'I had my reasons—’
'They better be damned good!' exploded the President's heavy contributor. 'Because if they're not, I may just break your ass, you bitch! Suppose he saw you, recognized you, remembered Off Shore and put two and two together and got four! I don't take those kinds of chances!'
'It's my turn to say “Relax”, Andy,' countered the contributor's wife. 'The people around a vice president aren't news or even newsworthy. When's the last time you can recall the name of any individual on a vice president's staff? They're a grey, amorphous group—presidents won't have it any other way. Besides, I don't think my name's even been in the papers except as “Mr. and Mrs. Vanvlanderen, guests at the White House.” Kendrick still thinks I'm Frazier-Pyke, a banker's wife living in London, and if you remember, although both of us were invited to the Medal of Freedom ceremony, you went alone. I begged off.'
'Those aren't reasons! Why didn't you tell me?'
'Because I knew what your reaction would be—take her out of the picture—when I realized I could be far more useful to you in it.'
'How, for Christ's sake?'
'Because I knew him. I also knew I had to get up to date on him, but not with some private investigating firm that could end up burning us later, so I took the official high road. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.'
'The threats against Bollinger?'
'They'll stop tomorrow. Except for one man who'll continue here on a special basis, the unit will be recalled to Washington. Those mocked-up threats were the paranoid fantasies of a harmless lunatic I invented who supposedly fled the country. You see, sweetie, I found out what I had to know.'
'Which is?'
'There's an old Israeli Jew named Weingrass whom Kendrick worships. He's the father Evan never had, and when there was the Kendrick Group he was called the company's “secret weapon”.'
'Munitions?'
'Hardly, darling,' laughed Ardis Vanvlanderen. 'He was an architect, a damned good one, and did pretty spectacular work for the Arabs.'
'What about him?'
'He's supposed to be in Paris, but he's not. He's living in Kendrick's house in Colorado, with no passport entry or any official immigration status.'
'So?'
'The soon-to-be-anointed congressman brought the old man back for an operation that saved his life.'
'So?'
'Emmanuel Weingrass is going to have a medical relapse that will kill him. Kendrick won't leave his side, and when it's over it'll be too late. I want the ten million, Andy-boy.'
The Icarus Agenda
Chapter 27
Varak studied the members of Inver Brass, each face around the table reflected in the light of the brass lamp in front of him… or her. The Czech's concentration was strained to the limit because he had to focus on two levels.
The first was the information he delivered; the second was on the immediate reaction of each face to certain facts within that information. He had to find one pair of eyes that were suspect and he could not find them. That was to say, there were no momentary flashes of astonishment or fear on the faces of the members as he gradually, logically approached the subject of the current Vice President of the United States and his staff, touching ever so lightly on the 'innocuous' details he had learned from a Mafia plant in the Secret Service. There was nothing, only blank riveted stares. So while he spoke with conviction and conveyed roughly 80 per cent of the truth, he kept watching their eyes, the second level of his mind recalling the salient facts of the life behind each face reflected in the light.
And as he looked at each face, its features heightened by the chiaroscuro wash from the lamps, he felt, as he always did, that he
