The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"With extreme caution, each thinking the other would shoot to kill, speaking of banal expressions. Vasili made the first move in our lethal chess game. To begin with, he had to get out of the Soviet Union because he was marked for a firing squad-the reasons are too serpentine to go into; and second, a dying, once all-powerful KGB director told him about the Matarese-" "I don't get the connection," Pryce broke in.

"Think about it. You've got five seconds."

"Good Lord," said Cameron softly, narrowing his eyes.

"The Matarese? They assassinated both men? Yurievich and Blackburn?"

"On the money, Field Officer Pryce."

"Why?"

"Because their tentacles reached into the war rooms on both sides,

and the hotheads on both sides thought each kill was a splendid idea, if it could be accomplished without being traced. The Matarese, letting only a very few know in Washington and Moscow, carried out the assassinations, putting a convincing spin on them that pointed to Vasili and me."

"Just like that? But again, why?"" "Because they'd been doing it for years. Feeding both superpowers information about their enemies' newest weapons of annihilation, forcing each to produce more and more, until the arms race became gargantuan.

All the while the Matarese made billions, its defense-contractor clients happily paying off."

"This is coming too fast.... So Taleniekov made the first move?"

"He sent me a message from Brussels.

"We will either kill each other or we will talk." He got over here somehow, and after a series of rendezvous, during which we damn near blew each other away, we did talk. We assumed that our names, our personas, if you will, had taken each of our countries to the brink, only the intercession of the Soviet Premier and the American President curbing the hotheads. They convinced each other that neither nation was responsible for the kills, that Taleniekov and I were nowhere near the scenes."

"If I may," interrupted Cameron, holding up the palm of his right hand in the candlelight.

"As I said, I remembered the death of Yurievich because it was so macabre, but I don't recall the killing of a General Blackburn; perhaps I was too young. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn't mean an awful lot to a kid of ten or eleven."

"You wouldn't have recalled it if you'd been twice that age," replied Scofield.

"Anthony Blackburn was reported to have died from cardiac arrest while reading the Scriptures in his library at home. A nice touch considering the truth. He was killed in an expensive New York whorehouse having extremely kinky sex."

"Why was he a target? Just because he was head of the Joint Chiefs?"

"Blackburn wasn't just a figurehead, he was a brilliant tactician. The Soviets in some ways knew him better than we did; they'd studied him in Korea and Vietnam. They knew his primary goal was stability."

"Okay, I understand. So you and Taleniekov talked. How did that lead you to the Matarese?"

"The old KGB director, Krupskova-or some name like that-he'd been shot, the wound was severe, and he called for Vasili. He told Taleniekov that he had analyzed the reports of the kills of Yurievich and Blackburn. He concluded that the assassinations were the work of a secret organization called the Matarese, its origins in Corsica. He explained to Vasili that they were spreading out everywhere, blackmailing high government officials, assuming extraordinary power throughout the Free World and the Eastern bloc countries."

"Had this Krupskova worked with them-with it?" asked Pryce.

"He said we all did, had been for years. Signals would be sent, meetings in fields or forests arranged, away from anyone observing them, men in shadows meeting other shadowed men in darkness. Deals were made in the blackest arts-'kill him or kill her, we'll pay."

" "They could get away with that?"

"On both sides," answered Scofield.

"It was their tentacles, its tentacles. They knew what the extremists wanted and they supplied the results, untraceable to their clients."

"There had to be records of disbursements. How were they paid?"

"Off the books, clandestine operations being beyond scrutiny for reasons of national security. That's a necessary euphemism for buy whatever you can when you can't get it legally or morally. The Soviets, of course, had fewer problems in those areas, but we weren't far behind.

To put it bluntly, our governments weren't officially at war, but we were. It was a goddamned bloody mess, and we were the messees- on both sides."

"You're pretty cynical, aren't you?"

"Of course, he is," said Antonia Scofield, lurching forward in her white wicker chair.

"Men like my husband and Vasili Taleniekov were killers on the loose, killers who had to take the lives of men and women who they knew would kill them! For what purpose? While the superpowers pretended to get together with parades and marching bands proclaiming detente, or whatever they called it, while agents like Bran-don Scofield and Vasili Taleniekov were ordered to keep killing? Where was the logic, Cameron Pryce?"

"I don't have an answer, Mrs. Scofield-Antonia. It was a different time."

"What's your time, Cam?" asked Beowulf Agate.

"What are your orders? Who are you after?"

"Terrorists, I guess. Among the more deadly, perhaps, is this Malaise because it's a new kind of terror, I think."

"Exactly right, young man," agreed Scofield.

"They may not massacre people or blow up buildings at this point-they pay for those things to be done or engineer them with unknowing, programmed psychopaths-but they can and they will do everything themselves if it's part of their strategy."

"Strategy for what?"

"For a malevolent international cartel, dedicated to raw financial power for itself."

"To get anywhere near that goal they'd have to eliminate competition, neutralize competitors all over the place."

"Now you've got it. Capitalism run amok, derailed. One monolithic Daddy Warbucks pushing all the buttons, price-fixing the order of the day, false competition erected by noncompeting partners. Then what comes next, Field Officer Cameron Pryce?"

"I don't know what you mean-" "I mean what comes next? The world's leading financial centers under the patronage of a single authority. What follows?"

"Governments," said Cam quietly, his eyes narrowed again.

"Whoever has the major sources of money calls the political shots."

"Go to the head of the class, youngster!" exclaimed Scofield, raising his empty brandy snifter, and looking sheepishly at his wife.

"Perhaps, my love?"

"I'll bring the bottle," said Antonia, rising.

"You've been a good lad for several months now."

"Not by choice, damn it! It's those lousy doctors in Miami."

"But could it happen?" continued the CIA agent pensively as Antonia left the veranda.

"Could it really happen?"

"There are more historical precedents than either of us could enumerate, Cameron. Mergers upon mergers, the swallowing up of corporations by buy outs hostile and otherwise. Global monopolies, young man. It goes back to the pharaohs of Egypt who overrode their pretending princes, and the Romans who packed the senates so the ruling Caesars ran everything. It's nothing new, it's just modernized, computerized. The bastards who want everything will get everything unless they're stopped."

"Who'll stop them?"

"Not me, God knows, I don't care any longer. Perhaps the people the unconcerned people-may wake up and see that at the end of the line their freedoms have been sucked a

way by the unholy apparatus of financial supremacy. That's what the Matarese is driving for. The results are police states-everywhere. They can't survive otherwise."

"You really think that could happen?"

"It depends on what kind of head start they've got and who's on their board of directors. Frankly, yes, it could happen. When you analyze it, we're talking about boardroom terrorism, international collusion, flaunting all the antitrust laws everywhere. It's as though General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, BMW, Toyota, Porsche, and two or three other manufacturers got together and ran the world's automobile industry.

It's not really that far-fetched."

"And once there, they go after the governments," said Pryce.

"Oh, I suspect a number are entrenched already, as they were thirty years ago. One of them nearly became President of the United States.

They damn near ran our State Department and the Pentagon as well as having undue influence in the House and Senate. Since they're now so obviously international, suppose they controlled Britain's Foreign Office, France's Quai d'Orsay, Rome, Ottawa, and Bonn, it's a nice unhealthy picture, isn't it? Good heavens, in a few years, with politicians in their pockets, a couple of Matarese-rigged summits and we're all marching to their drums, happy as mindless clams-until we understand that when the drum rolls stop, so do our alternatives. We buy what they want to sell us, we take what they want to give us ... we believe what they tell us to believe ... or else."

"

"Boardroom terrorism," that's a hell of a term."

"And as lethal as any other, Cam. Because once they get their footholds, a monopoly here, a mega merger there, interrelated conglomerates here and there, they won't accept any opposition."

"They're apparently not accepting any now," said Pryce. He told Scofield about the four kills: the French financier, the Spanish doctor, the Englishwoman, and the Italian polo player on Long Island.

"We know the Frenchman's connected to the Matarese," Pryce went on.

"It's on record, his own words, presumably. Also the financial histories of the others are filled with confusing gaps regarding their money, according to Frank Shields's latest information."