Sundstrom stood motionless, gripping the glass in both hands, as he stared down at his former lover. ‘He did it, didn’t he, Ardis?’ he said softly. ‘That financial megalomaniac couldn’t stand the possibility that a small group of “benevolent misfits” might replace his man with another who could cut off his pipeline to millions and probably would.’
The widow collapsed back into the couch, her long neck arched, her eyes closed. ‘Eight hundred million,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what he said. Eight hundred million for him alone, billions for all the rest of you.’
‘He never told you what he was doing, what he had done?’
‘Good Christ, no! I’d have put a bullet in his head and called one of you to deep-six him in Mexico.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Will the others?’ Ardis sat up, her eyes pleading.
‘Oh, I think so. They know you.’
‘I swear to you, Eric, I didn’t know a thing!’
‘I said I believed you.’
‘The Rashad woman told me they were tracing the money he sent through Zurich. Can they do that?’
‘If I knew Andrew, it would take them months. His coded pay-in sources ranged from South Africa to the Baltic. Months, a year, perhaps.’
‘Will the others know that?’
‘We’ll see what they say.’
‘What?… Eric!’
‘I called Grinell from the airport in Baltimore. He’s no part of Bollinger’s staff and God knows he stays in the background, but if we have a chairman of the board, I think we’d all agree he’s the fellow.’
‘Eric, what are you telling me?’ asked Mrs. Vanvlanderen, her voice flat.
‘He’ll be here in a few minutes. We agreed we should have a talk. I wanted a little time with you alone but he should be here shortly.’ Sundstrom glanced at his watch.
‘You’ve got that glassy look in your eyes, lover boy,’ said Ardis, slowly getting up from the couch.
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed the scientist. ‘The one you always laughed at when I couldn’t… shall we say, perform.’
‘Your mind was so often on other things. You’re such a brilliant man.’
‘Yes, I know. You once said that you always knew when I was solving a problem. I went limp.’
‘I loved your mind. I still love it.’
‘How could you? You don’t really have one yourself so how would you know.’
‘Eric, Grinell frightens me.’
‘He doesn’t frighten me. He has a mind.’
The chimes of the front door filled the Vanvlanderen suite.
Kendrick sat in a small canvas chair by the cot in the cabin of the jet that was flying them to Denver. Emmanuel Weingrass, his wounds prevented from further bleeding by the surviving nurse in Mesa Verde, kept blinking his dark eyes, made darker by the lined white flesh surrounding them.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Manny with difficulty, half coughing the words.
‘Don’t talk,’ broke in Evan. ‘Conserve your strength. Please?’
‘Oh, get off it,’ replied the old man. ‘What have I got? Twenty more years and I don’t get laid?’
‘Will you stop it?’
‘No, I won’t stop it. Five years I don’t see you so we get back together and what happens? You get too attached—to me. What are you, a feygele with a hang-up for old guys?… Don’t answer that, Khalehla will do it for you. You two must have busted your parts last night.’
‘Why don’t you ever talk like a normal person?’
‘Because normalcy bores me, just like you’re beginning to bore me… Don’t you know what all this shit is about? I brought up a dummy? You can’t figure?’
‘No, I can’t figure, all right?’
‘That lovely girl was on the button. Someone wants to make you very important in this country, and someone else is having bowel movements over the prospect. You can’t see that?’
‘I’m beginning to, and I hope the other guys win. I don’t want to be important.’
‘Maybe you should be. Maybe it’s where you belong.’
‘Who the hell says so? Who thinks so?’
‘The people who don’t want you—you think about that. Khalehla told us that these garbage maniacs who came over here to kill you didn’t just hop on a plane from Paris or walk off a cruise ship. They had help, influential help. How did she put it?… Passports, weapons, money—even drivers’ licences and clothes and hideouts. Those things, especially the paperwork, you don’t pick up at a corner store. They take contacts with power in high places, and the people who can pull those kinds of strings are the bastards who want you dead… Why? Does the outspoken congressman pose a threat to them?’
‘How can I be a threat? I’m getting out.’
‘They don’t know that. All they see is a mensch politician who, when he opens his mouth, everybody in Washington shuts up and listens to.’
‘I don’t talk that much, so the listening’s minor, practically nonexistent.’
‘The point is that when you do talk, they don’t. You got what I call listening credentials. Like I do, frankly.’ Weingrass coughed, bringing a trembling hand to his throat. Evan bent over him, concerned.
‘Take it easy, Manny.’
‘Be quiet,’ ordered the old man. ‘You hear what I’ve got to say… Those bastards see a real American hero who’s awarded a big medal by the President and put on important committees in the Congress—’
‘The committees came before the medal—’
‘Don’t interrupt. After a couple of months the sequence of things blurs—anyway, you just made it stronger. This hero takes on the Pentagon brass over national television before he’s a hero and damn near indicts the whole damned bunch of them as well as all those big industrial complexes who supply the machine. Then what does he do? He demands accountability. Terrific word, accountability—the bastards all hate it. They’ve got to start sweating, kid. They’ve got to figure that maybe this joker-hero will get more powerful, maybe chair one of those committees, or even get elected to the Senate where he could do some real damage.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘Your girlfriend wasn’t!’ countered Weingrass loudly, staring into Kendrick’s eyes. ‘She told us that her elite group may have tapped into a nerve centre higher up in the government than they want to think about… Doesn’t all this present a blueprint to you, although I admit you were never the hottest shot with a blueprint I ever knew?’
‘Of course it does,’ answered Evan, nodding slowly. ‘There’s no nation in the world that doesn’t have its degrees of corruption, and I doubt there ever will be.’
‘Oh, corruption?’ intoned Manny, eyes rolling, as if the word were part of a Talmudic chant. ‘Like in one guy stealing a buck’s worth of paper clips from the office and another taking a million with a cost overrun, is that what you mean?’
‘Basically, yes. Or ten million, if you like.’
‘Insignificant peanuts!’ shouted Weingrass. ‘Such people do not deal with Palestinian terrorists thousands of miles away for the sole purpose of positively removing themselves from a kill. They wouldn’t know howl Also, you didn’t look into that lovely girl’s eyes, or maybe you don’t know what to look for. You’ve never been there.’
‘She says she knows where you’re coming from because you have been there. All right, I haven’t, so what are you talking about?’
‘When you’re there, you’re scared,’ said the old man. ‘You’re walking towards a black curtain that you’re going to pull down. You’re excited; the curiosity’s killing you and so is the fear. All of those things. You try like hell to suppress them, even hide some from yourself, and that’s part of it because you can’t afford to lose an ounce of control. But it’s all there. Because once that curtain is yanked away you know you’ll be looking at something so nuts you wonder if anyone will believe it.’
‘You saw all that in her eyes?’
‘Enough, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s getting near the edge, kid.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re not dealing—she’s not dealing—with simple corruption, even terrific corruption. What’s behind that black curtain is a government within the government, a bunch of servants running the master’s house.’ The old architect suddenly went into a spasm of coughing, his whole body trembling, his eyes shut tight. Kendrick grabbed his arms; in moments the convulsion was over and Manny blinked again, breathing deeply. ‘Listen to me, my dumb son,’ he whispered. ‘Help her, really help her, and help Payton. Find the bastards and rip them out!’
‘Of course I will, you know that.’
‘I hate them! That youngster under chemicals, that Ahbyahd you knew in Masqat—we might have been friends in another time. But that time won’t ever come as long as there are bastards who pit ourselves against ourselves because they make billions out of hatred.’
‘It’s not that simple, Manny—’
‘It’s a larger part of it than you think! I’ve seen it!… “They have more than you do, so we’ll sell you more than they have”—that’s one of the come-ons. Or “They’ll kill you unless you kill them first, so here’s the firepower… for a price.” It goes right up the goddamned ladder: “They spent twenty million on a missile, we’ll spend forty million!” Do we really want to blow up the fucking planet? Or is everyone listening to lunatics who listen to men who sell hatred and peddle fear?’