The Osterman weekend

by Ludlum, Robert

  Yet Fassett's men were gone. Perhaps there was no mistake at all.

  Tanner suddenly remembered that he, too, had resources. There existed for Standard Mutual Network necessary links to certain government agencies. He dialed Connecticut information and got the Greenwich number of Andrew Harrison, head of Standard's legal department.

  "Hello, Andy? . . . John Tanner." He tried to sound as composed as possible. "Sorry as hell to bother you at home but the Asian Bureau just called. There's a story out of Hong Kong I want to clear. ... I'd rather not go into it now, I'll tell you Monday morning. It may be nothing, but I'd rather check. ... I guess C.I.A. would be best. It's that kind of thing. They've cooperated with us before. . . . Okay, I'll hold on." The news editor cupped the telephone under his chin and lit a cigarette. Harrison came back with a number and Tanner wrote it down. "That's Virginia, isn't it? . . . Thanks very much, Andy. I'll see you Monday morning."

  Once more he dialed.

  "Central Intelligence. Mr. Andrews' office." It was a male voice.

  "My name is Tanner. John Tanner. Director of News for Standard Mutual in New York."

  "Yes, Mr. Tanner? Are you calling Mr. Andrews?"

  "Yes. Yes, I guess I am."

  "I'm sorry, he's not in today. May I help you?"

  "Actually, I'm trying to locate Laurence Fassett."

  "Who?"

  "Fassett. Laurence Fassett. He's with your agency. It's urgent I speak with him. I believe he's in the New York area."

  "Is he connected with this department?"

  "I don't know. I only know he's with the Central Intelligence Agency. I told you, it's urgent! An emergency, to be exact!" Tanner was beginning to perspire. This was no time to be talking to a clerk.

  "All right, Mr. Tanner. I'll check our directory and locate him. Be right back."

  It was a full two minutes before he returned. The voice was hesitant but very precise.

  "Are you sure you have the right name?"

  "Of course, I am."

  "I'm sorry, but there's no Laurence Fassett listed with the switchboard or in any index."

  "That's impossible! . . . Look, I've been working with Fassett! . . . Let me talk with your superior." Tanner remembered how Fassett, even Jenkins, kept referring to those who had been "cleared" for Omega.

  "I don't think you understand, Mr. Tanner. This is a priority office. You called for my associate . . . my subordinate, if you like. My name is Dwight Mr. Andrews refers decisions of this office to me."

  "I don't care who you are! I'm telling you this is an emergency! I think you'd better reach someone in much higher authority than yourself, Mr. Dwight. I can't put it plainer. That's all! Do it now! Or hold on!"

  "Very well. It may take a few minutes..."

  "I'll hold."

  It took seven minutes, an eternity of strain for Tanner, before Dwight returned to the line.

  "Mr. Tanner, I took the liberty of checking your own position so I assume you're responsible. However, I can assure you you've been misled. There's no Laurence Fassett with the Central Intelligence Agency. There never has been."

  Tanner hung up the telephone and supported himself on the edge of the sink. He pushed himself off and walked mindlessly out the kitchen door onto the backyard patio. The sky was dark. A breeze rustled the trees and caused ripples on the surface of the pool. There was going to be a storm, thought Tanner, as he looked up at the clouds. A July thunderstorm was closing in.

  Omega was closing in.

  With or without Fassett, Omega was real, that much was clear to Tanner. It was real because he had seen and sensed its power, the force it generated, capable of removing a Laurence Fassett, of manipulating the decisions and the personnel of the country's prime intelligence agency.

  Tanner knew there was no point trying to reach Jenkins. What had Jenkins said in the living room during the early morning hours? . . . "If you point at me, I'll deny everything. . . ." If Omega could silence Fassett, silencing Jenkins would be like breaking a toy.

  There had to be a starting point, a springboard that could propel him backward through the lies. He didn't care any longer; it just had to end, his family kept safe. It wasn't his war any more. His only concern was Ali and the children.

  Tanner saw the figure of Osterman through the kitchen window.

  That was it! Osterman was his point of departure, his break with Omega! He walked quickly back inside.

  Leila sat at the table while Bernie stood by the stove boiling water for coffee.

  "We're leaving," Bernie said. "Our bag's packed."

  "Why?"

  "Something's terribly wrong," said Leila, "and it's none of our business. We're not involved and we don't care to be."

  "That's what I want to talk to you about. Both of you."

  Bernie and Leila exchanged looks.

  "Go ahead," said Bernie.

  "Not here. Outside."

  "Why outside?"

  "I don't want Ali to hear."

  "She's asleep."

  "It's got to be outside."

  The three of them walked past the pool to the rear of the lawn. Tanner turned and faced them.

  "You don't have to lie any more. Either of you. I just want my part over with. I've stopped caring." He paused for a moment "I know about Omega."

  "About what?" asked Leila.

  "Omega . . . Omega!" Tanner's voice—his whisper—was pained. "I don't care! So help me God, I don't care!"

  "What are you talking about?" Bernie watched the news director, taking a step towards him. Tanner backed away. "What's the matter?"

  "For God's sake, don't do this!"

  "Don't do what?"

  "I told you! It doesn't make any difference to me! Just please! Please! Leave Ali and the kids alone. Do whatever you want with me! . . . Just leave them alone!"

  Leila reached out and put her hand on Tanner's arm. "You're hysterical, Johnny. I don't know what you're talking about."

  Tanner looked down at Leila's hand and blinked back his tears. "How can you do this? Please! Don't lie any longer. I don't think I could stand that."

  "Lie about what?"

  "You never heard about any bank accounts in Switzerland? In Zurich?"

  Leila withdrew her hand and the Ostermans stood motionless. Finally, Bernie spoke quietly. "Yes, I've heard of bank accounts in Zurich. We've got a couple."

  Leila looked at her husband.

  "Where did you get the money?"

  "We make a great deal of money," answered Bernie cautiously. "You know that. If it would ease whatever's troubling you, why don't you call our accountant. You've met Ed Marcum. There's no one better ... or cleaner... in California."

  Tanner was confused. The simplicity of Osterman's reply puzzled him; it was so natural. "The Cardones, the Tremaynes. They've got Zurich accounts, too?"

  "I guess they have. So do fifty percent of the people I know on the coast."

  "Where did they get the money?"

  "Why don't you ask them?" Osterman kept his voice quiet.

  "You know!"

  "You're being foolish," said Leila. "Both Dick and Joe are very successful men. Joe probably more than any of us."

  "But why Zurich? What's in Zurich?"

  "A degree of freedom," answered Bernie softly.

  "That's it! That's what you were selling last night! 'What do you want most?,' you said. Those were your words!"

  "There's a great deal of money to be made in Zurich, I won't deny that."

  "With Omega! That's how you make it, isn't it? Isn't it?"

  "I don't know what that means," said Bernie, now apprehensive himself.

  "Dick and Joe! They're with Omega! So are you! The 'Chasm of Leather!' Information for Zurich! Money for information!"

  Leila grabbed her husband's hand. "The phone calls, Bernie! The messages."

  "Leila, please. . . . Listen, Johnny. I swear to you I don't know what you're talking about Last night I offered to help you and I meant it. There are investments bei
ng made; I was offering you money for investments. That's all."

  "Not for information? Not for Omega?"

  Leila clutched her husband's hand; Bernie responded by looking at her, silently commanding her to calm herself. He turned back to Tanner. "I can't imagine any information you might have that I could want. I don't know any Omega. I don't know what it is."

  "Joe knows! Dick knows! They both came to Ali and me! They threatened us."

  "Then I'm no part of them. We're no part."

  "Oh, God, Bernie, something happened...." Leila couldn't help herself. Bernie reached over and took her in his arms.

  "Whatever it is, it hasn't anything to do with us. . . . Perhaps you'd better tell us what it's all about. Maybe we can help."

  Tanner watched them, holding each other gently. He wanted to believe them. He wanted friends; he desperately needed allies. And Fassett had said it; not all were Omega. "You really don't know, do you? You don't know what Omega is. Or what 'Chasm of Leather' means."

  "No," said Leila simply.

  Tanner believed them. He had to believe them, for it meant he wasn't alone any more. And so he told them.

  Everything.

  When he had finished the two writers stood staring at him, saying nothing. It had begun to drizzle lightly but none of them felt the rain. Finally, Bernie spoke.

  "And you thought I was talking about ... we had something to do with this?" Bernie narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "My God! It's insane!"

  "No it's not. It's real. I've seen it."

  "You say Ali doesn't know?" asked Leila.

  "I was told not to tell her, that's what they told me!"

  "Who? Someone you can't even reach on the phone? A man Washington doesn't acknowledge? Someone who pumped you full of lies about us?"

  "A man was killed! My family could have been killed last Wednesday! The Cardones and the Tremaynes were gassed last night!"

  Osterman looked at his wife and then back at Tanner.

  "If they really were gassed," he said softly.

  "You've got to tell Alice." Leila was emphatic. "You can't keep it from her any longer."

  "I know. I will."

  "And then we've got to get out of here," said Osterman.

  "Where to?"

  "Washington. There are one or two Senators, a couple of Congressmen. They're friends of ours."

  "Bernie's right. We've got friends in Washington."

  The drizzle was beginning to turn into hard rain. "Let's go inside," said Leila, touching Tanner's shoulder gently.

  "Wait! We can't talk in there. We can't say anything inside the house. It's wired."

  Bernie and Leila Osterman reacted as though they'd been slapped. "Everywhere?" asked Bernie.

  "I'm not sure. . . . I'm not sure of anything anymore."

  "Then we don't talk inside the house; or if we do we put on a radio loud and whisper."

  Tanner looked at his friends. Thank God! Thank God! It was the beginning of his journey back to sanity.

  In less than an hour the July storm was upon them. The radio reports projected gale force winds; medium-craft warnings were up from Hatteras to Rhode Island, and the Village of Saddle Valley was neither so isolated nor inviolate as to escape the inundation.

  Ali awoke with the first thunder and John told her—whispered to her—through the sound of the ^loud radios, that they were to be prepared to leave with Bernie and Leila. He held her close to him and begged her not to ask questions, to trust him.

  The children were brought into the living room; " a television set moved in front of the fireplace. Ali packed two suitcases and placed them beside the garage entrance. Leila boiled eggs and wrapped celery and carrot sticks.

  Bernie had said they might not stop driving for an hour or two.

  Tanner watched the preparations and his mind went back a quarter of a century.

  Evacuation!

  The phone rang at two-thirty. It was a suppressed, hysterical Tremayne who—falsely, thought Tanner—recounted the events of the Lassiter depot and made it clear that he and Ginny were too shaken to come over for dinner. The Saturday evening dinner of an Osterman weekend.

  "You've got to tell me what's going on!" Alice Tanner spoke to her husband in the pantry. There was a transistor radio at full volume and she tried to turn it down. He held her hand, preventing her, and pulled her to him.

  "Trust me. Please trust me" he whispered. "I'll explain in the car."

  "In the car?" Ali's eyes widened in fright as she brought her hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God! What you're saying is ... you can't talk."

  "Trust me." Tanner walked into the kitchen and spoke, gestured really, to Bernie. "Let's load." They went for the suitcases.

  When Tanner and Osterman returned from the garage, Leila was at the kitchen window looking out on the back yard. "It's becoming a regular gale out there."

  The phone rang, and Tanner answered it.

  Cardone was an angry man. He swore and swore again that he'd rip apart and rip apart once more the son of a bitch who'd gassed them. He was also confused, completely bewildered. His watch was worth eight hundred dollars and it wasn't taken. He'd had a couple of hundred in his wallet and it was left intact.

  "The police said Dick had some papers stolen. Something about Zurich, Switzerland."

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Cardone and then silence. When Joe spoke he could hardly be heard. "That's got nothing to do with me!" And then he rapidly told Tanner without much conviction that a call from Philadelphia had warned him that his father might be extremely ill. He and Betty would stay around home. Perhaps they'd see them all on Sunday. Tanner hung up the phone.

  "Hey!" Leila was watching something out on the lawn. "Look at those umbrellas. They're practically blowing away."

  Tanner looked out the window above the sink. The two large table umbrellas were bending under the force of the wind. The cloth of each was straining against the thin metal ribs. Soon they'd rip or invert themselves. Tanner knew it would appear strange if he didn't take care of them. It wouldn't be normal.

  "I'll go get them down. Take two minutes."

  "Want some help?"

  "No sense both of us getting wet."

  "Your raincoat's in the hall closet."

  The wind was strong, the rain came down in torrents. He shielded his face with his hands and fought his way to the farthest table. He reached up under the flapping cloth and felt his fingers on the metal hasp. He started to push it in.

  There was a shattering sound on the top of the wrought iron table. Pieces of metal flew up, searing his arm. Another report. Fragments of cement at his feet bounced off the base of the table. And then another shot, now on his other side.

  Tanner flung himself under the metal table, crouching to the far side, away from the direction of the bullets.

  Shots came in rapid succession, all around him, kicking up particles of metal and stone.

  He started to crawl backwards onto the grass but the small eruptions of wet dirt paralyzed him. He grabbed for a chair and held it, clutched it in front of him as though it were the last threads of a disintegrating rope and he were high above a chasm. He froze in panic, awaiting his death.

  "Let go! Goddamn it! Let go!"

  Osterman was pulling at him, slapping him in the face and wrenching his arms from the chair. They scrambled back toward the house; bullets thumped into the wooden shingles.

  "Stay away! Stay away from the door!" Bernie screamed. But he wasn't in time, or his wife would not heed the command. Leila opened the door and Bernie Osterman threw Tanner inside, jumping on top of him as he did so. Leila crouched below the window and slammed the door shut.

  The firing stopped.

  Ali rushed to her husband and turned him over, cradling his head, wincing at the blood on his bare arms.

  "Are you hit?" yelled Bernie.

  "No ... no, I'm all right."

  "You're not all right! Oh, God! Look at his arms!" Ali tried to wipe the blood away with her
hand.

  "Leila! Find some alcohol! Iodine! Ali, you got iodine?"

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, Alice could not answer the question. Leila grabbed her shoulders and spoke harshly.

  "Stop it, Ali! Stop it! Where are some bandages, some antiseptic? Johnny needs help!"

  "Some spray stuff ... in the pantry. Cotton, too." She would not let go of her husband. Leila crept towards the pantry.

  Bernie examined Tanner's arms. "This isn't bad. Just a bunch of scratches. I don't think anything's embedded..."

  John looked up at Bernie, despising himself. "You saved my life. ... I don't know what to say."

  "Kiss me on my next birthday. . . . Good girl, Leila. Give me that stuff." Osterman took a medicine can and held the spray steady on Tanner's arms. "Ali, phone the police! Stay away from the window but get hold of that fat butcher you call a police captain!"

  Alice reluctantly let her husband go and crawled past the kitchen sink. She reached up the side of the wall and removed the receiver.

  "It's dead."

  Leila gasped. Bernie leapt towards Ali, grabbing the phone from her hand.

  "She's right."

  John Tanner turned himself over and pressed his arms against the kitchen tile. He was all right. He could move.

  "Let's find out where we stand," he said slowly.

  "What do you mean?" asked Bernie.

  "You girls stay down on the floor. . . . Bernie, the light switch is next to the telephone. Reach up and turn it on when I count to three."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Just do as I say."

  Tanner crept to the kitchen door, by the bar, and stood up out of sight of the window. The rain, the wind, the intermittent rumble of thunder were the only sounds.

  "Ready? I'm going to start counting."

  "What's he going to do?" Ali started up, but Osterman grabbed her and held her to the floor.

  "You've been here before, Bernie," John said. 'Infantry Manual. Heading: Night Patrols. Nothing to worry about. The odds are a thousand to one on my side."

  "Not in any book I know."

  "Shut up! ... One, two, three!"

  Osterman flipped the switch and the overhead kitchen light went on. Tanner leapt towards the pantry.

  It came. The signal. The sign that the enemy was there.