Mel thought about it as he munched his breakfast. “Sure, why not?” he agreed.
• • •
On the way to the beach, Stephanie had to drop something off for a girl in her class, whom she arranged to meet in The Viennese. Mel and Brett decided to go inside with her for coffee while they were there. As they got out of Mel’s car in the area at the rear of the restaurant, he noticed to his surprise that Eva’s silver Subaru was there, parked in its usual slot. He looked up the outside stairway and saw that the light was on in the hall window next to her door.
Inside, at the table, he remained quiet and preoccupied while the other three chatted, glancing furtively toward the far end of the room and growing more agitated as the minutes went by. In the end he stood up suddenly. “I’ll be back in a minute. Get me a refill if the guy comes by.”
He went to the back, walked past the restrooms, and carried on out the rear of the building. There he hesitated, uncertain now. But he had to know what was going on. He climbed the stairs to Eva’s door and stared at it woodenly. One part of his mind was in a quandary, unable to initiate any action, yet at the same time equally incapable of allowing him to return downstairs without seeing the thing through. A vague, absurd, fleeting picture of himself standing there all night flashed through his brain, and then in the moment that he had been distracted he realized that another part of him had seized control of his hand and made it press the doorbell. Something akin to panic gripped him then, and in the same instant a desperate hope materialized out of nowhere that perhaps she had simply gone away and left the light on. He had given it long enough. Leave now, he told himself… And then he heard the latch turning in the door.
Eva’s eyes widened in surprise. She didn’t look pleased. “Mel! What are you doing here?”
He started to grin awkwardly, then quashed it in the same instant. “I saw your car, so I figured I’d stop by. I guess you changed your plans, eh?”
She made no move to invite him in. He moved forward, more insistently. She stood firmly in the doorway. It was the first time that Mel had ever seen anger showing openly on her face. “Mel, if I wanted company, I’d have called. You could have called. Look, I don’t like people creeping around and spying on me. Haven’t you ever heard of respecting a person’s privacy?”
“I was not creeping around. I was downstairs with Steph and Brett. I told you, I saw the car.” Now his tension was beginning to show. The situation was turning into a confrontation.
“So, I park my car outside my own place. Is that okay?”
“You’re not supposed to be here, remember?” Despite himself, Mel heard his voice rising. “You told me you were going out of town.”
“Who the hell do you think you are to come here cross-examining me on my own doorstep? So I changed my mind. I don’t have to talk to you like this, Mel. Go away.”
“Not until we get one thing—”
“What’s going on?” a man’s voice asked from inside. He moved into view from the door of the large lounge. It was Dave Fenner. Eva sighed and stood aside.
Something dropped in Mel’s stomach. “I should have guessed,” he grated.
Dave was looking at him calmly, without any suggestion of owing explanations. As always the alpha-male, secure and impregnable. “You should know that Eva lives her own life, Mel.” His tone was matter-of-fact, not needing to make any exhibition of dominance. “There wasn’t any need for this. You’re just bringing a lot of grief on yourself. Sorry, but this is the real world. It’s not about to change for you.”
Since he couldn’t counter, Mel ignored him and was looking accusingly at Eva. “You—”
She nodded wearily and closed her eyes. “Yes, Mel, I lied. And I’m sorry about that, because I shouldn’t have. I knew it was the wrong thing to do as soon as I said it, but… Okay. It was a mistake. We all make them.”
“What kind of—”
Eva saw the attack coming and retaliated immediately. “Because I know how you react, Mel. I’ve told you, I’m me. But you’ve never accepted it. You keep insisting on wanting me to be someone else. But that person doesn’t exist. She’s a fantasy that you’ve manufactured in your own head. Can’t you get that straight?”
“What the hell’s happening up there?” It was Brett’s voice, from halfway up the stairs. Stephanie was a short distance below. Mel turned away feeling crushed, looking for a hole to vanish into.
“Look, I didn’t start this,” Eva said. “I wanted a weekend to myself and he can’t accept that. Would you take him home, please?” Dave moved into full view behind her.
“It’s time to go, buddy,” Brett told Mel. His voice was low, but firm. “This isn’t going to do any good.”
Avoiding Eva’s eyes, Mel allowed himself to be steered back to the stairs. He felt numb now, as some kind of anesthetizing self-defense mechanism intervened. But he’d known, even before they went into the restaurant. Why couldn’t he either accept it or get out of it? He didn’t know.
CHAPTER 40
In 1857 a shrewd Irishman purchased Malibu, a picturesque strip of coastal bays and beaches twenty-five miles north of Los Angeles—at that time a sprawling rancho—for ten cents an acre. About thirty years later, a Yankee from Massachusetts first saw the possibility of an “American Riviera” developing there, and his widow later leased property to the actress Anna Q. Nilsson in 1927. In time, a host of other stars, as well as many of the more socially conscious well-to-do by whatever means, built homes there. The Malibu strip became famous—and infamous—as a focus of wealth, ostentation, and influence.
The sun was setting in a blaze of crimson and orange that seemed to have ignited the entire Pacific when the car that Seybelman had sent to collect Stephanie arrived at the house. She had no idea who owned the place since without advance information on where she would be brought, there had been no opportunity for checking. The gates were opened remotely in response to a password radioed from the car by one of the two escorts sent to fetch her. Through the gates, they drove between palm-shaded lawns fringed by floral beds and rose trees to the front of the house, which stood on a landscaped mound, partly screened by a canopy of shrubbery and vines. It was a low-built, long affair, with a tennis court and bowling green on the landward side, screened from the lawns by hedges. The driveway ended in a forecourt in front of a glass-fronted vestibule. Several other automobiles were parked along one side, all gleaming and expensive.
The entrance hall, with its marbled floor and miniature waterfall chattering over a rockery, brought to mind more the lobby of a Hyatt hotel than the front of a private residence. Seybelman was waiting for her there, with a shorter, slimly built, dark-haired man whom she recognized from her briefings as Philip Challin, the California congressman. A maid came forward to take her coat, while a majordomo in tie and maroon jacket watched from the side. It was the full treatment.
Seybelman showed his teeth in a crocodilian parody of a smile and offered his hand. Stephanie took it, at the same time glancing quickly at the surroundings again in an effort to look suitably awed. “Delighted to see you again so soon, Eva,” Seybelman said. “Oh, don’t look so lost. Remember, you’re almost one of the family now, eh, heh-heh.”
“You’re looking as pretty as ever,” Challin said in his turn.
“Hello again.” Stephanie knew that Eva had met Challin, but not how she had addressed him. Her impulse was to add something flippant, but that wouldn’t have been Eva’s style.
Then she saw the tall, well-built, figure in a dark suit, watching unobtrusively from a short distance farther back, but positioned—Stephanie would never have noticed before she’d gotten to know people like Ronald Bassen—to keep an eye on the front door and to be ready to block the way through into the rest of the house if need be. Yellow hair, hollow cheeks, solidly carved features, body poised loosely, yet alert to move at an instant’s notice, missing nothing.
Hoffenach’s eyes came back to the group in the foyer and held hers directly. Although St
ephanie had anticipated and tried to rehearse herself for this moment, she found she had no idea how to react. Hoffenach solved the problem for her by nodding almost imperceptibly and allowing the corners of his mouth to twitch momentarily upward in recognition. Stephanie hesitated, then sent a smile back. She didn’t try to conceal it from Seybelman or Challin, who obviously knew about Eva’s association with Hoffenach. That was in line, too, Stephanie reasoned. Affecting sudden pretensions of social airs and graces wouldn’t have been Eva’s style either.
Seybelman took her arm and steered her on into the house. Challin, who had caught Stephanie’s gesture, stopped for a moment to murmur in Hoffenach’s ear. “Remember, orders. An old boyfriend of hers has shown up from the past. We don’t need any more complications in her life right now. She’s off-limits, okay?”
Hoffenach nodded and looked mildly pained. “The job always comes first with me. You know that.”
“I know you, too, Arnold. Don’t forget, that’s all.”
Stephanie was a physicist, not a connoisseur of arts and craftsmanship. But she didn’t have to be to sense, as they moved on through elegantly carpeted and furnished rooms, adorned with paintings, sculptures, and china, that she had passed into a different world. This was the world of those who could shape the lives of millions on a whim, by the stroke of a pen; where nations could be bought or sold; where an idea that could revolutionize civilization would live or die, or a decision made if an Edward Gilman was to be destroyed. She abhorred all of it. She wanted nothing more at that moment than to escape. But at the same time she had never felt closer to Eva, and more determined to see through to its end the task that she had accepted.
The house was considerably larger than it appeared from the front, being stepped downward toward the side facing the sea. Here, they came to a long lounge with a curving wall of glass that formed a crescent looking down over a terraced pool, which was separated from the ocean only by a rocky scarp and a strip of private beach. The inside wall of the lounge consisted of library shelves and had an open fire as its centerpiece. There were two large tables in the center of the floor, one each side of the fireplace. Four men were sitting in a loose semicircle formed by a couch and several armchairs facing the fire. They stood up as Stephanie entered with Challin, who had caught up after talking to Hoffenach, on one side, and Seybelman on the other.
“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Eva,” Challin said. “Eva, these are a few of your new friends.”
“What can I get you to drink?” Seybelman asked.
“A vodka tonic with a touch of lime?”
“Phil?”
“Make mine a Manhattan.” Challin said. Seybelman moved away to a bar in the corner below the steps down to the lounge, via which they had entered.
Stephanie recognized two of the faces. One was from the notes of Eva’s that Mel had found: Wilson Clines, the Bible-thumping financier who wanted to put the fear of God back in the schools, and everyone else back in their own proper beds. He was a squat, paunchy man with a balding head, ragged mustache, and the outward appearance of a genial, fatherly uncle. The other was from a list that Landis had produced from his own files, of known connections to the names that Eva had identified. He was Groveland Maddock, an energy magnate associated with the investment group that had commissioned the GPD report, slack-faced and fragile in appearance, with thinning hair, pale eyes, and folds of skin hanging at his jowls and throat. He was holding a brandy snifter in one hand and a partly smoked cigar in the other. Challin introduced him first as “Howard.” Stephanie had hardly expected them to volunteer their real names; it was surprising that they were willing to meet her face-to-face at all. Challin said simply that Howard was “influential in determining energy policy, both here and across a large piece of the world.”
Next was a younger man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, lean, tallish, and swarthy-skinned with dark but graying hair and deep, intense, brown eyes. More of Middle Eastern than Hispanic extraction, Stephanie decided. Challin introduced him incongruously as “Pat”—“well connected in the field of international relations. He probably manages the flow of more money than the whole of the oil business put together.” Which probably meant, Stephanie guessed, that he was involved in administering the international welfare program that Newell wanted to abolish and replace with free trade.
“Alan” was heftily built and tanned, with close-cropped hair and lined features. Challin described him merely as “very high politically,” which could have meant influential within Congress or powerful in some branch of the standing bureaucracy. Stephanie viewed the latter as more threatening. Congressional bills had come to be so vague that their interpretation—in other words, what was to constitute law—was left to a vast army of permanent civil servants who were masters at stalling any measure they didn’t approve of until the administration that had tried to implement it was out of office. It meant that most—the estimate was 85 percent—laws were now passed by a new, unelected branch of government, unaccountable to anyone, who were able, in effect, to run the country as they chose. The positions of power thus created made them valuable allies to be sought after, and enhanced their market value, both financially and socially, accordingly.
Finally, Wilson Clines was introduced as “Graham,” who “provides the money to make the world go around.”
They all sat down. Seybelman returned with the drinks and joined them.
Landis had been curious to find out which of the group that Stephanie was to meet would be in charge. Most likely it would be whoever took the initiative at this point. That turned out to be Clines. He settled back more comfortably, picked up the glass which he had set on the arm of his chair, and regarded her with interest for several seconds. Finally he said, “So, Eva, we understand that you’ve been a loyal employee of the illustrious new party for a number of years now.”
“That’s right. Since I left university at the end of 1996—and before then, in fact.” There was no point in holding anything back. All the available facts would have been checked already.
“Would you say you were a strong follower of theirs?”
“Completely.”
“But now, Philip says, you’re agreeable to working against them.”
“Yes.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I grew up.”
“How do you mean?” he asked.
“I still think it’s a good ideology. So is communism. So is Christianity. But like them, it won’t work. It can’t.”
Pat, the swarthy one among the four, sat forward and looked interested. “Why can’t it work?”
“Under a free market, some people are going to make more money than others. Either because they work harder, are smarter, or simply more lucky—for whatever reason, some will do better. That wealth will buy them access to the lawmaking process, which they’ll use to protect their interests. As soon as that happens, a free market has ceased to operate. Therefore, it’s self-defeating.”
The question had been expected, and Stephanie had deliberately offered an intellectual answer—as would Eva. The whole thing was a game being played for form’s sake, anyway. She could hardly admit what was supposed to be the real reason, which was simply that she was conscious of getting older, felt she was in a rut, and craved to become part of the world of glamor, excitement, and power that her affair with Hoffenach had revealed a glimpse of. But Seybelman would already have told the others that.
“Did they pay you well?” Howard asked.
Stephanie looked around her. “Not such that I’d ever think about living somewhere like this.”
Howard and Clines exchanged brief looks. “Would you like to live somewhere like this?” Clines asked.
“Show me a girl who wouldn’t.”
“And you’d knowingly operate against the interests of the party you’ve served for over four years to achieve that?” Alan said. He seemed to be taking the role of devil’s advocate, sounding dubious and skeptical.
St
ephanie forced a note of indifference into her voice. “It doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. I married what I thought was a shining knight when I was still a college kid, and he turned out to be a sham. If that’s what it takes, then that’s’ what it takes.”
“Is that all there is to it, though, Eva?” Clines asked. “Do you just want to get away, or is there something else? Isn’t: there just a little bit of a feeling for getting back at them—a need to even the score for what you’ve lost?”
Although she knew the right answer to give, Stephanie went through the motions of trying to decide whether to admit to her supposedly true feelings. Finally she looked him straight in the face and said, “Yes, there is. But not just a little bit. A lot.”
There was a short silence, and then Howard asked her; quietly, “How far would you be prepared to go, Eva?”
That was an unexpected question. She grappled with it for a while, looked genuinely perplexed, and then said, “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“You’d lie and cheat?”
Stephanie shrugged. “I already have. What about Kirkelmayer?”
“Under oath, in court? Perjury?”
“Well, I suppose it would depend what… But yes, if I had to.”
Howard’s voice became very soft. “How about killing somebody?”
Stephanie swallowed involuntarily. She forced herself to remember that this was just a charade. She wouldn’t really have to do it. She was here only to find out what they were up to.
But at the same time, if they were sounding her out as suitable material, she didn’t want to appear unaffected. Landis had said that people who were identified by the psychologists as being capable of killing too easily, or even of relishing it—and such did exist—never got through the preliminary screening interviews for hard-line intelligence work. The best agents were those who could be trained to kill reluctantly, only as a last resort, and who detested it—the ones who thought more and risked less.
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