“It’s not a very flattering code name.”
“It’s not in general use, either. Just among the detail.”
“I see. Go on—These threats. Who made them?”
“That’s what the unit’s all about. They’re trying to find out because they’re still being made.”
“How?”
“Phone calls, telegrams, paste-up letters—they come from different places, which keep the Feds in the air a lot tracing them down.”
“Without success?”
“Not yet.”
“Then they’re a roving task force, here one day, somewhere else the next. Are their movements coordinated from Washington?”
“When Viper’s there, sure. When he’s out here, it’s here, and when he’s on the road it’s wherever he’s at. The unit’s controlled by his personal staff; otherwise too much time is wasted checking back and forth with D.C.”
“You were out here five weeks ago, weren’t you?”
“Around then, yes. We just got back ten days ago; he spends a lot of time out here. As he likes to say, the President covers the East and he covers the West, and he’s got the better deal because he gets away from Funny Town.”
“That’s a foolish statement for a Vice President to make.”
“That’s Viper, but that’s not to say he’s a fool. He’s not.”
“Why do you call him Viper?”
“As long as you want it straight I guess we don’t like him, or the crowd he pals around with—especially out here. Those bastards treat us like Puerto Rican houseboys. The other afternoon one of them said to me, ‘Boy, get me another G and T.’ I told him I’d better check with my superiors in the Secret Service to see if I was assigned to him.”
“Weren’t you afraid the Vice—Viper—might take offense?”
“Christ, he doesn’t mess with us. Like the Fed unit, we only answer to his staff chief.”
“Who’s he?”
“Not he, she. We’ve got another code for her; it’s not as good as Viper but it fits. We call her Dragon Bitch—Dame Bountiful in the logs, which she likes.”
“Tell me about her,” said Varak, the antennae of an adult lifetime picking up a signal.
“Her name’s Ardis Vanvlanderen, and she came on board about a year ago replacing a hell of a good man who was doing a hell of a good job. So good he got a terrific offer from one of Viper’s friends. She’s in her forties and one of those tough executive ladies who looks like she wants to cut your balls off when you go into her office just because you’re a male.”
“An unattractive woman, then?”
“I wouldn’t say that. She’s got a decent enough face and a foxy body, but it’d be hard to work up a letch for her unless you like the type. My guess is she screws by the numbers.”
“Is she married?”
“There’s a gonzo who comes around saying he’s her husband, but nobody pays much attention to him.”
“What does he do? What’s his business?”
“He’s Palm Springs social set. Stocks and bonds when they don’t interfere with his golf, that’s the way I read him.”
“That’s significant money.”
“He’s a heavy contributor and never misses a superbash at the White House. You know the type—wavy white hair and a big gut with lots of shiny teeth in a tuxedo; they always get their pictures taken dancing. If he could read a whole book through in English, they’d probably make him the ambassador to the Court of St. James—I take it back. With his money, half a book.”
Varak studied the Secret Service guard. The man was obviously relieved at being asked such innocuous questions. His answers were more complete than they had to be, bordering on the false confidentiality of gossip. “I wonder why someone like that would send his wife out to work, even if it is for the Vice President.”
“I don’t think he has anything to say about it. You don’t send a sharp item like her anywhere she doesn’t want to go. Besides, one of the maids told us she was wife number three or four, so maybe Vanvlanderen learned to let ’em hang loose and do their thing.”
“And you say she does it well?”
“Like I said, very sharp, very pro. Viper doesn’t make a move without her.”
“What’s he like?”
“Viper?” Suddenly another jet took off from the Naval Air Station, the roar of the engines thunderous. “Viper’s Viper,” said the Mafia plant when the earthshaking noise had vanished. “Orson Bollinger’s a party glad-hander with an insider’s grasp of every fucking thing that goes on, and nothing goes on that doesn’t serve the boys in the back rooms of California because they take care of him.”
“You’re very astute.”
“I observe.”
“You do a great deal more than that. Only I’d suggest you be more cautious in the future. If I can find you, others might, too.”
“How? Goddamn you, how?”
“Diligence. And over the weeks watching for a mistake someone had to make. It could have been one of the others in your detail for something else—we’re all human; none of us lives in a freezer—but it turned out to be you. You were tired, of perhaps you had that extra drink, or simply felt you were too secure. Regardless, you made a phone call to Brooklyn, New York, obviously not the way you were supposed to make it, not from an untraceable pay telephone.”
“Frangie!” whispered the capo supremo.
“Your cousin, Joseph ‘Fingers’ Frangiani, second underboss of the Ricci family in Brooklyn, inheritors of the Genovese interests. It was all I needed, amico.”
“You foreign low-life son of a bitch!”
“Don’t waste obscenities on me.… One last question, and why not be civil?”
“What?” cried the furious man from the Mafia, his black eyebrows arched, his right hand instinctively reaching behind his jacket.
“Stop!” roared the Czech. “One inch more and you’re dead.”
“Where’s your gun?” choked the agent, without a breath.
“I don’t need it,” replied Varak, his eyes boring in on his would-be killer. “And I’m sure you know that.”
Slowly, the Secret Service man brought his right hand in front of him. “One question, that’s all!” he said, his animus reflected in his face. “You’ve got one last question.”
“This Ardis Vanvlanderen. How was her appointment as the Vice President’s chief of staff explained to you? Words must have been said, reasons given. After all, you’re Bollinger’s personal security and you worked well with her predecessor.”
“We’re his security, not corporate executives. Explanations weren’t required.”
“Nothing was said? It’s an unusual position for a woman.”
“Plenty was said so we wouldn’t miss the point, but no explanation. Bollinger called everybody together and told us how pleased he was to announce the appointment of one of the most talented executives in the country, someone who was assuming the job at such personal sacrifice that we should all thank the powers that be for her patriotism. The ‘her’ was the first inkling we had that it was a woman.”
“Interesting phrase ‘powers that be.’ ”
“He talks that way.”
“And he doesn’t make a move without her.”
“I don’t think he’d dare. She’s heavy metal and she keeps the house in order.”
“Whose order?”
“What?”
“Never mind.… That’s all for now, amico. Please be so kind as to leave first, will you? I’ll call you if I need you.”
The mafioso, the hot, ancestral blood of the Mediterranean rushing to his head, jabbed his index finger at the Czech and spoke in a hoarse voice. “You’ll stay out of my fucking life if you know what’s good for you.”
“I hope to stay as far away from you as possible, Signor Mezzano—”
“Don’t you call me a pimp!”
“I’ll call you anything I like, but as to what’s good for me, I’ll be the judge of that. Now fila! Capisce???
?
Milos Varak watched his reluctant informer walk over the sand in silent fury until the mezzano disappeared into the maze of beach accesses toward the hotel. The Czech let his mind wander.… she came on board about a year ago; he’s a heavy contributor; Viper doesn’t make a move without her. It was thirteen months ago when Inver Brass had begun the search for a new Vice President of the United States, the incumbent considered a pawn of the President’s unseen contributors—men who intended to run the country.
It was past four o’clock in the morning and Khalehla would not stop. She kept pressing Evan, changing cassettes on the recorder and repeating names over and over again, insisting that wherever he recognized anything at all he describe in detail everything he could remember. The computer printout from Mitchell Payton’s office at the Central Intelligence Agency included a hundred twenty-seven selected names with corresponding occupations, marriages, divorces and deaths. In each case the individual listed had either spent considerable time with Kendrick or had been present during a period of high activity and could conceivably have been instrumental in his academic or career decisions.
“Where the hell did he get these people?” asked Evan, pacing the study. “I swear I don’t remember half of them, and most of the other half are blurs except for old friends I’ll always remember, and none of them could be remotely connected with what’s happening. Christ, I had three roommates in college, two others in graduate school and a sixth shared an apartment with me in Detroit when I worked in a lousy job over here. Later there were at least two dozen others I tried unsuccessfully to raise backing from for the Middle East and some of them are on that list—why I don’t know, but I do know all those lives are being lived in the suburbs with green lawns and country clubs and colleges they can barely afford for their kids. They have nothing to do with now.”
“Then let’s go over the Kendrick Group again—”
“There is no Kendrick Group,” broke in Evan angrily. “They were killed, blown away, drowned in concrete!… Manny and I are all that’s left, you know that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Khalehla gently, sitting on the couch drinking tea. The printout was on the coffee table in front of her. “I meant the dealings you had over here in the States while there was the Kendrick Group.”
“We’ve gone over them. There weren’t that many—mostly in high-tech equipment.”
“Let’s go over them again.”
“It’s a waste of time but go ahead.”
“ ‘Sonar Electronics, Palo Alto, California,’ ” read Khalehla, her hand on the printout. “The representative was a man named Carew—”
“ ‘Screw Carew,’ ” said Kendrick, chuckling. “That was Manny’s comment. We bought some sounding devices that didn’t work, and they still wanted payment after we sent them back.”
“ ‘Drucker Graphics, Boston,’ the representative, a G. R. Shulman. Anything?”
“Gerry Shulman, good man, good service; we worked with them for years. Never a problem.”
“ ‘Morseland Oil, Tulsa.’ The rep was someone named Arnold Stanhope.”
“I told you about him—them.”
“Tell me again.”
“We did preliminary surveying for them in the Emirates. They kept wanting more than they were willing to pay for, and since we were growing, we could afford to drop them.”
“Was there acrimony?”
“Sure, there always is when chiselers find out they can’t do business as usual. But there wasn’t anything silence couldn’t cure. Besides, they found some other jokers, a Greek outfit who caught on to them and delivered a survey that must have been made on the floor of the Oman Gulf.”
“Freebooters; every one of you,” said Khalehla, smiling and lowering her hand on the printout. “ ‘Off Shore Investments, Limited, headquarters Nassau, the Bahamas, contact Ardis Montreaux, New York City.’ They funneled a lot of capital to you—”
“Which we never touched because it was a sham,” interrupted Evan sharply. “It better damn well say that there.”
“It says here, ‘Skip it.’ ”
“What?”
“I wrote it. It’s what you said before, ‘Skip it.’ What’s Off Shore Investments, Limited?”
“Was,” corrected Kendrick. “It was a high-class boilerplate operation on the international scale—high-class and international but still boilerplate. Build a company up with large Swiss accounts and hot air, then sell off and switch the assets, leaving the buyers with a balloon full of helium.”
“You got mixed up with something like that?”
“I didn’t know it was something like that. I was a lot younger and impressed as hell that they wanted to list us as part of their structure … even more impressed with the money they banked for us in Zurich. Impressed, that is, until Manny said ‘Let’s try to get some, just for the hell of it.’ He knew exactly what he was doing; we couldn’t pull out two francs. Off Shore’s signatures controlled all withdrawals, all assignments.”
“A dummy setup and you were the dummies.”
“That’s it.”
“How did you get involved?”
“We were in Riyadh, and Montreaux flew over and conned me. I hadn’t learned that there weren’t any shortcuts—not that kind.”
“Ardis Montreaux. Ardis.… That’s an odd name for a man.”
“Because it’s not a man—she’s not a man. She’s a lot tougher.”
“A woman?”
“Believe it.”
“With your innate skepticism she must have been very persuasive.”
“She had the words. She also wanted our heads when we pulled out; she claimed we were costing them millions. Weingrass asked her whose millions this time.”
“Perhaps we should—”
“Skip it,” Evan broke in firmly. “She married an English banker and lives in London. She’s faded.”
“How do you know?”
Showing minor embarrassment, Kendrick answered quickly and quietly. “She called me a couple of times … as a matter of fact to apologize. Skip it.”
“Sure.” Khalehla went on to the next firm on the printout. As she spoke she wrote two words after Off Shore Investments, Limited. Check out.
Ardis Montreaux Frazier-Pyke Vanvlanderen, born Ardisolda Wojak in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, walked into the marble foyer of the suite at the Westlake Hotel in San Diego. She threw her sable stole over the back of a velour chair and raised her voice, her speech a cultivated mid-Atlantic, rather more nasal stage British than old-money American, but still afflicted with the harsh tones of Monongahela Slavic in the upper registers.
“Andy-boy, I’m home! We’ve got less than an hour to get up to La Jolla, so move it, sweetie!”
Andrew Vanvlanderen, heavyset, with stark white wavy hair and dressed in a tuxedo, walked out of the bedroom, a drink in his hand. “I’m ahead of you, babe.”
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” said Ardis, peering into a foyer mirror and fingering the curls of her perfectly coifed frosted brown hair. She was closing in on fifty and of medium height but gave the impression of being younger and taller due to erect posture, a slender figure topped by generous breasts, and a well-coordinated face punctuated by large, penetrating green eyes. “Why not call for the car, sweetie?”
“The car can wait. So can La Jolla. We’ve got to talk.”
“Oh?” The Vice President’s chief of staff looked over at her husband. “You sound serious.”
“I am. I had a call from your old boyfriend.”
“Which one, darling?”
“The only one who counts.”
“Good God, he called here?”
“I told him to—”
“That was dumb, Andy-boy, just plain dumb!” Ardis Vanvlanderen walked rapidly, angrily out of the foyer and down into the sunken living room. She sat in a red silk wing chair and abruptly crossed her legs, her large eyes riveted on her husband. “Take risks with money—on commodities or futures or your stupid horses or any
goddamned thing you like, but not where I’m concerned! Is that understood, darling?”
“Listen, bitch—Dragon Bitch—with what I’ve paid out, if I want firsthand information I’m going to get it. Is that understood?”
“All right, all right. Cool off, Andy.”
“You start a rhubarb and then you tell me to cool it?”
“I’m sorry.” Ardis arched her neck back into the chair, breathing audibly through her open mouth, her eyes briefly closed. In seconds she opened them, leveled her head, and continued. “Really, I’m sorry. It’s been a particularly rotten Orson day.”
“What’s Viper done now?” asked Vanvlanderen, drinking.
“Be careful with those names,” said his wife, laughing softly. “We wouldn’t want our all-American gorillas to learn they’re being bugged.”
“What’s Bollinger’s problem?”
“He’s feeling insecure again. He wants a written ironclad guarantee that he’ll be on the ticket next July or we settle ten million on him in a Swiss account.”
Vanvlanderen coughed a swallow of whisky into his glass. “Ten million?” he gasped. “Who the fuck does that comedian think he is?”
“The Vice President of the United States with a few secrets in his skull,” replied Ardis. “I told him we wouldn’t accept anyone else, but it wasn’t good enough. I think he senses that Jennings doesn’t consider him a world-beater and would let him go.”
“Our beloved telegenic wizard, Langford Jennings, hasn’t a goddamned thing to say about it!… Is Orson right? Does Jennings dislike him?”
“Dislike’s too strong. He just dismisses him, that’s what I hear from Dennison.”
“That one’s got to go. One of these days Herb’s going to get more curious than we want him—”
“Forget him,” interrupted Mrs. Vanvlanderen. “Forget Dennison and Bollinger and even your stupid horses. What did my straying, cat-hunting old boyfriend have to say that was so important you had him call here?”
“Relax. He phoned from my Washington attorney’s office; we share the same firm there, remember? But first, let’s not forget Orson. Give him his guarantee. A simple sentence or two and I’ll sign it. It’ll make him happy and happy is better.”