‘For the purpose of assassinating the Vice President?’
‘Maybe the—what did you call it?—the target is somebody else, isn’t that possible?’
‘Somebody else?’ asked the field agent, nearly wincing as the intense widow grabbed another cigarette.
‘Yes. And by sending cablegrams from the San Diego area implicating an innocent Bollinger supporter! That is possible, Miss Rashad.’
‘It’s very interesting, Mrs. Vanvlanderen. I’ll convey your thoughts to my superiors. We’ll have to consider the possibility. A double omission with a false insert.’
‘What?’ The widow’s scratching voice came straight from some long gone Pittsburgh saloon.
‘Shop talk,’ said Khalehla, rising from the chair. ‘It simply means disguise the target, omit the source, and provide a false identity.’
‘You people talk goddamned funny.’
‘It serves a purpose… We’ll stay in constant touch with you, and we have the Vice President’s schedule. Our own people, all counter-terrorist experts, will quietly supplement Mr. Bollinger’s security forces at every location.’
‘Yeah—awright.’ Mrs. Vanvlanderen, the cigarette in her hand, the handkerchief forgotten on the brocade sofa, escorted Rashad out of the living room and up to the door.
‘Oh, about the double omission-insert theory,’ said the intelligence officer in the marble foyer. ‘It’s interesting, and we’ll use it to press the Swiss banks for quick action, but I don’t think it really holds water.’
‘What?’
‘All numbered Swiss accounts have sealed—and therefore unscalable—codes leading to points of origin. They are often labyrinthine, but they can be traced. Even the greediest Mafia overlord or Saudi arms merchant knows he’s mortal. He’s not going to leave millions to the gnomes of Zurich… Good night, and, again, my deepest sympathies.’
Khalehla walked back to the closed door of the Vanvlanderen suite. She could hear a muted scream of panic wrapped in obscenities from within; the sole resident of the made-to-measure apartment was going over the edge. The scenario had worked. MJ was right! The negative circumstances of Andrew Vanvlanderen’s death had been reversed. What had been a liability was now an asset. The contributor’s widow was breaking.
Milos Varak stood in a dark shopfront thirty yards to the left of the entrance to the Westlake Hotel, ten yards from the corner where the service entrance was located on the intersecting street. It was 7:35 pm, California time; he had outraced every commercial flight across the country from Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. He was in place for the moment of revelation, and equally important, everything was arranged upstairs in the hotel. The cleaning staff of the management, a management genuinely concerned about the grieving widow’s sorrow, included a new member, experienced and instructed by the Czech. Frequency-designed intercepts had been placed in every room; no conversation could take place without being recorded by Varak’s voice-activated tapes in the adjoining suite.
Taxis drove up to the hotel on the average of one every three minutes and Milos studied each departing fare. He had seen twenty to thirty, losing count but not his concentration. Suddenly he was aware of the unusual: a cab stopped on his left, across the intersecting street at least a hundred feet away. A man got out and Varak moved farther back into the unlit recess.
‘I heard it on the radio.’
‘So did I.’
‘She’s a bitch!’
‘And if they’re alive, they have to get out of the country. Can they get out…?’
‘ What are your speculations?’
‘It’s not the biggest news story of the day.’
‘And Bollinger?’
The man in the top coat, the lapels pulled up, covering his face, walked rapidly across the street towards the hotel’s entrance. He passed within ten feet of Inver Brass’s coordinator. The traitor was Eric Sundstrom, and he was a man in panic.
* * *
Chapter 34
Ardis Vanvlanderen gasped. ‘Good Christ, what are you doing here?’ she cried, literally yanking the rotund Sundstrom through the door and slamming it shut. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
I’m very much in it, but yours is out to lunch… Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did you and that horse’s ass of a husband of yours think you were doing?’
‘The Arabs? The hit teams?’
‘Yes! Goddamned fools—’
‘It’s all preposterous’.’ screamed the widow. ‘It’s a horrendous mix up. Why would we—why would Andy want to have Bollinger killed?’
‘Bollinger…? It’s Kendrick, you bitch! Palestinian terrorists attacked his houses in Virginia and Colorado. There’s a blackout on the news but a lot of people were killed, not, however, the golden boy himself.’
‘Kendrick?’ whispered Ardis, panic in her large green eyes. ‘Oh, my God… and they think the killers are coming out here to assassinate Bollinger. They’ve got it all backwards!’
‘They?’ Sundstrom froze, his face ashen. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘We’d both better sit down.’ Mrs. Vanvlanderen walked out of the foyer and down into the living room, to the couch and her cigarettes. The pale scientist followed, then veered to a bar where there were bottles, decanters, glasses and an ice bucket. Without glancing at the labels he picked up a bottle at random and poured himself a drink.’
‘Who is they?’ he asked quietly, intensely, as he turned and watched Ardis on the couch lighting a cigarette.
‘She left about an hour and a half ago—’
‘She? Who?’
‘A woman named Rashad, a counter-terrorist expert. She’s with a cross-over unit, CIA joining up with State. She never mentioned Kendrick!’
‘Jesus, they’ve put it together. Varak said they would and they did!’
‘Who’s Varak?’
‘We call him our co-ordinator. He said they’d find out about your Middle East interests.’
‘My what?’ shouted the widow, her face contorted, her mouth gaping.
‘That Off Shore company—’
‘Offshore Investments,’ completed Ardis, again stunned. ‘It was eight months of my life but that’s all it was!’
‘And how you have contacts throughout the whole area—’
‘I have no contacts!’ screamed Mrs. Vanvlanderen. ‘I left over ten years ago and never went back! The only Arabs I know are a few high rollers I met in London and Divonne.’
‘Rollers in bed or at the tables?’
‘Both, if you want to know, lover boy!… Why would they think that?’
‘Because you gave them a damn good reason to start looking when you had that son of a bitch cremated this morning!’
‘Andy?’
‘Was there someone else hanging around here who happened to drop dead? Or perhaps was poisoned? In a cover-up!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Your fourth or fifth husband’s body, that’s what I’m talking about. No sooner does it reach the damned mortuary than you’re on the phone ordering his immediate cremation. You think that’s not going to start people wondering—people who are paid to wonder about things like that? No autopsy, ashes somewhere over the Pacific.’
‘I never made such a call!’ roared Ardis, leaping up from the couch. ‘I never gave such an order!’
‘You did!’ yelled Sundstrom. ‘You said you and Andrew had a pact.’
‘I didn’t say it and we didn’t have one!’
‘Varak doesn’t bring us wrong information,’ stated the high-tech scientist firmly.
‘Then someone lied to him.’ The widow suddenly lowered her voice. ‘Or he was lying.’
‘Why would he? He’s never lied before.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ardis, sitting down and stabbing out her cigarette. ‘Eric,’ she continued, looking up at Inver Brass’s traitor. ‘Why did you come all the way out here to tell me this? Why didn’t you just call? You have our private numbers.’
‘Varak again. Nobody really knows how he can do what he does, still he does it. He’s in Chicago, but he’s made arrangements to be given the telephone number of every incoming call to Bollinger’s office and residence, as well as the office and residence of each member of his staff. Under those conditions I don’t make phone calls.’
‘In your case it might be hard to explain to that council of senile lunatics you belong to. And the only calls I’ve had were from the office and friends with condolences. Also the Rashad woman; none of those would interest Mr. Varak or your benevolent society of rich misfits.’
‘The Rashad woman. You say she didn’t mention the attacks on Kendrick’s houses. Assuming Varak’s wrong and the investigating units haven’t put certain facts together and come up with you and perhaps a few others out here, why didn’t she? She had to know about them.’
Ardis Vanvlanderen reached for a cigarette, her eyes now betraying an unfamiliar helplessness. ‘There could be several reasons,’ she said without much conviction as she snapped up the flame of the lighter. ‘To begin with, the Vice President is frequently overlooked where clearances are concerned regarding security blackouts—Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project. Then there’s the matter of avoiding panic, if these attacks took place—and I’m not ready to concede that they did. Your Varak’s been caught in one lie; he’s capable of another. In addition, if the full extent of the damage in Virginia and Colorado was known, we might lose staff control. No one likes to think he might be killed by suicidal terrorists… Finally, I go back to the attacks themselves. I don’t believe they ever happened.’