The Matarese Countdown (46 page)

“It wasn’t difficult, darling, the role fit, no acting required. You, on the other hand, gave a grand performance, extremely imaginative.”

“Why thank you, my sweet, how so?”

“I read your notes on everyone you’ve already met with. With the others I could follow you, for there were too many coincidences, too much convergence of similar interests leading to collusion. You genuinely frightened a few of them, and they hid their fear with silence and abstract denials; the rest were completely confused. But when you mentioned foreign investments to these two, their silence was very loud, the mention of Amsterdam frightening, or so it seemed.”

“Yeah, I kinda dragged that one out of my butt. It paid off, though, didn’t it? They couldn’t deny it fast enough, or at least justify it.”

“How did you figure it, Bray? I’m simply curious.”

“Part of the truth, Toni, part of the essential truth. We called them gaps in the old days, spaces that weren’t filled.… Why would an up-and-coming brokerage house named Swanson and Schwartz sell out when their best years were ahead of them? Swanson died of a coronary when he had no history of heart trouble, and Schwartz left the States and became a citizen of Switzerland, both in their middle forties. For me, it was a classic Matarese pattern of manipulation. Both of those boys are Matarese down to their Gucci shoes.”

“Sometimes you really revert to Beowulf Agate, don’t you?”

“If the Serpent were still with us, I hope he’d agree. We owe a great deal to Taleniekov.”

“Our lives, Bray, only our lives.”

“So let’s get on with it, luv,” said Brandon, walking to the telephone console on the desk. He pressed a series of
numbers and reached Frank Shields in an unmarked federal car nearby. “Everything under control, Squinty?” he asked.

“Would you mind not using that offensive name over government communications?”

“Sorry, Frank, it’s meant only as a supreme compliment. You see what others can’t see ’cause you narrow things down.”

“Bullshit isn’t required.… We’re tailing the two subjects; they’re turning onto Central Park South.”

“What do you figure?”

“Well, he’s not heading back to his office, which tells us something. This was the last one, wasn’t it?”

“Two as it turned out. Yes, they were. Stay in touch and if anything develops, call me. Toni and I are going to relax and order our way through the room-service menu, which, of course, the taxpayers don’t have to cough up a dime for.”

“
Please
, Brandon!”

“He
knows!
” cried a terrified Albert Whitehead in the limousine. “He knows
everything!
”

“Possibly,” said the attorney, Nichols, coolly, “and just as possibly, he may not.”

“How can you
say
that?” protested the CEO of Swanson and Schwartz. “You heard him, the stock offerings, the loans, the mergers and buyouts, for Christ’s sake! Our entire schedule!”

“All easily discovered and confirmed by legal research. A first-year law student could do it.”

“Then answer me this, Clarence Darrow! What about the foreign investment? How do you explain
that?
”

“That may be where he slipped up. The monies were funneled through a Texas consortium of venture capitalists, done orally through Amsterdam, and left no paper trail whatsoever.”

“You can’t be sure of that, Stuart.”

“No, I can’t be,” admitted Nichols, turning and gazing absently at Whitehead. “It’s what bothers me, I’ll be honest with you. This Clayton is obviously tuned in to Amsterdam,
which says a great deal … and he claims it’s now off-limits,
really
off-limits.”

“Dangerously so! He mentioned a death list—that’s not an unknown calculation among our silent partners. They’ll stop at nothing. We can’t risk calling Amsterdam.”

“So we can’t learn the truth, if there’s another truth, and we’re not scheduled to report for another eight days. If we violate that schedule, which is timed for sterile satellite transmission, Amsterdam will know we think something’s wrong.”

“We could make
up
something, you’re good at that!”

“Nothing I can think of. We’re on time with everything, not a glitch in the agenda. Perhaps the others will have an idea, a reason to call the Keizersgracht.”

“One of them
must
,” insisted a panicked Whitehead. “We’re all in this together and we’ve made millions!”

“You do realize, don’t you, Albert, that this Clayton may be employing an enormous bluff?”

“Yes, I do, Stuart. But who’s going to call it?”

The room-service table was filled with the remains of a devoured porterhouse steak, veal piccata, assorted vegetables, iced goblets of Iranian caviar (for Antonia), and three chocolate eclairs (for Scofield). They were now enjoying espresso coffee with ponies of Courvoisier VSOP brandy. “I could get used to this, m’luv,” said Scofield, wiping his mouth with an enormous pink napkin.

“You could also die, old man,” said Antonia. “If we ever get out of this, I want you back on the fish we catch and the fresh vegetables we grow.”

“They’re all so dull.”

“They keep you alive, you old goat.”

The telephone rang, and as if the sound were a relief, Scofield jumped out of his chair and walked rapidly to the console. “Yes?”

“It’s Frank, Brandon. You’re proving to have a fine batting average. The two big shots from Swanson and Schwartz ended up at one of those little unadvertised garden restaurants
in the Village, the kind where you’ve got to have a financial pedigree to make a reservation.”

“Not in my frame of reference, Mr. Director.”

“Think of those clam houses in Brooklyn and Jersey, where the clientele are descendants of the old Moustache Petes and they can ice-pick anyone they like because they own them. These new ones are way upscale; the suits and the speech are different, but the meetings aren’t.”

“Get to the point, Frank.”

“Your two honchos left your hotel and met with the banker Benjamin Wahlburg of that new banking conglomerate, and both Jamieson Fowler, head of Boston’s Standard L and P, and Bruce Ebersole, president of Southern Utilities. They represent the mergers of the major electric and bicoastal banking institutions with a heavy arm in the Mediterranean. We have photographs. You had ten candidates and four proved out. Congratulations, Beowulf Agate, you’re batting four hundred.”

“Thanks, Squinty. What have you heard from London?”

“Find them, find
him!
” screamed Julian Guiderone over his satellite telephone on board his private jet en route to London from Marseilles. “We pay millions to gnomes who have lifestyles far beyond anything they could possibly earn, who exist only to
service
us! Why are they failing, why are
you
failing?”

“We’re all working around the clock, I assure you,” replied Jan van der Meer Matareisen from his sanctum sanctorum above the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. “It’s as if an unseen, unexpected blanket had descended over our sources.”

“Then remove it, blow it apart! Kill several dozen on your payrolls—send out the word that they were suspected of betrayals. Spread terror through the ranks, create your own inquisition. As the bodies fall, traitors will be exposed; fear is the catalyst. Have you learned
nothing
, ‘Grandson’?”

“I’ve learned to have patience, sir, and do
not
shout at
me. While you fly around the world engineering crises,
I
have to hold the entire operation together. And may I remind you, sir, that while you are the son of the Shepherd Boy,
I
am the legitimate grandson of the Barone di Matarese, who
created
the Shepherd Boy. You have many, many millions, but
I
have billions. I respect you, sir, for what you nearly achieved—my God, the
White House
—however, I beg you, do not fight me.”

“For God’s sake, I’m not fighting you, I’m trying to
teach
you. Your heart and your intellect convince you that you’re right, but you must have the stomach to follow through with those convictions! Where you find weakness, you root it out, the weed as well as its offshoots. Destroy everything in your path, no matter how appealing the wild-flowers!”

“I’ve understood that for years,” said Matareisen, “and don’t try to insinuate that I haven’t. I have no emotions where the work of the Matarese is involved; our disciples live or die by their actions.”

“Then do as I say, start the killing, create the panic. Someone out there will know—or will force himself to
learn
—where Scofield is! Especially if failure may well cost him his life.
Beowulf Agate!
He’s the one behind these interruptions, I told you that!”

“Our sources cannot tell us what they don’t know, Mr. Guiderone.”

“How do
you
know that, ‘Grandson’?” asked the son of the Shepherd Boy caustically. “For all your brilliance, Jan van der Meer, you have a flaw common to genius. You believe that what you have created is infallible, for the creator cannot be faulted.
Nonsense!
You don’t have the vaguest idea what Scofield is doing, what attack strategies he’s mounted, or with whom. He neutralized Atlantic Crown … how many others are walking—no, goddamn it, probably
running
—into his nets? Once confirmed, how many of those may break?”

“No one will be broken,” answered the Dutchman quietly. “Not only do they understand the consequences, but there are numerous fallback positions designed by our attorneys
that completely legitimatize everything we’ve done. We’re legally immaculate, free to continue until everything’s in place. I also created that.”

“You think you have—”

“I
know
I have,
old
man!” broke in Matareisen, suddenly shouting. “The only near catastrophe was because of
you
and your foolishness at Westminster House in London,” went on Jan van der Meer, abruptly lowering his voice, “but you’ve apologized so we’ll say no more about it.”

“Well, well,” mused Guiderone out loud, “the young lion really wants to dominate the pride.”

“I do dominate it, through your appointment, if you recall. Do you regret it?”

“Good heavens, no. I could never do what you’ve done. However, I doubt I was the only catastrophe. Something happened in Wichita, and I don’t believe I’ve ever been there, nor did I know the gentlemen involved.”

“And they knew no one but a code and an answering machine in Amsterdam, buried in the Department of Canals.”

“An inscrutable bureaucracy,” conceded the son of the Shepherd Boy. “You are truly a genius, Jan van der Meer, but you’re missing something, and that something is a someone.
Beowulf Agate
. If you do not find him,
kill
him, he will discover more flaws—and bring your house down. He did it before and we thought—we
knew
—we were invincible. Don’t let it happen again.… You were correct, of course, I’m an old man, and so is Scofield. The difference between us is that he can move with the quick and the dead, I can only move with the dead and the near dead. You, on the other hand, can move with the quick and the dead
and
, above
all
, those filled with greed. They’re the most powerful army on earth, an unstoppable battalion.
Use
it, use them! Do not disappoint me.”

Guiderone slammed down the telephone, annoyed that the sudden turbulence had caused his glass of Château Beychevelle Médoc to spill over his table.

•  •  •

Sir Geoffrey Waters signed for the top-secret envelope delivered to his house in Kensington by an MI-5 officer. He began to open it as he walked back through the narrow hallway to his breakfast in the dining room. His wife, Gwyneth, a gray-haired woman of delicate features and wide, intelligent brown eyes, looked up from the London
Times
and spoke.

“Communiqués at this hour, Geoffrey? Couldn’t it have waited till you got to the office?”

“I don’t know, Gwyn, I’m as surprised as you are.”

“Open it, darling.”

“I’m trying to, but these damn black plastic tapes require scissors, I think.”

“Use the steak knife.”

“Yes, rather. Nice of you to have Cook get me a small fillet with my eggs.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been under considerable pressure these past few weeks. Better to send you off with a satisfied stomach.”

“Much appreciated,” said the MI-5 chief of Internal Security as he slashed the crisscrossing tapes and opened the large manila envelope. He scanned its contents and plummeted down into his chair. “Oh, my
God
,” he exclaimed.

“Is it something I’m permitted to know?” asked Gwyneth Waters. “Or one of those things I’m not supposed to?”

“You’d bloody well better! It’s your brother, Clive—”

“Oh, yes, dear Clivey. He’s doing so well now, isn’t he?”

“Perhaps too well, my dear. He’s on the board of directors of the new Sky Waverly consortium.”

“Yes, I know, he phoned me last week. Quite a stipend, I gather.”

“Or quite a mess, Gwyn. Sky Waverly is under an intensive investigation concerning matters I can’t discuss with you—once again for your own well-being.”

“Yes, we’ve been through this before, Geof, but after all, you’re talking about my
brother.
”

“Let’s be honest, dearest. I enjoy Clive, I like him; he’s a charmer with a wonderful sense of humor, but I don’t think either of us considers him among the better barristers in London.”

“He does have his shortcomings, I’ll grant you that.”

“He’s gone from firm to firm, never rising to a partnership,” continued Waters, “usually hired on the strength of
your
name. Bentley-Smythe is an honored name in English law.”

“He’s a decent man,” interrupted the sister, “and he had too much to live up to, which he couldn’t. Is that a crime?”

“Of course not, but why was he plucked from a minor legal firm in which he was a downscale member to the board of directors of Sky Waverly?”

“I’ve no idea, but I’ll call him this morning and ask him.”

“That’s the one thing you must
not
do,” said Waters, softly but firmly. “Leave this to me, Gwyn. In my opinion, your brother’s being used. Let me handle it.”