The Road to Omaha: A Novel

by Robert Ludlum

  “They’re inseparable. We could get our asses blown away, maybe our heads. I’ll explain later.”

  “You mentioned something about getting out of here, so what are we waiting for?”

  “We have to get Mother and Cousin Cora.”

  “In the parlance of Indian legend, let’s run like the northern winds before the palefaces close in on us with their thunder sticks!”

  “God, that’s magnificent!”

  “What is?”

  “The ‘northern winds,’ the ‘thunder sticks’!”

  “Not if you’re born into a tribe, buster. Come on! You get Cousin Cora and I’ll get your mother.”

  “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

  “Are you kidding? Your mother doesn’t trust you for a second.”

  “She has to, I’m her son.”

  “She’ll deny that, take my word for it.”

  “But I love you—you love me. We agreed!”

  “We were both carried away—you superficially; me, I was intellectually moved. We’ll discuss it later.”

  “That’s the most hurtful thing I think I could ever hear you say.”

  “Try me with a thunder stick pointed at my head in a calm northern wind, Counselor. Let’s go. The last time I saw Cora she was in the pantry checking out the teapots. You find her, and I’ll bundle up your mother. We’ll meet in the garage. Bring the keys to the Jag.”

  “The garage …?”

  “You forget I’m an Indian. We circle an encampment before we strike. White man never learns.”

  “Magnificent!”

  “Oh, shut up. Let’s go!”

  Cora, however, refused to budge, and when Sam implied that there was the possibility of a real physical threat to her life, his distant uncle’s cousin opened a concealed, magnetically released drawer below the oven and pulled out not one, but two .357 magnums, both loaded, proclaiming that she was the true protector of the house. “You think I’d count on those lousy alarms no one can figure out that go off whenever the technical bullcrap meets their fancy, Nephew? No way, Sammy! I come from another branch of the family, one the hoity-toity and her smooth-talkin’ husband didn’t care too much about—but my God, I’ll earn my keep!”

  “I don’t believe in guns, Cora!”

  “So believe what you like, Sammy. This place is what yer hard-drinkin’, faraway cousin is paid for lookin’ after, and you ain’t goin’ to take that away from me, you got that, buster?”

  “Buster …? I can’t handle two ‘busters’ within the space of five minutes.”

  “You always talk funny, Sam-boy.”

  “Did I ever tell you that I love you, Cora?”

  “A couple of times, Sammy, when you were oiled up to your last cylinders. Now, you and the leggy unbelievable take the hoity-toity and get out of here.… And may the good Protestant Lord have mercy on any bastards who try to get in. Just in case, however, I may give the police a ring; let ’em earn their keep for a change.”

  The yellow Jaguar, with Redwing holding a semicognizant Eleanor in the backseat, sped out of the driveway and headed for the streets that led to the Boston road. At the second corner they passed a long black limousine that had all the earmarks of a vintage 1930s Black Maria, including a face pressed against a window whose features were best descrbed as having been caught in the lens of a zoological photographer. Despite disinclinations, Devereaux pressed forward, confident in the knowledge that Cora was more than a match for two gunsels who were stupid enough to look for an unfamiliar house in a huge black automobile in broad daylight. Police aside, his ersatz cousin from the other branch of the family would blow them away with her magnums. Where did she ever get them?

  “Sam, your mother has to go to the bathroom!” said Redwing twelve minutes later, cradling Eleanor Devereaux in her arms.

  “My mother doesn’t do that. That sort of thing’s for other people. She never goes to the bathroom.”

  “She says it runs in the family—witness your trousers.”

  “Coffee!”

  “You say.”

  “We’ll be at Nanny’s in a couple of minutes. Tell her to hold on.”

  “Nanny’s Naughty Follies?” cried the lawyer-daughter of the Wopotamis. “We’re going there?”

  “You know it?”

  “Well, when I was at school we had a couple of legally oriented … orientations. A course in constitutional censorship, that sort of thing.… You can’t take her there! It’s open twenty-four hours a day.”

  “No choice, Counselor. It’s only two or three minutes from here.”

  “She’ll be mortified!”

  “Then she can blame it on the family trait of incontinence.”

  “You are a male child carrying the demon seed of the evil spirits below the earth.”

  “What the f—f … what does that mean?”

  “It means your birth was not acceptable to the benevolent gods, and your carcass will be devoured by carrion after a painful death.”

  “That’s not very sociable, Red. I mean it doesn’t sound in tune with our little talk in my office.”

  “I told you, I was carried away. I heard words I haven’t heard in a very long time—too long. The practice of law is frequently in conflict with a love for the law. I momentarily lost control of my perspective, and I do not enjoy losing control.”

  “Wow, thanks a lot. A little soul-searching turns you on no matter who the idiot’ is who brings it up, is that it?”

  “I think we could all do with a little soul-searching now and then in our profession.”

  “Then you really are a lawyer.”

  “I am.”

  “What firm?”

  “Springtree, Basl and Karpas, San Francisco.”

  “Christ, they’re sharks!”

  “I’m glad you understand.… How far away are we? Your mother can barely whisper, but she’s terribly uncomfortable.”

  “Less than a minute.… Hey, maybe we should take her to the hospital! I mean, if she’s really—”

  “Forget it, Counselor. That would mortify her more than Nanny’s. The teapot was empty.”

  “Is that another twig from the tribal tree of wisdom?… No, it couldn’t be. Cora mentioned teapots—so did you.”

  “Some things, Mr. Devereaux, like childbirth, are distinctly feminine experiences.”

  “Thanks again—for the mister,” said Sam, swinging into the parking lot of Nanny’s Naughty Follies Et Cetera. “Nobody has to make my day, or last night. Madman Mac and his two absurd ‘adjutants’ who keep tackling me, bearded Greeks who’ve got my clothes, Aaron Pinkus calling me ‘Samuel,’ a brief that should be consigned to some legal hell, a bombed-out mother, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life falling in and out of love with me in the space of twenty minutes—and now a fucking hit man from Brooklyn after my ass! Maybe I should take myself to the hospital.”

  “Maybe you should stop the car!” shouted Red Redwing, as Devereaux passed by the canopied entrance of Nanny’s emporium. “Now, back up about thirty yards!”

  “You people bury your captives up to their heads in killer anthills,” mumbled Sam.

  “It’s an option I’ll take under consideration,” said Redwing, opening the door and gently urging Eleanor Devereaux out of the car. “Will you get your ass outside and help me, or a hit man from Brooklyn will be the least of your worries!”

  “All right, all right.” Sam did as he was told, finally holding his mother’s right arm as the three of them walked to the imposing building, where photographs of naked men and women were plastered all over the place, on the stucco walls and above the doorframe. “Perhaps I shouldn’t leave Mother’s car,” Sam offered softly.

  “Good thinking, Counselor,” agreed Redwing, not without a note of sarcasm. “It might not be here two minutes later.… I’ve got Eleanor, you just wait for that man Paddy or whatever his name is.”

  “Eleanor?”

  “We women more readily recognize kindre
d souls than men do. We’re brighter.… Come along, Ellie, you’ll be fine.”

  “Ellie?” said the astonished Devereaux as the stunning Indian woman took his mother inside. “Nobody calls her ‘Ellie’—”

  “Hey, Fancy Dan!” intoned the coarse voice of a huge, heavyset middle-aged man, more apelike than human, who stood by the Jaguar and was obviously a guard-cum-bouncer. “We ain’t exactly got vallay parking here. Move the fag Jag!”

  “Right away, officer.” Sam trotted back to the car under the disapproving eye of Nanny’s Special Force veteran.

  “I ain’t no cop,” said the older carnivore of a man, as Devereaux got behind the wheel. “Read that as no police restraints, mister.”

  “Understood, sir.” Sam started the engine. “You’re obviously with the diplomatic corps,” he added, spinning the wheel and shooting across the lot in a circle before stopping. The moment he saw Redwing and his mother come outside, he would rush back to the canopy, counting on the fact that even Nanny’s elderly King Kong would reflect on Red’s beauty and have a gentler disposition. Then the three of them could wait in the Jaguar for Paddy Lafferty to arrive with further instructions.… Jesus, an “enforcer!” And a black limousine right out of a funeral procession racing down the street to his house! What was happening? He could certainly understand Washington’s desperation if there was any sympathy whatsoever for the Wopotami brief, but a hit man and a Black Maria with a passenger who bore no resemblance to “Penrod” was not the way for a civilized government to proceed. Negotiators were sent, not exterminators. Quiet meetings were held to seek civilized solutions, not death squads to impose them.… Whoa, thought Devereaux. On the other hand, if Washington had learned that former General MacKenzie Hawkins—Madman Mac the Hawk—was behind this potential if remote fiasco of national security proportions, exterminators and death squads were the only solutions. The Hawk gave no quarter where the lace-pants of Dizzy City were concerned. Those pricky-shits, as he termed them, had taken the army out of his life and nothing, absolutely nothing, was too putrid to shove down their throats, the higher placed the better.

  Whoa … no, double whoa! Sam considered with a sudden mental jolt. If Washington was responding in kind to Mac’s assault, it would include any and all persons around the Hawk. And the enforcer had used the names of Pinkus and Devereaux at the front desk! How the hell did that happen? Hawkins had arrived in Boston barely eighteen horrible hours ago, and by his own admission nobody in Washington had yet heard of one Sam Devereaux, much less Aaron Pinkus! How then? Even with today’s instantaneous global communications, one source had to have a fact or a name to transmit to a second source, or the specific information could not be received—and the name of an innocent, insinuated Devereaux was not known, and therefore neither was that of Pinkus. How?… Good God, there was only one answer—the Hawk was being followed! Right now, at this moment!

  Where was Paddy? Christ, he had to get word to Mac! Somewhere close by, unseen by the Hawk, was a second person watching every move the old soldier made, and it took no criminal imagination to know that second unknown person was in touch with the enforcer two stories below Mac.… Paddy, where are you?

  Sam glanced over at the canopy; there was no sign of Redwing or his mother—also Nanny’s aging King Kong had left. Perhaps, if he was quick about it, he could get inside to the pay phone against the wall that he had used last night and reach Hawkins at the hotel. He was about to start the engine when, to his surprise, the huge bouncer came walking out of the door, rushed to the curb, and looked around, immediately centering his gaze on Devereaux and the yellow Jaguar. He gestured at Sam, instructing him to drive instantly to the entrance. Oh, my God, something’s happened to Mother! Devereaux gunned the engine and screeched to a stop under the canopy in 2.4 seconds. “What is it?” he cried to the now smiling simian with the straight gray hair.

  “Boyo, why didn’t y’tell me you were with Miss Redwing? She’s a grand little girl, y’know, and I surely wouldn’t have been so impolite if I knew you were an acquaintance. Me apologies, bucko!”

  “You know her?”

  “Well, now, truth be told, I been at this lousy joint for more years than I care to count, since I got the pink slip from the force. Y’see, this rotten establishment is owned by m’widowed daughter-in-law—which had somethin’ to do with my gettin’ the pink slip, ’cause m’stupid son took the wrong bread to buy the place and got totaled in the crossfire—and Miss Redwing and her pals from Haavadd actually sued City Hall and got me a bigger pension. What d’y a think of that?”

  “I have no thoughts, no comprehension of the events that swirl around me—”

  “Yeah, the lovely Injun miss said you might sound a touch confused—and I wasn’t to pay no attention to your trousers.”

  “I changed them! She knows that!”

  “And I don’t care to know no details, boyo, but I tell ya this. You do dirt to that girl and you’ll answer to me, bucko. Now, get out and join the ladies. I’ll watch this fruit car of yours.”

  “Inside?”

  “They ain’t in a yacht in Boston Harbor, lad.”

  A completely bewildered Devereaux got out of the car, barely finding his balance on the pavement, when Aaron Pinkus’s limousine came thundering down the entrance ramp into the parking lot and sped toward the yellow Jaguar by the canopy, coming to a crushing stop behind it. “Sammy!” yelled Paddy Lafferty from the open window. “Oh, hello there, Billy Gilligan, how are ya?”

  “Survivin’, Paddy,” replied Nanny’s semibenevolent King Kong. “And you, kiddo?”

  “Better now that I see you got my boyo in tow.”

  “He’s yours?”

  “Me and my fine employer’s as it were.”

  “Then take him, Paddy. He’s a bit off in the head, y’know. I’ll watch both the cars.”

  “I thank you, Billy,” said Lafferty, leaping from the oversized automobile and running toward Sam and Tarzan’s enlarged cheetah of later years; he totally ignored Devereaux. “Billy-boy, you won’t believe what I’ve got to tell you, but I swear it on all the graves of County Kilgallen!”

  “So, what is it, Paddy?”

  “I not only met the man, but he drove beside me in the front seat and we had a very meaningful conversation between us! Between just the two of us, Billy!”

  “The Pope, Paddy? Your Jewish fella brought the Pope over?”

  “Go one better, Billy!”

  “Well, I couldn’t now, really—except one, of course, but that’s out of the question.”

  “No, Billy, you got it, lad! Himself, it was! General MacKenzie Hawkins!”

  “Don’t say that, Paddy, m’heart will stop dead—”

  “I mean it, Billy Gilligan! It was himself in the God-given flesh, and a grander, greater man there never was. Remember how we used to talk in France, crossin’ through the woods in the Marne? ‘Give us Mad Mac and we’ll break through the shit-kicking Krauts!’ And then for ten days he was there and we busted through, singin’ and shootin’ our hearts out with himself ahead of us, ahead of us, Billy, shoutin’ his head off, tellin’ us we could do it because we were better than the bastards who’d put us in chains! Remember, Billy?”

  “The most glorious days of m’life, Paddy,” answered Gilligan, tears welling in his eyes. “Outside of our Lord Jesus, he’s maybe the greatest man God ever put on earth.”

  “I think he’s in trouble, Billy. Right here in Boston!”

  “Not while we’re about, Paddy. Not while the Pat O’Brien Commemorative Legion Post has a breathin’ soldier in its membership.… Hey, Paddy? What happened to your boyo? He’s flat out on the cement.”

  “He’s fainted, Billy. Must run in the family.”

  “Mmmjff…!” came the unconscious protest from Sam Devereaux’s throat.

  13

  “Samuel Lansing Devereaux, get up at once and behave yourself!” cried Lady Eleanor with estimable authority, considering the fact that she clutched Jennifer Redwing’s ar
m under Nanny’s canopy for stability.

  “Come on, Sam boyo,” said Paddy. “Grab my hand, lad.”

  “He’s lighter than me daughter-in-law, Lafferty,” added Billy Gilligan. “We can just heave him into the Hebrew canoe.”

  “Yer daughter-in-law should play for the Patriots, Billy, and I’ll ask you not to refer to Mr. Pinkus’s fine stretcheroo in derogatory terms.”

  “Guess where I got that derogatory term, Paddy?” asked Gilligan, chuckling as the two men carried Devereaux to the limousine and angled him into the backseat. “Don’t bother, I’ll tell you. From old Pinkus himself, boyo. Remember when you and he come over and we—”

  “That’ll be enough, Billy, and I thank you for your assistance. The keys are in the Jaguar, and I’ll thank you again if you’ll stash it and lock it where you can keep your eye on it.”

  “Oh, no, Lafferty!” objected Gilligan. “I’m callin’ my relief and headin’ directly over to the Pat O’Brien Commemorative Post and rounding up the members. If the greatest general who ever kissed the sword of battle has troubles, he can count on us, by the graves of Donegal!”

  “We can’t do nothin’, Billy, until the general and Mr. Pinkus give us our orders. I’ll stay in touch, my word as a gunny.”

  “Oh, the glory of it! To meet the magnificent man himself—general of the United States Army, MacKenzie Hawkins!”

  “Oh, that dreadful name!” exploded Eleanor Devereaux.

  “You’re seconded, Ellie,” agreed Redwing.

  “Mmmfff,” came the muffled cry from the backseat of the limousine.

  “Pay no attention, Gilligan, the girls aren’t well.… But, Billy, I didn’t promise that you’d meet the great man himself, I only said I’d try.”

  “And I didn’t promise I wouldn’t sell the Jaguar, neither, Paddy. I only said I’d try not to.”

  “Come along, ladies,” Lafferty interrupted, with a scowl at Gilligan. “I’m to take you to the Ritz-Carlton, where Mr. Pinkus has made private arrangements—”

  “Paddy!” yelled a partially revived Sam Devereaux from the backseat. “I’ve got to reach Mac … he doesn’t know what’s happening!” The attorney lurched unsteadily out of the limousine on the far side, slammed the door, and crawled to the automobile’s cellular telephone.