The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"Come again?"

"Among those killed that afternoon was the honored guest at the conference in Appleton Hall. He was a true descendant of the Appleton dynasty, brought back to be applauded by the new owners of the estate."

"You knew who they were then," said Scofield, making a statement.

"I was getting closer. The honored guest was Senator Joshua Appleton the Fourth, the anticipated next President of the United States. No one doubted it; it was a given. He was the most popular figure on the political landscape. He was about to become the most powerful leader of the free world."

"And?"

"In reality, the honored senator wasn't Appleton at all; for years he had been someone else. He was Julian Guiderone, the son of the Shepherd Boy, anointed by Guillaume, the Baron of Matarese."

"I knew it, but how did you find out?"

"Your doing, Brandon. Let me take you back, step by step, as I believe you took them yourself."

"I'm fascinated," Scofield interrupted.

"I wish Toni were here."

"Where is she?" asked Pryce, leaning against the swaying gunwale.

"Asking questions," replied Bray without elaborating.

"Go on, Frank, what sort of trail did you follow?"

"First, knowing you, I assumed you'd put together some kind of false identification to get you where you wanted to go-that was basic.

As I learned, it was up to your creative standards: Your ID officially proclaimed you to be an 'aide' to Senator Appleton himself. Then, since you were in the dark about so many things, you went to see Appleton's mentally disturbed old mother in Louisburg Square."

"She was an alcoholic, had been for over a decade," added Scofield.

"Yes, I know," said Shields.

"She was in the same condition twenty-one months later when I saw her."

"It took you that long?"

"You weren't any help.... To begin with, she didn't remember you, but when I was about to leave I got lucky. Out of the blue-I should say the haze-she suddenly said in an eerie singsong, "At least you didn't insist on seeing Josh's old room." My first bingo because I knew her other visitor had to be you."

"So you did the same thing."

"I certainly did and it led to bingo two. Especially as she said she hadn't been there since Joshua had allowed my long-ago predecessor inside."

"I thought Appleton was dead," interrupted Pryce.

"Actually, the real Appleton was. The whiskey ghosts had taken over.

"What was bingo two?" pressed Scofield.

"That room was nothing more than a fake shrine with useless memorabilia. Photographs, school banners, and sailing trophies. Fake because Appleton never lived in Louisburg Square. He came out of the Korean War with a few wounds, and after the hospital returned to the family estate."

"Don't get ahead of me, Brandon, all that's part of the trail.

However, you did mention the magic word-'photographs." The minute we got inside that room the old girl lurched over to a wall and yelled that one was missing. She started screaming about "Josh's favorite picture."

" "Well, well, Squinty, you'd found another spoor, hadn't you? You questioned the poor old dear and learned that it was a photo of Appleton and his closest friend. Two strapping young men in front of a sailboat, pretty much the same size, both with imposing builds, both handsome in the prep-school mold-like they could be cousins, maybe."

"Closer, according to Mrs. Appleton. Brothers. Until one went to war and the other suddenly refused to go and flew to Switzerland."

Shields reached into his pocket and withdrew a small notebook; it was wrinkled, the pages yellow with age.

"I dug this out of a file cabinet. I wanted to make sure I had the facts and the names straight when we talked. Where were we?"

"A photograph ..." Cameron, by the gunwale, was engrossed.

"The photograph."

"Oh, yes," said the deputy director, flipping the pages of his notebook.

"It was after Korea; Appleton was in law school when he was in a terrible collision on the Massachusetts Turnpike. He nearly died at Mass General, with multiple fractures, massive internal bleeding, and horrible facial disfiguration. The family had specialists from everywhere working around the clock; it seemed hopeless, but obviously it wasn't. So your next move, Brandon, was fairly obvious.

You marched over to Massachusetts General Hospital, directly to the Department of Records and Billing. Although she's now retired, the woman in charge remembers you very clearly."

"I got her into trouble?"

"No, but as the chief aide to Senator Appleton, you promised her a personal thank-you note from the man who was soon to become President. She never got it, that's how she remembered."

"Hell, I didn't have time to write," said Bray.

"Go on, you're doing pretty well."

"The hospital's R and B didn't tell you a great deal-most of it was medical mumbo jumbo with eighty-odd pages of procedures, services, and whatnot-and you wanted more. You wanted names. So she sent you up to the Department of Personnel, by then completely computerized, the records going back years."

"There was a black kid on the equipment and without him I'd have been a dead pigeon," broke in Scofield.

"He was a student at Tech, making ends meet to stay in school. It's funny, but I can't recall his name."

"You should. He's now Dr. Amos Lafollet-Ph.D.-and a leading authority on nuclear medicine. When I finally tracked him down, he said if I ever saw you, I should ask if you liked the inscription in his first book."

"I didn't know he wrote one."

"Well, I went out and bought it; it's a standard text on nuclear medicine. You want to hear the inscription? I've got it here."

"Sure."

"

"To a generous stranger who asked little and gave a great deal, making possible a young man's career, including this book." .. . Not bad for a stranger who couldn't elicit those words from his own mother."

"My mother thought I was either a gangster or a professional gambler. Let's get back to Boston."

"Certainly," said Shields, returning to his notebook.

"Dr. Lafollet, then a

young student working the hospital's computers, discovered that the two surgeons of record for Appleton had been replaced, and to his astonishment, one replacement had died and the name of the other replacement had been deleted from the records."

"Don't forget the nurses, Frank," said Scofield quietly, staring at Shields.

"For me they were a significant bingo."

"Indeed they were," agreed the deputy director.

"What about the nurses?" asked Pryce.

"Presumably on orders from the Appleton family, the hospital personnel were replaced by three private nurses, all of whom were killed in a freak boating accident four days before Joshua Appleton was re leased and taken back to the family estate, which, incidentally, was in the process of being sold. To a very old, very wealthy banker named Guiderone, a friend of the Appletons who knew their money was dwindling."

"Say it, Squinty. To Nicholas Guiderone, the Shepherd Boy."

"You didn't have any real answers then, Brandon, but you saw the pattern of a monstrous conspiracy. All you really had were the names of the original two surgeons of record, one dead, the other forced into retirement. His name was Dr. Nathaniel Crawford. He died about fifteen years ago, but I reached him several years before that. He also remembered you, remembered your very disturbing phone call. He told me it brought back his nightmares."

"He should never have had them. His diagnosis was accurate, but he was set up. His patient, Joshua Appleton the Fourth, died in the hospital as he predicted."

"In the company of the two replacement surgeons and perhaps one or two of the private nurses," added Shields.

"I can't know the sequence or what you were beginning to perceive, but I assume that's when you persuaded the young Amos Lafollet to fly to Washington and pick up a set of old X rays."

"Everything was happening so fast I can't remember the sequence," said Bray, turning the Chris-Craft into the mild wind.

"Taleniekov and Toni were being held hostage; there wasn't time to plan much. I was flying half blind but I couldn't stop."

"Yet you knew the X rays might prove what you had begun to suspect, no matter how outrageous it seemed."