Masquerade (47 page)

She considered trying to reach them at once, but it was Sunday, and August, and it would be extremely difficult to get
through to anyone. Suddenly she felt weary to the bone. What should she do? But before her brain had finished the question, she knew. If ever she deserved to have a few quiet drinks, this was the time.

Chapter 53

Sunday, 3:45
P.M
.

Asher Flores turned the motorcycle off the highway onto a paved road that rolled up and down the undulating hills like a shipping lane in a high sea. The August sun beat steadily down, and the warm wind flowed across their skin. Behind him, Sarah adjusted her weight. For a moment her legs tightened around him. With a thrill, his mind returned to last night. To Sarah and heated relief. To the issue of love.

Was it love to want her all to himself? To see her come through doorways when she wasn't there? To be unable to imagine ever being bored with her?

She squeezed him tenderly. He held her hand against his heart, savoring her smooth skin and the confidence, the belief, she had in him, while he worried about Hughes Bremner and what they might find at Jack O'Keefe's estate.

After another ten miles, just as Christine Robitaille had said, a castlelike tower appeared above the tops of a forest. Then, around a curve, they saw the rest of the grand Château de la Vere. It arose from manicured grounds, a yellow-brick fortress with a round tower and a conical roof.

He turned the motorcycle up the gravel drive and stopped in front of an imposing single door with huge wrought-iron hinges.

But before they could disembark, the door swung open, and
a beefy man leaped out, waving a musket over his white powdered wig. From his powdered face to his white-silk stockings and shiny black slippers, he appeared to have stepped right from the eighteenth century. But he wore sunglasses. And his wig was crooked, his face powder was blotched, and the black slippers were on the wrong feet.

“Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité
! To arms. To arms!” The man pointed his musket at Asher and Sarah. “The prisons are full of conspirators. Have you escaped,
citoyens? Zut! Zut
! I will send you to your graves!” He cocked the musket.

Sarah pulled out her Walther.

Asher said, “Hello, Jack. We've come for a visit.”

Sarah glanced from Asher to the older man, then she put away her weapon. Dammit, this sorry fellow with his crooked wig and reversed slippers was the legendary spymaster himself, Red Jack O'Keefe. But there was something very wrong with him, maybe wrong enough for him to drop out of sight.

Asher introduced himself and Sarah. Then: “Christine Robitaille sends her regards.”

Red Jack O'Keefe recognized the name. “Christine?”

A voice rang out from the château.
“Monsieur Jack! Monsieur Jack! S'il vous plaît!”

Jack O'Keefe lifted his head. A puzzled expression came over his powdered face, and he lowered his musket as the man's voice continued to demand to know the location of Monsieur Jack.

“Me voici!”
he called back at last into the marble foyer. Nervously he ran a hand down his ruffled shirt.

A bald man appeared in the doorway. He was of medium height and build, but heavy in the shoulders. He wore thick-lensed eyeglasses, a precisely trimmed mustache, a snooty expression, and butler's clothes. With a glance he took in the scene. He rested his hands on his hips, shook his head, and tuttutted. Then he led Jack O'Keefe up the château's steps.

Sarah and Asher quickly popped off their motorcycle helmets. While Asher tended to the BMW, Sarah tested her wounds. Her shoulder was sore, but no longer painful. She unwrapped the bandage from her head. The bullet had cut
through her scalp just above her ear. It was sore, too, but not enough to bother about. She pulled her hair down over it.

She and Asher exchanged a look, and they followed Jack O'Keefe into his château.

The butler was settling the old spy at a table in a grassy courtyard at the back. Asher stayed, chatting to a blank-faced O'Keefe, while Sarah followed the butler back into the château.

“Schizophrenia?” she asked.

“Monsieur
has the Alzheimer's,
hélas
.”

Sarah had once done a magazine piece on Alzheimer's, and she knew it was the single most common cause of dementia. Sufferers often had hallucinations and paranoid delusions. If the disease was far advanced, they'd get nothing from O'Keefe.

She asked, “How long has he been sick?”

The butler peered through his glasses at her. “Who knows? The doctors cannot say from exactly what moment. But the last two years have been bad,
très
bad.” In a modern, spotless kitchen he arranged a tray of little crustless sandwiches, raw vegetables, and Oreo cookies. “He's always hungry after an
épisode
,” he explained. “Perhaps you will join him? He has few
visiteurs
. They find him, ah—”

“Of course.” She forced a cheerful smile. “Does Jack know who he is? Where he is?”

“Occasionally.”

Occasionally
was a lousy prognosis, but they had few options. And there was one sign of hope: O'Keefe had recognized Christine Robitaille's name.

The butler picked up the tray. Sarah followed him back to the grassy courtyard. A large pond glistened beyond the thick, green lawn. Snow-white swans floated across its smooth surface. Her gaze casually swept the landscape and met Asher's. He nodded slightly, just enough to tell her he'd been watching.

The butler laid the tray on the glass-topped table, while Sarah took a seat across from O'Keefe. Asher was struggling to talk with him about the weather, the château, France's recession, anything that might capture the old spy's interest.

Sarah knew one of the characteristics of Alzheimer's sufferers was they often recalled the past as clearly as if it had happened yesterday, while the morning's bath was lost in degenerating brain cells. Which meant Jack O'Keefe's memory might still hold what they needed. But even if it did, would they be able to get to it?

Sarah wanted to settle him down and engage him. “I've heard you worked for Wild Bill Donovan back in the old OSS days.”

O'Keefe looked up. A smile spread across his powdered face. This was a subject he cared about. “Ah, Bill! The best. . . . Did you know . . . he got more decorations in the First World War than any U.S. soldier? . . . Ike called him the Last Hero. Then during the second war Bill ran intelligence. Damn, he was good. He turned the OSS into a private club.” He twisted his hands with excitement. “Talk about a hard one, Bill was hard as boar's teeth. But we loved him. Yes, we did. When he said we'd done a good job, we knew it. He didn't give a damn for flattery.”

Asher was playing along. “Hughes Bremner was one of your boys, wasn't he?”

“Taught him everything I could.” O'Keefe beamed again.

“He's my boss.” Asher stuffed his sandwich into his mouth. “Gives me some real interesting assignments.”

O'Keefe chuckled. “And you've got the scars to prove it.”

Asher laughed and nodded.

Sarah was encouraged to try another tack. “Asher, I'll bet we can tell Jack. I'll bet he's still got security clearance.”

Asher nodded. “Yeah. Jack would get a kick out of it.”

“What?” O'Keefe's powdered face was eager. For him, lack of work was a disease worse than Alzheimer's.

She said, “The Carnivore's coming in.”

O'Keefe's dark glasses trained on Sarah. “After all this time. Good lord. What that killer knows—”

“Bremner's bringing him in,” Asher said. “But there's something we don't understand. Perhaps you can explain it.”

“See what I can do.” O'Keefe patted his lips with his napkin. He enjoyed being back in the role of mentor.

“What would be the point of Hughes grabbing the Carnivore for himself?” Sarah watched the old cold warrior as he frowned first at her and then at Asher. His powder-splashed, beefy face seemed to close down behind his glasses. He knew something, and he wasn't going to reveal it . . . or was he about to drift off again?

Chapter 54

4:14
P.M
.

Sarah had an idea, but it was a gamble. O'Keefe was shaky, and she might trigger a full-blown Alzheimer's episode. Still, she felt there was little choice. Time was passing too swiftly. She spoke casually:

“You've got a magnificent château here, Jack. Very expensive. Your shares in Sterling-O'Keefe must be paying off.”

He looked shocked, then confused.

She'd hit close. No Langley salary could have bought the Château de la Vere, and neither could a Langley pension have maintained it. O'Keefe was getting money somewhere else.

“Didn't know you were a businessman, Jack.” Asher had caught on. “Pretty smart, eh?”

But they'd gone too far.

Jack O'Keefe jumped up. “Damn you all to hell! I have nothing to do with Sterling-O'Keefe! I won't have my reputation ruined. I've got nothing else left!” With a swipe of his arm, O'Keefe crashed the food-laden tray to the grass. Another episode was beginning, and if it were a long one, it could be days before his mind would be sound enough to hold another conversation.

Sarah used her calmest voice. “We'll protect your reputation, Jack. It's important to all of us at Langley.”

“That's what we're here for.” Asher's tones were soothing.

O'Keefe's splotched, powdered face was pathetic, lily white against his black glasses. His voice dropped. “All I've got now is the legend. My mind's going. This hellish disease—”

Asher urged him into his chair. “We're here to help.”

“It's a dicey situation, and we need you.” Then Sarah lied: “We've learned Hughes is walking into a trap. Someone's planning to kill him and the Carnivore, too. If we don't know why Hughes is worried about the Carnivore, we can't stop it.”

“We'll take care of everything,” Asher promised, “but we have to know enough to save Hughes!”

They waited nervously. Would O'Keefe tell them what he knew? Could he? The old spy's hand trembled as he picked up an Oreo cookie that had miraculously remained on the table. He seemed to be deep inside himself, concentrating.

His hand steadied. His face cleared. His mouth stopped twitching. A few years ago he would have questioned them closely before believing them. Now his reasoning powers had deteriorated. But had his memory?

He spoke slowly at first, and then with gradually increasing assurance—

Cuba, Christmas, 1958

Music, laughter, and sporadic gunfire resounded throughout downtown Havana. Armored vehicles shared the palm-lined streets with mule carts and Cadillacs. At the hotels, security officers patrolled with machine guns, while glamorous women slung mink coats over their swim suits as they crossed lobbies on their way to sapphire-blue swimming pools.

The city never slept. Encircling it was the ragtag guerrilla army of Fidel Castro, which in a few days would sweep President Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar from office.

La Cosa Nostra—the mafia, the mob—guarded its Havana casinos, brothels, and bars. It stayed, believing with Sicilian wisdom that, peace or war, someone had to do business—and take the profits. Sensing change, foreign agents prowled the tropical
nights, buying favors and information to ensure their nations a say in the future of this strategically located island.

Hughes Bremner was there undercover, tracking the political cyclone that was about to land. Bremner was blessed with “gut,” that sixth sense with which the best operatives were born. For this reason, Red Jack O'Keefe had taken the young man under his wing. But Jack O'Keefe had been sent to Nuremberg on emergency business, and Bremner was left alone, in charge.

One night Bremner met a young American salesman, Alex Bosa, with whom he went drinking and whoring. They got together often after that. Gut told Bremner to keep an eye on Bosa.

On New Year's Eve the two young men met for drinks. Bosa took several telephone calls, and after midnight he left with a mambo dancer. Bremner followed. Around one o'clock in the morning Bosa left the dancer's apartment. Bremner tailed him to the plantation of General Geraldo Ocho. There Bosa left his brand-new Chevrolet hidden in a tangle of vegetation. He stripped down to some kind of dark clothing. He took out a rifle with a telescopic sight, a knife, and a rope, and he vanished into a field of sugarcane.

Batista's army was all around. It was safe for no one, so Bremner returned to Havana. That night Castro captured the capital. Word spread like wildfire—Fidel Castro had won because a guerrilla had killed Batista's best commander, General Geraldo Ocho. People said Castro's guerrillas had shot the general in a daring raid. But Bremner knew better.

Bremner knew General Ocho had huge gambling debts, which he'd refused to pay. A mafia sniper—Alex Bosa—had killed him. Not for political reasons, but because the mafia could allow no defiance, not even from a great general in the middle of war.

The assassin, Alex Bosa, hired a private yacht to take him back to Miami. Bremner found him on the yacht with two of Batista's supporters holding cane knives to his throat. Alex Bosa had cost them the war, their country, their little fortunes, and, unless they could get off the island, their lives.

Bremner knew that Alex Bosa might prove important to the United States; the two Cubans wouldn't. Even at such an early age, the young CIA man knew how to take the long view. He surprised the two Cubans, and he shot and killed them. He and Bosa dumped them overboard.

Now Bremner had a mafia assassin who owed him. Bosa was no fool either. Bremner was CIA. It was good for a professional killer like Bosa to have a “friend” in the CIA. Life was one long business transaction. The two understood that. They understood each other.