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 identicaclass="underline" 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-Prés. Of the three men, one was a member of the president’s all-important Elysée Financial; his Citroën exploded when he turned his ignition on in the Rue du Bac. The two other Frenchmen were powerful executives in shipping companies—Marseilles-based, under the Paraguayan flag … owned by the Marquis de Chatellerault. The first spastically lurched and died over a café 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 Schriftführer 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 Einkünfte Finanzamt 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. A funzionario 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 powerful 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 identicaclass="underline" 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 rumor—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 of 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 explosion that ripped the entire enclosure out of its foundation, instantly killing Dellacroce and causing considerable damage to the rest of the house. Dellacroce was rumored to be …
Noon. London time.
Phoenix, Arizona. At approximately 5:15 in the morning, one Harrison Renfield, international financier and real-estate magnate with extensive Caribbean holdings, collapsed in his private quarters at the Thunderbird Club after a late party with associates. He had ordered a predawn breakfast; poison was suspected, as a Thunderbird waiter was found unconscious down the hall from Renfield’s suite. An autopsy was ordered… Five o’clock, Mountain time.