Recoil (16 page)

“Are you trying to reassure me?”

“You'll begin to feel like a prisoner of war here after a bit. It will be important that you realize that escape is dead easy. That knowledge, I think, will encourage you to stay and stick it out.”

“Stick what out? You still haven't really explained the program.”

“Homer facetiously described it as boot camp but it was quite apt. We're going to be rough on you. You've got to be conditioned out of some of your most comfortable habits. It will be modeled to some extent on the army's basic-training techniques, although there's one significant difference—we're not concerned with inculcating obedience; quite the contrary. What needs development is your initiative. Essentially I want to see you become comfortable with a variety of methods and techniques that will strike you at first as unfamiliar and perhaps unpleasant. We'll present you with challenges that you'll be forced to meet with a combination of trained responses and imagination. Bear in mind you're going to be fighting formidable antagonists who regard violence as an acceptable and even commonplace solution to nearly any sort of problem. I'm not forgetting your prejudices—you may not wish to initiate violence but you've got to know how to deal with it when you're faced with it.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“I assure you it is. But you know the seriousness of it better than I do.”

“How long does all this take?”

“You're impatient.”

“Of course I'm impatient, damn it.”

“It shouldn't take terribly long. We can't expect to make you over. A few basics—and we do need to restore you to first-rate physical condition. Fortunately you seem to have the remains of a good constitution, according to Doctor Wylie. But that sort of training is peripheral at most. Mainly we'll be acquiring information and improvising our schemes based on that information. My organization is already casting its lines and in a very short time I expect to have dossiers on each of your enemies.”

At the edge of the trees Homer Seidell came in sight. He walked up the driveway with his rolling determined gait.

Vasquez said, “Homer has instructions to be rough with you. Try to remember who your real enemies are. Homer's a very good man.”

Vasquez turned away, disappearing back into the house. He left Mathieson feeling uneasy.

4

He jogged in tennis shoes and a gray sweat suit with a towel flopping around his neck. Homer Seidell paced him effortlessly and Mathieson was embarrassed by his own puffing and the streaming sweat.

They came around the corner of the fence. It was still a quarter of a mile up to the house and he didn't think he was going to make it but he was determined to try, if only because of the half-concealed contempt with which Homer had treated him all day.

Momentum and the slight downslope of the driveway were all that kept him from collapse. When he reached the porte cochere he sat on the steps of the porch panting for breath. There was a roaring in his ears.

Homer went bouncing into the house without breaking the rhythm of his stride—up the steps three at a time … Mathieson was still gulping for air when Homer appeared with a bottle of mineral water and two tumblers. He set them down and handed two chalky tablets to Mathieson. They looked like oversized aspirin.

“Salt,” Homer explained. “Take them with the water. But wait till you've got your breath.”

It was a while before he could speak. “How far … did we run?”

“About a mile. That's not running. Man your age doesn't start out running the first day. We'll get your legs stretched out first—legs and chest. You need to learn how to control your wind first.”

“I'll try it.”

“For a desk man you're in better-than-average shape. For an athlete—forget it.”

“I didn't expect to have to learn to be a decathlon contender.”

Homer said, “Think of yourself as Eliza Doolittle.”

“Are you an actor?”

“I have been. Found it a little dull.”

“How'd you get associated with Diego Vasquez?”

“He's got a small staff. Eleven of us, not counting the office help. We're all ex-cops and ex-federals. I spent six years in foreign service before the technocrats got to me. I could take working with dummies but when your superiors are imbeciles it begins to dawn on you that you're in the wrong game.”

“Is ‘foreign service' a euphemism for the CIA?”

“No, but it was something like that. The Defense Intelligence Agency. We didn't drag down the kind of headlines the CIA gets but then we didn't have a public relations staff.”

“Tell me about Vasquez.”

“He's a fine man to work for.” That was all Homer had to say on the subject: It was a measure of Homer's loyalty to his employer and it also said something about Vasquez that he could command that kind of loyalty from a man who clearly did not bestow his respect easily.

Homer wore a scuba-diver's wristwatch with a complexity of dials and buttons. He turned his wrist over to consult it. “You've got four more minutes.”

“Then what?”

“Ever done any boxing?”

“No.”

“I won't make a prizefighter out of you but I'll teach you a bit of footwork. Half an hour ought to do it for today. Then you'll have a shower and a swim. You do swim?”

“I know the strokes.”

“We'll have you doing forty laps. All right, after the swim you can relax a little while. Then lunch, then the handgun range, then rifles. Later on we'll do another jog around the fence. You won't feel like it but if we don't keep doing it your muscles will knot up. Tomorrow morning you'll feel like a cripple.”

5

Vasquez flipped open the photo album on the dining table. His slender finger tapped a photograph of a sharp-faced young man in a metallic suit. “Him?”

“C. K. Gillespie.”

The pages turned. “Him?”

“Sam Urban.”

“What does he do? What's his connection?”

Mathieson studied the photograph. “He's the manager of a restaurant. He's the collection point for numbers slips——”

“What restaurant, Mr. Merle?”

“It's slipped my mind.”

“The Cheshire Cat, Route Nine-W, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.”

“I did remember it was New Jersey.”

“Why?”

“Because it's safer for them to collect New York numbers slips in another state.”

“Will you forget it again?”

“The Cheshire Cat, Englewood Cliffs. I'll remember it now.” Vasquez flipped the page over. “Him?”

“George Ramiro.”

“Function? Connection?”

“I'm not quite clear on the relationship. I know what he does.”

“His wife is a cousin of Frank Pastor's. She's Ezio Martin's half sister. Ramiro is an immigrant, from the Azores. He eloped fifteen years ago with the girl, who was an ugly duckling destined to be the family wallflower. Pastor and Martin either had to kill him or hire him. They hired him, and Ramiro turned out to be useful and completely ruthless. You know his function?”

“Essentially he's in charge of security around Pastor and Martin—he runs the security system and staffs around their houses and offices and cars.”

“If you go in after them by stealth or force, he's the one you'll be contending with.”

“I may not do it that way.”

“That's up to you, of course. But study the backgroundings on Ramiro. You may spot a weak point here and there.”

“Have you spotted any?”

“He plays around with whores sometimes. I realize that's not much of a lever but it's all, we've found.”

Another page. “Her?”

“Anna Pastor. Pastor's wife.”

“Good-looking woman,” Vasquez remarked, and turned another page. “Him?”

“Cestone. Gregory Cestorie.”

There was a knock; it was Homer Seidell. “Just about time for the afternoon workout.”

Vasquez pushed the photos aside. “Come in a moment.”

Homer shut the door and approached the table. Vasquez inclined his head toward a chair; Homer pulled it out and sat. Vasquez said, “I'm going to have to return to the office for two days to try to catch up on the most urgent tasks on my desk. You'll have to take Mr. Merle through a number of things.”

“Such as?”

“Procedures. Methods. Practices. He's going to have to learn how to recognize a hundred different kinds of locks and know how to get into them with picks. How to field-strip a wall safe or hot-wire a car. How to plant explosives on an engine block——”

Mathieson stiffened. “I'm not blowing anybody up.”

“Granted. But you want to know what to look for. Suppose someone tries to do it to you?” Vasquez went back, matter-of-factly, to Homer: “He'll have to learn the rudiments of burglar alarm systems—how to spot them and how to get through them. Bugs, wiretaps, infrared camera techniques.”

Mathieson said gloomily, “There's a lot to it, then.”

6

“He's got me lifting weights,” he complained. Gingerly he stretched his legs out across the bed and arched his head back into the pillow but there was no comfortable position.

“This was your idea,” she said.

“I could use a little sympathy.”

“It's the best thing that's happened to you in years, I imagine. You're going to end up with the physique of Muhammad Ali.”

He scowled at her. “I've always detested cheerful types who make fun of somebody else's agony.”

“Yes, dear.”

He grumbled. “They can't really expect to turn me into Charles Atlas in a matter of weeks, can they?”

“Vasquez seems to think that's up to you. How long do you think it will take?”

“I have no idea; this is just phase one. I don't have too many illusions about this—even if we can bring something off, it won't be done overnight.”

He rolled over on his side but that was just as painful.

She said, “What?” and glanced at him in the mirror.

“Nothing. That was a grunt of anguish.”

“Lift dem weights, tote dat barge. Hadn't you better start getting dressed?”

“Whose idea was it to dress for dinner around here, anyway?”

“Mine.”

“I suppose you had your reasons.”

“It suits the surroundings.” She drew her mouth into a puckered O to apply lipstick.

He left the bed painfully and climbed into his slacks. “How are the kid's bruises?”

“Healing. He seems to be ignoring them.”

“Teach him to try to ride the wildest horse in the place.”

“He gets that from his old man.”

“Christ I haven't even seen him in two days.”

“Whose fault is that? But we ought to be thankful he's occupying himself.”

“And he's not even coming down to dinner tonight?”

“He made a deal with Mrs. Meuth. There's a TV movie he's desperate to see. He promised to put the dishes in the dishwasher afterward.”

Mathieson turned up his shirt collar and wrapped the necktie around it. She put the eye-shadow brush down and turned to look at him. “You've got that all askew. Come over here and use the mirror.”

He had to get down on one knee behind her ottoman to see himself in the mirror. “Paying court to the queen,” he observed.

“Very gallant.”

He got the knot centered. Her face hovered discomfitingly near. She had gone bolt still.

“What's the matter?”

“I'm jittery,” she said. “I keep feeling as if I'm on the verge of a crisis. Every little disturbance feels like a major calamity.”

He reached for her hand but she was turning away; she stood up and walked swiftly to the wardrobe. He got to his feet and watched her step into the dress. “Zip me up?”

He crossed the room and pulled the zipper up and dropped both hands on her shoulders. “How long are we going to go on being polite to each other in cool voices?”

She leaned back against him. “I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm just too neurotic to think.”

He slid his hands around her waist but she pushed them away. “Let's go down to dinner. I'm famished.”

7

Mathieson dragged himself to the dinner table and tried to ignore what he was sure was Homer's smirk. The chandelier threw a yellow glow along the immense dining table. Vasquez remarked, “I know. It feels rather like a set for a 1946 Warner Brothers film—something with Sydney Greenstreet.” Vasquez among his oddities had a penchant for old movies and an apparent total recall concerning their stories, casts, directors and writers.

Unceremoniously Mrs. Meuth laid their plates before them and retired. Something in the kitchen began to grind and clatter. Mathieson looked at the thick red steak, the buttered zucchini, the salad, the glass of ice water. He was not hungry.

“I know,” Homer said, “but eat it anyway. You need the protein.”

“Been running my tail off for a week, you'd think I'd be famished.”

“It doesn't work that way unless you're conditioned to it,” Vasquez told him. “Unaccustomed exercise mutes a sedentary man's appetite. I'm not sure why.”

Homer said, “Go ahead, eat up. It won't put weight on you—that's diet margarine, not butter.”

Mrs. Meuth bustled in with a pitcher of iced tea. She slammed it on to the table and left, her feet falling like bowling pins. She was overweight but not a huge woman by any means; nevertheless everything she did seemed to require the accompaniment of loud noises.

Vasquez remarked, “These are surroundings to which one wouldn't mind becoming accustomed.”

Jan said, “Is everything you touch this glamorous?”

“Hardly. Most often our work is sheer boredom. Homer can confirm that, I'm sure.”

Mathieson said, “Not excepting present company. It drives Homer up the wall, being coach and trainer to an inept middle-aged idiot.”