The Matarese Circle (63 page)

On the floor by the table were his attaché case and travel bag, positioned—neatly—beside each other the way a steward or a bellboy might position them. And folded—neatly—over the travel bag was his dark blue raincoat. A
guest was prepared for departure.

Two visitors had already departed. Antonia was gone, Taleniekov gone.

The bedroom door was open, the bed fully made up, the bedside table devoid of the water pitcher and the ashtray which an hour ago had been filled with half-smoked cigarettes—testimony to an anxious, pain-stricken night and day.

Silence. Nothing.

His eyes were suddenly drawn to the one thing—again on the floor—that was not in keeping with the neatness of the room, and he felt sick. On the rug by the left side of the table was a circle of blood—a jagged circle, still moist, still glistening. And then he looked up. A small pane of glass had been blown out of the window.

“
Toni!
” The scream was his; it broke the silence, but he could not help himself. He could not think, he could not move.

The glass shattered; a second window pane blew out of its wooden frame and he heard the whine of a bullet as it imbedded itself in the wall behind him. He dropped to the floor.

The telephone rang, its jangling bell somehow proof of insanity! He crawled to the desk below the sightline of the window.

“Toni?… 
Toni!
” He was screaming, crying, yet he had not reached the desk, had not touched the phone.

He raised his hand and pulled the instrument to the floor beside him. He picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.

“We can always find you, Beowulf,” said the precise English voice on the other end of the line. “I told you that when we spoke before.”

“What have you
done with her?
” shouted Bray. “Where
is she?
”

“Yes, we thought that might be your reaction. Rather strange coming from you, isn’t it? You don’t even inquire about the Serpent.”

“
Stop
it! Tell me!”

“I intend to. Incidentally, you had a grave lapse of judgment—again strange for one so experienced. We merely had to follow your friend Symonds from Belgravia. A
quick perusal of the hotel registry—as well as the time and the method of registering—gave us your room.”

“What have you
done
with her?… 
Them?
”

“The Russian’s wounded, but he may survive. At least sufficiently long for our purposes.”

“The
girl!
”

“She’s on her way to an airfield, as is the Serpent.”

“Where are you taking her?”

“We think you know. It was the last thing you wrote down before you named the Corsican. A city in the state of Massachusetts.”

“Oh, God.…
Symonds?
”

“Dead, Beowulf. We have the notebook. It was in his car. For all intents and purposes, Roger Symonds, MI-Six, has disappeared. In light of his schedule, he may even be tied in with the terrorists who massacred the Foreign Secretary of England and his family.”

“You … 
bastards
.”

“No. Merely professionals. I’d think you’d appreciate that. If you want the girl back you’ll follow us. You see, there’s someone who wants to meet with you.”

“Who?”

“Don’t be a fool,” said the faceless messenger curtly.

“In Boston?”

“I’m afraid we can’t help you get there, but we have every confidence in you. Register at the Ritz Carlton Hotel under the name of … Vickery. Yes, that’s a good name, such a benign sound.”

“Boston,” said Bray, exhausted.

Again there was the sudden shattering of glass; a third window pane blew out of its frame.

“That shot,” said the voice on the phone, “is a symbol of our good faith. We could have killed you with the first.”

He reached the coast of France, the same way he had left it four days ago; by motor launch at night. The trip to
Paris took longer than anticipated; the drone he had expected to use wanted no part of him. The word was out, the price for his dead body too high, the punishment for helping Beowulf Agate too severe. The man owed Bray; he preferred to walk away.

Scofield found an off-duty
gendarme
in a bar in Boulogne-sur-Mer; the negotiations were swift. He needed a fast ride to Paris, to Orly Airport. To the
gendarme
, the payment was staggering; Bray reached Orly by daybreak. By 9:00
A.M
., a Mr. Edmonton was on the first Air Canada flight to Montreal. The plane left the ground and he turned his thoughts to Antonia.

They would use her to trap him, but there was no way they would permit her to stay alive once the trap had closed. Any more than they would let Taleniekov live once they had learned everything he knew. Even the Serpent could not withstand injections of scopolamine or sodium amytal; no man could block his memory or prohibit the flow of information once the gates of recall were chemically pried open.

These were the things he had to accept, and having accepted them, base his moves on their reality. He would not grow old with Antonia Gravet; there would be no years of peace. Once he understood this, there was nothing left but to try to reverse the conclusion, knowing that the chances of doing so were remote. Simply put, since there was absolutely nothing to lose, conversely there was no risk not worth taking, no strategy too outlandish or outrageous to consider.

The key was Joshua Appleton, that remained constant. Was it possible that the Senator was such a consummate actor that he had been able to deceive so many so well for so long? Apparently it was so; one trained from birth to achieve a single goal, with unlimited money and talent available to him, could probably conceal anything. But the gap that needed filling was found in the stories of Josh Appleton, Marine combat officer, Korea. They were well known, publicized by campaign managers, emphasized by the candidate’s reluctance to discuss them, other than to praise the men who had served with him.

Captain Joshua Appleton had been decorated for bravery under fire on five separate occasions, but the medals were only symbols, the tributes of his men paeans of genuine
devotion. Josh Appleton was an officer dedicated to the proposition that no soldier should take a risk he would not take himself; and no infantryman, regardless of how badly he was wounded or how seemingly hopeless the situation, was to be left to the enemy if there was any chance at all to get him back. With such tenets, he was not always the best of officers, but he was the best of men. He continuously exposed himself to the severest punishment to save a private’s life, or draw fire away from a corporal’s squad. He had been wounded twice dragging men out of the hills of Panmunjom, and nearly lost his life at Chosan when he had crawled through enemy lines to direct a helicopter rescue.

After the war, when he was home, Appleton had faced another struggle as dangerous as any he had experienced in Korea. A near fatal accident on the Massachusetts Turnpike. His car had swerved over the divider, crashing into an onrushing truck, the injuries sustained from head to legs so punishing the doctors at Massachusetts General had about given him up for dead. When bulletins were issued about this decorated son of a prominent family, men came from all over the country. Mechanics, bus drivers, farmhands, and clerks; the soldiers who had served under “Captain Josh.”

For two days and nights they had kept vigil, the more demonstrative praying openly, others simply sitting with their thoughts or reminiscing quietly with their former comrades. And when the crisis had passed and Appleton had been taken off the critical list, these men went home. They had come because they had wanted to come; they had left not knowing whether they had made any difference, but hoping that they had. Captain Joshua Appleton, IV, USMCR, was deserving of that hope.

This was the gap that Bray could neither fill nor understand. The captain who had risked his life so frequently, so openly for the sake of other men; how could those risks be reconciled with a man programmed since birth to become the President of the United States? How could repeated exposure to death be justified to the Matarese?

Somehow they had been, for there was no longer any doubt where Senator Joshua Appleton stood. The man who would be elected President of the United States before
the year was over was inextricably tied to a conspiracy as dangerous as any in American history.

At Orly, Scofield picked up the Paris edition of the
Herald-Tribune
to see if the news of the Waverly massacre had broken; it had not. But there was something else, on the second page. It was another follow-up story concerning Trans-Communications’ holdings in Verachten, including a partial list of the Boston conglomerate’s board of directors. The third name on the roster was the Senator from Massachusetts.

Joshua Appleton was not only a
consigliere
of the Matarese, he was the sole descendant of that guest list seventy years ago in Porto Vecchio to become a true inheritor.

“
Mesdames et messieurs, s’il vous plaît. À votre gauche, Les Illes de la Manche
.…” The voice of the pilot droned from the aircraft’s speaker. They were passing the Channel Islands; in six hours they would reach the coast of Nova Scotia, an hour later Montreal. And four hours after that, Bray would cross the U.S. border south of Lacolle on the Richelieu River, into the waters of Lake Champlain.

In hours the final madness would begin. He would live or he would die. And if he could not live in peace with Toni, without the shadow of Beowulf Agate in front of him or behind him, he did not care to live any longer. He was filled with … emptiness. If the awful void could be erased, replaced with the simple delight of being with another human being, then whatever years he had left were most welcome.

If not, to hell with them.

Boston.

There’s someone who wants to meet with you.

Who? Why?

To make you a
consigliere
of the Matarese … consider what you bring to such an organization
.

It was not hard to define. Taleniekov was right. There were no shocks out of Moscow, but there were astounding revelations to be found in Washington. Beowulf Agate knew where the bodies were, and how and why they no longer breathed. He could be invaluable.

They want you. If they can’t have you, they’ll kill you
. So be it; he would be no prize for the Matarese.

Bray closed his eyes; he needed sleep. There would be little in the days ahead.

Rain splattered against the windshield in continuous sheets, streaking to the right under the force of the wind that blew off the Atlantic over the coastal highway. Scofield had rented the car in Portland, Maine, with a driver’s license and credit card he had never used before. Soon he would be in Boston but not in the way the Matarese expected. He would not race halfway across the world and announce his arrival by registering at the Ritz Carlton as Vickery, only to wait for the Matarese’s next move. A man in panic would, a man who felt the only way to save the life of someone he deeply loved would—but he was beyond panic, he had accepted total loss, therefore he could hold back and conceive of his own strategy.

He would be in Boston, in his enemy’s den, but his enemy would not know it. The Ritz Carlton would receive two telegrams spaced a day apart. The first would arrive tomorrow requesting a suite for Mr. B. A. Vickery of Montreal, arriving the following day. The second would be sent the next afternoon, stating that Mr. Vickery had been delayed, his arrival now anticipated two days later. There would be no address for Vickery, only telegraph offices on Montreal’s King and Market Streets, and no request for confirmations, the assumption here being that someone in Boston would make sure rooms were available.

Only the two telegrams, sent from Montreal; the Matarese had little choice but to believe he was still in Canada. What they could not know—suspect surely, but not be certain—was that he had used a drone to send them. He had. He had contacted a man, a felony-prone
séparatiste
he had known before, and met him at the airport, giving him the two handwritten messages on telegraph forms along with a sum of money and instructions when and from where to send them. Should the Matarese phone Montreal for immediate confirmations of origin, they would find the forms written in Bray’s handwriting.

He had three days and one night to operate within Matarese territory, to learn everything he could about Trans-Communications and its hierarchy. To find another flaw, one significant enough to summon Senator Joshua Appleton, IV, to Boston—on
his
terms. In panic.

So much to learn, so little time.

Scofield let his mind wander back to everyone he had ever known in Boston and Cambridge—both as student
and professional. Among that crowd of fits and misfits there had to be someone who could help him.

He passed a road sign telling him he had left the town of Marblehead; he’d be in Boston in less than thirty minutes.

It was 5:35, the horns of impatient drivers blaring on all sides as the taxi inched its way down Boylston Street’s crowded shopping district. He had parked the rented car in the farthest reaches of the Prudential underground lot, available should he need it, but not subject to the vagaries of weather or vandalism. He was on his way to Cambridge; a name had come into focus. A man who had spent twenty-five years teaching corporate law at the Harvard School of Business. Bray had never met him; there was no way the Matarese could make him a target.

It was strange, thought Bray, as the cab clamored over the ribs of the Longfellow Bridge, that both he and Taleniekov had been brought back—however briefly—to those places where it had begun for each of them.

Two students, one in Leningrad, one in Cambridge, with a certain, not dissimilar talent for foreign languages.

Was Taleniekov still alive? Or was he dead or dying somewhere in Boston?

Toni was alive; they’d keep her alive … for a while.

Don’t think about them. Don’t think about her now! There is no hope. Not really. Accept it, live with it. Then do the best you can.…