The Matarese Countdown

by Robert Ludlum

  "What happened?" roared Pryce to the Australian, grabbing his blood-soaked shoulders.

  "

  "Eee was a bloody fuckin' bahstard!" whispered the mortally wounded man, "that's what he was. He wriggled his way out of the rope an' said he was goin' to free us. Instead, he picked up a winch handle and bashed us both, one after the other, so fast we didn't know what was .. . happening'. I'll see him in hell!" The Aussie expelled his last breath; he was dead.

  Cameron looked over the gunwale; the motorized life raft was gone.

  Its new helmsman could be heading to any one of five or six small islands. The immediate trail was ended. Cam raced back into the below-deck cabin.

  "The son of a bitch got loose, killed the other two, and took the PVC!" he yelled.

  "I can't break into the computer."

  "There's still a telephone over there, young fella," said Scofield.

  "I

  realize it's not high tech, but I dialed our house and got the answering machine."

  "You're a simplistic genius in a lousy high-tech world," said a relieved Pryce, rushing to the phone next to the computer. He pressed the coded numbers he knew would override satellite traffic and connect him to Langley, Virginia, to the Directorate of Operations, the Company's most sacrosanct of secret projects.

  "Yes?" said the neutral voice on the line.

  "This is Camshaft, Caribbean, and I have to talk to Deputy Director Frank Shields. This is a Four-Zero priority."

  "Director Shields left the grounds hours ago, sir."

  "Then patch me through to his home."

  "To do that I'll need additional information-" "Try the name Beowulf Agate!" Cam interrupted harshly.

  "Who, sir?"

  "I thought that was me," broke in Scofield.

  "I'm borrowing it, do you mind?"

  "I guess not." "Beowulf Agate," repeated Pryce anxiously into the telephone.

  Twelve seconds later, the voice of Frank Shields came on the line.

  "It's been a long time, Brandon, over twenty years, I'd say."

  "This isn't Brandon, it's me. Camshaft and Caribbean got me nowhere with your robot, so I borrowed the name. The owner didn't object."

  "You found him?"

  "A lot more than that, Frank, but this isn't the time to give you details. I need information fast. Is your Big Guy Eye still working?"

  "BGI and its brothers and sisters never stop working, they hum around the clock; it's mostly junk. What do you need?"

  "There's been a transmission or transmissions from here to God knows where, either by phone or computer via satellite within the past hour or so. Can you pull up the traffic you've intercepted?"

  "Sure, how much material do you want, ten or twenty thousand pages?"

  "Funny fellow. I've studied the charts. It or they were sent out from these approximate coordinates: longitude sixty-five degrees west; latitude eighteen degrees, twenty minutes north; the time span between midnight and two A.M."

  "I admit that narrows it down considerably. That would be our Mayagiez station in Puerto Rico. What are we looking for?"

  "I imagine Beowulf Agate to begin with. Scofield was told they were after him."

  "The Matarese?"

  "Exactly, according to a well-dressed scum bucket who's no longer befouling the planet."

  "You have been busy."

  "So have they. They followed in my footsteps-" "How could they? Everything was under wraps!"

  "Because one or more of them are on our payroll."

  "Oh, my God!"

  "No time for supplications. Get to work."

  "What's your number?"

  "We're on a trawler and the number's been removed. But there's a computer here, screen and all."

  "Pull up your equipment line in the confidential mode. I'll have Mayagiez contact you directly if they find something. Or even if they don't. I'll also give them a few more clues to look for."

  "Find something, Frank," said Pryce, turning to the computer, touching the keys, and delivering the information Shields needed.

  "An entire crew of fine young men were killed by those bastards." Cameron hung up and, breathing hard, leaned back in the chair.

  "What do we do now?" asked Antonia.

  "We wait, my girl," answered Bray.

  "We wait until the sun comes up if we have to. Mayagiez has to filter out a lot of ozone traffic, if they can find anything."

  "A two-hour time span with fairly accurate coordinates should reduce the difficulty," said Pryce.

  "Even Shields agreed to that."

  "Frank may have an impressive new title," Scofield mumbled, interrupting, "but he's still an analyst. He's comfortably in D.C.; you're in the field. In like situations, he's "Doctor Feel-good." Keep the on-scene talent happy."

  "You really are a cynic."

  "I've lived long enough, and outlived too many others, to be anything else."

  "We wait then." The minutes went by, all eyes on the computer screen. Nearly an hour passed until the bright letters appeared.

  In origin-com put-scrambler mode. No interception possible. Based on "Beowulf Agate' and additional info from D.C." we've cross-checked and send the following. Two transmissions from estimated coordinates may apply. Both verbatim telephone calls in French: "Expensive hawk arriving at Buenos Aires." Two: "Naval observers cooperative, neutral zone. Islands southwest of British Tortola." End of message. Receiver routing still under relay trace. Euro-Mediterranean stations narrowing down destination.

  "My, oh my!" exclaimed the retired Brandon Scofield, "aren't they cute?"

  "What do you mean?" asked his wife.

  "They learned how to code from cereal box tops," said Bray.

  "It's fairly obvious, I'll say that," agreed Cameron.

  "What is?" said Antonia.

  "

  "Expensive hawk arriving at Buenos Aires,"

  " replied Scofield.

  "Translated, the expensive hawk-the hunter-is our new friend Pryce, spelled with an I. Buenos Aires is B.A." undoubtedly Beowulf Agate and that's me."

  "Oh, I see what you mean," said the tall, attractive, and formidable Antonia, staring at the green letters on the black screen.

  "And the rest?"

  "I'll answer that," said Cameron angrily. "

  "Naval observers cooperative' .. . and neutralized. They blew up the Coast Guard cutter.

  Goddamn them!"

  "The second transmission said "Islands southwest of British Tortola," " swiftly interrupted Scofield, "not a specific island, and outside of the Brasses there are at least another twenty south and southwest of us.

  Let's head into our Twenty-six, and I'll use my equipment-we can also have a drink, which is profoundly necessary."

  "You don't have a computer," objected Pryce.

  "I don't need one, lad. I've got a telephone, one of those Comsat mobile-link jobs. Cost me a hell of a lot of money, but if you've got a friend in Hong Kong, you can get him on the line."

  Suddenly, far away in the night sky, came the sound of distant thunder, but not a storm, not the weather. It was something else.

  "What the hell is that?" said Cam.

  "On deck!" yelled Scofield, grabbing his wife by the hand and pulling her to the short cabin staircase while hammering Pryce's shoulder.

  "Get out of here!"

  "What .. . why?"

  "Because this is probably the tenth sortie, you idiot!" shouted the retired agent.

  "They're searching for us. They see this boat, we're finished! Move, both of you. And over the side!"

  All three did so, furiously swimming away from the hull as a jet fighter swooped down, dropping two bombs on the trawler, blowing it to the dark sky from which the deadly marauder emerged. It sank within moments.

  "Toni, Toni, where are you?" screamed Scofield in the turbulent waters.

  "Over here, my darling!" yelled Antonia, farther out in the water.

  "Pryce? .. . Are you here, are you alive, Pryce?"

 
"You're damned right I am!" replied Cameron.

  "And I intend to stay that way!"

  "Swim to our island," ordered Scofield.

  "We have to talk."

  "What's there to talk about?" asked Pryce, toweling himself off on the porch of the dark cabin.

  "They've ruined the life I've come to love, young man. They've taken away our happiness, our freedom."

  "I can't do anything about that," said Cam as both naked men dried themselves off.

  "I told you, I did my best to conceal your whereabouts."

  "Your best wasn't good enough, was it?"

  "Get out of my face. By your own admission, you weren't so damned hard to find."

  "For you, no, but I was for them. With an exception I never figured on, but I should have. After all these years, they still have a mole in the Agency. A high-placed son of a bitch. Did you have any idea?"

  "No, I didn't. You heard what I said to Frank, that someone was on our payroll. He went ape."

  "I believe you and I believe him. So that's why you must spread the word. Beowulf Agate is back. Let them know that Beowulf Agate and Vasili Taleniekov, the Serpent, are back, and we will not stop searching until the Matarese is history."

  "What about me, Scofield?"

  "You're our enforcer, our point."

  "Our? .. . Taleniekov is dead. He's gone!"

  "Not in my head, Cameron Pryce. He never will be."

  They sat in the dark screened-in veranda, the only light coming from a Coleman lantern, its wick at the lowest ebb, just enough to illuminate the numbers on Scofield's portable phone. He had pressed the esoteric digits that were their direct link to Langley's clandestine operations.

  "Get on the other phone," ordered Bray as Pryce felt around the table by his chair for the instrument.

  "Yes?" Once more the robotic voice half whispered, half spoke.

  "Beowulf Agate again," said Scofield.

  "Patch me through to Shields."

  "Just a minute, sir." The line seemingly went dead, then the disembodied words came back.

  "I'm afraid you're not Beowulf Agate.

  Your voiceprint doesn't match."

  " Voiceprint? .. . For Christ's sake, Cam, get on the phone and tell this praetorian keeper of the keys that I'm Beowulf Agate and you're not!"

  "I just found it; it was on the floor," said Pryce, reaching for the telephone and getting on the line.

  "Listen to me, Night Watch, a voiceprint doesn't mean a goddamned thing, it's the code that's important, and more than one person can have it. Now, move!"

  "Cameron?" said the very awake Frank Shields.

  "Hi, Squint Eyes," Scofield broke in.

  "Brandon, that is you!"

  "How'd you guess?"

  "

  "Let me count the ways," starting with your inevitable insult. How are you, Bray?"

  "I was a hell of a lot better before you gargoyles from hell came back into my life!"

  "We had to, old friend. I'm sure Pryce made that clear. Incidentally, what do you think of him?"

  "I can't really tell you what an asshole he is because he's on the other phone."

  "I'm on the other phone," agreed Cameron quietly, his weariness apparent.

  "Let me bring you quickly up to speed, Frank." Pryce rapidly described the events that led to the island search party and the trawler, the murder of the crew, and the disappearance of the trawler's captain.

  "He must have reached somebody somewhere nearby because an FWhatever jet fighter bombed the boat into driftwood. Fortunately, and I'll give him all the credit, your former colleague heard the noise and way out figured me. I wouldn't be talking to you now if he hadn't, and I still don't know how he did it."

  "He knows the Matarese, Cam."

  "Indeed I do, Squinty," interrupted Scofield, "and our killer captain didn't have to reach anybody. That fake trawler was tracked and mapped from its first transmission. The wheels were set in motion, and the first expendable item was the trawler itself, along with the crew.

  The Matarese never leaves loose ends, not even the possibility of loose ends."

  "There's your answer, Pryce," said Shields, two thousand miles north of the British Virgin Islands.

  "Where the hell did the plane come from?" exploded Cameron.

  "It was a fighter jet, armed, military, which means it had to come from an air base! Jesus, have they infiltrated the Air Force? They obviously didn't have much trouble with the Agency."

  "We're working on that," said Shields softly, haltingly.

  "You could be wrong, Cam," offered Scofield from across the veranda.

  "The explosions blinded us; it was dark and we were swimming for our lives. We're not sure what we saw."

  "Thanks to chivalry," interrupted Antonia beside her husband, "I was farther out than either of you. I tried to watch as the pilot circled to survey his work-" "I dove under, thinking he was going to strafe," broke in Pryce.

  "So did I," said Scofield.

  "I'm afraid that thought never struck me-" "What did you see, love? .. . Can you hear her, Frank?"

  "Very clearly," replied the man in Langley.

  "It was a jet, certainly, but not a configuration I'm familiar with, and there didn't appear to be any markings. However, there was something odd about the wings, and large protrusions on the underside."

  "A Harrier," said Cameron Pryce, disgust in his tone.

  "Capable of lifting off from a patch of cement or a small backyard."

  "An easy purchase for them," added Beowulf Agate.

  "Five'll get you ten they have dozens of them all over, strategically located."

  "So, going back to your statement a few moments ago," interrupted Shields, "when you said that the trawler was 'tracked and mapped," you were really saying the Harrier was already in place."

  "I don't doubt it for a minute. When did you fellas on the top floor decide to send Pryce after me?"

  "Six or seven days ago, when the CG station on St. Thomas couldn't come up with anything but a post-office box that nobody ever seemed to check."

  "Plenty of time to move a Seven Forty-seven to an island, say nothing of a small Harrier. After all, Squinty, and I say it modestly, I'm apparently something of a prize, wouldn't you say?"

  "You're a .. . never mind." Shields paused, his breathing audible.

  "I've got an update on the relay trace from our Euro-Mediterranean stations."

  "What the hell is that?" asked Scofield.

  "Something new?"

  "Actually, it's not, Brandon. You yourself used it a number of times-just a different name insofar as satellite communications have encompassed computers as well as radio and telephonic traffic. Do you remember when you used to call one number, say from Prague to London, but you dialed a number in Paris?"

  "Sure. We loused up the KGB and the Stasi to the point where they often went nuts. One time they damn near shot up a ballet studio they thought was our Mi-Six drop until they didn't have the heart to fire through the whirling tutus! We had to change the trip because the ballet teacher, who we all thought was a skinny la-la, if you know what I mean, beat the shit out of the roughest Brit agent we had."

  "It's the same thing, only technologically more sophisticated."

  "Now I really don't .. . Hold it, I see what you mean! We called it phone-forwarding trips, you call it relay traces."

  "Because we work forward and backward. We don't merely send, we can now trace the receivers through the multiple 'relays."

  " "That's remarkable, Squinty."

  "The lesson is over, Frank," said Pryce on the phone.

  "I'll fill in whatever your curious friend cares to hear. What's your transmission update?"

  "It's crazy, Cam. The first call was routed to Paris, relayed to Rome, then to Cairo, back to Athens, next to Istanbul, and finally to the Italian province of Lombardy, specifically Lake Como. From that station it was bifurcated-" "Split destinations!" interjected Pryce angrily.

  "They split the
wires!"

  "Into three parts, but the strongest signal was to Groningen in the Netherlands, where it stopped. Our experts believe the final leg, on private wire, was sent to Utrecht, Amsterdam, or Eindhoven."

  "Three pretty big cities, Frank."

  "Yes, we know. Where do you want to start? I'll alert our agents to give you every cooperation."

  "He won't start!" yelled Scofield into the phone.

  "He'll begin when I tell him to begin!"

  "Come on, Bray," said Frank Shields calmly, "I wouldn't sanction you into the field if my life depended on it. Among other things, my wife of forty years would leave me if I did. She adores you, you know that."

  "Give my love to Janie, she was always brighter and much more interesting than you. But if you want me back, you son of a bitch, it's on my terms."

  "Not in the field!"

  "I'll accept that, Squinty. My aim's damn sharp, but I can't leap over fences like I used to."

  "Then what do you want?"

  "I want to run the operation."

  "What?"

  "I'm the only one who penetrated the Matarese, I was there when they were all blown to hell. But before that Armageddon, it was just Taleniekov and me who unearthed their disciples, how they thought, how warped they were, how fanatic their motives, all cloaked in sweet reason so the entire world would march to their hollow drums.. .. You can't dismiss me, Frank, I won't let you! You need me!"

  "I repeat, not in the field," said the calm deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

  "I'd rather not be-I know the limitations of my age. But I'll not give you an open road."

  "What's an 'open road'?"

  "Hell, I just explained it to your junior officer here. We make up our own jargon, Frank, you know that."

  "I'm afraid I don't, Bray. What do you mean?"

  "If the boy gets in trouble, I have the right to intercede."

  "Unacceptable. Trouble' to you is one thing, it could be something quite different to anyone else."

  "Say he gets killed?"

  "Oh?" Shields again hesitated.

  "I hadn't considered that."

  "But it must be contemplated, mustn't it?"

  "Shut up!" yelled Cameron Pryce into the phone.

  "I'll take care of myself, Frank!"