Recoil. Part 16

"That's not exactly what I had in mind when I came to you."

"You put yourself in my hands, didn't you. You're paying for my judgment." Vasquez's abrupt expression of amus.e.m.e.nt took him by surprise. "Never mind-I enjoy melodrama." Vasquez went back around the car but before he could reach the horn Mathieson saw a man appear at the corner of the house carrying a golf club.

"Ah. Homer."

The man walked forward with a sailor's gait, shoulders rolling and head rocking, legs bowed, moving on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. He was no taller or wider than Vasquez but he had the chest and biceps of a weight lifter. He had the pitted narrow face of a street thug.

Vasquez made introductions. Homer Seidell wasn't a knuckle-crusher but his grip was authoritative. He had an odd brief smile-as if the skin around his mouth was stretched too tight.

He lifted the suitcases out of the trunk. "We're putting you in the Ronald Colman suite. It's the best digs in the house." It was the voice of a much bigger man-husky but powerful.

Vasquez held the door for them. Ronny dashed inside fearlessly. The vast center-hall foyer was hung with oil landscapes but they might as well have been Gainsborough portraits; the s.p.a.ce was darkly paneled and dominated by an enormous pewter chandelier and a sweeping rosewood staircase.

Homer Seidell said, with amus.e.m.e.nt, "Welcome to boot camp, Mr. Merle."

3.

The suite had two huge rooms connected by a bathroom whose marble decor and gold-plated plumbing reminded him of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

Homer Seidell deposited the luggage on ottomans and Vasquez stood in the door with a proprietary air identifying the amenities and facilities: There was a Mrs. Meuth who would look after their housekeeping needs; there was a Mr. Meuth, the groundskeeper; there was Perkins who looked after the place's mechanical needs and had charge of the livestock.

"Perkins can help you pick out a steed for your adventures. It would be wise if you confined your riding to the valley. It should give you enough elbow room-there's an area of some thirty square miles to explore. Perkins prefers that the horses not be taken into the foothills. You'll understand that-it's very rocky terrain."

Ronny gulped. "Yes, sir, I understand."

Vasquez turned to Jan. "It's an ideal topography for us. This house sits on the highest spot in the valley. On horseback the boy will be able to see the house from any point, and be seen from it."

She took his meaning. Vasquez told her, "This will be your home for a while. Settle in, make yourselves comfortable. Incidentally you'll find quite a good film collection in the library-prints of several hundred excellent motion pictures. Mrs. Meuth can help you with the projectors. There's also television throughout the house, of course. Meuth does the shopping, usually twice a week, and he always returns with newspapers and magazines. The swimming pool is immediately behind the house. There's an indoor pool as well, in the north bas.e.m.e.nt, but it isn't kept heated this time of year. If you prefer golf there are three holes laid out on the west lawn. Mrs. Meuth is employed to provide cooking for whatever guests are present but she doesn't take offense if you care to do your own from time to time. If you'd like to choose your own menus you may give Mr. Meuth a shopping list-his next scheduled trip is tomorrow morning."

"Are we confined to the estate?"

"You're not prisoners here, Mrs. Mathieson, but if you elect to go off on excursions I should appreciate your giving me twenty-four hours' notice so that I may bring down a few members of my staff to escort you." He glanced at Mathieson: "Naturally such services will be billed to you. But you understand the necessity."

"Yes."

"We'll take your husband off now. I'm afraid you and the young man will have to fend for yourselves most of the time."

"We'll manage. Thank you." Her face came around toward Mathieson. "Good luck." She was smiling but he couldn't fathom what might be behind the smile. Unnerved he followed Vasquez down the corridor with Homer Seidell; they went downstairs and Vasquez strode right out the front door. "May I have the keys to your car?"

He pa.s.sed them over and Vasquez handed them to Homer. When Homer pulled the car away Vasquez said, "If you want the car it will be in the garage beside the main barn. The keys will be in it-we don't have thieves up here."

"Are you trying to rea.s.sure me?"

"You'll begin to feel like a prisoner of war here after a bit. It will be important that you realize that escape is dead easy. That knowledge, I think, will encourage you to stay and stick it out."

"Stick what out? You still haven't really explained the program."

"Homer facetiously described it as boot camp but it was quite apt. We're going to be rough on you. You've got to be conditioned out of some of your most comfortable habits. It will be modeled to some extent on the army's basic-training techniques, although there's one significant difference-we're not concerned with inculcating obedience; quite the contrary. What needs development is your initiative. Essentially I want to see you become comfortable with a variety of methods and techniques that will strike you at first as unfamiliar and perhaps unpleasant. We'll present you with challenges that you'll be forced to meet with a combination of trained responses and imagination. Bear in mind you're going to be fighting formidable antagonists who regard violence as an acceptable and even commonplace solution to nearly any sort of problem. I'm not forgetting your prejudices-you may not wish to initiate violence but you've got to know how to deal with it when you're faced with it."

"Sounds ominous."

"I a.s.sure you it is. But you know the seriousness of it better than I do."

"How long does all this take?"

"You're impatient."

"Of course I'm impatient, d.a.m.n it."

"It shouldn't take terribly long. We can't expect to make you over. A few basics-and we do need to restore you to first-rate physical condition. Fortunately you seem to have the remains of a good const.i.tution, according to Doctor Wylie. But that sort of training is peripheral at most. Mainly we'll be acquiring information and improvising our schemes based on that information. My organization is already casting its lines and in a very short time I expect to have dossiers on each of your enemies."

At the edge of the trees Homer Seidell came in sight. He walked up the driveway with his rolling determined gait.

Vasquez said, "Homer has instructions to be rough with you. Try to remember who your real enemies are. Homer's a very good man."

Vasquez turned away, disappearing back into the house. He left Mathieson feeling uneasy.

4.

He jogged in tennis shoes and a gray sweat suit with a towel flopping around his neck. Homer Seidell paced him effortlessly and Mathieson was embarra.s.sed by his own puffing and the streaming sweat.

They came around the corner of the fence. It was still a quarter of a mile up to the house and he didn't think he was going to make it but he was determined to try, if only because of the half-concealed contempt with which Homer had treated him all day.

Momentum and the slight downslope of the driveway were all that kept him from collapse. When he reached the porte cochere he sat on the steps of the porch panting for breath. There was a roaring in his ears.

Homer went bouncing into the house without breaking the rhythm of his stride-up the steps three at a time ... Mathieson was still gulping for air when Homer appeared with a bottle of mineral water and two tumblers. He set them down and handed two chalky tablets to Mathieson. They looked like oversized aspirin.

"Salt," Homer explained. "Take them with the water. But wait till you've got your breath."

It was a while before he could speak. "How far ... did we run?"

"About a mile. That's not running. Man your age doesn't start out running the first day. We'll get your legs stretched out first-legs and chest. You need to learn how to control your wind first."

"I'll try it."

"For a desk man you're in better-than-average shape. For an athlete-forget it."

"I didn't expect to have to learn to be a decathlon contender."

Homer said, "Think of yourself as Eliza Doolittle."

"Are you an actor?"

"I have been. Found it a little dull."

"How'd you get a.s.sociated with Diego Vasquez?"

"He's got a small staff. Eleven of us, not counting the office help. We're all ex-cops and ex-federals. I spent six years in foreign service before the technocrats got to me. I could take working with dummies but when your superiors are imbeciles it begins to dawn on you that you're in the wrong game."

"Is 'foreign service' a euphemism for the CIA?"

"No, but it was something like that. The Defense Intelligence Agency. We didn't drag down the kind of headlines the CIA gets but then we didn't have a public relations staff."

"Tell me about Vasquez."

"He's a fine man to work for." That was all Homer had to say on the subject: It was a measure of Homer's loyalty to his employer and it also said something about Vasquez that he could command that kind of loyalty from a man who clearly did not bestow his respect easily.

Homer wore a scuba-diver's wrist.w.a.tch with a complexity of dials and b.u.t.tons. He turned his wrist over to consult it. "You've got four more minutes."

"Then what?"

"Ever done any boxing?"

"No."

"I won't make a prizefighter out of you but I'll teach you a bit of footwork. Half an hour ought to do it for today. Then you'll have a shower and a swim. You do swim?"

"I know the strokes."

"We'll have you doing forty laps. All right, after the swim you can relax a little while. Then lunch, then the handgun range, then rifles. Later on we'll do another jog around the fence. You won't feel like it but if we don't keep doing it your muscles will knot up. Tomorrow morning you'll feel like a cripple."

5.

Vasquez flipped open the photo alb.u.m on the dining table. His slender finger tapped a photograph of a sharp-faced young man in a metallic suit. "Him?"

"C. K. Gillespie."

The pages turned. "Him?"

"Sam Urban."

"What does he do? What's his connection?"

Mathieson studied the photograph. "He's the manager of a restaurant. He's the collection point for numbers slips--"

"What restaurant, Mr. Merle?"

"It's slipped my mind."

"The Cheshire Cat, Route Nine-W, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey."

"I did remember it was New Jersey."

"Why?"

"Because it's safer for them to collect New York numbers slips in another state."

"Will you forget it again?"

"The Cheshire Cat, Englewood Cliffs. I'll remember it now." Vasquez flipped the page over. "Him?"

"George Ramiro."

"Function? Connection?"

"I'm not quite clear on the relationship. I know what he does."

"His wife is a cousin of Frank Pastor's. She's Ezio Martin's half sister. Ramiro is an immigrant, from the Azores. He eloped fifteen years ago with the girl, who was an ugly duckling destined to be the family wallflower. Pastor and Martin either had to kill him or hire him. They hired him, and Ramiro turned out to be useful and completely ruthless. You know his function?"

"Essentially he's in charge of security around Pastor and Martin-he runs the security system and staffs around their houses and offices and cars."

"If you go in after them by stealth or force, he's the one you'll be contending with."

"I may not do it that way."

"That's up to you, of course. But study the backgroundings on Ramiro. You may spot a weak point here and there."

"Have you spotted any?"

"He plays around with wh.o.r.es sometimes. I realize that's not much of a lever but it's all, we've found."

Another page. "Her?"

"Anna Pastor. Pastor's wife."

"Good-looking woman," Vasquez remarked, and turned another page. "Him?"

"Cestone. Gregory Cestorie."

There was a knock; it was Homer Seidell. "Just about time for the afternoon workout."