The Talbot Odyssey

by Nelson DeMille

  Before he could reply, their number flashed in red lights on the large indicator board and they walked quickly to the desk. Katherine picked up a massive green leatherbound volume. They looked at the gold embossed letters on the cover.

  Abrams said, “Graecum est—non potest legere. It’s Greek to me.”

  Katherine looked at him. “Oh, I’d hoped you weren’t going to say that.”

  “Sorry. Seemed appropriate.”

  “Well, you don’t need Greek to read the title—He Odysseiatou. It’s Homer’s Odyssey.” She opened the book and flipped through the pages. The text, too, was in classical Greek, and there were numerous markings in the margins and a few odd scraps of paper that she left in place.

  Abrams said, “Did Arnold read Greek?”

  “I saw a Greek book on his desk once. That’s one of the reasons I thought he might not be a clerk sergeant. I always suspected he was a ranking intelligence officer, which would indicate that the files had more importance than some of us thought.”

  Abrams watched her examining the book and said, “The clue is not that particular book. The clue, if there is one, has to be the title, The Odyssey. Or the author, Homer.” He thought a moment. “Do those names have any significance to you? Someone’s code name?”

  “No . . .”

  “How about the protagonist, Odysseus, or by his Latin name, Ulysses?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then,” said Abrams, “perhaps the plot . . . the story line. Odysseus, after the fall of Troy, sets sail for home. . . . He meets with misadventures . . . Circe, Sirens . . . and all that. He’s presumed dead, but ten years later he returns. Is that about it?”

  “Basically . . . then there’s the end of the story . . . after ten years of war and another ten of wanderings, his wife Penelope doesn’t recognize him. But he’s left his bow at home and only he had the ability to draw it. He shoots an arrow through twelve axheads to prove to her it’s he.” She thought, then shook her head. “But I don’t know what Arnold had on his mind.”

  “Well, you’re familiar with the cast of characters. Think about it. A piece of advice—think about it alone.”

  She nodded, then looked at her watch. “I have about an hour before lunch. I’ll go on your errands with you.”

  “To Brooklyn? Do you have a passport?”

  “Don’t let Peter’s idiot jokes get to you.”

  Abrams returned the book to the librarian, and began walking toward the card catalog room.

  Katherine fell in beside him. “You handled yourself quite well with him. Ignore him.”

  Abrams thought that to ignore Peter Thorpe was like ignoring a dark shadow at your window. They entered the hall and moved toward the staircase. He said, “I deduce that your things are still at the Lombardy. Why don’t we go there and collect them?”

  She hesitated, then said, “All right. But . . . you can’t go up.”

  “Can you get me up?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps when no one is there. Do you have a key?”

  “No.”

  “Can you try to get me in there?”

  There was a long pause, long enough to indicate to Abrams that her loyalty to Thorpe was not one hundred percent. She said, “I’ll think about that.”

  They walked through the reception area and out onto the sun-splashed library steps where people sat, read, and played radios.

  Abrams said, “How important were those missing files?”

  “Apparently very important or they wouldn’t have murdered Arnold Brin.”

  Abrams lit a cigarette and stared down into Fifth Avenue. “That’s a logical conclusion. But I wonder . . .”

  “Wonder what?”

  “They may know less than we do. They have a secret—Talbot’s identity. We are trying to discover that secret. They can’t know exactly how close we are to their secret. Therefore they’ve got to cover every angle.”

  “Yes . . . you did say Talbot or his friends would kill again.”

  “And again, and again. Half the mob murders in New York are committed to shut someone up who didn’t know anything to begin with. For some organizations it’s easier to blast away at all possible sources of danger, rather than approach the problem rationally. I, for instance, know very little, yet someone tried to remove me from the equation.”

  “You said you were flattered.”

  “That was glib. Motive is important. Find the motive and you’ll find a suspect.”

  “What’s the motive? Are you a possible source of danger to them?”

  “I keep thinking it was more personal than political.”

  “Personal?”

  Abrams nodded. “Just about my only contact with your friends was last night. Maybe I stepped on someone’s toes at the dance.”

  “That’s very unlikely.”

  “Only in theory. In practice, people who kill, kill for the most unlikely and petty of reasons. When you cross the path of a killer, and you do or say something wrong, he considers you dead meat. You breathe and walk only because he needs a little time to plan your death. He feels incredibly alive knowing he has this power of life and death.”

  “Were we at the same function last night?”

  “As you know, some killers are outwardly charming, wear dinner jackets, and make jokes. But inwardly they are brooding individuals who are very sensitive to imagined insults or perceived threats to their existence. Then they turn psychotic, vengeful, and murderous. This is often manifested by an outward show of cordiality toward the marked victim. Did I meet anyone like that last night?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Abrams threw down his cigarette. “You know, if I could think of someone like that—even if I wasn’t certain—I might follow their rules and protect myself in the most direct manner, by eliminating that threat. I mean, why take a chance?”

  “I think I’d better leave you to your errands.”

  “Yes, well, be careful.”

  She started down the steps, hesitated, then turned. Abrams saw that her face was quite pale. She said, “Look . . . one thing we don’t do in this firm is to make unilateral decisions. Before you . . . take any direct action . . . please consult me.”

  He nodded.

  Katherine turned and walked up Fifth Avenue.

  Abrams sat on the steps beside an old drunk with a bottle of wine. The drunk asked, “Got four bits?”

  Abrams put two quarters in the man’s hand.

  “Thanks, bub.” Then with the easy social grace of derelicts he said, “Name’s John. What’s yours?”

  “Odysseus, a.k.a. Ulysses.”

  “Some name. Got a cigarette?”

  Abrams gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. “You know, John, the human mind is capable of some incredible things. Even your mind, John. Otherwise you wouldn’t have survived so long on the streets.”

  The old drunk nodded. “How about a dollar?”

  “Arnold Brin, I’m told, had a fine mind. I suppose he came here a lot. Like you. He, though, was not a survivor like you. He saw death approaching, but he overcame that basic instinct for survival, and instead of trying to make a break, he had the presence of mind to leave a message that might enable others to survive.”

  The drunk stood, swayed, and sat again. Several radios were playing loudly, each tuned to a different station. A group of students sat under the south lion and read. Abrams leaned toward the drunk. “The Odyssey, John. The story of Odysseus. Boiled down to one line, it’s the tale of a warrior who, after the war is won, and after many years of wandering, returns home from the dead. Now what was Arnold trying to tell us, John?”

  The drunk stood again, and took a tentative step. “Beats me.”

  “You’re not trying, John.”

  “Beats me.” The drunk navigated the steps to the sidewalk.

  Abrams stood. Coming up the steps was a homicide detective whom he recognized. With him was a man who was not a cop, but might be FBI. Well, Abrams thought, the
clue itself was obvious to the trained police eye, but the meaning of the clue would not be obvious to an outsider. Abrams turned away and let the two men pass, then stepped down to the sidewalk and headed south.

  Arnold, he reflected, was writing to the initiated. He was writing in shorthand to people who shared common experiences and thought processes. Or who had learned enough to make all the mental leaps and inferences necessary to draw a conclusion. Abrams, too, had come to a conclusion, had deduced a possible and logical meaning to the message; though as logical as it might be, it was so unlikely, he could not bring himself to believe the answer he had arrived at.

  29

  The old twin-engine Beechcraft leveled off at 15,000 feet. The pilot, Sonny Bellman, checked his airspeed indicator: 160 knots. He spoke into the PA microphone. “Pine Barrens dead ahead. About ten minutes to jump site.”

  Patrick O’Brien nodded to himself. They were about thirty miles west of Toms River, New Jersey. Ten more minutes would bring them over the most desolate area of the barrens.

  O’Brien looked out the fuselage window. The night was clear but not moonless. In fact, the half-moon was quite bright, he saw, lighting up the starry sky and casting a bluish luminescence across the flatlands below. This was not a night for tactical jumps, but a good night for sport. He sat cross-legged and leaned back against the fuselage.

  These Sunday-evening jumps were for him a sort of religious experience, a memorial to the dead, and a cleansing ritual. He’d land in the pristine Pine Barrens, make a small fire, and spend the night thinking, talking to himself, remembering and forgetting. Before dawn he would radio his position to an old friend, a retired farmer, and the man would come out in a motor home and meet him at a designated spot on the closest road.

  O’Brien would shower in the vehicle and change into a suit, having already shaved and eaten breakfast in the woods. Usually he would share a cup of coffee with the old man. By the time they reached the Holland Tunnel, O’Brien would be ready to do battle, an ironic reversal of the wartime sequence of events.

  O’Brien knew in his body, mind, and heart that there would be no more jumps after this summer, and so he savored these dwindling Sunday nights the way an old man savors most everything he knows is coming to an end.

  O’Brien was brought out of his reverie as he heard and felt the decrease in the engine’s power. He sensed they were approaching the 120-knot jump speed.

  His eyes surveyed the dark empty cabin, lit only by the red glow of the no-jump lamp. In the eerie redness he fancied he saw the fuselage walls lined with men and women, hooked to static lines, like nooses, and swathed in black shrouds. Their waxy white faces all turned slowly toward him and he saw their eyes glowing red. O’Brien shut his eyes and shook his head. After some time, he glanced up at the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the cockpit, then looked at his watch. Bellman should be giving him the green light soon.

  O’Brien stood and checked his harness as he moved toward the door. The Beechcraft had been modified for sky divers and the door had been fitted with roller tracks, rather than the conventional swing-out hinges. Also, the normal eight seats had been removed to accommodate about twelve standees. The Beechcraft also had an autopilot so that the pilot could come back and shut the door after a jump, eliminating the necessity of a jumpmaster or copilot.

  O’Brien stood at the door and looked out the small oval window. The craft banked to the left as a cloud passed in front of the moon, throwing a black shadow over the desolate landscape. A light twinkled here and there, and O’Brien was reminded of the signal lights from the partisans on the ground.

  One never knew who was actually controlling those signal lights. Certainly, he thought, one of the most frightening experiences of modern man was taking off from a blacked-out airstrip in a plywood aircraft whose worthiness was always in question; then running a gauntlet of enemy fighters, sometimes running through anti-aircraft fire over occupied territory; then, if you’d made it that far, jumping from the relative safety of the aircraft into a bleak, inhospitable landscape and floating down, much too slowly, to an uncertain reception.

  And having survived those terrors, one had to complete the mission and get the hell out. And for secret agents, capture did not mean POW camp. It meant a concentration camp, torture, interrogation, and nearly always a newly raked sandbox where you knelt for the bullet in the back of the neck. There was, however, always the L-pill.

  Yet, he had survived. Others had not. There was no accounting for it. But having survived, he felt he owed something. He owed it to those who ended their lives in battle, in the torturer’s chamber, with cyanide, or in the sandbox, to continue the mission. Right after the war there had been scores to settle with certain Gestapo and SS gentlemen. But within a year he and his friends had met the ultimate enemy: the Soviet state security forces.

  O’Brien looked at his watch again: ten seventeen. He wondered why Bellman hadn’t flashed the green light. O’Brien rechecked his gear: knife, rucksack, and canteens.

  How many jumps, he thought, can a man make before his luck runs out? Every one, they said, except the last one.

  * * *

  Sonny Bellman turned to the man in the right-hand seat. “Approaching jump time.”

  The man nodded, stood, and squeezed behind his seat to retrieve his parachute pack.

  Bellman said, “I wonder if he’s going to be angry at me.”

  The man said, “Mr. O’Brien enjoys surprises.”

  “He likes to jump alone. But I suppose it’s all right.”

  “No one will mention it to you. I promise.” Peter Thorpe raised a heavy rubber mallet and swung it down viciously at the base of the pilot’s skull. Bellman made a short sound of surprise, then slumped forward toward the control yoke. Thorpe yanked him back, then reached over and engaged the autopilot. The aircraft continued to track straight ahead, holding course, speed, and altitude.

  Thorpe looked at his watch and yawned. “Christ, what a weekend.”

  He strapped on his parachute, opened the door, and entered the cabin.

  The light from the open cockpit door caught O’Brien’s eyes and he turned toward it, squinting. The door closed again, throwing the cabin in near darkness except for the single red light.

  Thorpe moved wordlessly toward O’Brien.

  O’Brien said, “Bellman? What’s wrong?”

  Thorpe yawned again. “Jesus, Pat, why would you want to jump into the Pine Barrens on a Sunday night?” Thorpe stopped a few feet from O’Brien. “Most people your age are playing checkers.”

  O’Brien put his hand on his survival knife. “What are you doing here?”

  “Everybody has a shtick—that means panache—mine don’t always go over so well. I thought I’d cultivate yours.” He chuckled softly. “Do you mind?”

  “I mind that you didn’t ask.”

  “Sorry, Pat.” Thorpe peered out the side window. “Blue moon. Should be full in a few weeks. There’s a shooting star. Make a wish.”

  O’Brien glanced at the cabin door a few feet away.

  Thorpe turned quickly toward him. “Listen, Pat, this Talbot business has me worried.”

  O’Brien didn’t reply, and the drone of the engines outside seemed to fill the cabin. The moon shone through the windows now, and Thorpe’s body cast elongated shadows on the far wall.

  Thorpe said, “In fact, Patrick, you worry me.”

  “You ought to be worried. We’re very close.”

  “Are you? I wonder.”

  O’Brien spoke in a controlled voice. “What is your motive?”

  Thorpe shrugged. “I’m not certain. Not political. I mean, who in their right mind would side with those morons? Really, did you ever meet such a drab, boring bunch of ill-bred clods? I’ve been to Moscow twice. Jesus, what a shithole.”

  “Then why?” O’Brien unclipped the strap of his knife sheath.

  Thorpe saw the movement in the red light. “Forget it, Pat.”

  O’Brien said, “J
ust tell me why.”

  Thorpe scratched his head, then said, “Well, it’s very complex. It has to do with danger. . . . Some men jump from airplanes . . . others race cars . . . I commit treason. Every day is an adventure when you commit a capital offense. When you know that each day could be your last. You remember?”

  O’Brien said, “You’re sick, Peter.”

  “Probably. So what? Insanity, like a drug addiction, has to be fed. The Company provides food, to be sure, a veritable feast for most appetites. But not for mine. I need the ultimate nourishment. I need the blood of an entire nation.”

  “Peter . . . listen, if you want to alter history—and I suppose that is your ultimate motive—you can do it by helping us foil their plans. You could become a triple. That would be the crowning act of—”

  “Oh, be quiet. You’re too glib. Damned lawyer. Listen, how often do you get the chance to see a nation die? Think of it, Patrick—a highly developed, complex civilization succumbing to its own advanced technology. And I can stand on a hill and watch—watch the end of one human epoch and the beginning of another. How many people throughout the ages have been in so unique a position to cause such a sudden and catastrophic shift in the course of this planet’s history?”

  O’Brien listened to the droning of the engines, then spoke in a voice that suggested he’d accepted what Thorpe said, but had a last discomforting thought.

  “All right, Peter. But what kind of world will it be? Could you live in such a world?”

  Thorpe waved his hand in a motion of dismissal. “I’m pretty adaptable.” He laughed.

  “And what would you do for an encore? There’d be nothing left for you. No one to betray—”

  “That’s enough!”

  O’Brien wanted to ask how this would all come about, but as a trained intelligence officer who knew he was facing his own death, there was no reason to indulge himself by satisfying his curiosity. He was not going to be able to report or act on the information, and the more he asked Thorpe, the more Thorpe would know how little or how much O’Brien already knew.

  Thorpe seemed to read O’Brien’s mind. “How far along are you, Patrick?”