The Matarese Countdown (17 page)

“So by what authority, on what
expertise
, do you question an RDF decision or my decision?”

“I think that’s obvious. A man was killed.”

“It happens, Mr. Denny. I hate it, you hate it—we all hate it. But it
happens.
”

“Look, Pryce, maybe I flew off the handle when I shouldn’t have—”

“You’ve got
that
right!” Cameron broke in.

“But I’m here to oversee things, to make sure things go smoothly, and that was the first
night
. I look like a fool, an incompetent.”

“You couldn’t have prevented it, and I think you know that,” said Pryce, quieting down and gesturing for Denny to join them at the table.

“Maybe not the two guards and the assassination attempt, but I probably would have cautioned anyone about leaving the compound for the purpose explained. If I’d known about it.”

“You would?” Cam’s hostility returned. “
Why?
”

“Because there was a better way—assuming someone was actually waiting for the assassin on the old Chesapeake Road.”

“
If
, for Christ’s sake! You want to make the call to the kid’s family?”

“I was using a prior-hypothetical—”

“He speaks funnier than you do—” interrupted Scofield.

“So does Shields speak funny, but I’ve been around these clowns long enough to understand,” Cam replied. “What would you have done, Sir Analyst—you
are
an analyst, right?”

“I am, and I would have reached our armed personnel in a camouflaged vehicle in a field north of the entrance drive. They could have made an external assault.”

“
What
personnel?” Pryce, still standing, was shouting now. “What
vehicle?
”

“They’re there. In eight-hour shifts.”

“Why the ff … the
hell
didn’t we know about them?”

“I’m familiar with the F-word, Cameron,” said Antonia, quiet anger in her words, “and despite your courtesy, I believe it’s truly appropriate here.… Mr. Denny, why weren’t we told about them?”

“For God’s sake, I hadn’t gotten around to it! The first night, what could happen on the first
night?
…”

“That’s when you look for it,” replied Scofield, his voice suddenly assuming a tone of command. “It’s not your fault, though, it’s Shields’s—and it’s not the first time he’s done it. The initial instructions to the field should inform us of all the options we have—that’s
primary
. No surprises, no alternatives we don’t know about, no horseshit omissions, you got that, boy?”

“There can be variations on that scenario, sir.”

“Give me one, you son of a bitch!”

“
Please
, Bray,” interrupted his wife, her hand on her husband’s arm.

“No, I want to hear his answer! Go ahead, analyst!”

“I think you know, Mr. Scofield,” said Denny, in his soft, flat voice. “You go back a long time with Deputy Shields.”

“The
L-Factor
, am I right?”

“Yes,” replied the liaison, barely audible.

“What in God’s name is
that?
” asked Pryce, bewildered.

“You just appropriately used the name of the Lord,” said Bray. “The L-Factor is Scripture, according to Saint Shields the Immaculate, scholar of the Bible. The
L
is for Leviticus, as in the Pentateuch, the third book of the Old Testament. That much I remember.”

“What
are
you talking about, my husband?”

“Shields always believed that the answers to most human problems or enigmas were found in the Bible. Not necessarily the religious aspects, but in the interpretations of the stories, both myth and history.”

“Frank’s a
religious
fanatic?” Cameron was stunned.

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask him. He surely knows his Bible, though.”

“This L-Factor, this Leviticus, what is it?” insisted Pryce.

“In short, don’t trust the high priest. He may be a rat.”

“Come again?” Cameron sat down slowly, staring at Scofield as if the retired intelligence man were a lunatic.

“I’m not sure I ever got it completely straight, but in Leviticus the high priesthood was confined to the sons of Levi or Aaron, I think. They were the rulers of the temple and gave orders to everybody else. Then a few ambitious brothers who weren’t part of this exclusive fraternity mocked up some fake genealogical papers and wormed their way into the club. As a result, they had a real political voice over the vox populi.”

“Are you
crazy?
” Pryce, his eyes wide, was beside himself with frustration. “That’s biblical claptrap!”

“Not necessarily,” interrupted Eugene Denny. “Mr. Scofield essentially has the basic facts, if out of context.”

“Forget the redundancy,” said Pryce. “What’s he talking about?”

“In Leviticus, a few male Levites, the sons of Levi, later as they grew in numbers, the heirs of Aaron, were made the high priests of the Temple of Jerusalem, the seat of power. As in all such power centers, there was corruption—minimal by later standards, I might add—but nevertheless corruption by those who wanted to change the rigid system—frequently justified, I might also add. Ultimately, according to legend alluded to in Numbers or Deuteronomy, a zealot became the leader of the Jerusalem temple until he was exposed as a traitor and no son of Aaron.”

“Thanks for the lesson, preacher,” said Cameron, his words strained, “but what the hell does it all
mean?
”

“It means,” answered Scofield, his fury just below the surface, “that Deputy Director Shields isn’t sure he can trust
me
.”

“
What?
” Pryce turned angrily to Shields’s liaison.

“You see, youngster,” continued Bray, “in Squinty’s biblical imagination this compound here is the Chesapeake
Temple, and contrary to what you two assholes think, neither of you has the authority of a neutered fly-over this operation. Only
I
have. That’s my deal with Shields—check it out, Mr. Denny.”

“I’ve been apprised of your agreement, Mr. Scofield, and it’s hardly my place to interfere.”

“Naturally not. You’re Frankie-boy’s lackey and I’ll bet my left ball you’re in contact with your ‘camouflaged armed personnel’ just in case I decide to take a powder and blow this joint with my wife!”

“What are you
saying
, Bray?” pressed Antonia.

“And I’ll bet my right ball,” continued Scofield without stopping, “that the gate has instructions to reach you instantly if I go through it, which I’m entitled to do because I
am
the absolute authority here.”

“You’re not making sense, my dear—”

“The hell I’m not! The L-Factor, the Leviticus horseshit. I’m the high priest of the temple who may just be a rat. Isn’t that so, analyst?”

“There were other considerations,” replied Denny quietly.

“If there were, why weren’t we—why wasn’t
I
—told about your unit out there? It’s priority that I be informed at the outset just in case decisions have to be made that I wouldn’t allow you to make!… Oh, no, this is one of Squinty’s reverse tricks, goddamn it!”

“There was the possibility of a sudden, massive assault on the compound—”

“And two or three ‘armed personnel’ were going to
stop
it?” broke in a furious Beowulf Agate. “Jesus on a surfboard, what do you take me for?”

“I can’t answer that, sir. I merely follow orders.”

“You know, son, that’s the second time I’ve heard that within the past thirty hours, and I’ll tell you what I told that son of a bitch who became some shark’s antipasto.
I don’t buy it!
”

“Hey, slow down, Bray,” said Pryce. “Maybe Frank was right—about the second part. An assault, I mean.”

“It doesn’t wash, kid. If he really felt that way there’d be
a small brigade out there and I’d be the first to know about it. No, Squinty was waiting for me to make my unpredictable move.
Christ
, he’s a fucking genius!”

“You were about to make
what
unpredictable move?” cried Cameron.

“I really don’t understand, my darling—”

“In this high-tech age there’s no way to communicate with anyone in here by wire or radio, much less telephone, because everyone goes through a detector. The only way is personal contact, secret contact. After that mess with the bastard who killed the guards and tried to waste me—thank you for cutting him in half, Cam—I came to the same conclusion you did. I was waiting for Toni to fall asleep and then I was going out myself,
my
way, which wasn’t through the gate or in a goddamned vehicle. I would have been far more successful.”

“He’s done it before, gentlemen,” said Antonia, now squeezing her husband’s arm. “In Europe, when we were running for our lives, I’d wake up in the morning and find Brandon and Taleniekov having coffee. The problem that terrified us—the man or the men who had us in their gun-sights—were no longer a threat. That’s all they’d say about it, nothing more.”

“You equate that sort of thing with what happened last night?” Pryce asked Scofield.

“In a way, of course,” agreed the retired intelligence officer. “Only Frank got my objectives backward. I wasn’t going out to make a secret accommodation with the Matarese, who, as I told Squinty, offered me millions to disappear, I was going to kill the bastards. Or, if I’d had the patience, to take the fuckers alive.”

“Then why did you just call him a genius?” asked an angry, perplexed Cameron.

“Because, given like circumstances, I’d do one
or
the other. Frank always covers his bases.”

“But to consider you a turncoat, a traitor,” exclaimed Pryce, “that’s enough to make you want to put him in a box!”

“No, no, never,” said Scofield. “When he gets here at noon, I’ll surely tell him off, but nothing more.”

“Why not?”

“Let me take you back about thirty years. I was undercover in Prague and my control was a man I considered really brilliant, the best, most elusive deep-contact to Moscow ever on our side. I was scheduled to meet him on the banks of the Moldau River one night, when minutes before I left my flat, an urgent message came from Washington, from Langley—from Frank Shields. I decoded it, and it said, ‘Send a decoy, not ours but some drug pusher. Stay above on the perimeter.’ … That cocaine salesman was riddled with bullets meant for me. Frank Shields had led my control into a reverse trap that exposed him. My brilliant contact was a butcher from the KGB.”

“So now he’s pulling the same trap on you,” said Pryce. “Can you accept that?”

“Why not? All his bases are covered, and he could have been right. All I got from my years of service to
my
government was a bonus to buy a boat and a pension. The Matarese offer might have tempted me.”

“But he
knows
you!”

“Nobody knows anybody but himself or herself, Cam. We can get under the skin maybe, but we can’t penetrate the mind, or the multiple alternatives it might choose to take. How do you know who I really am, or who Toni is?”

“For God’s sake, we’ve talked for hours, about so many things. I
trust
you!”

“You’re young, my new friend. But beware, trust is built on optimism, it’s a series of shadows. You can’t give them three dimensions, no matter how hard you try.”

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” said Pryce, his eyes locked with Scofield’s. “This Leviticus nonsense, this high priest who may be a rat—what the hell does it all add up to?”

“Welcome to our world, Cameron. You may think that you’ve been there, but you’ve just begun your descent into our hell. It’s not a hell our pristine Mr. Denny knows, because he, like Squinty, sits behind a desk with all those
computers and makes abstract decisions. Sometimes they’re right, often they’re wrong, but what their computers can’t animate are human confrontations. In the end, machines can’t talk to machines.”

“I believe we’ve covered this before,” said Pryce. “I’m talking about last night, a night I’ll never forget. Where
are
we?”

“Well, I guess that the first lesson is that it’s not linear—nothing’s in a straight line. The second is that it’s got to be geometric—the lines flare out in all directions and you have to narrow down the possibilities.”

“I’m talking about last night—this
morning!
”

“Oh, that. I can’t tell you. Squinty will be here in an hour or so and we’ll ask him.”

“I can tell you,” said the liaison, Denny. “Director Shields is secretly transferring the entire compound to an estate in North Carolina.”

“That is the
one
thing he will
not
do!” exclaimed Scofield.

“But, sir, we’ve been discovered here—”

“You’re goddamned right, and I wish we could publicize it in all the newspapers—no, that’s probably wrong, let it remain classified. All those who shouldn’t know will find out.”

“Really, sir, the deputy insists that we start packing—”

“Then send the
deputy
to me and I’ll countermand his orders! What you idiots don’t know is that the bees fly to the honey pot. It’s an old Corsican expression.”

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