Eagles fly, p.5
Eagles Fly, page 5
“But a clinic wouldn’t be the answer. Not now.”
“On the contrary. You can take charge of the clinic for a couple of years or for however long it takes you to come up with a project. Something worthwhile, something viable.”
“And then?” Despite himself, Kelsey found himself becoming interested. It seemed somehow immoral to him coming just hours after he had buried his wife.
“When you have your project I will open a small research institute in Chicago for you, and someone else can take over the Lake Geneva clinic.”
“No,” Kelsey said flatly.
“Yes,” his father said, standing up. “First of all, I need the tax write-off, and second of all, you are simply too good a doctor to be buried as a little cog in some big research institute wheel.”
“I can’t,” Kelsey said weakly. He could feel that he was nearly at the point of collapse, and he could not understand why his father was persisting.
“You not only can, but you will,” his father said, and Kelsey suddenly knew that the old man was correct … both logically and compassionately right. But he was not quite ready to concede. Not tonight.
“I love you, Father,” he said softly.
“I love you too, son,” the old man replied.
4
They stood in Goldmann’s office, a small, plain, windowless room. On one wall was pinned a faded world map, and along the opposite wall was a row of eight file cabinets, all locked, steel rods running down the faces of the drawers. Outside a dimly lit corridor led to the front of the basement of Government House, where the offices of the other Mossad departments were located.
“Welcome to C-Seven,” Goldmann said, indicating a chair for Asheim to sit down.
“I spoke with my daughter last night,” Asheim said, his voice controlled.
Goldmann had a pained expression on his face. “I was hoping to avoid that.”
“I didn’t tell her I was working for you. I just told her I was going to have to go away for a while.”
Goldmann said nothing.
“She’s taking it badly. But the worst part for her was that her husband had to do it alone. He had no help.”
Goldmann wore a dark suit with a vest. He adjusted his tie and sat down, then looked slowly around the room at the map and the file cabinets as if he were cataloging the contents of his office. “Except for another room down the hall about the same size as this one that houses my two assistants, this is all of C-Seven. It’s never been any bigger, and it never will be.” He looked up at Asheim. “We have a budget to match, if you can call it that, and everyone works alone. Everyone.”
Asheim could see the expression of hurt and bewilderment on his daughter’s face when he had picked her up at the airport. But she had not let go until they got back to his apartment and put the children to bed.
“Benjamin was nothing more than a fucking government clerk, in federal travel records. He had no business working for you.”
“Your son-in-law was suited for the job. I explained to him and Deborah exactly what was expected of them, and they both accepted. With their eyes open, Major. They did not have to go down there.”
Asheim’s other daughter, Sandra, was driving up from Kibbutz Ze’Elim in the south to pick up her sister and the two children, who would return with her. “Is it that important?” he asked, the harshness suddenly gone from his voice. He sat down in his chair.
“I think so,” Goldmann said softly. “But you don’t have to do this, you know. You can back out.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Because you’re sick of fighting Arabs?”
Asheim shook his head.
“Because of your son-in-law?”
“Partly.”
Goldmann looked away. “Travel section has your papers ready, at least your initial identification. As and when you need others, they will be gotten to you.”
“When do I leave?”
“In the morning. We have an apartment for you in Buenos Aires, and Israeli Press Service is expecting you, although you won’t have to do much for them.”
“I can penetrate Stoeffel’s stronghold. I’ve studied the photos you gave me, and I know I can get in there,” Asheim said.
Goldmann shook his head. “It wouldn’t accomplish a thing. This isn’t a cops-and-robbers game. The people we’re dealing with are all wealthy, all respected, and all very shrewd men, each with his own private army. Even if you did manage to get into Aerie, let’s say even hold Stoeffel at gunpoint to get the story out of him, you’d never live to get the information back here. Not now. It’s too early.”
Asheim started to protest, but Goldmann cut him off.
“Listen to me, Asheim. We’re not dealing with ordinary men. We’re dealing with sophisticated networks of men and women all over the world, in all walks of life. If you managed to take out even one or two of them, it would be nothing more than taking a couple of legs off a centipede. Nothing more than a minor irritation.”
“I could take out the eleven leaders, one by one.”
Goldmann waved that off, obviously irritated. “We’ve already gone over that, Major. You either are going to cooperate with me or not. Which is it to be?”
Asheim lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then sat back in his chair. Deborah and the children would be all right at Ze’Elim. There was a good school there and plenty of work for her to do. Beyond that he had no ties here.
“What am I to do?” he asked.
Goldmann looked relieved. “At first nothing more than watch.”
“And then?”
Goldmann shrugged. “We play it by ear. We improvise. Which is exactly why I came to you. You’re known as a man who is able to think on his feet.”
Asheim noticed a framed photograph on the desk facing Goldmann, and he nodded toward it. “Your family?”
“I have no family,” Goldmann said, and he turned the photo around. It was a picture of Adolf Hitler. “He is the reason for this office and my job.”
There was so little to go on, Asheim thought as he stared at the photograph. Yet what little they had was the cause of his son-in-law’s death.
He looked up at Goldmann. “The Odessa has planned some unknown scheme, which will involve some unknown man, whom they have finally found apparently after a long search, and in two years this scheme is to be pulled off. Not much to go on.”
“No, there’s not,” Goldmann admitted. “But somewhere among Stoeffel and the other ten Odessa leaders there will be a clue. It is up to you to find it. And find it within the two-year time limit.”
“After that?”
“Stop whatever it is they are up to, any way you can.”
“With little or no help, and with nearly everyone outside this room against me.”
Goldmann nodded. “Welcome to C-Seven.”
5
It was one week to the day from Colleen’s funeral when the chauffeur-driven limousine pulled off Highway 50 outside the town of Lake Geneva, onto the property of the old MacArthur summer residence. Kelsey had consented to look at the place, and this morning he had driven up from Chicago with his father.
The last week was a blur in Kelsey’s mind. He had not returned to Chicago with his father immediately but instead had remained in Minneapolis to close down his apartment and make his good-byes at the university.
He had toyed with the idea of heading for California for the summer but then had dismissed it. He and Colleen had wanted to go to San Francisco during their summer break, and he could not stomach the idea of going out there without her.
Instead he had gone to Chicago, where he had stayed with his father in the large house in Evanston for a couple of days. The old man, persuasive as ever, had finally convinced him to take a look at the place on the lake.
“Old man MacArthur gave this place to his kids, but none of them wanted it, so I bought it a couple of years ago,” Kelsey’s father said.
A narrow blacktop road led off the highway through a tall, wrought-iron gate and down a steep, wooded hill toward the lake. The day was bright and warm, and yet in the thick woods it seemed like twilight of a cool day.
“Did the MacArthurs ever live here?” Kelsey found himself asking for want of anything better to say. He was really not interested.
“A few summers, from what I understand. But the house has spent most of its fifty years empty except for the care-taking staff. I kept them on after I bought the place.”
Kelsey turned to his father. “Why’d you buy it? Were you planning on moving up here?”
The old man smiled wistfully and patted his son’s arm. “I thought about it. I thought it would be a nice place for my grandchildren to visit.”
Pain stabbed at Kelsey’s heart. He turned away as the car came around a bend at the bottom of the hill, and the MacArthur summer place came into view.
It was a mansion in the grand tradition: row upon row of windows like soldiers stacked three stories high; chimneys bristling above the tree line; cornices, and balconies, and a balustrade at the main entrance.
“Stop here a moment,” his father told the chauffeur. They stopped across a football-field-sized lawn from the house.
“It’s grand, isn’t it?” the old man said.
“My God, it’s huge,” Kelsey said. “There must be twenty-five or thirty rooms in it.”
“Thirty-two rooms to be exact. Sixteen of which are upstairs bedrooms, not counting the servants’ quarters.”
“And this was a summer house?”
The old man smiled again. “MacArthur loved to entertain. It is a bit ostentatious … as a house, that is. But as a clinic …”
Kelsey looked sharply at his father. “Don’t start with that again, Father. I told you I was coming up here with you for the drive. Nothing more.”
The elder Kelsey was a small man, his face lined with age, and his hair thin and white, but his eyes were clear and very penetrating. “Now that I’ve got you this far, would you like to take a look inside?”
“As a tourist, nothing more,” Kelsey said, and the chauffeur drove them the rest of the way, parking in the wide drive at the front entrance.
“Around back are the garages and maintenance building, which includes a generator powerful enough to run the entire household in case of electrical failure,” the old man said as they climbed out of the backseat of the Mark V limousine. “Below, on the lake is a boathouse, a patio, and a sauna big enough to hold two dozen people. We passed the groundskeeper’s quarters, and stables by the highway.”
“All it needs is an airstrip,” Kelsey said as they started up the steps.
“The workmen are coming next week to install a helipad on the roof.”
“For what?” Kelsey asked sharply, stopping at the massive, hand-carved front door. “Are you planning on moving here and commuting to your office in Chicago?”
“No,” the old man said, and Kelsey was about to protest what he knew was about to come, but his father opened the door and went inside. Kelsey followed.
The entry hall was huge. A massive staircase curved to a second-floor balcony, on one side of which could be seen another staircase leading to the third floor. A man in white coveralls was polishing the deep walnut woodwork at one end of the entry hall while another similarly clad man was installing a new light fixture from the ceiling high above them. From other parts of the mansion Kelsey could hear the sounds of work going on; hammering, sawing, drills buzzing.
“You’re going ahead with this, aren’t you?” he said, following his father across the entry hall toward a set of double doors to one side of the stairway.
“If you mean am I opening a clinic here; yes, you’re right. But what part you play in it, or don’t, is up to you.” The old man opened the double doors with a flourish. Kelsey followed him into a huge room that had apparently once been used as a library or study. Now it was completely refurbished into a large, elegant, and very comfortable office, furnished with everything including books, a massive desk, a leather couch and chairs, modern drapes at the French doors that led to a small private balcony, and plush carpeting.
“This is to be the medical director’s office,” the old man said, crossing the room to a bar set up on a sideboard. He poured a drink and offered one to his son.
Kelsey waved it off, but remained where he stood by the open doors. “I told you I was not interested.”
“Fine,” the old man said. “This office connects with another, slightly smaller office for the administrative director. The remainder of the staff will have their offices and workrooms across the entry hall. The east wing will contain consultation rooms, a small laboratory and supply, as well as the kitchen. The west wing will house an operating theater, recovery rooms, another complete laboratory, and a small intensive care facility for burn victims who come here for reconstructive surgery.”
“Goddammit, father …” Kelsey sputtered, but the old man slammed his whiskey glass down on the sideboard, slopping some of the liquor on the hardwood cabinet. He was angry.
“Don’t you goddamn me, Richard. If you want to wallow in self-pity, that is your business. Meanwhile I’ve decided to open the Kelsey Clinic with or without you. I’ve hired the administrative director and all the nonmedical staff. What remains is the selection of the medical director-chief surgeon and his staff, who will supervise the design and installation of the medical facilities.”
He took a step forward. “I’m an old man, Richard, and I’ve accumulated more wealth than I ever dreamed of having. I can use my money for evil or for good, or when I die, let the government take most of it. I choose to do good with my money in my lifetime. I’ve set up a trust fund, the principal recipient of which will be the clinic. Later, in a couple of years, I’ll divert a substantial portion of the fund into building and operating a research institute in Chicago.”
Kelsey could think of nothing to say, although he wanted to go to his father and calm him down.
“I’m just vain enough to want to call this place the Kelsey Clinic, and the research facility, the Kelsey Institute,” the old man said sadly. “And it was pride that made me believe you would open this place, run it for a couple of years, and then take over the research institute.”
Kelsey turned away and walked slowly out into the entry hall. The workmen were still busy at their jobs, but the one polishing the woodwork looked his way and nodded. Kelsey nodded back.
“You Doc Kelsey?” the man shouted across the hall.
“Yes, I am,” Kelsey said.
“You’re sure going to have a swell place here,” the man said, and he went back to his work.
Kelsey shook his head and walked across the hall and down the wide corridor into the west wing of the mansion.
Here there were no workmen, but the rooms had been gutted and completely redone with spotlessly polished tiled floors, acoustical ceilings, recessed lighting, and extra-wide doors. In the largest of the rooms, at the center of the wing, there were already nonsparking safety electrical outlets, as well as piping for oxygen, nitrous oxide, and hospital vacuum. Beyond that room were others, some with heavy electrical cables for X-ray and other equipment, some with cabinets and laboratory shelving already installed, and others with overhead electrical connections for patient monitoring devices. At the end of the corridor was a large elevator that could be used for transporting postop patients to their rooms.
It was all here. Or at least the makings of a fine clinic were already begun. All it needed now was a doctor to complete the design and installation of the proper equipment, and then run the place.
“I had originally planned that Colleen would be head of nursing,” Kelsey’s father said.
Kelsey turned. “I don’t know if I can handle this.”
“Perhaps you can’t, but what’s the alternative?” the old man asked.
“Nothing is the same,” Kelsey said. “I can’t feel anything anymore.”
“It was the same for me when I lost your mother. But life is for the living. I can’t believe that Colleen would have wanted you to die with her.”
The ache was so bad that Kelsey wanted to lie down in the middle of the corridor, curl up, and drift away.
The old man pressed the elevator button and the door opened immediately. “Let’s go upstairs and look at the rooms. There are sixteen of them for patients. The servants’ quarters will be used by the staff.”
“What about quarters for the administrative and medical directors?”
“I bought a condominium in town. It’s only a five-minute drive.”
Kelsey shook his head. “I’d have to stay here.”
“No,” his father said firmly. “You need this place for your work. To fill that part of your life. But you must include people. You’ll live downtown.”
6
It was his night to close the bookstore, and it was well after 9:00 P.M. by the time the last customer left and he locked the doors. He placed the evening’s receipts in the safe, signing the cash register total slip with the name he was using for this cover. At other times he had been other men. Wernher Hempel. Walter Holvig. Walter Handel. But here, he was Arthur Stornberg.
The weather in Boston was unseasonably cold and blustery. The rain came in sheets directly into his face as he headed on foot the two blocks to the parking ramp where he always kept his car.
Very few men knew his real identity, and the few outside the Odessa leadership who had made the mistake of recognizing him were dead.
But he had the facility of forgetting who he really was, sublimating his personality to whoever he was posing as at the moment. And at this moment, Stornberg was glad when he turned in to the nearly empty five-story parking ramp. He was cold.
He trudged up the stairs, but at the open door on the third level he stopped a moment in the shadows. Something was wrong. He could feel it.
This level was empty of cars except for his battered Fiat parked about fifty feet away from where he stood. There were no sounds except for the rain and the wind, and yet he sensed something. And then it struck him. He was smelling a man’s cologne. Very faint. As if someone had passed this way a short while ago.
