“I like it fine,” he’d said.
From the eyeglass case came brown-tinted lenses, also bought in a Rio Zona Sul boutique. He examined himself in the mirror.
No one will be looking for me there, anyway. No one will associate one more guest with the man on TV.
In the bedroom Tom hung up the two sets of clothes he would need tomorrow. Lightweight sharply creased lime-green trousers. Short-sleeved pink Lacoste shirt and white Reeboks. Brooks Brothers pressed dark blue sports jacket and crisp gray slacks and loafers. On a night table he laid the printed invitation that he’d received in Seth Pryce’s PO box, its words in gold script.
Come celebrate with us!
He’d need to carry weapons and ammunition. But hiding them should be no problem, considering where he was going.
In Atlanta, a perfect sunny day, hot, skies clear. For tomorrow, he saw on TV, the forecast was the same.
The announcer grinned. “Wear sunblock today! Protect yourselves, my friends!”
THIRTY-ONE
In the old days, only a year ago, Eddie and I had no trouble getting into places if we needed to ask questions. We showed ID. We worked for a national agency. If we met resistance, the Admiral or an FBI official made a call, and we got in, fast.
I’d figured that now that we were off the task force, it would be harder to see important people, but I’d not accounted for Stuart’s status in Manhattan. As head of the Columbia program, he moved effortlessly through social strata accessible to me until now only by threat or ID.
“We’re here to see Chairman Riverside,” Stuart told the lobby guard. “We have an appointment.”
The glass tower occupied a corner at 6th Avenue and 50th Street, a block from Broadway. The sun-drenched atrium featured artwork commissioned in the 1920s by a railroad titan who hired a Mexican communist to paint murals on his walls.
All around us, in vivid colors, Spanish conquistadores slaughtered Aztec Indians, who morphed into white-clad farmers ridden down by Emperor Maximilian’s French dragoons. The French were replaced by Mexican soldiers, shooting at Zapata’s peasant uprising. On the fourth wall impoverished railroad workers lay tracks in scrub desert, then trudged home to shacks where peasant women rolled tortillas and fried beans, and small children slept.
Maybe tortillas were the connection to the food company. Frozen tortillas were a product line.
The elevator that whisked us high above the city featured an inset TV showing Wall Street news; stocks of makers of insecticides and antimalaria medicines were up, up, up. The door opened directly into a waiting room featuring a striking canvas, a cubist Picasso copy.
Stuart nudged me. “It’s not a copy, Joe.”
Up until now I’d appreciated Stuart’s medical knowledge but in security matters, thought him naive. He was a do-gooder, and I admired him for that. But hours ago I’d watched him pick up a phone and get through on the chairman’s private line to a secretary who said that George Riverside IV was busy. Stuart responded pleasantly, “Tell him that this is important, not a social call.”
I stared at Stuart. Social?
“He’s a big donor,” Stuart said now as we sat in a glass waiting room, sipping bottled water. “Allison and I sit at his table at the Explorers Club dinner every year. You should join, Joe. Tarantula appetizers. Yum!”
“I’m not a joiner.” I figured we’d have a long wait.
“Haven’t you figured out yet that it’s not about that?”
“What is it about, then?”
Stuart smiled with his mild blue eyes. Except now those eyes were looking more savvy. “Joe, two kinds of people join the Explorers Club. Those who do things. And those who want to be near people who do things. They donate money. They bankroll expeditions. Nice folks. They adventure by proxy. The truth, Joe? They don’t just donate to a cause. They donate, you might say, to envy.”
“And they envy you?”
Stuart shrugged. He disappeared for months into the wilds of New Guinea. He worked cholera outbreaks in Haiti. He was a soft-spoken presence who’d spent four months on the Orinoco in search of a lost Russian expedition once. He’d contracted so many tropical illnesses over the years that he ate a restricted diet. It had taken him almost a decade of hard work to convince Harvard to start up the first Wilderness Program. Columbia had followed.
How the hell did I ever underestimate him, I thought, just because his business card lacks the word Government?
Stuart said, “I do it because I like it. I like them. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value in it. So join. Every bit helps.”
“Stuey!” a voice exclaimed as a man rushed into the waiting room. “Where the hell were you Monday for squash?”
“The FBI was already here, asking about Tol-e-Khomri!” Riverside told us, minutes later, in his office.
“Oh, we know that,” Stuart lied. “We just want to go over a couple things again, Legs.”
Legs? I thought. Squash? Stuart?
Riverside looked to be a fit white man in his mid-forties; lanky and broad shouldered, strong jaw, intelligent eyes, oddly dirty fingernails. He’d made sure that we knew that his desk was made of sustainably grown tropical hardwood, and he’d personally served us sustainably harvested guava juice bottled by his company. ONE DOLLAR OF EVERY PURCHASE GOES TO SOUTH PACIFIC FARMERS! the label said. George was showing off. The company sold pork rinds, jelly candy, and beef jerky, too.
Stuart told me, “George is pigeon-toed, Joe, but he moves around that squash court like a cockamamy animal.”
George laughed. “That’s because you run me ragged, Stuey. No rest for the weary, Joe.”
“Oh, you’re far from weary, George.”
I wanted to shout questions as George and “Stuey” laughed. The FBI had been here? Eddie and I were used to coming in and firing out questions. Instead, in the last few minutes, I’d learned that George and family enjoyed the Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess, that a fellow squash player nicknamed “Hands Christian” had broken a leg while skiing in Chile last week, that Stuart and his wife should “come along on the Rainforest Alliance trip to Ecuador. It will be fun on that little boat in the Galápagos. We donate there, you know. Preservation.”
“Speaking of your good work, George…”
And finally, we were talking about Tol-e-Khomri.
George told us, “Two agents showed up, as I recall, after terrorists shot up that camp. I gave them our report on what happened. I had Bob Welch up here. He’s in charge of our charity work. He spent hours with them.”
Stuart asked, “Do you remember the report?”
“Not every detail. Why?”
Stuart glanced at me. Pick up the ball, he meant.
“Well, sir,” I began.
“Call me George, please.”
“George, there’s a correlation between the black malaria attacks and cities where you operate.”
The color drained slowly from George Riverside’s face. He looked at Stuart as if hoping that Stuart would disavow what I’d said, but Stuart nodded. The link was clear if you thought about it. But Riverside had not thought of it until now. Maybe he operated in so many cities that the correlation had been hidden. Maybe the fact that the attacks had not been directly against his people, but whole cities, had disguised what they were really about.