The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 31

Welcome to Stapleton Airport in Denver, ladies and gentlemen. If you need information regarding connecting flights, our personnel will gladly assist you inside the terminal. The time here in Colorado is five minutes past three in the afternoon.

Among the disembarking passengers spilling out of the exit ramp were five priests whose features were Caucasian but whose skin was darker than that of most white Occidentals. They moved together and talked quietly among themselves, their English stilted yet understandable. They might have been from a diocese in southern Greece or from the Aegean islands, or possibly Sicily or Egypt. They might have been but they were not. They were Palestinians and they were not priests. Instead, they were killers from the most radical branch of the Islamic jihad. Each held a small carry-on bag of soft black cloth; together they walked into the terminal making for a news-stand.

'La!' exclaimed one of the younger Arabs under his breath as he picked up a newspaper and scanned the headlines. 'Laish!’

‘Iskut!’ whispered an older companion, pulling the young man away and telling him to be quiet. 'If you speak, speak English.'

'There is nothing! They still report nothing! Something is wrong.'

'We know something is wrong, you fool,' said the leader known throughout the terrorist world as Ahbyahd, the name meaning 'the white-haired-one" despite the fact that his close-cropped prematurely grey head was more salt-and-pepper than white. 'That's why we're here… Carry my bag and take the others to Gate Number Twelve. I'll meet you there shortly. Remember, if anyone stops you, you do the talking. Explain that the others do not speak English, but don't elaborate.'

'I shall give them a Christian blessing with the blood of Allah all over their throats.'

'Keep your tongue and your knife to yourself. No more Washingtons!' Ahbyahd continued across the terminal, glancing around as he walked. He saw what he had to find and approached an inquiry desk. A middle-aged woman looked up at him, smiling pleasantly at his obviously bewildered expression.

'May I help you, Father?'

'I believe this is where I was instructed to be,' replied the terrorist humbly. 'We have no such fine arrangements on the island of Lyndos.'

'We try to be of service.'

'Perhaps you have a… a notice for me—further instructions, I'm afraid. The name is Demopolis.'

'Oh, yes,' said the woman, opening the top right-hand drawer of the desk. 'Father Demopolis. You're certainly a long way from home.'

'The Franciscan retreat, an opportunity of a lifetime to visit your splendid country.'

'Here we are.' The woman pulled out a white envelope and handed it to the Arab. 'It was delivered to us around noon by a charming man who made a most generous contribution to our charity box.'

'Perhaps I may add my gratitude,' said Ahbyahd, feeling the small hard, flat object in the centre of the envelope as he reached for his wallet.

'Oh, no, I wouldn't hear of it. We've been paid handsomely for such a little thing as holding a letter for a man of the cloth.'

'You are very kind, madam. May the Lord of Hosts bless you.'

'Thank you, Father. I appreciate that.'

Ahbyahd walked away, quickening his steps, veering to a crowded corner of the airport terminal. He tore open the envelope. Taped to the blank card inside was a key to a storage locker in Cortez, Colorado. Their weapons and explosives had been delivered on schedule, as well as money, articles of clothing, an untraceable hired car, alternative passports of Israeli origin for nine Maronite priests, and airline tickets to Riohacha, Colombia, where arrangements had been made to fly them to Baracoa, Cuba and points east. Their rendezvous for the trip home—home yet not home, not the Baaka; that was not home!—was a motel near the airport in Cortez; a flight the next morning would take them to Los Angeles, where nine holy men would be “assistance pre-cleared” on Avianca for Riohacha. Everything had gone according to schedule—schedules worked out once the amazing offer had reached the Baaka Valley in Lebanon: Find him. Kill him. Bring honour to your cause. We'll give you everything you need, but never our identities. Yet had those so precise schedules, those so precious gifts, borne fruit? Ahbyahd did not know; he could not know and it was why he had called a relay telephone number in Vancouver, Canada, demanding that new and lethal supplies be added to the Cortez delivery. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the attack on the house in Fairfax, Virginia, and close to eighteen hours after the storming of the hated enemy's home in Colorado. Their mission had been conceived as a combined assault that would stun the Western world with blood and death, avenging the brothers who had been killed, proving that the ultimate security ordered by the President of the United States for a single man was no match for the skills and the commitments of a dispossessed people. Operation Azra demanded the life of an ordained American hero, an impostor who had claimed to be one of them, who had broken bread and sorrow with them, and who finally had betrayed them. That man had to die along with all who surrounded him, protected him. A lesson had to be taught!

That most loathsome of enemies had not been found in Fairfax; it was presumed that Yosef's unit would find him and kill him at his house in the western mountains. Yet there was nothing, nothing! The five of them from Command One had waited in their adjoining hotel rooms—waiting, waiting for the telephone to ring and to hear the words spoken: Operation Azra is now complete. The hated pig is dead!… Nothing. And most strange of all, there were no screaming headlines in the newspapers, no shocked, anguished men or women on television revealing yet another triumph for the holy cause. What had happened?

Ahbyahd had gone over every step of the mission and could fault none. Every conceivable problem but one had been anticipated and solutions found in advance, either through the byways of official corruption in Washington or with sophisticated technology and bribed or blackmailed telephone technicians in Virginia and Colorado. The one unforeseen and unforeseeable problem was a suddenly suspicious aide to the despicable politician who quite simply had to be killed quickly. Ahbyahd had sent the one 'priest' of their small brigade who had not been in Oman to Kendrick's office late on Wednesday afternoon before the attack on Fairfax. The purpose was merely to cross-check the latest intelligence that confirmed the American congressman's presence in the capital. The 'priest's' cover was immaculate; his papers—religious and official—were in order and he brought with him 'greetings' from numerous 'old friends', each of them a living person from Kendrick's past.

The 'priest' had been caught reading a secretary's desk diary while waiting for the aide to come out into the deserted office. The aide had promptly gone back inside; their 'priest' had quietly opened the door and heard the young man on the telephone asking for Congressional Security. He had to die. Quickly, efficiently, taken under a gun to the bowels of the massive Capitol building and dispatched swiftly. Yet even that death had not been made public.

What had happened? What was happening? The martyrs of the holy mission would not, could not, return to the Baaka Valley without the trophy of vengeance they so desperately sought and so richly deserved. It was unthinkable! If there was no rendezvous in Cortez, blood would flow over blood at a place called Mesa Verde. The terrorist put the key in his pocket, threw the blank card and the envelope on the terminal floor, and started towards Gate Twelve.

'Sweetie!' shouted Ardis Vanvlanderen, walking into the living room from the office she had made for herself from a guest room in San Diego's Westlake Hotel.

'What is it, babe?' asked her husband, sitting in a velour armchair in front of a television set.

'Your problems are over. Those zillions of millions are safe for the next five years! Keep building your missiles and super-duper sonics until the cows shit uranium… I mean it, lover, your worries are over!'

'I know that, babe,' said Andrew Vanvlanderen without moving, his eyes fixed on the screen. ‘I’ll see it and hear it any time now.'

'What are you talking about?' She stopped and stood motionless, staring down at her husband.

'They've got to release it soon. They can't keep it quiet much longer… Jesus, it's been damn near twenty-four hours.'

'I have no idea what that muddled mind of yours is conjuring, but I can tell you that Emmanuel Weingrass is on his way out. There was a certain doctor for hire. He's been injected—’

'He's out now. So's Kendrick.'

'What?'

'I couldn't wait for you, lover—none of us could. There were better ways, more logical ways—expected ways.'

'What the hell have you done?'

'Given an aggrieved people the opportunity to avenge themselves on someone who screwed them to hell and back. I found the survivors. I knew where to look.'

'Andy-boy,' said Ardis, sitting down opposite her husband, her large green eyes fixed on his distracted face. 'I repeat,' she added quietly, 'what have you done?'

'Removed an obstacle that would have weakened the military strength of this country to an unacceptable degree—turning the most powerful giant of the free world into a pitiful dwarf. And in doing so cost me personally in the neighbourhood of eight hundred million dollars—and cost our group billions.'

'Oh, my God… You couldn't wait—you couldn't wait. You dealt with the Arabs!’

'Mr. President, I need these few days,' pleaded Mitchell Payton, sitting forward on a straight-backed chair in the upstairs living quarters of the White House. It was one fifty-five in the morning. Langford Jennings sat in the corner of the couch dressed in pyjamas and a bathrobe, his legs crossed, a slipper dangling from one foot, his steady, questioning gaze never leaving the CIA director's face. 'I realize that by coming directly to you I've broken several hundred valid restrictions, but I'm as alarmed as I've ever been in my professional life. Years ago a young man said to his commander in chief that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. This is a far older man saying essentially the same thing, except that in this case any knowledge of the disease—if it exists, as I believe it does—has been kept from you.'

'You're here, Dr Payton,' said Jennings, his resonant voice flat, the fear unmistakable. 'Yes, Dr Payton—I've had to learn a few things quickly—because Sam Winters made it clear to me that if you said you were alarmed, most other men would be in shock. From what you've told me I understand what he means. I'm in shock.'

'I'm grateful for an old acquaintance's intercession. I knew he'd remember me; I wasn't sure he'd take me seriously.'

'He took you seriously… You're sure you've told me everything? The whole rotten mess?'

'Everything I know, sir, everything we've pieced together, admitting, of course, that I have no “smoking gun”.'

That's not the most favourite phrase around these premises.'

'In all candour, Mr. President, if I thought those words had any application whatsoever to these premises, I wouldn't be here.'

'I appreciate your honesty.' Jennings lowered his head and blinked, then raised it, frowning, and spoke pensively. 'You're right, there's no application, but why are you so sure? My opponents ascribe all manner of deceits to me. Aren't you infected? Because looking at you and knowing what I know about you, I can't imagine that you're an ardent supporter of mine.'

'I don't have to agree with everything a man believes to think decently of him.'

'Which means I'm okay but you wouldn't vote for me, right?'

'Again, may I speak in candour, sir? The secret ballot is sacred, after all.'

'In all candour, sir,' said the President, a slow smile creasing his lips.

'No, I wouldn't vote for you,' answered Payton, returning the smile.

'IQ problems?'

'Good God, no! History shows us that an over-involved mind in the Oval Office can be consumed by an infinity of details. Above a certain level, an immensity of intellect is irrelevant and frequently dangerous. A man whose head is bursting with facts and opposing facts, theories and counter theories, has a tendency to endlessly debate with himself beyond the point where decisions are demanded… No, sir, I have no problem with your IQ, which is far more than sufficient unto the day.'

'Is it my philosophy then?'

'Candour?'

'Candour. You see, I have to know right now whether I'm going to vote for you, and it hasn't a damn thing to do with quid pro quo.'

'I think I understand that,' said Payton, nodding. 'All right, I suppose your rhetoric does bother me at times. It strikes me that you reduce some very complicated issues to… to—’

'Simplistics?' offered Jennings quietly.

'Today's world is as complicated and tumultuous as the act of creation itself, however it came about,' replied Payton. 'Wrong moves by only a few and we're back where we started, a lifeless ball of fire racing through the galaxy. There are no easy answers any longer, Mr. President… You asked for candour.'

'I sure as hell got it.' Jennings laughed softly as he uncrossed his legs and sat forward, his elbows on his knees. 'But let me tell you something, Doctor. You try expounding on those complicated, tumultuous problems during an election campaign, you'll never be in a position to look for the complex solutions. You end up bellyaching from the stands, but you're not part of the team—you're not even in the game.'

'I'd like to believe otherwise, sir.'

'So would I but I can't. I've seen too many brilliant erudite men go down because they described the world as they knew it to be to electorates who didn't want to hear it.'

'I would suggest they were the wrong men, Mr. President. Erudition and political appeal aren't mutually exclusive. Some day a new breed of politician will face a different electorate, one that will accept the realities, those harsh descriptions you mentioned.'

'Bravo,' said Jennings quietly as he leaned back on the couch. 'You've just described the reason for my being who I am—why I do what I do, what I've done… All governing, Dr Payton, since the first tribal councils worked out languages over fires in their caves, has been a process of transition, even the Marxists agree with that. There's no Utopia; in the back of his mind Thomas More knew that, because nothing is as it was—last week, last year, last century. It's why he used the word Utopia—a place that doesn't exist… I'm right for my time, my moment in the change of things, and I hope to Christ it's the change you envisage. If I'm the bridge that brings us alive to that crossing, I'll go to my grave a damned happy man and my critics can go to hell.'

Silence.

The once and former Professor Mitchell Jarvis Payton observed the most powerful man in the world, his eyes betraying mild astonishment. 'That's an extremely scholarly statement,' he said.

'Don't let the word get out, my mandate would disappear and I need those critics… Forget it. You pass, MJ, I'm voting for you.'

'MJ?'

'I told you, I had to do some fast gathering and faster reading.'

'Why do I “pass”, Mr. President? It's a personal as well as a professional question, if I may ask it.'

'Because you didn't flinch.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You haven't been talking to Lang Jennings, a farmer from Iowa whose family made a few bucks because his daddy happened to buy forty-eight thousand acres in the mountains that developers sold their souls for. You've been talking to the head boy of the Western world, the man who could take this planet right back to that ball of fire. If I were you, I'd be frightened confronting that fellow. Frightened and cautious.'

'I'm trying not to be both, and I didn't even know about the forty-eight thousand acres.'

'You think a relatively poor man could ever be president?'

'Probably not.'

'Probably never. Power is to the rich, or the damn-near broke who haven't a thing to lose and a lot of clout and exposure to gain. All the same, Dr Payton, you come here through a back door making an outrageous request, asking me to sanction the covert domestic activities of an agency prohibited by law from operating domestically. Further, and in the process, you want me to permit you to suppress extraordinary information involving a national tragedy, a terrorist massacre meant to kill a man the country owes a great deal to. In essence, you're asking me to violate any number of rules vital and intrinsic to my oath of office. Am I right so far?'

'I've given you my reasons, Mr. President. There's a web of circumstances that spreads from Oman to California, and it's so clear that it has to be more than coincidence. These fanatics, these terrorists, kill for one purpose that overrides all other motivation. They want to focus attention on themselves, they demand headlines to the point of suicide. Our only hope of catching them and the people here behind them is to withhold those headlines… By sowing confusion and frustration someone may make a mistake in the heat of anger, contact someone else they shouldn't contact, breaking the chain of secrecy, and there has to be a chain, sir. Those killers got in here, which took powerful connections to begin with. They're moving around from one end of the country to the other with weapons; that's no simple feat considering our security procedures… I have a field agent from Cairo going to San Diego and the best man we have in Beirut heading for the Baaka Valley. They both know what to look for.'

'Jesus!' cried Jennings, leaping up from the couch and pacing, the slipper falling off his foot. 'I can't believe Orson is any part of this! He's not my favourite bedfellow but he's not insane—he's also not suicidal.'

'He may not be a part of it, sir. Power, even a vice president's power, attracts the would-be powerful—or the would-be more powerful.'

'Goddamn it!' shouted the President, walking over to a Queen Anne desk on which there were scattered papers. 'No, wait a minute,' said Jennings, turning. 'In your own words you have this web of circumstances that somehow extends from the Oman crisis all the way across the world to San Diego. You say it has to be more than coincidence but that's all you've got. You don't have that well-advertised smoking gun, just a couple of people who knew each other years ago in the Middle East and one who suddenly shows up where you don't expect her.'

'The woman in question has a history of borderline financial manipulations for very high stakes. She would hardly be enticed by an obscure political position that's light years away from her normal compensation… Unless there were other considerations.'

'Andy-boy,' said the President, as if to himself. 'Glad-handed Andy… I never knew that about Ardis, of course. I thought she was a bank executive or something he met in England. Why would Vanvlanderen want her to work for Orson in the first place?'

'In my judgment, sir, it's all part of the web, the chain.' Payton stood up. 'I need your answer, Mr. President.'

'“Mr. President,” repeated Jennings, shaking his head as if he could not quite accept the title. 'I wonder if that word sticks in your throat.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'You know what I mean, Doctor. You arrive here at one o'clock in the morning with this paranoid scenario asking me to commit impeachable offences. Then when I ask you a few questions you proceed to tell me: A, You wouldn't vote for me. B, I'm simplistic. C, At best, I'm a predecessor of better men. D, I can't differentiate between coincidence and valid circumstantial evidence—’

'I never said that, Mr. President.'

'You implied it.'

'You asked for candour, sir. If I thought—'

'Oh, come on, get off it,' said Jennings, turning towards the antique desk with the papers strewn across the top. 'Are you aware that there's not a single person in the entire White House staff of over a thousand who would say those things to me? That doesn't include my wife and daughter, but then they're not official staff and they're both tougher than you are, incidentally.'

'If I offended you, I apologize—’

'Don't, please. I told you that you passed and I wouldn't want to rescind. I also wouldn't permit anyone but someone like you to ask me to do what you've asked me to do. Quite simply, I wouldn't trust them… You've got a green light, Doctor. Go wherever the hell the train takes you, just keep me informed. I'll give you a sacrosanct number that only my family has.'

'I need a presidential finding of nondisclosure. I've prepared one.'

'To cover your ass?'

'Certainly not, sir. I'll countersign it, assuming full responsibility for the request.'

'Then why?'

'To protect those below me who are involved but have no idea why.' Payton reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded page of paper. 'This makes it clear that your staff has not been consulted.'

'Thanks a bunch. So we both hang.'

'No, Mr. President. Only myself. Nondisclosure is built into the statutes of the 1947 Act of Congress institutionalizing the CIA. It permits extraordinary action on the part of the Agency in times of national crisis.'

'Any such finding would have to have a time limit.'

'It does, sir. It's for a period of five days.'

'I'll sign it,' said Jennings, taking the paper and reaching for another on the Queen Anne desk. 'And while I do, I want you to read this—actually, you don't have to. Like most computerized printouts from the press office, it takes too long. It came to me this afternoon.'

'What is it?'

'It's an analysis of a campaign to push Congressman Evan Kendrick on to the party's ticket next June.' The President paused. 'As the vice presidential candidate,' he added softly.

'May I see that, please?' asked Payton, stepping forward, his hand outstretched.

'I thought you might want to,' said Jennings, handing the elongated page to the director of Special Projects. 'I wondered if you'd take it as seriously as Sam Winters took you.'

'I do, sir,' answered Payton, now rapidly, carefully scanning the eye-irritating computer print.

'If there's any substance to that paranoia of yours, you may find a basis there,' said the President, watching his unexpected visitor closely. 'My press people say it could fly… fly fast and high. As of next week, seven respectable newspapers in the Midwest will do more than raise Kendrick's name, they'll damn near editorially endorse him. Three of those papers own radio and television stations in concentrated areas north and south, and, speaking of coincidences, audio and visual tapes of the congressman's television appearances were supplied to all of them.'

'By whom? I can't find it here.'

'You won't. There's only a half-assed ad hoc committee in Denver no one's ever heard of and they don't know anything. Everything's fed to Chicago.'

'It's incredible!'

'Not really,' disagreed Jennings. 'The congressman could prove to be an attractive candidate. There's a quiet electricity about him. He projects confidence and strength. He could catch on—fast and high, as my people say. Orson Bollinger's crowd, which I suppose is my crowd, could be having a collective case of the trots.'

'That's not the incredibility I'm talking about, Mr. President. When I'm presented with such an obvious connection, even I have to back off. It's too simple, too obvious. I can't believe Bollinger’s crowd could be that stupid. It's too incriminating, entirely too dangerous.'

'You're losing me, Doctor. I thought you'd say something like “Aha, my dear Watson, here's the proof!” But you're not, are you?'

'No, sir.'

'If I'm going to sign this goddamned impeachable piece of paper, I think I'm entitled to know why.'

'Because it really is too obvious. Bollinger’s people learn that Evan Kendrick is about to be launched in a nationwide campaign to replace their vice president so they hire Palestinian terrorists to kill him? Only a maniac could invent that scenario. One flaw among a hundred-odd arrangements, one killer taken alive—which we have— and they could be traced… will be traced, if you'll sign that paper.'

'Who will you find then? What will you find?'

'I don't know, sir. We may have to start with that committee in Denver. For months Kendrick has been manoeuvred into a political limelight he never sought—has run from, actually. Now, on the eve of the real push there's the obscenity of Fairfax and the aborted assault on Mesa Verde, aborted by an old man who apparently doesn't let his age interfere with his actions. He killed three terrorists.'

'I want to meet him, by the way,' interrupted Jennings.

'I'll arrange it, but you may regret it.'

'What's your point?'

'There are two factions, two camps, and neither is unsophisticated. Yet on the surface, one may have committed an extraordinary blunder which doesn't make sense.'

'You're losing me again—’

'I'm lost myself, Mr. President… Will you sign that paper? Will you give me five days?'

'I will, Dr Payton, but why do I have the feeling that I'm about to face a guillotine?'

'Wrong projection, sir. The public would never allow your head to be chopped off.'

'The public can be terribly wrong,' said the President of the United States bending over the Queen Anne desk and signing the document. 'That's also part of history, Professor.'

The streetlamps along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive flickered in the falling snow creating tiny bursts of light on the ceiling of the room at the Drake Hotel. It was shortly past two in the morning and the muscular blond man was asleep in the bed, his breathing deep and steady, as if his self-control never left him. Suddenly his breathing stopped as the sharp, harsh bell of the telephone erupted. He bolted up to a sitting position, swinging his legs out from under the loose covers to the floor, and yanked the phone out of its cradle. 'Yes?' said Milos Varak, no sleep in his voice.

'We have a problem,' said Samuel Winters from his study in Cynwid Hollow, Maryland.

'Can you discuss it, sir?'

'I don't see why not, at least briefly and with abbreviation. This line is clean and I can't imagine anyone plugging into yours.'

'Abbreviations, please.'

'Roughly seven hours ago something horrible happened at a house in the Virginia suburbs—'

'A storm?' broke in the Czech.

'If I understand you, yes, a terrible storm with enormous loss.'

'Icarus?' Varak nearly shouted.

'He wasn't there. Nor was he in the mountains, where a similar attempt was made but thwarted.'

'Emmanuel Weingrass!' whispered the Czech under his breath. 'He was the target. I knew it would happen.'

'It wouldn't appear so, but why do you say that?'

'Later, sir… I drove down from Evanston around twelve-thirty—’

'I knew you were out, I started calling you hours ago but didn't leave word, of course. Is everything on schedule?'

'Ahead of it, but that's not what I mean. There was nothing on the radio about either event, and that's astonishing, isn't it?'

'If things go as I expect,' answered Winters, 'there'll be nothing for at least several days, if then.'

'That's even more astonishing. How do you know that, sir?'

'Because I believe I've arranged it. A man I trust has gone privately to Sixteen Hundred through my intervention. He's there now. If there's any hope of catching those responsible, he needs the blackout.'

With enormous relief, Milos Varak instantly understood that Samuel Winters was not the traitor within Inver Brass. Whoever the informer was would never prolong the hunt for killers if they were sent out by San Diego. Beyond that truth, that relief, the Czech co-ordinator had someone to confide in.

'Sir, please listen to me carefully. It's imperative—I repeat, imperative—that you call a meeting tomorrow as early as possible. It must be during the day, sir, not at night. Every hour will count in each of the time zones.'

'That's a startling request.'

'Call it an emergency. It is an emergency, sir… and somehow, some way, I must find another emergency. I must force someone to make a move.'

'Without specifics, can you give me a reason?'

'Yes. The one thing we never thought could happen within the group has happened. There's someone who shouldn't be there.'

'Good God!… You're certain?'

'I'm certain. Seconds ago I eliminated you as a possibility.'

It was 4:25 in the morning, California time; 7:25 in the eastern United States. Andrew Vanvlanderen sat in his overstuffed velour chair, his eyes glazed, his heavy body weaving, his white, wavy hair dishevelled. In a burst of frenzy, he suddenly threw a thick-based glass of whisky across the space into the television set; it glanced off the mahogany cabinet and dropped ineffectually on the white rug. In fury, he picked up a marble ashtray and heaved it into the screen of the twenty-four-hour All News programme. The convex glass picture shattered and the set imploded with a loud, sharp report as black smoke rushed out of the electronic entrails. Vanvlanderen roared incoherently at nothing and everything, his quivering lips trying to form words he could not find. In seconds his wife ran out of the bedroom.

'What are you doing?' she screamed.

'There's—augh!—nothing, not a goddamned thing!' he shrieked, his speech garbled, his neck and face flushed, the veins in his throat and forehead distended. 'Not a fucking thing! What's happened? What's going on? They can't do this! I paid them a straight two million!' And then, without warning or the slightest indication of anything other than being in the grip of rage, Vanvlanderen lurched out of the chair, his arms trembling, his hands shaking violently, pressing a wall of air he could not see through his bulging eyes, and fell forward on the floor. As his face crashed into the rug, a furious guttural cry was the last sound from his throat.

His fourth wife, Ardis Wojak Montreaux Frazier-Pyke Vanvlanderen, took several steps forward, her face white, her uplifted skin stretched to the parchment of a mask, her large eyes staring down at her dead husband. 'You son of a bitch!' she whispered. 'How could you leave me with this mess, whatever it is? Whatever the hell you've done!'