“We’d like to reopen it.”
“Why?”
“Word from the Baaka Valley is that two or more hit teams have been dispatched over here conceivably to assassinate Vice President Bollinger. Your crank may have been the point, wittingly or unwittingly, but nevertheless, the point.”
“The ‘point’? What are you talking about? I can’t even understand your language except that it sounds preposterous.”
“Not at all,” said Khalehla calmly. “Terrorists operate on the principle of maximum exposure. They will frequently announce an objective, a target, well in advance of execution. They do this in many ways, many variations.”
“Why would terrorists want to kill Orson—Vice President Bollinger?”
“Why did you think the threats against him should be taken seriously?”
“Because they were there. I could do no less.”
“And you were right,” agreed the intelligence officer, watching the widow crushing out her cigarette and reaching for another, which she promptly lighted. “But to answer your question, should the Vice President be assassinated, there’s not only a void on a political ticket assured of reelection, but considerable destabilization.”
“For what purpose?”
“Maximum exposure. It would be a spectacular kill, wouldn’t it? Even more so, as the record would show that the FBI had been alerted and then withdrawn, outsmarted by superior strategy.”
“Strategy?” exclaimed Ardis Vanvlanderen. “What strategy?”
“A psychotic crank who wasn’t a crank at all but a strategic diversion. Pivot attention on a harmless crank, then close the book while the real killers move into place.”
“That’s crazy!”
“It’s been repeated over and over again. In the Arabic mind, everything progresses geometrically in stages. One step leads to another, the first not necessarily related to the third, but the connection is there if you look for it. Talking of classic cases, this diversion fits the bill.”
“It wasn’t a ‘diversion’! There were the phone calls and the numbers were traced to different cities, the pasted-up letters with the filthy language!”
“Classic,” repeated Khalehla softly, writing.
“What are you doing?”
“Reopening the book … and noting your convictions. May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly,” replied the widow, her voice controlled but tight.
“Among Vice President Bollinger’s many supporters—many friends, I should say—here in California, can you think of any who might not be either?”
“What?”
“It’s no secret that the Vice President moves in wealthy circles. Is there anyone with whom he’s had differences, or more than one, a particular group, perhaps? Over policy or procurements or government allocations.”
“Good God, what are you saying?”
“We’ve reached the bottom line, Mrs. Vanvlanderen, the reason I’m here. Are there people in California who would rather have another candidate on the ticket? Frankly, another Vice President?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this! How dare you?”
“I’m not the one who’s daring, Mrs. Vanvlanderen. Someone else is. International communications, no matter how obscured, can ultimately be traced. Perhaps not at first to a specific individual or individuals, but to a sector, a location.… There’s a third party, or parties, involved in this terrible thing, and they’re here in southern California. Our people in the Baaka have zeroed in on initial cablegrams routed through Beirut from Zurich, Switzerland, original dateline … San Diego.”
“San Diego …? Zurich?”
“Money. A convergence of interests. One party wants a spectacular kill with maximum exposure, while the other wants the spectacular target removed but must stay as far away from the kill as possible. Both objectives take a great deal of money. ‘Follow the money’ is a maxim in our work. We’re tracing it now.”
“Tracing it?”
“It will only be a matter of days. The Swiss banks are cooperative where drugs and terrorism are concerned. And our agents in the Baaka are forwarding descriptions of the teams. We’ve stopped them before and we’ll stop them now. We’ll find the San Diego connection. We simply thought you might have some ideas.”
“Ideas?” cried the stunned widow, crushing out the cigarette. “I can’t even think, it’s all so incredible! Are you certain that some enormous, extraordinary error hasn’t been made?”
“We don’t make errors in these matters.”
“Well, I think that’s pretty shit-kicking egotistical,” said Ardis, the speech of Monongahela overriding her cultivated British. “I mean, Miss Rashad, you’re not infallible.”
“In some cases we have to be; we can’t afford not to be.”
“Now, that’s asinine!… I mean—I mean if there are these hit teams, and if there are communications to Zurich and Beirut from … from the San Diego area, anyone could have sent them, giving any names they wanted to! I mean they could have used my name, for Christ’s sake!”
“We’d instantly discount anything like that.” Khalehla answered the unasked what-if question as she closed her notebook and replaced it in her purse. “It would be a setup, and far too obvious to be taken seriously.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean, a setup! Someone could be setting up one of Orson’s friends, isn’t that possible?”
“For the purpose of assassinating the Vice President?”
“Maybe the—what did you call it?—the target is somebody else, isn’t that possible?”
“Somebody else?” asked the field agent, nearly wincing as the intense widow grabbed another cigarette.
“Yes. And by sending cablegrams from the San Diego area implicating an innocent Bollinger supporter! That is possible, Miss Rashad.”
“It’s very interesting, Mrs. Vanvlanderen. I’ll convey your thoughts to my superiors. We’ll have to consider the possibility. A double omission with a false insert.”
“What?” The widow’s scratching voice was right out of a long-gone Pittsburgh saloon.
“Shop talk,” said Khalehla, rising from the chair. “It simply means disguise the target, omit the source, and provide a false identity.”
“You people talk goddamned funny.”
“It serves a purpose.… We’ll stay in constant touch with you, and we have the Vice President’s schedule. Our own people, all counterterrorist experts, will quietly supplement Mr. Bollinger’s security forces at every location.”
“Yeah—awright.” Mrs. Vanvlanderen, the cigarette in her hand, the handkerchief forgotten on the brocade sofa, escorted Rashad out of the living room and up to the door.
“Oh, about the double omission–insert theory,” said the intelligence officer in the marble foyer. “It’s interesting, and we’ll use it to press the Swiss banks for quick action, but I don’t think it really holds water.”
“What?”
“All numbered Swiss accounts have sealed—and therefore unsealable—codes leading to points of origin. They are often labyrinthine, but they can be traced. Even the greediest Mafia overlord or Saudi arms merchant knows he’s mortal. He’s not going to leave millions to the gnomes of Zurich.… Good night, and, again, my deepest sympathies.”
Khalehla walked back to the closed door of the Vanvlanderen suite. She could hear a muted scream of panic wrapped in obscenities from within; the sole resident of the tailored-to-taste apartment was going over the edge. The scenario had worked. MJ was right! The negative circumstances of Andrew Vanvlanderen’s death had been reversed. What had been a liability was now an asset. The contributor’s widow was breaking.
Milos Varak stood in a dark storefront thirty yards to the left of the entrance to the Westlake Hotel, ten yards from the corner where the service entrance was located on the intersecting street. It was 7:35 P.M., California time; he had outraced every commercial flight across the country from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. He was in place for the
moment of revelation, and equally important, everything was arranged upstairs in the hotel. The cleaning staff of the management—a management genuinely concerned with the grieving widow’s sorrow—included a new member, experienced and instructed by the Czech. Frequency-designed intercepts had been placed in every room; no conversation could take place without being recorded by Varak’s voice-activated tapes in the adjoining suite.
Taxis drove up to the hotel on the average of one every three minutes and Milos studied each departing fare. He had seen twenty to thirty, losing count but not his concentration. Suddenly he was aware of the unusual: a cab stopped on his left, across the intersecting street at least a hundred feet away. A man got out and Varak moved farther back into the unlighted store recess.
“I heard it on the radio.”
“So did I.”
“She’s a bitch!”
“And if they’re alive, they have to get out of the country. Can they get out …?”
“What are your speculations?”
“It’s not the biggest news story of the day.”
“And Bollinger?”
The man in the topcoat, the lapels pulled up, covering his face, walked rapidly across the street toward the hotel’s entrance. He passed within ten feet of Inver Brass’s coordinator. The traitor was Eric Sundstrom, and he was a man in panic.
34
Ardis Vanvlanderen gasped. “Good Christ, what are you doing here?” she cried, literally yanking the rotund Sundstrom through the door and slamming it shut. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m very much in it, but yours is out to lunch.… Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did you and that horse’s ass of a husband of yours think you were doing?”
“The Arabs? The hit teams?”
“Yes! Goddamned fools—”
“It’s all preposterous!” screamed the widow. “It’s a horrendous mix-up. Why would we—why would Andy want to have Bollinger killed?”
“Bollinger …? It’s Kendrick, you bitch! Palestinian terrorists attacked his houses in Virginia and Colorado. There’s a blackout on the news, but a lot of people were killed—not, however, the golden boy himself.”
“Kendrick?” whispered Ardis, panic in her large green eyes. “Oh, my God … and they think the killers are coming out here to assassinate Bollinger. They’ve got it all backwards!”
“They?” Sundstrom froze, his face ashen. “What are you talking about?”
“We’d both better sit down.” Mrs. Vanvlanderen walked out of the foyer and down into the living room, to the couch and her cigarettes. The pale scientist followed, then veered to a dry bar, where there were bottles, decanters, glasses and an ice bucket. Without glancing at the labels, he picked up a bottle at random and poured himself a drink.
“Who is they?” he asked quietly, intensely, as he turned and watched Ardis on the couch lighting a cigarette.
“She left about an hour and a half ago—”
“She? Who?”
“A woman named Rashad, a counterterrorist expert. She’s with a cross-over unit, CIA joining up with State. She never mentioned Kendrick!”
“Jesus, they’ve put it together. Varak said they would and they did!”
“Who’s Varak?”
“We call him our coordinator. He said they’d find out about your Middle East interests.”
“My what?” shouted the widow, her face contorted, her mouth gaping.
“That Off Shore company—”
“Off Shore Investments,” completed Ardis, again stunned. “It was eight months out of my life but that’s all it was!”
“And how you have contacts throughout the whole area—”
“I have no contacts!” screamed Mrs. Vanvlanderen. “I left over ten years ago and never went back! The only Arabs I know are a few high rollers I met in London and Divonne.”
“Rollers in bed or at the tables?”
“Both, if you want to know, lover boy!… Why would they think that?”
“Because you gave them a damn good reason to start looking when you had that son of a bitch cremated this morning!”
“Andy?”
“Was there someone else hanging around here who happened to drop dead? Or perhaps was poisoned? In a cover-up!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your fourth or fifth husband’s body, that’s what I’m talking about. No sooner does it reach the damned mortuary than you’re on the phone ordering his immediate cremation. You think that’s not going to start people wondering—people who are paid to wonder about things like that? No autopsy, ashes somewhere over the Pacific.”
“I never made such a call!” roared Ardis, leaping up from the couch. “I never gave such an order!”
“You did!” yelled Sundstrom. “You said you and Andrew had a pact.”
“I didn’t say it and we didn’t have one!”
“Varak doesn’t bring us wrong information,” stated the hightech scientist firmly.
“Then someone lied to him.” The widow suddenly lowered her voice. “Or he was lying.”
“Why would he? He’s never lied before.”
“I don’t know,” said Ardis, sitting down and stabbing out her cigarette. “Eric,” she continued, looking up at Inver Brass’s traitor. “Why did you come all the way out here to tell me this? Why didn’t you just call? You have our private numbers.”
“Varak again. Nobody really knows how he can do what he does—still, he does it. He’s in Chicago, but he’s made arrangements to be given the telephone number of every incoming call to Bollinger’s office and residence, as well as the office and residence of each member of his staff. Under those conditions I don’t make phone calls.”
“In your case it might be hard to explain to that council of senile lunatics you belong to. And the only calls I’ve gotten were from the office and friends with condolences. Also the Rashad woman; none of those would interest Mr. Varak or your benevolent society of rich misfits.”
“The Rashad woman. You say she didn’t mention the attacks on Kendrick’s houses. Assuming Varak’s wrong and the investigating units haven’t put certain facts together and come up with you and perhaps a few others out here, why didn’t she? She had to know about them.”
Ardis Vanvlanderen reached for a cigarette, her eyes now betraying an unfamiliar helplessness. “There could be several reasons,” she said without much conviction as she snapped up the flame of the lighter. “To begin with, the Vice President is frequently overlooked where clearances are concerned regarding security blackouts—Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project. Then there’s the matter of avoiding panic, if these attacks took place—and I’m not ready to concede that they did. Your Varak’s been caught in one lie; he’s capable of another. Regardless, if the full extent of the damage in Virginia and Colorado was known, we might lose staff control. No one likes to think he might be killed by suicidal terrorists.… Finally, I go back to the attacks themselves. I don’t believe they ever happened.”
Sundstrom stood motionless, gripping the glass in both hands, as he stared down at his former lover. “He did it, didn’t he, Ardis?” he said softly. “That financial megalomaniac couldn’t stand the possibility that a small group of ‘benevolent misfits’ might replace his man with another who could cut off his pipeline to millions and probably would.”
The widow collapsed back into the couch, her long neck arched, her eyes closed. “Eight hundred million,” she whispered. “That’s what he said. Eight hundred million for him alone, billions for all the rest of you.”
“He never told you what he was doing, what he had done?”
“Good Christ, no! I’d have put a bullet in his head and called one of you to deep-six him in Mexico.”
“I believe you.”
“Will the others?” Ardis sat up, her eyes pleading.
“Oh, I think so. They know you.”
“I swear to you, Eric, I didn’t know a thing!”
“I said I believed yo
u.”
“The Rashad woman told me they were tracing the money he sent through Zurich. Can they do that?”
“If I knew Andrew, it would take them months. His coded pay-in sources ranged from South Africa to the Baltic. Months, a year, perhaps.”
“Will the others know that?”
“We’ll see what they say.”
“What?… Eric!”
“I called Grinell from the airport in Baltimore. He’s no part of Bollinger’s staff and God knows he stays in the background, but if we have a chairman of the board, I think we’d all agree he’s the fellow.”
“Eric, what are you telling me?” asked Mrs. Vanvlanderen, her voice flat.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes. We agreed we should have a talk. I wanted a little time with you alone, but he should be here shortly.” Sundstrom glanced at his watch.
“You’ve got that glassy look in your eyes, lover boy,” said Ardis, slowly getting up from the couch.
“Oh, yes,” agreed the scientist. “The one you always laughed at when I couldn’t … shall we say, perform.”
“Your mind was so often on other things. You’re such a brilliant man.”
“Yes, I know. You once said that you always knew when I was solving a problem. I went limp.”
“I loved your mind. I still love it.”
“How could you? You don’t really have one yourself, so how would you know.”
“Eric, Grinell frightens me.”
“He doesn’t frighten me. He has a mind.”
The chimes of the front door filled the Vanvlanderen suite.
Kendrick sat in a small canvas chair by the cot in the cabin of the jet that was flying them to Denver. Emmanuel Weingrass, his wounds prevented from further bleeding by the surviving nurse in Mesa Verde, kept blinking his dark eyes, made darker by the lined white flesh surrounding them.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Manny with difficulty, half coughing the words.