Trevayne (40 page)

“I understand the Defense Department is … upset. I assume they’ve contacted you.”

“Most definitely. A number of others as well. You are causing excited reactions in many quarters, Mr. Trevayne. You breed fear in men who are paid to be unafraid. I have told several they would not draw an additional week’s salary from me. Unfortunately—and I use the word well—they are not in my hire.”

“Then I don’t have to beat around the bush, do I?”

“Beating bushes was always a questionable method of hunting, used by the poor because they couldn’t afford bait. It had two adverse possibilities. One: the game always had the advantage due to its smell detectors and could choose its avenue of escape. And two: if aroused, it could turn on the hunter and attack without warning. Unseen, as it were.… You can do better, Mr. Trevayne. You’re neither poor nor unintelligent.”

“On the other hand, I find the idea of placing bait a little distasteful.”

“Excellent! You’re very quick; I like you.”

“And I understand why you have such a loyal following.”

“Ahh! Fooled again, my friend. My following—if I
really
have one—has been purchased. We both have money,
Mr. Trevayne. Surely you’ve learned, even at your young age, that money begets followers. By itself, isolated, money is useless, merely a by-product. But it can be a bridge. Used correctly, it promulgates the idea. The
idea
, Mr. Trevayne. The idea is a greater monument than a temple.… Certainly I have followers. What’s more important is that they transport and convey my
ideas.
”

A uniformed servant came through the porch door carrying a silver tray. Green introduced Shirley, and Trevayne stood up—to Green’s obvious approval—and helped place the tray on the exquisite wrought-iron coffee table.

Shirley departed quickly, hoping Mr. Trevayne would enjoy the cakes.

“A gem! An absolute gem,” said Green. “I found her at the Israeli Pavilion at the Montreal Exposition. She was American, you know. I had to endow a half a dozen orange groves in Haifa to convince her to come back and work for us.… The cakes, the cakes. Eat!”

The cakes
were
delicious.

“These are marvelous.”

“I told you. Falsehoods may pass in this room with our ensuing conversation, but not about the cakes.… Come, let us enjoy them.”

Both men warily, with some humor, bandied about trivialities until the cakes were finished. Each sized up the other, each found himself confident but apprehensive, as two extremely good tennis players approaching a play-off match.

Green put down his coffee and sighed audibly. “The
nosh
is finished. We talk.… What are your concerns, Mr. Subcommittee Chairman? What brings you to this house under such unusual circumstances?”

“Genessee Industries. You dispense, partially through your agency, an acknowledged seven million a year—we estimate closer to twelve, possibly more—for the purposes of convincing the country that Genessee is intrinsic to our survival. We know you’ve been doing this for at least ten years. That totals anywhere between seventy and a hundred and twenty million dollars. Again, possibly more.”

“And those figures frighten you?”

“I didn’t say that. You were right the first time. They concern me.”

“Why? Even the disparity between the figures can be accounted for; and you
were
right. It is the higher amount.”

“Perhaps accounted for; can they be justified?”

“That would depend on who seeks justification.… Yes, they can be justified.
I
justify them.”

“How?”

Green pressed his back into the chair. The patriarch about to dispense wisdom, thought Trevayne. “To begin with, a million dollars in today’s purchase market is not what the average citizen thinks it is. General Motors alone bills twenty-two million annually in advertising. The new Post Office Utility, seventeen.”

“And they happen to be the two largest consumer corporations on earth. Try again.”

“They’re infinitesimal compared to the government. And since the government is the predominant client—consumer—of Genessee Industries, certain scholastic logic might be applicable.”

“But it isn’t. Unless the client is, in fact, his own company. Its own source. Even I don’t believe that.”

“Every viewpoint has its own visual frame, Mr. Trevayne. You look at a tree, you may see the sun reflected off its leaves. I look at it, I see the sunlight filtering through. Two different trees if we described them, wouldn’t you say?”

“I fail to see the analogy.”

“Oh, you’re capable of seeing it; you simply refuse to. You see only the reflection, not what’s underneath.”

“Riddles are annoying, Mr. Green, set-up riddles, insulting. For your edification, sir, I’ve gotten a glimpse of what’s underneath, and that’s why I’m here under these unusual circumstances.”

“I see.” Green nodded his head. The patriarch again, thought Trevayne; this time tolerantly accepting the inconsequential judgment of an inferior. “I see. You’re a tough fellow. A very hard man.… You have chutzpah.”

“I’m not selling anything. I don’t need chutzpah.”

Suddenly Aaron Green slapped the flat of his hand against the hard metal of his chair. The slap was loud, ugly. “Of course, you’re selling!” The old Jew shouted, his deep voice seemed to echo, his eyes glared at Trevayne.
“You’re selling the most despicable merchandise a man can peddle. The narcotic of complacency. Weakness! You should know better.”

“Not guilty. If I’m selling anything, it’s the proposition that the country has the right to know how its money is spent. Whether those expenditures are the result of necessity or because an industrial monster has been spawned and become insatiable. Controlled by a small group of men who arbitrarily decide where the millions will be allocated.”

“Schoolboy! You are a schoolboy. You soil your pants.… What is this ‘arbitrary’? Who is arbitrary? You set yourself up as a judge of necessity? You imply that from-sea-to-shining-sea there is some great intelligence that is all-knowing? Tell me, Wise Rabbi, where was this mass intellect in nineteen seventeen? In nineteen forty-one? Yes, even in nineteen fifty and sixty-five? I’ll tell you where. Standing in weakness, in complacency. And this weakness, this complacency, was paid for. With the blood of hundreds of thousands of beautiful young men.” Green suddenly lowered his voice. “With the lives of millions of innocent children and their mothers and fathers, marching, straggling naked into the cement walls of death. Do not speak to me of ‘arbitrary’; you are a fool.”

Trevayne waited until Aaron Green calmed himself. “I submit, Mr. Green, and I say it with respect, that you’re applying solutions to problems that belong in another time. We’re faced with different problems now. Different priorities.”

“Fancy talk. The reasoning of cowards.”

“The thermonuclear age doesn’t have very much room for heroes.”

“More garbage!” Green laughed derisively. He put his two hands together, his elbows at his side. The patriarch toying with an unenlightened adversary, thought Trevayne. “Tell me, Mr. Subcommittee Chairman, what is my crime? You haven’t made that clear.”

“You know as well as I do. Using funds inappropriately—”

“Inappropriately or illegally?” Green interrupted, separating his hands, holding them out with their palms up, his deep voice trailing off.

Trevayne paused before answering. By doing so he made clear his distaste. “The courts decide those questions, when they’re capable of it.… We find out what we can and make recommendations.”

“Just how are these funds used … inappropriately?”

“For purposes of persuasion. I suspect an enormous barrel of pork that’s distributed to retain support or eliminate opposition to Genessee contracts. In a dozen areas. Labor, talent, Congress, to mention three.”

“You
suspect?
You make charges on what you
suspect?
”

“I’ve seen enough. I chose those three on the basis of what I’ve seen.”

“And what
have
you seen? Men growing wealthy beyond their abilities to earn? Worthless endeavors paid for by Genessee Industries? Come, Mr. Subcommittee, where is this moral decay? Who, may I ask you, has been so hurt, so corrupted?”

Andrew watched the calm but nearly triumphant expression on Aaron Green’s face. And understood the pure genius behind Genessee’s use of the bribe. At least with regard to the enormous sums dispensed by Green, the most important commitments. Nothing was paid out that couldn’t legally, logically, or at least emotionally be justified. There was Ernest Manolo, the infant labor baron of southern California. What could be more logical than to contain the spiraling national union demands with petty-cash vouchers and jurisdictional guarantees for certain geographical areas? And the brilliant scientist, Ralph Jamison, Ph.D. Should such a mind stop functioning, stop contributing, because it was troubled with real or imaginary problems? And Mitchell Armbruster. Perhaps the saddest of all. The fiery, liberal Senator pushed into line. But who could argue the benefits of the Armbruster Cancer Clinic? The mobile medical units traveling throughout the California ghettos? Who could term such contributions corrupt? What manner of cruel inquisitor would manufacture connectives that surely would cause the generosity to cease?

Inquisitor.

We don’t want an inquisitor
. Big Billy Hill.

There was Joshua Studebaker, too, plaintively searching for a way to make permanent his past emancipations.
But that wasn’t Aaron Green’s domain. Studebaker belonged somewhere else. Yet if Sam Vicarson spoke the truth, Studebaker and Green were alike. In so many ways; both brilliant, complex; both hurt yet giantlike.

“So?” Green was leaning forward on the chair. “You find it difficult to be specific about this mass depravity you’ve uncovered? Come, Mr. Subcommittee. At least a for-instance.”

“You’re incredible, aren’t you?”

“So?” Green was perplexed by Andrew’s abruptly inserted question. “What’s incredible?”

“You must have volumes. Each case a history, every expenditure balanced. If I picked an isolated ‘for-instance,’ you’d have a story.”

Green understood. He smiled and once again sat back in his chair. “I have learned the lesson of Sholom Aleichem. I do not buy a billy goat with no testicles. Select, Mr. Subcommittee. Give me an example of this degeneracy and I will make a telephone call. Within minutes you will learn the truth.”

“Your truth.”

“The tree, Mr. Trevayne. Remember the tree. Which tree are we describing? Yours or mine?”

Andrew pictured in his mind some steel-encased vault with thousands of carefully annotated insertions, a massive directory of corruption. Corruption for him; justification for Aaron Green. It had to be something like that.

To even begin to unravel such an encyclopedia—if he could find it—would take years. And each case a complication in itself.

“Why, Mr. Green? Why?” asked Trevayne softly.

“Are we talking, as they say, not on the record?”

“I can’t promise that. On the other hand, I don’t expect to spend the rest of my life on this subcommittee. If I brought you in, brought in this extraordinary source material of yours, I have an idea that we’d become a permanent fixture in Washington. I’m not prepared for that, and I think you know it.”

“Come with me.” Green got up from his chair; it was the effort of an old man, a tired man. He walked to a glass-louvered door that led to the back lawn. On the wall
by the door were several ornate coat hooks, a woolen muffler hanging from one of them. He reached for it and wrapped it around his neck. “I am an old woman; I need my shawl. You are young; the cold air will be invigorating. The snow beneath your feet won’t hurt good leather. I know. When I was a child in the Stuttgart winters, my shoe leather was ersatz. My feet were always cold.”

He opened the door and led Trevayne out on the snow-covered grass. They walked to the far end of the lawn, past burlap-covered bushes and a marble table which stood in front of a white latticed arbor. Summer tea, thought Trevayne. They went just beyond the arbor to the edge of a tall Japanese maple and turned right. This section of the lawn was narrow, bordered by the maple and a row of evergreens on the other side. It was actually a wide path.

The flickering immediately caught Trevayne’s eye.

At the end of the wooded corridor was a bronze Star of David raised perhaps a foot above the ground. It measured no larger than twenty or twenty-five inches, and on each side there was a small recessed casing in which a flame burned steadily. It was like a miniature altar protected by fire, the two jets of flame somehow strong and fierce. And very sad.

“No tears, Mr. Trevayne. No wringing of hands or mournful wails. It’s been nearly half a century now; there’s some comfort in that. Or adjustment, as the Viennese doctors say.… This is in memory of my wife. My first wife, Mr. Trevayne; and my first child. A little daughter. We last saw each other through a fence. An ugly, rust-covered fence that tore the flesh off my hands as I tried to rip it apart.…”

Aaron Green stopped and looked up at Trevayne. He was perfectly calm; if it pained him to remember, the hurt was recessed far inside him. But the memory of horror was in his voice. Its quiet, utter violence was unmistakable.

“Never,
ever
again, Mr. Trevayne.”

Paul Bonner adjusted the brace so the metal collar was less irritating. The flight from Westchester airport, in the cramped quarters of the plane’s bucket seat, had caused considerable chafing on his neck. He’d told his fellow officers in the adjacent Pentagon rooms that he’d jumped the skiing season in Idaho and regretted it.

It wasn’t what he was going to tell Brigadier General Lester Cooper. He would tell Cooper the truth.

And demand answers.

He got out of the elevator on the fifth floor—Brasswares—and walked to his left. To the last office in the corridor.

The Brigadier General stared at Paul’s bandaged arm and neck and tried his best to hold his reaction in check. Violence, physical violence, was the
last
thing he wanted.
They
wanted. The Young Turk—accustomed to violence, so prone to seek it out—had taken action without authorization.