“I think maybe I’m going crazy. I have the terrible dreams like you used to have and terrible things are all twisted together. But the craziest part is how anyone—could—Ben! They killed Jocie. Somebody killed Jocie!” The words came out hoarsely and on a climbing scale.
“Where are you, kid? We have to talk. We can’t talk on the telephone. Where are you?”
“I have to talk to you. I have to talk to you.”
“I’ll meet you. Where are you?”
“I can’t stay here. I have to get out. I have to get air.”
“I’ll meet you at the paper.”
“No, no.”
“In the Park, then.”
“The Park?”
“The zoo, Raymond. On the porch of the cafeteria. O.K.?”
“O.K.”
“Right away.”
“They’re inside my head, like you said.”
“Get a cab and get up to the Park.”
“Yes.” Raymond hung up. Marco banged the phone down and wheeled in his swivel chair. Amjac and Lehner nodded at the same time. “The boy is in bad shape,” Lehner said.
“I’ll take him now,” Marco said. “This has to move very normally. Raymond has to be allowed to feel safe, then he has to play solitaire, so this is all mine. Give me some cards.”
Lehner took a pack of force cards out of a carton on the long work table supported by sawhorses and tossed them across the room to Marco. Lehner stuffed another pack into his pocket as a souvenir. A detail coming off duty straggled into the room. “Whatta you know?” the first man said. “They just handed the vice-presidency to that idiot Iselin.” Marco grunted. He turned and nearly ran toward the Forty-ninth Street exit.
Raymond was sitting in the sooty sunlight with his back to the arriviste skyline of Central Park South, staring at a cup of coffee. Marco felt shock like a heavy hammer as he stared at him from a few feet off. He suddenly realized he had never seen Raymond unshaven before, or wearing a dirty shirt, or wearing clothes that could have been slept in for night after night. Raymond’s face seemed to be falling into itself and it presented the kind of shock a small boy’s face would bring if he had had all of his teeth extracted.
Marco sat down across from Raymond at the sturdy outdoor table. There were only eight or nine people on the long, broad terrace. Marco and Raymond had a lot of room to themselves. He put his hand on top of Raymond’s dirty hand with the black rimmed fingers. “Hi, kid,” he said almost inaudibly. Raymond looked up. His eyes glistened with wet. “I don’t know what is happening to me,” he said and Marco could almost see the ripping Raymond felt. Raymond’s emotion was like that of a curate with his head filled with cocaine, or perhaps like that of a man after he has had acid thrown into his eyes. The grief that shone dully out of Raymond blocked out everything else within Marco’s field of vision; it was blackness which threw back no reflection.
The seals in the large pool honked and splashed. Around the seal pond grew a moving garden of zoo-blooming balloons, their roots attached to bicycles and prams and small fists. The big cats were being fed somewhere in the area behind Marco and they were noisy eaters.
“They are inside my head like you said, aren’t they, Ben?”
Marco nodded.
“Can they—can they make me do anything?”
Marco nodded less perceptibly.
“I have a terrible dream—oh, my God—I have a terrible dream that my mother and I—”
Raymond’s eyes were so wild that Marco could not look at him. He shut his eyes and thought of the shapes of prayers. A rubber ball came bouncing then rolling along the stone terrace. It lodged against Marco’s feet. A small boy with a comical face and hair like a poodle’s came running after it. He held Raymond’s arm as he bent down to get his ball, then ran away from them shouting at his friends.
“Who killed Jocie, Ben?”—and Marco could not answer him. “Ben, did I—did I kill Jocie? That could be, couldn’t it? Maybe it was an accident, but they wanted me to kill Senator Jordan and—did I kill my Jocie?”
Marco could not watch this any longer. Mercifully, he said, “How about passing the time by playing a little solitaire?” and he slid the force deck across the table. He watched Raymond relax. Raymond got the cards out of the box and began to shuffle mechanically and smoothly.
Marco had to be sure that his red queen would command the authority to supersede all others. He had never been permitted to read Yen Lo’s complete instructions for the operation of a murderer. Therefore, the force deck, which had been enlisted at first as a time-saver to bring the red queen into immediate play, was now seen by Marco as his insurance policy which had to be seven ways more powerful than the single queen of diamonds that the enemy had used. Every time Raymond’s play showed the red queen, which was from the first card set down, he attempted reflexively to stop the play. Marco ordered him to play on, to lay out the full, up-faced seven stacks of solitaire. At last there was arrayed a pantheon of red queens in an imperious row.
Where was Jocie? Raymond asked himself, far inside himself, as he stared at the advancing sweep of costumed monarchs. The seven queens commanded silence. They began to order him, through Marco, to unlock all of the great jade doors which went back, back, back, along an austere corridor in time to the old, old man with the withered, merry smile who said his name was Yen Lo and who promised him solemnly that in other lives, through which he would journey beyond this life, he would be spared the unending agony which he had found in this life. Where was Jocie? Mr. Gaines had been a good man but he had been told to make him dead. Amen. He had had to kill in Paris; he had killed in London by special appointment to the Queen of Diamonds, offices in principal cities. Amen. Where was Jocie? The tape recorder in the holster under Marco’s arm revolved and listened. Raymond stared at the seven queens and talked. He told what his mother had told him. He explained that he had shot Senator Jordan and that—that he had—that after he had shot Senator Jordan he had—
Marco’s voice slammed out at him, telling him he was to forget about what had happened at Senator Jordan’s until he, Marco, told him to remember. He asked Raymond what he had been told to do in New York. Raymond told him.
In the end, when all Marco’s questions had been answered, but not until the very end, did it become clear to Colonel Marco what they would have to do. Marco thought of his father and his grandfather and of their Army. He considered his own life and its meaning. He decided for both of them what they would have to do.
They walked away from the terrace, past the seal pond, through the bobbing flowers in the garden of toy balloons. They walked past the bars marked YAK—POEPHAGUS GRUNNIENS—CENT. ASIA and they moved out slowly through the gantlet of resters and lovers and dreamers toward the backside of General Sherman’s bronze horse.
At Sixtieth Street, on Fifth Avenue, Marco tried to anticipate the changing of a traffic light. He stepped down from the curb two steps in front of Raymond, then turned to hurry Raymond along so that they could beat the light, when the Drive-Ur-Self car, rented by Chunjin, hit him. It threw him twelve feet and he lay where he fell. A crowd began to collect itself out of motes of sunlight. A foot policeman came running from the hotel marquee at Fifty-ninth Street because a woman had screamed like a crane. Chunjin leaned over and opened the door. “Get in, Mr. Shaw. Quickly, please.” Raymond got into the car, carrying his satchel, and as the car zoomed off into the Park, he slammed the door. Chunjin left the Park at Seventy-second Street, crossed to Broadway, and started downtown. They did not speak until they reached the dingy hotel on West Forty-ninth Street when Chunjin gave him the key stamped 301, wished him good luck, shook his hand while he stared into Raymond’s tragic, yellow eyes, told him to leave the car, and drove off, going west.
Raymond changed clothes in Room 301. He entered the Garden through a door marked Executive Entrance on the Forty-ninth Street side, at five forty-five, during the afternoon recess while the building held only five per cent of the activity it had seen one hour b
efore. The candidates’ acceptance speeches were scheduled to appear on all networks from ten to ten-thirty that night, and after that the campaign would start.
Raymond was dressed as he had been told to dress; as a priest, with a reversed stiff collar, a black suit, a soft, black hat, and heavy black shell eyeglasses. He smoked a large black cigar from the corner of his mouth and he carried a satchel. He looked overworked, preoccupied, and sour. Everybody saw him. No one recognized him. He walked across the main lobby just inside the Eighth Avenue gates and climbed the staircase slowly like a man on a dull errand. He kept climbing. When he could go no farther, he walked along behind the top tier of the gallery seats, now empty, not bothering to look down at the littered floor of the arena, six stories below him. Carrying the satchel, he went up the iron stepladder that was bolted to the wall, climbing twenty-two feet until he reached the catwalk that ran out at right angles from the wall and led to the suspended box that was a spotlight booth, used only for theatrical spectaculars. He let himself into the booth with a key, closing and locking the door behind him. He sat down on a wooden packing case, opened the satchel, took out a gun barrel, then the stock of a sniper’s rifle, and assembled the gun with expert care. When he was satisfied with its connection, he took the telescopic sight out of its chamois case and, after polishing it carefully, mounted it on the piece.
Twenty-Nine
MARCO WAS FIGHTING TO KILL TIME. HE stalled at every possible chance as they tried to help him dress. He needed time for Raymond to find his position, for the inexorable, uncompromising television schedule to pull all of the counters into play. Marco thought about the face of John Yerkes Iselin and he made himself do everything more slowly.
His right arm was in full sling; right hand to the left shoulder. The right side of his face seemed to have come off. The skin was gone and under the snowy bandage it was as black as the far side of the moon. Four ribs had crumpled on the left side of his spine, and he was tightly taped. He was under semi-anesthesia to keep the pain under control, and it gave him everything on the outside in parts of fantasy and parts of reality. Two men were dressing him as rapidly as he would allow them to progress, although no one there could tell that he was stalling.
Amjac and Lehner squatted on the floor around a tape playback machine and the only sound in the room, beyond Marco’s labored breathing and his quick, deep throat-sounds of pain, was the clear, impersonal sound of Raymond’s voice, backed up by children’s squeals and laughter, the roar of hungry cats, the honks and splats of seals, and the gentling undersound of two hundred red, green, and yellow balloons as they cut the air at a tenth of a mile per hour. Every man in the room was staring at the machine. It was saying:
“No, I don’t think the priest’s outfit is supposed to have any symbolic significance. My mother doesn’t think that way. Primarily, it will be good camouflage. She may have arranged to have me caught after I kill him, when, I suppose, I will be exposed as a Communist with a tailor-made record as long as a hangman’s rope. Then, of course, the choice of ecclesiastical costume will keep a lot of people enraged on still a different level, if they didn’t happen to plan to vote for the dead candidate. If I am caught I am to state, on the second day, after much persuasion, that I was ordered to undertake the execution by the Kremlin. Mother definitely plans to involve them, but I don’t think she will purposely involve me because she was really deeply upset and affected for the first time since I have known her when she discovered that they had chosen me to be their killer. She told me that they had lost the world when they did that and that when she and Johnny got into the White House she was going to start and finish a holy war, without ten minutes’ warning, that would wipe them off the face of the earth, and that then we—I do not mean this country, I mean Mother and whoever she decides to use—will run this country and we’ll run the whole world. She is crazy, of course. There will be a terrible pandemonium down in that arena after they are hit, and I am sure the priest’s suit will help me to get away. I am to leave at once, but the rifle stays there. It’s a Soviet issue rifle.”
Marco’s voice, from the tape, said, “Did you say after they are hit? Did you use the word ‘they’?”
“Well, yes. I am ordered to shoot the nominee through the head and to shoot Johnny Iselin through the left shoulder, and when the bullet hits Johnny it will shatter a crystal compound which Mother has sewn in under the material which will make him look all soggy with blood. He won’t be hurt because that whole area from his chin to his hips will be bullet-proofed. Mother said this was the part Johnny was actually born to play because he overacts so much and we can certainly use plenty of that here. The bullet’s velocity will knock him down, of course, but he will get to his feet gallantly amid the chaos that will have broken out at that time, and the way she wants him to do it for the best effect for the television cameras and still photographers is to lift the nominee’s body in his arms and stand in front of the microphones like that because that picture will symbolize more than anything else that it is Johnny’s party which the Soviets fear the most, and Johnny will offer the body of a great American on the altar of liberty, and as you know, as Mother says, there is nothing that has succeeded in the history of politics like martyrdom, for now the people must rise and strike down this Communist peril which she can prove instantly lives within and amongst us all. Johnny will point that up in his speech he will make with the candidate in his arms. It is short, but Mother says it is the most rousing speech she has ever read. They have been working on that speech, here and in Russia, on and off, for over eight years. Mother will force some of the men on that platform to take the body away from Johnny because, after all, he’s not Tarzan she said, then Johnny will really hit that microphone and those cameras, blood all over him, fighting off those who try to succor him, defending America even if it means his death, and rallying a nation of television viewers into hysteria and pulling that convention along behind him to vote him into the nomination and to accept a platform which will sweep them right into the White House under powers which will make martial law seem like anarchism, Mother says.”
“When will you shoot the candidate, Raymond?” Marco’s voice asked.
“Well, Mother wants him to be dead at about six minutes after he begins his acceptance speech, depending on his reading speed under pressure, but I will hit him right at the point where he finishes the phrase which reads: ‘nor would I ask of any fellow American in defense of his freedom that which I would not gladly give myself—my life before my liberty.’ ”
“Where will you shoot from?”
“There is a spotlight booth that will not be in use. It’s up under the roof of the Eighth Avenue side of the Garden. I haven’t been in it, but Mother says I will have absolutely clear, protected shooting from it. She will seat Johnny on the platform directly behind the candidate, just a little to his left, so I’ll be able to swing the sights and wing him with minimal time loss. That’s about it. It’s a very solid plan.”
“They all are,” Marco’s voice said. “There are going to be one or two important changes, Raymond. Forget what your mother told you. This is what you are going to do.”
There was a click. The tape in the playback machine rolled to a stop.
“What happened?” Amjac said quickly.
“The colonel stopped the machine,” Lehner said, watching Marco.
“Come on,” Marco said. “We have seconds, not minutes. Let’s go.” He started out of the room, forcing them to follow him.
“But what did you tell him, Colonel?”
“Don’t worry,” Marco said, walking rapidly. “The Army takes care of its own.”
“You mean—Raymond?”
They crowded into the elevator at the end of the hospital corridor. “No,” Marco answered. “I was thinking about two other things. About a General Jorgenson and the United States of America.”
Thirty
A HUSH FELL UPON THE DELEGATIONS IN THE great hall as the Chairman announced that wi
thin a very few minutes their candidates would be facing the television cameras, when, for the first time together, eighty million American voters would see the next President and Vice-President of the United States standing before them. The convention thundered its approval. As they cheered the top brass of the party, made up of governors, national committeemen, fat cats, senators, and congressmen, were herded upon the platform, followed by the two nominees and their wives.
They moved with great solemnity. Senator Iselin and his wife seemed to be affected particularly. They were unsteady and extremely pale, which occasioned more than one delegate, newspaperman, committeeman, and spectator to observe that the vast dignity and the awful responsibility, truly the awesome meaning of that great office, had never failed to humble any man and that John Iselin was no exception, as he was proving up there now. When he sat down he was actually trembling and he seemed—he, of all people, whom audiences and speeches had stimulated all his life—nervous and apprehensive, even frightened. They could see his wife, a beautiful woman who was always at his side, a real campaigner and a fighter who, more than once, had looked subversion in the face and had stared it down, as she spoke to him steadily, in an undertone which was obviously too low-pitched and too personal for anyone to hear.
“Sit still, you son-of-a-bitch! He has never missed with a rifle in his life. Johnny! Damn it, Johnny, if you move you can get hurt. Give him a chance to sight you and to get used to this light. And what the hell are you sweating now for? You won’t be hit until after the speech is under way. Did you take those pills? Johnny, did you? I knew it. I knew I should have stood over you and made you take those goddam pills.” She fumbled inside her handbag. She worked three pills out of a vial and placed them together on the adhesive side of a piece of Scotch tape, within the purse. Very sweetly and with the graciousness of a Schrafft’s hostess she gestured unobtrusively to a young man who was at the edge of the platform for just such emergencies and asked him for a glass of water.