The Matarese Countdown

  On the curb in Belgravia, the taxi was waiting for Gerald, the yellow handkerchief dangling below the driver's window. He leaped into the backseat, breathing furiously.

  "Hurry!" he shouted, "I can't be seen around here!" Suddenly, Gerald was aware of a man sitting next to him.

  No words were spoken, only the sound of two silenced gunshots.

  "Drive to the ironworks north of Heathrow," said the man in shadows.

  "The fires burn all night."

  n an off-limits strategy room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, two men faced each other over a conference table.

  The older man was the First Deputy Director of the CIA, the younger an experienced case officer named Cameron Pryce, a veteran of the new Cold Peace, with posts in Moscow, Rome, and London entered into his service report. Pryce was multilingual, fluent in Russian, as well as French, Italian, and, naturally, English. He was a thirty-six-year-old product of Georgetown University, B.A.; Maxwell School of Foreign Service, Syracuse, MA.; and Princeton University, objective, Ph.D.the last abandoned in his second year. The doctorate was aborted when Langley recruited him before he could complete his studies.

  Why? Because Cameron Pryce, in a predoctoral Honors thesis, recklessly but adamantly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union within four months of its collapse. Such minds were valuable.

  "You've read the max-classified file?" asked Deputy Director Frank Shields, a short, overweight former analyst with a high forehead and eyes that seemed perpetually squinted.

  "Yes, I have, Frank, and I didn't take any notes, honest," replied Pryce, a large, slender man whose sharp features could best be described as marginally attractive. He continued, smiling gently.

  "But, of course, you know that. The gnomes behind those hideous reproductions on the walls have been watching me. Did you think I was going to write a book?"

  "Others have, Cam."

  "Snepp, Agee, Borstein, and a few other gallant souls who found some of our procedures less than admirable.. .. It's not my turf, Frank. I made my pact with the devil when you paid off my student loans."

  "We counted on that."

  "Don't count too high. I could have paid them myself in time."

  "On an associate professor's salary? No room for a wife and kids and a white picket fence on campus."

  "Hell, you took care of that, too. My relationships have been brief and movable, no kids that I'm aware of."

  "Let's cut the biographical bullshit," said the deputy director.

  "What do you make of the file?"

  "They're either disconnected events or a great deal more. One or the other, nothing in between."

  "Take an educated guess."

  "I can't. Four internationally known very rich folk are killed along with lesser mortals. The trails lead nowhere and the killers are out of sight, vanished. There's no cross-pollination that I can see, no mutual interests or investments or even any apparent social contact-it would be odd if there were. We have a titled Englishwoman, who was a philanthropist, a Spanish scholar from a wealthy family in Madrid, an Italian playboy from Milan, and an elderly French financier with multiple residences and a floating palace he usually calls home. The only common thread is the uniqueness of the killings, the absence of leads or follow-ups, and the fact that they all took place within a time span of forty-eight hours. August twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, to be exact."

  "If there's linkage, that's where it could be, isn't it?"

  "I just said that, but that's all there is."

  "No, there's more," interrupted the deputy director.

  "What?"

  "Information we deleted from the file."

  "For God's sake, why? It's maximum classified, you just said so."

  "Sometimes those folders get into the wrong hands, don't they?"

  "Not if handled properly .. . good Christ, you're serious, it's serious."

  "Extremely."

  "Then you're not playing fair, Frank. You asked me to evaluate data it's not all there."

  "You came up with the right answers. The lack of traceability and the time span."

  "So would anybody else."

  "I doubt as quickly, but then we're not looking for anyone else, Cam. We want you."

  "Flattery, a bonus, and increased contingency funds will get you my undivided attention. What's the missing dirt?"

  "Orally delivered, nothing on paper."

  "Very, very serious-" "I'm afraid so.... First, we have to go back to the natural death of an old woman a thousand miles from Moscow several months ago. The priest, who was with her at the end, finally sent a letter to the Russian authorities after debating with himself for weeks. In it he wrote that the woman, the wife of the Soviet Union's preeminent nuclear physicist, reportedly killed by a crazed bear during a hunt, said her husband had in fact been murdered by unknown men who shot the animal and forced it into the scientist's path. They subsequently disappeared."

  "Wait a minute!" Pryce broke in.

  "I was only a kid then, but I remember reading about it or hearing it on television.

  "Yuri' something or other. It was the sort of thing that rivets a kid's imagination-a famous person torn apart by a large animal. Yes, I remember."

  "People my age remember it very well," said Shields.

  "I'd just started with the Agency, but it was common knowledge here at Langley that Yurievich wanted to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

  We mourned his death; a few of us even questioned the veracity of the reports-there was one rumor that Yurievich had actually been shot, not killed by the bear-but the underlying question was, why would Moscow order the execution of its most brilliant physicist?"

  "The answer?" asked the former case officer.

  "We didn't have one. We couldn't understand, so we accepted Tass's account."

  "And now?"

  "A different equation. The old woman, apparently with her last breath, blamed her husband's death, his murder, on an organization called the Matarese, claiming it was-in her words-'the consummate evil." Ring any bells, Cam?"

  "None. Only a pattern of un traceability as it applies to these recent killings."

  "Good. That's what I wanted to hear. Now we jump forward to the French financier, Rene Pierre Mouchistine, who was gunned down on his yacht."

  "Along with four attorneys from four different countries," interjected Pryce.

  "No fingerprints, which assumes the killers wore surgical gloves, no traceable shell casings, because they were all so common, and no witnesses, because the crew was ordered off the boat while the conference was taking place."

  "No witnesses, no leads-un traceability

  "That's right."

  "Sorry, it's wrong."

  "Another surprise, Frank?"

  "A beaut," replied the deputy director.

  "A close friend, later determined to be Mouchistine's personal valet of almost thirty years, knew how to reach our ambassador in Madrid. A meeting was arranged, and this man, one Antoine Lavalle, gave what amounted to a confidential deposition to be forwarded to the major intelligence organization in Washington. Fortunately, despite the Senate, it came to us."

  "I would hope so," said Cameron.

  "Hope is elusive in D.C.," said Shields.

  "But thanks to cross reference computers, we got lucky. The name Matarese appeared again. Before he died of his wounds, Mouchistine told Lavalle that the "Matarese was back." Lavalle said his employer was sure of it because it, or they, knew about the conference and had to stop it."

  "Why?"

  "Apparently, Mouchistine was divesting himself of his entire financial empire, willing everything to universal charities. With that bequest, he was relinquishing the economic power that goes with his global conglomerates, essentially run under his strict orders by his boards and his attorneys. According to Lavalle, the Matarese could not accept that; they had to stop him so they killed him."

  "With Mouchistine dead, who runs the international companie
s?"

  "It's so serpentine, it'll take months, if not years, to unravel."

  "But somewhere in the financial caves could be the Matarese, am I reading you?"

  "We don't know but we think so. It's so goddamned amorphous, we simply don't know."

  "What do you want from me?"

  "It was in Mouchistine's last words.

  "Find Beowulf Agate."

  " "Who?"

  "Beowulf Agate. It was the code name the KGB and the East German Stasi created for Brandon Scofield, our most successful penetrator during the Cold War. The sublime irony was that he eventually teamed up with a man he hated, and who hated him, when they both uncovered the Matarese in Corsica."

  "In Corsica? That's wild!"

  "Vasili Taleniekov was his real name, code name Serpent, an infamous KGB intelligence officer. He had engineered the death of Scofield's wife, and Scofield killed Taleniekov's younger brother. They were sworn enemies until they both faced an enemy far greater than either of them."

  "The Matarese?"

  "The Matarese. Ultimately, Taleniekov sacrificed himself to save Beowulf Agate's life as well as Scofield's woman, now his wife."

  "Jesus, it sounds like a Greek tragedy."

  "In many ways, it was."

  "So?"

  "Find Beowulf Agate. Learn the whole story. It's a place to start, and no one knows it better than Scofield."

  "Weren't there any debriefings?"

  "Scofield wasn't very cooperative. He said it was mission-completed time and there wasn't anything to learn from ancient history. Everyone who mattered was dead. He just wanted out and damned fast."

  "That's pretty strange behavior."

  "He felt it was justified. You see, at one point he was placed 'beyond salvage."

  " "Targeted for execution?" asked the astonished Pryce.

  "By his own people?"

  "He was considered dangerous to our personnel everywhere. He knew all the secrets. The President himself had to order the 'salvage' aborted."

  "Why was it ever issued in the first place?"

  "I just told you, he was a walking time bomb. He had joined the enemy; he and Taleniekov were working together."

  "After this Matarese!" protested Cameron.

  "We learned that later, almost too late."

  "Maybe I'd better get to know our President.. .. Okay, I'll try to find him. Where do I start?"

  "He's in seclusion in the Caribbean, one of the islands. We've got our feelers operating, but so far no concrete information. We'll give you everything we have."

  "Thanks a bunch. It's a pretty wide area with lots and lots of islands."

  "Remember, if he's alive, he's in his sixties now, probably a lot different from the ID photographs."

  "

  "Beowulf Agate," what a stupid name."

  "I don't know, it's no worse than "Serpent' for Taleniekov.

  Incidentally, translated, in Tashkent your code was "Camshaft Pussycat."

  " "Oh, shut up, Frank."

  The seaplane landed in the mild waters of the Charlotte Amalie harbor in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. It taxied to the Coast Guard patrol station on the left bank of the waterfront, where Cameron Pryce climbed down the unstable steps to the dock. He was met by the young white-uniformed commander of station.

  "Welcome to Charlotte Ahma-lee," said the naval officer, shaking his hand, "and if you want to fit in, that's the way it's pronounced."

  "I'm on your side, Lieutenant. Where do I start?"

  "First, you have a reservation at the Eighteen Sixty-nine House, right up on the hill. Damn good restaurant, and the fellow who owns it was once part of your kind of operations, so he'll keep his mouth shut."

  "Once doesn't fill me with confidence-" "Count on it, sir. He was AID in Vientiane and the Agency dumped a pile of aircraft on him. How do you think he bought the hotel?"

  "He's golden. Do you have anything for me?"

  "Scofield folded up his charter service here several years ago and moved it to British Tortola. He closed that down, too, but still keeps a post office box there."

  "Which means he comes back to pick up his mail."

  "Or sends someone with a key. He gets his pension check every month and, presumably, whatever inquiries there are for his charters."

  "He's still sailing then?"

  "Under a new name.

  "Tortola Caribbean," a tax dodge, if you want my opinion, which is kind of stupid since he hasn't paid any taxes for over twenty-five years."

  "Some deep-cover boys never change. Where is he now?"

  "Who knows?"

  "Nobody's seen him?"

  "Not for the record, and we've asked around. Discreetly, of course."

  "Someone's got to pick up his mail-" "Look, sir, we just got this inquiry eight days ago, and we have friends in Tortola," said the Coast Guard lieutenant.

  "They don't have a clue. Tortola is roughly twenty square miles of island with about ten thousand residents, mostly native and British. Its main post office is in Road Town, where mail comes in erratically and most of the time the clerks are asleep. I can't change the habits of a subtropic environment."

  "Don't get irritated, I'm merely asking questions."

  "I'm not irritated, I'm frustrated. If I could really help you, it would look good on my record and I might get out of this goddamned place. I simply can't. For all intents and purposes, that son of a bitch Scofield has disappeared."

  "Not when he has a mailbox, Lieutenant. It's just a question of watching it."

  "You'll forgive me, Mr. Pryce, but I'm not permitted to leave my station and sit on my ass in Tortola."

  "Spoken like an officer and a gentleman, young man. But you can hire someone to do just that."

  "With what? The budget's so tight here I have to rely on volunteer help when lousy catamarans can't get into shore!"

  "Sorry, I forgot. Bureaucrats in suits make those decisions. They probably think St. Thomas is a Catholic territory in the Pacific.. ..

  Cool off, Lieutenant, I'm wired into the suits. You help me, I'll help you."

  "How?"

  "Get me an inter island flight to Tortola with no identification."

  "That's too easy."

  "I'm not finished. Send one of your cutters to the harbor in Road Town under my command."

  "That's too hard."

  "I'll clear it. It'll look good on your record."

  "I'll be damned-" "You will be if you refuse me. Let's go, Lieutenant, let's set up shop. Instant communications and all the rest of that horse shit."

  "You're for real, aren't you?"

  "Reality is my middle name, youngster. Don't you forget it, especially not now."

  "What are you after?"

  "Someone who knows the truth about an old story with numerous dimensions, and that's all you have to know."

  "That doesn't tell me a hell of a lot."

  "And I don't know much more, Lieutenant. I won't until I find Scofield. Help me."

  "Sure, of course. I can ferry you over to Tortola on our second cutter, if you like."

  "No thanks. Marinas are watched, the immigration procedures are pretty thorough-those tax dodges you mentioned. I'm sure you can find me an airstrip or a water touchdown that's off the usual routes."

  "As a matter of fact, I can. We both use it to interdict drug smugglers."

  "Use it now, please."

  It was sundown, the third day of surveillance, and Pryce was in a hammock strung between two sturdy palms on the island beach.

  Dressed in tropic clothes-docksiders, shorts, and a light guayabera- he was basically indistinguishable from the dozen or so other male tourists lolling about in the early-evening sand. The difference was in the contents of his "beach bag." Whereas others were filled with sunscreen lotion, crumpled magazines, and forgettable paperbacks, his bag held, first, a portable phone, calibrated to put him in immediate contact with St. Thomas as well as the Coast Guard cutter moored in the Tortola harbor and capable of sen
ding and receiving less esoteric communications via satellite. In addition to this vital link, there was a holstered weapon-a .45 Star PD auto pistol with five clips of ammunition-a belt-scabbarded hunting knife, a flashlight, a pair of night-vision binoculars, charts of Tortola and the nearby islands, a fir staid kit, a bottle of flesh antiseptic, and two flasks-one filled with spring water, the other with McKenna sour-mash bourbon. Experience had taught him that each item had its place in the scheme of unpredictable things.

  He was about to doze off in the debilitating heat when the low hum of the phone penetrated the lining of his waterproof flight bag. He reached down, unzipped the thin nylon strip, and pulled out the state of-the-art instrument.

  "Yes?" he said quietly.

  "Finally pay dirt, mon!" replied one of the black Tortolans recruited by the lieutenant in St. Thomas for the surveillance team; he was calling from the Road Town post office.

  "The mailbox?"

  "Not much in it, but she got it all."

  "She?"

  "A white lady, mon. Middle-aged, mebbe forties or fifties, difficult to tell 'cause she damn near as dark as us from the sun."

  "Hair? Height?"

  "Half gray, half brown. Pretty tall, mebbe three, four flat hands above five feet."

  "It was his wife. Where did she go?"

  "She got into a Jeep, mon, no license plate. She's heading toward the Point, I think."

  "What Point?"

  "Got lots of names, only one road. I'll follow her on my moped.

  Gotta hurry, mon."

  "For God's sake, keep in touch!"

  "You get to cut-boat. Tell 'em to cruise east to Heavy Rock, they know it."

  Cameron Pryce switched channels and spoke to the skipper of the Coast Guard cutter.

  "Pull into the dock and I'll get on board. Do you know a place, a point, called Heavy Rock?"

  "Or "Lotsa Rock," or "Big Stone Point," or "Black Rock Angel'? .. .

  Sure, it depends where you live on Tortola. At night it's a favorite landing site for the contrabandistas. The older natives say it's haunted with obeah, that's like voodoo."

  "That's where we're going."

  The long shadows, created by the orange sun disappearing over the horizon, fell across the Caribbean waters as the cutter slowly, lazily, rounded the coastline.