The Road to Gandolfo (15 page)

Sam wondered what Aaron Pinkus would do. Then he realized what Aaron would do and abandoned that thought, too.

Pinkus would sit
Shiva
for him.

He got out of the chair and wandered aimlessly through the hotel suite. What the hell
was
he going to do? What in
God’s name
could
he do? His gaze fell on the unsigned, typewritten note on the desk.

He had been
cabled—internationally
.

In some marble banking hall in Switzerland, a powerful broker of international finance had no doubt already listed him as the bona fide overseer of the transfer of ten million dollars into an account of a nonfiled but very much existing company named Shepherd.

That’s what he was going to do whether he liked it or not. It was Geneva, or a lifetime of cracking rocks at Leavenworth,
or
Dellacroce justice—feet-in-cement style.

Kidnap the pope!

My God! That’s what the crazy bastard said. He was going to
kidnap the pope
!

All of Mac’s other insanities paled by any stretch of comparison! World War Three might be more acceptable! A simple war would be so much—well, simpler. Borders were defined, objectives properly obscured, ideologies flexible. A war was duck soup compared to 400 million hysterical Catholics; and heads of state moaning and groaning their obsequious platitudes, blaming every conceivable inimical faction, extremist or not (secretly glad to be rid of the meddling nuisance in the Vatican) and …

My God! World War Three could be a very logical consequence of Hawkins’s act!

And with that realization Sam knew what he had to do. He had to stop MacKenzie. But he could not stop him if he were in a maximum security cell in Leavenworth; who would believe him? And he certainly could not stop him if he were at the bottom of one of the deeper sections of the Hudson River, probably upstate, courtesy of Angelo Dellacroce; who would hear him?

No, the only way he could push the Hawk’s insanity out of the realm of reality was to find out how the hell MacKenzie intended to pull off his papal score. The most foolish thing here would be to assume he couldn’t do it. The Hawk was no joke; anyone who thought he was need only look at a few of Mac’s accomplishments—including four extraordinary ex-wives who adored him, and a little matter of an initial capitalization of ten million dollars, to say nothing of military exploits spanning three decades and the same number of wars.

What the Hawk was bringing to the profession of crime were all the strategic resources, the finely honed discipline, and the leadership of an experienced general officer. MacKenzie was starting at the top; no graduate of the lineup he, but instead, a full-fledged criminal commander who had already outsacked a Mafia don in his own backyard.

The son of a bitch had flare. Christ! He had the balls of King Kong smashing the concrete off the Empire State Building as he climbed up the sides.

Kidnap the pope!

Who the hell would believe it?

Samuel Devereaux believed it, that’s who believed it. What was left was for S. Devereaux, counselor-at-law, to figure out how to stop it. And stay both alive and outside prison walls so doing. A vague idea was coming into focus, but it was still too blurred to make sense. Yet there was a core of possibility within the outlines.

“Don’t be too confident,” said Sam out loud. “You’re dealing with a living, legal, spinal meningitis!”

But it
was
possible. He could pretend to go along with MacKenzie (always with great reluctance; to act otherwise would be out of character), gather in the diseased money—and, at the last moment, convene the investors and blow the whole operation out of the sky. And to save his hide, there’d be a lot of “in the case of my sudden demise, my own attorneys are instructed to publicly reveal …” any number of things.

Including the translation of the Shepherd Company’s “brokering of religious artifacts.”

Who would believe it?

“
Stop that!
” Sam grabbed his wrist, startled by the
sound of his own voice. He was further startled by the sound of the telephone. He raced to it like a man facing execution rushing to hear what the governor had to say.

“Goddamn! This must be the attorney
and
secretary
and
treasurer of the Shepherd Company! With assets over ten million dollars! How does that strike you?”

“It’s a leading question. I’ll not indulge.”

“You know something, boy? You must be a pistol of a lawyer!”

“Are you sure you want to talk over the telephone?” asked Devereaux. “It’s been given a pretty good FCC rating lately.”

“Oh, that’s all right. We won’t say anything we shouldn’t. At least,
I
won’t, and I hope to hell you know better. I just wanted to tell you that the additional copies of the partnership agreement are downstairs waiting for you. I sent them up last night with an old master sergeant I used to know—–”

“Good
God
, you had
duplicates
made? You damn fool! Those copy places usually keep a set! If they’re photostats there’ll be negatives!”

“Not where I was. Right down here in the Watergate lobby there’s a big machine. You put in a quarter for each page—–
Jesus
! You should have seen the crowds gather! They’re a little jumpy around here, aren’t they? But nobody saw anything. It was kind of weird. Everybody staring; nobody saying anything. Except two guys from the
Washington Post
who came running in from the street—–”

“All right!” interrupted Devereaux. “The copies are downstairs. What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”

“Put ’em in your fancy briefcase, the one I gave you. Take ’em to Geneva. You won’t need ’em in Switzerland, of course, but there may be one or two other stops on the way back. Namely, London; that’s pretty definite. You’ll be at the Savoy for a day or two. Airline tickets and everything will be at the hotel in Geneva. When you’re in London a gentleman named Danforth will call you. You’ll know what to do.”

“That’s dirty pool. I won’t know what to do; I don’t know what I’m
doing
! You can’t just put me in this crazy
situation and not tell me anything. I’m carrying documents! My
name
is on them! I’m involved with the transfer of ten million dollars!”

“Now, calm down,” said the Hawk with gentle firmness. “Remember what I told you: There’ll be times when, as my adjutant, you’ll be asked to carry out orders—–”

“
Bullshit!
” roared Sam. “What am I supposed to
say
to people?”

“Well, what’s bullshit to one man may be sugar-coated wheat to another. If anyone presses you, you’re just helping an old soldier who’s quietly raising a few dollars to spread religious brotherhood.”

“That’s absurd,” said Devereaux.

“That’s the Shepherd Company,” said the Hawk.

MacKenzie lifted up five specific pages from the Xeroxed G-2 files scattered over the hotel bed and took them to the desk across the room. He sat down, picked up a red crayon, and proceeded to mark each copy on the top left border. One through five.

Goddamn! It was the sequence he had been looking for, the pattern he knew was there because a man can’t resist going back to his first method of fortune building if the circumstances appear right. And because time minimizes the problems and pressures a person felt decades ago, especially if the profits remain.

The cover intelligence out of Hanoi three years ago had been confusing but authentic. Authentic, that is, on the bottom line; everything else was distorted.

An Englishman was making a killing by brokering hardware and ammunition to North Vietnam.

No big deal; London did not frown on trade to the Commie bloc, although there were specific regulations as to war machinery. But it was a period during that screwed-up, half-assed conflict when the boys in Hanoi
and
Moscow
and
Peking were running slow on the production lines. Money could be made in large bundles by anyone who could divert combat supplies into North Vietnamese ports.

One Lord Sidney Danforth had done just that.

Buying in the United States, West Germany, and France, he sailed under Chilean flag ostensibly for ports in the
new African countries. Except the ships did not go anywhere near Africa. They altered their courses in international Pacific waters, sped north, refueled in the Russian out-islands, and headed south to Haiphong as regulation-bound trading vessels.

G-2 could never prove Danforth’s involvement because the Communist payments were made directly to the Chilean companies and Danforth stayed well out of sight. And Washington was not about to provoke an incident. Danforth was a powerful Englishman with a lot of clout in the Foreign Office. Nam wasn’t worth it.

What had intrigued MacKenzie, however, were the two keys: Chilean flag and African ports. They were covers that had been used before. Thirty years ago. During World War II.

It was common knowledge in intelligence circles that certain South American companies with outside financing had fed war machinery to the Axis at enormous profit during the early forties. In those hectic wartime days the shipping destinations were always Capetown and Port Elizabeth because the manifest records in those harbors were chaotic at best, but usually nonexistent. Scores of ships that were supposed to dock in South Africa altered courses in the southern Atlantic waters and headed into the Mediterranean. To Italy, generally.

Was it possible that one Lord Sidney Danforth had imitated his own operations of three decades past?

It was one thing to chisel a few million out of Southeast Asia in the seventies, something else again to make a fortune out of the holocaust that tested the courage of the British Lion. A man could get his name taken off the Buckingham Palace guest list pretty quickly for something like that.

It was time for the Hawk to have a transatlantic talk with Lord Sidney Danforth, seventy-two-year-old knighted paragon of British industry. And just about the wealthiest man in England.

Goddamn!
The Shepherd Company was attracting some of the most interesting investors.

The Strand was crowded. It was shortly past five o’clock; the legion of office workers were heading home.

Sam had arrived at Heathrow Airport on the 3:40 flight from Geneva and had wasted no time getting to the relaxed comfort of a Savoy suite. He needed it. Geneva had been a nightmare.

He had realized that for any future record, he had to convey a very specific ignorance as to the objectives of the Shepherd Company, cloaking this lack of knowledge in profound respect for the unnamed principals involved; especially the president, who was motivated by deeply-felt religious convictions.

The Geneva bankers were, at first, impressed by his humility. My God, ten million United States dollars and the overseeing lawyer only smiled and spoke convivial banalities, demurring when pressed for identities, nodding soulfully about religious brotherhood when the staggering amount was brought up. So they asked him out to lunch, where there were a lot of winks and drinks and offers of bedroom gymnastics of an incredible variety. This was, after all, Switzerland; a buck was a buck and this hard-nosed approach was not to be confused with yodeling and edelweiss and Heidi in her pinafores. Gradually, thought Devereaux, as the lunches evolved into dinners, the Geneva bankers thought he was either the dumbest attorney ever to practice before the American bar or the most implausibly secretive middleman ever to cross their borders.

He kept up the charade for three days and nights, leaving behind a half-dozen confused Swiss burgomasters, tearfully frustrated over unrequited confidences and terribly
sick to their stomachs after too much industrial lubricant. And the strain on Sam was unbearable. He had reached the point where he could not concentrate on anything but his own rigid, blank smile and the necessary quiet control of his fears. He was so preoccupied with himself that when the vice-president of the Great Bank of Geneva saw him off at the airport, Devereaux just smiled and said “Thank you” when the banker threw up over his raincoat.

In his anxiety to get the hell out of Geneva, he had left his shaving kit behind, which explained why he was now on The Strand looking for a drugstore. He walked south for a block and a half, opposite the Hippodrome, and went into the Strand Chemists. His purchases made, he headed back to the hotel, anticipating a long, warm bath, a shave, and a good dinner at the Savoy Grille.

“Major Devereaux!” The voice was enthusiastic, American, and feminine. It came from a taxi which stopped in Savoy Court.

It was Sloping yet Argumentative, the fourth Mrs. MacKenzie Hawkins, the lovely lady named Anne. She hurled herself at Sam, encircling his neck with her arms, pressing her cheek and various other parts against him.

Instantly she withdrew and rather awkwardly composed herself. “I’m awful sorry. Gosh, that was real
forward
of me. Please forgive me. It was just so
terrific
to see a familiar face.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” said Sam, remembering that Sloping yet Argumentative had appeared to him as the most naīve, as well as the youngest, of the four wives. She had
oohed
a lot, if he recalled correctly. “Are you staying at the Savoy?”

“Yes. I got in last night. I’ve never been to England before, so I spent the whole day just walking
everywhere
. Gosh, my feet are yelling at me.” She parted her very expensive suede coat and frowned at the lovely legs very much in evidence below her short skirt.

“Well, let’s get you off them quickly. Into the bar, I mean.”

“I can’t
tell
you! It’s just so
marvy
to see someone you know!”

“Are you here by yourself?” asked Devereaux.