Eagles Fly, page 11
Silverstein shrugged his shoulders. “A man who knew you were coming and wanted to kill you.”
“You knew I was coming, but how did you know someone would be waiting for me?”
“When Goldmann said you were coming, he mentioned that there might be trouble. I had Santini put his ear to the ground, and he found out that there’s a contract on you. The police have been informed that you’re a drug runner trying to bust in on a local operation. As far as they’re concerned, you’re better off dead. If the opposition doesn’t kill you, the cops probably will.”
They turned off the main highway onto a narrow dirt road and Santini floored the Peugeot.
“The boat is docked at the South Canal just below Puerto Madero, but we’re going to first make sure that we’re not being followed,” Silverstein said. “They would have been content to let Manuel and me get out, but you’re a different story. And now, by association, so are we.”
“I’m sorry,” Asheim said softly, and again Silverstein smiled, a touch of sadness in it.
“No need to be, Major. Your son-in-law Benjamin and I were friends, which is why I requested this assignment in the first place.”
“I see,” Asheim said, and for several minutes he fell silent as Santini drove them into the city, along back streets, down narrow alleys, and finally along another dirt road, the Rio de la Plata off to their left.
Silverstein finally broke the silence. “There is a paper bag with a gun in it on the floor. I have no idea how it came to be there, nor will it ever be said I gave it to you. He looked away as Asheim bent down and pulled the .38 Smith & Wesson out of the bag and stuck it in his belt.
Silverstein turned back. “If you are going to Aerie, tonight would be best. They would not be expecting you so soon.”
“I’ll take the car after you leave.”
“I can do better than that,” Silverstein said. “Campana lies just off the river Paraná, which empties into the La Plata. Stoeffel’s compound borders the river. It is the only way in for you.”
Asheim nodded and Silverstein held up one finger. “But, Major, we will be able to wait for you only one hour. No longer. If you are not back by then, we will leave you.”
“Fair enough,” Asheim said. If he could get to the house. If Stoeffel was there. If he could confront the man. And if he was not detected, he would get the answers he was coming for, or he would kill the old man and then somehow get back to Silverstein and the boat. After that his future course of action would depend on what he had learned or not learned. But at least they would know they had serious opposition who not only knew they were planning something big, but who was willing and able to do something to stop it.
13
On Saturday Kelsey went to the clinic around 8:00 A.M. to check on his patients. He had planned on taking the remainder of the day off for a much-needed rest.
Shelly Hope was awake and in good spirits, talking on the phone to her agent in New York when he came in. She flashed him a big smile and kissed him on the cheek.
Mrs. Hermitage, on whom he had done the blepharoplasty, was listening to the television, bitching about the fact it would be weeks before her eyelids healed enough to remove the bandages so she could see again.
And Locke was recovering nicely, although he was impatient for the real work on his face to begin.
“There are only a few days until Christmas, and sometime between then and New Year’s Eve, I’ll start on your nose,” Kelsey said after examining the man. He had taken the surgery well.
“It can’t be done any sooner?” Locke asked, still having difficulties talking because of the injuries to the muscles, controlling his jaw.
Kelsey shook his head. “Your system wouldn’t stand the shock. The human body can take just so much until it demands a rest.”
“What about the photographs I brought, Doctor? Can you match them?”
Kelsey pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down. “Do you have any family, Mr. Locke? Any relatives we could telephone? Anyone you would like to visit you?”
Locke was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice seemed to hold a great sadness. “There’s no one. There never has been anyone.”
“Parents? Sisters? Brothers?”
“No sisters or brothers, and my parents died years ago when I was a child. There is no one.”
“A girlfriend?”
Locke somehow managed a bitter laugh. “I’ve visited whorehouses for my pleasure. And even there I have never been what you could call a welcome guest. I was an ugly man.”
“That simply is not true,” Kelsey said with feeling, leaning forward.
Locke stiffened in the bed, and he turned his bandaged face away so that he could look out the window. “Handsomeness or ugliness are more than something merely in the eye of the beholder, a phrase I’ve heard a million times. Ugliness is also in the mind’s eye of the individual cursed with a face he is not happy with.” He turned back to face Kelsey, and there was a passion in his voice. “All my life, Doctor, ever since I was a child, I have hated the way I looked.” He shook his head sadly, although it was obvious to Kelsey that the motion caused him some pain. “Oh, I know that I have never been really ugly, not in the same sense as some poor deformed wretch. But my own feeling about myself, I am sure, has made itself clear on my face. It’s like I’ve been making faces at the world all of my life. I have no friends, not one. I guess I’m counting on you to not only give me a new face but, because of it, a new personality in which I will like myself instead of despising my image in the mirror.”
Kelsey reached out and touched the man gently on the arm. “Perhaps you need a psychologist. I think your problem is more inside your head than on your face.”
Locke half rose out of the bed. “Promise me, Doctor, that you will do as I ask. That you will give me the face I have asked for. It can’t hurt. The operations cannot be any different than restoring my face to what it used to be. And maybe it will help me.”
Kelsey got up and gently pushed the man back down on the bed. “I’ll do what you ask. I’m just suggesting that perhaps you need another kind of help as well.”
Locke seemed to relax. “I’ll promise you this much, Doctor, that if you do what I want you to do with my face, my entire life will change. For the better. If it doesn’t, I’ll go and have my head examined.”
Kelsey smiled. “No more talking or you’ll screw up my good work.”
“Right,” Locke mumbled, and he reached over for a book from a pile of them on his night table as Kelsey got up and pushed the chair back into the corner.
As Kelsey turned to go, he happened to catch a glimpse of the titles of several of the books. Among them were The Presidency: An Historical Survey, The American Political System, and Theory of Power in Government.
Strange reading for an engineer. The fleeting thought passed through his mind and was gone as he left Locke’s room and went downstairs. But then Locke was a strange man.
Two of the outside maintenance men had set up a huge Christmas tree in the entry hall, and Marion along with a couple of the nurses were unpacking several boxes of decorations. They had been too busy all week to do much more than string up a few lights around the hall, and this tree, Kelsey was sure, had been Marion’s doing.
They stopped what they were doing and glanced his way, guilty looks on their faces.
Marion started toward him, a defensive glare in her eye, but he smiled.
“I was wondering if you people had forgotten about Christmas,” he said.
“With the way things have been going around here lately, I thought we all needed a little cheering up. Even the patients are complaining about the long faces,” Marion said.
“Don’t blame it on me. I don’t deserve the title of Scrooge,” Kelsey said, holding up his hands in surrender.
“Oh, yes, you do,” Marion chided. “But there is something in your office that will change that even faster than this tree.”
He looked at her, but he could see no clue other than a twinkle in her eye.
“It’s a present from your father. A messenger brought it a few minutes ago,” Marion said, and she accompanied him to his office, where she made him close his eyes before she would open the door and lead him inside.
When the door was closed behind them and she had led him over by his desk, she said, “Now,” and Kelsey opened his eyes.
Propped against the wall behind his desk was a large, framed architectural drawing of an ultramodern building perched on a cliff overlooking what appeared to be one of the Great Lakes. For a moment it made no sense to Kelsey until all at once it hit him.
“The research institute,” he said softly, and he went forward to get a closer look.
“Your father told me about it a month ago,” Marion said.
He tore his eyes away from the drawing and looked at her. She was smiling, her eyes bright. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Nope,” she said mischievously. “Your father swore me to secrecy. Said this was going to be your Christmas present.”
Kelsey looked again at the drawing and noticed that a card was attached at the bottom corner. He went around his desk and pulled the card from where it was taped to the frame and opened it.
In his father’s handwriting, the message was short and, to Kelsey’s mind, very sweet.
Merry Christmas, Richard,
As soon as your work is cleared up at Lake Geneva, I’ll expect you down here to begin equipping and staffing your research institute.
Love, Father
Kelsey looked again at the drawing, and for a moment his thoughts went back to his wife, but he could not conjure up a clear picture of her face in his mind.
Marion came around the desk to him, and he turned to look down at her.
“Merry Christmas, Doctor,” she said, and stood up on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips.
He let the card fall to the floor and took her in his arms and kissed her deeply, something one part of his mind told him he should have done a long time ago.
14
Santini’s brother Eugenio turned out to be even older and more decrepit than Manuel, but the boat was a sleek forty-foot pleasure craft that Silverstein explained was rented on weekends to the Santini brothers’ friends.
“I never ask where they go on their weekend cruises, and they never volunteer the information,” Silverstein said as he and Asheim clambered aboard. “But she’s seaworthy, very fast, and her hold is big enough for them to haul half of Buenos Aires in one trip.”
Manuel and Eugenio hugged and slapped each other on the back as if they had not seen each other for years, and Manuel quickly explained to his brother Asheim’s presence and what was requested of them this night before they crossed to Montevideo.
Eugenio, a concerned expression on his deeply lined face, parted from his brother and gravely shook Asheim’s hand.
“Señor Stoeffel is a dangerous man,” he said, his English heavily accented.
Asheim nodded. “He was responsible for my son-in-law’s murder.”
The old man looked even sadder. “Although I did not know Benjamin, Manuel and Abraham tell me he was a good man.”
“Can you take me up the Paraná?”
“Would you kill Senor Stoeffel?”
“Only if I am required to,” Asheim said. “But first I need information from him.”
“Yes.” Eugenio was nodding. “I will take you to Campana. But we will not be able to wait very long. And if we are discovered, we will have to leave you. Stoeffel is a powerful man in Buenos Aires. He has many friends. Many soldiers.”
The boat was tied up at a wharf among hundreds of other similar craft. Asheim and Silverstein went below as the Santini brothers cast off and headed down the South Canal out into the Rio de la Plata Estuary, the twin diesels throbbing powerfully.
On deck the boat was spotlessly clean, and it came as no surprise to Asheim when they entered the main cabin to see that it too was in the same state of gleaming cleanliness.
“Unusual men, the Santinis,” he said as he sat down. Silverstein poured him a brandy.
“What you are really thinking, Major, is that it is unusual for a man in my position to use the services of men like them.” Silverstein was smiling, and he sat down across the highly polished wood table from Asheim. “Despite what our mutual friend David Goldmann probably told you about your son-in-law’s assignment here, Benjamin was not the man for the job. He was in over his head.”
Asheim looked away, focusing his gaze on a Picasso print hanging on the wall, and said nothing.
“He was an honest, honorable man. And this profession is not suitable for such men.”
Asheim turned back to Silverstein. “What is your connection with Goldmann? Why were you sent down here?”
“I was born and raised in New York City. When the street wars became too tame for me, I went to Israel, where the real fighting was going on. From what Goldmann told me when I was recruited, he approached me the same way and for the same reasons he came to you.”
“What was your connection with Benjamin?”
Silverstein took a sip of his brandy. “I don’t imagine your daughter told you about me,” he said. “Deborah and I had a thing for each other before she married Benjamin.”
Asheim was surprised. He could not imagine his daughter seeing anything in this man. His feelings evidently showed on his face, because Silverstein laughed out loud.
“She finally saw through me, Major. Saw that I was not the man for her. I was too dangerous. ‘Like a wild animal,’ she said once. And I agreed with her. Told her Benjamin was the man for her.”
“You said you were Benjamin’s friend,” Asheim said. He was tired and wanted to get the business with Stoeffel over with.
Silverstein put his glass down and leaned forward, an intense expression in his eyes. “I left your daughter because I thought Benjamin would be better for her than me. But I never stopped loving her. And when the babies came I was happy for her because I had been right—Benjamin was the correct man for her.” He sat back. “When I heard Benjamin had been killed I put out the word that I would like to take his assignment. It took Goldmann nearly a year and a half to finally come to me, but he did.”
Asheim could not decide if he liked or trusted the man, and yet he felt a compassion for him. “Deborah has remarried.”
A startled expression crossed Silverstein’s face, but then he smiled wanly. “Good. I am happy for her. With me she would have had no luck.” He turned away. “It doesn’t alter the fact that I want revenge for Benjamin’s death. He was a good man.”
“If you were so concerned, why didn’t you move against Stoeffel and the others here in Buenos Aires yourself?”
“A number of reasons,” Silverstein said, turning back. “Goldmann told me any such action would result in my immediate recall. I decided that when I made my move, it was not going to be in the dark. I don’t enjoy batting my head against a brick wall.”
“And?” Asheim asked.
“Goldmann told me about you and what you were doing, so I figured it would only be a matter of time before you showed up here.”
“You intend coming with me to Stoeffel?”
Silverstein nodded. “I too have difficulty in following orders.”
“There’s a good chance we’ll just be beating our heads against your brick wall.”
Silverstein shrugged. “They may be expecting you tomorrow, but I don’t think they are expecting the both of us tonight. And not by water.” He poured another drink. “And now I think you’d better tell me what you have learned about this Odessa operation.”
“First you tell me how you met and recruited the Santinis,” Asheim said.
Silverstein glanced up toward the closed hatchway, then shrugged again. “When you are born and raised on the streets, you know such things. Manuel was easy, and he works cheap.”
Something was not quite right about any of this, but Asheim could not put his finger on it. “Have you used this boat before?” he asked to cover his momentary uncertainty.
“A number of times. Stoeffel’s house is visible from the river. We’ve gone out there on a half-dozen occasions in the last few months.”
“Come up with anything?”
Silverstein shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“How far do you trust them?”
“If you mean do I believe they might be working for Stoeffel, I think Manuel’s actions at the airport covered that pretty well.”
Still, it did not set right in Asheim’s mind, and yet he told himself his feelings of uncertainty were probably the result of the events of the past two days, including jet lag—and someone trying to kill him at the airport. Goldmann could not have made that big a mistake in picking Silverstein for this job.
He took another sip of his brandy, lit a cigarette, and told Silverstein everything he had learned over the past two years up to the business three days ago at the clinic in Lake Geneva, and the FBI coming for him by name at the consulate the next day.
“Ingenious. They closed all avenues of escape for you except the one that led here to Buenos Aires.”
Asheim nodded. “And here I am.”
“You don’t expect Stoeffel to tell you anything, do you?”
“Either that or I’ll kill him.”
“And then one by one kill the remaining ten Odessa leaders.”
Asheim nodded again but said nothing.
“You’d never accomplish it all and you know it. But it won’t stop you, will it?”
“No.”
“I like that,” Silverstein said, his feral grin returning. “I like that a lot.”
The hatchway popped open and Manuel Santini was framed in the opening. “We’ve just entered the Paraná, so I suggest, Major, that you come on deck and get ready.”
“I’m going with him, Manuel,” Silverstein said as he and Asheim got to their feet.
