The Matarese Countdown (20 page)

Pryce and Scofield raced through the chairs and tables to the fallen men, joined by an Army patrol on kitchen duty. Cameron leaned down, alternately touching the necks of Bracket and Denny.

“My God, they’re
dead!
” Pryce cried, getting to his feet. “It had to be poison.”

A young, stunned RDF soldier knelt to examine the plates. “Don’t touch those, son!” said Scofield quickly.

Cam and Bray looked down at the broken plates, at the spilled food beside each. Both men had eaten eggs, either poached or lightly fried, since portions of soft, yellow yoke were apparent.

“Who knows you like eggs?” asked Pryce quietly.

“Hell, probably every one of the boys who’ve worked in here. Toni was pretty outspoken about my eggs, and most of the time I listened to her. Two months ago those medical idiots in Miami said my cholesterol was over three hundred.”

“Did you order eggs this morning?”

“Order? This is a buffet, haven’t you noticed? Those metal servers on the table hold scrambled with sausages, and the one next to it has poached floating in slow-boiling water.”

“But you didn’t have eggs today?”

“Had ’em yesterday … and I figured Toni might walk in.”

“Seal off the kitchen,” ordered Pryce to the RDF soldier.

“Seal off? I
am
the kitchen, sir. Everything comes in sealed, including the eggs, and whoever’s on duty here follows the regs on how to make ’em.”

“
Regs?
”

“Instructions, sir. By the numbers, although we sure don’t need them. I mean, what can you do with eggs?”

“Kill people, my friend,” said Scofield. “Seal off the kitchen.
Now!
”

One of the normal two cartons of eggs was still in the mansion’s walk-in refrigerator. Otherwise it was bare except for a few quarts of milk, several packages of cheese, and unopened cans of soft drinks.

“What do you make of it?” asked Cam. “Maybe it wasn’t the eggs.”

“Maybe not,” answered Bray, turning to the RDF patrol. “Tell me, soldier, what about these instructions—for the eggs, I mean?”

“They’re taped on the wall to the left of the first stove, sir, but I can detail ’em like the ABC’s.… Mix six in a bowl with a little milk and whip them up in a skillet with some butter—those are the scrambled. Then you break the other six in the big hot-water server over the Sterno on the table and sort of wing it.”

“ ‘Wing it’?”

“Check ’em now and then depending on who shows up. If they get too hard, which is like when they’re light yellow, you scoop them out and replace ’em.”

“Do you do that often, soldier?”

“Not really, sir. Those who like them that way usually get down here early.
Jesus
, I don’t understand!”

“But you understand that you’re not to say anything, don’t you?” said Scofield pointedly.

“Sure, but that’s crazy—I’m sorry but it’s
crazy!
The word’ll go out all over the compound, you can’t stop it!”

“I know that, son, I just want to know who learns about it outside of this compound. So let’s try a little containment.”

“I still don’t understand—sir.”

“You don’t have to. Now bring that carton of eggs over to the sink and mix up some liquid soap and warm water.”

Using the soapsudsy solution, Bray shook each egg, dipped it into the water, and held it up to the light. Each displayed tiny bubbles at the apex of the shell, the opening too minuscule to be seen by the naked eye.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” said Pryce, studying one of the eggs.

“You’d be a dead one if you had eaten that,” added Scofield. “This method of killing was developed by the Borgias in the middle of the fifteenth century, only far less sophisticated. They used the hatpins of their ladies’ finery and painstakingly allowed the poison to seep in. They also injected tomatoes, squash, plums, and their most-favorite, punctured grapes left soaking for a few days.”

“How civilized,” said Cameron sardonically.

“These eggs were done by the most-modern, thinnest syringes available. Same trick our lesser magicians employ when they inject supposedly fresh eggs with a substance that makes them instantly solid so they can be smashed without breaking. Amusing, in a horrible sort of way, isn’t it?”

“No, not remotely,” said Pryce. “What do you want to do now, since you’re the honcho of this operation?”

“The obvious. Quarantine the kitchens at Langley and place everyone who works there under total surveillance.”

The computer in the Chesapeake compound clacked out the information:

The products in question were purchased from the Rockland Farms in Rockport, Maryland, under contract issued by the Central Intelligence Agency after a full investigation of the company’s standards. The CIA personnel in the Langley kitchens are mostly long-term employees who were subjected to background checks. Reevaluation adds nothing. Intensive scrutiny will continue
.

The dimly lit study in the large house on the outskirts of Rockport, Maryland, was not unlike other houses in the three-million-dollar range on the properties of megamillion-dollar “farms” far from the odors of their businesses. Although the cold winds of autumn had barely arrived, the fireplace was roaring, the flames casting shadows that danced against the walls. An angry man in his forties approached an elderly figure in a wheelchair.

“How could you
do
it, Grandfather? I’ve turned down Atlantic Crown for years! They’re vultures, buying up every processing plant in sight until they own it all and can dictate the markets!”

“And
I
own this company, you don’t,” wheezed the old man, bringing an oxygen mask to his mouth. “When I’m dead, you can do what you want, but until then it’s mine.”

“But
why?
”

“You all got decent money, didn’t you?”

“That’s irrelevant and you know it. They’re not our sort of people. They’re
bloodsuckers.
”

“All too true, Grandson. But there was a time over fifty years ago when the money behind what’s known now as
Atlantic Crown backed a young visionary. With finances that could have come from moneylenders expunged from hell. How do you think a neophyte agronomist could have bought over ten thousand acres of fertile ground without them? By
God
, they were the visionaries, not I.”

“Are you saying you couldn’t
refuse
them?”

“Nobody can.”

The velour-draped boardroom of Atlantic Crown in the penthouse of the ACL building in Wichita, Kansas, was deserted except for two men. The man at the head of the table, appropriately dressed in a subdued dark pin-striped suit, spoke.

“Next shot is the beef industry,” he said. “Orders from Amsterdam.”

“We’ll need an infusion of capital,” said the subordinate executive in a navy blue blazer and French cuffs. “I hope that’s been made clear.”

“We’ll have it,” answered the CEO of Atlantic Crown. “Incidentally, that minor problem about the eggs in the Chesapeake complex, was it taken care of?”

“Our final investigating negotiators made sure of it. Right down to the sealed crates for the helicopter.”

“That’s good. We must be precise in all things.”

T
he teeming streets of Cairo seemed awash with the odor of sweat as thousands rushed about in the harsh midday sun. The traffic was dense; horns clashed in angry spurts as voices erupted in incessant conflict, pitting languages and dialects against one another. The mass of humanity was as diversified as the vocal tumult; Arabic robes comingled with Western suits, jackets, and blue jeans, while the Muslim headdress vied with bowlers, Stetsons, and baseball caps. In a sense, it was a macrocosm of East and West, the numbers favoring the Arab, as it was his country, his city. Cairo, the font of legends, where myth and reality were inseparable, yet very separate in a land of contradictions.

Julian Guiderone, dressed in an
aba, thobe
, and
ghotra
, and wearing large dark glasses, walked down the crowded Al Barrani Boulevard looking for the sign that would tell him he had reached his destination. There it was! A blue fleur-de-lis on a small white banner hanging in the storefront window of a jewelry shop. The son of the Shepherd Boy paused to light a cigarette in front of the glass; it allowed him to slowly glance up and down the street, his eyes searching for the unusual. A man or a woman whose eyes were on
him
. Such was the danger of the conference that
was about to take place on the second floor of the store. No one,
no one
outside of those conferring could know the purpose of the meeting about to begin. Should even a rumor be floated, it could spell disaster.

Satisfied, Guiderone stamped out his cigarette and walked inside, instantly holding up three fingers waist high in front of his robes. The clerk behind the counter nodded twice and gestured with his head to a dark red velvet drape on his right. Julian acknowledged with a slight bow and proceeded through the curtain that concealed a staircase. He climbed the narrow steps, as always annoyed by the impediment of his injured leg, the limp restricting his swiftness. At the top of the stairs he looked around at the three doors on the second floor; he saw the blue dot on a brass doorknob and awkwardly maneuvered his way around the curved railing toward it. He stood still briefly except for his hands, which roamed under his robes checking his two weapons, a small .25-caliber automatic on his right, and a fluted grenadelike missile on the left that when hurled against a wall exploded a gaseous substance lethal to any who inhaled it.

Guiderone reached for the brass knob, twisted it, swung the door open, and remained in the frame, studying the room. There were four men all dressed in bedouin robes around a table, each wearing a desert veil cloth, a protection against sandstorms, here a protection against identity. Julian had no need for such a device. He wanted all to know the face of the son of the Shepherd Boy, for if they disobeyed, that face would haunt them until each took his last breath, which could come any hour or any minute from the moment of disobedience.

“Good morning, gentlemen, or is it now afternoon?” he said, entering and taking the chair nearest the door. “I trust that you,
all
of you, have thoroughly checked the security of our meeting place.”

“The room is bare but for our chairs and this table,” replied the Arab at the opposite end from Guiderone, the brocaded gold on his
ghotra
signifying a chieftain’s status.
“The walls have been examined by our subordinates and deemed clear of listening devices.”

“And what about yourselves?
Ourselves?
Desert robes can conceal so many things, can’t they?”

“Despite the times,” said another to the left of Julian, “the ancient rules of that same desert prevail. A traitor’s punishment is still decapitation by dagger, excruciatingly slow in its work. None of us would shirk at executing another, and each of us knows it.”

“That’s succinct, to say the least. So let’s proceed. Since nothing can be written down, I believe each of you, as leader of your faction, has an oral report to give me, am I correct?”

“You are,” answered a third member of the conference, at the far end of the table. “They may appear to be repetitive as each essentially delivers the same information—”

“Then in the interests of brevity,” interrupted the last man, diagonally across the table on Julian’s right, “since each of us has a price on his head, and none cares to remain here any longer than necessary, why not state the general information, each following up with geographical specifics?”

“An excellent idea,” agreed the son of the Shepherd Boy, “but allow me to compliment all of you on the obvious. You speak my language far better than most of my countrymen.”

“You are a polyglot society of vastly undereducated people,” said the Arab chieftain at the end of the table. “We are different, far different. I, for one, read law and international jurisprudence at Cambridge—along with many others of my Islamic brothers.”

“And I am a physician, University of Chicago’s School of Medicine, residence and practice in Stanford—among several hundred other Muslims over the years,” added the man on the apparent leader’s right.

“I held the chair of medieval studies at a university in Germany several years after my doctorate from Heidelberg,” quietly noted the impatient member.

“My credentials are less impressive,” said the fourth
delegate, “but perhaps more pragmatic. I am an electrical engineer and worked on major projects for firms dealing with governments and private industry. I pray for the day I can return and build in our own homeland.”