by Morris West
Second: you must know that you are in personal danger from government agents. Nowhere in South America do they want freelance subversion – especially not from someone they call a renegade capitalist.
Third: you are also a target for the extremists of the Left; not, I think, because they suspect any connection between you and Gebhardt Semmler, but simply because they are now turning their attention to the disruption of international business and may well extend their activities to the United States. We have seen target lists of institutions and high executives. Your name appears on most of them.
Fourth: the Proteus card which was found in Semmler’s wallet has excited much curiosity among my European colleagues, because it is interpreted as the symbol of some new terror group. I have always thought it was an indiscretion on your part to leave the card. It was a theatrical act which I understood, but would never myself have committed.
So far, no one has any idea of its real meaning; but the official interest will persist. Policemen are trained to be inquisitive about unexplained details. I, myself, see another danger. The symbol intrigues people. I ask myself what happens if an extremist group does adopt it, and we of Proteus are blamed for their crimes. I know you command much loyalty; but no organisation is wholly secure against indiscretion or defection. I beg you to think on this. If possible, we should meet and talk about it.
Finally, I am presuming you still retain the documents of Erwin Hengst. If you do not intend to use them again, I should like them returned. If you do, please be sure to inform me in advance, so that I can cover the situation here.
I wish I could tell you better news. Instead I report that, with Italy in such a mess, the prospect of a big swing to the Right in Germany remains a constant possibility. I talked with a Russian at the seminar. He said. “You think we are too tough on dissenters. Wait till you try to sit on the lid of your own cook-pot!” What could I say? Already our tails are burning.
I wish we may see each other soon. With friendliest greetings,
Kurt D.
Spada read the letter twice, then tore it into shreds and burned it in an ashtray. He wished to God the Scarecrow Man would call. There was now one hell of a lot to talk about.
The investigation of Mike Santos was planned and executed as finically as a piece of cerebral surgery. The margin of error was minimal. The risks enormous. A botched operation could damage irrevocably the reputation of an innocent man. An indiscreet revelation could send shock waves round the markets of the world. If the subject himself became aware of his situation, he could put the whole Proteus network in jeopardy. So, for the first time in years, the message was circulated through the North American network: ‘Proteus to the fishes . . . please supply all available information on Michael Aloysius Santos . . .’
A fish-name in Morgan Guaranty set up a trace on nominee transactions in Spada stock. Another in Nassau began an elaborate search for trust deeds and new company registrations. An electronics expert came into the glass tower with the cleaners and installed an elaborate bugging system in Santos’ office. His social engagements were plotted and monitored. His bank statements were copied. His domestic routine was scrutinised, his visits to doctor, dentist and hairdresser were logged.
Since Mike Santos was a very active man, it was an intelligence exercise of large dimension. Without Spada’s money and the resources of the Proteus organisation it would have been impossible to complete it within the two weeks Spada had prescribed. Finally, however, it was done; and while Anna went down to the Bay House to spend the weekend with Teresa and Rodo, Spada stayed in New York to discuss the report with Maury Feldman and the Scarecrow Man.
‘… It’s an odd situation.’ Maury Feldman frowned over the close-typed pages. ‘Upside and downside, he’s clean. All his financial records, including his tax returns, show prudent management of his known income. He doesn’t gamble. He has only monthly debts. His family life appears to be stable. His telephone calls and correspondence fit the context of the business as we know it…’
‘Except for two things,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘Every Wednesday he stays in town. He has a permanent booking at the Regency. He plays squash at the Racquet Club – which is his excuse for the night away from home – then goes to an apartment on the East side – you’ve got the address there – which is occupied by one Marina Altamira. He stays for an hour, then returns to the hotel, has a couple of drinks in the bar and goes to bed. The curious fact is that the lady is on the wrong side of sixty…’
‘What do we know about her?’
‘Nothing, except what’s in the report. She’s the widow of an Argentine business man, who died twenty years ago. She lives on investment income, administered by Morgan Guaranty. She’s a naturalised citizen of the United States, and she works a couple of days a week in a small gallery selling primitive artifacts.’
‘And her connection with Santos?’
‘We don’t know yet . . . However, the next item is more revealing. Those fifty thousand shares of Spada stock . . . Here’s the chain. They were marked out from Norden Trust to Morgan Guaranty, account client. The client in this case is Altamira Investments Limited, a company registered in Nassau, Bahamas. The shares in this company are owned by a trust, set up two months ago by Madame Marina Altamira for the benefit of one Michael Santos. We got a D and B report on the company. It is good for transactions up to two million dollars.’
‘And what was the origin of the funds?’ The question came from John Spada.
The Scarecrow Man shrugged and spread his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘Anybody’s guess! Mine is that they came to Nassau in a suitcase.’
‘So, sometime in the last two months, an Argentine widow makes Mike Santos richer by two million dollars. What’s the consideration?’
‘Sex?’ asked Maury Feldman with a grin.
‘No stud in the world is worth two million dollars.’ Spada was in no mood for jokes. ‘So what’s the conclusion?’
‘Maybe it is in the law of trusts itself,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘Mr Feldman, you’re the expert. Is it not correct that the trustee administers the funds at his or her own discretion? The beneficiary cannot legally direct the trust?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So may we not have a position where Mr Santos can only benefit if and when he performs appropriate service?’
‘Oh brother!’ John Spada let out a long whistle of amazement. ‘What a sweet, sweet set-up! We’re paying our own assassin!’
‘We haven’t proved it yet,’ said Maury Feldman judicially.’
‘We won’t,’ said the Scarecrow Man, ‘until we can put a bug in the lady’s apartment – which is not as easy as it sounds. The place is locked and wired like a fortress. You know how it is in this city; especially with elderly ladies living alone. However, I’ve got Henson working on the project.’
‘Meantime, what do we do about Mike Santos?
‘Nothing.’ Spada was cold as a hanging judge. ‘It’s tradition, isn’t it? Even Judas was invited to the last supper before he picked up his thirty pieces of silver. We can hardly do less for Mr Mike Santos.’
‘I have a dirty taste in my mouth,’ said Maury Feldman. ‘I’d like to be diverted. Two seats for Trovatore at the Met… anybody interested?’
‘I’ll come,’ said John Spada. ‘I used to be very tender in “Ai Nostri Monti!”’
‘Count me out,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘I’m afraid I find opera rather ridiculous. Besides, Henson is taking me to a restaurant called “Sign of the Dove”, where Madame Altamira always eats dinner on Saturday evenings. You’ll be covered at the opera of course, Mr Spada.’
‘And Mike Santos?’
‘You’ll find his routine in the report,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘Always on Saturday he plays golf, dines at the Club with his wife and makes love to her afterwards. Would you like to hear the tapes?’
‘If you find opera ridiculous,’ asked John Spada incredulously, ‘what ab
out Mike Santos in the heat?’
The curtain came down at a quarter to twelve. At midnight, Spada and Feldman were strolling, arm in arm, across town, two middle-aged gentlemen regaling the passers-by with a shaky rendition of ‘Ai Nostri Monti’. At one in the morning Spada was playing duets with the pianist in the Regency Bar, while Maury Feldman held earnest converse with a fashion buyer from Bonwit Teller. At two-thirty John Spada walked unsteadily into the foyer of his apartment building. As he waved goodnight to the porter, two men converged on him.
‘Mr Spada?’
‘The same. What can I do for you, gentlemen?’
‘Police officers, Mr Spada. I’m afraid we’ve got bad news for you.’
The Bay House was gutted, a black and smouldering ruin, in the light of the false dawn. The three bodies, charred beyond recognition, were laid on the terrace, enclosed in green plastic sacks. Beside them were six gasoline cans, half-melted in the blaze.
It had happened, they told him, just after midnight. All the lights were out; the family had retired early. There were two security men on duty. One, working from the gatehouse, patrolled the road. The other walked the perimeter on the beach side. It was the man on the beach who first saw the flames. By the time he reached the house, the whole ground floor was ablaze and flames were licking up the creeper on the outside walls. There was no hope of rescue. The occupants – strange, neutral word I – the occupants had died in their beds. The place had been drenched with gasoline and the arsonists – they had found traces of two intruders – had made an easy escape through the woodland either side of the house. The detective in charge of the investigation insisted on explaining that death by fire was quicker than it seemed. The fire ate up the oxygen. Most people died quickly of suffocation. Spada turned away and vomited on the grass.
In their brusque, professional fashion they were kind to Spada. They sat him on the bench in the pavilion house and talked earnestly while the plastic sacks were loaded into the ambulance. The medical examiner fished in his little bag and offered capsules to make him sleep. He was driven back to the city in a police car and the officers waited until Carlos had settled him, passive as a child in his bed, and fed him the capsules. They called Maury Feldman as he asked; but before he arrived, John Spada was dead to the world.
It was the very excess of the horror that kept him sane. Reason recoiled from the effort to compass or explain it. No tears no tirades, could purge it from the memory. So, those who had business with John Spada in the immediate aftermath – the police, the coroner and his jury, journalists, Kitty Cowan, the Scarecrow Man, Mike Santos – all marvelled at his granite calm. He accepted their condolences with grave courtesy. He answered questions with icy precision. He despatched efficiently all the business that was laid before him, estate documents, letters to Anna’s family, his own and Vallenilla’s, preparations for the Requiem and the funeral, the daily affairs of Poseidon Press and Raymond Laboratories.
He did not weep. He showed no rage. He uttered no reproach. Whatever he felt – if indeed he felt anything at all – was hidden behind a grey, unsmiling mask; so that even Kitty and Maury Feldman found themselves shut out from his confidence.
At night, he dined alone in his apartment. Then, when Carlos had retired, he went out and, in a small hotel on the West side, closeted himself with the Scarecrow Man, poring over maps and gazetteers until the early hours of the morning. They were like blood-brothers now, spawned from some cold planet far from the sun, absorbed in an intricate mathematic of retribution.
Yet, however late the vigil, he presented himself, promptly at nine-thirty, at the offices of Poseidon Press. By one, he was in Wilton, immersed in the problems of finding markets for the serums and the cultures developed by the younger Raymond.
Wherever he went, he carried, pinned in his breast pocket, a linen envelope in which was a strip of microfilm consigned to him by the fish-man in Nassau. The microfilm was a copy of a document, signed and witnessed two days after the fire at the Bay House. The document was entitled: ‘Determination of a Deed of Trust’ and it stated that Marina Altamira had vacated her office of trustee and devolved to the beneficiary, Michael Santos, all the materia of the trust, to wit, the shares of Altamira Investments Limited . . .
The tiny strip of film was the one warm thing in the ice-bound world of John Spada. It was as if what was left of his life reposed in it, as if, should he lose it, he must surrender himself to nothingness.
The day of the obsequies dawned warm and clear. Maury Feldman and Kitty Cowan rode with him in the limousine to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, sat with him in the first pew, and felt his first reaction of shock at the sight of the three coffins, ranged side by side, in the sanctuary. Kitty wept quietly. Maury Feldman blew his nose violently and then bowed his head in his hands. Behind them, a whisper of pity rustled through the congregation of mourners who had come from all over the country to pay their respects to the dead and to memorialise John Spada’s lost hopes of love and continuity. The Cardinal Archbishop intoned the antiphon: ‘Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them.’
John Spada tried to join in the response but the words stuck in his throat. He tried to focus on the celebrant; but he could not take his eyes away from the three caskets on their brass stands. After a while they melted into a misty blur, while the chant of the ritual rose and fell with the monotony of waves on a winter beach.
The Cardinal’s eulogy was eloquent but sterile: a careful, syncretic sermon, acceptable to folk of all beliefs and none, on the faith that failed not, the hope that made the only sense possible out of man’s barbaric propensities, the charity that embraced even the evil-doer. All the sting, which His Eminence meant for sweetness, was in the final peroration.
‘… And we pray for our brother, John Spada, that, in this, his hour of desolation, he may be given the grace to bear his grief with courage, and the generosity to forgive those who have so brutally robbed him of his loved ones. We should not mourn for Anna, Teresa or Rodolfo. They are at peace now. Our care should be for John Spada, who has so much need of our fraternal support . . . In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’
As they stood for the Creed, John Spada swayed on his feet. Maury Feldman put an arm around his shoulder to steady him. Kitty Cowan clasped his hand and whispered:
‘Hold on, John. It will soon be over.’
But it was not soon; it was a whole eternity of irrelevant events: the blessing of the remains, the procession to the hearse, his helping to carry Anna’s casket, and wondering that she felt so light, the long drive to the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester, the last envois, the first clods of earth tossed into the sepulchres. There was one moment of exquisite agony, when he saw Mike Santos facing him across Anna’s grave, and felt a fierce demonic urge to leap at him, kill him with bare hands and toss him into the gaping hole in the ground.
Then, at long last, it was over. Maury Feldman helped him into the limousine with Kitty and perched himself on the jump seat in front of them. As they drove out of the city of the dead, back into the land of the living, Maury said firmly:
‘Enough is enough, lover. We’re not leaving you alone tonight.’
‘You’re eating at my place.’ said Kitty Cowan. ‘I think we should all get drunk.’
‘It sounds like a good idea.’ John Spada nodded vaguely. ‘I can’t seem to think straight, any more.’
Then the dam burst. He leaned his head on her shoulder and cried helplessly all the way back to Manhattan.
CHAPTER TEN
On a Monday morning, four weeks after the funeral, Kitty Cowan resigned from Spada Consolidated. Mike Santos made formal noises of regret, wished her well and asked whether she wanted to dispose of her holdings in Spada stock. Kitty declined. She also declined to participate in any ceremonies of farewell. A very practical lady, she preferred to take the money and run. What were her plans? A long holiday in Europe. After that? She wasn’t sure. With any luck s
he might discover a rich suitor or a talent for idleness. She wasn’t joining Spada at the Poseidon Press? For the present, no . . . If Mike didn’t mind, she would clear out her desk, hand over the files and be gone by the end of the week. Mike Santos agreed that a clean break would be better for everyone.
On the afternoon of the same day, John Spada introduced at Raymond Serum Laboratories a European client, Doctor von Paulus, who conducted, from Paris, a multilingual service, disseminating scientific information. He was particularly interested in Mr Raymond’s work on aberrant strains of bacilli and would like to publish some of his material . . . In this connection also, the good Doctor could offer an active export market for microscopic slides, for cultures and toxins. He was interested to establish in France the counterpart of the American ‘National Collection of Type Cultures’ – a unique library from which any reputable bacteriologist could draw his specimens. When Doctor von Paulus left, late in the afternoon, to drive back to town with Spada, he took with him a folder of documents, a package of slides and a box containing six sealed phials of anaerobic soup full of live Botulinus cultures.
The next evening Spada entertained Max Liebowitz to cocktails in his apartment. It was a small, sombre occasion, which Max honoured with lugubrious dignity.
‘… It is good of you to tell me first, John. We have never been close, I know; but this – this monstrosity should happen to no man. I bleed for you!’
‘I have to pull out, Max. I simply can’t take any more. I need to go into smoke for a while, get myself together again.’
‘Best thing you could do. We’ll keep a close eye on the store.’
‘I wanted to talk to you about that, Max. I may not be back for a long time. Maury Feldman will vote my stock. You can work with him, I think.’
‘Easier than with you.’ Max Liebowitz permitted himself a wintry smile. ‘But – if you’ll excuse the expression – I like you better now. You’re a real mensch!’