The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

On the curb in Belgravia, the taxi was waiting for Gerald, the yellow handkerchief dangling below the driver's window. He leaped into the backseat, breathing furiously.

"Hurry!" he shouted, "I can't be seen around here!" Suddenly, Gerald was aware of a man sitting next to him.

No words were spoken, only the sound of two silenced gunshots.

"Drive to the ironworks north of Heathrow," said the man in shadows.

"The fires burn all night."

n an off-limits strategy room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, two men faced each other over a conference table.

The older man was the First Deputy Director of the CIA, the younger an experienced case officer named Cameron Pryce, a veteran of the new Cold Peace, with posts in Moscow, Rome, and London entered into his service report. Pryce was multilingual, fluent in Russian, as well as French, Italian, and, naturally, English. He was a thirty-six-year-old product of Georgetown University, B.A.; Maxwell School of Foreign Service, Syracuse, MA.; and Princeton University, objective, Ph.D.the last abandoned in his second year. The doctorate was aborted when Langley recruited him before he could complete his studies.

Why? Because Cameron Pryce, in a predoctoral Honors thesis, recklessly but adamantly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union within four months of its collapse. Such minds were valuable.

"You've read the max-classified file?" asked Deputy Director Frank Shields, a short, overweight former analyst with a high forehead and eyes that seemed perpetually squinted.

"Yes, I have, Frank, and I didn't take any notes, honest," replied Pryce, a large, slender man whose sharp features could best be described as marginally attractive. He continued, smiling gently.

"But, of course, you know that. The gnomes behind those hideous reproductions on the walls have been watching me. Did you think I was going to write a book?"

"Others have, Cam."

"Snepp, Agee, Borstein, and a few other gallant souls who found some of our procedures less than admirable.. .. It's not my turf, Frank. I made my pact with the devil when you paid off my student loans."

"We counted on that."

"Don't count too high. I could have paid them myself in time."

"On an associate professor's salary? No room for a wife and kids and a white picket fence on campus."

"Hell, you took care of that, too. My relationships have been brief and movable, no kids that I'm aware of."

"Let's cut the biographical bullshit," said the deputy director.

"What do you make of the file?"

"They're either disconnected events or a great deal more. One or the other, nothing in between."

"Take an educated guess."

"I can't. Four internationally known very rich folk are killed along with lesser mortals. The trails lead nowhere and the killers are out of sight, vanished. There's no cross-pollination that I can see, no mutual interests or investments or even any apparent social contact-it would be odd if there were. We have a titled Englishwoman, who was a philanthropist, a Spanish scholar from a wealthy family in Madrid, an Italian playboy from Milan, and an elderly French financier with multiple residences and a floating palace he usually calls home. The only common thread is the uniqueness of the killings, the absence of leads or follow-ups, and the fact that they all took place within a time span of forty-eight hours. August twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, to be exact."

"If there's linkage, that's where it could be, isn't it?"

"I just said that, but that's all there is."

"No, there's more," interrupted the deputy director.

"What?"

"Information we deleted from the file."

"For God's sake, why? It's maximum classified, you just said so."

"Sometimes those folders get into the wrong hands, don't they?"

"Not if handled properly .. . good Christ, you're serious, it's serious."

"Extremely."

"Then you're not playing fair, Frank. You asked me to evaluate data it's not all there."

"You came up with the right answers. The lack of traceability and the time span."

"So would anybody else."

"I doubt as quickly, but then we're not looking for anyone else, Cam. We want you."

"Flattery, a bonus, and increased contingency funds will get you my undivided attention. What's the missing dirt?"

"Orally delivered, nothing on paper."

"Very, very serious-" "I'm afraid so.... First, we have to go back to the natural death of an old woman a thousand miles from Moscow several months ago. The priest, who was with her at the end, finally sent a letter to the Russian authorities after debating with himself for weeks. In it he wrote that the woman, the wife of the Soviet Union's preeminent nuclear physicist, reportedly killed by a crazed bear during a hunt, said her husband had in fact been murdered by unknown men who shot the animal and forced it into the scientist's path. They subsequently disappeared."

"Wait a minute!" Pryce broke in.

"I was only a kid then, but I remember reading about it or hearing it on television.

"Yuri' something or other. It was the sort of thing that rivets a kid's imagination-a famous person torn apart by a large animal. Yes, I remember."

"People my age remember it very well," said Shields.

"I'd just started with the Agency, but it was common knowledge here at Langley that Yurievich wanted to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

We mourned his death; a few of us even questioned the veracity of the reports-there was one rumor that Yurievich had actually been shot, not killed by the bear-but the underlying question was, why would Moscow order the execution of its most brilliant physicist?"

"The answer?" asked the former case officer.

"We didn't have one. We couldn't understand, so we accepted Tass's account."

"And now?"

"A different equation. The old woman, apparently with her last breath, blamed her husband's death, his murder, on an organization called the Matarese, claiming it was-in her words-'the consummate evil." Ring any bells, Cam?"

"None. Only a pattern of un traceability as it applies to these recent killings."

"Good. That's what I wanted to hear. Now we jump forward to the French financier, Rene Pierre Mouchistine, who was gunned down on his yacht."

"Along with four attorneys from four different countries," interjected Pryce.

"No fingerprints, which assumes the killers wore surgical gloves, no traceable shell casings, because they were all so common, and no witnesses, because the crew was ordered off the boat while the conference was taking place."

"No witnesses, no leads-un traceability

"That's right."

"Sorry, it's wrong."

"Another surprise, Frank?"

"A beaut," replied the deputy director.

"A close friend, later determined to be Mouchistine's personal valet of almost thirty years, knew how to reach our ambassador in Madrid. A meeting was arranged, and this man, one Antoine Lavalle, gave what amounted to a confidential deposition to be forwarded to the major intelligence organization in Washington. Fortunately, despite the Senate, it came to us."

"I would hope so," said Cameron.

"Hope is elusive in D.C.," said Shields.

"But thanks to cross reference computers, we got lucky. The name Matarese appeared again. Before he died of his wounds, Mouchistine told Lavalle that the "Matarese was back." Lavalle said his employer was sure of it because it, or they, knew about the conference and had to stop it."

"Why?"

"Apparently, Mouchistine was divesting himself of his entire financial empire, willing everything to universal charities. With that bequest, he was relinquishing the economic power that goes with his global conglomerates, essentially run under his strict orders by his boards and his attorneys. According to Lavalle, the Matarese could not accept that; they had to stop him so they killed him."

"With Mouchistine dead, who runs the international companie

s?"

"It's so serpentine, it'll take months, if not years, to unravel."

"But somewhere in the financial caves could be the Matarese, am I reading you?"

"We don't know but we think so. It's so goddamned amorphous, we simply don't know."

"What do you want from me?"

"It was in Mouchistine's last words.

"Find Beowulf Agate."

" "Who?"

"Beowulf Agate. It was the code name the KGB and the East German Stasi created for Brandon Scofield, our most successful penetrator during the Cold War. The sublime irony was that he eventually teamed up with a man he hated, and who hated him, when they both uncovered the Matarese in Corsica."

"In Corsica? That's wild!"

"Vasili Taleniekov was his real name, code name Serpent, an infamous KGB intelligence officer. He had engineered the death of Scofield's wife, and Scofield killed Taleniekov's younger brother. They were sworn enemies until they both faced an enemy far greater than either of them."

"The Matarese?"

"The Matarese. Ultimately, Taleniekov sacrificed himself to save Beowulf Agate's life as well as Scofield's woman, now his wife."

"Jesus, it sounds like a Greek tragedy."

"In many ways, it was."

"So?"

"Find Beowulf Agate. Learn the whole story. It's a place to start, and no one knows it better than Scofield."

"Weren't there any debriefings?"

"Scofield wasn't very cooperative. He said it was mission-completed time and there wasn't anything to learn from ancient history. Everyone who mattered was dead. He just wanted out and damned fast."

"That's pretty strange behavior."

"He felt it was justified. You see, at one point he was placed 'beyond salvage."