The Icarus Agenda

'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—’