“Oh, yes, that’s been confirmed,” said the new Scorpio One. “Where are you now? I’ll send a car for you—and the boy too, of course.”
“As eager as I am to have the package,” the Baj broke in, “there’s another matter that must be attended to immediately, immediately. I met with a young man, a red-haired political consultant you’ll read about in the papers. His name was Reilly and he’s dead, but the information he thought he was selling is devastating to our mission and must be cut off at the source.”
“My God, what is it?”
“An attorney named Ingersol, David Ingersol, has put out an alarm among the lower elements in your ghettos to look for a woman and a young man, foreigners probably traveling together, and whoever finds them will receive a hundred thousand dollars. The scum of the world will murder their mothers and brothers for such an amount! The search must be stopped, aborted, this lawyer killed!… I don’t care how it’s done, but it must be done in time to appear in the morning papers. It must be!”
“Jesus Christ!” whispered the voice on the phone.
“It’s two-thirty in the afternoon,” continued Bajaratt. “This Ingersol must be dead by nine o’clock tonight, or all the blades of the Baaka Valley will cut the throats of the Scorpions.… I’ll call you for my package when I hear the news on the radio or the television. Ciao, Scorpione Uno.”
David Ingersol, attorney-at-law, and newly elevated Scorpio One, if in name only, hung up the black secure phone that resided in a steel cabinet hidden in the paneled wall behind his office desk. He stared out the window at the clear blue Washington sky. It was incredible. He had just received the order for his own death! It wasn’t happening to him, it couldn’t be happening to him! He had always been above the violence, above the filth; he was the catalyst, a coordinator, a general orchestrating events through influence and position, not in the trenches with the “scum of the world,” as this Bajaratt so accurately described the lower Scorpios.
The Scorpios. Oh, God, why? Why had he done it, why had he been so easily recruited?… The answer was all too simple, all too pathetic. His father, Richard Ingersol, prominent attorney, celebrated judge, a giant associate justice of the Supreme Court—and a man on the take.
“Dickie” Ingersol had been born into riches that were diminishing at an alarming rate. The thirties were not kind to the warlords of Wall Street, by and large the products of inherited wealth who were unable to discard the memories of their great estates of the twenties, with platoons of servants they gradually realized they could no longer afford any more than they could their limousines or their cotillions or their summer tours of Europe. It was an unfair world they were entering, unfair and untenable, and then the war came at the end of the decade, and for many it was a proper Armageddon for an era, for a way of life few could abandon. They would lead charges or go down in flames or fill the battleships with an aristocracy of an officer corps. Many did not wait for the draft, much less Pearl Harbor; more than a few of “their crowd” joined the ranks of Britain’s services, romantics all, above the hoi polloi in tailored uniforms and with clean-cut features. As one of the Roosevelts phrased it—the Roosevelts of San Juan Hill and Oyster Bay, not that traitor to his class from Hyde Park—“My God, it’s better than driving a Ford!”
Richard “Dickie” Ingersol was among the first to enlist in the United States Army, the Air Corps his promised objective, the wings on his tunic guaranteed. However, the army learned that Richard Abercrombie Ingersol had recently passed the New York State bar exam. So much for the wild blue yonder; he was assigned to the army’s legal division, for there was a lack of bona fide attorneys, certainly few who had passed bar exams above the “barely qualified” classification, and none who had weathered the stiff New York bar.
Dickie Ingersol spent the war prosecuting and defending courts-martial from North Africa to the South Pacific, loathing every minute of his toils. Finally, America won the war on both sides of the globe, and Dickie found himself in the Far East; it was the occupation of Japan, and war crimes trials were under way in abundance. Many of the enemy were tried and hanged under Ingersol’s aggressive prosecutions. Then, on a Saturday morning he received a telephone call from New York at his B.O.Q. in Tokyo. His family fortunes had collapsed; there was nothing left but bankruptcy, ignominy; a way of life had disappeared.
But the army owed him, Dickie believed, the nation itself owed him, owed his entire class which had led the country since its inception. So deals were made, dozens of “war criminals” were exonerated or their sentences reduced in exchange for Japanese money funneled to secret accounts in Switzerland from the great industrial families in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. Along with these payments were documents of “participation” in the projected corporations that would rise like phoenixes out of the rubble that was the defeated Japan.
Back in the United States, and once more secure in his wealth, Ingersol jettisoned the “Dickie,” became Richard, and started his own firm with more capital than any other lawyer his age in the city of New York. He rose rapidly, the upper firmaments welcoming back one of their own, applauding when the Second Court of Appeals named him a judge, exulting when the Senate confirmed him to the Supreme Court. One of “their crowd” had made it, reaffirming their rightful place in the celestial legal heavens.
And then one day years later, now years ago, on another Saturday morning a man who called himself only “Mr. Neptune” arrived at the home of Associate Justice Ingersol’s son, David, in McLean, Virginia. By now Ingersol fils, his background impressive and the legal furrows plowed for him, was the sought-after partner of Ingersol and White, a highly respected firm in Washington, although it was a given that the son would never argue a case before the highest court in the land. (The majority of clients did not really think it was necessary; their petitions would reach the proper ears.) The unexpected visitor to the house in McLean had been admitted pleasantly by David’s wife, his elegance overriding his unannounced appearance.
Mr. Neptune courteously asked the brilliant young attorney to grant him a few minutes of his time for an urgent matter; there had been no minutes to waste seeking out Ingersol’s unpublished telephone number. It was an emergency that concerned his father.
Alone in David’s study, the stranger produced a sheaf of financial statements that had evaded the sanctity of one of the oldest banks in Bern, Switzerland. The portfolio contained not only the history of original Japanese deposits dating back to 1946, but also current and ongoing payments to the account of “Zero, zero, five, seven, two thousand,” revealed and documented to be that of Associate Justice Richard A. Ingersol of the United States Supreme Court. These payments were from many of Japan’s highly successful companies as well as several worldwide conglomerates controlled by Japanese interests. Finally, attached to the portfolio was a record of the decisions rendered by Justice Ingersol that favored those companies and conglomerates with respect to their operations in the United States.
Neptune’s “solution” was as clear as it was concise. Either David joined their highly selective and restricted organization, or “those above” would be forced to make public the entire story of Richard Ingersol’s postwar wealth as well as his actions on the Supreme Court, thus destroying both father and son. There had been no alternative; the son had confronted the father, who resigned from the Court, claiming weariness and intellectual stagnation, a burnout that required a more active life after a period of rest. So universal did his explanation appear that Justice Ingersol was hailed for his courage and forthrightness, raising similar questions about several other members of the aging contentious Court. In reality, Ingersol père moved to the Costa del Sol, in southern Spain, his “active life” centering around golf, horse racing, croquet, and deep-sea fishing, along with formal dinner parties and colony dances. Behaviorally, if not geographically, Dickie had come home. And David Ingersol, the son, became Scorpio Three.
Now, as Scorpio One, he had been given his own death sentence. Insa
nity! David reached for the intercom on his desk. “Jacqueline, hold all calls and cancel whatever appointments I have for the rest of the day. Phone the clients and say there’s been an emergency that I must attend to.”
“Certainly, Mr. I.… Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m afraid not—yes, there is. Call the rental agency and have them bring a car around right away. I’ll meet them downstairs at the side entrance in fifteen minutes.”
“Your limousine’s in the garage, sir, and your driver’s in the mailroom—”
“This is personal, Jackie. I’ll be using the freight elevator.”
“I understand, David.”
The lawyer swung around to the hidden telephone in the open wood-paneled wall. He picked it up and dialed; following a series of signals, Ingersol pressed five additional digits and spoke clearly. “I assume you’ll get this within the next few minutes. To use your language, this is a four-zero problem. Meet me along the river, as we discussed. Hurry!”
Across the Potomac, at his office in the Central Intelligence Agency, Patrick O’Ryan—Scorpio Two … in name only—felt the slight vibration from the electronic device beneath his jacket in his shirt pocket. He counted the tiny jolts and understood: There was an emergency that concerned the Providers. It was also awkward, as there was an L.B.G. conference with the director in forty-five minutes, and Little Girl Blood was the Agency’s very top priority. Goddamn it! Yet there was nothing else to do; the Providers came first, always first. He picked up his phone and dialed the DCI’s office.
“Yes, Pat, what is it?”
“It’s about the conference, sir—”
“Oh, yes,” the director interrupted. “I understand you’ve got a new slant you want to present. I can’t wait to hear it; in my opinion, you’re the best analyst we’ve got.”
“Thank you, sir, but it’s not quite complete. I need an extra couple of hours to pull it together.”
“That’s disappointing, Patrick.”
“More to me than anyone else. There’s an Arab, a blind I think, who could fill in a couple of gaps that need filling. I just got word from him; he’s agreed to meet me, but it’s got to be in an hour—in Baltimore.”
“Hell, go to it! I’ll postpone the conference, give you as long as you like. Call me from Baltimore.”
“Thank you, sir, I will.”
The Riverwalk Bridge did not span the river at all, but a minor offshoot of the Potomac, deep in the Virginia countryside. On the east bank was a rustic restaurant of limited quality that catered to the young in search of hoagies, hot dogs, burgers, and beer, and on the west side various paths into the woods, where it was said more boys and girls became men and women than in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. It was a public relations exaggeration; the paths were too narrow and the ground was filled with rocks.
Patrick O’Ryan swung into the parking lot, relieved to see that only three other cars were there; the restaurant saw little action until dark. Scorpio Two got out, checked his pocket for his portable telephone, and started toward the bridge while lighting a cigar. David Ingersol had sounded panicked on Patrick’s untraceable answering machine and that was not a good sign. The WASP quasi-fag was a bright legal, but he had never been tested when the mud was slinging and a little blood was in the offing. Davey-boyo was a weak son of a bitch despite his lawyer smarts; the Providers would learn that sooner or later. Maybe sooner than later.
“Hey, mister!” A drunken young man came reeling out of the restaurant’s door. “Those pricks cut me off, the bastards! Lend me five and I’m yours for life, man! I mean I’m coming down off a high, man!”
An analyst’s instincts, which were always projections of the possible and the impossible, came into play. “Suppose I gave you ten, say maybe twenty, will you do what I tell you to do?”
“Hey, man, I’ll climb all over you naked if that’s what you want. I need bread, man!”
“That’s not what I want. And you may not have to do anything.”
“I’m on your side, man!”
“Follow me after I cross over the bridge, but keep out of sight when I go into the woods. If I whistle for you, you run like hell and reach me. Got it?”
“Hell, yes, man!”
“Maybe I’ll even give you fifty.”
“Heaven, man, pure heaven! Fifty would set me free, y’know what I mean?”
“I’m counting on it … man.” O’Ryan approached the sturdy, thick bridge that spanned the rushing waters below, crossed it, and entered the second path on the right. Stepping on the dirt and the rocks, he had progressed roughly thirty feet when the figure of David Ingersol suddenly emerged from behind a tree.
“Patrick, it’s crazy,” cried the attorney.
“You heard from Bajaratt?”
“It’s insane. She demanded that I be killed! That David Ingersol be killed. Me, Scorpio One!”
“She doesn’t know you, boyo! Why would she make such a demand?”
“I sent the word out on the streets, the worst elements, of course, to look for them—”
“Oh, did you now, Davey? That wasn’t too smart a move. You didn’t clear it with me.”
“For God’s sake, O’Ryan, we both agreed this madness had to stop!”
“Yes, we did, boyo, but not that way. That was just dumb, Davey, you should have used a cover. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they traced the word back to you? You’d last twelve minutes in the field, y’ninny!”
“No, you’re wrong, I thought it out completely; the angles were covered. The raison d’être had all the appearance of legitimacy and thus immensely tempting—”
“The raison d’être, is it?” the CIA analyst interrupted. “That sounds grand, I’ll give you that. And just how was all this legitimacy so tempting while it covered the angles, whatever the hell that means?”
“The firm was looking for these people, not an individual, not me! I was merely the one who should be contacted for the reward. I even backed up the search with a notarized affidavit clearly stating that the woman and the young man were the inheritors of a great deal of money, the implication being seven figures. A finder’s fee of ten percent is perfectly normal.”
“Oh, that’s splendid, Davey, only I think you forgot that the searching parties you were appealing to wouldn’t be able to spell affidavit and couldn’t give a shit about legitimacy. However, they can smell out a rogue hunt faster than a spraying skunk in a jail cell.… No, boyo, you wouldn’t last five minutes in the field.”
“What are we going to do—what am I going to do? She said my death had to appear in the papers tomorrow, or the Baaka Valley—oh, Christ, it’s all getting out of control!”
“Calm down, Scorpio One,” said O’Ryan sardonically, looking at his watch. “I suspect that if your ‘disappearance’ is in the papers, that’ll suffice for a day or so.”
“Oh?”
“It’s only a diversion, Davey, I know what I’m talking about. For starters, you’ve got to get out of Washington right away—you’re kind of a minor celebrity, Counselor, and for a few days you don’t want to be seen. I’ll drive you to the airport; we’ll stop and get you sunglasses—”
“I have a pair in my pocket.”
“Good. Then buy a ticket to wherever you like, in cash, not a credit card. Do you have enough?”
“Always.”
“Good again.… There’s only one problem, and it could be a toughie, boyo. For the next day or so we’ve got to program your S-One number to me. If Bajaratt calls and doesn’t get an answer or isn’t contacted after leaving a message, the Baaka could explode, especially her hotheaded tribe of lunatics. The padrone guaranteed as much to me.”
“I’d have to go back to the office—”
“You shouldn’t do that,” the analyst broke in. “Take my word for it, Davey, I know how these things are done. Who did you last speak to?”
“My secretary … no, it was the man from the rental agency who brought me a car. I drove out here alone;
I didn’t want to use my limousine.”
“Very good. When that car’s found here, they’ll start looking. What did you tell your secretary?”
“That there was an emergency, a personal problem. She understood; she’s been with me for years.”
“I’ll bet she did.”
“That’s hardly called for.”
“Neither was Puerto Rico.… Did you have any plans tonight?”
“Oh, my Lord,” exclaimed Ingersol. “I forgot! Midgie and I are going to the Heflins’ place for their annual anniversary dinner.”
“No, you’re not.” Patrick Timothy O’Ryan smiled benignly at the panicked attorney. “It’s all falling into place, Davey. Your disappearance for a couple of days, I mean.… Let’s go back to the S-One telephone in your office; where is it?”
“In the wall behind my desk. The panel opens by a switch in my lower right-hand drawer.”
“Good. I’ll program the phone to my number after I drop you off at the airport.”
“It does it automatically if I don’t respond after five hours.”
“With this Bajaratt, we need it done right away, boyo.”
“Jacqueline, my secretary, would never let you in. She’d call security.”
“She will if you tell her to, won’t she?”
“Well, of course.”
“Do it now, David,” said O’Ryan, yanking the portable telephone out of his jacket pocket. “This thing doesn’t work too well in a car—all that steel and no ground—and we won’t have time at the airport. I’ll just drop you off and get out of there.”
“You really mean it, don’t you? You think I should take a plane out of Washington right away, this afternoon. What will my wife think?”
“Call her tomorrow, wherever you are. It’s better she spend one miserable night worrying than the rest of her life without you. Remember the Baaka Valley.”
“Give me the phone!” Ingersol called his office and spoke to his secretary. “Jackie, I’m sending a Mr.… Johnson over to pick up some papers in my office for me. It’s extremely confidential, and I’d appreciate it if, when the reception desk announces him, you’d leave our doors unlocked and go out for coffee. Would you please do that, Jackie?”