“You relieve us greatly, signore.”
“And you’ll get that sort of thing in writing, everything relative to productivity and investment return. What else?”
“Is it not always forever the same, whether in this country or our own, wherever industrialists deal with governments?”
“Taxes?” asked the legislator, the start of a frown creasing his forehead, disapproval in the offing. “They’re equitably levied, Countess—”
“No, no, no, signore! You misunderstand me. As you Americans say, death and taxes are both inevitable.… No, I refer to what appears to much of Italian business as your extraordinary, even intemperate, government interference in the business community. Safety and integrity notwithstanding, we’ve heard horror stories about delays costing millions over one bureaucratic procedure or another—local, state, and federal is the phrase I myself have heard, as has the baron.”
“Safety—and as much integrity as the marketplace demands, notwithstanding,” said the senator, smiling. “The powers of my state, as constitutionally spelled out, will make damn sure there’ll be no unwarranted interference of any kind. We can’t afford to do otherwise, and in service to my constituents, I’ll put that in writing.”
“Excellent, that’s wonderful.… There is one last thing, Signore Senatore, and it is a personal request that you may refuse with no lack of respect on my part.”
“What’s that, Countess?”
“Like all great and worldly men, my brother the baron carries about him a certain justifiable pride, not only for his accomplishments, but also for his family, especially his son, who has sacrificed a normal, privileged adolescence to come to his father’s aid.”
“He’s a very fine young man. Like everyone else, I’ve read the papers, the articles about his friendship with that lovely television actress, Angel Capell—”
“Ah, Angelina,” said Nicolo softly, accentuating each syllable of the name. “Una bellissima ragazza!”
“Basta, mio Dante.”
“I was especially taken with the photographs of the two of them with her family in the delicatessen in Brooklyn. The highest-paid campaign manager couldn’t have come up with that photo op.”
“It was all quite accidental—but to the request I wish to make of you.”
“Of course. The baron’s pride, his family, especially this fine son of his. What can I do?”
“Would it be possible to arrange a brief private meeting between the barone-cadetto and the President—only a minute or two, so I might send back a photograph of them together? It would bring such happiness to the baron, and I would certainly tell my brother how it came about.”
“I think that can be arranged, although in all honesty, there’s been a considerable backlash about foreign investment—”
“Oh, I understand that, signore, I, too, read the papers! It’s why I said brief and private, just Dante Paolo and myself, and only for the baron of Ravello, no newspaper publicity whatsoever.… Naturally, if it is too much to ask, I withdraw my request and apologize for bringing it up.”
“Now, just a minute, Countess,” said Nesbitt quietly, pensively, “It’ll take a few days, but I think I can work it out. Our state’s junior senator is of the President’s party, and I backed a bill of his because I thought it was right, but it could cost me votes—”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s a close friend of the President’s and he appreciated my support—he also knows damn well what the baron’s infusion of money could do for the state—and what I could do to him if he even marginally interfered.… Yes, Countess, I can work it out.”
“You all sound so Italian.”
“Machiavelli had his points, my dear Countess.”
Hawthorne and Poole walked cautiously down the cobblestone street in the lowest-rent district of Old San Juan. The section was devoid of tourist traps except for those devoted to sailors’, soldiers’, and addicts’ more carnal appetites. The streetlamps were only partially operational, say one out of four, so there were far more shadows falling across the decrepit buildings than there was illumination. The two men approached the address of the pilot who had flown the murdered Cooke and Ardisonne from Gorda to Puerto Rico, both abruptly surprised by the loud, boisterous voices coming from within the ancient three-story stone structure.
“This cat’s pad beats anything on Bourbon Street, Commander. What the hell’s goin’ on in there?”
“Apparently a party, Lieutenant, and we’re about to crash the gate, since we weren’t invited.”
“Would you mind if I did that, sir?”
“Do what?”
“Crash the gate. My good leg is one of the strongest in a situation like this.”
“Let’s knock first and see what happens.” Tyrell did, and they found out quickly. A slat was opened in the center of the door, a pair of wide, mascaraed eyes peering through it. “We were told to come here,” said Hawthorne pleasantly.
“What chu name?”
“Smith and Jones, that’s what we were supposed to say.”
“Get the fuck outta here, gringos!” The slat was slammed shut.
“I believe your experienced leg is in order, Poole.”
“Your weapon at-the-ready, Tye?”
“Execute, Lieutenant.”
“Here we go, Commander!” Poole smashed the door with his left foot, shattering it everywhere as the two of them crashed through the splintered wood, their weapons leveled. “Don’t one of you move a bayou-straw inch or I’ll pull my trigger!” screamed the lieutenant. “Holy shit!”
The threat was not necessary. Someone in panic had fallen across the tape machine, breaking the wires to the speaker. The subsequent silence was broken by a number of males pulling up their trousers, racing down the staircase and out the door. The lack of modesty was observable only in the dimly lit, smoke-layered, downstairs living room, where the majority of young, and not so young, ladies were barebreasted, their lower coverings making a joke of the thinnest bikinis. There was one extension of this professional exhibitionism, singularly revealed by a light-haired, late-middle-aged man who seemed oblivious of the chaos. He kept pounding his hips in the heat of intercourse on a pillowed couch in the corner with a dark-haired woman who screamed, trying frantically to tell him to cease his endeavors.
“What … what? Shut your mouth and stay with me!”
“Maybe you should shut off your engine and listen up, Simon,” said Hawthorne, approaching the gaudy velveteen couch in the shadowed corner of the room.
“Yo, grunt!” roared the man as he spun around, shock but no fear in his cold eyes at the sight of the weapons.
“All you girls!” Poole yelled, addressing not only the women in the living room but also those who came running down the stairs. “I figure you should get outta here. We got personal things to talk about, and they don’t concern you.… You, too, lady, if you can get away from that bastard.”
“¡Gracias, señor! ¡Muchas gracias!”
“Tell your friends to find other jobs!” shouted the young air force officer as the prostitutes raced out the door into the street. “They can get dead this way!”
The room was deserted except for the half-drunken pilot who pulled part of the shiny dark-red cover over his naked waist. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”
“For starters, I want to know where you come from,” said Tyrell. “You’re not normal, Simon.”
“It’s none of your fucking business, baby.”
“This gun at your head says it is, baby.”
“You think that’s a threat? Squeeze it, babe, do me a favor.”
“Definitely not normal. ‘Yo, grunt.’… You’re military, aren’t you?”
“Once, a hundred years ago.”
“I was military too. Who blew you out of the sky?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m tracking some very bad people. Tell me or you’re dead, babe.”
&n
bsp; “Okay, okay, who gives a shit? I was a drop pilot out of Vientiane flying under Royal Lao Air—”
“A CIA subsidiary,” broke in Hawthorne.
“You got it, pal. The Panmunjom talks started and the Senate began asking questions, so the spy boys had to dump the whole fucking mess on somebody’s lap. They sold all six planes to me for a hundred thousand, which they advanced me, then buried. To me, an underage sharecrop pilot who got into service by signing my old lady’s name because my old man was long gone—for Christ’s sake, I was only eighteen! I lost all but one aircraft to mech failure and cannibalizing, but they were still there and all registered to me under highly questionable circumstances.”
“You had one plane left, equipment worth at least two million. What did you do, sell it so you could set up this little operation to supplement your airborne income?”
“Hell, I stole enough to buy this place years ago,” replied Alfred Simon, sneering.
“What happened to the jet? It was a major asset.”
“Was, and is. I flew it in hops over the down-under routes cleared with bribes. It’s here but I never use it. I keep it greased and operational and hidden. I won’t fly it until I’m ready to buy my own farm, diving straight into that fucking Pentagon, and blow those sons of bitches to hell who’ve kept me on the string for thirty-four years! Those bastards claim I stole ten million dollars’ worth of aircraft from the U.S. government—read that as forty years in Leavenworth!… Hell, I haven’t got a quarter of that long to live.”
“But that string around your neck was sufficiently tight to have you pick up those two men at Sebastian’s Point in Gorda.”
“Hell, yes, but I wasn’t the one who shoved ’em out of the plane during the final approach! I had nothing to do with that!”
“Who did?” roared Poole, slapping away Hawthorne’s gun, and pressing his own into the pilot’s forehead. “You’re with those bastards who killed Charlie, man, and you’re dead if you don’t tell me!”
“Hey, come on!” cried the pilot, his body writhing under the deep-red cover. “The spook showed me his identification and said I’d never be called on the operation if I mentioned his name!”
“What was it?”
“Hawthorne. Somebody named Tyrone Hawthorne, or something like that.”
15
The manicured lawns of his estate glistened with morning dew as Nils Van Nostrand sat at his desk and stared out the window of his study, deep in thought. Time was short and he needed the entire day to make his arrangements, for his disappearance had to be complete, his new identity initiated, all lines to his past obliterated—his ultimate “death” incontestable. Yet what remained of his natural life had to be civilized; he could accept anonymity, even welcome it, but he could not accept living without grace and comfort, and he would not.
So many years ago, too many to count, he and his partner for life, il vizioso elegante—Mars and Neptune!—had purchased a walled, secluded lakefront estate in Geneva for their elder years. The deed was recorded in the name of an Argentine colonel, a bisexual bachelor who was only too pleased to serve the younger, all-powerful padrone and his confidant. Since that time, an obscure rental agency in Lausanne had secured an annual stipend that by itself could pay for the firm’s existence with but a few additional clients. There were, however, several absolutes that, if broken, would result in a dissolution of the contract. Number one: Never to attempt to explore the ownership of the estate; two: No lease could be for less than two years nor longer than five; three: All payments were to be made to a numbered account in Bern, subtracting an additional twenty percent over and above the firm’s commission for service and silence. The fourth year was up for the current residents, the unexpired six months of the fifth compensated for by returning the half year’s rent along with an additional sixty days’ notice of vacancy. Van Nostrand would put those two months to splendid use; they were his timetable for oblivion. The odyssey would begin with the death of the padrone’s killer, one former Lieutenant Commander Tyrell Hawthorne. Tonight.
The day, however, was the prelude to his journey. People he had helped throughout his years in Washington now had to accede to his courteous, if strange, requests. It was vital none know that the others were also lending him assistance. Nevertheless, as the capital was a font of misinformation, rumor, diversion, and self-protection, it was necessary that there be a common thread in his appeals, so that if, like the disintegrating web of a spider, one strand after another broke from the weight of truth, there would be a common core all could retreat to. Van Nostrand could even hear the words.
You too? My God, after all he did for the country, at his own expense, it’s little enough we could do! Don’t you agree?
Of course everyone would agree, for self-protection was the quintessential law of survival in Washington. Inquiries would die quickly with the presumption of his death.
The common thread? Obscure, incomplete, but heart-breaking, especially from a selfless, patriotic man who seemed to have everything—immense wealth, influence, respect, and withal, uncommon modesty. A child, perhaps; a child had universal appeal. What kind of child …? A girl, obviously; look how people everywhere slobbered over that little actress, Angel whatever her name was. Circumstances? Again obvious. The blood of his blood, lost to him for years due to a tragic situation. The event? Marriage? Death?… Death; it was the chord of finality. Van Nostrand was ready; the words would come, they always did. Mars used to say to his Neptune: “Your thoughts are so serpentine. You think beyond the thoughts of others. I like that, I need that.”
The aristocrat picked up the red telephone and dialed the direct, private secure number of the secretary of state. “Yes?” said the voice in Washington.
“Bruce, it’s Nils. I really hate to bother you, especially on this phone, but I’m not sure where else to turn.”
“Anytime, my friend. You’ve certainly earned a minor convenience in light of your major contributions. What is it?”
“Have you got a minute or two?”
“Certainly. To tell you the truth, I just finished an irritating meeting with the Philippine ambassador, and I’ve got my shoes off. What can I do for you?”
“It’s extremely personal, Bruce, and, of course, confidential.”
“This line is secure, you know that,” interrupted the secretary of state gently.
“Yes, I know that. It’s why I used it.”
“Go ahead, my friend.”
“Good Lord, I need a friend right now.”
“I’m here.”
“I’ve never discussed this publicly, and rarely in private, but years ago, when I was living in Europe, my marriage was falling apart—we were both at fault; she was an intemperate German and I was an unresponsive husband who disliked confrontations. She opted for more exciting fields and I fell in love with a married woman, deeply in love, as she did with me. The circumstances prohibited her getting a divorce—her husband was a politician running on a vociferously Catholic ticket and wouldn’t permit it—but we had a child together, a girl. She was, naturally, passed off as his, but he knew the truth, and forbade his wife ever to see me again, and I was never to see the child.”
“How dreadful! Couldn’t she have revolted, forced the issue?”
“He told her that if she did, he would have both mother and child killed before he was ruined politically. An accident, of course.”
“The son of a bitch!”
“Oh, yes, that he was; that he is.”
“Is? Do you want me to arrange State emergency transport to get”—here the secretary paused—“mother and daughter brought over here under diplomatic immunity? Just say the word, Nils. I’ll coordinate with Central Intelligence and it’s done.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late, Bruce. My daughter is twenty-four years of age and dying.”
“Oh, my God …!”
“What I want, what I beg of you, is to fly me with diplomatic clearance to Brussels, no immigration procedures, no
computerized passport entry—that man has eyes and ears everywhere, I’m an obsession with him. I must get to Europe without anyone knowing I’m there. I must see my child before she’s gone from us, and once she is, live somewhere with my love in our last years, to make up for the time we’ve lost.”
“Oh, Christ, Nils, what you’re going through, what you’ve been through!”
“Can you do this for me, Bruce?”
“Of course. An airport away from Washington—less chance of your being recognized. Military escort here and in Brussels; first on board, last to get off, and with a curtained seat in front of the bulkhead. When do you want to leave?”
“This evening, if you can arrange it. Naturally, I insist on paying for everything.”
“After all you’ve done for us? Never mind payment. I’ll call you back within the hour.”
How easily the words came, thought Van Nostrand as he hung up the phone. The essence of pure evil, Mars always said, was to dress the archangel of Satan in the pure white robes of goodness and mercy. Of course, Neptune had taught him that.
The next call was to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose organization frequently used one of Van Nostrand’s guest cottages as a safe house for defectors and stressed-out field agents under medical debriefing.
“… Jesus, Nils, that’s a terrible thing! Give me the bastard’s name. I’ve got dark assets all over Europe who’ll remove him. And I don’t say that lightly—I avoid last extremities as if they were my own—but that scum doesn’t deserve to live another day! My God, your own daughter!”
“No, my good friend, I don’t believe in violence.”
“Neither do I, but the most violent thing on earth was done against you and the mother of your child. Years of living under the threat of both being killed? An infant and her mother?”
“There’s another way, and I ask you only to listen to me.”
“What is it?”
“I can get them out and into a safe situation, but it will take a great deal of money, which I certainly have. However, if I use the normal transfer procedures, they will be picked up by the European banking community and he’ll know I’m over there.”