The Icarus Agenda

Chapter 34

Ardis Vanvlanderen gasped. 'Good Christ, what are you doing here?' she cried, literally yanking the rotund Sundstrom through the door and slamming it shut. 'Are you out of your mind?'

I'm very much in it, but yours is out to lunch… Stupid, stupid, stupid! What did you and that horse's ass of a husband of yours think you were doing?'

'The Arabs? The hit teams?'

'Yes! Goddamned fools—’

'It's all preposterous'.' screamed the widow. 'It's a horrendous mix up. Why would we—why would Andy want to have Bollinger killed?'

'Bollinger…? It's Kendrick, you bitch! Palestinian terrorists attacked his houses in Virginia and Colorado. There's a blackout on the news but a lot of people were killed, not, however, the golden boy himself.'

'Kendrick?' whispered Ardis, panic in her large green eyes. 'Oh, my God… and they think the killers are coming out here to assassinate Bollinger. They've got it all backwards!'

'They?' Sundstrom froze, his face ashen. 'What are you talking about?'

'We'd both better sit down.' Mrs. Vanvlanderen walked out of the foyer and down into the living room, to the couch and her cigarettes. The pale scientist followed, then veered to a bar where there were bottles, decanters, glasses and an ice bucket. Without glancing at the labels he picked up a bottle at random and poured himself a drink.'

'Who is they?' he asked quietly, intensely, as he turned and watched Ardis on the couch lighting a cigarette.

'She left about an hour and a half ago—’

'She? Who?'

'A woman named Rashad, a counter-terrorist expert. She's with a cross-over unit, CIA joining up with State. She never mentioned Kendrick!'

'Jesus, they've put it together. Varak said they would and they did!'

'Who's Varak?'

'We call him our co-ordinator. He said they'd find out about your Middle East interests.'

'My what?' shouted the widow, her face contorted, her mouth gaping.

'That Off Shore company—’

'Offshore Investments,' completed Ardis, again stunned. 'It was eight months of my life but that's all it was!'

'And how you have contacts throughout the whole area—’

'I have no contacts!' screamed Mrs. Vanvlanderen. 'I left over ten years ago and never went back! The only Arabs I know are a few high rollers I met in London and Divonne.'

'Rollers in bed or at the tables?'

'Both, if you want to know, lover boy!… Why would they think that?'

'Because you gave them a damn good reason to start looking when you had that son of a bitch cremated this morning!'

'Andy?'

'Was there someone else hanging around here who happened to drop dead? Or perhaps was poisoned? In a cover-up!'

'What the hell are you talking about?'

'Your fourth or fifth husband's body, that's what I'm talking about. No sooner does it reach the damned mortuary than you're on the phone ordering his immediate cremation. You think that's not going to start people wondering—people who are paid to wonder about things like that? No autopsy, ashes somewhere over the Pacific.'

'I never made such a call!' roared Ardis, leaping up from the couch. 'I never gave such an order!'

'You did!' yelled Sundstrom. 'You said you and Andrew had a pact.'

'I didn't say it and we didn't have one!'

'Varak doesn't bring us wrong information,' stated the high-tech scientist firmly.

'Then someone lied to him.' The widow suddenly lowered her voice. 'Or he was lying.'

'Why would he? He's never lied before.'

'I don't know,' said Ardis, sitting down and stabbing out her cigarette. 'Eric,' she continued, looking up at Inver Brass's traitor. 'Why did you come all the way out here to tell me this? Why didn't you just call? You have our private numbers.'

'Varak again. Nobody really knows how he can do what he does, still he does it. He's in Chicago, but he's made arrangements to be given the telephone number of every incoming call to Bollinger's office and residence, as well as the office and residence of each member of his staff. Under those conditions I don't make phone calls.'

'In your case it might be hard to explain to that council of senile lunatics you belong to. And the only calls I've had were from the office and friends with condolences. Also the Rashad woman; none of those would interest Mr. Varak or your benevolent society of rich misfits.'

'The Rashad woman. You say she didn't mention the attacks on Kendrick's houses. Assuming Varak's wrong and the investigating units haven't put certain facts together and come up with you and perhaps a few others out here, why didn't she? She had to know about them.'

Ardis Vanvlanderen reached for a cigarette, her eyes now betraying an unfamiliar helplessness. 'There could be several reasons,' she said without much conviction as she snapped up the flame of the lighter. 'To begin with, the Vice President is frequently overlooked where clearances are concerned regarding security blackouts—Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project. Then there's the matter of avoiding panic, if these attacks took place—and I'm not ready to concede that they did. Your Varak's been caught in one lie; he's capable of another. In addition, if the full extent of the damage in Virginia and Colorado was known, we might lose staff control. No one likes to think he might be killed by suicidal terrorists… Finally, I go back to the attacks themselves. I don't believe they ever happened.'

Sundstrom stood motionless, gripping the glass in both hands, as he stared down at his former lover. 'He did it, didn't he, Ardis?' he said softly. 'That financial megalomaniac couldn't stand the possibility that a small group of “benevolent misfits” might replace his man with another who could cut off his pipeline to millions and probably would.'

The widow collapsed back into the couch, her long neck arched, her eyes closed. 'Eight hundred million,' she whispered. 'That's what he said. Eight hundred million for him alone, billions for all the rest of you.'

'He never told you what he was doing, what he had done?'

'Good Christ, no! I'd have put a bullet in his head and called one of you to deep-six him in Mexico.'

'I believe you.'

'Will the others?' Ardis sat up, her eyes pleading.

'Oh, I think so. They know you.'

'I swear to you, Eric, I didn't know a thing!'

'I said I believed you.'

'The Rashad woman told me they were tracing the money he sent through Zurich. Can they do that?'

'If I knew Andrew, it would take them months. His coded pay-in sources ranged from South Africa to the Baltic. Months, a year, perhaps.'

'Will the others know that?'

'We'll see what they say.'

'What?… Eric!’

'I called Grinell from the airport in Baltimore. He's no part of Bollinger's staff and God knows he stays in the background, but if we have a chairman of the board, I think we'd all agree he's the fellow.'

'Eric, what are you telling me?' asked Mrs. Vanvlanderen, her voice flat.

'He'll be here in a few minutes. We agreed we should have a talk. I wanted a little time with you alone but he should be here shortly.' Sundstrom glanced at his watch.

'You've got that glassy look in your eyes, lover boy,' said Ardis, slowly getting up from the couch.

'Oh, yes,' agreed the scientist. 'The one you always laughed at when I couldn't… shall we say, perform.'

'Your mind was so often on other things. You're such a brilliant man.'

'Yes, I know. You once said that you always knew when I was solving a problem. I went limp.'

'I loved your mind. I still love it.'

'How could you? You don't really have one yourself so how would you know.'

'Eric, Grinell frightens me.'

'He doesn't frighten me. He has a mind.'

The chimes of the front door filled the Vanvlanderen suite.

Kendrick sat in a small canvas chair by the cot in the cabin of the jet that was flying them to Denver. Emmanuel Weingrass, his wounds prevented from further bleeding by the surviving nurse in Mesa Verde, kept blinking his dark eyes, made darker by the lined white flesh surrounding them.

'I've been thinking,' said Manny with difficulty, half coughing the words.

'Don't talk,' broke in Evan. 'Conserve your strength. Please?'

'Oh, get off it,' replied the old man. 'What have I got? Twenty more years and I don't get laid?'

'Will you stop it?'

'No, I won't stop it. Five years I don't see you so we get back together and what happens? You get too attached—to me. What are you, a feygele with a hang-up for old guys?… Don't answer that, Khalehla will do it for you. You two must have busted your parts last night.'

'Why don't you ever talk like a normal person?'

'Because normalcy bores me, just like you're beginning to bore me… Don't you know what all this shit is about? I brought up a dummy? You can't figure?'

'No, I can't figure, all right?'

'That lovely girl was on the button. Someone wants to make you very important in this country, and someone else is having bowel movements over the prospect. You can't see that?'

'I'm beginning to, and I hope the other guys win. I don't want to be important.'

'Maybe you should be. Maybe it's where you belong.'

'Who the hell says so? Who thinks so?'

'The people who don't want you—you think about that. Khalehla told us that these garbage maniacs who came over here to kill you didn't just hop on a plane from Paris or walk off a cruise ship. They had help, influential help. How did she put it?… Passports, weapons, money—even drivers' licences and clothes and hideouts. Those things, especially the paperwork, you don't pick up at a corner store. They take contacts with power in high places, and the people who can pull those kinds of strings are the bastards who want you dead… Why? Does the outspoken congressman pose a threat to them?'

'How can I be a threat? I'm getting out.'

'They don't know that. All they see is a mensch politician who, when he opens his mouth, everybody in Washington shuts up and listens to.'

'I don't talk that much, so the listening's minor, practically nonexistent.'

'The point is that when you do talk, they don't. You got what I call listening credentials. Like I do, frankly.' Weingrass coughed, bringing a trembling hand to his throat. Evan bent over him, concerned.

'Take it easy, Manny.'

'Be quiet,' ordered the old man. 'You hear what I've got to say… Those bastards see a real American hero who's awarded a big medal by the President and put on important committees in the Congress—’

'The committees came before the medal—’

'Don't interrupt. After a couple of months the sequence of things blurs—anyway, you just made it stronger. This hero takes on the Pentagon brass over national television before he's a hero and damn near indicts the whole damned bunch of them as well as all those big industrial complexes who supply the machine. Then what does he do? He demands accountability. Terrific word, accountability—the bastards all hate it. They've got to start sweating, kid. They've got to figure that maybe this joker-hero will get more powerful, maybe chair one of those committees, or even get elected to the Senate where he could do some real damage.'

'You're exaggerating.'

'Your girlfriend wasn't!' countered Weingrass loudly, staring into Kendrick's eyes. 'She told us that her elite group may have tapped into a nerve centre higher up in the government than they want to think about… Doesn't all this present a blueprint to you, although I admit you were never the hottest shot with a blueprint I ever knew?'

'Of course it does,' answered Evan, nodding slowly. 'There's no nation in the world that doesn't have its degrees of corruption, and I doubt there ever will be.'

'Oh, corruption?' intoned Manny, eyes rolling, as if the word were part of a Talmudic chant. 'Like in one guy stealing a buck's worth of paper clips from the office and another taking a million with a cost overrun, is that what you mean?'

'Basically, yes. Or ten million, if you like.'

'Insignificant peanuts!' shouted Weingrass. 'Such people do not deal with Palestinian terrorists thousands of miles away for the sole purpose of positively removing themselves from a kill. They wouldn't know howl Also, you didn't look into that lovely girl's eyes, or maybe you don't know what to look for. You've never been there.'

'She says she knows where you're coming from because you have been there. All right, I haven't, so what are you talking about?'

'When you're there, you're scared,' said the old man. 'You're walking towards a black curtain that you're going to pull down. You're excited; the curiosity's killing you and so is the fear. All of those things. You try like hell to suppress them, even hide some from yourself, and that's part of it because you can't afford to lose an ounce of control. But it's all there. Because once that curtain is yanked away you know you'll be looking at something so nuts you wonder if anyone will believe it.'

'You saw all that in her eyes?'

'Enough, yes.'

'Why?'

'She's getting near the edge, kid.'

'Why?'

'Because we're not dealing—she's not dealing—with simple corruption, even terrific corruption. What's behind that black curtain is a government within the government, a bunch of servants running the master's house.' The old architect suddenly went into a spasm of coughing, his whole body trembling, his eyes shut tight. Kendrick grabbed his arms; in moments the convulsion was over and Manny blinked again, breathing deeply. 'Listen to me, my dumb son,' he whispered. 'Help her, really help her, and help Payton. Find the bastards and rip them out!'

'Of course I will, you know that.'

'I hate them! That youngster under chemicals, that Ahbyahd you knew in Masqat—we might have been friends in another time. But that time won't ever come as long as there are bastards who pit ourselves against ourselves because they make billions out of hatred.'

'It's not that simple, Manny—’

'It's a larger part of it than you think! I've seen it!… “They have more than you do, so we'll sell you more than they have”—that's one of the come-ons. Or “They'll kill you unless you kill them first, so here's the firepower… for a price.” It goes right up the goddamned ladder: “They spent twenty million on a missile, we'll spend forty million!” Do we really want to blow up the fucking planet? Or is everyone listening to lunatics who listen to men who sell hatred and peddle fear?'

'On that level, it's that simple,' said Evan, smiling. 'I may even have mentioned it myself.'

'Keep mentioning it, kid. Don't walk away from that platform we talked about—mainly regarding a certain Herbert Dennison we also talked about whom you scared the shit out of. Remember, you got listening credentials like me. Use 'em.'

‘I’ll have to think about it, Manny.'

'Well, while you're thinking,' coughed Weingrass, his right hand on his chest, 'why don't you think about why you had to lie to me? You and the doctors, that is.'

'What?'

'It's back, Evan. It's back and it's worse because it never went away.'

'What's back?'

'“Big casino”, I think is the gentle phrase. The cancer's running rampant.'

'No, it isn't. We ran you through a dozen tests. They got it—you're clean.'

'Tell that to these little suckers who are choking off my air.'

‘I'm no doctor, Manny, but I don't think that's a symptom. During the last thirty-six hours you've been through a couple of wars. It's a wonder you can breathe at all.'

'Yeah, but while they're patching me up at the hospital you have them run one of those little checks, and don't lie to me. There are some people in Paris I've got to take care of, some things I've got locked away they should have. So don't lie to me, understand?'

'I won't lie to you,' said Kendrick as the aircraft started its descent into Denver.

Crayton Grinell was a slender man of medium height and a perpetually grey face made prominent by sharp features. When greeting someone, for the first time or the fiftieth, whether a waiter or a board chairman, the forty-eight-year-old attorney who specialized in international law greeted that person with a shy smile that conveyed warmth. The warmth and the modesty were accepted readily until one looked into Grinell's eyes. It was not that they were cold, for they were not, yet neither were they particularly friendly; they were expressionless, neutral, the eyes of a cautiously curious cat. 'Ardis, my dear Ardis,' said the lawyer, walking into the foyer and holding the widow, gently patting her shoulder as one might console a faintly disagreeable aunt who had lost a far more agreeable husband. 'What can I say? What can anyone say? Such a loss for us all, but how much more so for you.'

'It was sudden, Cray. Too sudden.'

'Of course it was, but we must all look for something positive in our sorrows, mustn't we? You and he were spared a prolonged and agonizing illness. Since the end must come, it's better if it's quick, isn't it?'

'I suppose you're right. Thank you for reminding me.'

'Not at all.' Disengaging himself, Grinell looked over at Sundstrom, who was standing in the large sunken living room. 'Eric, how good to see you,' he said solemnly, walking across the foyer and down the marble steps to shake hands with the scientist. 'Somehow it's right that we both should be with Ardis at a time like this. Incidentally, my men are outside in the hallway.'

'Fucking bitch!' Sundstrom mouthed the words, his breath a whisper as the grieving Mrs. Vanvlanderen closed the door, the sound of the closing and the noise of her heels on the marble covering the mumble uttered by her former lover.

'Would you care for a drink, Cray?'

'Oh, no thank you.'

'I think I will,' said Ardis, heading for the bar.

'I think you should,' agreed the attorney.

'Is there anything I can do? At the legal end here, or with arrangements, anything at all?'

'I imagine you'll be doing it, the legal things, I mean. Andy-boy had lawyers all over the place, but I gathered you were his main man.'

'Yes, I was, and we've all been in touch during the day. New York, Washington, London, Paris, Marseilles, Oslo, Stockholm, Bern, Zurich, West Berlin—I'm handling everything personally, of course.'

The widow stood motionless, a decanter halfway to her glass, staring at Grinell. 'When I said all over the place, I didn't think that far all over the place.'

'His interests were extensive.'

'Zurich…?' said Ardis, as if the name of the city had slipped out unintentionally.

'It's in Switzerland,’ broke in Sundstrom harshly. 'And let's cut the crap.'

'Eric, really—'

'Don't “Eric, really” me, Cray. That bullheaded horse's ass did it. He contracted the Palestinians and paid them out of Zurich… Remember Zurich, sweetie'? … I told you in Baltimore, Cray. He did it!'

'I couldn't get a confirmation on the assaults in Fairfax or Colorado,' said Grinell calmly.

'Because they never happened!' yelled the widow, her right hand trembling as she poured a drink from the heavy crystal decanter.

'I didn't say that, Ardis,' objected the lawyer softly. 'I merely said I couldn't get a confirmation. However, I did get a later call, no doubt placed by a well-paid drunk who was handed a phone after the number was dialled, thus eliminating the identity of the source. The words he obviously repeated are all too familiar. “They're following the money,” he said.'

'Oh, Jesus!' exclaimed Mrs. Vanvlanderen.

'So now we have two crises,' continued Grinell, walking to a white marble telephone on a red-lined marble table against the wall. 'Our weak, ubiquitous Secretary of State is on his way to Cyprus to sign an agreement that could cripple the defence industry, and one of our own is linked to Palestinian terrorists… In a way, I wish to heaven I knew how Andrew did it. We may be far clumsier.' He dialled as the widow and the scientist watched. 'The switch from Design Six to Design Twelve, Mediterranean, is confirmed,' said the attorney into the phone. 'And prepare the medical unit, if you will, please.'