The Matarese Circle (69 page)

He drove around the hill. The ten-foot-high wrought-iron fence was continuous; every several hundred yards, small lean-to shelters were built into the earth of the hill like miniature bunkers, and within a number of them he could see uniformed men sitting and standing, smoking cigarettes and talking on telephones.

It was the seat of the Matarese, the home of the Shepherd Boy.

At 9:30 he drove out to Logan Airport. He had told Amos Lafollet to get off the plane and head directly to
the dimly lit bar across from the main newsstand. The booths were so dark it was nearly impossible to see a face five feet in front of one, the only light a series of flashes from an enormous television screen on the wall.

Bray slid into the black plastic booth, adjusting his eyes to the lack of light. For an instant he thought of another booth in another dimly lit room and another man. London, the Connaught Hotel, Roger Symonds. He pushed the memory from his mind; it was an obstacle. He could not handle obstacles right now.

He saw the student walk through the bar’s entrance. Scofield stood up briefly; Amos saw him and came over. There was a manila envelope in his hand and Bray felt a quick acceleration in his chest.

“I gather everything went all right,” he said.

“I had to sign for it.”

“You
what?
” Bray was sick; it was such a little thing, an obvious thing, and he had not thought of it.

“Take it easy. I wasn’t brought up on 135th Street and Lenox Avenue for nothing.”

“What name did you use?” asked Scofield, his pulse receding.

“R. M. Nixon. The receptionist was real nice. She thanked me.”

“You’ll go far, Amos.”

“I intend to.”

“I hope this’ll help.” Bray handed his envelope across the table.

The student held it between his fingers. “Hey, man, you know you don’t really have to do this.”

“Of course, I do. We had an agreement.”

“I know that. But I’ve got an idea you’ve gone through a lot of sweat for a lot of people you don’t know.”

“And a number that I know very well. The money’s incidental. Use it.” Bray opened his attaché case and slipped the X-ray envelope inside—right above a file folder containing Joshua Appleton’s X-ray from twenty-five years ago. “Remember, you never knew my name and you never went to Washington. If you’re
ever
asked, you merely ran some forgotten names through a computer for a man who never identified himself.
Please.
Remember that.”

“That’s going to be tough.”

“Why?” Scofield was alarmed.

“How am I going to dedicate my first textbook to you?”

Bray smiled. “You’ll think of something. Goodbye,” he said, getting out of the booth. “I’ve got an hour’s drive and several more of sleep to catch up on.”

“Stay well, man.”

“Thanks, professor.”

Scofield stood in the dentist’s waiting room on Main Street in Andover, Massachusetts. The name of the dentist had been supplied—happily, even enthusiastically—by the Nurse’s Office of Andover Academy. Anything for Andover’s illustrious—and generous—alumnus, and by extension the Senator’s aide, of course. Naturally, the dentist was not the same man who had tended Senator Appleton when he was a student; the practice had been taken over by a nephew a number of years ago, but there was no question that the present doctor would cooperate. The Nurse’s Office would call him and let him know the Senator’s aide was on the way over.

Bray had counted on a psychology as old as the dentist’s drill. Two young boys who were close friends and away at prep school might not see eye-to-eye on every issue, but they would share the same dentist.

Yes, both boys had gone to the very same man in Andover.

The dentist came out of the door that led to a storeroom, half-glasses perched on the edge of his nose. In his hand were two sheets of cardboard, small negatives embedded in each. X-rays of two Andover students taken over thirty years ago.

“Here you are, Mr. Vickery,” said the dentist, holding out the X-rays. “
Damn
, will you look at the primitive way they used to mount these things! One of these days I’ve got to clean out that mess back there, but then you never know. Last year I had to identify an old patient of my uncle’s who was burned to death in that fire over in Boxford.”

“Thank you very much,” said Scofield, accepting the X-ray sheets. “By the way, doctor, I know you’re rushed but I wonder if you’d mind one more favor? I’ve got two newer sets here of both men and I’ve got to match
them with the ones you’re lending us. Of course, I can get someone to do it, but if you’ve got a minute.”

“Sure. Won’t even take a minute. Let me have them.” Bray removed the two sets of X-rays from their envelopes; one stolen from the Massachusetts General Hospital, the other obtained in Washington. He had placed white tape over the names. He gave them to the dentist who carried them to a lamp and held them in sequence against the glare of the light bulb above the shade. “There you are,” he said, holding the matching X-rays separately in each hand.

Scofield put each set in a different envelope. “Thanks again, doctor.”

“Anytime.” The dentist walked rapidly back into his office. He was a man in a hurry.

Bray sat in the front seat of the car, his breathing erratic, perspiration on his forehead. He opened the envelopes and took out the X-ray sheets.

He pulled off the small strips of tape that covered the names.

He had been right. The awesome fragment was irrevocably in place, the proof in his hand.

The man who sat in the Senate, the man who unquestionably would be the next President of the United States, was not Joshua Appleton, IV.

He was Julian Guiderone, son of the Shepherd Boy.

Scofield drove southeast to Salem. Delay was irrelevant now, previous schedules to be thrown away. He had everything to gain by moving as fast as he could, as long as every move was the right move, every decision the perceptive decision. He had his cannons and his nuclear bomb—his bill-of-particulars and the X-rays. It was a question now of mounting his weapons properly,
using
them, not only to blow the Matarese out of existence but first—above all,
first
—to find Antonia and force them to release her. And Taleniekov, if he was still alive.

Which meant he had to create a deception of his own. All deceptions were based on illusion, and the illusion he had to convey was that Beowulf Agate could be had, his cannons and his bomb defused, his assault stopped, the man himself destroyed. To do this he had to take the initial position of strength … the weakness to follow.

The hostage strategy would not wash any longer; he would not be able to get near Appleton. The Shepherd Boy would not permit it, the prize of the White House too great to place in jeopardy. Without the man there was no prize. So his position of strength lay in the X-rays. It was imperative he establish the fact that only a single set of X-rays existed, that duplicates were out of the question. Spectro analysis would reveal any such duplicating process and Beowulf Agate was not a fool; he would expect an analysis to be made. He wanted the girl, he wanted the Russian; the X-rays could be had for them.

There would be a subtle omission in the mechanics of the exchange, a seeming weakness the enemy would pounce on; but it would be calculated, no weakness at all. The Matarese would be forced to go through with the exchange. A Corsican girl and a Soviet intelligence officer for X-rays that showed incontrovertibly that the man sitting in the Senate, on his way to the presidency, was not Joshua Appleton, IV—legend of Korea, politician extraordinary—but instead, a man supposedly buried in 1954 in the Swiss village of Col du Pillon.

He drove down toward Salem harbor, drawn as he was always drawn, toward the water, not precisely sure what he was looking for until he saw it: a shield-shaped sign on the lawn of a small hotel.
Efficiency Suites
. It made sense. Rooms with a refrigerator and cooking facilities. There’d be no stranger eating in restaurants; it was not the tourist season in Salem.

He parked the car in a lot covered with white gravel and bordered by a white picket fence, the gray water of the harbor across the way. He carried his attaché case and travel bag inside, registered under an innocuous name, and asked for a suite.

“Will payment be made by credit card, sir?” asked the young woman behind the counter.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You didn’t check off the method of payment. If it’s
a credit card, our policy is to run the card through the machine.”

“I see. No, actually, I’m one of those strange people who use real money. One man’s fight against plastic. Why don’t I pay you for a week in advance, I doubt I’ll stay any longer.” He gave her the money. “I assume there’s a grocery store nearby.”

“Yes, sir. Just up the street.”

“What about other stores? I’ve a number of things to get.”

“There’s the Shopping Plaza about ten blocks west. I’m sure you’ll find everything you need there.”

Bray hoped so; he was counting on it.

He was taken to his “suite,” which was in effect one large room with a pull-out bed and divider that concealed the smallest stove this side of a hot plate and a refrigerator. But the room looked out over the harbor; it was fine. He opened his attaché case, took out the photograph he had removed from the wall in Mrs. Appleton’s tomb for her son, and stared at it. Two young men, tall, muscular, neither to be mistaken for the other, but enough alike for an unknown surgeon somewhere in Switzerland to sculpt one into the other. A young American doctor, paid to sign the medical authorization of discharge, then killed for security. A mother maintained as an alcoholic, kept at a distance, but paraded whenever it was convenient and fruitful to do so. Who knew a son better than his mother? Who in America would argue with, much less confront, Mrs. Joshua Appleton, III?

Scofield sat down and added a page to the seventeen in his bill-of-particulars. Doctors:
Nathaniel Crawford and Thomas Belford. A Swiss physician deprogrammed from a computer; a young plastic surgeon dead suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage. Three nurses drowned off Marblehead. Gstaad; a coffin in Col Du Pillon; X-rays—one set from Boston, one set from Washington, two from Main Street, Andover, Massachusetts. Two different men merged into one, and the one was a lie. A fraud was about to become President of the United States
.

Bray finished writing, and walked to the window that looked out on the still, cold waters of Salem Harbor. The dilemma was clearer than it had ever been: they had traced the Matarese from its roots in Corsica through a
federation of multinational corporations that encircled the globe; they knew it financed terror the world over, encouraged the chaos that resulted from assassinations and kidnappings, killing in the streets and aircraft blown out of the skies. They understood all this but they did not know why.

Why?

The reason would have to wait. Nothing mattered but the deception that was Senator Joshua Appleton, IV. For once the son of the Shepherd Boy reached the presidency, the White House belonged to the Matarese.

What better residence for a
consigliere
.…

Keep breathing, my old enemy
.

Toni, my love. Stay alive. Keep your mind
.

Scofield went back to his attaché case on the table, opened a side flap and took out a single-edge razor blade that was wedged down between the leather. He then held the two matted sheets of cardboard with the embedded X-ray slides of two Andover students thirty-five years ago and placed them on the table, one on top of the other. There were four rows of negatives, each with four slides, a total of sixteen on each card. Small red-bordered labels identifying the patients and the dates of the X-rays were affixed to the upper left-hand corners. He checked carefully to see that the borders of the cardboard sheets matched; they did. He pressed a manila envelope down on the top sheets between the first and second rows of X-rays, took the razor blade and began to cut, slicing so that the blade went through both sheets of X-rays. The top row fell clean, two strips of four X-ray negatives.

The names of the patients and dates of entry—typed on the small red-bordered labels more than thirty-five years ago were on the strips; the simplest chemical analysis would confirm their authenticity.

Bray doubted that any such analysis would be made on the new labels he would purchase and stick on the remaining two sheets with 12 X-rays each; it would be a waste of time. The X-rays themselves would be compared with new X-rays of the man who called himself Joshua Appleton, IV. Julian Guiderone. That was all the proof the Matarese would need.

He took the strips and the larger sheets of negatives, knelt down and carefully buffed the edges of the cuts
across the rug. Within five minutes each of the edges was rubbed smooth, soiled just enough to match the age of the original borders.

He got up and put everything back in his attaché case. It was time to return to Andover, to put the plan in motion.

“Mr. Vickery, is something wrong?” asked the dentist, coming out of his office, still harried, three afternoon patients reading magazines, glancing up in mild irritation.

“I’m afraid I forgot something. May I speak with you for a second?”

“Come on in here,” said the dentist, ushering Scofield into a small workroom, the shelves lined with impressions of teeth mounted on moveable clamps. He lit a cigarette from a pack on the counter. “I don’t mind telling you it’s been one hell of a day. What’s the matter?”

“The laws, actually.” Bray smiled, opening his attaché case and taking out the two envelopes. “HR Seven-Four-Eight-Five.”

“What the hell is that?”

“A new congressional regulation, part of the post-Watergate morality. Whenever a government employee borrows property from any source, for whatever purpose, a full description of said property must be accompanied by a signed authorization.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m sorry, doctor. The Senator’s a stickler for these things.” Scofield took the X-rays from the envelopes. “If you’ll re-examine these, call in your nurse and give her a description, she can type the authorization on your letterhead and I’ll get out of here.”