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  Dave remembered the only one of these sessions from which he’d learned something about himself — or, for that matter, about anything else.

  The psychologist had subjected Dave to a series of free form association-preference questions.

  “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Green.”

  “Any particular shade?”

  “Emerald green.”

  Green as a green bottle.

  “What’s your favorite car?”

  “What I drive? A Mercedes.”

  “No, what would you like to drive?”

  “A Porsche.”

  “An emerald green Porsche?”

  “No. I think a yellow one.”

  “Yellow is a sexual color. Did you know that?”

  “No, but I’m not surprised.”

  “If you were reincarnated as an animal, what animal would you like to come back as?”

  “A sea otter.”

  “Why?”

  “They just float with the tide, don’t they?”

  “What animal would you expect to come back as?”

  Dave didn’t answer.

  “Come, Mr. Elliot. What animal would your fate — your karma, as it were — cause you to be reincarnated as?”

  Dave shook his head. “I have no idea. I like to run. Maybe I’d come back as some sort of deer or something.”

  “Ah, the hunted not the hunter.”

  “If you say so.” But the answer that formed in Dave’s mind, the karma he feared himself to have, had nothing to do with herbivores.

  “Do you have fantasies?”

  “Of course.”

  “Power fantasies?”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Achievement fantasies?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I don’t mean success.”

  “I know that.”

  “What achievement do you fantasize about? What ultimate achievement? The pinnacle of your dreams?”

  Without thinking Dave blurted, “Mark Twain.” Then he blushed.

  The psychologist looked perplexed. “Mark Twain? Would you explain that for me, please?”

  Dave felt uncomfortable. He had never mentioned his Mark Twain fantasy to anyone, not even to Helen, who would not have appreciated it anyway. In fact, he had barely admitted it to himself. He stuttered, “The achievement I dream about is … well … I’d like to write a book … a book about Mark Twain. In fact, I’d like to write a study of his life and works. That’s what I dream about.”

  “A best-seller?”

  “No, not necessarily. But critically … well, acclaimed would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Now this is very interesting, Mr. Elliot. Most business people of your seniority fantasize about sports — buying a baseball team, becoming a PGA champion, sailing around the world, and things like that. But you, Mr. Elliot, you dream about something else entirely. You dream of becoming an erudite literary figure. This is exceptionally peculiar.”

  Once upon a time, David himself would have agreed that it was, indeed, exceptionally peculiar.

  2

  Once upon a time, a young man wants to be a lawyer, but his ultimate goal is more ambitious than that. Becoming a lawyer will be only a step along the way. In the end, he wants to be in politics. The Senate, the governor’s mansion, a member of the Cabinet, perhaps even … well, who knows how far he can go.

  He’ll need a degree from a prestigious law school, Harvard or Columbia of preference. And, he’ll need grades good enough to clerk for a Justice of the Supreme Court — or, at a minimum, a Court of Appeals judge. Then he’ll spend a few years working for the state government, making contacts, building relationships with the right people. After that, he’ll be ready to run for office. First, the state legislature. Later something higher. The public life is what he has been made for.

  He grins as he frames the witticisms he’ll make during televised debates. Already he can see his smiling photograph in the newspapers, on campaign posters, on magazine covers … standing in the spotlight, on the platform, behind the rostrum … proud and upright and popular and dynamic and respected and a leader of men … and, of course, a champion of the people. Always that. That more than anything else. He will be the man they call “the conscience of the Senate,” or something similar. Just like Jimmy Stewart in that old movie, he will be the one who …

  These are daydreams, of course. He uses them to keep awake while, at a wage of seventy-five cents an hour, he works the graveyard shift in an aluminum extrusion plant some twenty miles from the university. Between classes and homework, between R.O.T.C. drill and the job he holds to pay his tuition, he usually manages to get four hours of sleep on weekdays. He catches up on the weekends.

  He is shooting for cum laude. He almost makes it, but not quite.

  He doesn’t mind R.O.T.C. Drill is relaxing in a mindless sort of way, and the classwork is undemanding. His only objection to the Reserve Officer Training Corps is that — in this year when more American boys enroll in it than ever before — it obliges him to associate with the jocks, frat boys, and engineering majors who actually enjoy playing soldier. It is a minor objection, easily outweighed by the stipend the program pays, and, when he reflects on it, by the certainty that an honorable military record — ideally with a decoration or two — will be an important asset for a rising young politician.

  He gets his decorations, all right. One of them is a Bronze Star.

  But by then the medals are irrelevant, as is a record of military duty bravely served. He abandons his political dreams before the court-martials even begin. Instead of yearning for a public life and political power, David Elliot decides that he wants to live his years as comfortably, even prosperously, as he can; but regardless of comfort and regardless of prosperity, to slip through the world as silently as possible, leaving no footprints behind.

  * * *

  The village of My Lai is still fresh in the Army’s mind. Four or five hundred civilians, they never can quite agree on how many, methodically slaughtered by the baby boys of Company C. It being war, and the victims being blameless and unarmed civilians, all the time-honored traditions are followed. Torture. Rape. Scalp-taking. The conventional customs of war.

  Enough of it has leaked into the press that the powers that be are mightily embarrassed. But they’re even more embarrassed by Lieutenant David Perry Elliot.

  So when the time comes for the court-martials, They (with a capital “T”) decide to move slowly, cautiously, and with a great deal of secrecy.

  The protracted procedures involved result in Dave having nothing but time on his hands. He is confined to base, forbidden to communicate with the outside world. Apart from his daily — some would say obsessive — workouts, the only recreation open to him is reading.

  He’s never been much of a reader. High school had seen him consume the obligatory works — all carefully selected to demonstrate that reading is, or at least should be, dull. In college, between his night job and his classes he had little time for anything other than textbooks. Nor has his subsequent career, involving as it did the practice of covert warfare, lent itself to leisurely reading.

  However, for these months of waiting for the trials to begin, he has little to do but read. What he reads is what he finds, largely such worn and much-thumbed volumes as are stored in the day room of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters.

  Two passages that he reads make upon him a singular impression. The first is by Hiram Ulysses Grant, later, due to a clerical error at West Point, renamed Ulysses S. Grant. The second is by Mark Twain.

  Here is the first, written while he was dying by possibly the greatest, surely the most reluctant, general America ever produced: “Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history. Better for him, individually, to advocate war, pestilence, and famine, than to act as obstructionist to a war already begun.”

&
nbsp; And here is the second, good Sam Clemens speaking: “Patriotism is patriotism. Calling it Fanaticism cannot degrade it; nothing can degrade it. Even though it be a political mistake, and a thousand times a political mistake, that does not affect it; it is honorable — always honorable, always noble — and privileged to hold its head up and look the nations in the face.”

  * * *

  David Elliot has been reading, and re-reading, Mark Twain ever since.

  3

  Safe behind the telephone room’s locked door, Dave talked things over with his cynical guardian angel.

  Let’s tally up the facts in the case of the likely to be late David Elliot, shall we, pal? Maybe there’s some sort of sense you can make of this mess. Maybe you’ll even find a clue as to how to save your butt.

  Probably not.

  True, but it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do with your time. So, first question: Who is Ransome and who are his pals?

  Dave answered silently: All I really know is who he was and where he came from. Special Operations. Covert warfare. Just like me — in Army uniform, but not entirely under Army command. Not merely raw muscle either. They never recruited muscle just for muscle’s sake.

  And what else?

  A survivor. No kamikaze pilots need apply. We don’t do heroes and we don’t do Custer’s last stand. That’s what Mamba Jack kept telling us.

  Brains, brawn, and an instinct to survive. Your basic sine qua non for the biz. So now what do you know?

  Not much. After the war ended most of us in that line of business simply came back home, hung up our spurs, and tried to get on with our lives. Those who didn’t — well, some of them stayed in, or so I heard. Not necessarily in the Army, but still on active duty.

  So maybe Ransome is a Fed?

  No way. Why would someone from the government want to kill me? I don’t have anything to do with politics. I don’t sign petitions. I don’t join causes. Hell, I don’t even vote.

  Still, the Feds have been known to …

  Nuts! I doubt if I have so much as spoken to a government employee in twenty-five years.

  What about year twenty-six?

  Not possible. If they had wanted to shut me up, they would have shut me up then. Not now. It would be crazy to wait all this time. Besides, those days are ancient history. Nobody cares anymore.

  Maybe. Maybe not. And if Ransome isn’t one of Los Federales, then what is he?

  Who knows? A mere maybe. After the war some people took their skills elsewhere. Became mercenaries — trusted advisors to the local dictator in Singapore, Iraq, Ecuador, or wherever. One year I’d see them mentioned in some story about Chile or South Africa, and the next year I’d hear they were in Ethiopia or Guatemala. Colonel Kreuter, good old Mamba Jack himself, started his own company. War Dog, Inc., he called it.

  You think Ransome comes from Kreuter? That after all these years Mamba Jack is settling his bill?

  No. If Jack ever decides to pay off old debts, he’ll do it personally. Not that that’s any consolation.

  So?

  So, I’m still in the dark.

  What about the mob?

  Not possible. Businessmen don’t do deals with gangsters except in the movies. Least of all does Bernie Levy deal with them. He wouldn’t touch anything the mob was involved in. He’s the most ethical businessman I’ve ever met — the original Straight Arrow.

  Straight Arrow just tried to shorten your life span with a Browning.

  I’m aware of that.

  What about Harry? He defended that guy, Joey whatshisname, the Mafia kingpin from New Jersey.

  Harry Halliwell might defend a gangster, but he’d never go into business with one.

  Not the Feds, not the mob. Maybe it’s Con Ed, mad because you forgot to pay the light bill.

  Oh, give me a break! I don’t have enough information to even guess what’s going on.

  You have some information. Like for instance, Ransome saying that he read your 201 file.

  My military personnel jacket. That crack he made about my service being honorable until the end means he knows what’s in it. But no one is supposed to know that. They sealed the records. They’re stamped “Top Secret,” and buried in the vaults of the Army Judge Advocate General. Nobody could read my 201 file unless he carried a high-level security clearance. Or knew someone with a clearance.

  Another puzzle: It was Bernie rather than Ransome who came to pull the trigger. What do you make of that?

  Ransome is a pro. My guess is that he’s been in the business — whatever his business is — all his life. He’s good at it, and killing people doesn’t bother him one little bit. So, why did he send Bernie to do it? If the contract was on me, and Ransome was there, why did he let a civilian like Bernie Levy try to do the job?

  Think about the mise-en-scene, pal.

  Right. Right you are. I’d almost missed that. They tried to do it in the office. Why there? Why didn’t they just take me out from a moving car while I was jogging, or put one behind my ear while I was walking home at night? There’s only one answer to that. The answer is that early in the morning on the forty-fifth floor of a Park Avenue high-rise, there aren’t very many people around. Nobody to watch. Nobody to ask questions. It would have been very quiet, and no one ever would have known. Remember Ransome said, “This is supposed to be a private party. Let’s keep it that way.”

  And, therefore …

  * * *

  Colonel John James Kreuter is slouched behind a field table in a candlelit hooch. No one calls him Colonel Kreuter. They call him Mamba Jack. The nickname pays tribute to the Black Mamba, a snake whose venom is a neurotoxin, the most swiftly acting and lethal poison in the world — one bite and ten seconds later, you’re history.

  Mamba Jack is proud of his nickname.

  A three-quarters-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label sits before the colonel. The stub of an unfiltered Lucky Strike dangles from his lips. He takes one last, deep drag, and flicks the butt to the dirt floor. He smiles at Dave. His teeth are phenomenally white, and he has the longest set of canines that Dave has ever seen.

  “Well now, here’s our young Lew-tenant Elliot lookin’ all bright-eyed an’ bushy-tailed.” Mamba Jack speaks with a long East Texas drawl, the accent of a redneck born and bred. Unless you had been told, as Dave has been by the company clerk, that Colonel Kreuter had graduated third in his class at West Point, you would think him to be an ignorant hick.

  “I think the time done come for yew to loose yer virginity, Lew-tenant.”

  “Sir?”

  Kreuter leers. It makes him look like Disney’s Big Bad Wolf, and he knows it. “I got a li’l job for yew. Seems like Charlie’s got hisself this ol’ Roosian KGB major up there north of the Dee Em Zee. Now this here Roosian he’s become a bit of a botheration. Seems like he’s a-passin’ out guns an’ he’s a-passin’ out supplies an’ he’s a-passin’ out advice. Now, I don’t much mind the guns, an’ I don’t much mind the supplies, but that advice — why, son, that just irks the living hell out of me. Become a real burr beneath my saddle, as it were. So what I want yew to do, Lew-tenant, is yew take some men up ’cross the Dee Em Zee an’ communicate to this aforementioned Roosky Mamba Jack Kreuter’s sincerest displeasure with the sit-e-achyun.”

  “Sir. You want me to bring him back?”

  “Naw. What for? Hellfire, what would I want with a smelly ol’ Roosian? Can’t speak to him. Don’t know the language. ’Sides which, nobody don’t need no live, palpitatin’ Rooskies lyin’ around. Got enough po-lick-tickle trouble as it is.”

  “Termination, sir?”

  “Yessir, Lew-tenant Elliot, that is the accepted terminology. But y’ain’t a-gonna do it messy. No bodies, an’ no evidence. What we want, Lew-tenant Elliot, is for that ol’ KGB major’s boss to worry some. Want him to worry that his boy done cut an’ run. Worry that he’s down our way a-talkin’ an’ a-gabbin’ an’ a-singin’ his li’l heart out. Want him to have nightmares ’bout
that there major showin’ up on teevee a-talkin’ to Mike Wallace an’ good ol’ Walter Cronkite. Yew got that, Lew-tenant, yew know what we want yew to do?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “An’ that is, what, Lew-tenant?” You remember what you answered, of course? Dave’s sarcastic angel asked.

  David Elliot, slumped on the linoleum floor of the Senterex telephone room, smiled ambivalently at the memory of his answer: “Yes, sir,” he’d said. “You want the major to get disappeared.”

  Right. And now somebody wants you to get disappeared.

  4

  In the early 1970s, when Dave was beginning his business career, telephone equipment rooms were large, noisy places. All the equipment was electromechanical — endless banks of chattering relays and clicking switches. It took work to maintain the PBX systems in those days, and a team of telephone company men usually would show up to tinker with the hardware once or twice a week. Dave, whose first position was in the administration department of what was then called the First National City Corporation, remembered them. They always seemed to be big guys, a little overweight, with cigar butts clinched between their teeth. They all wore heavy grey work pants and answered to Irish or Italian names.

  Most important, they kept lockers in the telephone rooms. Spare clothes, overalls, jackets, sometimes work-boots. Dave had hoped to find something similar in the room containing Senterex’s switching equipment. No such luck. The days of the electromechanical PBX had gone. Modern telephone systems are small, compact, and computerized. The only sound they make is the whir of their cooling fans.

  Yes, there was a locker in the room. But all it contained, apart from shelves of miniature electronic parts and spools of colored wire, was two back issues of Hustler magazine, a tool belt, and a pair of gloves. Only the belt and gloves would be useful for what Dave had in mind.

  The one other useful thing in the room was a wall-mounted beige telephone. After more than an hour of hard thought, Dave had decided to use it. He’d call his brother. Not Helen. Helen didn’t handle crises well, and was swift to assign him blame for anything that went wrong. Dave had long since decided that if his second marriage was going to work (and he badly wanted it to), he and he alone would have to handle the rough spots.