Robert Ludlum - Road To Gandolfo.txt

by The Road To Gandolfo [lit]

  "Her name is Lillian von Schnabe.

  She is American from the state of

  California, married to an older man,

  a German immigrant who fled Hitler. As

  coincidence would have it, she is

  currently in Berlin."

  "I merely asked who she was, Father.

  Not her biography. How do you know all

  this?"

  "It was in the recommendation from

  the United States Army Information

  Service. The military think highly of

  her, apparently."

  "More than apparently. So, her

  husband fled Hitler? One does not turn

  away from such compassionate women.

  Coupled with the state of food

  prices a number of inexpensive papal

  dishes is called for. Set up an

  appointment, Father. You may tell our

  resplendent cardinal, who suffers from

  the unfortunate affliction of a

  high-decibeled wheeze that we truly

  hope our decision is not an affront to

  him. Viva Gourmet. The Lord God has

  been good to me; it is a mark of

  recognition. I wonder why its

  correspondent is in -Berlin? There's

  a monsignor in Bonn who makes an

  excellent Sauerbraten."

  "I swear, you've got feathers in

  your teeth!" said Lillian as Sam

  walked into the room.

  "It's better than chickenshit."

  "What?"

  "My business contact had a strange

  method of transpottation."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I want to take a shower."

  "Not with me, honey!"

  "I've never been so hungry in my

  life. They wouldn't even stop for

  a what the hell is it? A strudel.

  Everything was ein, zwei, drei! Mach

  schnell! Christ, I'm starved! They

  really think they won the war!"

  Lillian backed away from him. "You

  are the filthiest, most foul-smelling

  man I've ever seen. I'm surprised they

  let you in the lobby."

  "I think we goose-stepped." Sam

  noticed a large white business

  envelope on the bureau. "What's that?"

  149

  "The front desk sent it up. They said

  it was urgent and they weren't sure

  you'd stop for messages." -

  "I can only conclude your ex, the

  fruitcake, has been

  - busy." Devereaux picked up the

  envelope. Inside were airline tickets

  and a note. He didn't really have to

  read the note; the airline tickets said

  it all.

  Algiers.

  Then he read the note.

  "No! Goddamn it no! That's less than an

  hour from

  ... .

  now!

  "What is?" asked Lillian. "The plane?"

  "What plane? How the hell do you know

  there's a plane?"

  "Because MacKenzie called. From

  Washington. You can imagine his shock

  when I answered "

  "Spare me your inventive details!"

  roared Devereaux as he raced to the

  telephone. "I've got several things to

  say to that devious son of a bitchl Even

  convicts get a day off! At least time

  for a meal and a shower!"

  "You can't reach him now" said Lillian

  quickly. "That was one of the reasons he

  called. He'll be out for the rest of the

  day."

  Sam turned menacingly. Then he stopped.

  This girl could probably cut him in two.

  "And I suppose he offered a suggestion

  as to why I should be on that plane.

  Once he got over the shock of hearing

  your lovely voice, of course."

  Lillian looked puzzled. It crossed

  Devereaux's mind that the puzzlement was

  not entirely genuine. "Mac mentioned

  something about a German named Koenig.

  How anxious this Koenig was for you to

  leave Berlin one way or the other."

  "The less controversial method being

  Air France to Paris and from Paris to

  Algiers?"

  "Yes, he did say that. Although not in

  those exact words. He's terribly fond of

  you, Sam. He speaks of you as a son. The

  son he never had."

  "If there's a Jacob, I'm Esau.

  Otherwise, I'm fucked as Absolom."

  "Vulgarity isn't called for "

  "It's the only thing that is called

  for! What the hell is in Algiers?"

  150

  "A sheik named Azaz-Varak," answered

  Lillian Hawkins von Schnabe.

  Hawkins left the Watergate in a

  hurry. He had no desire to talk to

  Sam; he had absolute faith in Lillian,

  in all the girls, actually. They were

  doing their jobs splendidly! Besides,

  he was to meet with- an Israeli major

  who, with any luck, could put the

  final pieces of the puzzle together

  for him. The puzzle being Sheik

  Azaz-Varak. By the time Devereaux

  reached Algiers a telephone call would

  have to be made. The Hawk could not

  make it without that final item which

  would insure the last of the Shepherd

  Company's capitalization.

  That Azaz-Varak was a thief on a

  global scale was nothing new. During

  the Second World War he sold oil at

  outrageous prices to the Allies and

  the Axis simultaneously, favoring only

  those who paid instantly in cash. This

  did not make him enemies, however;

  instead, his policies engendered

  respect, from Detroit to Essen.

  But the war was ancient history.

  That war. It was Azaz-Varak's behavior

  in a far more recent conflagration

  that interested Hawkins: the Mideast

  crisis.

  Azaz-Varak was nowhere to be found.

  While oaths were hurled across the

  lands of the Middle East, and the

  world watched armies clash against

  armies, and crisis-laden conferences

  took place, and outrageous profits

  were made, the greediest sheik of them

  all claimed to have a case of shingles

  and went to the Virgin Islands.

  Goddamn! It didn't make sense! So

  MacKenzie went back into Azaz-Varak's

  raw files and studied them with the

  eye of a professional. He began to

  find the pattern in the years between

  1946 and 1948. Sheik Azaz-Varak had

  apparently spent a considerable amount

  of hme in Tel Aviv!

  According to the reports, his first

  few trips were made quite openly. It

  was supposed that Azaz-Varak sought

  Israeli women for his harem.

  Thereafter, however, Azaz-Varak con-

  tinued to By into Tel Aviv, but not

  openly; landing at night in outlying

  private airfields that could

  accommodate his most modern and

  expensive private planes.

  More women') Hawkins had researched

  exhaustively and was unable to unearth

  the name of a single Israeli female

  151

  who ever went back to the sheikdom of

  Azaz-Kuwait. Then, what had Aza
z-Varak

  been doing in the state of Israel? And

  why had he traveled there so

  frequently?

  MacKenzie's breakthrough came,

  strangely enough, from information

  supplied by naval intelligence On

  island of St. Thomas, where Azaz-Varak

  had fled during the Mideast war.

  There, he tried to buy up more

  property than anyone wished to sell.

  Rebuffed, he became furious.

  The islanders had enough trouble.

  They did not need Arabs with harems

  and slaves. Jesust Slaves! The very

  idea sent the bureau of tourism into

  apoplexy; visions of all that kitchen

  help in revolt were positively

  nauseating. AzazVarak was

  systematically prevented from buying

  two buckets of sand. When it was

  suspected he was trying to negotiate

  through second and third parties,

  covenants were included that would

  have made Palm Beach green with envy

  and the ACLU purple with rage. Simply

  put: no Sucking Arabs could own,

  lease, sublease, visit, or trespass.

  So in his frustration, the

  acquisitive sheik angrily, and

  hastily, brought in an American

  holding company called the Buffalo

  Corporation and tried to negotiate

  through it. There were laws and St.

  Thomas was a United States possession.

  And it did not take much research on

  Hawkins's part to uncover the fact

  that the Buffalo Corporation address:

  Albany Street, Buffalo, New York;

  telephone: unlisted was a subsidiary

  of an unknown company called

  Pan-Friendship, main office: Beirut;

  telephone: also unlisted.

  Subsequent overseas calls to several

  Israeli clearinghouses made stunningly

  clear what Azaz-Varak had been doing

  during all those visits to the Jewish

  homeland. He owned half the real

  estate in Tel Aviv, much of it in the

  poorer sections of town. The sheik was

  a Tel Aviv slumlord.

  The Buffalo Corporation collected

  rents from all over the city. And if

  the Israeli major who was in ordnance

  and supply confirmed a report the Hawk

  had received from some old Cambodian

  buddies in the CIA, the Buffalo

  Corporation was also in another

  business. One that held most

  unfortunate implications for the owner

  of said Buffalo 152

  .,

  Corporation, insofar as he was the

  very Arab who scared hell out of the

  realtors in St. Thomas.

  The report was simple; all MacKenzie

  needed was one military official to

  corroborate it. For the CIA boys

  learned that a major expediter of

  petrochemicals and fuel for the army

  of Israel during the Mideast war was

  a little-known American company called

  the Buffalo Corporation.

  Sheik Azaz-Varak not only owned half

  the real estate in Tel Aviv, but at

  the height of the conflict, he fed the

  Israeli war machine so the maniacs in

  Cairo wouldn't damage his investments.

  It was the sort of information that

  simply demanded a long-distance call,

  thought MacKenzie Hawkins. To the

  sheikdom of Azaz-Kuwait.

  Devereaux appreciated the sympathy

  from the Air France stewardess, but he

  would have appreciated food more.

  There were no supplies in the galley

  of the 727, a conditiion that would be

  corrected in Paris. Apparently and

  there was no way to be sure he

  understood correctly the Boche

  catering trucks that serviced Air

  France had been tied up in a

  Russian-induced traffic jam on the

  autobahn, and what had been left in

  the galley had been stolen by the

  Czechoslovakian ground crew in Prague.

  And besides, the food was better in

  Paris.

  So Sam smoked cigarettes, caught

  himself chewing bits of tobacco, and

  tried to concentrate on the doings of

  MacKenzie Hawkins. His seatmate was

  some kind of Eastern religious,

  perhaps a Sikh, with brown skin tinged

  with gray, a very small black beard,

  a purple turban, and darting eyes that

  were as close as a human's could be to

  those of a rat. It made thinking about

  MacKenzie easier; there would be

  little conversation on the trip to

  Paris.

  Hawkins had raised his third ten

  million. And now there was an Arabian

  sheik who was the fourth and final

  mark. Whatever it was that MacKenzie

  had culled from the raw files had the

  effect of thermonuclear blackmail.

  Christ! Forty million!

  What was he going to do with it? What

  kind of "equip153

  ment and support personnel" (whatever

  the hell they were) could possibly

  cost so much?

  Granted one did not kidnap a pope

  with a dollar and a quarter in his

  pocket, but was it necessary to cover

  the Italian national debt to do it?

  One thing was certain. The Hawk's

  plan for the kidnapping included the

  exchange of extraordinary sums of mon-

  ey. And whoever accepted such sums

  were ipso facto accessories to the

  most outrageous abduction in history!

  It was another avenue he, Sam, could

  explore. And a pretty good one at

  that. If he could obtain the names of

  even a few of Mac's suppliers, he

  could scare them right out of the

  picture. Certainly the Hawk was not

  going to say to someone: Yes, I'll buy

  that railroad Brain because I'm going

  to kidnap this pope fellow and it'll

  be a big help. No, that was hardly the

  way of an experienced general officer

  who had drugged half the pouch

  couriers in Southeast Asia. But if he,

  Sam, reached that same someone and

  said: You know that train you're

  sexing to that bearded idiotP It's

  going to be used to kidnap the pope.

  Have a good night's sleep well, that

  was something else again. The train

  would not be sold. And if he could

  prevent a train from being sold,

  perhaps he could prevent other

  supplies from reaching the Hawk.

  MacKenzie was army; lines of supply

  were paramount to any operation.

  Without them whole strategies were

  altered, even abandoned. It was

  military holy writ.

  Yes, resected Devereaux, gazing out

  into the German twilight from the

  hoodless Air France plane, it was a

  very decent avenue to explore. Coupled

  with his first consideration finding

  out how the Hawk intended to pull off

  the kidnapping, and the second

  consideration finding out what

  specific blackmailing material

  MacKenzie held over hi
s investors, the

  suppliers were a third, powerful

  ingredient. In preventive medicine.

  Sam closed his eyes, conjuring up

  visions of long ago. He was in the

  basement of his home in Quincy,

  Massachusetts. On the huge table in

  the center of his room was his set of

  Lionel trains, going around and

  around, weaving in and out of the

  miniature shrubbery and over the tiny

  154

  bridges and through the toy tunnels.

  But there was something strange about

  the sight. Except for the engine and

  the caboose, all the other vehicles

  were marked identically: '

  Refrigerator Car. Food."

  At Orly Airport, the passengers to

  Algiers were told to remain on the

  plane. For Devereaux nothing mattered

  once he saw the white truck pull up

  alongside the aircraft and men in

  white coats transferring immaculate

  steel containers into the galley. He

  even smiled at Rat Eyes beside him,

  noticing as he did so that his

  seatmate's purple turban had slipped

  somewhat over his brown forehead. Sam

  might have said something he'd learned

  long ago that even strangers

  appreciated it when you told them

  their zippers were open but since

  several other turbaned acquaintances

  who'd boarded at Orly had come up to

  pay their respects and had said

  nothing, Devereaux felt it wasn't his

  place. Besides most of the other

  purple turbans seemed a touch

  lopsided. Perhaps it was a custom

  indigenous to the particular religious

  sect.

  Regardless, all Sam could think

  about were the immaculate steel trays,

  now securely in the Air France galley

  broilers, sending out deliriously

  inviting wafts of escalope de veau,

  tournedos, sauce Bearrzaise, and, if