The Secret Service guard had opened the door, gestured for Kendrick to go inside, and then closed it, remaining in the hallway. Once the initial effect of the room wore off, Evan realized that a man was seated at a large desk, only the back of his head visible. Several moments after the door closed, as if to make certain they were alone, the man turned around in the swivel chair.
‘We’ve never met, Congressman,’ said Crayton Grinell in his soft, pleasant lawyer’s cadence, ‘and discourteous as it may appear, I prefer to remain nameless… Please, sit down. There’s no reason to be more uncomfortable than necessary. It’s why your clothes were returned to you.’
‘I gather they served their purpose in a place called Balboa Park.’ Kendrick sat down in a chair in front of the desk; the seat was covered with leopard skin.
‘Providing us with options, yes,’ agreed Grinell.
‘I see.’ Evan suddenly recognized the distinctive voice he knew he had heard before. It was on the blond European’s tape recording. The man in front of him was the vanished Crayton Grinell, the attorney responsible for wholesale death in Cyprus, killer of the Secretary of State. ‘But since you don’t want me to know who you are, am I to infer that one of those options might find me back in San Diego?’
‘Quite possibly, but I must emphasize the questionable part. I’m being frank with you.’
‘So were your friends at Bollinger’s house.’
‘I’m sure they were and so were you.’
‘Did you have to do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Kill an old man.’
‘We had nothing to do with that! Besides, he’s not dead.’
‘He will be.’
‘So will we all one day… It was a gratuitously stupid act, as stupid as her husband’s incredible financial manipulations in Zurich. We may be many things, Congressman, but we’re not stupid. However, we’re wasting time. The Vanvlanderens are gone and whatever happened is buried with them. The erstwhile “Dr Lyons” will never be seen again—’
‘I want him!’ Kendrick broke in.
‘But we got him and he got the maximum penalty a court can impose.’
‘How can I be sure of that?’
‘How can you doubt it? Could the Vice President, could any of us tolerate the association?… We deeply regret what’s happened to Mr. Weingrass, but we had absolutely nothing to do with it. I repeat, the doctor and the Vanvlanderens are gone. It’s all a closed book, can you accept that?’
‘Was it necessary to drug me and bring me out here to convince me?’
‘We couldn’t very well leave you in San Diego saying the things you were saying.’
‘Then what are we talking about now?’
‘Another book,’ replied Grinell, leaning forward in the chair. ‘We want it back, and in exchange you’re free. You’ll be returned to your hotel in your own clothes and nothing’s changed. It’s daytime in Zurich; a line of credit to the amount of fifty million dollars has been established in your name.’
Stunned, Evan tried not to show his astonishment. ‘Another book?… I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘Varak stole it.’
‘Who?’
‘Milos Varak!’
‘The European…?’ His sudden recognition of the name unconsciously slipped out. It was the Milos.
‘Inver Brass’s very professional, very dead lackey!’
‘Inver who?’
‘Your would-be promoters, Congressman. You don’t think you got where you are by yourself, do you?’
‘I knew someone was pushing me—’
‘Pushing? Catapulting is more like it… Meddling lunatics! They didn’t realize that one of them was also one of us.’
‘What makes you think the European… that this Varak’s dead?’ asked Evan, if only to gain moments to adjust to revelations that were coming too fast.
‘It was in the paper—not listing him by name, of course, but unmistakable. But before he died, he was somewhere else, with someone else who worked for us. He had to be or he never would have come to the airport… He stole it.’
‘This other book?’ said Kendrick, hesitantly.
‘An industrially coded ledger, meaningless to any but a selected few.’
‘And you think I have it.’ A statement.
‘I think you know where it is.’
‘Why?’
‘Because in his zeal Varak would have mistakenly believed it should be in your hands. He couldn’t trust Inver Brass any longer.’
‘Because he learned that one of them was also one of you.’
‘Essentially, yes,’ said Grinell. ‘I’m hypothesizing, of course. It’s a professional habit, but it’s served me well over the years.’
‘Not this time. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘I wouldn’t lie if I were you, Congressman. It would be futile in any event. There are so many ways of loosening minds and mouths these days.’
He couldn’t allow drugs! Under them he would reveal everything, signing Khalehla’s death warrant as well as giving the contributors all the information they needed to mount their individual smoke screens and in other cases disappear. The dying Manny deserved better than that! If ever he needed credibility it was now. He was back in another compound, not in Masqat but on an island in the waters of Mexico. He had to be every bit as convincing as he was among the terrorists, for these men, these killers from the boardrooms, were no less than terrorists themselves.
‘Listen to me,’ said Evan firmly, leaning back and crossing his legs, his eyes levelled on Grinell. ‘You can think whatever the hell you care to think, but I don’t want the vice presidency, I want a fifty-million-dollar line of credit in Zurich. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Clear and recorded, naturally.’
‘Good, fine! Run a full scam on me and put it on videotape—’
‘But you see, it is,’ interrupted the attorney.
‘Excellent! Then we’re both in the same hot tub, aren’t we?’
‘Same tub, Congressman. So where’s the ledger?’
‘I haven’t the vaguest idea, but if this Varak sent it to me, I know how you can get it… I’ll call my office in Washington and tell my secretary, Annie O’Reilly, to express it out overnight to wherever you like.’
The two negotiators stared at each other, neither wavering for an instant. ‘That’s a fair solution,’ said Grinell, finally.
‘If you can think of a better one, use it.’
‘That’s even fairer.’
‘Am I on board?’
‘On board and on your way to Zurich,’ replied Grinell, smiling. ‘Once you settle certain items on our agenda, like Chicago.’
‘The telegram will go out in the morning. I’ll have O’Reilly send it from the office.’
‘With a copy to our esteemed Vice President, of course.’
‘Of course.’
The chairman of the contributors’ board of directors sighed audibly, pleasantly. ‘Oh, how venal we all are,’ he said. ‘You, for instance, Congressman, you’re a bundle of contradictions.
Your public persona would never accept our accommodation.’
‘If this is for the benefit of your videotape, let me make a statement. I was burned and did my best to put out the fires in Oman because they had burned me, killing a great many friends. I see no contradiction of issues.’
‘So recorded, Representative Kendrick.’
Suddenly, without any indication whatsoever, the quiet conference was broken apart by a combination of signals. A bright red light started flashing from the console of the radio telephone on the desk, and a muted siren came from somewhere in the stuccoed walls, probably from the mouth of a dead animal. The door crashed open and the tall figure of the deeply tanned captain of the boat, the laconic angry weed from the Town of Corruption, burst into the room.
‘What are you doing?’ roared Grinell.
‘Get that fart out of here,’ the yachtsman yelled. ‘I thought he was a trap from the beginning and I was right! There are government people dispatched by Washington all over Bollinger’s place looking for him, questioning everyone as if they were in a police line-up.’
‘What?’
‘We’re handling that but we’ve got a bigger problem. The ledger! Bollinger got a call. It’s with the bitch’s own lawyer!’
‘Shut up!’ commanded Grinell.
‘He’s talking ten million which she told him her Andy-boy promised her. Now he wants it!’
‘I told you to shut up!… What did you mean that the federal men were questioning everyone?’
‘Just what I said. They’re not only grilling them, they got search warrants. They won’t find anything, but not for lack of trying.’
‘In the Vice President’s house? It’s unheard of!’
‘They’re playing it smart. They’re telling Bollinger that they’re protecting him from his subordinates. But no one’s going to convince me.’ The yachtsman turned on Evan. ‘That son of a bitch was sent in to trap us. The hero’s word against everybody else’s!’
Grinell stared at Kendrick. ‘There can’t be a hero’s word if there’s no hero… Adi๓s, Congressman.’ Grinell touched a button on the side of his desk and the door to the huge room of dead animals opened once again. The Mafioso’s automatic waved back and forth as he entered cautiously. ‘Take him out,’ ordered the attorney. ‘The Mexicans will tell you where… You really fooled me, Congressman. I’ll remember the lesson. Beware the persuasive philosophical turncoat.’