The Matarese Countdown (10 page)

In the brief illuminations of moonlight, they appeared to be ordinary fishermen. Two had unkempt beards, attesting to the aversion at sea to wasting warm water and manipulating a razor; the third was clean-shaven. This last member was the skipper of the raft and appeared younger than the others, perhaps in his middle thirties, while his companions—rugged, heavyset—appeared to be in their late forties or slightly beyond. Too, the third man was dressed in what could best be described as casual-expensive. Form-fitting white jeans, a loose blue cotton jacket, and a visored sailing cap, as opposed to his associates’ tattered shirts and trousers whose only laundering was probably a plunge in the salt
water every other day or so. Also, around each neck was a rawhide strap attached to a flashlight.

“
You
there, Jack,” shouted the younger man, addressing the intruder in front, “beach the raft and look around over there!” He pointed in Antonia’s direction. “And you, Harry, check the other side of the beach.” It was Pryce’s domain. “There’s someone here, that beam of light didn’t appear out of nowhere!” The language the search-party leader spoke was English, but it was not his native tongue. The accent was middle European, Slovak or Baltic.

“I dinno, mate,” cried Harry, his speech obviously Australian—Strine, as it was called. “These Carib spots can be ruddy loony. Reflections all over the plyce.”

“We saw what we saw. Go on!”

“If we saw wot we think we seen,” said the man called Jack, evidently a London cockney, “they weren’t bashful about it, now were they?”

“Just look, just
look!
”

“I ayn’t paid to get me bloody head whacked off by some cryzy savages.”

“You’re paid far more than you’re worth, Harry, now hurry up!” It was at this moment that the concealed Scofield saw what he hoped to see. The search party’s superior officer took out a small walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket and spoke into it. “No sign of anyone on the beach and no visible light beyond the trees and the brush. We’ll reconnoiter; keep your radio with you.”

The comparatively well-dressed leader of the unit lifted the rawhide strap over his head and, looping the flashlight into his left hand, switched it on and swung the beam around, crisscrossing the area. Scofield ducked as the light shot over his head, behind the rocks and the hidden rocket launcher. Darkness again, except for the erratic moonlight; Beowulf Agate peered over the ragged edge of stone. He was alarmed.

The leader had spotted something and Bray knew exactly what it was: the rows of small sun-absorbing plates that fed the photoelectric cells that were an alternate source of Outer Brass 26’s energy. Slowly the man crept forward.

At the far right side of the beach, the slovenly subordinate named Jack cautiously walked through the sand, the beam of his flashlight swinging in all directions. He came within two feet of Antonia, and the moment he did so, she stepped out of the foliage, shoved the short barrel of the Uzi into his back, and whispered, “You utter a sound and you’ll sleep with the fishes, I believe is the expression. Drop your gun!”

Over on the left flank, Pryce waited behind the boulder as the Australian approached with his flashlight. When the man came nearer, actually brushing the large rock with his shoulder, Cameron circled the huge stone and stepped out, three feet behind the intruder.

“You raise your voice, you’re in kangaroo hell, mate,” he said quietly but harshly.

“
What
the—”

“I told you
once!
” interrupted Pryce softly, angrily. “I won’t say it again. Instead, you’ll be a bloody corpse on the beach.”

“Don’t you worry about me, mate! I didn’t come on board for this kind of shit.”

“Why did you come on board … 
mate?
”

“The screw—the salary. The bastards pay every week what it would take me two months to make!”

“Why are you so far away from home?”

“I worked for ’em in the west territories, way above Perth it was, servicing the Indian Ocean. I’m a good hand and m’morals aren’t a priority, if you know what I mean. We’re all goin’ to that hell anyway.”

“Do you know whom you’re working for?”

“Haven’t the slightest. Never asked, don’t care. Contraband, I gather; drugs, I suspect. Meeting tankers and cargos on their way to Durban and Port Elizabeth.”

“You’re a beautiful man.”

“M’children think I am. I bring home the bacon, as you Yanks say.”

“Hold your head straight, Aussie, it’ll hurt less that way.”

“
What?
…”

Cameron dropped his MAC-10, walked up to the man, his arms raised above him, then crashed his taut, hard, experienced hands into both sides of the rogue Australian’s neck. The carotid vessels were damaged, not severed; he would be unconscious for at least two hours.

Suddenly, out of the darkness of the small cove beach, came the words shouted in accented English. “
Jack, Harry
, I’ve
found
it! There are more than I can count. Dozens and dozens of small plates that lead to a central cable! They’re here, we’ve found them; this is their electricity!”

“And I’ve found
you
,” said Scofield, standing up from the dark beach rocks, the silenced automatic rifle in his hand. “I suggest you get rid of the AK-Forty-seven before I become upset and put a bullet in your forehead. I don’t approve of those weapons; they kill people.”

“My God, it
is
you!”

“What did you say?”

“Beowulf Agate, your code name.”

“You can tell in this light?”

“I’ve listened to your voice on tape.”

“Why were you so anxious to find me? Not that I was so hard to find.”

“We had no reason until recently. Beowulf was a forgotten relic, a man who had disappeared.”

“And now I’ve reappeared?”

“You know the reason as well as I do. The old woman in Chelyabinsk, René Mouchistine on that yacht.”

“I’ve heard of those people.”

“Why else would the Agency’s
new
Beowulf Agate, the vaunted Cameron Pryce, come after you?”

“I have no idea. You tell me.”

“He’s an expert, and you have names going back years.”

“If I have, I’ve forgotten them. That world no longer interests me. And, incidentally, how could you possibly have known about Pryce? It was a Four-Zero search, maximum classified.”

“Our methods, too, are maximum classified, but very thorough. More thorough than the Company’s.”

“ ‘Ours’ being the Matarese’s, of course.”

“It’s to be presumed that Officer Pryce revealed that to you.”

“Actually, he didn’t have to, if that interests you.”

“
Really?
”

“Which means that your sources and my sources come from the same source. Now
that’s
interesting, isn’t it?”

“It’s also immaterial, Mr. Scofield. These names you’ve forgotten, and the companies they represented—surely you realize they’re meaningless now. Most of the people, if not all, are dead, the corporations swallowed up by others. Meaningless.”

“
Ah
, yet some do come back to me, I truly believe, but then they were pretty well buried all those years ago, weren’t they? Let’s see if I can remember.… There was Voroshin in the Soviet city of Leningrad, which gave birth, of course, to Essen’s Verachten, not so? Both were owned by their governments but they were beholden to someone—
something
—else. In the American city of Boston, Massachusetts, wasn’t it?”

“That is enough, Mr. Scofield.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy. My memory’s activated—it hasn’t been for years. There was also the English Waverly Industries; it, too, was irrevocably bound to Boston. And Scozzi-Paravacini, or was it Paravacini-Scozzi? In Milan, wasn’t it? However, it also took its orders from Boston—”

“You’ve made your point—”

“Good heavens, not until we consider the untimely, tragic deaths of such leaders as the brilliant Guillaumo Scozzi, the seductive Odile Verachten, and the stubborn David Waverly. I’ve always felt that somehow they displeased—dare I say the name—the
Shepherd Boy?
”

“Ashes, Scofield. I repeat, meaningless! And that’s nothing but a sobriquet for someone long dead and forgotten.”

“ ‘Sobriquet’? That’s a nickname, isn’t it?”

“You’re not uneducated.”

“The Shepherd Boy … In some parts of that secret world of yours, that world of constant night, he’s a legend going back decades. A legend about whom words were written down by those he ultimately destroyed. If found and
pieced together, those writings would change the history of international finance, wouldn’t they?… Or perhaps describe a blueprint for the future.”

“I say it for the last time!” The search-party leader both spat and choked out the words. “Meaningless ramblings!”

“Then why are you here?” asked Bray. “Why were you so anxious to find me?”

“We follow orders.”

“Oh, I love that phrase! It certainly covers a lot of exculpatory ground, doesn’t it?
Doesn’t
it?”

“You finish your statements with too many questions.”

“It’s the only way you learn anything,
isn’t
it?”

“Let me be frank, Mr. Scofield—”

“You mean you
haven’t
been?” interrupted Beowulf Agate.

“Please stop that!”

“Sorry, go on.”

“We live in a different age from when you left the Service, sir—”

“Are you saying I’m antediluvian, out of
touch?
” again Bray broke in.

“Only in terms of technological relativity,” replied the Middle European with marked irritation. “Data banks have been upgraded beyond belief, instruments electronically scan thousands of documents every hour and store them, the
depth
of research has become extraordinary.”

“Which means if I happened to mention a few of those names to interested parties, it might lead to new ones now—new names, new companies, is that what you’re saying? My word, the entire history of corporate Boston would have to be rewritten.”

“What I’m
saying
, Mr. Scofield,” said the intruder through clenched teeth, as if addressing a senile idiot, “is that we’re prepared to pay you several million dollars to disappear again. South America, the South Pacific islands, anywhere you wish. A mansion, a ranch, the finest that can be purchased for you and your wife.”

“We were never really married you know, just sort of our own commitment—”

“I really don’t
care
. I’m simply offering you a superb alternative to what you have.”

“Then why didn’t you just come in here and blow us up with your cannon? You could have smoked us out and killed me—ergo, your problem is solved.”

“I remind you that Officer Pryce was tracked here. It would lead to unacceptable complications. And by the way, where is he?”

“Mrs. Scofield is showing him around our lagoon; it’s quite beautiful in the moonlight, what there is of it.… So you don’t reject the solution, only the consequences.”

“Just as you would have done in your younger years. Beowulf Agate was the most pragmatic of deep-cover, black-operations officers. He killed when he believed he had to.”

“That’s not quite true. He killed when it was necessary—there’s a difference. Belief, or conjecture, had nothing to do with it.”

“Enough. What is your answer? Live out your days in splendid comfort or stay on this tiny island hovel? And die on it.”

“Good Lord, such a
decision!
” said Scofield, lowering his MAC-10 automatic rifle against the rocks, his left hand pensively shading his eyes but still on the intruder. “It would be wonderful for my wife—my common wife, as it were, and perfectly legal—but I’d be constantly thinking …” Beowulf Agate watched through his slightly parted fingers the subtle movements of the intruder. The man’s right hand was lowered, close to his loose jacket.… Suddenly, he ripped up the flap and reached for a gun under his belt. Before he could fire, Bray raised his weapon and sent off a single round. The Mataresan collapsed in the sand, blood trickling from his chest.

“
What was
that?” came the voice from the dead man’s radio. “
I heard something! What was it?
”

Scofield raced to the corpse, pulling it into the bushes out of sight and removing the small intercom from the jacket pocket; he switched it off. Then, concealing himself in the shadows, he called out sotto voce, “From your silence, my
hidden pigeons, I assume you’ve completed your assignments. With great caution, please return to Father Christmas.”

“My man’s asleep,” said Pryce, emerging from the palm-engulfed bushes. “He’ll be asleep for a couple of hours.”

“Here’s another on his hands and knees,” added Antonia, crawling with her captive out of the foliage. “Where’s the other man?”

“He was most impolite; he tried to kill me. He’s doing penance in our jungle.”

“What do we do now, my husband?”

“Simplest thing in the world, old girl,” replied Scofield, peering through the night-vision binoculars. “We activate the bowels of the captain of that so-called trawler.… Cam, have you got any rope in your tricky bag?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Not too bright, either. Take off your T-shirt, rip it in strips, and bind Toni’s prisoner, hands and feet. With what’s left, shove it in the bastard’s mouth, and, if you wouldn’t mind, a little physical anesthesia would be helpful.”

“It’ll be a pleasure.” Pryce went to work, his assignment taking less than ninety seconds.

“And me, Bray?”

“Wait a minute, lovey,” answered Scofield, still staring through the binoculars. “There he goes. He’s heading below, probably to a radio. He’s not watching the shore and obviously there’s no one else on board!”

“So?”

“So run back to the house and gather up a few flares, four or five’ll be enough. Then dash down the east path, say two or three hundred feet, and send one up.”

“Good heavens, why? He’ll know we’re here!”

“He knows already, dearest. Now we’ve got to confuse him.”

“How?”

“By your racing back to the house and into the
west
path, past the lagoon, and setting off another flare over there.
Ignite the first one, say in eight minutes, the second in eleven, give or take. Don’t you remember?”