oxygen ceased to function–that the aural and optical functions shut
down first, but that sentience itself would soon follow.
He waited until he saw Strasser hit the ground before he allowed his own
eyes to close. As they did so, there was a fleeting awareness that his
eyes would never open again; and then there was no awareness of anything
at all.
Back in the hotel room, Ben and Anna rifled through a stack of papers
that they’d hurriedly purchased at a newsstand on the way. Chardin had
referred to an imminent development. And the “fancy-dress forum” in
Austria that Strasser had mentioned chimed with an item they’d recently
come across: but what was it?
The answer was within their grasp.
It was Anna who came across the item in El phi’s, Argentina’s leading
newspaper. It was another brief article about the International
Children’s Health Forum a convocation of world leaders to discuss
matters of pressing mutual concern, especially with respect to the
developing world. But what caught her eye this time was the city where
the meeting was to be held: Vienna, Austria.
She read on. There was a list of sponsors among them, the Lenz
Foundation. Translating from the Spanish, she read the article out loud
to Ben.
A shiver ran down his spine. “My God,” he said. “This is it! It has
to be. Chardin said only days remained. What he was talking about has
to be related to this conference. Read me the list of sponsors again.”
Anna did so.
And Ben started to make a few phone calls. These were calls to
foundation professionals, people who were delighted to hear from one of
their contributors. Slipping into a familiar role, Ben sounded hale and
hearty when he spoke to them, but what he learned was profoundly
dismaying.
“They’re great people, the folks from the Lenz Foundation,” Geoffrey
Baskin, programs director for the Robinson Foundation, told him in his
dulcet New Orleans accent. “It’s really their baby, but they just
wanted to keep a low profile. They put it together, footed most of the
bill it’s hardly fair that we’re getting any of the glory. But I guess
they wanted to make sure it had an international feeling. Like I say,
they’re really selfless.”
“That’s nice to hear,” Ben said. His tone upbeat even as he
felt a rising sense of dread. “We may be partnering with them on a
special project, so I just wanted to get your sense of them. Really
nice to hear.”
Dignitaries and leaders from around the world would be gathering in
Vienna, under the auspices of the Lenz Foundation … They had to get to
Vienna.
It was the one place in the world they shouldn’t be showing their faces,
and the one place where they had no choice but to go.
Anna and he paced the hotel room. They could take precautions
precautions that now came as second nature: disguise, falsified
identities, separate flights.
But the risks seemed much greater now.
“If we’re not just chasing a will-o’-the-wisp, we’ve got to assume that
every commercial flight into Vienna is going to be scrutinized very
carefully,” Anna said. “They’re going to be on full alert.”
Ben felt the flicker of an idea. “What did you say again?”
“They’re going to be on full alert. Border control isn’t going to be a
cakewalk. More like a gauntlet.”
“Before that.”
“I said we’ve got to assume that every commercial flight into Vienna”
“That’s ir,” Ben said.
“What’s it?”
“Anna, I’m going to take a risk here. And the calculation is that it’s
a smaller risk than we’d otherwise be facing.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m going to call a guy named Fred McCall an He was the codger I was
supposed to go skiing with in St. Moritz.”
“You were going to St. Moritz to go skiing with a ‘codger.” ”
Ben blushed. “Well, there was a granddaughter in the picture.”
“Go on.”
“More to the point, though, there’s a private jet in the picture. A
Gulfstream. I’ve been in it once. Very red. Red seats, red carpeting,
red TV set. Fred will still be at the Hotel Carlton there, and the
plane will probably be at the little airport in Chur.”
“So you’re going to call him up and ask for the keys. Kind of like
borrowing someone’s station wagon to pick up groceries, right?”
“Well…”
Anna shook her head. “It’s true what they say the rich really are
different from you and me.” She shot him a look. “I mean, of course,
just me.”
“Anna …”
“I’m scared as shit, Ben. Bad jokes come with the territory. Listen, I
don’t know this guy from Adam. If you think you can trust him if that’s
what your gut is telling you then I can live with it.”
“Because you’re right, it’s the commercial flights they’ll be watching”
Anna nodded vigorously. “So long as they’re not coming from places like
Colombia, private flights get pretty much a free pass. If this guy’s
pilot can move the Gulfstream to Brussels, let’s say…”
“We go directly to Brussels, assuming nobody’s onto the IDs Oscar made
for us. Then transfer to Fred’s private jet and fly to Vienna that way.
That’s the way the Sigma principals travel. Chances are, they’re not
going to be expecting a Gulfstream with two fugitives on board.”
“O.K.” Ben,” Anna said. “I call this the beginning of a plan.”
Ben dialed the number of the Hotel Carlton and waited a minute for the
front desk to connect him.
Fred McCall an voice boomed even through the international phone lines.
“My God, Benjamin, do you have any idea of the hour? Never mind, I
suppose you’re calling to apologize. Though I’m not the one you should
apologize to. Louise has been devastasted. Devastated. And you two
have so much in common.”
“I understand, Fred, and I…”
“But actually I’m glad you finally called. Do you realize they’re
saying the most preposterous things about you? A guy called me up and
gave me an earful. They’re saying that…”
“You’ve got to believe me, Fred,” Ben said urgently, cutting him off,
“there’s no truth to those reports whatever I mean, whatever they’re
accusing me of, you’ve got to believe me when I say that…”
“And I laughed in his face!” Fred was saying, having talked over Ben’s
interjection. “I told him, maybe that’s what you get from your creepy
English boarding schools, but I’m a Deerfield man myself, and there’s no
way on God’s green earth that…”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Fred. The thing is …”
“Top-seeded in tennis, I told him. You were, weren’t you?”
“Well, actually…”
“Track and field? I was a track and field man myself did I ever show
you my trophies? Louise thinks it’s ridiculous that I’m still boasting
about them fifty years later, and she’s right. But I’m incorrigible.”
“Fred, I’ve got a really, really, really big favor to ask.”
“For you, Benny? You’re practically family, you know that. One day you
might actually be family. Just say the word, my boy. Just say the
word.”
As Anna said, it was the beginning of a plan, no more. But foolproof
would take more time than they had. Because the one thing that was
certain was that they had to make their way to Vienna as fast as
possible, or it would be too late.
Unless it was, as Chardm had suggested, already too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.
The hotel was in Vienna’s seventh district, and they had selected it
because it appeared to be suitably anonymous, catering mostly to German
and Austrian tourists. Traveling to Brussels in uniform as David Paine,
Ben arrived first, by several hours; Anna, using the Gayatri
Chandragupta alias for one last time, had traveled on a separate flight,
connecting through Amsterdam. McCall an pilot, a genial Irishman named
Harry Hogan, was perplexed by the odd garb of his guests, and further
perplexed that they’d refused to tell him in advance where they planned
on going, but the old man had been vehement in his instructions:
whatever Ben wanted, Ben would get. No questions asked.
Compared to the luxury of the Gulfstream, and the open-faced
companionability of Harry Hogan, the hotel seemed drab and depressing.
All the more so because Anna hadn’t arrived yet: they agreed that
traveling together from the airport was a risk best avoided. They’d
travel separately, and by different routes.
Alone in the room, Ben felt caged and anxious. It was noontime but the
weather was foul; rain spattered against the room’s small windows,
deepening his sense of gloom.
He thought about Chardin’s life, about the incredible ways in which the
governance of the Western world had been molded and directed by these
corporate managers. And he thought about his father. A victim? A
victimizer? Both?
Max had hired people to watch out for him–minders, baby-sitters, for
God’s sake. In a way, that was typical of the man: if Ben wouldn’t let