The Road to Omaha (81 page)

“That’s a nice position to be in.”

“I was merely excusing myself to go to the ladies’ room.”

“Strike my comment.… But why are you being so gentle?”

“Come on, Sam, what they’ve offered is so outrageously beyond our wildest dreams it would be criminal to argue.”

“Then why even negotiate? What are you after?”

“To begin with, a legally binding guaranteed timetable for our immediate needs, such as good housing, fine schools, paved roads, a real, honest-to-God village with seed money for stores and shops so decent livings can be made right here legitimately. Then maybe a few goodies like a couple of community pools and clearing Eagle Eye Mountain for ski lifts and a restaurant—but, of course, the
latter could be considered part of our commerce. It was Charlie’s idea; he loves to ski.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Darling, I diapered that kid and now I sometimes feel almost incestuous.”

“
Huh
?”

“He’s so much like
you
! He’s quick and smart and, yes, funny—”

“I’m a very serious officer of the court,” Devereaux broke in, grinning.

“You’re a lunatic and so is he, both your lunacies mitigated by quick perceptions, irritating memories, and reducing complexities to fundamental simplicities.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Neither does he, but you both do it. Did you know that he came up with an insane, insignificant blemish on our history of jurisprudence called
non nomen amicus curiae
when Hawkins filed his brief? Who would ever know what it is, much less
remember
it?”

“I do. Jackson versus Buckley, 1827, one stole pigs from the other—”

“Oh, shut up!” Jenny released his hand, then immediately grabbed it back.

“What’s Charlie going to do when this is over?”

“I’m making him the attorney-of-record for the tribe. He can run the ski resort in winter at the same time.”

“Isn’t that terribly limiting?”

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so. Someone has to be here to make damn sure Washington lives up to every article of the reconstruction agreement. When you’re involved with building on this scale, you’d better have a lawyer at your beck and call. Ever put an addition on your house that was completed on time? And I should add that I’ve placed heavy penalty clauses on every aspect of the construction.”

“Charlie will have his hands full. What else did you get from Dizzy City, as Mac calls it? I mean beside your “immediate needs’?”

“Very simple. An uninvadable, irrevocable trust based on irreversible guarantees by the Treasury Department that the tribe will receive a basic two million dollars a year, adjusted for inflation, for the next twenty years.”

“That’s
chickenshit
, Jenny!” cried Sam.

“No, it’s not, darling. If we can’t make it by then, we don’t deserve to. We don’t want a free ride, we simply want the opportunity to get in the mainstream. And knowing my Wopotamis, we’ll take you palefaces for just about every nickel you’ve got. If I also know my tribe, and surely I do, in twenty years your President will probably have a surname like ‘Sundown’ or ‘Moonbeam,’ take my word for it. We didn’t refine the yaw-yaw juice for nothing.”

“And now what?” asked Devereaux.

“And now what
what
?”

“What about us?”

“Did you have to bring that up?”

“Isn’t it about time?”

“Of course it is, but I’m afraid.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“From whom?
You
?”

“If need be. Actually, it’s very simple, and as you’ve pointed out, Charlie and I can reduce complex matters into simple issues anyone can understand.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Sam?”

“Reducing a complicated situation into a very simple problem.”

“What, may I ask, is that?”

“I refuse to live the rest of my life without you, and somehow I get the idea that you might feel the same way.”

“Say there’s a grain of truth in what you say, just a grain, even a large kernel, how is it possible? I’m in San Francisco and you’re in Boston. That’s not a good arrangement.”

“With your credentials, Aaron would hire you in a minute at a terrific salary.”

“With your record, Springtree, Basl and Karpas of San Francisco would make you a partner before me.”

“I could never leave Aaron, you know that, but you’ve already left one firm in Omaha. So you see it’s been reduced to a simple either/or, based on the assumption that we’d both take the gas pipe if we couldn’t be together.”

“I didn’t go that far.”

“I did. Can’t you?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.”

“Still, I have a solution.”

“What is it?”

“Mac gave me a medallion of his old division from World War Two, the one that broke through the Bulge, and I always keep it on me for good luck.” Devereaux reached into his pocket and withdrew an outsized, lightweight, ersatz coin with the face of MacKenzie Hawkins etched in the center. “I’ll flip it up and let it land on the road. I’ll take heads, you take tails. If it’s tails, you’ll go back to San Francisco and we’ll both suffer the tortures of the damned. If it’s heads, you’ll come to Boston with me.”

“
Agreed.
” The medallion spun end-over-end in the air and fell on the dirt road. Jennifer bent down. “Good heavens, it’s heads.” She started to pick up the coin when Sam’s hand clamped over hers.

“
No
, Jenny, you mustn’t lean over like that!”

“Like what?”

“It’s very bad for your sacroiliac!” Devereaux pulled her up while clutching the medallion in his right hand.

“Sam, what are you
saying
?”

“The husband’s first job is to protect his wife.”

“From
what
?”

“Bad sacroiliacs.” Devereaux manipulated the medallion in his fingers and scaled it into the pasture on their left. “I don’t need any lucky pieces anymore,” he said, embracing Jenny. “I have you, and that’s all the luck I ever wanted or needed.”

“Or maybe you didn’t want me to see the other side of the coin,” whispered Redwing into his ear while softly biting it. “The Hawk gave me one of those in Hooksett. His face is on both sides. If you had said tails, I would have killed you.”

“Wanton
bitch
,” whispered Sam, nibbling her lips like a chimpanzee finding peanuts. “Is there a secluded field we might wander into?”

“Not now, Rover, Mac’s expecting us.”

“He’s
out
of my life; this is the
end
!”

“I sincerely hope so, my darling, but being a realist, I wonder for how long?”

They rounded the corner of the dirt road where the huge multicolored, multilayered tepee of imitation animal skins flapped down from the apex to the widespread stakes in the ground. Smoke emerged from the opening above.

“He’s there,” said Devereaux. “Let’s make the good-byes quick and simple, like in nice-to-know-you-stay-the-hell-away-from-our-lives!”

“That’s a bit harsh, Sam. Look what he’s done for my people.”

“It’s all a game for him, Jenny, don’t you understand that?”

“Then it’s a good game he plays, darling, can’t
you
see that?”

“I don’t know, he always confuses me—”

“Never mind,” said Redwing. “He’s coming out. Good Lord,
look
at him!”

Sam stared in disbelief. General MacKenzie Lochinvar Hawkins, a.k.a. Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis, bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to either alleged person. There was not an inkling of the military, much less the majesty of the American Indian; in fact, there was no dignity properly attributed to either image. Instead, regality had been replaced by gaucherie, the flamboyance of the shallow man, which somehow was more solid, more convincing. Partially covering his bristling, close-cropped gray hair was a yellow beret, and below his strong nose a thin, blackened mustache, and below that a purple ascot that was in flaming contrast to his pink silk shirt, which was color-coordinated with his tight-fitting bright red trousers, the cuffs lopping over a pair of white Gucci loafers. Naturally, the suitcase he was carrying was a Louis Vuitton.

“Mac, who the hell are you supposed to
be
?” yelled Devereaux.

“Oh, there you two are,” said the Hawk, without answering the question. “I thought I’d have to leave without seeing you. I’m in a dreadful hurry.”

“ ‘A dreadful hurry’?” said Jennifer.

“Mac, who
are
you?”

“Mackintosh Quartermain,” replied the Hawk sheepishly, “veteran of the Scots Grenadiers. It was Gin-Gin’s idea.”

“
What
?”

“Off to Hollywood,” mumbled Hawkins. “I’m a co-producer and technical adviser on Greenberg’s flick.”

“ ‘Flick’ …?”

“Just to keep an eye on Manny’s financial imagination … and maybe a few other things, if they crop up. Hollywood’s in a mess, you know. It needs some clear-thinking innovators.… Look, it was terrif seeing you two sweethearts, but I’m really in a hurry. I’m meeting my new adjutant—
assistant
—Colonel Roman Zabritski, late of the Soviet military cinema, at the airport. Our plane goes on to the Coast.”

“Roman Z?” asked a stunned Redwing.

“What happened to Cyrus?” said Sam.

“He’s somewhere in the south of France, checking on one of Frazier’s châteaus. It was vandalized.”

“I thought he wanted to go back to the laboratory.”

“Oh, well, what with his prison record and everything … well, Cookson’s buying a chemical plant.… Look, it was great you dolls came out to see me, but I’ve really got to dash-bash. Give us a kiss, sweetheart, and if you ever want a screen test, you know where to jingle me.” The astonished Redwing accepted the Hawk’s embrace. “And you, Lieutenant,” continued MacKenzie, throwing his arms around Devereaux, “you’re still the best legal skull on the planet, except maybe for Commander Pinkus and the little lady here.”

“
Mac
!” cried Sam. “Don’t you
see
? You’re starting all over again! There’ll be nothing left of Los Angeles!”

“No, not true, son, not true at all. We’ll bring back the glory days.” The Hawk picked up his Louis Vuitton suitcase, stifling the emergence of tears. “
Ciao
, babes,” he said, quickly turning away and hurrying up the dirt road, a man with a mission.

“Why do I have the idea that sometime, somewhere in Boston, the telephone will ring and at the other end will be
Mackintosh Quartermain?” said Devereaux, his arm around Jennifer as they watched the figure of the Hawk grow smaller in the distance.

“Because it’s inevitable, my darling, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Read on for an excerpt from Robert Ludlum’s

The Bourne Identity

The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The waves rose to goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point. The animal was dying.

Two abrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind and the vessel’s pain. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its host body. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.

A second man followed, the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin door; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.

The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backward under the impact of the fourth bullet. The trawler’s bow dipped suddenly into the valley of two
giant waves, lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left, unable to take his hands away from his head. The boat surged upward, bow and midships more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin; a fifth gunshot fired wildly. The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.

He felt rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propelling him up to the surface—only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again.

And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; an ice-like throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.