The Matarese Countdown (Matarese Dynasty 1)

"And this horse shit that only he can call us but we can't call him?"

"Hotel switchboards keep a record of all outgoing telephone numbers

for billing purposes, and he's not taking any more risks with cell phones because of scanners. At least not where you're concerned."

"To repeat, we're caged. We might as well be in jail!"

"I doubt that the room service is comparable, to say nothing of the accommodations, Bray."

"I don't like it. I was better than Hog's Butt twenty-some years ago, and I'm still better now."

"However, I trust you'll admit he's extremely good at what he does-" "I'm better at covering my ass than he is," said Scofield like a pouting, overage adolescent.

"There's such a thing as over complicating dark operations' security. Does he think the real floor stewards are blind, mute, and morons?"

"I'm sure he's considered that aspect."

A knock on the door sent Bray stalking across the room.

"Yes, who is it?"

"Mrs. Downey .. . sir," was the hesitant reply.

"Housekeeping."

"Oh, certainly." Scofield opened the door, somewhat startled to see an elderly woman whose tall, slender figure, erect posture, and chiseled aristocratic features hardly seemed compatible with the soft, light blue uniform of the Savoy's maid service, along with the mandatory vacuum cleaner and dust rags.

"Come in," Bray added.

"Please don't get up," said Mrs. Downey, walking inside and addressing Antonia, who started to rise from the room-service table.

"No, really," replied Toni, "I couldn't eat another scrap. You may clear it all away."

"I may but I shan't. A steward will take care of it.. .. However, I shall introduce myself. For the time being, my name is Downey, Mrs.

Dorothy Downey-a fine, solid name, I chose it myself-and I'm duly registered in the Savoy's employment records with splendid credentials, housekeeping division. That, I'm afraid, is absurd; I couldn't properly make a bed to the hotel's standards if my life depended upon it. In point of fact I'm a cryptographer, and at the moment I'm your sole contact with Sir Geoffrey Waters."

"I'll be goddamned-" "Please, Bray.. .. And how do we reach you, Mrs. Downey?"

"Here's the number," said the MI-5 cryptographer, crossing to Antonia and handing her a small piece of paper.

"Please commit to memory and burn it."

"We'll commit and burn after you detail the security of that number," countered Scofield testily.

"An excellent request.. .. It's a direct sterile line that bypasses the switchboard and goes to the small office the Savoy has provided me. I, in turn, have a direct sterile access to Sir Geoffrey Waters. Does that answer you, sir?"

"I trust my name is as sterile as your access."

"Bray! ..."

The extraordinarily efficient "Mrs. Dorothy Downey, Housekeeping" proved to be a perpetual irritant to Scofield and superb at her job.

Information flowed back and forth between Waters, Brandon, and Antonia, and Pryce and Leslie Montrose, who were ensconced incognito at the Blakes Hotel in Roland Gardens. Like pieces of a puzzle set in place by unseen hands, the outlines of the next phase of strategy began to emerge.

They would concentrate on Amsterdam, starting with the sparse information found in Myra Symond's flat, which would be reexamined and thoroughly studied. Then there was the equipment stolen from McDowell's office in Wichita and flown as cargo to Amsterdam.

Thanks to a faceless executive at Atlantic Crown who felt he might be held responsible if he permitted the expensive items to be removed without an invoice, they knew the KLM flight number. There were airline personnel, ground and cargo crews to be questioned; someone had to know something, have seen something-the people who met the equipment, the vehicle or vehicles that carted it away.

The hunters were down to the stones and the pebbles, for Amsterdam was the key to the first door in Scofield's symbolic maze. It was time to open that door and see what was behind it. The materials were gathered together and fed into a single computer at MI-5. The results were not spectacular, neither were they useless. Correlations led to connections and associations; methods of transport narrowed the field of those who used them; hiring an international cargo aircraft with all the government clearances, inspections, and restrictions was not a task for even the average multimillionaire. They also included every canal that employed the letter K, regardless of its position; there were dozens, the hard AT sound emphatic in each.

"Get me a list of every resident on every one of them," said Sir Geoffrey to an aide.

"There'll be thousands, sir!"

"Yes. I expect there will be. Incidentally, include the basics, wherever you can. Income, employment, marital status, that'll be enough for starters."

"Good Lord, Sir Geoffrey, such a list could take weeks!"

"It shouldn't, and frankly, I'm not sure we have weeks. Who's our liaison to Dutch intelligence?"

"Alan Poole, Netherlands Division."

"Tell him to go to Situation Black and reach his man in Holland.

Explain what we need using the cover of narcotics or diamond smuggling-whatever he's most comfortable with. Telephone companies keep billing records and divide cities into sectors. Our Dutch counterparts can easily gain access and we'll fly a courier over to pick up the material. As I say, it's a place to start."

"Very good, sir," said the aide, crossing to the door.

"I'll speak to Poole right away."

The information from Dutch intelligence was voluminous. A team of six MI-5 analysts pored over the material for thirty-eight hours without a break, discarding the obvious non candidates retaining even the vaguely possible. The thousands were reduced to several hundred and the process started all over again. Dossiers and police records were gathered wherever they existed, banking practices scrutinized;

companies, corporations, and other places of employment were analyzed for dubious transactions, and flight and ground crews at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport interrogated by Dutch-speaking MI-5 officers regarding the cargo aircraft from Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A. This last provided curious information. According to the agent's notes, the following conversation took place between the MI-5 officer and the ground chief of the cargo crew.

MI-5: "You recall that flight?"

GC: "I surely do. We were unloading cartons of unspecified technical equipment with no bills of lading, no breakdown .. .

and no one shows up from customs. For God's sake, there could have been all sorts of contraband, even nuclear materials, but nobody with authority bothered to inspect the shipment." "Can you remember who claimed the shipment, who signed for it?" "That would be done inside the cargo hangar, at the release counter."

The release-counter computers had no record of the flight from Wichita. It was as if the aircraft and its arrival did not exist. The MI-5 officer's notes continued during his interrogation of the customs personnel.

"Who was on duty that night?"

Female on computer: "Let me check. It was a slow night . for cargo so most of the crew left early.

"Who remained?"

"According to this, a sub named Arnold Zelft covered...."

"A sub?"

"We have a pool of substitutes, usually retired employees. " "How can I find this Zelft?"

"I'll bring up the pool.. .. That's strange, he's not listed."

There was no Arnold Zelft in any telephone system, published or unpublished, in the Netherlands. He, too, did not exist.

All of the above data reduced the list of several hundred to sixty three possibles. The reduction was based on dossiers, police records, company and corporate scrutinies, further financial revelations, and incidental information gathered from neighbors, friends, and enemies.

The MI-5 analysts kept probing, essentially eliminating possibles based on disqualifying factors that took them out of the running. The names and residences were now down to sixteen, and individual around-the-clock surveillances were mounted.

Within forty-eight hours a number of strange incidents were reported by officers of the surveillance teams. Six couples on the K canals flew to Paris, staying a

t separate hotels but, as reported by the switchboards, keeping in touch with one another. Three husbands left on business trips, two joined in the evenings by women staying the night, one drinking copiously, to the point of unconsciousness after his meetings, only to be picked up by apparent strangers and to disappear in a speeding car out into the countryside. Was he drunk or was it an act?

The rest of the possibles were four couples, one elderly widow, and two unmarried men. Like the others, they were wealthy, influential to the point of having access to high, medium, and low government figures, and the sources of their vast incomes were complex and difficult to define. This was especially true of one of the two unmarried men, a Mr. Jan van der Meer, who lived in an old, elegant mansion on the Keizersgracht. The records described him as an international financier with undisclosed global holdings, the Dutch equivalent of a worldwide venture capitalist.

Breakthrough! Then another!

The first came by way of one of the Dutch-speaking MI-5 agents posing as a survey taker for a cosmetics firm. In casual conversations with van der Meer's closest neighbors, it was learned that limousines from a certain company arrived frequently at van der Meer's residence.

When questioned, the limousine service denied any knowledge of a Jan van der Meer and had no record of such a person hiring its vehicles. A security-corporation search revealed that the limousine-rental agency was owned by a holding company named Argus Properties. It was one of van der Meer's vast array of business interests, and the deception, although perhaps explainable, was disturbing. Further scrutiny was demanded. Where would it lead?

The second breakthrough was part fluke, part cross-pollinating technology, and buried in the past. Also, it was so significant that it eliminated the necessity for further scrutiny. They had found the house on a K canal. Three-ten Keizersgracht, the "canal of the caesars."

A computer at Dutch intelligence picked up a glitch, which often signified a deletion in a past entry. The past in this instance was twenty-four years ago. A computer search was set in motion covering all government and court records going back until that deletion was discovered. Twenty-four years. It turned out to be the Amsterdam Civil Court, Division of Titles and Nomenclature. A second, physical search was mounted in the court's archives, the document unearthed and subjected to spectrographic X rays. The glitch was found, the words restored.