The Road to Omaha: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “Oh, him,” replied the Englishman, his tone dismissing the memory. “Nasty young fellow, quite sullen, really.”

  “Who?” Goldfarb instantly sat forward.

  “Not sullen, Reggie, simply uncommunicative, incoherent, actually, but he understood everything we were saying. It was in his eyes.”

  “Who was he?” pressed the CIA consultant.

  “An Indian brave—that’s the word, I think—in his early twenties, I’d judge. He claimed not to understand English very well and just shrugged and shook his head when we asked him several questions. I didn’t think much about it at the time—the young are so hostile these days, aren’t they?”

  “He was indecently dressed, if I do say,” interrupted Reginald. “Hardly more than a loincloth, really. Rather disgusting. And when he leaped up on that horse, I can tell you he betrayed a definite lack of equestrian skill.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked a bewildered Goldfarb.

  “He fell off,” answered Daphne. “Dressage is hardly his strong suit.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Goldfarb’s broad chest was halfway across the desk. “You say you didn’t think much about this, this young Indian at the time, but you’re thinking about him now. Why?”

  “Well, in light of the circumstances, dear Hy, I’m trying to think of everything.”

  “What you mean is he may know something he didn’t want to tell you?”

  “It’s only a possibility—”

  “Do you think you could find him again?”

  “Oh, yes. I saw which tepee he came out of, which one belonged to him.”

  “Tepee? They live in tepees?”

  “Well, naturally, Hyman,” replied Reginald. “They’re Indians, chap. Redskins, as you say in your cinema.”

  “There’s also a rotten whitefish somewhere,” said Goldfarb, picking up the telephone and dialing. “Tepees! Nobody sleeps in tepees anymore!… Don’t unpack,” he added to the couple, instantly shifting his attention back to the phone. “Manny?… Reach ‘The Shovel’ and get over to the field. You’re taking the Lear out to the state of Nebraska.”

  The young Indian brave, naked but for an odd-looking short leather skirt, stood outside the large decorated tepee and shouted. “I want my clothes back, Mac! You can’t do this. I’m sick of it—we’re all sick of it! We don’t sleep on dirt in these dumb tents and we don’t burn our hands trying to cook over campfires and we do use toilets, not the goddamn woods! And while I’m at it, you can take that miserable, distempered nag and ship him back to Geronimo! I hate horses and I don’t ride—none of us do, for God’s sake. We drive Chevys and Fords and a couple of old Cadillacs, but not horses!… Mac, are you listening to me? Come on, Mac, answer me!… Look, we appreciate the money and your good intentions—even the nutty clothes from that costume factory in Hollywood, but it’s all gone too far, can’t you see that?”

  “Did you ever see the movie they made about me?” came the bellowing roar from within the closed tepee. “The son of a bitch playing me had the biggest lisp I ever heard! Embarrassing, real embarrassing!”

  “Mac, that’s what I’m talking about! This crazy charade you’re putting us through is embarrassing to us. We’re going to get shot down and be the laughingstock of all the reservations!”

  “Not yet you’re not—we’re not! Although the term ‘shot down’ is kinda interesting.”

  “No it isn’t, you lotus brain! It’s been over three months now and we haven’t heard a word. Three months of insanity, running around half-naked or in costumes with beads that scratch our asses like hell, and burning our fingers and getting poison ivy in places also embarrassing whenever we have to run into the woods—”

  “Slit trenches have always been an acceptable part of military life, boy. And you can’t argue with the separation of the sexes—the army wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “This isn’t the army and I’m not a soldier and I want my clothes back—”

  “Any day now, son!” interrupted the harsh, gravelly voice inside the tepee. “You’ll see!”

  “No, you lunatic, not any day or any month or any year! Those old farts on the Supreme Court are probably sitting around in chambers laughing their heads off, and I won’t be able to practice in the loosest court in American Samoa.… Come on, Mac! Admit it, it’s over—it was a hell of an idea and I’ve got to say there was maybe a grain, a grain, maybe, of substance, but now it’s become ridiculous.”

  “Our good people have suffered for a hundred and twelve years, boy. Suffered at the hands of the brutal, avaricious white man, and we shall be justly recompensed and set free!… What’s a few more days?”

  “Mac, you’re not remotely related!”

  “In this old soldier’s heart we’re bonded, son, and I won’t let you down.”

  “Let us down, please? Let me down, and give me my clothes back and tell those two idiots who follow me around to leave me alone!”

  “You’re too impatient, young fella, and I can’t let you turn on our tribal brothers—”

  “Our …? Mac, you’re certifiable, so let me lay one on you, brother brave. It’s a little matter of a pro forma judicial statute of which you may not be aware, but you damn well should be. Four months ago, when this whole whack-a-doo war dance started, you asked me if I’d passed my bar exam, and I told you that I was sure I had. Well, I’m still sure I passed the damn thing, but if you asked me to provide you with certification, I couldn’t do it. You see, I haven’t received formal notification from the Nebraska bar, and I may not for another two months, which is perfectly normal for the bar and perfectly impermissible where your legal powwow with the Supreme Court is concerned.”

  “What …?” came the prolonged, disemboweling roar from behind the closed front flap of the tepee.

  “That joint’s a busy place, brother, and except under extraordinary circumstances, which must be spelled out and approved, no unaccredited attorney may petition the Supreme Court, even as temporary counsel. I told you that. You’re dead by default even if you were awarded a positive decision, which is about as likely as this Indian brave learning to ride a goddamned horse!”

  The harrowing scream from within the cone of painted ersatz animal skins was longer than before and infinitely more heartrending. “How could you do this?”

  “I didn’t do it, Mac, you did! I told you to officially list your attorney-of-record, but you said you couldn’t because he was dead and you’d figure something out later, and in the meantime we’d use the non nomen precedent from 1826.”

  “You dug that one up!” cried the faceless roar.

  “Yes, I did, and you were grateful, and now I suggest you dig up your late attorney of research-and-record.”

  “I can’t.” The roar suddenly became the whimper of a bewildered kitten.

  “Why not?”

  “He won’t talk to me.”

  “I would hope to hell not! Christ, I don’t mean his corpse, I mean his papers, his findings, interrogatories—his research. They’re all acceptable.”

  “He wouldn’t like that.” The kitten was now a piping mouse.

  “He wouldn’t know!… Mac, listen to me. Sooner or later, one of those judges’ law clerks in D.C. will learn that I’m a kid barely out of law school with hardly six months of clerking myself, and he’ll blow a shrill whistle. Even if you had a prayer, the lord god of the Court, Chief Justice Reebock, would throw a lightning bolt into it for defrauding his holy institution. Worse, for making fools of them, if even one or two corkscrews were leaning in your favor, which, as I say, is totally impossible. Forget it, Mac! It’s over. Give me my clothes back okay, and let me get out of here—”

  “Where would you go, son?” The unseen piping mouse was getting out of the vocal cellar and climbing back up to a crescendo. “I mean where, boy?”

  “Maybe American Samoa with a forwarded certification from the Nebraska bar, who the hell knows?”

  “I never thought I’d say thi
s, son,” cried the faceless, once more shouting voice from the tepee, “because I really thought you had the right stuff, but I can see now that I can’t bring you up to snuff!”

  “Thanks for the rhyme, Mac. Now, how about my clothes?”

  “You got ’em, you yellow-skinned coyote!” The fake animal skin flap opened and an assortment of Ivy League garments was hurled out of the dark space.

  “That’s redskin, Mac. Not yellow-skinned, remember?” The young loinclothed brave lurched for the flying shorts, shirts, gray flannel trousers, and navy blue blazer. “Thank you, Mac, I really thank you.”

  “Not yet, boy, but you will. A good officer never forgets the grunts, no matter how unworthy they might appear in the heat of battle.… You were a help, I’ll say that, in the GHQ strategy sessions. Leave your forwarding address with that drunken flake you call Eagle Ass!”

  “Eagle Eyes,” corrected the brave, discarding his loincloth and putting on his shorts. He reached for his blue oxford shirt. “And you gave him the booze—you gave everyone cases of booze—I never allowed so much.”

  “Beware the sanctimonious Indian who turns on his tribe!” yelled the unseen manipulator of the Wopotamis.

  “Fuck off, Mac!” cried the brave, shoving his feet into his Bally loafers and his striped tie into his pocket, and getting into his blazer. “Where the hell’s my Camaro?”

  “Camouflaged beyond the east pasture, sixty running deer strides to the right of the August owl’s tall pine.”

  “Sixty what? What goddamned owl?”

  “You never were too sharp in the field; Eagle Ass told me that himself.”

  “Eagle Eyes, and he’s my uncle, and he hasn’t inhaled a sober breath or seen straight since you got here!… East pasture? Where is it?”

  “Check the sun, boy. It’s the compass that never fails you, but make damn sure you ash up your weapons, so the glares don’t give you away.”

  “Certifiable!” screamed the young brave of the Wopotamis as he fled due west.

  At that moment, accompanied by a primordial roar of defiance, a tall figure strode out of the tepee, the flap whipping up and sticking to the exterior wall of animal hides. This giant of a man, gloriously resplendent in full, flowing Indian headdress and beaded buckskins, all signifying his highest tribal office, squinted in the sunlight as he shoved a mutilated cigar into his mouth and began chewing on it furiously. His bronzed, leather-lined face and narrowed eyes betrayed an expression of consummate frustration—also perhaps a degree of fear.

  “Goddamn!” swore MacKenzie Hawkins to himself. “I never thought I’d ever have to do this.” The Hawk reached inside his painted buckskin doublet with the beaded yellow bolts of lightning across the chest and pulled out a cellular telephone. “Boston area information? I want the number of the Devereaux residence, first name Sam—”

  5

  Samuel Lansing Devereaux drove cautiously on the Waltham-Weston road at the height of the Friday evening rush hour exodus from Boston. As usual, he drove carefully, as though he were maneuvering a tricycle through a battlefield of opposing tanks closing in for their thunderous kills, but tonight was worse than usual. It was not the traffic; that was maddeningly standard. It was the pulsating pain in his eyes along with the pounding in his chest and the movable vacuum in his stomach, all the result of an acute seizure of depression. He found it almost impossible to keep his mind on the erratic rhythms of the surrounding vehicles, but forced himself to concentrate on those nearest him, hoping to heaven he stopped short of a collision. He kept the window open, his hand waving continuously until a truck swerved so close that he touched its sideview mirror; he shrieked and instinctively grabbed it, thinking for a moment he was watching his arm disappear over his hood.

  There was nothing else for it, or, as the great French playwright phrased it—he could not actually remember the man’s name or the exact phrase in French, but he knew the words said it all. Oh, Christ, he had to get home to his lair and let the music swell and the memories revive until the crisis passed!… Anouilh, that was the goddamned playwright’s name—and the phrase … On ne pouvait plus que crier—hell, it sounded better in English than in the lousy French he had trouble recalling: There was nothing left but to scream, that was it! Actually, it was pretty stupid, thought Sam. So he screamed and turned north into the Weston exit, only minimally aware of those drivers and passengers nearest his car who stared at him through their windows as if watching an act of sodomy between man and beast. The prolonged scream had to go; it was replaced by a wide grin worthy of Alfred E. Neuman as Devereaux pressed the accelerator and three cars crashed behind him.

  It had all started within minutes after he left the office following an afternoon conference with a gaggle of related corporate executives whose single-family company was in deep shit if they did not take his advice. The problem was not in their criminality, it was in their stupidity, which could not be pried away from their stubbornness until Sam had made it clear that if they did not follow his instructions, they could all look for different representation, and he would visit each of them in prison, but only on a social basis. Although somewhat obscure, the law did make it clear that grandfathers and grandmothers could not place their grandchildren—especially those between the ages of six months and twelve years—on the company’s board of directors at salaries exceeding seven figures. He had weathered the onslaught of Irish indignation, accepted the eventuality of eternal damnation for shorting the bloodlines of the clan of Dongallen, and fled to his favorite bar two blocks from the firm of Aaron Pinkus Associates.

  “Ahh, Sammy boyo,” the owner-barkeep had said as Devereaux slumped on the stool farthest from the entrance. “It’s been a rough day, it has, I can see it. I always know when one or two liquid remedies may lead to a couple more—you sit down at this end of the bar.”

  “Do me a favor, O’Toole, and soften the brogue. I’ve spent damn near three hours with your crowd.”

  “Oh, they’re the worst, Sam, let me tell you! Especially the two-toilet variety, who are the only ones who can afford you fellas. Here, it’s early, so let me pour you the usual and turn on the tellyvision and you take your mind off business.… There’s no Sox game this afternoon, so I’ll turn on the all-day news.”

  “Thanks, Tooley.” Devereaux had accepted his drink with a grateful nod as the solicitous owner turned on the cable news network, which was apparently in the middle of a human-interest segment, in this case depicting the good works of a supposedly obscure individual.

  “… a woman whose selfless charity and kindness keeps her forever young, a face the angels kiss with the gift of youth and clear-eyed perseverance,” proclaimed the sonorous voice as the camera zoomed in on a white-habited nun dispensing gifts in a children’s hospital located in some war-torn Third World country. “Sister Anne the Benevolent, they call her,” continued the vowel-rolling announcer, “but that’s all the world knows about her … or will ever know from her own lips, we are told. What her true name is or where she came from remains a mystery, a mystery wrapped in an enigma perhaps filled with unendurable pain and sacrifice—”

  “Mystery, my ass!” Samuel Lansing Devereaux had screamed, leaping and falling off the barstool as he roared at the television screen. “And the only unendurable pain is mine, you bitch!”

  “Sammy, Sammy!” yelled Gavin O’Toole, racing down the length of the mahogany, waving his arms in a sincere effort to quiet his friend and customer. “Shut the fuck up! The woman’s a goddamned saint, and my goddamned clientele ain’t exactly all Protestant, do you get my goddamned message?” O’Toole had lowered his voice while pulling Devereaux over the bar—then he glanced around. “Jesus, a few of my daytime regulars are takin’ exception to your words, Sammy! Don’t worry, Hogan can handle them. Sit down and shut up!”

  “Tooley, you don’t understand!” cried the fine Boston lawyer, close to weeping. “She’s the enduring love of my life on earth—”

  “That’s better, that’s much bett
er,” whispered O’Toole. “Keep it up.”

  “You see, she was a hooker and I saved her!”

  “Don’t keep it up.”

  “She ran off with Uncle Zio! Our Uncle Zio—he corrupted her!”

  “Uncle who? What the hell are you talkin’ about, boyo?”

  “Actually, he was the Pope, and he messed up her head and he took her back to Rome, to the Vatican—”

  “Hogan! Get over the wood and hold back the bastards!… Come on, Sammy, you’re leavin’ through the kitchen, the front door you’d never make!”

  That innocent episode had brought on his acute depression, thought Devereaux, as he sped north on the less-traveled road to Weston. Couldn’t the unknowing “world” understand that the “mystery” was not unknown to one lovesick, adoring Sam-the-lawyer type, who had nurtured Anne-the-many-times-married-hooker from Detroit back into self-respect, only to have her slam the gates shut on their marriage to follow in the steps of crazy Zio?… Well, Uncle Zio hadn’t actually been crazy, he was only misguided where the life of Samuel-my-son-the-fine-attorney was concerned. He was also Pope Francesco I, the most beloved Pope of the twentieth century who had permitted his own kidnapping on Rome’s Via Appia Antica because he had been told he was dying, and it was better that his identical cousin, one Guido Frescobaldi from LaScala Minuscolo, be put on Saint Peter’s throne and take radio instructions from the true Pontiff somewhere in the Alps. It all had worked! For a while. Mac Hawkins and Zio for weeks on end would go up to the ramparts of Zermatt’s Château Machenfeld and over the shortwave radio explain to the less than bright, tone-deaf Frescobaldi what to do next in the cause of the Holy See.

  Then everything fell apart—with a thud that had to sonically rival the first creation of planet Earth. The Alpine air restored Uncle Zio—Pope Francesco, of course—to his former healthy self, and, conversely, Guido Frescobaldi accidentally fell on the private shortwave radio, his bulk smashing it to smithereens, and the Vatican went into an economic tailspin. The remedy was painful but obvious; however, far more painful to Sam Devereaux—far, far more painful—was the loss of his one true love, Anne the Rehabilitated, who had listened to all that crap Uncle Zio kept spewing quietly into her ear as they played checkers every morning. Instead of marrying one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, she opted for “marrying” one Jesus Christ, whose credentials, Sam had to admit, were considerably more impressive than his own, although the more earthly perks somewhat less so—immensely less so when one took into account the life that the glorious Anne the Rehabilitated had chosen. My God, Boston at its worst was better than leper colonies! Well, certainly most of the time.