The Road to Gandolfo: A Novel

  MacKenzie wrote out the figure numerically.

  $20,000,000.00

  Then he wrote it in words:

  Twenty million dollars.

  Strange, but it had no real effect on him. It was merely a means, not an end in itself. Although it had occurred to him that he could easily call it an economic day, wrap it up, and retire to the south of France. Certainly, neither Dellacroce nor Danforth would sue. Not bloody likely. But that wasn’t what it was all about; the money was both a conveyance and a by-product. And in its way, a legitimate form of punishment. The two marks deserved their losses.

  But time was running short and he could not allow himself to get sidetracked. Summer was only a few months away; there was an enormous amount of work to do. The selection and training of the support personnel would be time-consuming. The leasing and stocking of the maneuver site would be difficult, especially the covert purchasing of equipment. The maneuvers themselves would take a number of weeks. All told, there was a great deal to accomplish in a short time. Because of this it was a natural temptation to veer from the initial strategy and go with less than the full capitalization, but it would be wrong. That’s for sure. He had set the figure of forty million not merely for the numerical symmetry to the four hundred million (although it certainly looked proper on the limited partnership agreement, in the blank lines he had filled out), but because forty million took care of everything, including last-extremity contingencies.

  Otherwise known as quick-witted evacuation of the fire base.

  It would have to be forty million. He was just about ready for his third investor.

  Heinrich Koenig, Berlin.

  Herr Koenig had not been easy. Whereas Sidney Danforth had overworked his modus operandi in Chile, and whereas Angelo Dellacroce had been just plain sloppy with regard to his Mediterranean payments and entirely too ostentatious in his manner of living, Heinrich Koenig had made no obvious errors, and lived the quiet life of a country squire in a peaceful rural town twenty-odd miles from Berlin.

  But twenty-two years ago Koenig had played an enormously dangerous game brilliantly. A game that not only netted him a fortune but also insured the capitalization and ultimate success of his various business enterprises.

  During the height of the Cold War, Koenig was a double agent-cum-blackmailer. He began by secretly informing on single agents to both sides, then extorting cash—financed through opposing intelligence channels—from those seeking protection from exposure. Soon he was issued exclusive international, nontariff “franchises” for his new companies from scores of countries dependent upon the economic goodwill of both giant factions. Finally, with the grace of Mephistopheles, he forced Washington, London, Berlin, Bonn, and Moscow into declaring his companies outside the regulatory legalities that governed other industries. Koenig accomplished this by explaining to each that he would inform the others of its past activities.

  And then, to the profound relief of many governments, Koenig retired. He had built his empire on the trampled bodies—deceased and paralyzed—of half the bureaucratic and industrial population of Europe and America. He had remained untouchable because of the very real terror of chain reaction-reprisal. What bureaucrat, what undersecretary, what minister or statesman (indeed, what head of a government) would allow access to the horrors of Pandora’s box? So, in retirement, Koenig remained as safe as during his halcyon days of furious activity.

  Fear was Koenig’s clout. But there was no fear or clout if a man didn’t give a good goddamn about reaction or reprisals—governmental, industrial, or international.

  And naturally this was Hawkins’s weapon.

  For there was an international army of victims who would quick-march for the kill if they thought they could do so with impunity, if everyone realized his past sins were known to everybody else. Complete disclosure was Mac’s threat.

  Koenig would certainly see the logic of this approach; it was the absence of it that had guaranteed his fortunes. He surely could foretell the effects of several hundred lengthy cablegrams sent simultaneously to several hundred inhabitants of the corridors of power throughout the world. Oh, yes! Koenig would be convinced, the instant a barrage of names, dates, and activities was rattled off to him.

  MacKenzie picked up the raw-file Xeroxes from the bed, keeping the piles in sequence, and carried them to the coffee table in front of the couch. He sat down and with the red crayon he began circling two or three items on each page.

  Things were going beautifully. It was all a question of making a realistic appraisal of one’s capabilities and the logistics available to complement those abilities. Simple inventory. He picked up the Xeroxes, moved to the desk, and arranged the papers properly in front of the telephone. He was ready to calmly, dispassionately recite a record of international duplicity that would cause Genghis Khan to blush.

  Heinrich Koenig would part with ten million dollars.

  His eyes rimmed with black circles of exhaustion, Devereaux went through customs at Berlin’s Templehof Airport, fully prepared to have his forehead stamped by the officiously barking neo-Nazi who inspected his papers and luggage. Christ, he thought, give a German a rubber stamp and he went wild.

  At one point he stared in amazement at the contents of his own suitcase. Everything was folded neatly and arranged tidily as though packed by Bergdorf Goodman, and he simply did not pack suitcases that way. Then through the fog of dislocation, he remembered that Anne had taken care of everything. She not only had packed for him, she had also accompanied him to the cashier’s desk and helped him settle his bill.

  She had done all this, reflected Sam, because he was not in condition to do much for himself. The insanity of his predicament had led him into a battle with a bottle of Scotch. He lost. The only thing he did remember to do was to airmail the goddamned limited partnership agreement to Hawkins.

  Berlin’s Kempinsky Hotel was a Teutonic version of New York’s old Sherry-Netherland with a slightly harsher interior; the overstuffed lobby chairs seemed cast more in concrete than leather. Still, it screamed money, polished dark wood, and terribly proper clerks Sam knew hated his weak, democratically oriented, and inferior guts.

  The front desk dispensed with him efficiently and swiftly. He was escorted by a disagreeable, aging SS Oberführer who treated his suitcase as though it contained bagels and lox. Once inside the suite (it was enormous; Mac Hawkins did send him first class) the Oberführer snapped up the shades in the various rooms with the authority of a man used to issuing commands to a firing squad. Devereaux, fearing for his life, grossly overtipped him, saw him to the door as if he were a visiting diplomat and bid him a gracious auf Wiedersehen!

  He opened his suitcase. Anne had possessed the foresight to wrap a full bottle of Scotch in a Savoy towel. If there was ever a time to ingest the indigestible, it was now. Not much; just enough to get the motor running.

  There was a knock on the door. Sam was so startled he coughed a mouthful of whiskey over the bed. He corked the bottle and furiously looked for a place to hide it.

  Under the pillow! Covered by the bedspread! He stopped. What was he doing? What the hell was the matter with him? What was happening to him? Goddamn you, MacKenzie Hawkins!

  He took a deep breath, and calmly placed the bottle on the dresser top. He took another deep breath, opened the door, and promptly, involuntarily, expelled every bit of air in his lungs.

  Standing in the door frame was the blonde Aphrodite from Palo Alto, California, catalogued in his memory as Narrow and Pointed. The third Mrs. MacKenzie Hawkins. Lillian.

  “I knew it was you! I said to the man at the desk that it had to be you!”

  Sam was not sure why he had catalogued Lillian as Narrow and Pointed. “Narrow” did the lady an injustice. Perhaps it was a relative adjective, subject to the immediate visual comparison to the other six.

  Devereaux was thinking these absurd thoughts and—he was aware—staring like a twelve-year-old at his first Artists and Models magazine, while Lill
ian sat across from him, explaining that she had flown into Berlin three days ago to attend a two-week course in gourmet cooking.

  Of course, it was unbelievable. After all, he was a skilled attorney. He had analyzed scores of crime-ridden mentalities, stripping away the layers of fraud from sophisticated deceivers on all levels of the social jungle. In spite of his drained mind and body, he was not a man to be conned easily and he would let the third Mrs. MacKenzie Hawkins know that—in spades! He stared at her harder, then mentally shrugged. What the hell!

  “So there we are, Sam. I may call you Sam, mayn’t I? It’s amazing what an interest in really fine cooking can lead to.”

  “But entirely plausible, Lillian! That’s what makes coincidences truly—well, coincidental!” Sam laughed quasi-hysterically, doing his best to control his eyes. He was simply too exhausted to be successful; he just gave up and let his eyes roam freely.

  “And I can’t think of a better way to see Berlin. If we’re lucky, we can find an indoor tennis court! I hear the hotel has a swimming pool; perhaps a gymnasium—–” Lillian stopped and Devereaux felt deprived; in his spent condition he was enjoying the soft, breathless, aural massage. “I may be taking far too much for granted. Are you traveling alone?”

  He knew he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t.

  “More alone than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t have that. If you don’t mind my saying so, you look dreadfully tired. I think you’ve been working half to death. You really need someone to look after you.”

  “I am only a warm shadow of my substance.…”

  “You poor lamb. Come over here and let me rub your shoulder blades. It does wonders, it really, really does.”

  “I am a wasted vestige. I am filled with vacuum and molten lead.…”

  “You’re exhausted, my lamb. That’s the good boy; stretch out and put your head on Lilly’s lap. Oh my, your temples are so warm. And your neck muscles are much too tense. There, that’s better; doesn’t it feel better?”

  It did. He could feel her nimble fingers unbutton his shirt and the gentle hands moving about his chest, caressing his flesh with the touch of angels. What the hell. He opened his eyes, his sight was filled with the unbearable loveliness of two magnificent breasts inches above his face.

  “Do you like hot tubs filled with lots of soap bubbles that smell like roses and springtime?” he whispered.

  “Not actually,” she whispered back. “I’m partial to warm showers. Straight up, as it were.”

  Sam smiled.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The fragrance permeated the air around him; he did not need to open his eyes to know its source.

  If he was able to reconstruct the previous evening with any accuracy—and the quiescence below his waist convinced him that he could—they had spent most of the night in the Kempinsky shower.

  Sam opened his eyes. Lillian was beside him, sitting up against the pillows with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on her lovely upturned nose. She was reading from an enormous piece of frayed cardboard, the white sheet covering her chest but not for an instant obscuring the shafts beneath.

  “Hello,” he said quietly.

  “Good morning!” She looked down at him and positively beamed. “Do you know what time it is?”

  The blonde creature was a healthy type, he considered. It must be all that California surfboarding, or perhaps MacKenzie Hawkins had taught her to do pushups. “My watch is under the covers with my wrist. I do not know what time it is.”

  “It’s twenty after ten. You slept for eleven hours. How do you feel?”

  “Are you telling me we went to bed—I was asleep—by eleven thirty last night?”

  “You could be heard at the Brandenburg Gate. I kept shoving you to stop your snoring. You were positively operatic. How’s your head?”

  “Fairly secure, as a matter of fact. I wonder why?”

  “All that steam. And exercise. Actually, you weren’t capable of drinking a great deal. I think your bloodstream went into revolt.” Lillian picked up a pencil from the bedside table and lightly checked the menu.

  “You smell terrific,” he said after several moments of looking up at her, remembering the sightlines from her lap and the touches of angels over his chest.

  “So do you, lamb,” she replied, smiling, removing her glasses, and gazing down at Sam. “Do you know, you have a very acceptable body?”

  “It has its points.”

  “I mean you have a fundamentally sound physique, moderately well proportioned and coodinated. It’s really a pity you’ve let it disintegrate.” She tapped her glasses against her chin like a doctor studying postoperative conditions.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say disintegrate. I played lacrosse once. I was pretty good.”

  “I’m sure you were, well over a decade ago. Now look here—–” Lilly put down her glasses and peeled the blankets away from Devereaux’s chest. “See here. And here and here and here! Absolutely no tone whatsoever. Muscle pockets that’ve had no discernible use for years! And here.”

  “Ouch!”

  “Your latissimi dorsi are positively nonexistent. When was the last time you exercised?”

  “Last night. In the shower.”

  “That aspect of your condition cannot be debated. But it’s a minor part of the whole being—–”

  “Not to me it isn’t!”

  “—relative to the muscular network. Your body is a temple; don’t let it crumble and decay with misuse and neglect. Spruce it up! Give it a chance to stretch and breathe and be useful; that’s what it’s meant for. Look at MacKenzie—–”

  “I object! I don’t want to look at MacKenzie!”

  “I’m speaking clinically.”

  “I knew it,” mumbled Devereaux in defeat. “I can’t escape him. I’m possessed.”

  “Do you realize that Mac is well over fifty? And take his body. It’s taut. It’s a coiled spring toned to perfection.…”

  Lilly’s eyes drifted up—at nothing. As Anne’s had done at the Savoy. She was remembering, as Anne had remembered—and those memories were not cold.

  “Well, for God’s sake,” said Sam. “Hawkins spent his whole life in the army. Running and jumping and killing and torturing. He had to stay in shape so he could stay alive. He had no choice.”

  “You’re wrong. Mac understands the meaning of full capacity, experiencing the total potential. He once said to me—well, never mind, it’s unimportant.” The girl removed her hand from Devereaux’s chest and reached for her glasses.

  “No, please.” The bedroom in the Kempinsky might have been a bedroom at the Savoy. But the wives were not interchangeable; they were very individual. “I’d like to hear what Mac said.”

  Lilly held her glasses in both hands, fingering the stems pensively. “ ‘Your body should be a realistic extension of your mind, pushed to its limit but not abused.’ ”

  “I liked the ‘change the outside, mix up the inside’ better—–”

  “What?”

  “Something else he said. Maybe I don’t understand; the intellectual and the physical are poles apart. I might imagine I could fly off the Eiffel Tower, but I’d better not try it.”

  “Because that wouldn’t be realistic; it would be abusive. But you might train yourself to scale down it in record time. That would be the realistic, physical extension of your imagination. And it’s important to attempt it.”

  “Scale down the Eiffel Tower?”

  “If flying off it is a serious consideration.”

  “It’s not. If I follow this pseudoscholastic doggerel, you’re saying that if you think about doing something you should actually translate it as much as possible into physical terms.”

  “Yes. The main thing is not to remain inert.” Lilly waved her arms in emphasis; the sheet plummeted down.

  Unbearably lovely, thought Devereaux. But at the moment untouchable; the girl was in debate.

  “This is eith
er far more complicated or much simpler than it sounds,” he said.

  “It’s more complicated, believe me,” she answered. “The subtlety is in the obviousness.”

  “You believe in this challenge concept, don’t you?” Sam said. “I mean it’s fundamentally the necessary satisfaction of meeting the challenge, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. For its own sake; to try to reach out for what you can imagine. To test your potential.”

  “And you believe that.” There was no question implied.

  “Yes, I do. Why?”

  “Because at this moment my imagination is working so hard I can’t stand it. I feel the necessity of physical expression; to test my potential. Within reasonable limits, of course.” He rose from his base camp until he sat facing her, their eyes level. He reached out and took her glasses, folded them, and dropped them over the side of the bed. He held out his hand and she gave him the menu.

  Lillian’s eyes were bright, her lips parted in a half smile. “I was wondering when you were going to ask.”

  And then the Nazi telephone rang.

  The voice on the other end of the line belonged to a man brought up in his formative years watching all those war movies from Warner Brothers. Every syllable dripped evil.

  “Ve do not—vill not—cannot shpeak on der telephone.”

  “Go across the street and open a window. We’ll shout,” replied Devereaux irritably.

  “Der time ist der essence! You vill go down to der lobby, to der fart chair in front of der vindow, on der richt of der hentrance! Under der arm carry a folded copy of Der Spiegel. Und you vill be crossing der legs every tventy seconds.”

  “I’m sitting down?”

  “You vould look foolish crossing der legs standing up, mein Herr.”

  “Suppose someone’s sitting in the chair?”

  The pause conveyed both anger and confusion. There followed a short, strange sound that gave rise to the image of a small pig squealing in frustration. “Remove him!” was the reply that followed the squeal.