The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"Well, they told me the plane was going to Paris, which, of course, I could read on the signs, but they said I'd be going on, only they didn't know where to. Just that I'd be met at Orly Airport by another two guys who would take over."

"They didn't say anything more about your mother or the operation?"

"They didn't know anything. They were really sincere about that.

Then I told them I had to make a couple of phone calls and they said go ahead. I called home and there was no answer, not even the machine.

Then I called a close friend and fellow officer who often worked with Mom; the operator broke in saying the number was changed, the new one unlisted. That's when I figured whatever they were doing was really undercover. But I've told you all this, Lieutenant."

"Not everything, you left out the phone calls before. Anyway, I may want to hear it again and again. I could be flying over something I can't see yet."

"There's nothing to miss, Lieutenant."

"Drop the "Lieutenant," Jamie. It's Luther. The next time you see me I may be Seaman No Class. From a black top gun to a swab with a mop. . Colin Powell will whip my ass, and I'm a big fella, but he could do it."

"I don't think race enters into any of this .. . Luther."

"Oh, I love you white liberals. Why couldn't you have picked a nice, white naval officer to tell your tale to? There's a prick in my squadron who hates anyone that isn't all spit-and-polish. He'd turn a cook in for having grease on his apron."

"Then he'd turn me in, too."

"You've got a point. So tell me about the phone calls. Specifically the one where the number was changed."

"It was to Colonel Everett Bracket. He was at the Point with Mom, and he and his wife were friends of Mother and Dad. He frequently asked for Mom on certain assignments."

"What's the nature of his assignments?"

"He's an elite hog in Army intelligence. My mother was trained in high technology, like computers and stuff. It's a subdivision of G-Two, and Uncle Ev called upon her a lot, I guess."

"Why did he pick her for a supposedly dangerous undercover operation?"

"Darned if I know. After Dad died he was kind of a surrogate father to me, and the last thing I think he'd ask her to do was to go into a dangerous situation. It doesn't make sense!"

"Now, listen to me carefully, Jamie, and try to remember. When, exactly, did you get the word from Washington-through the head of your school-that you were to leave and go to Kennedy Airport in New York?"

"It was a Friday, I don't remember the exact date, but it was before the weekend."

"Now, again, as precisely as you can recall, prior to that Friday, when did you last talk to your mother?"

"A few days before, maybe three or four. Just a regular call, about how my classes were going and stuff like that."

"And you didn't talk to her after that?"

"No, there wasn't any reason to."

"Then can we assume she didn't try to reach you during those three or four days?"

"I know she didn't."

"How so?"

"In Paris, at the airport, I told the two men who met me that I had to call a cousin of mine who lives there because Mom told me to. It kind of threw them, but I got the impression that they didn't want to rock the boat, so they let me, practically breathing down my neck by the phone."

"So?"

"I have one of those phone cards, you know, the kind you can use anywhere, and I sure know the numbers to reach the States and the school-" "You do?" interrupted Considine.

"Hey, Lieutenant-Luther, I spent a few years as a traveling Army brat, remember? But most of my friends, even when I was a kid, are in Virginia, which is our real home."

"So you were on the phone, and I presume you called your school, not any nonexistent cousin."

"Oh, Kevin exists all right. He's a lot older than me and he goes to graduate school at the Sorbonne."

"A very impressive family. But you did reach your school."

"Sure did. Olivia was on the switchboard; she's a scholarship student and we've got kind of a thing going, if you know what I mean."

"I'll try to remember.. .. And?"

"Well, she knew it was me, and I asked her if my mother had tried to call me-the switchboard keeps records. She said Mom hadn't, so I pretended I was talking to Cousin Kevin and hung up. I'll have to apologize to Livvie for that."

"Do so," said Considine, his fingers massaging his forehead.

"That's also another phone call you didn't tell me about."

"I guess I forgot. But I told you all about that big house over the bridges, and the guards, and how I couldn't call anybody and how I was kept in a room with bars on the windows and everything."

"And how you escaped," agreed the pilot, "which was remarkable in itself. You must be a tough kid; your hands were a mess but you kept going."

"I don't know about tough, I just knew I had to get out of there. The things my warden, Amet-I called him a warden-kept repeating sounded like a broken record and about as convincing. After all those days nobody could figure out how to get my mother and me on the phone together. That's bullshit!"

"And undoubtedly timed down to hours, if not minutes," mused Luther Considine, abruptly standing up.

"What do you mean?"

"If you're straight-arrow, and I'm pretty well convinced you are, the bad guys had to get you out of the country before your momma joined this undercover operation, said operation probably the only truthful thing your kidnappers told you."

"I don't get it, Luther." Jamie frowned in bewilderment.

"It's the only thing that does make sense," said the pilot, glancing at his watch.

"Whatever your mother's involved in concerns the maggots who snatched you, and it's got to be mighty heavy."

"Come again?"

"Kidnapping's big-time anytime, and kidnapping the kid of an Army officer attached to government security is executioner's meat. They took you out of the loop and pulled you into another. Theirs."

"But why?"

"So they've got a hook into Mother Montrose." Considine walked toward the door.

"I'll be back in a few hours. Get some rest, some sleep, if you can. I'll keep the red letters on, no one'll bother you."

"Where are you going?"

"You've described the place where they kept you in damn clear detail, and I've wandered all over the Bahrainian territory. I've got several ideas where it could be; there aren't too many areas where estates like that are built. I'll bring along a Polaroid with a dozen or so cartridges of film. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Julian Guiderone was relaxing alone in his Lear 26 jet on the way to his home in Bahrain, in many ways the seat of his immense financial empire.

He always enjoyed Bahrain, its comforts

and its lifestyle. Manama was hardly as enticing as Paris or as civilized as London, but if there was ever a place on earth where the term laissez-faire was purely applied, it was Bahrain. Noninterference was its credo, and went beyond economics and the marketplace to the soul of the individual, even more so, of course, if he was among the rich.

Julian had friends there, though not close friends-he had no close friends; they were an impediment-and he considered having several small dinner parties, inviting a few royal pretenders, but mainly bankers and oil barons, the true royalty.

His sky pager buzzed, cutting short his reverie. He pulled it out of his pocket, alarmed to see that the party calling him was in the area code 31, the Netherlands. The number itself was meaningless, for it was false.

There was only one person who would call. From Amsterdam. Jan van der Meer Matareisen. He reached for the telephone cradled in the console of his air desk.

"I'm afraid I have terrible news, sir."

"Everything's relative. What's terrible one minute can be beneficial the next. What is it?"

"The package we transferred via Paris to the Middle East has disappeared."

"What?" Guiderone bolted forward with such force that the metal buckle on his seat belt dug painfully into his stomach.

"You mean the parcel's lost?" he choked, wincing as he gripped the buckle, disengaging it.

"Have you looked for it, really searched?"

"We've got our best personnel on it. Not a trace."

"Keep looking-everywhere!" The son of the Shepherd Boy gasped, trying to find some measure of control.

"In the meantime," he began slowly, collecting his thoughts, "I've leased the boat, the big boat, so clean it out, completely out. Also, release the crew, the entire crew, and send them to our marina in Oman, to Muscat. The sheikh who's taking it has his own people."

"I understand, sir. It will all be accomplished before the day is over."

"But for God's sake, keep searching for the package!" Guiderone slammed down the phone and yelled out, "Pilot?"

"Yes, signore?" came the voice from the flight deck only eight feet away.

"How is our fuel?"