“Are you crazy?” cried Ardis, bouncing forward in the chair.
“Not at all. To begin with, he’ll be on the ticket or he’ll just disappear … like former vice presidents usually do.”
“Oh, my,” said Ardis, drawing out the word my in admiration. “You’re my kind of fella, Andy-boy. You think so clearly, so succinctly.”
“Long years of learning, babe.”
“Now, what did mixed-up old Dimples have to say? Who’s after his sensitive skin now?”
“Not his, ours—”
“Which is his and don’t you forget it. It’s why I’m here, lover, why he introduced us and brought us together.”
“He wants us to know that the little group of deluded super people are moving into high gear. During the next three months their congressman will start getting editorials in progressively stronger papers. The theme will be ‘examining his positions’ and he’ll pass all the exams. The point, of course, is to create a ground swell. Our Cupid is worried, very worried. And to tell you the truth I’m sweating a few bullets myself. Those benevolent lunatics know what they’re doing; this whole thing could get out of control. Ardis, we’ve got millions riding on the next five years. I’m goddamned worried!”
“Over nothing,” said his perfectly coiffed wife, getting out of her chair. She stood for a moment and looked at Vanvlanderen, her wide green eyes only partially amused. “Since you figure to save ten million on Bollinger one way or another—and my way is better, certainly safer, than any alternative—I think it’s only reasonable that you bank an equal amount for me, don’t you, darling?”
“Somehow I fail to see the overpowering reason.”
“It could be your undying love for me … or perhaps one of the more extraordinary coincidences of my career floating among the rich, the beautiful, the powerful and the politically ambitious, especially in the area of government largess.”
“How’s that again?”
“I won’t recite the litany of why we’re all doing what we’re doing, or even why I’ve cast my not inconsiderable talents with you, but I will now let you in on a little secret I’ve kept all to myself for, lo, these many weeks.”
“I’m fascinated,” said Vanvlanderen, putting his drink down on a marble table and closely observing his fourth wife. “What is it?”
“I know Evan Kendrick.”
“You what?”
“Our brief association goes back a number of years, more than I care to dwell on, frankly, but for a few weeks we had something in common.”
“Outside of the obvious, what?”
“Oh, the sex was pleasant enough but immaterial … to both of us. We were young people in a hurry with no time for attachments. Do you remember Off Shore Investments?”
“If he was part of that outfit, we can nail him with fraud! Certainly enough to take him out if he climbs on board. Was he?”
“He was, but you can’t. He pulled out in loud moral indignation, which was the start of that house-of-cards’ collapse. And I wouldn’t be too anxious to nail Off Shore’s principals unless you’re tired of me, sweetie.”
“You?”
“I was the main missionary. I recruited the components.”
“I’ll be damned.” Vanvlanderen laughed as he picked up his drink and raised the glass to his wife. “Those thieves sure as hell knew whom to hire for the right jobs.… Wait a minute. You knew Kendrick well enough to sleep with the son of a bitch and you never said anything—”
“I had my reasons—”
“They better be damned good!” exploded the President’s heavy contributor. “Because if they’re not, I may just break your ass, you bitch! Suppose he saw you, recognized you, remembered Off Shore and put two and two together and got four! I don’t take those kinds of chances!”
“It’s my turn to say ‘Relax,’ Andy,” countered the contributor’s wife. “The people around a vice president aren’t news or even newsworthy. When’s the last time you can recall the name of any individual on a vice president’s staff? They’re a gray, amorphous group—presidents won’t have it any other way. Besides, I don’t think my name’s even been in the papers except as ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vanvlanderen, guests at the White House.’ Kendrick still thinks I’m Frazier-Pyke, a banker’s wife living in London, and if you remember, although both of us were invited to the Medal of Freedom ceremony, you went alone. I begged off.”
“Those aren’t reasons! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew what your reaction would be—take her out of the picture—when I realized I could be far more useful to you in it.”
“How, for Christ’s sake?”
“Because I knew him. I also knew I had to get current on him, but not with some private investigating firm that could end up burning us later, so I took the official high road. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“The threats against Bollinger?”
“They’ll stop tomorrow. Except for one man who’ll continue here on a special basis, the unit will be recalled to Washington. Those mocked-up threats were the paranoid fantasies of a harmless lunatic I invented who supposedly fled the country. You see, sweetie, I found out what I had to know.”
“Which is?”
“There’s an old Israeli Jew named Weingrass whom Kendrick worships. He’s the father Evan never had, and when there was the Kendrick Group he was called the company’s ‘secret weapon.’ ”
“Munitions?”
“Hardly, darling,” laughed Ardis Vanvlanderen. “He was an architect, a damned good one, and did pretty spectacular work for the Arabs.”
“What about him?”
“He’s supposed to be in Paris, but he’s not. He’s living in Kendrick’s house in Colorado, with no passport entry or any official immigration status.”
“So?”
“The soon-to-be-anointed Congressman brought the old man back for an operation that saved his life.”
“So?”
“Emmanuel Weingrass is going to have a medical relapse that will kill him. Kendrick won’t leave his side, and when it’s over it’ll be too late. I want the ten million, Andy-boy.”
27
Varak studied the members of Inver Brass, each face around the table reflected in the light of the brass lamp in front of him—and her. The Czech’s concentration was strained to the limit because he had to focus on two levels.
The first was the information he delivered; the second was on the immediate reaction each had to certain facts within that information. He had to find one pair of eyes that were suspect and he could not find them. That was to say, there were no momentary flashes of astonishment or fear on the faces of the members as he gradually, logically approached the subject of the current Vice President of the United States and his staff, touching ever so lightly on the “innocuous” details he had learned from a Mafia plant in the Secret Service. There was nothing, only blank riveted stares. So while he spoke with conviction and conveyed roughly 80 percent of the truth, he kept watching their eyes, the second level of his mind recalling the salient facts of the life behind each face reflected in the light.
And as he looked at each face, its features heightened by the chiaroscuro wash from the lamps, he felt, as he always did, that he was in the presence of giants. Yet one was not; one had revealed the existence of Emmanuel Weingrass in Mesa Verde, Colorado, a secret unknown to the most clandestine departments in Washington. One of those shadowed faces in front of him was a traitor to Inver Brass. Who?
Samuel Winters? Old money from an American dynasty going back to the railroad and oil barons of the late-nineteenth century. An honored scholar satisfied with his privileged life; an adviser to presidents regardless of party. A great man at peace with himself. Or was he?
Jacob Mandel? A venerated financial genius who had designed and implemented reforms that revitalized the Securities and Exchange Commission into a viable and far more honorable asset to Wall Street. From Lower East Side Yiddish poverty to the halls of merchant pr
inces, and it was said that no decent man who knew him could call him an enemy. Like Winters, he wore his honors well and there were few he had not attained. Or were there others he strove for secretly?
Margaret Lowell? Again aristocratic old money from the New York-Palm Beach orbit, but with a twist that was virtually unheard of in those circles. She was a brilliant attorney who eschewed the rewards of estate and corporate law for the pursuit of advocacy. She worked feverishly in the legal vineyards on behalf of the oppressed, the dispossessed and the disfranchised. Both theorist and practitioner, she was rumored to be the next woman on the Supreme Court. Or was the advocacy a supreme cover for the championship of opposite causes under cover?
Eric Sundstrom? The wunderkind scientist of earth and space technology, holder of over twenty hugely remunerative patents, of which the vast majority of proceeds were given away to engineering and medical institutions for the advancement of those sciences. His was a towering intellect concealed by a cherubic face with tousled red hair, an impish smile and a ready sense of humor—as if he were embarrassed by his gifts, even quick to feign mild offense if they were singled out. Or was it all pretense, the guilelessness a sham?
Gideon Logan? Perhaps the most complex of the quintet, and because he was a black man, again perhaps, understandable. He had made several fortunes in real estate, never forgetting where he came from, hiring and nursing along black firms in his developments. It was said that he quietly did more for civil rights than any single corporation in the country. The current administration, as well as its predecessor, had offered him a variety of cabinet posts, all of which he refused, believing he could achieve more as a respected independent force in the private sector than if he was identified with a political party and its practices. A nonstop worker, he seemingly permitted himself only one indulgence: a luxurious oceanfront estate in the Bahamas where he spent infrequent weekends fishing on his forty-six-foot Bertram with his wife of twelve years. Or was the legend that was Gideon Logan incomplete? The answer was yes. Several years of his whirlwind, meteoric life were simply unknown; it was as if he had not existed.
“Milos?” asked Margaret Lowell, her elbow forward on the table, her head resting on the extended fingers of her hand. “How in heaven’s name has the administration managed to keep the threats against Bollinger quiet? Especially with a Bureau unit exclusively assigned to him.”
Strike Margaret Lowell? She was opening the obvious can of worms in which was found the Vice President’s chief of staff.
“I must assume it’s through the direction of Mrs. Vanvland-eren, her executive expertise, as it were.” Watch the eyes. The muscles of their faces—the jaws.… Nothing. They reveal nothing! Yet one of them knows! Who?
“I realize she’s Andrew Vanvlanderen’s wife,” said Gideon Logan, “and ‘Andy-boy,’ as he’s called, is one hell of a fundraiser, but why was she appointed, to begin with?”
Strike Gideon Logan? He was stirring up the worms.
“Perhaps I can answer that,” replied Jacob Mandel. “Before she married Vanvlanderen she was a headhunter’s dream. She turned around two companies that I know of from bankruptcy into profitable mergers. I’m told she’s distastefully aggressive, but no one can deny her managerial talents. She’d be good in that job; she’d keep the political sycophants at bay.”
Strike Jacob Mandel? He had no compunction about praising her.
“I ran across her once,” said Eric Sundstrom emphatically, “and in plain words she was a bitch. I assigned a patent to Johns Hopkins Medical and she wanted to broker the damn thing.”
“What was there to broker?” asked the attorney Lowell.
“Absolutely nothing,” answered Sundstrom. “She tried to convince me that such large grants required an overseer to make sure the money went where it was supposed to go and not for new jockstraps.”
“She probably had a point,” said the lawyer, nodding as if from experience.
“Not for me. Not the way she talked and the med school’s president’s a good friend of mine. She’d have driven him up the wall so often he would have returned the patent. She’s a bitch, a real bitch.”
Strike Eric Sundstrom? He had no compunction whatsoever about damning her.
“I never met her,” interjected Samuel Winters, “but she was married to Emory Frazier-Pyke, a fine-tuned banker in London. You remember Emory, don’t you, Jacob?”
“Certainly. He played polo and you introduced me as a silent branch of the Rothschilds—which, unfortunately, I think he believed.”
“Someone told me,” continued Winters, “that poor Frazier-Pyke lost a considerable amount of money in a venture she was associated with but came away with a wife. It was the Off Shore Investments crowd.”
“Some fine-tuning he had,” added Mandel. “Goniffs, every one of them. He should have checked with his polo ponies or even the silent Rothschild.”
“Perhaps he did. She didn’t last long and old Emory has always been a stickler for the straight and narrow. She could have been a thief, too.”
Strike Samuel Winters? The traitor in Inver Brass would not raise the speculation.
“In one way or another,” commented Varak without emphasis, “you are all at least aware of her, then.”
“I wasn’t,” said Margaret Lowell, bordering on the defensive, “but after hearing the others I can tell you who else knows her—‘aware’ is a touch too dull. My ex-husband, the alley cat; it was the Frazier-Pyke that did it.”
“Walter?” Sundstrom’s voice and expression were both humorously questioning.
“My boy made so many business trips to London I thought he was advising the Crown, and he frequently mentioned that this Frazier-Pyke was his banker over there. Then one morning the maid phoned me at the office saying that Casanova had an urgent call from an ‘FP’ in London, but she didn’t know where he was. She gave me the number and I called saying to somebody—I assumed a secretary—that M. Lowell was on the line for ‘FP.’ I was subsequently greeted by an exuberant voice virtually yelling at me. ‘Dahling, I’ll be in New York tomorrow and we can have five full days together!’ I said ‘How nice’ and hung up.”
“She travels in the right circles for her purposes,” said Gideon Logan, chuckling. “Andy-boy Vanvlanderen will keep her in blue chips and sables until he gets bored.”
Varak had to change the subject quickly! If he was right about there being a traitor around the table, and he was right—whatever was said about Ardis Vanvlanderen would get back to her and he could not permit anything further. “From everyone’s reactions,” he said pleasantly, aimlessly, “we can assume that there are some opportunists who are immensely capable. However, it’s not important.” Watch them. Every face. “She serves the Vice President well, but that’s essentially immaterial to us.… Back to our candidate, everything proceeds on schedule. The Midwest newspapers, starting with Chicago, will be the first to speculate on his credentials, both in columns and editorials. They’ve all been provided with extensive background material on Kendrick as well as tapes of the Partridge Committee, the Foxley program and his own quite remarkable press conference. From this core the word will spread both East and West.”
“How were they approached, Milos?” asked the spokesman, Samuel Winters. “The newspapers and the columnists, I mean.”
“A legitimate ad hoc committee that we’ve formed in Denver. The seed, when planted, grew quickly. The Colorado branch of the party was enthusiastic, especially as the money was contributed by donors who insisted on remaining anonymous. The state functionaries see a potentially viable candidate and the wherewithal to launch him, as well as the attention it focuses on Colorado. Win or lose, they can’t lose.”
“That ‘wherewithal’ could be a legal problem,” said Margaret Lowell.
“Nothing significant, madam. It’s provided in sequences, no amount over the legal limit as mandated by the election laws—which are quite obscure, if not mystifying, in my opinion.”
“If I need a l
awyer, I’ll call you, Milos,” added Lowell, smiling and sitting back in her chair.
“I’ve furnished each of you with a copy of the names of the newspapers, their editorial writers and the columnists involved in this phase—”
“To be burned in our coal stove,” broke in Winters softly.
“Of course,” “Naturally,” “Most certainly,” came the chorus of quiet replies.
Which was the liar?
“Tell me, Varak,” said the brilliant cherubic Sundstrom. “According to everything we know, everything you’ve brought us, our candidate hasn’t displayed an iota of that ‘fire in the belly’ we hear so much about. Isn’t it terribly important? Doesn’t he have to ultimately want the job?”
“He’ll want it, sir. As we’ve learned, he’s what might be called a closet activist who runs out of the closet when the conditions call for his abilities.”
“Good Lord, Samuel, he’s a rabbi, too?”
“Hardly, Mr. Mandel,” replied the Czech, permitting himself a tight grin. “What I mean to say, no doubt poorly—”
“The words are lovely, Milos.”
“Thank you, sir, you’re too kind. But what I’m trying to say is that on two dramatic occasions in his life—one extraordinarily dangerous to him personally—he chose to take the most difficult courses of action because he felt he could effect a change for the better. The first was his decision to replace a corrupt congressman; the second, of course, was Oman. In short words, he must once again be convinced that his person and his abilities are needed—uniquely needed for the good of the country.”
“That’s a tall order,” said Gideon Logan. “He’s obviously a man of realistic sensibilities who makes a pretty fair appraisal of his qualifications. His bottom line may be … ‘I’m not qualified.’ How do we overcome that?”
Varak looked around the table, his expression that of a man trying to be understood. “I suggest symbolically, sir.”
“How’s that?” asked Mandel, removing his steel-rimmed glasses.
“For example, the current Secretary of State, although he is frequently maligned by his colleagues and the White House staff as a stubborn academic, is the most reasoned voice in the administration. I know privately that he has managed to block a number of rash actions recommended by the President’s advisers because the President respects him—”