The Triumph of Evil Read online

  “Nor will there be.”

  “There will, however, be a development before that joint session of congress opens. A development of sufficient moment to cancel that session, I would think.”

  “I too would think so.” Heidigger whistled tonelessly. “I think at once of the security, the fantastic security. But of course you have already considered this.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you have made a plan that penetrates all of this security.”

  “Of course.”

  “And that leaves no room for doubt that this horrible act is the work not of a deranged soul but of a heartless and soulless conspiracy.”

  “Of course.”

  Eric, I want to tell you about Karnofsky. God, do I want to tell you about Karnofsky!

  He listened as Heidigger told him that no other man could do what he, Miles Dorn, was doing. And he thought that this was very likely true, and in ways Heidigger did not imagine.

  And then he broke into a sentence.

  “Eric, is that the device you were talking about? The electronic wonder?”

  “Where?”

  “There—”

  And even as the head was turning, his hand was in motion, reaching for the back of the neck, reaching, making the grab precisely. Intercepting the flow of blood to the brain, cutting it off neatly, neatly.

  He caught Heidigger as he fell, eased him gently to the floor. He knelt beside the man. The thick glasses had slipped down on the nose. He replaced them, his hands gentle.

  “And how I wanted to tell you about Karnofsky, Eric,” he said aloud. “Childish of me, eh? But you shall not hear it, old friend. It is the least I can do for you, is it not? To grant you the bliss of dying in ignorance.”

  He uncapped the little vial, let a capsule role out onto the palm of his hand. He pried open Heidigger’s jaw.

  “They will even bury you with your gold teeth, Eric. This is America. A free country.”

  He lodged the capsule between Heidigger’s teeth. He put one hand on the bald head, one on the underside of the chin. He turned his own head aside and pressed his hands toward one another.

  There was a faint, almost undetectable odor of almonds.

  “My old friend,” he said, looking down at the corpse. “My oldest, dearest friend.” He spoke the words several times over, and meant them. But he spoke with no tears in his eyes and not a trace of sorrow in his voice.

  A careful search of the room revealed no gun. He had expected that Heidigger would have a gun on his person or in his luggage and was mildly annoyed that this was not the case. This was inconvenient, but his schedule allowed for the inconvenience.

  He found a coded address and memorandum book in Heidigger’s pocket. He was at first inclined to leave it on the corpse, then changed his mind and put it in his own pocket. In its place he left a letter in his own hand to Heidigger, giving a version of his plan for terminating Case Six. He had prepared the letter in the most difficult code he was able to devise, an elaborate cipher based on a Serbo-Croat key word. He doubted that any decent government cryptographer would have any appreciable degree of difficulty cracking the code.

  He also found, among Heidigger’s effects, a packet of pornographic photos of an interracial couple and an electrical masturbatory device. He laughed aloud, and returned these to the drawer in which he had found them.

  When he was quite through, he removed from one of his own pockets a thick sheaf of folded sheets of lined yellow paper. His letter to Jocelyn.

  He checked his watch. There was time. Even with the necessity of obtaining a gun, there was time.

  He sat down in an armchair and read the letter from its beginning to its end.

  Here are parts of what he read:

  My Jocelyn,

  You hold in your hand a letter from a man you now know as the author of a heinous crime… .

  Do you remember the day my house stank of Turkish cigarettes? The following day I traveled to Tampa to meet a man named Eric Heidigger. He wanted to employ me in the only profession I have ever practiced, that of assassination. He wanted me to kill the following men …

  What I could not get out of my head, Jocelyn, was not that the plan was outrageous but that it was so eminently feasible. His analysis of the state of the country was weighted, but not much so. And it seemed to me that fulfillment of the plan did not hinge upon its execution. I looked at the country and saw it all beginning to happen… .

  Why, you might wonder, did I not report this to the authorities? I did consider this. But what precisely did I have to report? Some fanciful plan concocted by some not-to-be-found Eric Heidigger? And to whom would I make my report? Suppose I poured all this into an ear that already knew. And approved… .

  You will wonder, then, why I felt compelled to take any action at all. Perhaps you will recall my own advice to you. To avoid involvement. To survive.

  But I could not survive in any event. From the moment I met with Heidigger in Tampa my own death was inevitable. It was only a matter of time. If I did not take Heidigger’s assignment, I would in turn become someone else’s assignment. If I were not part of his solution, I became part of his problem. My knowledge of the plan was only acceptable so long as I was part of that plan.

  I might have tried flight. Halfway across the world the trouble in killing me would be greater than the hazard I would present. But I made a promise to myself, Jocelyn. I swore not to commit suicide, and I swore not to leave the country. You might be interested in the source of this oath… .

  Do you remember Eichmann’s plea in Jerusalem? I still find it amusing. That he was only following orders. That he was given a job to do, and that the job would be performed by someone else if he refused it. And that he thus resolved to carry it out as well as he possibly could.

  I, too, was confronted with a job that would be done by someone else should I refuse to undertake it. Heidigger liked to flatter me that no man alive could do the task as well as I. But any number of men could and would have done it, one way or another. I have told you that, from the time of that meeting in Tampa, my death was a foregone conclusion. But so were the deaths of the men on that list. I could not possibly have prevented this… .

  One thing I could do. In one respect I was in fact unique. I knew Heidigger’s plan. I was a part of Heidigger’s plan.

  And I was opposed to it.

  Thus I was in an extraordinary position, that of a fifth column within a fifth column. A precarious position at that, because I had to do the job given to me while modifying its results in certain important but not readily detectable ways… .

  I could easily have made Drury’s murder the act of a conspiracy, or at least the act of a rational leftist assassin. But by taking pains to cloak Burton Weldon in the trappings of madness… .

  With Karnofsky, I arranged that both Heidigger and most of the public would see the murder as the result of a burglary. But among the more knowledgeable labor leaders there would be some suspicion, some slight feeling …

  You thought Guthrie ought to die. At the time I supplied a reason or two why he should not. I did not mention the one that moved me to keep him alive.

  It was simply this. Racism will be a factor in American politics for many years, if not indeed forever. And there must be a voice that speaks for this racist opinion. Such a voice may be dangerous or innocuous. Guthrie was not dangerous because he never possessed the potential for national success. Heidigger knew this. Thus, in his profoundly offensive way, he constituted a safeguard to American democracy.

  Imagine, Jocelyn, how astonished he himself would be to know this!

  But I was willing to see him dead. I hoped it would work out as it did, but the tolerance in dealing with explosives … In any case, I felt the death of Willie Jackson would tend to separate moderate blacks from the bomb throwers. Whether it had this effect I could not say. One small event among so many …

  … and thus decided not to kill James. It will never be possible for me to k
now how much of this stemmed from reason and how much I owe to the fact of our having become lovers. I am sure the latter had some effect… But reason was partly responsible, too. You see, Jocelyn, I felt it was important that James live. I felt the role he played was a positive one, a more valuable one than that played by any of the others.

  But how can I possibly make you understand, how can I dare to expect you to understand, that the deaths of innocent persons affect me not at all? How can I convince you of this without at once convincing you that I am a monster?

  Nor, on reflection, is the statement wholly true. I am moved by human death, but no more and in no hugely different way than I am by the death of any animal. That baby bird that Vertigo killed, for one example. The chicken we ate for dinner our last night together, for another. I grieve as deeply for that chicken as I do for J. Lowell Drury. I cannot see (and I suspect the fault is mine) any difference between taking the one life and the other. But this does not move me to vegetarianism, either… .

  And so I made the mistake of forgetting who I am. I am a killer. For a moment I thought I was God, and that James would live because I had decided that he should live. But my failing to kill him did not immunize him from death at another’s hands.

  I learned from this. I learned something I had already known, but one only learns what one already knows. What I learned was that these events would come to pass not only without my participation but also without the movement of which Heidigger and I were a part. Acts grow out of their time. And so I killed P.F. O’Dowd, not because it mattered to me or to Heidigger that he live or die, but lest someone else kill him in a more damaging way … .

  I have been over this so many times. There is a danger on the right, and every move the left makes strengthens it. Rhodine himself hardly matters. Remove him and another would take his place.

  I am just one man, Jocelyn. I am trying to do what I can to make this country as fit as it can be for you to live in. But I am just one man. I do not know how much effect I can have.

  The center holds the only answer. If there is an answer.

  Again and again I find myself blinking back thoughts of the unthinkable. That the answer is that there is no answer. But I must go on acting as if I do not believe this to be true …

  And the last page:

  And yet. And yet one fear gnaws at me, Jocelyn. It eats at me like cancer. And that is the fear that you will hate me.

  Before I met you, Jocelyn, no action of mine ever stemmed from a selfless purpose. Since then, everything I have done has grown out of love for you. So I write these lines, these endless lines, to you. To gain your understanding. To win your forgiveness. To keep your love. You are my afterlife, Jocelyn.

  Your love is my Heaven, its absence all I need of Hell

  And the last paragraph:

  Oh, my darling, my love, my life. Love of you made me selfless. Now it makes me self-sacrificing, because for it I must give up the only thing I want. For I cannot possibly send this letter to you, Jocelyn, my Jocelyn. I write to you knowing you must be spared my words. I cannot burden you with this knowledge. I cannot permit you to share it. You will be questioned at great length. You must know no more than I have already shown you. And what I have shielded from the world, I thus must shield from you as well. You said you would always love me, Jocelyn, and were it true I could bear anything. But you will know of me what the world knows, not what I have written here. For your sake, Jocelyn. But I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it, and something dies now within me.

  Miles Dorn

  He shed no tears while he read the letter. He would never weep again. The part of him that wept no longer existed. He read the letter dry-eyed all the way through to the signature. Then he burned it, page by page, in Heidigger’s wastebasket. He watched as each piece of yellow paper in its turn caught fire and flamed.

  When the last sheet was consumed he stirred the ashes thoroughly. Then, although he knew that the most painstaking laboratory work in the world could not reconstitute those pages, he nevertheless took the wastebasket into the bathroom and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Already the air conditioner was beginning to clear the smoke from the room.

  He left all of the cyanide capsules but one at Heidigger’s side. He let himself out of the room, hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob. The inside lock was the sort he could engage from the outside. He turned the bolt, put the room key in his pocket, and left.

  SIXTEEN

  His body moved, acted, performed. It knew its role and did what it was supposed to do. His mind was only peripherally aware of what was going on. For the most part his thoughts wandered in space and time, playing with words and phrases, listening to voices other than his own.

  Henry Michael Theodore. Vice-President, United States of America. An intuitive political amateur with an instinctive appreciation of centrist and right-centrist anxieties. A refined demagogue.

  His suit jacket hid the gun stuck in the waistband of his trousers. The patrolman whose service revolver it was would never miss it. He was dead now, in an alley, his neck expertly broken. Dorn had expected Heidigger to have a gun in his room. Finding none, he had not wanted to waste time devising a clever way to get one.

  The easiest way was the best. Policemen carried guns. Dead policemen have no need for them. A policeman going to the aid of an apparent mugging victim does not expect that mugging victim to reach up suddenly and break his neck. No amount of training can prepare a policeman for such an eventuality.

  (“I voted for the President in the last election. You know who a lot of cops voted for? … Guthrie… . You know who they’re talking about more and more? … Your man Rhodine … You know who else I like is Theodore. Of course, he hasn’t got Rhodine’s style. But I like what he’s got to say.”)

  It was so easy. That was perhaps the most frightening thing about it, that it had all been so absurdly easy from beginning to end. Even the genuinely complicated parts were difficult only in their conception, not in their execution.

  …. Romanian ancestry, original name Teodorescu. Theodore’s moderate right-centrist stance and his extraordinary success at focusing white middle-class discontent make his termination a quintessential ingredient in movement policy… .

  But didn’t they know how easy it was? Didn’t everyone know? It seemed to him that Dallas should have taught them that much. Not the assassination of Kennedy. But the assassination of Oswald, when one man with a gun walked through everyone and committed the world’s first televised murder.

  One man with a gun.

  (“Sweet old Theodorable… . Oh, God, I hate that man. When I see him on television I want to kick the screen in. Somebody ought to put a bullet through that head of his… . That man is tearing the country apart, and the more he does it the more the idiots applaud. I think he’s a dangerous man.”)

  What was Jocelyn doing now? She was at the commune with the Land People, and it bothered him that he could not picture the place in his mind. Perhaps she was working in the garden. Or putting up preserves for the winter. Or talking with someone, or sitting around high on marijuana. Or making love.

  (“I’ll always love you, Miles. Always.”)

  Will you, Jocelyn? Will you? I am going to believe that you will. Permit me a little self-deception. Permit me to believe this. I will not have to believe it for very much longer.

  …. It should be scheduled at least one and no more than three months after Guthrie’s termination. Terminal thrust must be unmistakably via large-scale leftist conspiracy. Involvement should extend to both black and white radicals… .

  One man with a gun. One man with a gun, in the right place at the right time. One man with a gun at the Capitol steps as the presidential limousine approaches.

  N.B.—It is imperative that the terminal cover be wholly opaque. Not only must there be no official or unofficial suspicion of movement involvement, but there can be no evidence of any involvement that is not absolutely identifiable as leftist and/or black.


  One man with a gun. In one pocket, a key to a room at the Holiday Inn. In another pocket, Heidigger’s coded address and memorandum book. In his mouth, tucked in a cheek, a plastic-coated capsule filled with cyanide. A capsule that would not dissolve in the mouth or in the stomach. A capsule that had to be crushed between the teeth.

  (“I will not kill myself. I will not leave the country.”)

  One man with a gun. One man with a gun in the waistband of his trousers, moving forward as the presidential limousine disgorges its contents. One man with a gun in his hand, moving through the crowd like a ghost through walls.

  (“But didn’t they know how easy it was? Didn’t everyone know?”)

  One man with a gun. One man with a gun in his hand.

  (“If you are not part of the solution, then you must be part of the problem.”)

  One man emptying that gun point-blank into the chest of the President of the United States.

  And turning even as the last bullet hit home. Turning, empty gun in hand, cyanide capsule still tucked between cheek and gum.

  (“I will not kill myself.”)

  One man with a gun, turning to point the empty gun at the Vice-President of the United States.

  (“Sweet old Theodorable ….”)

  One man with a gun. One man with an empty gun that no one else knew was empty. One man with a gun pointed at the Vice-President of the United States while Secret Service men threw themselves over the president’s body.

  Fools! Do you think I could miss?

  One man with a gun, welcoming the bullets that pierced his flesh.

  It took so long to die. La grande mort. He fell so slowly. Whoever would have thought the ground would be so far away? The ground was miles away. (Miles from Croatia.) The feel of the plastic capsule against his gum. (I will not—) How odd it felt, this business of dying.

  I die in your arms, Jocelyn.

  “I’ll always love you, Miles. Always.”

  Jocelyn—

  A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR

  The Triumph of Evil was the second book I published under the pen name of Paul Kavanagh.