called Souha Mamonlian found strangled and robbed in Beirut. Nothing out of the ordinary there, except that the Bank of Lebanon had a deposit of ten thousand dollars in her name, put there by a European man she was living with. This was reported to Interpol because the bank felt it might be connected with dope running—it's a hell of a lot of money for a girl like that, and also the boy friend was a bum. No steady job, no money, and after putting the money in the bank for her he disappeared. Our friend in Interpol thought we should know because Beirut was Eddi King's last port of call before he rendezvoused with Marcel Druet in Paris. That's number one. Number two is nastier. Have your coffee, Pete. In the course of checking up on King, we found out something else. He went direct to Paris, a day later Elizabeth Cameron left for New York. Half a dozen people at the Beirut airport, the barman, the Pan Am stewardess on the flight, said she was travelling with a man. She never mentioned this to me. She talked about King and about everything else, but she never once mentioned meeting anyone else or coming on the plane with them.'

‘It looks bad,' Mathews said slowly. ‘You were right, weren't you? You said she was holding out—you even said there was a man in it somewhere. There was certainly somebody with her the time I called. We've got a tail on her—she went down to Freemont for the weekend.' He finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Leary had been right and so had he. He'd made a joke, curious to know who the guy was. Stars in her eyes, that's what he'd said, and she hadn't been drawn. She had said nothing to him, either.

‘And now,' Leary said, ‘for the real reason I woke you up. Look at this.' He pushed over a teletyped sheet, and settled back in his chair while Mathews read it. It was a report of an interview with a member of the faculty at Wisconsin College where Eddi King had been a student in the early thirties. It was all routine stuff, chatty and inaccurate in minor details; thirty years ago was a long time; the teacher had been very junior, more interested in the basketball team than the academic records. And that was where Leary's broad pencil had scored and scored again, beside a single paragraph.

The reason Eddi King remained in the teacher's memory so vividly was because he had been so keen on basketball. But he just hadn't made the team. Used to try exercise to increase his height. But it was no good. Five foot nine was just too short. He never made it. That was where the pencil marking stopped.

Mathews looked up. ‘I don't get this? What's wrong?

Leary had his eyes shut. He spoke without opening them; he looked strained and very tired. ‘King was twenty-one. He'd finished growing. I've heard of people growing down as they got older, but never growing up. Our Eddi King is over six feet tall. You see what this means, Pete? You see what those three or four inches mean?'

‘It's not the same man,' Mathews said slowly. ‘It's not the real Eddi King.'

‘I didn't just take that,' Leary went on. ‘I got through to Wisconsin myself. I checked it personally. King was a small guy, slight build. Five nine was a stretch for him.

‘How could it have been done?' Peter Mathews said. He wasn't excited; he felt chilled, as if they had opened a door and seen a dead face through the crack.

‘King was interned in France during the war. It's in his file. He was released in '45, and came back here in '58. That's how it happened, Pete. The real Eddi King didn't surive that death camp. The Russians took his identity for one of their people.'