The Matarese Countdown (26 page)

little girl
. “When you’re finished, Toni and I will add whatever we can, which will be considerable.”

“Thank you, but what does it all have to do with my
son?
”

“Everything,” said Beowulf Agate.

T
he formerly bankrupt resort known as Peregrine View at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains was as visually different from the Chesapeake compound as its security personnel were from the RDF and CIA patrols; instead of the latter, there was an elite Special Forces undercover Gamma unit from Fort Benning, recently returned from Bosnia. The soldiers were told only that the guests of the government sequestered there were selected embassy officials brought back for debriefing, and since their posts had been sensitive—read borderline dangerous—they were to be guarded from any external interferences—read physical threats. It was enough; these were professional military men used to understanding the unspoken. It was the nature of their Gamma operations: infiltrate and perform, the orders indirect and obfuscated.

Since everything was drastically altered in this area, and everyone in the Chesapeake compound gone but still under surveillance, provisions were brought in from the town of Cherokee, a welcome relief from the twice-daily thunder of the helicopters. However, small planes regularly flew into the Cherokee airstrip carrying the materials requested by Scofield and were driven up to the restricted mountain complex. These ranged from financial reports to all manner of
correspondence, from executive speeches to interoffice memoranda where they could be secretly unearthed, whether by expert thieves or bribery. Within a few days the cartons filled the living room of Brandon and Antonia’s bilevel condominium, known as Estate 6. Flanking this dwelling were Estates 5 and 7, respectively occupied by Pryce and Lieutenant Colonel Montrose.

Frank Shields and Thomas Cranston had returned to their posts at Langley and the White House, staying in constant touch over sterile telephones and confidential-mode fax machines. The work was laborious, the four of them poring over the materials for hours at a time until spines were stiff and eyes exhausted. The financial reports were the worst: myriad columns of figures followed by addenda of projections and analyses of assets procured or on the table. For instance, “Project M-113” would be briefly described as “undervalued. See Section 17 in this report, then crosscheck with Sections 28 and 36 for clarification.” To make matters worse, the language was out of a textbook for advanced economics—theoretical and pragmatic, definitely on the doctoral level and the proverbial “Greek” for the layman. But one thing was clear to Brandon Scofield. These abstruse insertions were designed to mystify to the point of unintelligibility, going to the precipice of illegality, but not over the edge.

“M-One Thirteen is never spelled out!” yelled a frustrated Bray. “And the lousy thing is, it doesn’t
have
to be.”

“I couldn’t get through that stuff,” said Cameron, “but what do you mean?”

“The precepts of laissez-faire, which beat the hell out of the Malthusian laws of economics.”

“Come again?” asked Leslie.

“Competition,” answered Scofield. “Until a bid is actually made, opposing interests have no right to know one is projected or even thought about.”

“What’s that got to do with the Malthusian thing?”

“Iron, bronze, and gold, youngster. Iron wants to become bronze, and bronze would prefer being gold, and gold wants the whole kit and caboodle. Guess who’s gold?”

“The Matarese,” said Pryce.

“Sweet Jesus, you’re filling the hole in your head.… Mark this one down. It’s a possible Matarese.”

“What’s the company?” asked Antonia, paper and pencil in hand.

“A global conglomerate all the way. Atlantic Crown, headquarters Wichita, Kansas.”

“We need more than a corporate report, Bray,” said Cameron.

“This is just the beginning, son. Once we’ve found a pattern—if we found the pattern—we know what to go for. I’m surprised I have to tell you that.”

“Forgive me, darling,” Antonia sat forward in her chair, “but I think we should take some time off. We’ve been at this for hours, and I, for one, am losing my concentration.”

“I hate to stop,” said Leslie, a sheaf of papers in her hand, “but I agree. I have to continuously reread so the words mean something.”

“Wimps,” mumbled Scofield, yawning. “Although you may have a point. I could use a drink.”

“You could use a nap, my darling. Come, let me take you upstairs.”

“An animal,” said Bray, winking at Pryce and Montrose. “She’s sheer animal. Can’t wait to get me into a bedroom.”

“Very refreshing,” Leslie noted. “It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it?”

“That’s a myth, dear,” replied Antonia. “Dogs chase cars, but they can’t drive.”

“I’m surrounded by pharisees.” Scofield rose from the chair, once again yawning as he and Toni walked to the staircase.

“Perhaps I’ll scare the hell out of him,” said Antonia, wiggling her hips.

“You could be sorry, luv—I think.” The couple started up the steps, disappearing behind the staircase wall.

“They’re really adorable,” said Montrose.

“Love her, hate him,” said Cameron quietly.

“You don’t mean that for a minute.”

“No, I don’t,” admitted Pryce. “He’s got more in two brain cells than I have in my whole head. He’s been where few of us will ever go.”

“He’s also a very troubled man.”

“Over events he could never control,” added Cam. “He finds guilt where there shouldn’t be any.”

“That’s up to each of us to discover, isn’t it? Guilt’s intrinsic to all of us, according to certain beliefs.”

“None that I subscribe to, Colonel. Doubts, yes, not guilt, unless you’re guilty of something rotten you can control.”

“That’s quite philosophical, Mr. Pryce—”

“Cam or Cameron, remember?” he interrupted. “We agreed on that … Leslie.”

“Sometimes I choose to forget.”

“Why?”

“Frankly, I’m uncomfortable. You’re a very nice guy, Cam, and I have other things on my mind—one other thing, to be exact.”

“Your son, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He’s on my mind, too, believe that.”

Montrose looked at him from the adjacent chair. “I do,” she said finally, their eyes locked. “It can’t be the same, however, can it?”

“Of course not,” agreed Pryce, “but that doesn’t lessen my concern. So where are we?”

“I’d like to take a walk, get some air. Brandon’s little cigars are pleasantly aromatic, but a lot goes a long way.”

“Tell him, he’ll stop or cut down.”

“Good heavens, no. In his way he’s as obsessed as I am, and if puffing away helps him, so be it.”

“Still, I gather you don’t smoke,” said Pryce aimlessly as they got out of their chairs.

“You’d be wrong. Jim and I both quit. We monitored each other, in fact, but when he was lost I’m afraid I took it up again. Not heavily and never in front of the troops—that’s frowned upon—but there’s something to be said for calming the nerves, no matter how dumb.”

“Come on, let’s go for that walk.” They started toward the door.

“I forgot again,” said Leslie as Cameron opened the steel-plated sterile-house door. “We delicate females aren’t supposed to walk around alone. We’re to be accompanied by one of you big, strong men, or preferably a Gamma patrol.”

“I have an idea that both you delicate females could nail our tails to a wall with one shot.”

“How delicately spoken.”

“Walk, smart-ass.”

Montrose laughed, briefly to be sure, but it was a nice laugh, a genuine laugh.

They came to a fork in the mountain path, contrarily paved with white concrete, which was easier on elderly feet and golf carts. The left side descended gradually to a pond, a challenge on the course fronting the sixteenth tee, a scenic spray of water cascading from a pump in the center. The right path ascended more sharply toward a stretch of woods that separated the first nine holes from the second.

“The fountain of youth or the forest primeval?” said Pryce.

“Oh, the forest, to be sure. There’s nothing that recycled grime could do for our youths, what we remember of them.”

“Hey, neither was that long ago. I gave up my wheelchair, and I don’t see any gray in your hair.”

“There’s a strand or ten, believe me. You haven’t looked close enough.”

“I won’t follow that up—”

“
Thank
you,” interrupted Leslie, bearing right on the white concrete and immediately continuing. “Have you changed your mind about Tom Cranston?”

“Not entirely,” answered Cameron, catching up. “He gets too apologetic, too humble too quickly. That’s not normal for such a bright guy. Frankly, I’m not sure I trust him.”

“Bunk!” said Montrose. “He’s smart enough to realize
when he’s wrong and to admit it. Like he did with the cell phone in the compound.”

“Which phone?”

“The one he sent me on the Black Hawk, ostensibly a package from my son. The handwritten note inside, which I was ordered to burn, said—and I quote verbatim—‘My
God
, I forgot the Agency can trace those phones of yours! Use this and I’m sorry.’ ”

“Still, you switched phones with Bracket.”

“The hell I did!”

“Frank traced the White House calls to his phone; there were none on yours.”

“Then it must have happened at the beginning of our transfer to Chesapeake. Everett opened the carton with our two phones, checked the batteries and the backups, and simply handed me one.”

“Didn’t he know each was registered?”

“I don’t think he gave a damn. Ev could be impatient with minor details. Anyway, what difference did it make?”

“Blind alleys.”

“What?”

“We’ve got enough blind alleys in this so-called operation,” said Pryce. “We don’t need false ones. But there’s a real one left from the compound. Who’s got Bracket’s phone? It disappeared.”

“I’m sure it’s at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay,” replied Leslie. “Whoever stole it would get rid of it as soon as possible. It could be traced, even monitored, remember?”

“Why was it stolen in the first place?”

“Perhaps to be deprogrammed and sold, if it could be smuggled out. Or by the mole who was told to steal it for intercepts. If that was the case, he probably got cold feet and deep-sixed it, since everyone’s under scrutiny, even after they left the compound.”

“If this, if that, and perhaps—blind alleys,” he said again.

“To change the subject but not really, do you think Mr. Scofield—Brandon—is on to something?”

“About that conglomerate, Atlantic something?”

“Atlantic Crown,” said Montrose. “You see its commercials on television all the time. They’re usually very classy and on the better programs.”

“They never seem to sell a product,” agreed Pryce, “just low-key scientific processes, as I recall. But to answer your question, if Bray smells something, there’s usually an odor.”

Suddenly, from behind them, a man shouted; it was a Gamma patrol and he was running up the concrete path. “Guests
Three
and
Four!
Guest Number One has been trying to reach you on your phones!”

“Good Lord, I left my purse in the condo.”

“And I left my phone on the table.”

“He’s mad as hell, folks,” said the breathless soldier in camouflage fatigues as he approached. “He says he wants you back at … the
base
camp, he called it.”

“A term from the past,” clarified Cameron.

“I
know
what it means, sir, but this isn’t a combat-incursion area.”

“It is to him.”

“Let’s go!” said Leslie.

Scofield was pacing back and forth in front of the dark fireplace, Antonia in an easy chair patiently reading from a single fax sheet.

“The reason we have our telephones,” said Brandon, abruptly stopping as Pryce and Montrose walked through the door, “is for immediate communication, or am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong and we’re guilty of all charges,” replied Cameron. “Now let’s forgo the Savonarola bullshit and tell us why you interrupted a very pleasant walk.”

“Sorry, Brandon, we were simply careless,” said Montrose.

“I hope not in all things—”

“
That
is offensive!” protested Leslie.

“Shut up, my dear,” said Antonia, glaring at Scofield, “and get on with it.”

“All right, all right!… Last week at the compound I told you to forget the overseas connections and concentrate on what we’ve got here, correct?”

“That’s what you said, but I never said I agreed. Only temporarily, along with Frank Shields.”

“Well, I take it back, or as the colonel would say, I rescind the order.”

“Why?”

“London’s MI-Five found a passel of notes in a locked drawer of that Englishwoman’s husband, the one who killed her. They refused to fax them for security reasons, but the fax they did send is mighty interesting, whets the appetite.… Give it to him, Toni.” She did and Cam read the thin, glossy sheet.

Papers found in a locked drawer indicate that Gerald Henshaw, vanished husband of the murdered Lady Alicia Brewster, kept obscure records of his associates. According to Lady Alicia’s children, a boy and a girl, both in their teens, now alone and severely troubled, Henshaw was frequently inebriated and blurted out confused and contradictory statements while drunk. Suggest you fly over an experienced field officer as well as an American psychologist, a specialist in adolescent behavior, perhaps, to assist us. And to keep it out of London circles, as it were.

Pryce handed the fax to Leslie. She read it and stated simply, “They don’t need a psychologist, they need a mother. And I’m it.”

T
he U.S. diplomatic jet landed at Heathrow Airport and taxied to the restricted annex, where Pryce and Montrose were met by Sir Geoffrey Waters, chief of Internal Security, MI-5. The British intelligence officer was a thickset, broad-shouldered man of medium height and in his middle fifties, his full head of brown hair gray at the temples. There was about him an air of quiet humor, his light blue eyes bordering on the mischievous, as if to convey the silent message,
Been there, seen that, so what?
The Air Force crews unloaded their passengers’ luggage, which was minimal, one suitcase apiece, and the MI-5 chief instructed the ground personnel to carry them to the open boot of his car, a large Austin.