Wyatt's Revenge: A Matt Royal Mystery (24 page)

“Who is this guy McKinley?” asked Logan.

“Forbes Magazine recently called him the richest man in America,” said Jock. “They ran a piece on him. Before the war, he was a history professor, but when he was discharged he started a small manufacturing business in New England. Made uniforms on a contract with the army. He married into some money, and probably used that to build his business. He diversified over the years, and ended up in the missile business somehow. Now he’s one of the largest defense contractors in the country.”

Logan took a swallow of his beer. “I don’t think he used his wife’s money. More likely, he recycled the Jewish money. I bet if we dig deep enough, we’ll find a link to Allawi’s bank.”

I said, “I’m disappointed that we didn’t find out more about de Fresne. I only needed about two more minutes.”

“We’ll try again,” Logan said. “Give him some time to feel safe, and we’ll go after him again.”

“Why don’t we have a go at McKinley?” Jock asked.

That seemed like a good idea at the time. It didn’t pan out as well as we’d hoped.

We slept late the next day, Thanksgiving Day, exhausted from the intense adrenalin-fueled activity of the night before. At mid-morning, we met for breakfast in the hotel restaurant overlooking the beach. It was a pleasant day, typical of Florida’s autumn. The sun was already high, the temperature in the mid-seventies. People were on the beach, digging in the sand, diving into the surf, or just lying on beach chairs reading.

“I just put in a call to Debbie,” I said. “I asked her to see what she could dig up on McKinley.”

“How soon can she get it?” asked Jock.

“Late this afternoon. She was on her way to her aunt’s house in Bradenton for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Logan put down his coffee cup. “Should we go after him? He’s a pretty big fish.”

“I think he’s the key. He set this up in the first place, so he’s probably still in charge. He can also tell us where de Fresne is.”

Jock said, “What are you thinking, Matt?”

“I wonder how McKinley knew about the money in the first place. How did he know that de Fresne had squirreled it away?”

“He probably got it through his intelligence network,” Logan said.

“I don’t think so. Too many people would have known about it.”

“We know Blattner knew about it,” said Jock. “He told us.”

“Yes, but he didn’t know what happened to de Fresne. I doubt anybody else did, either. As far as anybody knows, he was buried in the rubble of Frankfurt.”

“Maybe Blattner knows something,” Jock said. “He’s probably still at the safe house.”

Jock placed a call to Bad Vilbel, and using a code name to identify himself, asked to speak to Blattner. He handed me the phone.

“Good afternoon, Herr Blattner,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask a few more questions.”

“Not at all, Mr. Royal.”

“Were you debriefed by the Americans after France was liberated?”

“Oh, yes, but not until early nineteen forty-five.”

“Do you remember who you talked to?”

“No. It was an OSS officer, but I don’t remember his name. Lincoln, I think, or maybe Washington. The same name as one of your presidents. I remember that.”

“Could it have been McKinley?”

There was a pause on the phone, an intake of breath. “That’s it. Major McKinley. He seemed particularly interested in de Fresne’s money. I told him that without de Fresne he’d never get it out of the Swiss banking system.”

“Did you ever see McKinley again?”

“No. We talked for the better part of two days, but I guess he gave up on finding de Fresne and moved on.”

“Did you tell him that you’d heard that de Fresne was in Frankfurt?”

“I don’t remember specifically, but I probably did. It would have been a dead end for the Americans. By the time they got to Frankfurt in March, the city had been destroyed. I heard that the Gestapo headquarters took a direct hit.”

I thanked him and hung up. I related Blattner’s end of the conversation and said, “I think somehow McKinley found de Fresne and rescued him.”

“How could McKinley have found the de Fresne needle in that haystack?” asked Logan.

“I don’t know, but according to Allawi, McKinley got de Fresne and the money out of Europe at the end of the war. He also saved Allawi’s father from the executioner and set him up in banking. And Allawi said it was McKinley who ordered the hit on Wyatt.”

“That may have been a smokescreen to save his own ass,” said Jock.

“Could be, but we’ve got to check it out.”

“How’re we going to set that up?” asked Logan. “You know a guy like McKinley has lots of security.”

“I haven’t figured that one out, yet,” I said.

Late that afternoon, Debbie called and said she could fax me the material I’d requested. I gave her the hotel’s fax number and went to the lobby to retrieve it as it came in. I didn’t want the clerks to get a close look at the information.

McKinley lived north of Boston in a sparsely populated area dotted with homes of the very wealthy. Debbie had included an aerial photo of McKinley’s place that she’d found on the Internet. It was huge, running to several acres and surrounded by a stone wall. Much of the estate was wooded, but there was a large expanse of lawn surrounding an enormous house. A long driveway meandered through the trees from a gatehouse to the main building.

“We’ll have to get ourselves invited in,” said Jock.

We were in my room, Debbie’s fax spread over the bed. We’d spent the day doing nothing. We’d crossed the Atlantic three times in less than a week, and we were reeling from the jet lag. A day of dozing in the sun had brought each of us back to life.

“I agree,” said Logan. “I don’t think we can get in any other way.”

“How do we get an invitation?” I asked.

Jock scratched his chin. “Let me work on that. The guy’s companies do a lot of government work. That may be our key to getting an audience with him.”

“We can fly to Boston tomorrow,” Logan said.

Jock shook his head. “I don’t think so. Airlines keep records of who flies where. If we kill McKinley, I don’t want any evidence that we were anywhere near Boston.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“I can fly up there on one of my phony IDs, rent a car, and get us a hotel. You guys need to come up by car or train or something. Since we don’t have a lot of time, I can’t wait for my agency to get you set up with false identification.”

“Do you think Allawi alerted McKinley about last night?” I asked.

“You can bet on it,” said Jock.

“I think we should have another go at Allawi before we head north,” I said.

“He’s bound to have better security at the house now,” said Logan.

“Maybe we can get a shot at him outside the house.”

Jock shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s got to be nervous, and I don’t think he’s going to be spending time at the grocery store. He’ll stay locked up tight in his house.”

“Let’s think about it overnight,” I said. “Surely we can come up with something.”

But, as it turned out, that didn’t happen.

The next morning, a small article on page 3B of the Palm Beach Post caught my eye. The headline read, “Palm Beach Billionaire Dies On Way Home.” The story described the death of Saudi banker Mohammed Allawi. He’d left Palm Beach Airport in his private jet on a flight plan filed for the Azores for refueling and then on to Saudi Arabia. Allawi died of a heart attack enroute. The body was taken to Saudi Arabia for burial. The story mentioned that Allawi had a history of heart problems and had undergone bypass surgery in the past.

I was sitting in the hotel restaurant, when Jock and Logan joined me. I told them about the article.

“I don’t think he’s going to be of anymore use to us,” Logan said.

“What now?” I asked.

“McKinley?” asked Jock.

“That’s our only shot,” I said. “Let’s head for Boston.”

Jock left on a flight for Boston that afternoon. Logan and I decided to fly to New York and take the train to Boston. Our flight left at mid-afternoon, a few minutes after Jock’s.

We arrived at LaGuardia Airport and took a taxi into the city. We were too late to take a train that evening, so we checked into the Hotel Pennsylvania across the street from Penn Station.

We left the next morning on a six fifty-five a.m. train bound for Boston. When you travel by train you see the backside of America, the garbage dumps, decaying warehouses, junkyards, used car lots, rail yards, and abandoned buildings that are the flotsam and jetsam of an affluent society.

I’ve read of a vortex in the middle of the North Pacific that collects all the junk tossed into the oceans of the world. The prevailing currents bring in the garbage, and the flow of the vortex captures it, consigning it forever to a swirling mass of refuse. Scientists tell us that the plastic found there will last forever, a triumph of modern science. And in the end, this unintended consequence may destroy the planet’s marine life.

The rail beds of the northeast pass by the land-bound versions of the Pacific Vortex, mounds of junk in its various forms, tossed out by a public surfeited by mindless consumption. Some day, our own garbage will inundate us all, and then we’ll join the marine life in the grave of our own technology.

We arrived at the Boston South Station a little before eleven. Jock was there to meet us and led us to a parking garage where he’d left his rental car. We drove northeast on Atlantic Avenue and merged onto I-93 north. Traffic was heavy but moving steadily. It had snowed the day before, and small hummocks of dirty ice flanked the road. The remains of the salt sprayed on the highway splattered the undercarriage of the car, creating a small din that was not unpleasant.

We took the exit onto I-95 and continued northward. In a few miles we left the Interstate and drove onto a road leading toward Hamilton. We turned onto a secondary road, drove for three or four miles, and came to a driveway with a gatehouse blocking the entrance.

We drove a little farther down the narrow road and stopped. Logan got out. Jock and I were going in alone.

The house was huge, sprawling over several acres, more baronial castle than house. It fit the style of America’s richest man: mock-Tudor with formal gardens lining a driveway almost a mile long. We’d stopped at the gatehouse, and the guard checked his list against our names. We were expected.

Jock and I drove up to the circular brick driveway that abutted the front of the house. Jock had called the day before, talked to the great man’s secretary, and made the appointment. He’d told the aide that he was a government auditor and needed to talk to Mr. McKinley about the Confederated Bank Suisse. That was a pretty big hook, and it reeled in our fish. Or so we thought.

We were met at the door by man wearing a navy blazer, gray trousers, white shirt, and red tie, who introduced himself as Carl. He didn’t offer a last name. He was tall, six feet two or more, and the jacket didn’t hide the well-defined musculature of the weight lifter. Butler? Bodyguard? Maybe both.

The bruiser led us through a large foyer, its walls hung with paintings that looked to me to be originals by some of the old masters. We were shown to a large room in the back of the house, overlooking formal gardens. French doors opened to a patio that had lawn furniture stacked for the winter. Patches of snow covered the ground, and I could see a thin sheet of ice that had formed on the surface of a pond in the distance.

An elderly man stood to greet us. He was tall and spare, his face lined with age, gray hair parted sharply. His blue eyes reflected a keen intelligence. He was wearing a flannel shirt in a checkered pattern, chinos, and boat shoes.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he said. “Can Carl here get you anything to drink? Coffee, soda, something stronger?”

We declined, and were asked to sit. The butler left, but I suspected that he remained nearby. The room was informal, a departure from the formality we’d seen in the rest of the house as we’d passed through. There was an overstuffed sofa and two armchairs placed around a coffee table to create a conversation area. McKinley took the sofa, waving Jock and me to the chairs. He must have noticed my inspection of the room.

“I’m not much on formalities,” he said, chuckling. “My late wife liked the grandeur of an estate, but I preferred the simple things. We compromised. I got this room, and she got the rest of the house.”

“It’s a beautiful place,” I said.

“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Royal.”

Uh-oh. I suddenly felt like the mouse who’d just bitten into the cheese and realized too late that the trap was about to fall on his neck. I shrugged. “You didn’t buy the government auditor crap, huh?”

“Mr. Royal, I have a lot of resources, and you are a persistent man. I knew you’d come sooner or later. My sources told me there was no audit, so I figured you were on your way. Who’s your friend?”

Jock sat forward in his chair. “I’m Grant Ferguson.”

“I haven’t been able to get a handle on you, Mr. Ferguson. You must work for the government. CIA? FBI?”

Jock stared at McKinley, grinning, saying nothing.

McKinley stood, ill at ease with the malevolence implicit in Jock’s demeanor. “It doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, you won’t leave this house alive. But, I must say, I admire your perseverance. What I don’t know is why, Mr. Royal.”

“You ordered my friend Laurence Wyatt killed.”

“The group ordered it done. I act as the chairman, but it takes a unanimous vote to order someone’s death.”

“Why have him killed?”

“We thought it necessary. Why else are you here?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it? You’ve gone through all this because your friend was killed?”

“I owed him. The dead can’t take their revenge, but sometimes the survivors can.”

“Ah, so you’re here to avenge your friend’s death.”

“Yes.”

“Too bad it didn’t work out.”

“Tell me, Mr. McKinley,” I said, “why did you have Wyatt killed?”

“Simple. He and that other guy in Gainesville were closing in on me. I couldn’t let that happen. My son is going to be president of the United States. A scandal like that, even if not proven, would have wrecked his campaign.”