The Matarese Countdown (58 page)

They would concentrate on Amsterdam, starting with the sparse information found in Myra Symond’s flat, which would be reexamined and thoroughly studied. Then there was the equipment stolen from McDowell’s office in Wichita and flown as cargo to Amsterdam. Thanks to a faceless executive at Atlantic Crown who felt he might be held responsible if he permitted the expensive items to be removed without an invoice, they knew the KLM flight number. There were airline personnel, ground and cargo crews to be questioned; someone had to know something, have seen something—the people who met the equipment, the vehicle or vehicles that carted it away.

The hunters were down to the stones and the pebbles, for Amsterdam was the key to the first door in Scofield’s symbolic maze. It was time to open that door and see what was
behind it. The materials were gathered together and fed into a single computer at MI-5. The results were not spectacular, neither were they useless. Correlations led to connections and associations; methods of transport narrowed the field of those who used them; hiring an international cargo aircraft with all the government clearances, inspections, and restrictions was not a task for even the average multimillionaire. They also included every canal that employed the letter
K
, regardless of its position; there were dozens, the hard
K
-sound emphatic in each.

“Get me a list of every resident on every one of them,” said Sir Geoffrey to an aide.

“There’ll be thousands, sir!”

“Yes, I expect there will be. Incidentally, include the basics, wherever you can. Income, employment, marital status, that’ll be enough for starters.”

“Good Lord, Sir Geoffrey, such a list could take weeks!”

“It shouldn’t, and frankly, I’m not sure we have weeks. Who’s our liaison to Dutch intelligence?”

“Alan Poole, Netherlands Division.”

“Tell him to go to Situation Black and reach his man in Holland. Explain what we need using the cover of narcotics or diamond smuggling—whatever he’s most comfortable with. Telephone companies keep billing records and divide cities into sectors. Our Dutch counterparts can easily gain access and we’ll fly a courier over to pick up the material. As I say, it’s a place to start.”

“Very good, sir,” said the aide, crossing to the door. “I’ll speak to Poole right away.”

The information from Dutch intelligence was voluminous. A team of six MI-5 analysts pored over the material for thirty-eight hours without a break, discarding the obvious noncandidates, retaining even the vaguely possible. The thousands were reduced to several hundred and the process started all over again. Dossiers and police records were gathered wherever they existed, banking practices scrutinized;
companies, corporations, and other places of employment were analyzed for dubious transactions, and flight and ground crews at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport interrogated by Dutch-speaking MI-5 officers regarding the cargo aircraft from Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A. This last provided curious information. According to the agent’s notes, the following conversation took place between the MI-5 officer and the ground chief of the cargo crew.

The release-counter computers had no record of the flight from Wichita. It was as if the aircraft and its arrival did not exist. The MI-5 officer’s notes continued during his interrogation of the customs personnel.

There was no Arnold Zelft in any telephone system, published or unpublished, in the Netherlands. He, too, did not exist.

All of the above data reduced the list of several hundred to sixty-three possibles. The reduction was based on dossiers, police records, company and corporate scrutinies, further financial revelations, and incidental information gathered from neighbors, friends, and enemies. The MI-5 analysts kept probing, essentially eliminating possibles based on disqualifying factors that took them out of the running. The names and residences were now down to sixteen, and individual around-the-clock surveillances were mounted.

Within forty-eight hours a number of strange incidents were reported by officers of the surveillance teams. Six couples on the
K
canals flew to Paris, staying at separate hotels but, as reported by the switchboards, keeping in touch with one another. Three husbands left on business trips, two joined in the evenings by women staying the night, one drinking copiously, to the point of unconsciousness after his meetings, only to be picked up by apparent strangers and to disappear in a speeding car out into the countryside. Was he drunk or was it an act?

The rest of the possibles were four couples, one elderly widow, and two unmarried men. Like the others, they were wealthy, influential to the point of having access to high, medium, and low government figures, and the sources of their vast incomes were complex and difficult to define. This was especially true of one of the two unmarried men, a Mr. Jan van der Meer, who lived in an old, elegant mansion on the Keizersgracht. The records described him as an international financier with undisclosed global holdings, the Dutch equivalent of a worldwide venture capitalist.

Breakthrough!
Then
another!

The first came by way of one of the Dutch-speaking MI-5 agents posing as a survey taker for a cosmetics firm. In
casual conversations with van der Meer’s closest neighbors, it was learned that limousines from a certain company arrived frequently at van der Meer’s residence. When questioned, the limousine service denied any knowledge of a Jan van der Meer and had no record of such a person hiring its vehicles. A security-corporation search revealed that the limousine-rental agency was owned by a holding company named Argus Properties. It was one of van der Meer’s vast array of business interests, and the deception, although perhaps explainable, was disturbing. Further scrutiny was demanded. Where would it lead?

The second breakthrough was part fluke, part cross-pollinating technology, and buried in the past. Also, it was so significant that it eliminated the necessity for further scrutiny. They had found the house on a
K
canal. Three-ten Keizersgracht, the “canal of the caesars.”

A computer at Dutch intelligence picked up a glitch, which often signified a deletion in a past entry. The past in this instance was twenty-four years ago. A computer search was set in motion covering all government and court records going back until that deletion was discovered. Twenty-four years. It turned out to be the Amsterdam Civil Court, Division of Titles and Nomenclature. A second, physical search was mounted in the court’s archives, the document unearthed and subjected to spectrographic X rays. The glitch was found, the words restored.

A nineteen-year-old law student at the University of Utrecht had his name legally changed, or more precisely, altered, his true last name eliminated. From that date forward he was known as Jan van der Meer, no longer Jan van der Meer Matareisen.

Matareisen
.

Dutch for
Matarese
.

The final piece of the maddening puzzle was in place.

Julian Guiderone registered under the name of Paravacini at London’s Inn on the Park hotel. The better establishments knew the House of Paravacini to be among the wealthiest
dynasties in Italy and worthy of their finest efforts. To fulfill the objective of his visit to England—simply put, the death of Brandon Alan Scofield, a.k.a. Beowulf Agate—Julian had to unearth the whereabouts of the Matarese’s man in London, one Leonard Fredericks. Apparently, as their mole in Langley phrased it, “It’s as though he’s disappeared.”

However, someone like Fredericks did not just disappear. He might create irrefutable explanations for temporary absences, but he would never vanish. Notwithstanding harsher realities, like his own execution, he was extraordinarily well paid for his services and, like many of his subterranean colleagues, maintained a covert lifestyle that might be the envy of a Saudi prince. Guiderone did not confine himself solely to Matarese conduits, though; he had his own sources and resources. One of these was Leonard Fredericks’s wife, trapped in a dreadful marriage from which there was no escape. In the event she was being watched, they agreed to meet in the Islamic exhibition room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the subject an established interest of hers.

“You know perfectly well that Leonard rarely tells me the details of his trips,” said the matronly Marcia Fredericks as they sat on a marble bench in the museum. The exhibition room was half-filled with students and tourists, and Julian’s eyes were on the entrance archway; he was prepared to get up and leave the woman at the first inkling of surveillance. “I presume he flew over to his Paris flesh-pots, listed, of course, as some trumped-up economic study.”

“Did he say when he was coming back?”

“Oh, he was quite specific—tomorrow, to be exact. As usual, I’m on call, which was why he was specific. I’m cooking a roast for a couple from the office.”

“Considering the state of your wedded non-bliss, I’d say you were very kind.”

“I’m very curious. He’s been sleeping with the wife for the last two years.”

“He does have nerve, doesn’t he?”

“That he does, dearie. If a woman’s breath can fog a mirror, he’ll nail her.”

“Listen to me, Marcia,” said Guiderone. “I have to see Leonard, but he mustn’t know that we met or that I’m even here in London.”

“He won’t hear it from me.”

“Good. I’m staying at the Inn on the Park, under the name of Paravacini—”

“Yes, you’ve used that before,” interrupted Mrs. Fredericks.

“It’s convenient. The family’s prominent, and they
are
friends. When Leonard returns, does he call you before coming home?”

“Of course. To give me orders.”

“Reach me as soon as he does. He still drives from the office or the airport?”

“Naturally. He may find that he has detours to make, the horny bastard.”

“I’ll intercept him after your call. He may be late for dinner.”

Marcia Fredericks turned slightly and looked imploringly at Julian. “When can I get
out
, Mr. G.? I have no life. I’m in a preconceived hell!”

“You know the rules. Never.… I’ll amend that—certainly not now.”

“But I
don’t
know the rules! I just know there
are
rules because Leonard
says
there are, but I don’t know what they are or why.”

“You certainly understand that they’re related to the excessive money your husband brings home—”

“Doesn’t do a bloody thing for me!” interrupted the wife. “And I haven’t the foggiest what he does to earn it.”

Guiderone returned Marcia’s gaze, their eyes locked. “No, I’m sure you don’t, my dear,” he said softly. “Hang in a while longer. Frequently things have a way of righting themselves. You’ll do as I ask?”

“The Inn on the Park. Paravacini.”

It was early evening on the outskirts of London; the street lamps in this residential section had been recently turned
on. The row of neat, pleasant upper-middle-class homes was progressively distinguished by the succession of inside lights filling the windows. Darkness comes quickly in these quasi-suburban areas as the sun disappears rapidly, the close proximity of the houses prohibiting the dying rays from flooding the streets.

On this particular street a nondescript gray sedan was parked at the curb across from Leonard Fredericks’s home. Inside, Julian Guiderone sat behind the wheel smoking a cigarette, his left arm slung over the passenger seat, his eyes on the rearview mirror. There they were. The headlights of a slowly moving car angling to the right, sliding into the opposing curb. Leonard Fredericks.

On the oft-confirmed premise that a startled man was verbally careless, Julian turned on the ignition and, timing his move with precision, swung the wheel, lurching the gray sedan directly into the path of the approaching vehicle. Slamming to a stop inches from the car’s bonnet, the tires screeching, Guiderone sat immobile, waiting for the reaction. It came instantly as Fredericks leaped out of the driver’s side, yelling.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re
doing?
” he roared.

“I think the question should be reversed, Leonard,” replied Julian calmly, getting out of the gray car and staring at the Matarese’s man-in-London. “What the bloody hell have
you
done?”

“Mr. Guiderone?… 
Julian?
… What in heaven’s name are you doing
here?
”

“To repeat, what have you done wherever you were, Leonard? No one’s been able to find you; you’ve answered no sterile calls or coded messages. As Eagle put it, it’s as though you had disappeared. That’s all very disconcerting.”

“Good God, certainly
you
don’t have to be told!”

“Told what?”

“It’s why I went on a short holiday … until things were clarified.”

“Told
what
, Leonard?” asked Guiderone sharply.

“Amsterdam’s off-limits! Jordan passed the word to me —from
you
.”

“From me?…”

“Of course. He said you’d particularly appreciate my perceptions. He as much as admitted that he was your messenger.”