by Robert Adams
Which was one reason that Rupen vacationed so often in Sicily or Naples—he felt safe in those places. His original contacts with the Honored Society had been through Seraphino Mineo, back in 1960. Against the advice of many well-meaning people, he since had consistently refused to do any business with or for them and, oddly enough, thereby gained the sincere respect of the upper echelons. They had not only refused numerous contracts to kill him, but had seen to it that he received detailed information on those who had sought to employ them to assassinate him, often complete with color photos, make and color and year of auto, and passport numbers.
When he made his usual daily call to Virginia, a sobbing operator put him through directly to Kogh, rather than to Bagrat. "Kogh, what the hell are you doing up there? Has something happened I should know about?"
"Fucking-A-right, it has!" His brother's agitated voice crackled over the undersea cables. "About an hour ago, JFK was shot in Dallas, Texas. It was on TV, for Chrissakes. A sniper got him in the head—nobody knows whether he's dead or alive, now. Honest, Rupen, he was shot right on TV!"
"Who would—" began Rupen, but Kogh cut him off, brusquely.
"Hell, I don't know. There's all kinda rumors, though. Some say the Cubans, some say the Russkis or hide-out SS or American Nazis or beatniks or the John Birch Society, even. Anyhow, I was thinking it might be a damn good idea for you to get back here as fast as you can get on a plane. If you can't get on a commercial flight, hire a plane of your own. We'll pay for it. Just get back Stateside, Rupen. God alone knows what's gonna happen next."
Six months after the demise of President John F. Kennedy, Rupen Ademian was back in Italy, but in an entirely different capacity, this time around. The American Civil War Centennial had bred a thriving market for shooting reproductions of nineteenth-century caplock weapons—ranging up from Philadelphia derringers to full-size field cannon—and his firm had sent him over to try to strike a deal with certain of his contacts in the Italian arms manufactories involving production of these reproduction weapons at a cost less than that charged to them by American arms companies, with their millstones of higher overheads and production costs, and grasping, predatory unions.
Rupen was authorized to place orders for revolving pistols of .36 and .44 caliber, a revolving, fixed-stock carbine of .44 caliber, and a .58 caliber rifled musket in two barrel lengths, to start; he also was to keep eyes and ears peeled for anyone with a good idea for faster, cheaper, and safer production of musket and pistol percussion caps.
Bagrat Ademian had become a fanatic enthusiast of black-powder, muzzle-loading shooting, driving or flying off weekend after weekend to meets and shoots and encampments all over the country. His had been the idea—and a very profitable one it had been—to develop a sideline of reproduction bayonets, powder flasks, bullet molds, cap boxes, and other accessories which were sold through the old mail-order retail outlet.
Now, Bagrat wanted his own line of firearms, but the bids he had solicited from American manufacturers had slammed right through the ceiling, and he had strongly doubted that he could have unloaded them even had he sold them at a hefty loss. That had been when he had started to chivvy Rupen into accompanying him to black-powder shooting exhibitions.
At the first, his elder brother had been very skeptical of an involvement of the firm. "Look Bagrat, in another year, this whole Civil War thing will be just a memory, and there we'll be, stuck with a carload or two of cheap reproduction charcoal burners that won't even have any collector value. Unless you were thinking of doctoring them to look like originals? Is that what you have on your devious, Yankee-Armenian mind, little brother? Or were you of a mind to convert them all to floor lamps and bookends, huh?"
But gradually, Bagrat had won him over. "Look, Rupen, what you've seen is just the tip of the iceberg, man! Its thousands of black-powder buffs don't belong to clubs or teams or anything, and others—lots of 'em—that collect repros and never shoot 'em, because they're priced out of collecting the originals. Then there's rich collectors who buy repros so they won't be tempted to try and shoot their real ones and blow them up, like as not. There's real moneybags, even, pays an outfit down in Tennessee to cast cannons for 'em—shooting-type cannons."
"What, pray tell, do these nuts use for ammunition?" asked Rupen dryly, "Old bowling balls?"
"Aw, naw," replied Bagrat, dead serious. "The cannons ain't that big. Mosta 'em shoots frozen orange juice cans fulla concrete; the bigger ones uses beer cans."
"So you want me to stump all over Europe looking up bell-founders, eh? Listen, Bagrat, there are people over there who do not like me at all, but at least they all consider me to be sane, as of now. If I start soliciting bids on casting bronze muzzle-loading cannon, the next thing you're likely to hear is that I'm in a soft room in Switzerland, courtesy of my European friends."
"No, no, Rupen, I don't want bids on cannons . . . well, not yet anyhow," Bagrat assured him. Then he told him exactly what he did want to start, queried the vastly experienced Rupen as to the best possible bets for reproducing the weapons, and, after some lengthy and detailed discussion, agreed with him that Italian firms might be what was needed in this instance.
Despite Rupen's misgivings, despite fierce competition for the American market from subsidiaries of massive Interarmco, up in Alexandria, Virginia, and a veritable host of others, the first shipments of Italian-made reproductions sold like the proverbial hotcakes, and the newest branch of the Ademian Enterprises tree, Confederate States Armaments, was off with flying colors.
The eldest Ademian brother had managed to acquire only about twelve percent of the Rappahannock operations in the ten years he had worked for it, but most all of his traveling had been paid by the firm or reimbursed to him later; the vast purchasing power of the U.S. dollar worldwide in the fifties and early sixties had always assured him of first-class accommodations at very reasonable dollar rates on those things he had himself paid, and what with salary, commissions, dividends on his little block of stock, and a few gifts that various customers had pressed on him over the years, he had managed over the decade past to sock away a fair chunk of money, which, as it turned out, was a damned good thing.
For Kogh Ademian, president and chairman of the board of Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, was dead-set against CSA from the very outset. "Look, fellas, we're doing damn good on the damn international arms deals, so it's no need at all for us to keep peddling old guns or new ones, either, by mail around the damn country. Just remember that damn crazy Commie bastard Oswald shot poor John Kennedy with a fuckin' Carcano 6.5mm carbine—thank God it wasn't one I imported! Though for all any of us know, it was our ammo the murderin' lunatic used—and you can bet your sweet tootsie that the damn liberals in Congress aren't gonna rest til they've got it made illegal to sell imported guns to anybody 'cept cops and the military. Then, I'll give you odds these damn socialist one-worlder bastards keeps on pushing to where it'll be illegal for most Americans to even own a gun of any kind."
"So if you wanta do this crazy thing, Bagrat, you better figger on doin' it without one cent of Ademian Enterprises backing, you hear me?"
Thus, Rupen cleaned out his various accounts of all save a bit under fifty-seven thousand dollars, but he came into Confederate States Armaments, Inc., as a full partner and the executive vice-president of the new firm. He it was who persuaded a not unwilling Bagrat that, as they now were in no way, shape, or form connected to Ademian Enterprises, it might be to their best business interests to move the operation to another part of the state, and what better location for a firm playing upon the Confederate States theme than a location or at least a mailing address in the city that had been the capital of the Confederate States of America: Richmond.
Boghos—now grown chubby and jowly—and Mariya—still slim and toothsome as a girl, despite four children and a regimen of truly epicurean meals—would not hear of his staying at a hotel while looking for a location for Confederate States Armaments in Richmond or its envi
rons. Rupen accepted the hospitality with not a little trepidation. It had been around fifteen years since he had lived in a stable, home-type environment with relatives, and he was not at all certain that he could readapt, or sure that he wanted to do so.
Not that he thought he would be in any way cramped in the home of his sister and brother-in-law, for Boghos's lucrative medical practice, his astute investments, and the goodly chunk of Ademian Enterprises stock willed to Mariya by her mother had combined to give the family a current net worth of between three and five million dollars, and their present house reflected it.
The house sat on a bluff above the James River. There were two master suites and six bedrooms, each with a private bath. The eight other rooms in the main house included a spacious parlor and formal dining room with a butler's pantry connecting it to the huge kitchen, a family room, a library, a music room, Boghos' study, and a sprawling, tile-floored Florida room for Mariya's legions of plants. Pantry, freezer lockers, and wine cellar were in the basement and connected to the kitchen by both stairs and a dumbwaiter. The basement also housed the laundry room and Boghos' big-game trophies and guns and cameras.
When Boghos had finished showing him through the two-and-a-half-story brick mansion, Rupen's first comment was, "Talk about flaunting what you got, Brother Boghos, you live in a testament to visible affluence, you know that? I know you've got a chef, but how many other servants does it take to keep this museum shipshape? I know Mariya couldn't possibly do it all alone."
"Stephanie, the housekeeper, is the wife of Etienne, the chef you just met," replied Boghos. "We had them before this place was even built, but now they live here, on the grounds, in that brick bungalow you passed as you drove in; they're Algerian-French and more old friends than mere employees. Stephanie has a couple of nigra girls to help her five days a week."
"At Mariya's insistence, we employ a gardener, fellow name of Lemuel Steptoe and his son, who live up the road in Manakin. And then there's my chauffeur-cum-bodyguard-cum-the best goddamned automotive mechanic anybody has ever had . . . but hell, Rupen, you know him! Seraphino Mineo, the hard man my attorney got to help us with that Evelyn Mangold business, years ago, though for some reason I never pried into, that's not the name he's using now."
"What does he call himself these days, Boghos? Mr. Cobra?"
Boghos shook his head. "No, all his IDs are in the name of Anonimo Beccacciniero. Maybe that was his real name all along, huh?"
"Not hardly," said Rupen. "The literal translation of that name comes out as 'Nameless Sniper.' He's a deeper man than you think he is, Boghos. The last time I saw him was in 1960, and he then was working for the . . . well, let's just say he was with an American intelligence group. How long has he been with you?"
"About two and a half years, off and on, Rupen."
"Off and on, Boghos? What do you mean?" asked Rupen.
"Well, there have been two or three times when he's had to leave for Italy to visit his mother, who seems to be in very poor health. Those trips usually take him about a month. Also, he has relatives in New York City and he drives up there every so often, but he's never gone more than a week at a time on those trips."
Rupen just nodded. "And I'll bet he leaves when he leaves at the drop of a hat, with little or no prior warning, eh, Boghos?"
"Why, yes . . . usually, Rupen. How did you know?"
Rupen did not answer the question, just asked another. "And why do you put up with an employee who disappears from time to time with no notice?"
"Because when he is around he's invaluable, Rupen. I told you, he's a fantastic mechanic, and with our nine cars, plus a pickup and two jeeps, he earns what I pay him and more. And if that were not enough, Anonimo saved my life last year, in Alaska."
"It was this brute here, Rupen." The doctor gestured toward the mounted head of what must have been a near-record brown bear. "I'd dropped him from a stand at about a hundred yards with my Westley-Richards .425, then the guide and I trotted over and he put a soft-nose .30-06 into him at close range, while I was setting up my Leica on a folding tripod for a remote shot."
"All of a sudden, that 'dead' bear roared and jumped up, coughing blood, and knocked that guide ass over biscuit and started shuffling toward me. Rupen, the only weapon of any kind that I had on me was a belt knife. The Westley-Richards was back at my stand, the guide had rolled to the bottom of a gully, and the bear was between me and his rifle."
"What did you do, Boghos?" asked Rupen.
"I wet my pants, for one thing," admitted the physician, without shame. "And I think I started to pray. The stand that Anonimo was on was more than two hundred yards away, you see. We'd been communicating by walkie-talkie. Mine was back with my rifle and the guide's was on him at the bottom of the gully."
"The bear was only ten feet away from me—we measured that distance, later—when he squalled and reared up on his hind legs. Then, just about the time I heard the first shot, the second one sent the fur and tissue flying, blew out a section of his spine at the very base of his skull. He dropped like he'd been pole-axed, almost at my feet."
"And it was Cobr . . . Anonimo who shot him, at two hundred yards?" queried Rupen.
Boghos nodded. "He apologized, later, for making me wait so long, Rupen. His scope wasn't working right and it had taken him a couple of minutes to get the thing off and flip the open sights up, then make the shot. Two hundred yards, Rupen, a downhill shot at a moving target, with open, iron sights; the first shot smashed the bear's left shoulder, the second one killed him outright! Rupen, even should I find out that that man is actually Adolf Hitler's bastard son, he still would have that apartment over the garage, a decent income, and work when he wants it, those things, plus my friendship and deep respect."
"And where is this paragon of virtue now?" asked Rupen. The shoe was on the other foot with him and Mineo-Cobra-Beccacciniero. He'd shot and likely killed several men to save the mysterious Italian's life on that CIA business years back, not the other way about.
"He took the pickup into Richmond to bring back some parts for the Jag. God, but those Limeys are slow—six months ago those parts were ordered!"
"Mere imported sports cars and luxury sedans, Boghos?" mocked Rupen. "Tch, tch, tch! Don't you know that one is not truly of the landed gentry until one's holdings include a stable of real thoroughbred horses, usually horses with pedigrees longer than one's own?"
The search for the ten missing guests—Arsen and his group—went on for three days. Horsemen, dismounted men with keen-nosed hounds, all worked out from the center of the archbishop's estate in ever-widening circles. But no single trace of the six men and four women was turned up.
Neither Rupen nor red-haired Jenny Bostwick could think of any slightest reason why Arsen and Haigh and the rest would have left without first contacting them.
"Der Hal," said Rupen earnestly, "I just don't think they'd have taken off like this, not if they'd had a choice in the matter. For one reason, the biggest and best reason, we all of us have a lot of trouble even understanding the dialect you folks speak, much less trying to speak it ourselves. Even to my ear, the language you all call English sounds more to me like a bastard concoction of Plattdeutsch, Old French, and Lowland Gaelic; I think I'm finally getting the hang of speaking it fairly fluently, but neither Arsen nor any of the rest are blessed with my linguistic abilities. So could it be possible that they were taken away by force?"
"Now it is just barely possible," Archbishop Harold told Bass Foster an hour or so later, in private, "that they snapped back to where they were projected from the same way your house eventually did. But I sincerely doubt that that is what happened to them, for if it is, why then Rupen and the other woman would have snapped back as well."
"No, Bass, I think that the threats of a dying woman are being carried out. I think that Gamebird has gotten a second projector into Whyffler Hall, that they have used it—possibly, unknowingly—to project this latest batch of unfortunates God alone knows where, for
as I told you long ago, even to the projector staff at Gamebird, this project is still in only an advanced experimental stage."
"I also think that you had best inform your host to be ready to ride out for Strathtyne on tomorrow's dawn. This time, I shall be accompanying you, along with my own guards and servants and staff. I think we'll take along Rupen Ademian, too, if you don't mind—who knows but what his lifetime of experiences so different from our own and his flexible mind will be of value to us."
"Hal," began Bass, "the king expects me to—"
"Yes, yes, that Irish business. Don't worry, I'll send a galloper to his majesty immediately, telling him that I have preempted you and your services for a few more weeks on matters every bit as urgent as the earlier ones. There'll then be no difficulty, you'll see."