The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"You think of everything, Squinty."

"We want you to be comfortable, Brandon, not careless," said Shields, his creased eyes abruptly pinched at Scofield's use of the pejorative nickname.

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"Considering that strip of the Okefenokee that covers the north forty, and the platoon of Agency gorillas, including that Army commando unit, to say nothing of a security system that belongs in Fort Knox, who the hell could get near us?"

"We trust nobody."

"And speaking of security," continued Scofield, "any progress with your mole or moles, courtesy of the Matarese?"

"None. That's why our trust is limited."

Living quarters, patrol schedules, and communications with Langley were all arranged by Shields himself. Whatever by necessity had to be typed out was numbered by copy and recipient, the mercury-layered paper incompatible with any duplicating equipment known. Copies would emerge as smudged straight lines, and should the electrified lens of a camera be employed, those same lines would turn yellow, evidence that a photograph had been taken.

Further, all those furnished with the schedules were ordered to keep them on their persons at all times and be prepared to produce them instantly. In addition, no one was to leave the compound for any reason, which partially explained why, to a man-except for command personnel-each was single or unattached. Lastly, it was understood that all telephone calls would be monitored on tape.

Frank Shields was leaving nothing to chance. At the highest security level at the Agency, no progress whatsoever had been made in unearthing the Matarese mole or moles. From the top hierarchy to the lowest clerks and maintenance workers, personnel were scrutinized. Background checks were duplicated and triplicated, bank accounts, lifestyles, even the most insignificant odd habits studied. There would be no Aldrich Ames buried as part of the furniture.

The frustrating aspect of the whole exercise was that those select few doing the unearthing had no idea why they were doing it. There was no Cold War, no centralized Russian enemy, no terrorist organization specifically targeted, no cogent leads-just the order to search for everything. For what, for Christ's sake? Give us a clue!

Aberrations! Strange behavior, especially among the better-educated personnel. Pastimes or hobbies that appeared beyond their incomes;

clubs or associations they couldn't afford; cars they owned; jewelry their wives or lovers wore; and how was it paid for? If there were children in expensive private schools, who covered the tuitions?

Anything, everything.

"Give us a break," exclaimed one researcher.

"You're talking about half the clowns in the top floors! Some cheat on their wives, what's new? Others make quiet deals on schools, real estate, and cars, 'cause they flash their Langley ID's-those plastic cards are secret persuaders. A number drink too much, and, frankly, I probably do, too, but not so much as to compromise ourselves. What's the end product, or who is it? Give us a name, an objective, anything."

"I can't do that," Deputy Director Shields had said to the chief of the research unit.

"I'll tell you this, Frank. If it were anyone but you, I'd go to the DCI and tell him you were nuts."

"He'd probably agree with you, but he'd also instruct you to follow my orders."

"You realize that you're tainting at least three or four hundred decent people who may not tie their shoes right, don't you?"

"I can't help it."

"It's dirty, Frank."

"So are they, and they're here-he's here or she's here. Someone who's computer-sophisticated with direct or indirect knowledge of the most secret materials we have-" "So we're down to maybe a hundred and fifty people," the researcher broke in dryly, "if you don't take the word 'indirect' too seriously.. .. For God's sake, we started there! There's not a soul within a hundred feet of the Directorate that we haven't x-rayed down to the marrow in their bones."

"Then go a step further, try MRI, because they are here."

The three-man research unit was stymied; among themselves they seriously debated the state of the deputy director's mental health. They had seen paranoia before and the memories were strong. There was the classic and documented case of J. Edgar Hoover over at the FBI, and later a DCI named Casey, who was in the process of building his own supra-intelligence organization accountable to no one, surely not Langley or the President or Congress. The official records had their share of paranoia, but Frank Shields was not paranoid. The very first night they spent at the estate on Maryland's Eastern Shore proved it.

Cameron Pryce whipped his head back and forth across the pillow.

His eyes suddenly snapped open; he was not sure what had startled him awake. Then it vaguely came to him-there had been a scratch, a scrape, and a brief flash of light. What was it, where was it?

The French doors that led to a short balcony? His room was on the second floor of the three-storied mansion, Scofield and Antonia directly above him. And he had heard something; the inner screen of his eyes had been assaulted by a flash of light, a reflection perhaps of a boat's searchlight in the bay .. . perhaps. And perhaps not, but probably.

He stretched his arms over his head, yawning. The large mass of water beyond the windows, the dull glow of moonlight, in the main blocked by cloud cover; it was all too reminiscent of the conditions on Outer Brass 26 barely twenty hours ago.

It was funny in a way, he mused, settling back into the comfort of the pillow. To the normal civilian, the life of a covert-operations officer was a constant display of derring-do, of events in which he displayed skills that permitted him to survive. It was accepted as fact, depicted inaccurately by films, television, and novels. A small part was obviously true: One had to be trained to do the work, especially the distasteful aspects, but such incidents were few and far between, and therefore, when they came, they were moments of extreme stress and anxiety. Of fear.

Someone once said that the object of scuba diving was to stay alive.

Cam, an experienced diver, had laughed at the simile until the time that he and his lady of the season had been caught beneath a school of hammerhead sharks off the coast of the Costa Brava.

No, the life of a deep-cover was to avoid such incidents as often as was humanly possible while under orders. And if those orders were produced in the imaginative realm of a source-control who had seen too many films or read too many novels, they were to be disregarded. If the results achieved something vital and the risks were feasible, that was okay. A job was a job, like any other. But, as in any other job, fear Of overachievement was a factor, in this case, fear for his life. Cam pryce was not about to die to advance some analyst's career.

Another scratch! A scrape .. . outside the windows of the French doors.

He was not dreaming, it was there. But how? Guards patrolled the grounds, including the lawns and the terraces below; nothing, no one, could approach them. Grabbing his flashlight and his automatic, both beside him on the bedcover, Pryce slowly got to his feet and approached the slender twin doors to the short balcony. Silently, he pulled the left glass-paned panel open and peered outside, first looking down.

Jesus Christ! He did not need a flashlight to make out the two prone, immobile bodies on the ground, the dark pools of blood still flowing from their necks, necks all but severed from their bodies. For all intents and purposes, they had been beheaded! Pryce switched on his flashlight with the blinding beam, and swung it above him.

A figure in a black latex wet suit had crawled up the smooth stone wall of the mansion, suction cups on his hands and knees. He had reached Scofield's balcony, and seeing the beam of Pryce's flashlight, he threw away his right-hand cup, reached into his belt, pulled out an automatic machine pistol, and began firing. Cameron lunged back into the protection of the bedroom wall as a fusillade of bullets soared past, many ricocheting off the balcony's iron grillwork, spinning off into the room, embedding themselves into the wallpaper. Pryce waited; there was a brief lull. The killer was inserting a fresh magazine into his weapon. Now. Cam lurched out onto the balcony and shot repeatedly into the body of the black encased figure above. In milliseconds he was a corpse, obscenely glued to the wall by the suction cups on his knees and his left hand.

The body w

as lowered, the remains of the two guards removed to a remote environment. There was no identification found on the killer.

"We'll press his fingerprints," said a patrol dressed in Army combat fatigues.

"We'll find out who the son of a bitch is."

"Don't bother, young man," countered Brandon Scofield.

"If you'll check his fingers, you'll find smooth, bare skin. The flesh has been burned off, probably with acid."

"You're kidding!"

"Not for a moment. It's the way they operate. You pay for the best, you get the best, including un traceability

"There are still the teeth-" "I suspect there are many alterations, as in foreign-made caps and temporary bridges, that are also untraceable. I'm sure the coroner will agree with me."

"Agree with you? Who the hell are you?" asked the Army officer.

"Someone you were supposed to protect, Colonel. You didn't do much of a job, did you?"

"I don't understand, it doesn't make sense! How did this bastard get through us?"

"Superb training, I suspect. We're fortunate that Field Officer Pryce, who's also superbly trained, is a light sleeper. But then that's part of his training, isn't it?"

"Ease off, Bray," said Cameron, walking through the glare of the floodlights to the circle of guards around the corpse.

"We were lucky, and that yo-yo wasn't as well-trained as you think. He made enough noise to wake up a drunken deckhand."

"Thanks, buddy," said a grateful colonel softly.

"Forget it," acknowledged Pryce in like manner.

"And your question's on the mark. How did he get past all of you, especially through the marshes, which is the only way he could?"

"We've got patrols every twenty feet," said an Agency guard, "with overlapping beams, thirty lumens apiece, plus circular barbed wire all around the embankment. In my opinion, no way."

"The only other method of entry is the road," said an Army patrol, a woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in dark jeans and a black leather jacket. Like the others she wore an Army fatigue cap with a brocaded insignia above the visor; wisps of pale hair were evident, pulled back over her temples.