The appearance of legitimacy.
Sam Buonoventura.
Not that Sam wasn’t legitimate: He was. He was one of the best construction engineers in the business. But Sam had followed the sun so long he had blind spots. He was a fifty-year-old professional drifter, a City College graduate from Tremont Avenue, in the Bronx, who had found a life of instant gratification in the warmer climes.
A brief tour of duty in the Army Corps of Engineers had convinced Buonoventura that there was a sweeter, more generous world beyond the borders of the United States, preferably south of the Keys. All one had to be was good—good in a job that was part of a larger job in which a great deal of money was invested. And during the fifties and sixties, the construction explosion in Latin America and the Caribbean was such that it might have been created for someone like Sam. He built a reputation among corporations and governments as the building tyrant who got things done in the field.
Once having studied blueprints, labor pools, and budgets, if Sam told his employers that a hotel or an airport or a dam would be operational within a given period of time, he was rarely in error beyond four percent. He was also an architect’s dream, which meant that he did not consider himself an architect.
Noel had worked with Buonoventura on two jobs outside the country, the first in Costa Rica, where if it had not been for Sam, Holcroft would have lost his life. The engineer had insisted that the well-groomed, courteous architect from the classy side of Manhattan learn to use a handgun, not just a hunting rifle from Abercrombie & Fitch. They were building a postal complex in the back country, and it was a far cry from the cocktail lounges of the Plaza and the Waldorf, and from San José. The architect had thought the weekend exercise ridiculous, but courtesy demanded compliance. Courtesy, and Buonoventura’s booming voice.
By the end of the following week, however, the architect was profoundly grateful. Thieves had come down from the hills to steal construction explosives. Two men had raced through the camp at night, they’d crashed into Noel’s shack as he slept. When they realized the explosives were not there one man had run outside, shouting instructions to his accomplices. «¡Matemos el gringo!»
But the gringo understood the language. He reached his gun—the handgun provided by Sam Buonoventura—and shot his would-be killer.
Sam had only one comment: «Goddamn. In some cultures I’d have to take care of you for the rest of your life.»
Noel reached Buonoventura through a shipping company in Miami. He was in the Dutch Antilles, in the town of Willemstad, on the island of Curaçao.
«How the hell are you, Noley?» Sam shouted, over the phone. «Christ, it must be four, five years! How’s your pistol arm?»
«Haven’t used it since the colinas, and never expect to use it again. How are things with you?»
«These mothers got money to burn down here, so I’m lighting a few matches. You looking for work?»
«No. A favor.»
«Name it.»
«I’m going to be out of the country for a number of months on private business. I want a reason for not being in New York, for not being available. A reason that people won’t question. I’ve got an idea, Sam, and wondered if you could help me make it work.»
«If we’re both thinking the same thing, sure I can.»
They were thinking the same thing. It was not out of the ordinary for long-range projects in faraway places to employ consulting architects, men whose names would not appear on schematics or blueprints but whose skills would be used. The practice was generally confined to those areas where the hiring of native talent was a question of local pride. The inherent problem, of course, was that all too frequently the native talent lacked sufficient training and experience. Investors covered their risks by employing highly skilled outside professionals who corrected and amended the work of the locals, seeing the projects through to completion.
«Have you got any suggestions?» Noel asked.
«Hell, yes. Take your pick of half a dozen underdeveloped countries. Africa, South America, even some of the islands here in the Antilles and the Grenadines. The internationals are moving in like spiders, but the locals are still sensitive. The consulting jobs are kept separate and quiet; graft is soaring.»
«I don’t want a job, Sam. I want a cover. Someplace I can name, someone I can mention who’ll back me up.»
«Why not me? I’ll be buried in this motherlode for most of the year. Maybe more. I’ve got two marinas and a full-scale yacht club to go to when the hotel’s finished. I’m your man, Noley.»
«That’s what I was hoping,»
«That’s what I figured. I’ll give you the particulars and you let me know where I can reach you in case any of your high-society friends want to throw a tea dance for you.»
Holcroft placed his two draftsmen and his secretary in new jobs by Wednesday. As he had suspected, it was not difficult; they were good people. He made fourteen telephone calls to project-development executives at companies where his designs were under consideration, astonished to learn that of the fourteen, he was the leading contender in eight. Eight! If all came through, the fees would have totaled more than he had earned during the past five years.
But not two million dollars; he kept that in the back of his mind. And if it was not in the back of his mind, the survivors of Wolfsschanze were.
The telephone-answering service was given specific instructions. Holcroft, Incorporated, was unavailable at the time for architectural projects. The company was involved in an overseas commission of considerable magnitude. If the caller would leave his name and number …
For those who pressed for further information, a post-office box in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, under the name of Samuel Buonoventura, Limited, was listed. And, for the few who insisted on a telephone number, Sam’s was to be given.
Noel had agreed to phone Buonoventura once a week; he would do the same with the answering service.
By Friday morning, he had an uneasy feeling about his decision. He was taking himself out of a garden he had cultivated to walk into an unfamiliar forest.
Nothing is as it was for you. Nothing can ever be the same.
Suppose he could not find the Von Tiebolt children. Suppose they were dead, their remains no more than graves in a Brazilian cemetery? They had disappeared five years ago in Rio de Janeiro; what made him think he could make them reappear? And if he could not, would the survivors of Wolfsschanze strike? He was afraid. But fear itself did not cover everything, thought Holcroft as he walked to the corner of Seventy-third Street and Third Avenue. There were ways to handle fear. He could take the Geneva document to the authorities, to the State Department, and tell them what he knew of Peter Baldwin and Ernst Manfredi and a doorman named Jack. He could expose the massive theft of thirty years ago, and grateful thousands over the world would see to it that he was protected.
That was the sanest thing to do, but somehow sanity and self-protection were not so important. Not now.
There was a man in agony thirty years ago. And that man was his rationale.
He hailed a cab, struck by an odd thought, one he knew was in the deep recesses of his imagination. It was the «something else» that drove him into the unfamiliar forest.
He was assuming a guilt that was not his. He was taking on the sins of Heinrich Clausen.
Amends must be made.
«Six-thirty Fifth Avenue, please,» he said to the driver as he climbed into the cab. It was the address of the Brazilian Consulate.