The Matarese Countdown (54 page)

“Okay, okay, Brit. Tell the refueling truck to get out here fast, and bring the passenger with it. I’d like to get back to London by midnight. I’ve got a heavy date with a single bed and a large meal.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Cameron Pryce, sitting with Leslie in the bulkhead seats.

“I drop you cats off here at Heathrow and pick up an anonymous requiring full fuel tanks. Where to, I’ve got twenty minutes to figure out.”

“You’re the best, Luther,” said Montrose, raising her voice above the engines. “That’s why they chose you.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’ Why the hell did it have to be
me
?”

“The colonel just told you,” yelled Cameron as the pilot reversed thrust upon landing. “You’re the best!”

“I’d rather have lunch,” said Considine, proceeding down the runway.

The movement on the ground was choreographed. Luther taxied down the airstrip to a predetermined, isolated area. A refueling truck raced from a hangar, and as two uniformed mechanics reeled out hoses for the dual-wing tanks, a third man in civilian clothes approached the plane. Considine opened the fuselage panel of the Bristol Freighter; the man spoke. “Here’s your flight plan, Lieutenant. Study it and if you’ve any questions, you know whom to call.”

“Thanks a bunch,” said Luther, reaching out and taking the manila envelope. “Here’s your cargo,” he added, gesturing at Pryce and Montrose.

“Yes, I assumed that. If the two of you will please accompany me, our car is directly behind the truck.”

“We have luggage,” Cameron broke in, “give me a minute to get it together.”

“Lieutenant,” said the MI-5 officer, “perhaps you could assist us.”

Luther Considine, U.S.N., looked imperiously down at the stranger. “I do not do windows,” he said with quiet authority, “and I do not do laundry, and for your information, Cipher Head, I’m not a redcap in one of those old movies.”

“I
beg
your pardon?”

“Never mind, fella,” interrupted Pryce, “our friend is a little stressed. I’ve got the suitcases.”

“Thank you, Chicken Little.”

“What
are
you chaps talking about?”

“It’s colonial code,” answered Cameron. “Our pilot is brewing tea to throw into the Southampton harbor.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re
saying
.”

“They’re both stressed,” broke in Leslie, her voice flat and insistent. “Let’s go,
kiddies
.”

As Pryce, Montrose, and the intelligence agent walked rapidly toward the MI-5 vehicle, a second car, its windows shaded from the late-afternoon sunlight, sped out on the field to the Bristol aircraft.

“That must be Mr. or Mrs. Anonymous,” said Leslie.

“Unless you’ve short-circuited my perceptions,” observed Cameron, “it’s a young mister.”

“Roger
Brewster?
” whispered Montrose, as they were in the backseat. “But why and where are they flying him?”

“To the south of Spain, a bull ranch owned by a colleague of ours during the Basque rebellions, and you were right, Cameron,” said Geoffrey Waters, addressing Pryce and Montrose in his office at MI-5. “He reached old Coleman in Belgravia because, as you correctly assumed, he had no one else to turn to.”

“Good Lord, you
are
good,” interjected Leslie, looking at Cam.

“Not really, I just tried to narrow down his options. What could he do alone, without help? But he had to have a substantive reason for breaking out and coming back here.”

“He did, indeed,” agreed Waters, his voice rising. “A woman in High Holborn we knew nothing about.”

Sir Geoffrey Waters described the revelations as they had been told him by young Roger Brewster and Oliver Coleman. He then produced the letters and, most notably, the deciphered notepad from Myra Symond’s flat. “
Amsterdam
, Pryce! The head of the snake has got to be in
Amsterdam!
”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it? But whoever it is in Amsterdam that’s running this whole obscene thing is a manager, a bureaucrat, not the total power. There’s someone else behind him or her.”

“Why do you say that, Cam?” asked Leslie.

“I know you’ll think I’m stupid, or something, but when I was in college, I really loved reading and listening to
recordings of Shakespeare. Silly, isn’t it? But one phrase always stuck with me—I can’t even remember the play.”

“What was it?”

“ ‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream.’ ”

“I believe it’s
Julius Caesar
,” said Waters. “What’s the application here?”

“The ‘phantasma,’ I think. I had to look it up to get the context. The specter, the hidden phantom. There’s someone or something beyond Amsterdam.”

“But Amsterdam is certainly our first priority, isn’t it?”

“Of course, Geof. Definitely. But would you do me a favor? Fly Scofield over here. I think we need Beowulf Agate.”

•  •  •

Brandon Scofield and Antonia had settled into their suite at the Savoy, Bray exhausted by the trip on the Air Force jet, Toni exhilarated by the fact that they were back in London. “I’m just going to go out and wander around,” said Antonia, hanging up the last of their clothes.

“Give all the pubs my best wishes,” said Scofield, shoes off and supine on the bed. “I’ll try to touch base with the best of them.”

“They’re not on this tourist’s agenda.”

“I forgot, you’re the reincarnation of that bitch Carry Nation.”

“A little of
her
agenda wouldn’t hurt you.” The telephone rang. “I’ll get it.” Toni crossed to the bedside phone. “Hello?”

“
Antonia
, it’s Geoffrey! It’s been a thousand years, old girl.”

“At least twenty or so, Geof. I understand you’re now Sir Geoffrey Waters.”

“Accidents happen, luv, even in this business. Is the reprobate there?”

“He is and he isn’t. He hates the time zones, but here he is.” She handed the phone to Brandon.

“Hello, Sir Asshole, would you mind if I got a couple of hours’ sleep?”

“Normally, I’d be loath to interrupt your much-needed rest, old chap, but what we have to discuss is extremely important. Cameron and Leslie are with me.”

“So important we can’t talk about it over the phone while I’m lying down?”

“You know the answer to that, Bray.”

“I do now,” said Scofield, wearily moving his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up. “You still at the same place?”

“You won’t recognize the insides, that’s where the money went, but the outside hasn’t changed in several hundred years.”

“Better architecture back then.”

“Yes, the Prince keeps reminding us of that, and I happen to applaud him for it.”

“He needs all the applause he can get. We’ll be there in twenty minutes plus. By the way, do I have to call you ‘Sir’ to your face?”

“Only when there are people around. If you don’t, they’ll behead you.”

The reunion was brief, warm, and overlaid with a sense of urgency. The initial greetings over, the five sat down around a table in a secure conference room at MI-5 headquarters. Waters brought them all up to date regarding recent events in general, including the actions of the Brewster son but saving the London specifics for later. He then turned the chair over to Pryce and Montrose, who related their experiences in Lake Como, including Don Silvio Togazzi’s assistance and the horrible deaths of Paravacini and his aide.

“My
God
,” broke in Scofield, “Togazzi’s a ‘Don’ and Geof’s a goddamned ‘Sir’! Next, Silvio will probably be King of Italy, and Butterball here, no doubt, Prime Minister. The world’s gone crazy!”

“You’re too kind,” said Waters, chuckling. “…  So, from Como we can assume the collapse of a major force in the Italian Matarese, and a Paravacini cardinal at the Vatican.”

“Collapse may be too strong,” suggested Leslie. “ ‘Charlie’ Paravacini undoubtedly built a strong, efficient organization.”

“We don’t know that,” Brandon interrupted, “and even if we assume it, he was a real power, the only power in the whole sector. According to Togazzi, he didn’t delegate a hell of a lot.”

“If that’s the case,” said the MI-5 chief, “the organization may not have collapsed but it’s certainly in disarray and quite vulnerable.”

“Agreed,” added Cameron, “and that’s what we’re looking for, vulnerability. When we have enough facts, evidence
of a near-global conspiracy within the industrial countries, we can strike back.”

“By
exposing
it?” asked Scofield quizzically, his eyebrows raised in doubt.

“It’s one way,” replied Sir Geoffrey, “but perhaps not the most profitable.”

“What do you mean?” said Antonia.

“We want to eliminate the Matarese from international finance, not plunge the world’s industries into chaos.”

“How do you do that without exposing it?”

“Down and dirty, Toni,” answered Pryce. “We cut off the heads of the multiple snakes, leaving the extended bodies to whip around and strangle one another.”

“Why, Cam, that’s real poetic, kid,” said Scofield. “You could have taken a lit course at Harvard.”

“I didn’t know it had one.”

“May we ask the children to stop playing in their sandbox,” Leslie Montrose said firmly, turning to the MI-5 intelligence officer. “Geof, I think Toni has a point. How do we short-circuit the Matarese without exposing it?”

“I’ll answer that, Leslie, after we hear from Brandon. Go on, you relic. Outside of Atlantic Crown, which we all know about and for which we grant you reluctant praise, what other progress?”

“You tell ’em, luv,” said Bray, turning to Antonia. “She keeps score, and I really shouldn’t indulge my lessers.”

“Even I was impressed,” Toni admitted. “From the materials he found and photographed in the Atlantic Crown files, combined with a computer-reduced summary of outstanding mergers, buyouts, and hostile takeovers, he narrowed it all down and set up what you call a sting operation at the hotel in New York, along with Frank Shields.” Antonia Scofield explained that her husband had confronted fourteen Matarese candidates from the most influential areas of American business. “Four of the major players, who supposedly did not know one another, got together after meeting with Bray at an out-of-the-way restaurant in New York. Frank Shields’s people took photographs from a distance. It’s now on record.”

“Well done, Brandon!” exclaimed Waters. “…  Now, I’ll bring you
au courant
here in London.” Sir Geoffrey walked to the windows and closed the venetian blinds, although the early-evening light was not an impediment. He crossed to a slide projector at the head of the table and switched it on; a white square appeared on a screen at the end of the room. Waters pressed a button for the first slide. It was a photograph of a man running down a London street, his head turned as he looked behind him. He was a relatively tall, slender man, his legs disproportionately longer than his upper body, and dressed in a conservative business suit. The expression on his lean, high-cheekboned face was one of surprise and fear. Additional slides showed him obviously gathering speed, twice more looking around, his features pinched, now close to panic. The slides ended with the subject rounding a corner; the screen went white, then dark, as Waters turned on the overhead neon lights. Sir Geoffrey, walking and standing by his chair, spoke.

“This was the man running from the flat of Amanda Bentley-Smythe, now established as an operative of the Matarese, just before her death was made public. We have identified him as Leonard Fredericks, an upper-level attaché in the Foreign Office. His phone is tapped and he is currently under total surveillance by SIS, who coordinates with us. To date, since that day in Bayswater, he’s not been in formal contact with anyone of consequence, he’s merely a piece of furniture at the Foreign Office. Yet we’re convinced he’s the prime contact with the Matarese.”