The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"It sounds crazy."

"It was crazy, but it was also effective. Once proven, a new Mataresan was guaranteed for life-financially secure, protected from the laws, free from the usual stresses of normal living-as long as he or she obeyed their superiors without questioning any order."

"And to question any order wasfinito time," said Pryce, making a statement.

"That was understood."

"So, in essence, you're describing a Mafia or a Corso, as I see it."

"I'm afraid you're wrong again, Mr. Pryce-essentially."

"Since I'm drinking your brandy in your house, hospitality I never figured on, why not call me Cameron, or Cam, as most people do."

"As you gathered from my wife, I'm "Bray." My younger sister couldn't say Brandon till she was maybe four, so she called me Bray. It just stuck."

"My kid brother couldn't say Cameron. It came out "Cramroom," or worse "Come around," so he settled on "Cam." It stuck, too."

"Bray and Cam," said Scofield, "sounds like a barnyard legal firm."

"I'd be pleased-no, honored-with any association. I've read your service record."

"Most of which was exaggerated to make my superiors and the analysts look good. You wouldn't be doing your career any favors to be associated with me. Too many in the business consider me a flake or a fluke, or worse. Much worse."

"I'll pass on that. Why am I wrong again? Essentially."

"Because the Matarese never recruited thugs; no one ever climbed up the ladder based on the number of 'hits' he made. Oh, they'd kill if ordered to, but no meat hooks, no shotguns, no chains in the river usually no corpses, either. If the Matarese council-and it was just that-wanted unmitigated brutality that would be publicized, it secretly paid for terrorists untraceable to itself. But it never employed its members for that sort of work. They were executives."

"They were greedy bastards, sucking up to a wild boar."

"And then some." Scofield chuckled softly while sipping his brandy.

"They were elitists, Cameron, far above the common people. By and large, they were summa cum laudes and magna cum laudes from the finest universities both on this side and in Europe, the so-called best and the brightest of industry and government. In their own minds, they assumed they would in time become enormously successful; the Matarese was merely a shortcut. Once in, they were hooked, and the shortcut became a world they could not escape."

"What about accountability? What about right and wrong? Are you saying this army of the best and the brightest had no sense of morality?"

"I'm sure a few did, Mr. Pryce .. . Cameron," said Antonia Scofield, who had slipped into the white archway to the candlelit veranda.

"And I'm equally sure that if they voiced such reservations, they and their families had terrible things done to them .. . fatal accidents, in the main."

"That's savage."

"That was the way of the reinvented Matarese," added Brandon.

"Morality was replaced by having no options. You see, everything came in increments, and before they understood that, there was no way out. They were living abnormally extravagant yet strangely normal lives with wives and children and expensive tastes. Get the picture, Cam?"

"With frightening clarity.... I know a little-not much-about how you and Vasili Taleniekov came together and went after the Matarese, but your debriefing wasn't very complete. Would you care to fill me in a bit?"

"Certainly he will," said the wife.

"Won't you, my darling?"

"There she goes again," rejoined Scofield, glancing warmly at Antonia.

"My debriefing was a nonevent because the Cold War was still pretty hot and there were clowns who wanted to paint Vasili, our Soviet enemy, as one of the evil people. I wasn't having any part of it."

"He chose his own death so that we might live, Cameron," said Antonia, walking to a white wicker chair next to her husband.

"In terrible pain he flung himself at our enemies, allowing us to escape.

Without his sacrifice we both would have been shot, killed."

"From archenemies to allies, even friends who you give up your life for?"

"I wouldn't go that far, and I've thought about it for years. We never forgot what we did to each other, but I think he decided that his was the greater crime. He killed my wife, I killed his brother.. .. It's in the Past; nothing changes it."

"I was told about that," said Pryce.

"I was also told you were placed 'beyond salvage." Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about?" answered Scofield quietly.

"It happened."

"

"What's there to talk about'?" repeated the stunned CIA officer.

"For Christ's sake, your own agency, your superiors, ordered your execution!"

"Funny, I never considered them my 'superiors." Quite the opposite most of the time."

"You know what I mean-" "I do, indeed," interrupted Bray.

"Someone added the numbers but came up with the wrong total, and since I knew who it was, I decided to kill him. Then I reasoned I'd undoubtedly be caught and he wasn't worth it. Instead, I stopped being angry and got even. I dealt my cards, which proved to be reasonably profitable."

"Back to Taleniekov," said Cameron.

"How did it begin with you two?"

"You're smart, Cam. The keys are always at the beginning, the first door that has to be unlocked. Without that door you can't reach the others."

"A maze with doors?"

"More than you can count. The beginning.... It was nuts, but there it was and Taleniekov and I were caught up in it. There were two extraordinary kills, two assassinations. On our side there was General Anthony Blackburn, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and on the Soviet's, Dimitri Yurievich, their leading nuclear physicist."

"Deputy Director Shields mentioned that one, and I remembered it. A famous Russian torn apart by a crazed bear."

"That was the popular version, yes. A wounded bear shot by men who whipped it into Yurievich's trail. There's nothing on earth more ferocious than a huge maimed bear, his nostrils filled with the scent of his own blood. He'll smell out a group of hunters and tear them all to pieces until he's killed.. .. Wait a minute. Frank Shields? Old bull dogface with those creased eyes nobody's ever seen. He's still around?"

"He holds you in high regard-" "Perhaps in retrospect, not when we were current. Frank's a purist; he never tolerated men like me. However, analysts tend to cloak themselves in contradictory alternatives."

"You were saying," interrupted Pryce, "about the two assassinations?"

"Here I must digress, Cameron. Have you ever heard the phrase 'the banality of evil'?"

"Of course."

"What does it mean to you?"

"I suppose horrible acts repeated with such frequency they become commonplace-banal."

"Very good. That's what happened to Taleniekov and me. You see, the considered wisdom of the times regarding black operations was that Vasili and I were the leading players in those kinds of kills. It was more myth than reality. In truth, except for what we did to each other, between us we were responsible for only fourteen fairly well-publicized assassinations over twenty years, he with eight kills, me with six.

Hardly in Carlos the Jackal's league, but myths take on lives of their own, growing rapidly, far too persuasively. They're terrible things, myths."

"I think I see where you're going," said Pryce.

"Each side blamed the other's presumed chief assassin-you and Taleniekov."

"Precisely, but neither of us had anything to do with those assassinations. However, they had been set up as if we'd left our calling cards."

"But how did you get together? Surely you didn't pick up phones and call each other."

"It would have been comical.

"Hello, KGB switchboard? This is Beowulf Agate, and if you'll kindly reach the illustrious Comrade Colonel Taleniekov, code name Serpent, and tell him I'm on the line, he'll agree we should have a chat.

You see, we're both about to be eliminated for the wrong reasons. Silly, isn't it?"

" "The "Beowulf Agate' is ... inspired," noted the CIA officer.

"Yes, I always thought it was rather imaginative," said Scofield.

"Even Russian in its way. As you know, they more often than not use a person's first two names and omit the last."

"Brandon Alan .. . Beowulf Agate. You're right. But since you didn't make that phone call to the KGB, how did you meet?"