Scruff

by Robert Ludlum

  Brigadier General Lester Cooper slammed his fist on the long briefing table. His face was flushed, the veins in his neck pronounced.

  “That little bastard. That goddamned pygmy prick! What the hell is he after?”

  “We don’t know yet. Could be just about anything,” answered Robert Webster from across the room. “Our guess is Bonner; we calculated that possibility when we put him on.”

  “You calculated it. We didn’t want any part of it.”

  “We know what we’re doing.”

  “I’d feel better if you could convince me. I don’t like the possibility that everyone’s expendable.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Tell Bonner his old friend Bruce may be stalking him again, to be careful.” Webster approached Cooper; there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “But don’t lay it on too thick. We wouldn’t want him overly careful; just tell him. He’s aware of Trevayne’s surveillance; don’t let somebody else tell him first.”

  “I understand.… However, I think you people should find a way to force Bruce out of this. He shouldn’t be anywhere near it.”

  “That’ll come in time.”

  “It should be now. The longer you wait, the greater the risk. Trevayne’s going after Genessee.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re not making any sudden moves. Especially not now. Trevayne won’t get anywhere. Roger Brewster might.”

  17

  Andrew Trevayne looked out the window at the rolling Potomac. Brown leaves now, brackish water; Saturday-afternoon football games, pro contests on Sunday. Congress filled the newspapers with more talk than achievement; middle autumn in Washington.

  The meeting had gone well, his nucleus had confidentially compiled enough data to justify personal confrontations with a number of Genessee Industries’ top management.

  Especially one man. James Goddard. The one man at Genessee Industries who had the answers. San Francisco.

  That was the next stop.

  It had been a singularly effective effort on everyone’s part, made more difficult by the unorthodox methods Andy had called for. Very little of the work was done in the offices, almost all of it accomplished in the basement recreation room of his rented house in Tawning Spring. And those involved were limited to Alan Martin, Michael Ryan, John Larch, and the irrepressible Sam Vicarson.

  He initially conceived of these methods, this secrecy, for very uncomplicated reasons. When the last responses came in from Genessee plants and contractors across the country, the volume was enormous. File cabinets were filled in a matter of several weeks. Then as these reports proved consistently unsatisfactory and additional requests were sent to the company’s offices, Trevayne realized that Genessee was going to crowd out everything else they were working on. Simple collating between the voluminous replies became a major complication, brought about by evasive responses.

  Andrew found himself obsessed with the tactics of Genessee Industries. The only way to untangle the mess was to take each strand of the web and follow it through the myriad patterns to its source, adding up the misinformation and those responsible as one went along. It was a complex, gargantuan task, and it seemed logical to move this one area of the subcommittee’s work to a single place, a comfortable environment conducive to late hours and long weekends.

  From this unsophisticated reasoning, another, more concerning motive surfaced that further justified the move. Interference. Ryan and Larch were approached—indirectly, with extreme subtlety—and asked about the subcommittee’s inquiries at Genessee. Veiled hints of payment were dropped; humorous allusions to Caribbean holidays made.

  Only nobody was kidding. Ryan and Larch understood that.

  Beyond these two half-explored contacts three other incidents occurred in which Genessee figured—again subtly, indirectly, in shadow conversation.

  Sam Vicarson was invited to the country club at Chevy Chase by an apartment neighbor. What began as a small cocktail party for semi-acquaintances rapidly accelerated into a drinking bout of fairly hardcore dimensions. Acquaintances were suddenly close friends; a number of friends quickly developed enmities. The evening became alcoholically electric, and Sam Vicarson found himself on the golf course with the wife of a minor congressman from California.

  As he related the story to Trevayne, and admittedly there were gaps brought on by the liquor, the young, ebullient lawyer and the girl commandeered a golf cart, drove several hundred yards, when the vehicle stopped, its charge diminished. The wife became frightened; it was a potentially bad scene, and she’d been the instigator, making it clear she was attracted to Sam. The two of them started back toward the clubhouse, when they were confronted by the Congressman and an unknown friend.

  What followed was ugly, swift, and made indelible by the husband’s final words. The Congressman was drunk to the edge of incoherence; he slapped his wife across the mouth and lurched at Vicarson. Sam stepped back, defending himself as best he could against the husband’s onslaught, when the unknown man interceded, pinning the Congressman’s arms and pushing him to the ground.

  The stranger kept ordering the subdued man to be quiet, that he was making a fool of himself.

  At which point the minor Congressman from California made a futile attempt to lunge upward, to free himself, then screamed at his subduer.

  “Take your goddamn Palo Alto out of my life!”

  The wife raced across the lawn toward the parking lot.

  The unknown man lashed the back of his hand against the Congressman’s mouth, pulled him to his feet, and shoved him after the girl.

  Sam Vicarson had stood on the grass, aware through the liquor that in some strange, inexplicable way, a setup had just been aborted.

  Palo Alto. Genessee Industries.

  Trevayne agreed, knowing beyond a doubt that the young lawyer would be more circumspect in the future about invitations from neighbors.

  The second incident was told to Trevayne by his own secretary. The girl was going through the last stages of a soured engagement. When, contrary to their agreed-upon separation, the ex-fiancé asked to move in again, she couldn’t understand, the relationship was dead, amicably finished.

  He said he needed to come back—just for a few days.

  For appearances.

  And if anyone ever inquired, she should remember he asked her a lot of questions.

  Which he wouldn’t ask. He didn’t give a damn; he was getting out of Washington and just needed a few recommendations. Thanks to her, he got them.

  On the day he left for Chicago and a new job, he phoned Trevayne’s secretary.

  “Tell your boss a lot of people on Nebraska Avenue are interested in G.I.C. They’re very uptight.”

  And so she told him.

  G.I.C. Genessee Industries Corporation.

  The third and last incident that he knew about reached Trevayne through Franklyn Baldwin, the New York banker who’d recruited him.

  Baldwin came to Washington for a granddaughter’s wedding. The girl was being married to an Englishman, an attaché at the British embassy with a viscount somewhere in his family background. As Baldwin phrased it, “The dullest damned reception in nuptial history. Times don’t change: tell an American mother her daughter’s found a title, and she doesn’t plan a wedding, she mounts a funereal coronation.”

  This introduction from Baldwin was his way of telling Trevayne that he’d left the reception the minute he received a likely invitation to do so. It came from an old friend, a retired diplomat who suggested they plead geriatric exhaustion and head for one of Virginia’s better watering spots.

  They did so. To the home of a mutual friend, a rear admiral, also retired, who, to Baldwin’s surprise, expected them.

  At first Baldwin said, he’d been delighted by the playful conspiracy of two old cronies; made him feel as though they were all youngsters again, ingenuously avoiding tiresome duties.

  As the visit lengthened, however, Baldwin became upset. A supposedly pleasant get-together wasn’t pleasant a
t all. The Admiral initiated the unpleasantness by referring to Roderick Bruce’s article about the beached atomic submarines. From that point it was a short leap to Trevayne’s understanding of military—especially Navy Department—problems: he obviously had none.

  Finally, Baldwin continued, he found himself in a heated argument; after all, the Defense Commission was his responsibility. Trevayne’s approval had been unanimous, not only within the commission itself, but with the President and the Senate as well. Those approvals stood; the military—including the Navy Department—had better damn well accept the fact.

  However, the Admiral wouldn’t. As Baldwin was leaving, the old Navy hand suggested that yesterday’s approval might turn into today’s revulsion. Especially if Trevayne continued to harass one of the great institutions—“institutions, mind you”—upon which the nation in large measure depended—“depended, goddamn it, that’s what he said!”

  That institution was Genessee Industries.

  As Andrew continued to stare at the river, he reflected that these five fragments—the two guarded contacts with Ryan and Larch, Sam Vicarson in Chevy Chase, his secretary, and Franklyn Baldwin—these were what he knew about. How many others were there that he was not aware of? The subcommittee staff numbered twenty-one; had others been reached? Were there variations on the theme of interference that would remain silent?

  He couldn’t possibly hold a “team meeting” and ask; not only was such a tactic abhorrent to him, but it wouldn’t work. If anyone had been contacted and hadn’t spoken of it, he wasn’t going to do so now. The delay would appear incriminating.

  And if, in the remote but possible chance there was an informer inside the subcommittee, the information he carried back would be worthless. For until this afternoon the vital papers concerning Genessee Industries had been kept in Tawning Spring.

  The office files on Genessee—all the pertinent ones—were clearly marked in plastic tape: “Status—Current. Complete. Satisfactory.” Several which were minor Genessee transactions had another tape: “Status—Current. Pending.” These were unimportant.

  The coding of “Satisfactory” was not born of suspicion; instead, it was simply more convenient. Since only five people—the top four men and Trevayne—would have reason to use these files, each knew what the term meant. If anyone else, for any reason, came across them, there was no necessity for elaborate explanations.

  “Satisfactory” was sufficient.

  Andrew left the window and returned to his desk, where the three looseleaf notebooks were piled on top of one another. The Genessee notebooks, the partially unraveled threads of the web; a small clearing inside a labyrinth of very warped mirrors. He wondered where the hell they would lead?

  He also wondered what a man like Roderick Bruce—Roger Brewster—would do if they were in his possession?

  Roderick Bruce, diminutive slayer of dragons.

  Yet he hadn’t slain him. In spite of the columnist’s threats, he’d been extraordinarily gentle about Andy’s part of the submarine story.

  No reasons given; none asked for.

  There’d even been a kind of compliment:

  The tough, unresponsive chairman of the subcommittee remains unreachable by panicked high personnel of the intelligence departments. He leaves media relations to others—which may not be smart, but that kind of brightness isn’t required in his job. All they can do is dump him, and they probably will. Is that what he wants?

  Trevayne wondered why Bruce had decided not to expose his “plea for suppression.” Not that it mattered. He didn’t give a goddamn about Roderick Bruce or his readership. He wouldn’t have called Bruce back under any conditions. Whatever Paul Bonner stood for—and Christ knew it was ponderously antediluvian—the man was authentic. His beliefs were profoundly arrived-at concerns, not unthinking, blunt reactions to change. The Bonners of this world had to be convinced, not sacrificed as goats in ideological skirmishes.

  Above all, convinced.

  Trevayne picked up the top notebook, the plastic tape on the right-hand corner imprinted with the Roman numeral I. It constituted his immediate itinerary; the first stop, San Francisco.

  Routine. Nothing vital.

  That’s the way it was arranged. That’s the way it was described. The subcommittee chairman was merely making a personal tour of West Coast companies—a number of them. If concerned executives took the trouble to check—and it was certain they would—they’d be relieved to learn that Andrew Trevayne was dropping in on a dozen or so firms. Nothing much of any depth could be accomplished with such a schedule.

  It was even suggested off-handedly to several that the subcommittee chairman wasn’t averse to a game of golf or a couple of sets of tennis—weather permitting.

  The climate of his tour was therefore established. There were rumors of an early demise of the subcommittee; that Trevayne’s cross-country trip was a kind of farewell appearance, a symbolic finish to an impossible production.

  That was fine; that was the way he wanted it.

  It wouldn’t be possible if a Roderick Bruce had access to the Genessee notebooks.

  God forbid that should ever be the case! What had to be avoided at all costs now were blanket accusations, inclusive condemnations. It was far too complicated for simple conclusions.

  The telephone interrupted his meandering thoughts. It was after five; he’d let everyone go early—five o’clock was early at the Potomac Towers. He was alone.

  “Hello?”

  “Andy? Paul Bonner.”

  “You’re psychic. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Nice thoughts, I hope.”

  “Not particularly. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks.”

  “I’ve been out of town. In Georgia. Every six months or so the brass sends me down to Benning to run around obstacle courses, stay in shape. Or that’s what they think.”

  “Probably nothing to do with it. They figure to beat out your hostilities, or give the Washington ladies a breather.”

  “Better than cold baths. What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’m meeting Phyl for dinner at L’Avion. Care to join us?”

  “Sure. If I’m not intruding.”

  “Not at all. Forty-five minutes?”

  “Good. It’ll give us a chance to go over this crazy tour of yours.”

  “What?”

  “I’m back as your major-domo, massa. Whatever you want, snap your fingers or whistle; I’ll scurry around and get it for you.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Trevayne hesitantly.

  “I just got the orders. I understand we’ll be hitting the links and a few tennis courts. You’ve loosened up.”

  “Sounds that way. See you at L’Avion.”

  Trevayne replaced the phone and looked at the Genessee notebook in his left hand.

  No request had been made of the Defense Department for a military aide. As a matter of fact, the Pentagon had not been apprised of the trip.

  At least not by his office.

  18

  Mario de Spadante stepped off the second-floor escalator at the San Francisco Airport and headed for the observation lounge. His gait was fast, remarkably agile for a man of his girth. He dodged and overtook passengers and clerks; he was impatient with a black porter who blocked his path with an unwieldy luggage dolly. He pushed open the glass door of the lounge and rapidly walked past the hostess, acknowledging her unspoken question with a gesture of his hand. His party was already seated; they were expecting him, two men at a corner table.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. de Spadante, I think you’re unnecessarily agitated.”

  “I do mind your saying it, Mr. Goddard. I mind very much, because I think you’re a fucking idiot.” De Spadante’s voice remained gentle, only the rasp slightly more pronounced than usual. He turned to the other man, an older man somewhere in his sixties, stylishly tailored. A man named Allen. “Has Webster been in touch?”

  “I haven’t seen
him or spoken with him since New York. Months ago, before Baldwin approached this Trevayne. We should have killed it then.”

  “The big machers didn’t listen, because your suggestion was not only dumb but also hopeless. I took other measures; everything was under control—including emergency procedures. That is, it was until now.” De Spadante reverted his look to Goddard. Goddard’s cherubic face was still flushed with anger over the Italian’s insult. Goddard was middle-aged, middle-fat, and middle brow, the essence of the pressurized corporate executive, which he was—for Genessee Industries. De Spadante purposely did not speak. He just stared at Goddard. It was the executive’s turn, and he knew it.

  “Trevayne gets in tomorrow morning, around ten-thirty. We’ve scheduled lunch.”

  “I hope you eat well.”

  “We have no reason to think the conference is anything more than what we’ve been told: a friendly meeting. One of many. He’s scheduled conferences with half a dozen companies within a few hundred miles, all within several days.”

  “You kill me, Mr. Just-a-Minute. I mean, I’d be rolling on the floor laughing, except for the pain.… ‘No reason to think’! You’re beautiful! Like the kids say … very heavy, man.”

  “You’re offensive, Mr. De Spadante.” Goddard withdrew a handkerchief and blotted his chin.

  “Don’t talk to me ‘offensive.’ There’s nothing more offensive on this earth than stupidity. Except maybe conceited stupidity.” De Spadante spoke to Allen while his eyes remained on Goddard. “Where did you high types come up with this capo-zuccone?”

  “He’s not stupid, Mario,” replied Allen softly. “Goddard was the best cost accountant G.I.C. ever had. He’s shaped the company’s economic policies for the past five years.”

  “A bookkeeper! A lousy bookkeeper who sweats on his chin! I know the type.”

  “I have no intention of taking your abuse any longer.” Goddard moved his chair back, prepared to stand. However, Mario de Spadante’s hand shot out, and with the grip of a man who was no stranger to hard work and coarse methods, he held the arm. The chair rocked to a stop as Goddard’s legs went tense.