‘It’s my turn to say “Relax”, Andy,’ countered the contributor’s wife. ‘The people around a vice president aren’t news or even newsworthy. When’s the last time you can recall the name of any individual on a vice president’s staff? They’re a grey, amorphous group—presidents won’t have it any other way. Besides, I don’t think my name’s even been in the papers except as “Mr. and Mrs. Vanvlanderen, guests at the White House.” Kendrick still thinks I’m Frazier-Pyke, a banker’s wife living in London, and if you remember, although both of us were invited to the Medal of Freedom ceremony, you went alone. I begged off.’
‘Those aren’t reasons! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I knew what your reaction would be—take her out of the picture—when I realized I could be far more useful to you in it.’
‘How, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Because I knew him. I also knew I had to get up to date on him, but not with some private investigating firm that could end up burning us later, so I took the official high road. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.’
‘The threats against Bollinger?’
‘They’ll stop tomorrow. Except for one man who’ll continue here on a special basis, the unit will be recalled to Washington. Those mocked-up threats were the paranoid fantasies of a harmless lunatic I invented who supposedly fled the country. You see, sweetie, I found out what I had to know.’
‘Which is?’
‘There’s an old Israeli Jew named Weingrass whom Kendrick worships. He’s the father Evan never had, and when there was the Kendrick Group he was called the company’s “secret weapon”.’
‘Munitions?’
‘Hardly, darling,’ laughed Ardis Vanvlanderen. ‘He was an architect, a damned good one, and did pretty spectacular work for the Arabs.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s supposed to be in Paris, but he’s not. He’s living in Kendrick’s house in Colorado, with no passport entry or any official immigration status.’
‘So?’
‘The soon-to-be-anointed congressman brought the old man back for an operation that saved his life.’
‘So?’
‘Emmanuel Weingrass is going to have a medical relapse that will kill him. Kendrick won’t leave his side, and when it’s over it’ll be too late. I want the ten million, Andy-boy.’
* * *
Chapter 27
Varak studied the members of Inver Brass, each face around the table reflected in the light of the brass lamp in front of him… or her. The Czech’s concentration was strained to the limit because he had to focus on two levels.
The first was the information he delivered; the second was on the immediate reaction of each face to certain facts within that information. He had to find one pair of eyes that were suspect and he could not find them. That was to say, there were no momentary flashes of astonishment or fear on the faces of the members as he gradually, logically approached the subject of the current Vice President of the United States and his staff, touching ever so lightly on the ‘innocuous’ details he had learned from a Mafia plant in the Secret Service. There was nothing, only blank riveted stares. So while he spoke with conviction and conveyed roughly 80 per cent of the truth, he kept watching their eyes, the second level of his mind recalling the salient facts of the life behind each face reflected in the light.
And as he looked at each face, its features heightened by the chiaroscuro wash from the lamps, he felt, as he always did, that he was in the presence of very formidable people. Yet one was not; one had revealed the existence of Emmanuel Weingrass in Mesa Verde, Colorado, a secret unknown to the most clandestine departments in Washington. One of those shadowed faces in front of him was a traitor to Inver Brass. Who?
Samuel Winters? Old money from an American dynasty going back to the railroad and oil barons of the late American nineteenth century. An honoured scholar satisfied with his privileged life; an adviser to presidents regardless of party. A great man at peace with himself. Or was he?
Jacob Mandel? A venerated financial genius who had designed and implemented reforms that revitalized the Securities and Exchange Commission into a viable and far more honorable asset to Wall Street. From Lower East Side Yiddish poverty to the halls of merchant princes, and it was said that no decent man who knew him could call him an enemy. Like Winters, he wore his honors well and there were few he had not attained. Or were there others he strove for secretly?
Margaret Lowell? Again aristocratic old money from the New York-Palm Beach orbit, but with a twist that was virtually unheard of in those circles. She was a brilliant attorney who eschewed the rewards of estate and corporate law for the pursuit of advocacy. She worked feverishly in the legal vineyards on behalf of the oppressed, the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. Both theorist and practitioner, she was rumored to be the next woman on the Supreme Court. Or was the advocacy a supreme cover for the championship of opposite causes under cover?
Eric Sundstrom? The Wunderkind scientist of earth and space technology, holder of over twenty hugely remunerative patents on which the vast majority of proceeds were given away to engineering and medical institutions for the advancement of those sciences. His was a towering intellect concealed within a cherubic face with tousled red hair, an impish smile and a ready sense of humour—as if he were embarrassed by his gifts, even quick to feign mild offence if they were singled out. Or was it all pretence, the guilelessness a sham of someone nobody knew.
Gideon Logan? Perhaps the most complex of the quintet, and because he was a black man, again perhaps, understandable. He had made several fortunes in property, never forgetting where he came from, hiring and nursing along black firms in his developments. It was said that he quietly did more for civil rights than any single corporation in the country. The current administration, as well as its predecessor, had offered him a variety of Cabinet posts all of which he refused, believing he could achieve more as a respected independent force in the private sector than if he were identified with a political party and its practices. A nonstop worker, he apparently permitted himself only one indulgence: a luxurious oceanfront estate in the Bahamas where he spent infrequent weekends fishing on his forty-six-foot Bertram with his wife of twelve years. Or was the legend that was Gideon Logan incomplete? The answer was yes. Several years of his whirlwind, meteoric life were simply unknown; it was as if he had not existed.
‘Milos?’ asked Margaret Lowell, her elbow forward on the table, her head resting on the extended fingers of her hand. ‘How in heaven’s name has the administration managed to keep the threats against Bollinger quiet? Especially with a Bureau unit exclusively assigned to him.’
Strike Margaret Lowell? She was opening the obvious can of worms in which was found the Vice President’s chief of staff.
‘I must assume it’s through the direction of Mrs. Vanvlanderen, her executive expertise, as it were.’ Watch the eyes. The muscles of their faces—the jaws… Nothing. They reveal nothing! Yet one of them knows! Who?
‘I realize she’s Andrew Vanvlanderen’s wife,’ said Gideon Logan, ‘and “Andy-boy”, as he’s called, is one hell of a fund raiser, but why was she appointed to begin with?’
Strike Gideon Logan? He was stirring up the worms.
‘Perhaps I can answer that,’ replied Jacob Mandel. ‘Before she married Vanvlanderen she was a headhunter’s dream. She turned around two companies that I know of from bankruptcy into profitable mergers. I’m told she’s distastefully aggressive, but no one can deny her managerial talents. She’d be good in that job; she’d keep the political sycophants at bay.’
Strike Jacob Mandel? He had no compunction about praising her.
‘I ran across her once,’ said Eric Sundstrom emphatically, ‘and in plain words she was a bitch. I assigned a patent to Johns Hopkins Medical and she wanted to broker the damn thing.’
‘What was there to broker?’ asked the attorney Lowell.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ answered Sundstrom. ‘She tried to convince me that such large grants required an overseer to make sure the money went where it was supposed to go and not for new jockstraps.’
‘She probably had a point,’ said the lawyer, nodding as if from experience.
‘Not for me. Not the way she talked and the med school’s president is a good friend of mine. She’d have driven him up the wall so often he would have returned the patent. She’s a bitch, a real bitch.’
Strike Eric Sundstrom? He had no compunction whatsoever about damning her.
‘I never met her,’ interjected Samuel Winters, ‘but she was married to Emory Frazier-Pyke, a fine-tuned banker in London. You remember Emory, don’t you, Jacob?’
‘Certainly. He played polo and you introduced me as a silent branch of the Rothschilds—which, unfortunately, I think he believed.’