Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (45 page)

My other eye refused to follow the command.

“George.”

George, my right eye lid between his thumb and forefinger, squeezed. Squeezed very hard.

I could hear myself scream.

Then George added his sharp thumbnail to the squeeze.

Somehow it was like two of me screaming as nail sliced through flesh and tears rolled uncontrollably down my cheek. My left eye popped open. I was now fully awake.

“It was just a simple kick in the head,” Max said. “No need to get melodramatic about it.”

George was still squeezing. All my instincts to lash back were discouraged by the fact that I seemed to be securely tied by all four limbs to a chair.

Chairs seemed to be my curse on this adventure.

“Could you possibly ask George,” I rasped out, “to let go of my eyelid?”

“Why?” Max played the innocent fool. He was not good at it.

“It's annoying.”

“I'll bet. George, let go of the poor man's eyelid. Very clever, by the way, George. I like it.”

“Thanks,” George said, displaying no small amount of pride in his work.

“We now go back to my original question. Do you think I'm fucking stupid?”

Full memory was now mine.

“Lydia!” I cried.

“Lydia is dead. You killed her. You killed her by involving her in some stupid plot to stop me.”

“Where is she?”

“What does it matter? She's dead. The carcass has been carted away by one of my rangers. It's going to go on a plane trip. First stop, Nome, Alaska. From there a confederate of mine will fly it across the Bering Strait into Russia over to the Central Siberian Plateau, where it will be buried in an unmarked grave. As will your carcass eventually. You will be listed as missing by the authorities. Missing in Action, I assume, by your organization. What I want to know is, is it a criminal or a legal organization?”

“What are you talking about? I'm a lawyer. My name is Elsworth Henderson. I'm a partner in the law firm of Humbolt, Henderson & Pinsker. We specialize in buyouts and mergers.”

“Then why did you come here with clever little video cameras built into your oh-so-precious briefcases?”

George held one of the briefcases up.

“Is George pointing the tiny lens correctly? Let's see, it is in one of these keyholes, right? Do you think it's still recording? Let's find out.”

Max raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Russell?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Are you still receiving us?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What do you see right now?”

“A very ugly face, Sir. With a cut and swollen right eye lid.”

“Very good. Give me again your location.”

“Room 113 of the Silver Surf Motel, Sir.”

“The previous occupant of this room? What was his name? Mike?”

“Yes, sir, that's right. He has been prepped and packaged for shipment to Russia, Sir.”

“All right, Russell. Thank you for your fine work.”

Max put the walkie-talkie down.

“Tell me the purpose of these recorders now or I will have George slice your eyelid off completely.”

A shiny, sharp steel blade switched open not an inch from my eyes.

“Okay, but—but first, where am I?”

I was conscious enough now to have been trying to ascertain my situation. I knew I was tied to a chair. I was clothed, except for my suit coat, which had been removed, probably to better tie my arms down, but where were we? The light behind Max and George was bright enough to obscure vision. No clues there. The environment felt strange, for one thing, it was muggy, and sound, I suddenly realized, our voices especially, had a hollow, echoing quality.

Max smiled. “Where are we, boys?”

The hollow sound of water being agitated somewhere below.

“Look down, just slightly behind you,” Max said.

I did. What I saw, directly behind and maybe fifteen feet below, was illuminated clear water rippling over blue tiles featuring graphic gold sunburst images.

“You are in the indoor Roman Pool here at the Castle. Specifically you are tied to a chair sitting on the edge of the diving platform that bridges an alcove. This is really a large pool, you know, very elaborate. About the size of two tennis courts. If you will look to the sides a little, you will see that my men are almost all here down below us, fully armed, some of them cooling their feet off in the pool, but then, who could pass up such an opportunity? You'll notice to your right, at the side of the pool, your Mr. Pinsker, being guarded by several of my men. You may address him if you like.”

“Charles, are you okay?” I called down to Pinsker.

“More to the point,” Roee as Pinsker said, “are you?”

“He's just fine, Mr. Pinsker, worry not. Now, why did you think it was important to document the proceedings here tonight?”

“Look,” I started, “we were involving our client in a very difficult deal. She would provide the cash, but Sara Hutton would get all the control of the company, which was necessary if we wanted growth into the broadcast area, so....”

“So?”

“So, we heard about the rumors. We checked it out. We thought if we could get invited, get something on tape that was—damaging, embarrassing, we would have that to control Sara with.”

“Blackmail?”

“Why not?”

Max laughed his hearty laugh. “Bullshit!”

“It's the—”

“What were you doing at my airfield at Mom's Cove?”

“How—how did you know?”

“Yes, how did I know? Especially considering you splattered poor Ronnie Berger all over the tarmac, so there were no actual witnesses to your visit. Except for the video surveillance system I set up during the old days, and have maintained out of pure, perverse, but not altogether unwarranted, paranoia. You see I have so many enemies. In the old days, when I used to import drugs, I had dealings with many criminal elements. Also in the old days when I used to—patriotically—export guns, I had dealings with many elements from the secret world of government intelligence. These were concurrent associations and I often had a problem distinguishing between them. I guess I didn't have a program to tell the players apart.”

He laughed a little bit over this joke,

“So which are you? You aren't anybody I ever sold drugs too. I don't forget such people. So what's the deal? You from the government?”

“I was just investigating Sara. Doing a thorough job for my client. I talked to a teacher at Yale. He knew your name from when Sara was a student there; that you flew together. I was in the area, so I thought I would check out the airfield. I played tough to your guy because—because he scared me; thought it was a good way to get out of there safe.”

“Don't you guys hire private investigators anymore?”

“Lydia, wouldn't let us, so we had to do it ourselves. We're obviously not very good at it.”

“You were good enough to kill Ronnie Berger.”

“Hey, he was trying to kill me! It's not my fault he crashed. He was doing all kinds of weird flying.”

“Explain England to me. When Pye called me with a description of you, saying you were a lawyer snooping around the deal, I had an inspiration. I sent a video frame from the airfield tape over the computer. A good close-up of you. When he confirmed the ID, I told him to kill you. I had no idea who you were and why you were pushing into my business, but I also had no patience for such intrusions. So I told him to just kill you and free me from the annoyance. Pye's greedy need to check you out and get some information seemed to have saved your life. How did Mr. Pinsker find you? George tells me it was an interesting rescue.”

“We always have trailing bodyguards in Europe. We do work for Israeli companies. We're always afraid of Arab terrorists.”

“Did you know your friend Hamo is ex-British Intelligence.”

“Of course. He's also my wife's cousin. That's why we hired him.”

“You seem to have an answer for everything, Mr. Henderson.”

“I'm telling you the truth.”

“Are you? Not having a polygraph machine handy, how can I test that? There must be a clever way. Well, while I try to think of one, why don't you go for a swim?”

Max moved to the side, allowing the light to blind me.

“George.”

George blocked that light as he moved in, placed his heavy booted foot on the chair right between my legs, and pushed.

It was a fifteen-foot free fall, which my stomach decided not to make. Sudden wet and cold accompanied the splash, and a surprisingly swift drift down to the bottom of the pool ended with a jolt as the chair landed perfectly upright.

Despite a groggy, and now oxygen-deprived head, I had the presence of mind to realize that the legs of the chair must have been weighted for just this outcome.

Even through the water I could hear a sudden, loud commotion. There was gunfire; a scream from Max not to fire, screaming about damage to the tiles, you fucking idiots, and a splash, all quickly following one another.

Roee, still fully suited in the best Brooks Brothers has to offer was floating there besides me, reaching for the ropes that bound me to the chair. I could see by the disconcertion on his brow, that the ropes were not loosely tied.

Another splash. George, dressed down for the occasion, swam at Roee. I grunted a warning but it was too late, George grabbed Roee around the neck with his left arm and pulled him away from the chair. His right arm went up, the switchblade plainly protruding from his fist. Roee easily deflected the thrust, grabbing George's arm and holding it away, while, weighted enough with shoes and wet clothes to have purchase on the pool's bottom, he bent his knees, then shot his legs straight, slamming the top of his head up under George's chin. Stunned, George let go of Roee and the knife. The knife floated to the bottom, Roee shot to the surface, did a dolphin, then dived down to me. I'm sure he could see I was close to passing out as he grabbed the two back legs of the chair, and with the combined wonders of adrenaline and buoyancy, he lifted the chair up as high as he could.

My head broke the surface, I gasped for air, taking in as much as I could then holding it as I went underwater again, falling and jolting onto the pool's bottom.

Roee went for more air, diving back down towards the abandoned knife. Unfortunately George was back with us and they met and grabbed the knife together.

I had a strange flashback—lack of oxygen will do that—of a comment Roee had made about Larry Lapham and Robert Jordan when they were flailing about in fight on the floor of our fake TV studio ten gazillion years ago. He had compared them to the mating practices of a certain species of squid that fornicate in a frenzy of violent movement.

Somehow the memory seemed appropriate.

Blood started streaming from the area of the fight. A great deal of blood, bright red, diluting quickly to pink as it flowed outward.

The two were still. George's head was flipped back like the top of a PEZ candy dispenser. The slice had been that deep. Roee dropped him, shot to the surface, then returned to me and cut at the ropes with the switchblade.

I was free but with no strength. Roee grabbed me and dragged me to the surface.

We broke to the view of Max surrounded by a number of the Rangers, all with their AK-47s pointed at us.

“Lethal hand-to-hand combat in adverse situations,” Max said, “such as underwater. This was part of the New York State Bar exam, was it?”

He gestured for two of the Rangers to pull us out of the pool. They sat us against the blue and gold tiled wall by the decking to the side of the alcove.

Max squatted down to face us and watch us struggle still for fresh oxygen. Once our breathing became more regular he looked up at Ranger Blunt and nodded. In a swift move, Ranger Blunt brought the butt of his AK-47 down onto Roee's head. Roee collapsed into my lap. I could feel the warm blood from his scalp wound flow onto my legs and run into my crotch. I tore off my shirt and quickly used it to apply pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. Max seemed to have no objections. His mind was elsewhere.

“Now you tell me exactly who you are and why you're really here, or by God I'll kill you both in small, painful, ignoble increments. For the death of George alone, I should do that. But tell me the truth, and I'll spare you the ignobility.”

I had stopped Roee's bleeding. He was still unconscious, but breathing easily. I laid his head on the bunched up bloody shirt and turned to Max, collapsing my body language into a whisper of complete surrender.

“His name,” I said referring to Roee “is Roy Jenkins. My name is Gilgamesh Paul—”

“Gilgamesh?” Max stood and stared down at me. “What kind of fucking name is that?”

“Sumerian. An old character from myth. The first hero. My parents were academics.”