The Matarese Countdown

  "But neither of us did. I didn't even think about it."

  "Neither did I."

  "So there's a loose phone around. Let it stay that way."

  "Frank agrees. They're now monitored for conversations."

  "So who were the calls to? Montrose's calls?"

  "Surprise number three."

  "What?"

  "The White House. She was calling the White House."

  One by one, at intervals of twenty minutes, seven private aircraft flew into Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. The owners deplaned and one after the other were led to waiting limousines by muscular escorts last seen in the hills of Porto Vecchio above the waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

  They were driven to the elegant four-story house on the Keizers-gracht, the canal that flows through the wealthiest parts of the city. Finally, one by one, the seven descendants of the Baron of Matarese were shown up to the huge second-floor dining room.

  The setting was remarkably similar to the great hall of the estate in Porto Vecchio. The table was long, the extravagant wood polished to a glistening hue, and the chairs were separated by several feet, as if to give each guest the space to think, to consider, to evaluate. Absent were the delicate crystal bowls of caviar; in their places were small notepads with silver ballpoint pens beside them. All notes were to remain at the table; after the meeting they would be burned.

  Once the descendants of the Baron were seated, Jan van der Meer Matareisen entered and took his place at the head of the table.

  "I'm glad to see that a degree of camaraderie is present at this our second conference." He paused.

  "There should be. You've all done superb work."

  "Good Lord, old chap, I dare say we've all profited enormously," said the Englishman.

  "Our investments have gone through the roof!"

  "My brokerage house, with our recent alliances across the country," said the blond woman from California, "hasn't seen such expansion since the eighties. It's terrific."

  "It's also on paper," admonished Matareisen.

  "We'll tell you when to sell. Do so immediately, for there will be a collapse."

  "That's hard to imagine, little buddy," interrupted the American from New Orleans.

  "My real estate and my casinos are on a thunder roll. Everybody wants in."

  "And after all the mergers and downsizing, our bank is leaner-and meaner," added the attorney from the Boston bank.

  "We're becoming a national, even international, economic force. We cannot be stopped."

  "Oh, but you must be," Jan van der Meer broke in.

  "It's part of the larger plan and there can be no deviations. We'll tell you to whom you sell your major assets; in the main, they will not be to the highest bidders."

  "Do you presume to dictate to the Vatican Treasury?" asked the cardinal.

  "We certainly do, Your Eminence. For you are in the core of the Matarese first, a priest second."

  "Blasphemy," said the cardinal softly, his eyes riveted on Matareisen.

  "Reality, priest, merely reality. Or would you rather the Vatican Treasury be informed of your financial peccadillos, the handsome estate at Lake Como, a mere drip in a full bucket, as they say."

  "What is this foolishness-'not the highest bidders'? Do you take us for idiots?" the man from Portugal demanded.

  "You all will have made considerable profits, perhaps not in the figures you anticipated, but it is necessary."

  "You talk in circles, senhor!"

  "But we are a circle, are we not? The Matarese circle."

  "Please be clearer! What are you saying?"

  "In specific terms, you will be instructed to sell your interests to the buyers who are least experienced, least equipped to manage them."

  "Sacrebleu!" erupted the inheritor from Paris.

  "You are talking nonsense! Why would such people be interested?"

  "Ego, mon ami,"" replied the leader from Amsterdam.

  "Such people overreach constantly, paying for a prize they covet but cannot control.

  International finance is rife with examples; the giants in Tokyo first come to mind. They wanted the film industry in Los Angeles, so they paid and paid and paid until they were devoured by the studios because they were not equipped to run them."

  "It sounds like mule shit to me!" raged the entrepreneur from New Orleans.

  "No, he's right," said the cardinal, his eyes still leveled at the Hollander.

  "It lends believability to the collapse. It invalidates the system, infuriating the masses who instantly begin looking for solutions, for change."

  "Very good, priest. Strategically, you're perceptive."

  "Reality, Dutchman, merely reality. Or should I say credibility?"

  "They become interchangeable, don't they?"

  "Ultimately, of course. The scholastic philosophers had their points.

  So now that the seeds are sown, when do we harvest?"

  "Everything must be coordinated everywhere. One event preceding another, each action leading to another, on the surface seemingly unrelated-except one. The American and the European economies are a catastrophe, and no amount of high technology can cure it, for the advances drastically reduce the labor force. Technology does not produce jobs, it eliminates them."

  "Theoretically," asked the frowning Englishman, "what is your what is our-solution, if we have one, if only for public relations?"

  "Benevolent consolidation, the ultimate authority given to those who can nurture the enterprises after replacing those who cannot. A meritocracy that will appeal to the rich, the educated, and the ambitious, as well as a controlled system of benefits for those of lesser abilities as long as they willingly, even enthusiastically, join the support substructure."

  "What's next?" said the Bostonian.

  "Four-day work weeks, a television in every house combined with a monitoring system?"

  "Sophisticated technology does have its opportunities, doesn't it?

  But such concepts are far in the future. First, we must come out of the financial chaos with an agenda of our own."

  "Which brings me back to my question," the cardinal broke in.

  "When do we harvest?"

  "Less than three months, depending on updated progress reports.

  And the harvest will take time before all its restricting ramifications are bluntly understood. I'd say eighty days.

  "Around the world in eighty days." It has a nice ring to it."

  "Pryce!" roared Scofield, racing across the lawn above the boathouse as fast as his aging legs would permit. Cameron turned; he had been walking around the compound ostensibly aimlessly, but his stroll was not aimless at all. He was looking for someone who might emerge from some concealed place, someone who might have on his person a missing cellular telephone.

  "Hey, take it easy," said Pryce as a breathless Scofield approached.

  "You're not exactly ready for a two-twenty sprint."

  "I'm as ready as you are, kid!"

  "Then why am I here?"

  "Oh, shut up," ordered Bray, breathing deeply and wiping the sweat from his face.

  "Listen, those magazines you brought back from Easton-I began going through them."

  "I apologized for no comic books-" "Shut up! How long has this been going on?"

  "How long has what been going on?"

  "These mergers, the buy outs companies absorbing other companies, whole industries and utilities combining?"

  "I'd say about twenty or thirty years, probably a lot longer."

  "No, you idiot, I mean now! Within the past weeks or maybe months?"

  "I've no idea," replied Cam.

  "Those kinds of things aren't a high priority with me."

  "Goddamn it, they should be! It's pure Matarese!"

  "What?"

  "The style, the strategy! It's Corsica, Rome, Paris, London, Amsterdam-and yes, by God, Moscow all over again! It's the trail, the trails, Taleniekov and I followed, right back to Boston, Massachusetts.

&
nbsp; Down in the islands, I suggested that you go after the victims, their families, friends, lawyers, learning whatever you could-"

  "I'm working on that. Frank Shields is assigning a couple of researchers to get me backgrounds on the Italian polo player who bought it on Long Island; the Spanish scientist who was poisoned in Monaco;

  and the woman philanthropist who was killed by her second husband in London. If nothing breaks here in a few days, Frank's getting me military transport to the U.K."

  "Then I'm going to make another suggestion," said Scofield.

  "Put 'em all on a back burner and go after what's in front of your face right here!"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Those magazines, all that financial crap; the wizards of the boardrooms, the money slimes and their profit lines. And while you're at it, put the researchers on those companies, both national and international-the names are there, and I'll bet there's a lot of newsprint we don't know about-with more names, more trails!"

  "You're serious, aren't you?"

  "You're damn right I am. When I saw the name Waverly, it set me off! I can smell it, smell them, and the stench is overpowering, let me tell you."

  "If you're right, and I'm not saying you are, but if you are, it could save a lot of time."

  "We always look for shortcuts, don't we?"

  "That's axiomatic, if they're genuine."

  "It's all genuine, Cam. I couldn't be mistaken, not about this. I was there before you learned to write your name in the snow, if you know what I mean."

  "I'll reach Frank in Langley, get his reaction."

  "The hell you will!" objected Brandon.

  "I'll call him myself on our secure line. You lack a certain conviction, and I'm still running this operation."

  "I thought it was my function to implement it," protested Pryce.

  "All those things you didn't care to do-or couldn't do, like running sixty yards across a lawn."

  "Don't nitpick. Actually, one good thing is coming out of this," said Scofield, grabbing Cameron's arm and propelling him back toward the main house and a sterile telephone.

  "Instead of you running helter skelter all over Europe without direction, I'll be able to keep my eye on you, give you guidance."

  "Can I ask for Daffy Duck instead? He'd give me better advice and Lord knows, he'd be easier to live with."

  What neither man knew as they walked across the lawn at sundown on Chesapeake Bay was that in an unmapped airstrip on the outskirts of Havre de Grace, Maryland, a Black Hawk SOA helicopter with the identical markings as those that flew north from Langley, Virginia, was preparing to be airborne, heading south. However, instead of a cargo hold filled with the normal supplies for a sequestered, isolated unit on the Chesapeake shoreline, its underside was lined with six one thousand-pound bombs. It had a mission to accomplish, ordered by a man in Amsterdam.

  Now, have you got everything, Squinty-sorry, I forgot we're on tape-Deputy Director Shields, the finest analyst since Gaius Octavius sent Crassus out to find that Spartacus?"

  "I've got everything," said Frank Shields over the line from Langley, his voice quiet, tense.

  "Your dollops of levity are always welcome when we're under stress. May I speak to Officer Pryce, if you please?"

  "He can't tell you anything, Frank. He's just beginning to put it together." Scofield sat up in the bed in his and Antonia's suite, looking over at Cameron, who stood by a window.

  "To tell you the truth," continued Bray, "he seems to have doubts, but I don't."

  "I have something to tell him, Brandon. All the material he requested on those three people who were killed will be on the six o'clock chopper."

  "How complete is it?"

  "Very. Everything we could unearth in the time allowed. Families, friends, neighbors, business associates, assets and debits, three whole balls of wax, thanks mostly to Interpol and our friends in London."

  "I'm sure he'll tell you he's grateful, but right now that's all in limbo. Tell your researchers to concentrate on what I just gave you."

  "Field Officer Pryce, please?" repeated Shields. Scofield gestured with the phone at Cam, who walked across the room and took it, standing beside the bed.

  "Yes, Frank?"

  "I just told Brandon that you'll have the backgrounds you wanted.

  They're on the six o'clock flight, marked for you personally."

  "I gathered that when he mentioned the limbo status. Thanks, I'll go through them tonight. Any news about our Colonel Montrose's connection to the White House?"

  "They claim she doesn't have one. They say they don't even know who she is."

  "They're lying."

  "That switchboard doesn't have a pulse, just numbers that connect you with live people. We're working on it.... What do you make of Bray's theory about all these mergers?"

  "Look, Frank, I can't deny there may be some substance in Bray's speculations, but when you consider the antitrust laws, and the commissions, like Federal Trade and the Securities and Exchange, if there were fishy mergers, or even negotiations, wouldn't they be picked up?"

  "Not necessarily," replied Shields.

  "The big financial boys have teams of corporate attorneys, any one of whom makes more in an hour than we see in a month. They know what buttons to press, who to buy, where to allocate a company jet. I'm exaggerating, of course. There's undoubtedly less than I'm suggesting, and probably more than I want to believe."

  "Boy, have you learned how to straddle a fence," said Pryce.

  "It's also called trying to be fair. Shall we give our senior citizen the benefit of the doubt?"

  "Senior? Aren't you two about the same age?"

  "Actually, I'm a year and a half older but don't tell him. In the old days, when he wasn't calling me Squinty, it was Junior. It makes him feel wiser-and the rotten thing is that you come to realize he usually is."

  "Then let's go with him. We still have the Euro-dossiers, and we'll probably use them. Talk to you later, Deputy Augustus Spartacus, or whatever in hell he called you." Cameron handed the phone back to Scofield.

  "We're going to play in your sandbox, Bray, at least for a while."

  "If I'm wrong, I'll apologize, which I always do when I'm wrong.

  Come to think of it, I can't remember when I last had to apologize, so I couldn't have been wrong very often."

  The Central Intelligence Black Hawk helicopter was in mid flight on its north-northeast routing to the Chesapeake compound when the flight officer turned to the pilot.

  "Hey, Jimbo, isn't this air-space corridor supposed to be restricted?"

  "You're damned right. Six in the morning and six at night. The word's gone out to all the fields, public and private, with very strict warnings. We're top secret, Lieutenant. Doesn't that make you feel real important?"

  "Right now I've got the feeling that someone didn't get the word."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look at the radar screen. There's an aircraft closing in on us. It couldn't be more than nine hundred or a thousand feet to the west."

  "I don't need the screen. I can see it! Where are we? I'll reach Langley."

  "Coordinates twelve and eighteen, over water, west of Taylors Island. Time to head north to touch down."

  "This is nuts!" exclaimed the pilot, staring out the chopper's side window panel.

  "It's one of ours, an SOA .. . He's heading right for us! Now he's sideslipping-the markings .. . good Christ, they're .. .

  ours. Get on the horn, I'm going evasive!"

  These were the last words spoken. There was a shattering explosion, blowing apart the aircraft. What was left of the helicopter spiraled down to the water below, a fiery ball that disappeared rapidly as it sank.

  The radar-tracking operator at Langley frowned at his upper-right screen. He punched several buttons, enlarging the images, then called out to his supervisor.

  "Bruce, what's going on?"

  "About what?" asked the middle-aged, bespectacled man at the desk in
the center of the large, antiseptic room.

  "I lost Silent Horse."

  "What? The Chesapeake run?" The supervisor sprang to his feet when the operator continued.

  "It's okay!" he went on quickly.

  "It's back. Must have been a power glitch. Sorry."

  "If it happens again, I'll break out with hives. Silent Horse, Jesus!

  The way those bastards in Congress are yelling, we probably haven't paid our electric bill."

  Within minutes, and when the excited callers could get through, the police authorities in Prince Frederick, Tilghman, Taylors Island, and the Choptank River received a total of seventy-eight calls concerning a fireball in the early-evening sky, an explosion of sorts, a plane perhaps.

  Immediate inquiries to major and minor airports and airfields produced no information, much less confirmation of such an event. The police in Prince Frederick reached Andrews Air Force Base, a military government complex, whose circumspect press-relations officer was duly courteous, sympathetic, and offered no concrete answer to any direct question. He simply was not aware of recent or ongoing atmospheric experimentation but, naturally, he was not in a position to deny the possibility. The American taxpayer was well served by the military's constant search for safety procedures and weather evaluations.

  "The PR idiot at Andrews won't stay on or get off the pot," said the chief of police in Prince Frederick to the desk sergeant.

  "It was probably one of those low-flying reflecting weather balloons is the way I see it.

  Pass it along to the others and let's get back to work-if we have any."

  The slow-moving skiff, its small engine puttering quietly, made its way out of the Choptank River and into Chesapeake Bay. The two elderly fishermen in soiled overalls, one aft, one in the middle of the motorized rowboat, held their poles out on opposite sides of the craft, trawling for the hungry early-evening fish. They would return to the riverbank picnic site where their wives tended to the fired grills, confident their husbands would come back with their supper. They had been doing so twice weekly for a number of years; they were automobile mechanics in the same garage, and their wives were sisters. It was a good life. They worked hard and the Chesapeake rich with their fancy cars provided steady employment. But best of all were these picnics, when the sisters would gab and the guys could diminish the bay's fish with their expertise and a couple of six-packs.