“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the director of Special Projects softly. “Good and evil, decided solely by you, sentences pronounced only by you. A legend of arrogance.”
“That’s unfair! There was no other solution. You’re wrong!”
“It’s the truth.” Payton stood up, pushing the chair behind him. “I’ve nothing more to say, Dr. Winters. I’ll leave now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What has to be done. I’m filing a report for the President, the Attorney General and the congressional oversight committees. That’s the law.… You’re out of business, Doctor. And don’t bother to see me to the door, I’ll find my way.”
Payton walked out into the cold gray morning air. He breathed deeply, trying to fill his lungs but was unable to do so. There was too much weariness, too much that was sad and offensive—on Christmas Eve. He reached the steps and started down to his car when suddenly, shattering the grounds, was a loud report—a gunshot. Payton’s driver lunged out of the car, crouching in the drive, his weapon steadied by both hands.
MJ slowly shook his head and continued toward the back door of the vehicle. He was drained. There were no reservoirs of strength to draw from; his exhaustion was complete. Neither was there now the urgency to fly out to California. Inver Brass was finished, its leader dead by his own hand. Without the stature and authority of Samuel Winters, it was in shambles and the manner of his death would send the message of collapse to those who remained.… Evan Kendrick? He had to be told the whole story, all sides of it, and make up his own mind. But it could wait—a day at least. All MJ could think of as the driver opened the door for him was to get home, have several more drinks than were good for him, and sleep.
“Mr. Payton,” said the driver, “you had a radio Code Five, sir.”
“What was the message?”
“ ‘Reach San Jacinto. Urgent.’ ”
“Return to Langley, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, in case I forget. Have a Merry Christmas.”
“Thank you, sir.”
44
“We’ll look in on him at least once an hour, Miss Rashad,” said the middle-aged navy nurse behind the counter. “Rest assured of it.… Did you know the President himself called the Congressman this afternoon?”
“Yes, I was there. And speaking of phones, there are to be no calls put through to his room.”
“We understand. Here’s the note; it’s a copy of the one each operator has at the switchboard. All calls are to be referred to you at the Westlake Hotel.”
“That’s correct. Thank you very much.”
“It’s a pity, isn’t it? Here it is Christmas Eve, and instead of being with friends and singing carols or whatever, he’s bandaged up in a hospital and you’re stuck by yourself in a hotel room.”
“I’ll tell you something, Nurse. The fact that he’s here and alive makes it the best Christmas I could ever hope to have.”
“I know, dear. I’ve seen you two together.”
“Take care of him. If I don’t get some sleep, he won’t consider me much of a present in the morning.”
“He’s our number one patient. And you rest, young lady. You look a mite haggard and that’s a medical opinion.”
“I’m a mess is what I am.”
“In my best days I should be such a mess.”
“You’re sweet,” said Khalehla, putting her hand on the nurse’s arm and squeezing it. “Good night. See you tomorrow.”
“Merry Christmas, dear.”
“It is. And have a merry one yourself.” Rashad walked down the white corridor to the bank of elevators and pressed the lower button. She had meant it about needing sleep; except for a brief twenty minutes when both she and Evan dozed off, she had not closed her eyes in nearly forty-eight hours. A hot shower, a warm room-service meal, and bed was the order of the night. In the morning she would shop in one of those stores that stayed open for the benefit of errant people who had forgotten someone and buy a few silly presents for her … intended? My God, she thought. For my fiancé. Too much.
It was funny, though, how Christmas undeniably brought out the gentler, kinder aspects of human nature—regardless of race, creed, or lack of both. The nurse, for instance. She was sweet, and probably a rather lonely woman with too large a body and a pudgy face unlikely to be chosen for a Wave poster. Yet she had tried to be warm and kind. She had said that she knew how the Congressman’s lady felt because she had seen them together. She had not. Khalehla remembered every person who had come into Evan’s room and the nurse was not one of them. Kindness … reaching out, whatever one cared to call it, it was Christmas. And her man was safe. The elevator doors parted and she walked into the descending cage feeling secure and warm and kind.
Kendrick opened his eyes to the darkness. Something had awakened him … what was it? The door to his room?… Yes, of course, it was the door. Khalehla had told him he was going to be checked and rechecked all night long. Where did she think he would go? Out dancing? He sank back into the pillow, breathing deeply, no strength in him, all energy elusive.… No. It was not the door. It was a presence. Someone was there in the room!
Slowly he moved his head, inch by inch on the pillow. There was a blurred splash of white in the dark, no upper or lower extensions, just a dull space of white in the darkness.
“Who is it?” he said, finding his barely audible voice. “Who’s there?”
Silence.
“Who the hell are you? What do you want?”
Then, like a rushing onslaught, the white mass came toward him out of the dark and crashed into his face. A pillow. He could not breathe! He swung his right hand up, pushing against a muscular arm, then sliding off the flesh into a face, a soft face, then into the scalp of … woman’s hair! He yanked the strands in his grip with all the strength he could summon, rolling to the right on the narrow hospital bed, pulling his predator down to the floor beneath him. He released the hair and hammered the face under him, his shoulder in torment, the sutures broken, blood spreading through the bandages. He tried to yell, but all that emerged was a throated cry. The heavy woman clawed at his neck, her fingers sharp, heard points breaking his skin … then up into his eyes, tearing his lids and scraping his forehead. He surged up, spinning out of her grip, beyond her reach, crashing into the wall. The pain was intolerable. He lurched toward the door, but she was on him, hurling him into the side of the bed. His hand struck the carafe of water on the table; he grabbed it, and, spinning again, swung it up into the head, into the maniacal face above him. The woman was stunned; he rushed forward, throwing his right shoulder into her heavy body, smashing her into the wall, then lunged for the door and yanked it open. The white antiseptic hall was bathed in dim gray light except for a bright lamp behind the floor counter halfway down the corridor. He tried again to scream.
“Someone …! Help me!” The words were lost; only guttural, muted cries came out of his mouth. He limped, his swollen ankle and damaged leg barely able to support him. Where was everybody? No one was there … no one behind the counter! Then two nurses came casually through a door at the far end of the hallway, and he raised his right hand, waving it frantically as the words finally came. “Help me …!”
“Oh, my God!” screamed one of the women as both rushed forward. Simultaneously, Kendrick heard another set of racing feet. He spun around only to watch helplessly as the heavy, muscular nurse ran out of his room and down the hall to a door beneath a red-lettered EXIT sign. She crashed it open and disappeared.
“Call the doctor down in emergency!” cried the navy nurse who reached him first. “Hurry. He’s bleeding all over the place!”
“Then I’d better reach the Rashad girl,” said the second nurse, heading for the counter. “She’s to be called with any change of status, and, Jesus, this is certainly that!”
“No!” yelled Evan, his voice at last a clear, if breathless, roar. “Leave her alone!”
“But Congressman—”
r />
“Please do as I say. Don’t call her! She hasn’t slept in two or three days. Just get the doctor and help me back to my room.… Then I have to use the phone.”
Forty-five minutes later, his shoulder resutured and his face and neck cleaned up, Kendrick sat in bed, the telephone in his lap, and dialed the number in Washington he had committed to memory. Against strenuous objections, he had ordered the doctor and the nurses not to call the military police or even the hospital’s security. It had been established that no one on the floor knew the heavyset woman other than a name, obviously false, through transfer papers; which had been presented that afternoon from the base hospital in Pensacola, Florida. Ranking officer nurses were coveted additions to any staff; no one questioned her arrival and no one would stop her in her swift departure. And until the whole picture was clearer, there could be no official investigations triggering new stories in the media. The blackout was still in effect.
“Sorry to wake you, Mitch—”
“Evan?”
“You’d better know what happened.” Kendrick described the all too real nightmare he had lived through, including his decision to avoid the police, civilian and military. “Maybe I was wrong, but I figured the moment she reached that exit door there wasn’t much chance of getting her and every chance of hitting the papers if they tried.”
“You were right,” agreed Payton, speaking rapidly. “She was a hired gun—”
“Pillow,” corrected Evan.
“Every bit as lethal if you hadn’t woken up. The point is, hired killers plan ahead, usually with several different exits and an equal number of changes of clothes. You did the right thing.”
“Who hired her, Mitch?”
“I’d say it’s pretty obvious. Grinell did. He’s been a malignantly busy man since he got off that island.”
“What do you mean? Khalehla didn’t tell me.”
“Khalehla, as you call her, doesn’t know. She has enough stress with you on her hands. How is she taking tonight?”
“She hasn’t been told. I wouldn’t let them call her.”
“She’ll be furious.”
“At least she’ll get some sleep. What about Grinell?”
“Ardis Vanvlanderen’s lawyer is dead and the ledger is no-where to be found. Grinell’s people got to San Jacinto first.”
“Goddamnit!” shouted Kendrick hoarsely. “We’ve lost it!”
“It would appear so, but there’s something that doesn’t quite add up.… Do you recall my telling you that all Grinell needed in order to know we were closing in was someone watching the attorney’s house?”
“Certainly.”
“Gingerbread found him.”
“And?”
“If they did get that book, why station a lookout after the fact? Indeed, why risk it?”
“Force the lookout to tell you! Drug him up, you’ve done it before.”
“Gingerbread thinks not.”
“Why not?”
“Two reasons. The man may be a low-scale watchman who knows absolutely nothing, and second, Gingerbread wants to follow him.”
“You mean this Gingerbread found the lookout but the lookout doesn’t know it?”
“I told you he was good. Grinell’s man doesn’t even know we found the dead lawyer. All he saw was a company truck and two gardeners in Green Thumb coveralls who proceeded to mow the lawns.”
“But if the lookout’s so low-scale, what will Gingerbread—Christ, that’s a dumb name—what will he learn by following him?”
“I said he may be low-scale with only a relay telephone number to call periodically that wouldn’t tell us anything. On the other hand, he may not be. If he’s upscale he could lead us to others.”
“For God’s sake, Mitch, drug him and find out!”
“You’re not following me, Evan. A relay phone is called periodically … at specific times. If the schedule’s broken, we send Grinell the wrong message.”
“You’re all convoluted fruitcakes,” said a weakened, exasperated Kendrick.
“It’s not much of a living, either.… I’ll have a couple of shore patrols placed at your door. Try to get some rest.”
“What about you? I know you said you couldn’t fly out here and now I understand why, but you’re still at the office, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m waiting to hear from Gingerbread. I can work faster from here.”
“You don’t want to talk about yesterday morning—about your meeting with the honcho from that Inver Brass?”
“Perhaps tomorrow. It’s no longer urgent. Without him there is no Inver Brass.”
“Without him?”
“He killed himself.… Merry Christmas, Congressman.”
Khalehla Rashad dropped the packages in her arms and screamed. “What happened?” she cried, rushing to the bed.
“Medicare’s a bunch of bullshit,” replied Evan.
“That’s not funny!… The SPs at your door and the way they looked at my ID downstairs when I said I was coming to see you—what happened?”
He told her, omitting the parts about the replaced stitches and the blood in the hallway. “Mitch agrees with what I did.”
“I’ll have his head!” yelled Khalehla. “He should have called me!”
“Then you wouldn’t look as lovely as you do. The shadows around your eyes are only half black. You slept.”
“Twelve hours,” she admitted, sitting on the edge of the bed. “That sweet pudgy nurse? I can’t believe it!”
“I could have used some of your black belt, first class, training. I don’t make a point of fighting very often, and hardly ever with women—except hookers who overcharge.”
“Remind me never to let you pay.… Oh, God, Evan, I knew I should have insisted on a larger room with two beds and stayed with you!”
“Don’t carry this protective routine too far, kid. I am the man, remember?”
“And you remember that if we’re ever mugged, let me make the moves, all right?”
“There goeth all my masculine pride.… Be my guest, just feed me bonbons and champagne while you beat the hell out of the bastards.”
“Only a man could even joke like that,” said Rashad, bending down and kissing him. “I love you so, that’s my problem.”
“Not mine.” They kissed again and quite naturally the telephone rang. “Don’t yell!” he insisted. “It’s probably Mitch.” It was.
“Breakthrough!” exclaimed the director of Special Projects from Langley, Virginia. “Has Evan told you? About Grinell?”
“No, nothing.”
“Put him on, he can explain things to you—”
“Why didn’t you call me last night—this morning?”
“Put him on!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is it, Mitch?”
“The break we’ve needed—we’ve got it!”
“Gingerbread?”
“Oddly enough, no. From an entirely different source. You look for crazy things in this business and sometimes you find them. On an outside chance we sent a man to the offices of Mrs. Vanvlanderen’s attorney with a mocked-up document permitting him access to the files of the Vice President’s late chief of staff. In her employer’s absence the secretary wasn’t about to let anyone prowl around the files, so she called the San Jacinto house. Knowing she wouldn’t get an answer, our man hung in there for a couple of hours playing the angry Washington official with orders from the National Security Council while she kept trying to reach the lawyer. Apparently she was genuinely upset; he was supposed to be in an all-day conference out there with important clients.… Whether it was frustration or self-defense that made her say it, we don’t know and don’t care, but she blurted out the fact that our man probably wanted all those confidential pages she’d Xeroxed, but he couldn’t get them anyway because they were all in a safety box down in a bank vault.”
“Bingo,” said Evan quietly, inwardly shouting.
“Unquestionably. She even described the ledger
.… Our astute attorney was perfectly willing to sell Grinell the book, then proceed to blackmail him with the copy. Grinell’s lookout was in San Jacinto for simple curiosity, nothing more, and the ledger will be ours within the hour.”
“Get it, Mitch, and break it down! Look for a man named Hamendi, Abdel Hamendi.”
“The arms dealer,” said Payton, confirming the information. “Adrienne told me. The photographs in Vanvlanderen’s apartment—Lausanne, Amsterdam.”
“That’s the one. They’ll use a code name for him, of course, but trace the money, the transfers in Geneva and Zurich—the Gemeinschaft Bank in Zurich.”
“Naturally.”
“There’s something else, Mitch. Let’s clean house as much as we can. A man like Hamendi supplies arms to all the fanatic splinter groups he can find, each side killing the other with what he sells them. Then he looks for other killers, the ones in thousand-dollar suits and sitting in plush offices whose only cause is money, and he brings them into his network.… Production increases ten times what it was, then twenty, and there’s more killing, more causes to sell to, more fanatics to fuel.… Let’s take him out, Mitch. Let’s give a part of this screwed-up world a chance to breathe—without his supplies.”
“It’s a tall order, Evan.”
“Give me a few weeks to get patched together, then send me back to Oman.”
“What?”
“I’m going to make the biggest purchase of weapons Hamendi ever dreamed of.”
Sixteen days passed, Christmas a painful memory, the New Year greeted cautiously, with suspicion. On the fourth day Evan had visited Emilio Carallo and given him a photograph of a fine new fishing boat, along with its ownership papers, a prepaid course for his captain’s license, a bankbook, and a guarantee that no one from the island of Passage to China would ever bother him in El Descanso. It was the truth; of the selected brethren of the inner government who had conferred on that insidious government’s island, none cared to acknowledge it. Instead, they huddled with their batteries of lawyers, and several had fled the country. They were not concerned with a crippled fisherman in El Descanso. They were concerned with saving their lives and their fortunes.