extraordinary; only extraordinary minds could conceive and execute such
a symbolic coup.
He opened the door.
R. C. Hammond, British Intelligence, stood in the corridor, his
slender frame rigid, his face an expression of suppressed shock.
“Good God. It is you. I didn’t believe him. Your signals from the
river … There was nothing irregular, nothing at all!”
“That,” said Alex, “is about as disastrous a judgment as I’ve ever
heard.”
“They dragged me out of my rooms in Kingston before daylight. Drove me
up into the hills-”
“And flew you to Montego,” compete McAuliff I looking at his watch.
“Come in, Hammond. We’ve got a minute and fifteen seconds to go.”
“For what?”
“We’ll both find out.”
The lilting, high-pitched Caribbean voice on the radio proclaimed over
the music the hour of seven in the “sunlight paradise of Montego Bay.”
The picture on the television set was a sudden fade-in shot of a long
expanse of white beach … a photograph. The announcer, in overly
Anglicized tones, was extolling the virtues of “our island life” and
welcoming “alla visitors from the cold- climate,” pointing out
immediately that there was a blizzard in New York.
Twelve o’clock London time.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing.
Hammond stood by the window, looking out at the bluegreen waters of the
bay. He was silent; his anger was the filly of a man who had lost
control because he did not know the moves his opponents were making.
And, more important, why they were making them.
The manipulator manipulated.
McAuliff sat on the bed, his eyes on the television set, now a
travelogue fraught with lies about the “beautiful city of Kingston.”
Simultaneously, the radio on the bedside table blared its combination of
cacophonic music and frantic commercials for everything from Coppertone
to Hertz.
Intermittently, there was the syrupy female Voice-of-the
Ministry-of-Health, telling the women of the island that you do not have
to get pregnant,” followed by the repetition of the weather … the
forecasts never “partly cloudy,” always “partly sunny.”
Nothing unusual.
Nothing..
It was eleven minutes past twelve London time.
Still nothing.
And then it happened.
“We interrupt this broadcast. .
And, like an insignificant wave born of the ocean depths-unnoticed at
first, but gradually swelling, suddenly bursting out of the waters and
cresting in controlled firy the pattern of terror was clear.
The first announcement was merely the prelude-a single flute outlining
the significant notes of a theme shortly to be developed.
Explosion and death in Port Antonio.
The east wing of the estate of Arthur Craft had been blown up by
explosives, the resulting conflagration gutting most of the house, Among
the dead was feared to be the patriarch of the Foundation.
There were rumors of rifle fire preceding the series of explosions. Port
Antonio was in panic.
Rifle fire. Explosives.
Rare, yes. But not unheard of on this island of scattered violence. Of
contained anger.
The next “interruption” followed in less than ten minutes.
It was-appropriately, thought McAuliff-a news report out of London. This
intrusion warranted a line of moving print across the television screen:
KILLINGS IN LONDON FULL REPORT ON NEW HOUR. The radio allowed a long
musical commercial to run its abrasive course before the voice returned,
now authoritatively bewildered.
The details were still sketchy, but not the conclusions.
Four high-ranking figures in government and industry had been slain. A
director of Lloyds, an accounts official of Inland Revenue, and two
members of the House of Commons, both chairing trade committees of
consequence.
The methods: two now familiar, two new-dramatically oriented.
A high-powered rifle fired from a window into a canopied entrance in
Belgrave Square. A dynamited automobile, blown up in the Westminster
parking area. Then the new: poison-temporarily identified as
strychnine-administered in a Beefeater martini, causing death in two
minutes; a horrible, contorted, violent death … the blade of a knife
thrust into moving flesh on a crowded corner of the Strand.
Killings accomplished; no killers apprehended.
R. C. Hammond stood by the hotel window, listening to the excited
tones of the Jamaican announcer. When Hammond spoke, his shock was
clear., “My God … Every one of those men at one time or another was
under the glass” ‘The what?”
“Suspected of high crimes. Malfeasance, extortion, fraud … Nothing
was ever proved out.”
“Something’s been proved out now.”
Paris was next. Reuters sent out the first dispatches, picked up by all
the wire services within minutes. Again, the number was four. Four
Frenchmen-actually, three French men and one woman. But still four.
Again, they were prominent figures in industry and government. And the
M.O.”s were identical: rifle, explosives, strychnine, knife.
The Frenchwoman was a proprietor of a Paris fashion house. A ruthless
sadist long considered an associate of the Corsicans. She was shot from
a distance as she emerged from a doorway on the St.-Germain-des-Pr6s. Of
the three men, one was a member of the president’s all-important Elys&e
Financial; his Citron exploded when he turned his ignition on in the Rue
du Bac. The two other Frenchmen were powerful executives in shipping
companiesMarseilles-based, under the Paraguayan flag … owned by the
Marquis de Chatellerault. The first spastically lurched and died over a
cafe table in the Montmartre-strychnine in his late-morning espresso.
The second had his chest torn open by a butcher’s knife on the crowded
sidewalk outside the Georges V Hotel.
Minutes after Paris came Berlin.
On the Kurfurstendam Strasse, the Unter Schriftftihrer of the
Bundestag’s AuBenpolitik was shot from the roof of a nearby building as
he was on his way to a luncheon appointment. A Direktor of
Mercedes-Benz stopped for a traffic light on the Autobahn, where two
grenades were thrown into the front seat of his car, demolishing
automobile and driver in seconds. A known narcotics dealer was given
poison in his glass of heavy lager at the bar of the Grand Hotel, and an
appointee of the Einkurifite Finanzanit was stabbed expertly–death
instantaneous-through the heart in the crowded lobby of the government
building.
Rome followed. A financial strategist for the Vatican, a despised
cardinal devoted to the church militants’ continuous extortion of the
uninformed poor, was dropped by an assassin firing a rifle from behind a
Bernini in St. Peter’s Square. Afunzionario of Milan’s Mondadori drove
into a cul-de-sac on the Via Condotti, where his automobile exploded. A
lethal dose of strychnine was administered with cappuccino to a
direttore of Customs at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. A knife was plunged
into the ribs of a powerfid broker of the Borsa Valori as he walked down
the Spanish Steps into the Via Due Marcelli.
London, Paris, Berlin, Rome.
And always the figure was four … and the methods identical: rifle,
explosives, strychnine, knife. Four diverse, ingenious modi operandi.
Each strikingly news-conscious, oriented for shock. All killings the
work of expert professionals; no killers caught at the scenes of
violence.
The radio and the television stations no longer made attempts to
continue regular programming. As the names came, so too did
progressively illuminating biographies.
And another pattern emerged, lending credence of Hammond’s summary of
the four slain Englishmen: the victims were not ordinary men of stature
in industry and government. There was a common stain running through
the many that aroused suspicions about the rest. They were individuals
not alien to official scrutinies. As the first hints began to surface,
curious newsmen dug swiftly and furiously, dredging up scores of rumors,
and more than nimor-facts: indictments (generally reduced to the
inconsequential), accusations from injured competitors, superiors, and
subordinates (removed, recanted … unsubstantiated), litigations
(settled out of . court or dropped for lack of evidence).
It was an elegant cross-section of the suspected. Tarnished, soiled, an
aura of corruption.
All this before the hands on McAuliff s watch read nine o’clock. Two
hours past twelve, London time. Two o’clock in the afternoon in
Mayfair.
Commuter time in Washington and New York.
There was no disguising the apprehension felt as the sun made its way
from the east over the Atlantic. Speculation was rampant, growing in
hysteria: a conspiracy of international proportions was suggested, a
cabal of self-righteous fanatics violently implementing its vengeances
throughout the world.
Would it touch the shores of the United States?
But, of course, it had.
Two hours ago.
The awkward giant was just beginning to stir, to recognize the signs of
the spreading plague.
The first news reached Jamaica out of Miami. Radio Montego picked up
the overlapping broadcasts, sifting, sorting … finally relaying by
tape the words of the various newscasters as they rushed to verbalize
the events spewing out of the wire service teletypes.
Washington. Early morning. The Undersecretary to the Budget-a patently
political appointment resulting from openly questioned campaign
contributions-was shot while jogging on a backcountry road. The body
was discovered by a motorist at 8:20; the time of death estimated to be
within the past two hours.
Noon. London time.
New York. At approximately seven o’clock in the morning, when one
Gianni Dellacroce-reputed Mafia figure-stepped into his Lincoln
Continental in the attached garage of his Scarsdale home, there was an