‘Where he could be stopped at the border or in an airport—’
‘With us in attendance. What do you think he’ll tell that person?’
‘To burn the damn thing,’ said Kendrick quietly.
‘Precisely.’
‘I hope your men are good at what they do.’
‘Two men, and one is just about the best we have. His name is Gingerbread; ask your friend about him.’
‘Gingerbread? What kind of dumb name is that?’
‘Later, Evan,’ interrupted Payton. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. I’m flying out to San Diego this afternoon and we have to talk. I hope you’ll be up to it because it’s urgent.’
‘I’ll be up to it, but why can’t we talk now?’
‘Because I wouldn’t know what to say… I’m not sure I will later, but at least I’ll have learned more. You see, I’m meeting with a man an hour from now, an influential man who’s intensely interested in you—has been for the past year.’
Kendrick closed his eyes, feeling weak as he sank back into the pillows. ‘He’s with a group or a committee that calls itself… Inver Brass.’
‘You know?’
‘Only that much. I’ve no idea who they are or what they are, just that they’ve screwed up my life.’
The tan car, its coded government plates signifying the Central Intelligence Agency, drove through the imposing gates of the estate on Chesapeake Bay and up the circular drive to the smooth stone steps of the entrance. The tall man in an open raincoat that revealed a rumpled suit and shirt—evidence of nearly seventy-two hours’ continuous wear—got out of the back seat and walked wearily up the steps towards the large, stately front door. He shivered briefly in the cold morning air of the overcast day that promised snow—snow for Christmas, reflected Payton. It was Christmas Eve, simply another day for the director of Special Projects, yet a day he dreaded, the impending meeting one he would trade several years of his life not to have insisted upon. Throughout his long career he had done many things that caused the bile to erupt in his stomach, but none more so than the destruction of good and moral men. He would destroy such a man this morning and he loathed himself for it, yet there was no alternative. For there was a higher good, a higher morality, and it was found in the reasonable laws of a nation of decent people. To abuse those laws was to deny the decency; accountability was paramount and constant. He rang the bell.
A maid preceded Payton through an enormous sitting room overlooking the bay to another stately door. She opened it and the director walked inside the extraordinary library, trying to absorb everything that struck his eyes. The huge console that took up the entire wall on the left with its panoply of television monitors and dials and projection equipment; the lowered silver screen on the right and the burning stove in the near corner; the cathedral windows directly opposite and the large circular table in front of him. Samuel Winters got up from the chair beneath the wall of sophisticated technology and came forward, his hand extended.
‘It’s been too long, MJ—may I call you that?’ said the world renowned historian. ‘As I recall, everyone called you MJ.’
‘Certainly, Dr Winters.’ They shook hands and the septuagenarian scholar waved his arm, encompassing the room.
‘I wanted you to see it all. To know that we have our fingers on the pulse of the world—but not for personal gain, you must understand that.’
‘I do. Who are the others?’
‘Please sit down,’ said Winters, gesturing at the chair facing his own, on the opposite side of the circular table. ‘Take off your coat, by all means. When one reaches my age all the rooms are much too warm.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it on. This will not be a long conference.’
‘You’re certain of that?’
‘Very,’ replied Payton, sitting down.
‘Well,’ said Winters softly but emphatically as he went to his chair, ‘it’s the unusual intellect that chooses its position without regard to the parameters of discussion. And you do have an intellect, MJ.’
‘Thank you for your generous, if somewhat condescending, compliment.’
That’s rather hostile, isn’t it?’
‘No more so than your deciding for the country who should run and be elected to national office.’
‘He’s the right man at the right time for all the right reasons.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s the way you did it. When one lets loose a rogue force to achieve an objective, one can’t know the consequences.’
‘Others do it. They’re doing it now.’
‘That doesn’t give you the right. Expose them, if you can, and with your resources I’m sure you can, but don’t imitate them.’
‘That’s sophistry! We live in an animal world, a politically oriented world dominated by predators!’
‘We don’t have to become predators to fight them… Exposure, not imitation.’
‘By the time the word gets out, by the time even the few understand what’s happened, the brutal herds have stampeded, trampling us. They change the rules, alter the laws. They’re untouchable.’
‘I respectfully disagree, Dr Winters.’
‘Look at the Third Reich!’
‘Look what happened to it. Look at Runnymede and the Magna Carta, look at the tyrannies of the French Court of Louis the Sixteenth, look at the brutalities of the Czars—for Christ’s sake, look at Philadelphia in 1787! The Constitution, Doctor! The people react goddamned quickly to oppression and malfeasance!’
‘Tell that to the citizens of the Soviet Union.’
‘Checkmate. But don’t try to explain that to the refuseniks and the dissidents who every day make the world more aware of the dark corners of Kremlin policy. They are making a difference, Doctor.’
‘Excesses!’ cried Winters. ‘Everywhere on this poor, doomed planet there is excess. It will blow us apart.’
‘Not if reasonable people expose excess and do not join it in hysteria. Your cause may have been right, but in your excess you violated laws—written and unwritten—and caused the deaths of innocent men and women because you considered yourself above the laws of the land. Rather than telling the country what you knew, you decided to manipulate it.’
‘That is your determination?’
‘It is. Who are the others in this Inver Brass?’
‘You know that name?’
‘I just said it. Who are they?’
‘You’ll never learn from me.’
‘We’ll find them… ultimately. But for my own curiosity, where did this organization start? If you don’t care to answer, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, but I do care to answer,’ said the old historian, his thin hands trembling to the point where he gripped them together on the table. ‘Decades ago Inver Brass was born in chaos, when the nation was being torn apart, on the edge of self-destruction. It was the height of the great depression; the country had come to a stop and violence’ was erupting everywhere. Hungry people care little about empty slogans and emptier promises, and productive people who’ve lost their pride through no fault of their own are reduced to fury… Inver Brass was formed by a small group of immensely wealthy, influential men who had followed the advice of the likes of the financier Bernard Mannes Baruch and were unscathed by the economic collapse. They were also men of social conscience and put their resources to work in practical ways, stemming riots and violence not only by massive infusions of capital and supplies into inflamed areas, but by silently ushering laws through Congress that helped to bring about measures of relief. It is that tradition that we follow.’
‘Is it?’ asked Payton quietly, his eyes cold, studying the old man.
‘Yes,’ answered Winters emphatically.
‘Inver Brass… What does it mean?’
‘It’s the name of a marshy inlet in the Highlands of Scotland that’s not on any map. It was coined by the first spokesman, a banker of Scots descent, who understood that the group had to act in secrecy.’
‘Therefore without accountability?’
‘I repeat. We seek nothing for ourselves!’
‘Then why the secrecy?’
‘It’s necessary, for although our decisions are arrived at dispassionately for the good of the country, they’re not always pleasant or in the eyes of many even defensible. Yet they were for the good of the nation.’
‘”Even defensible?”‘ repeated Payton, astonished at what he was hearing.
‘I’ll give you an example. Years ago our immediate predecessors were faced with a government tyrant who had visions of reshaping the laws of the country. A man named John Edgar Hoover, a giant who became obsessed in his old age, who had gone beyond the bounds of rationality, blackmailing presidents and senators—decent men—with his raw files, which were rampant with gossip and innuendo. Inver Brass had him eliminated before he brought the executive and the legislative, in essence the government, to its knees. And then a young writer named Peter Chancellor surfaced and came too close to the truth. It was he and his intolerable manuscript that caused the demise of Inver Brass then—but not its resurrection.’