“Do come in, please,” interrupted Winters, placing his hand over Mandel’s arm. “And, if you will, introduce yourself.”
The young man walked confidently but without arrogance to the west end of the table below the black cylinder that when lowered was a screen. He stood for a moment looking down at the pools of light on the table.
“It’s a particular honor for me to be here,” he said pleasantly. “My name is Gerald Bryce, and I am currently director of GCO, Department of State.”
“GCO?” asked Mandel. “Another alphabet?”
“Global Computer Operations, sir.”
The California sun streamed through the windows of the hospital room as Khalehla, her arms around Evan, gradually released him. She sat back on the bed above him and smiled wanly, her eyes glistening from the residue of tears, her light olive skin so pale. “Welcome to the land of the living,” she said, gripping his hand.
“Glad to be here,” whispered Kendrick weakly, staring at her. “When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t sure it was you or whether I was … whether they were playing more tricks on me.”
“Tricks?”
“They took my clothes … I was in some old blue jeans and a corduroy—then I was back in my suit—my blue—”
“Your ‘congressional threads,’ I believe you called them,” interrupted Khalehla gently. “You’ll have to get another suit, my darling. What was left of your trousers after they cut them away was beyond a tailor.”
“Extravagant girl.… Christ, do you know how good it is to see you? I never thought I’d see you again—it made me so goddamned angry.”
“I know how good it is to see you. That hotel carpet has been worn through.… Rest now; we’ll talk later. You just woke up and the doctors said—”
“No.… To hell with the doctors, I want to know what’s happened. How’s Emilio?”
“He’ll make it, but one lung is gone and his hip is shattered. He’ll never walk properly again, but he’s alive.”
“He doesn’t have to walk, just sit in a captain’s chair.”
“What?”
“Forget it.… The island. It’s called Passage to China—”
“We know,” broke in Khalehla firmly. “Since you’re so rotten stubborn, let me do the talking.… What you and Carallo did was incredible—”
“Carallo?… Emilio?”
“Yes. I’ve seen the photographs—my God, what a mess! The fire spread everywhere, especially over the east side of the island. The house, the grounds, even the dock where the other boats exploded—it’s gone; it’s all gone. By the time the navy choppers arrived with marine assault troops, everyone on the place was frightened to death and waiting on the west beaches. They greeted our people as if we were liberators.”
“Then they got Grinell.”
Khalehla looked down at Evan; she paused, then shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, darling.”
“How …?” Kendrick started to rise, wincing at the pain in his bandaged sutured shoulder. Again gently, Rashad held him, lowering him down on the pillow. “He couldn’t have gotten away! They didn’t look!”
“They didn’t have to. The Mexicans told them.”
“What? How?”
“A seaplane flew out and picked up the patrón.”
“I don’t understand. All communications were out!”
“Not all. What you didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that Grinell had small auxiliary generators in the cellar of the main house with enough power to reach his people at an airfield in San Felipe—we’ve learned that much from the Mexican transmission authorities; not who but where. He can run and even disappear, but he can’t hide forever; we’ve got the tail of a trail.”
“Very alliterative, as my executioner might say.”
“What?”
“Forget it—”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
“Sorry, I mean it. What about Ardis’s lawyer and the ledger I told you about?”
“Again, we’re closing in but we’re not there yet. He’s taken a hike somewhere, but where no one knows. All his phones are monitored and sooner or later he’ll have to reach one of them. When he does, we’ll have him.”
“Could he have any idea that you’re after him?”
“It’s the big question. Grinell was able to reach the mainland, and through San Felipe he could have sent word to Ardis’s lawyer. We simply don’t know.”
“Manny?” asked Evan hesitantly. “Then again you didn’t have time—”
“Wrong, I had nothing but time, desperation time, to be exact. I called the hospital in Denver last night, but all the floor nurse could tell me was that he was stable … and, I gather, something of a nuisance.”
“The understatement of the week.” Kendrick closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. “He’s dying, Khalehla. He’s dying and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“We’re all dying, Evan. Every day is one day less of life. That’s not much help, but Manny’s over eighty and the verdict’s not in until it’s in.”
“I know,” said Kendrick, looking at their entwined hands, then up at her face. “You’re a beautiful lady, aren’t you?”
“It’s not something I dwell on, but I suppose I’ll pass for okay-plus. You’re not exactly Quasimodo yourself.”
“No, I just walk like him.… It’s not very modest, but our kids have a fair chance of being decent-looking little bastards.”
“I’m all for the first part but somewhat dubious about the second.”
“You understand that you just agreed to marry me, don’t you?”
“Try getting away from me and you’ll find out how really good I am with a gun.”
“That’s nice. ‘… Oh, Mrs. Jones, have you met my wife, the gunslinger? If anyone’s crashed your party, she’ll nail him right between the eyes.’ ”
“I’m also black belt, first class, in case a weapon makes too much noise.”
“Hey, terrific. Nobody’s going to push me around anymore. Pick a fight with me, I’ll let her off the leash.”
“Grrrr,” growled Khalehla, baring her bright lovely teeth, then composing her face, looking down as if studying him, her dark eyes soft, floating. “I do love you. God knows what we two misfits think we’re doing, but I guess we’re going to give it a try.”
“No, not a try,” said Evan, reaching for her with his right hand. “A lifetime,” he added. She bent down and they kissed, holding each other like two people who had nearly lost each other. And the telephone rang.
“Damn!” cried Khalehla, springing up.
“Am I that irresistible?”
“Hell, no, not you. It’s not supposed to ring in here, those were my instructions!” She picked up the phone and spoke harshly. “Yes, and whoever you are I’d like an explanation. How did you get through to this room?”
“The explanation, Officer Rashad,” said Mitchell Payton in Langley, Virginia, “is comparatively simple. I countermanded a subordinate’s order.”
“MJ, you haven’t seen this man! He looks like a nuked Godzilla!”
“For a grown-up woman, Adrienne, one who has admitted in my presence that she’s over thirty, you have an untidy habit of frequently talking like an adolescent.… And I’ve also spoken to the doctors. Evan needs some rest and must keep his ankle strapped and his leg quiet for a day or so and his shoulder wound periodically checked, but beyond these minor inconveniences, he could go right back into the field.”
“You are one frozen fish, Uncle Mitch! He can barely talk.”
“Then why have you been talking to him?”
“How did you know …?”
“I didn’t. You just told me.… May we please deal with realities, my dear?”
“What’s Evan? Unreal?”
“Give me that phone,” said Kendrick, awkwardly taking the instrument from Khalehla’s hand. “It’s me, Mitch. What’s happening?”
“How are you, Evan?… I suppose that’s a foolish question.”
r />
“Very. Answer mine.”
“Ardis Vanvlanderen’s lawyer is at his summer house in the San Jacinto Mountains. He called his office for messages and we got an area fix. A unit is on its way there now to evaluate. They should be there in a matter of minutes.”
“Evaluate? What the hell is there to evaluate? He’s got the book! Go in and get it! It obviously spells out their whole global structure, every rotten arms merchant they’ve used in the world! Grinell can run to any of them and be hidden. Grab it!”
“You’re forgetting about Grinell’s own sense of survival. I assume Adrienne … Khalehla told you.”
“Yes, a seaplane picked him up. So what?”
“He wants that ledger as much as we do, and he’s no doubt reached Mrs. Vanvlanderen’s man by now. Grinell won’t risk coming up himself, but he’ll send someone he can trust to retrieve it. If he knows we’re closing in, and all it would take is another pair of eyes on the lawyer’s house, what do you suppose the instructions will be to his trusted courier, who must, after all, get that book into Mexico?”
“Where he could be stopped at the border or in an airport—”
“With us in attendance. What do you think he’ll tell that person?”
“To burn the damn thing,” said Kendrick quietly.
“Precisely.”
“I hope your men are good at what they do.”
“Two men, and one is just about the best we have. His name is Gingerbread; ask your friend about him.”
“Gingerbread? What kind of dumb name is that?”
“Later, Evan,” interrupted Payton. “I’ve got something to tell you. I’m flying out to San Diego this afternoon and we have to talk. I hope you’ll be up to it because it’s urgent.”
“I’ll be up to it, but why can’t we talk now?”
“Because I wouldn’t know what to say … I’m not sure I will later, but at least I’ll have learned more. You see, I’m meeting with a man in an hour from now, an influential man who’s intensely interested in you—has been for the past year.”
Kendrick closed his eyes, feeling weak as he sank back into the pillows. “He’s with a group or a committee that calls itself … Inver Brass.”
“You know?”
“Only that much. I’ve no idea who they are or what they are, just that they’ve screwed up my life.”
The tan sedan, its codified government plates signifying the Central Intelligence Agency, drove through the imposing gates of the estate on Chesapeake Bay and up the circular drive to the smooth stone steps of the entrance. The tall man in an open raincoat that revealed a rumpled suit and shirt—evidence of nearly seventy-two hours of continuous wear—got out of the backseat and walked wearily up the steps toward the large stately front door. He shivered briefly in the cold morning air of the overcast day that promised snow—snow for Christmas, reflected Payton. It was Christmas Eve, simply another day for the director of Special Projects, yet a day he dreaded, the impending meeting one he would trade several years of his life not to have insisted upon. Throughout his long career he had done many things that caused the bile to erupt in his stomach, but none more so than the destruction of good and moral men. He would destroy such a man this morning and he loathed himself for it, yet there was no alternative. For there was a higher good, a higher morality, and it was found in the reasonable laws of a nation of decent people. To abuse those laws was to deny the decency; accountability was the constant. He rang the bell.
A maid preceded Payton through an enormous sitting room overlooking the Chesapeake to another stately door. She opened it and the director walked inside the extraordinary library, trying to absorb everything that struck his eyes. The huge console that took up the entire wall on the left with its panoply of television monitors and dials and projection equipment; the lowered silver screen on the right and the burning Franklin stove in the near corner; the cathedral windows directly across and the large circular table in front of him. Samuel Winters got up from the chair beneath the wall of sophisticated technology and came forward, his hand extended.
“It’s been too long, MJ—may I call you that?” said the world-renowned historian. “As I recall, everyone called you MJ.”
“Certainly, Dr. Winters.” They shook hands and the septuagenarian scholar waved his arm, encompassing the room.
“I wanted you to see it all. To know that we have our fingers on the pulse of the world—but not for personal gain; you must understand that.”
“I do. Who are the others?”
“Please sit down,” said Winters, gesturing at the chair facing his own, on the opposite side of the circular table. “Take off your coat, by all means. When one reaches my age, all the rooms are much too warm.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it on. This will not be a long conference.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Very,” replied Payton, sitting down.
“Well,” said Winters softly but emphatically as he went to his chair, “it’s the unusual intellect that chooses its position without regard to the parameters of discussion. And you do have an intellect, MJ.”
“Thank you for your generous, if somewhat condescending, compliment.”
“That’s rather hostile, isn’t it?”
“No more so than your deciding for the country who should run and be elected to national office.”
“He’s the right man at the right time for all the right reasons.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s the way you did it. When one lets loose a rogue force to achieve an objective, he can’t know the consequences.”
“Others do it. They’re doing it now.”
“That doesn’t give you the right. Expose them if you can, and with your resources I’m sure you can, but don’t imitate them.”
“That’s sophistry! We live in an animal world, a politically oriented world dominated by predators!”
“We don’t have to become predators to fight them.… Exposure, not imitation.”
“By the time the word gets out, by the time even the few understand what’s happened, the brutal herds have stampeded, trampling us. They change the rules, alter the laws. They’re untouchable.”
“I respectfully disagree, Dr. Winters.”
“Look at the Third Reich!”
“Look what happened to it. Look at Runnymede and the Magna Carta, look at the tyrannies of the French court of Louis, look at the brutalities of the czars—for Christ’s sake, look at Philadelphia in 1787! The Constitution, Doctor! The people react goddamned quickly to oppression and malfeasance!”
“Tell that to the citizens of the Soviet Union.”
“Checkmate. But don’t try to explain that to the refuseniks and the dissidents who every day make the world more aware of the dark corners of Kremlin policy. They are making a difference, Doctor.”
“Excesses!” cried Winters. “Everywhere on this poor doomed planet there is excess. It will blow us apart.”
“Not if reasonable people expose excess and do not join it in hysteria. Your cause may have been right, but in your excess you violated laws—written and unwritten—and caused the deaths of innocent men and women because you considered yourself above the laws of the land. Rather than telling the country what you knew, you decided to manipulate it.”
“That is your determination?”
“It is. Who are the others in this Inver Brass?”
“You know that name?”
“I just said it. Who are they?”
“You’ll never learn from me.”
“We’ll find them … ultimately. But for my own curiosity, where did this organization start? If you don’t care to answer, it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, but I do care to answer,” said the old historian, his thin hands trembling to the point where he gripped them together on the table. “Decades ago Inver Brass was born in chaos, when the nation was being torn apart, on the edge of self-destruction. It was the height of the great depression;
the country had come to a stop and violence was erupting everywhere. Hungry people care little about empty slogans and emptier promises, and productive people who’ve lost their pride through no fault of their own are reduced to fury.… Inver Brass was formed by a small group of immensely wealthy, influential men who had followed the advice of the likes of Baruch and were unscathed by the economic collapse. They were also men of social conscience and they put their resources to work in practical ways, stemming riots and violence not only by massive infusions of capital and supplies into inflamed areas, but by silently ushering laws through Congress that helped to bring about measures of relief. It is in that tradition that we follow.”
“Is it?” asked Payton quietly, his eyes cold, studying the old man.
“Yes,” answered Winters emphatically.
“Inver Brass.… What does it mean?”
“It’s the name of a marshland lake in the Highlands that’s not on any map. It was coined by the first spokesman, a banker of Scot descent, who understood that the group had to act in secrecy.”
“Therefore without accountability?”
“I repeat. We seek nothing for ourselves!”
“Then why the secrecy?”
“It’s necessary, for although our decisions are arrived at dispassionately for the good of the country, they’re not always pleasant or, in the eyes of many, even defensible. Yet they were for the good of the nation.”
“ ‘Even defensible’?” repeated Payton, astonished at what he was hearing.
“I’ll give you an example. Years ago our immediate predecessors were faced with a government tyrant who had visions of reshaping the laws of the country. A man named John Edgar Hoover, a giant who became obsessed in his old age, who had gone beyond the bounds of rationality, blackmailing presidents and senators—decent men—with his raw files, which were rampant with gossip and innuendo. Inver Brass had him eliminated before he brought the executive and the legislative, in essence the government, to its knees. And then a young writer named Peter Chancellor surfaced and came too close to the truth. It was he and his intolerable manuscript that caused the demise of Inver Brass then—but could not prevent its resurrection.”