The Devil Tree (22 page)

At the mouth of the Hudson we passed between two ships. The crews looked down at the three of us—a man, a woman, and a uniformed captain—looking up at them from a luxurious mini-
Titanic,

I asked the captain to drop anchor near the Statue of Liberty, and as he sat on the flybridge watching TV, the girl and I, both naked, lay on the bed in the cabin and let the gentle roll of the boat rock us into each other’s arms. At one point I was on top of her, stroking her hair, thinking, Soon I’ll put it in. But something reminded me of Karen. Screwing this girl would merely have been another anecdote for Karen’s amusement. Sweaty and exhausted, I turned away.

•   •   •

The desk clerk telephoned to say that Monsieur Bernardot was downstairs. “He says he has an appointment with you, Mr. Whalen.”

“Send him up,” said Whalen.

A balding, slightly stooped man in his fifties soon entered the room.

“I want you to be my cook,” said Whalen, shaking his hand.

The man looked at him with reverence, then said in a heavy French accent, “My former employer, Mrs. Allcott, greatly admired your parents, sir. It was while in her service that I cooked dinner for your father and mother on several different occasions. That was, shortly before you were born, Mr. Whalen. In a way,” he said, smiling at the thought, “I like to think that the food I prepared on those evenings might have contributed to what a fine man you’ve turned out to be.”

“My parents are both dead,” said Whalen.

“Yes, sir, I know that. I am sorry.” He paused. “Would you like to know my credentials and see my letters of reference?”

“You can leave the letters with my secretary. But tell me briefly where you’ve worked until now.”

The man smiled. “I’ve worked for over thirty years in many places. I went to the Hotel School in Lyon, where I studied cooking, service, and restaurant management. I spent three years working under Paul Bocuse, possibly the greatest cook ever, and then I worked at the Beau Rivage in Lausanne and the Hotel de l’Etrier in Crans-Montana. Later I became
chef de cuisine
at the Prince Royal Hotel at Bourg-Léopold, then
chef de garde
at the Ritz in Paris. After that I had some family trouble in France and immigrated to the United States. In New York I worked first for the famous Romeo Salta, then for David Wolf, the wellknown American restaurateur.”

“Good,” said Whalen, bored but polite.

The man went on. “The last three years I worked for Mrs. Mary Hay ward Weir. I’ve a letter of recommendation from her. And before that I was in the employ of Mrs. Charlotte Cobb-McKay, and before—”

“Fine,” Whalen interrupted. “Anything else?”

“Well, sir. . .” The man’s French accent became more noticeable. “There’s nothing in the field of haute cuisine that I can’t do. But of course—” he paused—” of course, you can’t compare what I could cook for you, let’s say, in Paris, Florence, or in Crans-Montana, to what I can prepare in New York or Pittsburgh. Here, the food-freezing methods kill the flavor—”

“You are single, aren’t you?” Whalen cut in.

“I am divorced. My children, all grown up, live in France.”

“All right,” said Whalen. “Now, as my lawyers discussed with your agency, I’m ready to pay you twice your previous salary. But you will have free time only when I am dining out or not in town. Otherwise you will have to be on call always to cook for me and my guests.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man. “Will I be living on the premises?”

“Yes, you will,” said Whalen. “My house should be ready in a month or so. I’ve already hired two experienced maids, and there will be an ample cleaning staff available. That’s all.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the man, and he bowed before leaving.

•   •   •

“You have asked us, Jonathan, to submit to you the findings of our screening of the applicants for the executive posts that are available from time to time in our company. These findings were obtained through the carefully monitored use of electronic Voice Stress lie detectors, sophisticated scientific testing and multidimensional personality analysis, as well as through information about each applicant’s
family, his professional past, his medical history, even his habits and hobbies—all acquired through our well-placed confidential sources. Eighty percent of those interviewed suffered from some disorder in the urinary tract and anal zones and admitted having sexual problems ranging from inadequate erection to complete impotence. More than forty percent complained of heart palpitation, tension, breathing difficulties, or headaches. We established that close to ninety percent of these otherwise outstanding businessmen had routinely complained about anxiety, insomnia, depression, forgetfulness, sweating, and ulcers. Your father was always in favor of such preventive screening. He called it our anti-ulcer policy. He was ahead of his time, Jonathan.”

“To be really ahead of his time, my father should have trained Peruvian Indians to become his executives,” I said. “According to the
Corporate Scientific
, Peruvian Indians never develop ulcers.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re notorious opium and cocaine smokers who lack ambition, refuse to compete, and are unwilling to plan ahead. Without tension, with no anxiety, they live only in the present—hence, they have no ulcers.”

“Do you know, Jonathan, that right here in this country we have millions upon millions of lazy blacks and Hispanics with exactly that attitude? It’s nice for them that we keep them all on welfare so that they can enjoy their freedom—freedom from work as well as ulcers.”

•   •   •

In the rearview mirror Whalen saw the car following him, and he recognized his pursuers. Noting that the highway was empty except for them, he stepped on the accelerator
and his car lurched forward. In a maneuver that brought back memories of his high school drives with Karen and their friends, he jerked the steering wheel to the left. As the car leaned to one side he pulled out the hand brake, locking the rear wheels, and as if lifted by a giant crane the car spun to the left, skidding and pitching. In an instant he swung the steering wheel to the right, released the hand brake, and simultaneously depressed the gas pedal. The front of the car swayed, then stabilized. Now moving in the opposite direction, he passed the pursuing car and then in the rearview mirror saw it stop suddenly. He could hear the tires squealing. Whalen sped on for about a mile, turned at an intersection, and continued speeding for another mile. Having lost his pursuers again, he slowed down, parked his car at the curb, and turned off the engine. He could hear the faint siren of a police car far away.

•   •   •

Whalen walked around the room glancing at the modern paintings. He paused at the window. Like an architect’s scale model, Manhattan spread out below him.

“In my father’s office I could open the window.”

“Ah, yes,” said Peter Macauley. “Those charming old-fashioned windows. Ours are all permanently sealed. Here on the hundred and sixth floor the wind is no joke.” He came closer and stood next to Whalen. “Your father’s office was on the twentieth floor of the dear old Coinage Building, wasn’t it?”

“The twenty-fifth,” said Whalen.

As Macauley returned to his office desk, he noticed Whalen looking at a panel of screens, buttons, knobs, and flickering lights on it. “Recently installed,” Macauley said,
patting the desk affectionately. “Made of hand-rubbed walnut. Everything is built in. This is a closed-circuit TV that is hooked up with a videophone, so I can see those I’m on the phone with, as long as they work for this company. I can even freeze a single frame and create an instant portrait of any one of them, as well as of myself.” He laughed. “And this,” he said, pointing to the right, “is a conference telephone with a hands-free speaker and an electronic touch dial—also connected to a screen that allows me to zero in on every participant at any conference that might be taking place in the building—and all this from behind my desk. Very useful. Here, farther to the right, we have a twelve-digit memory calculator hooked into our central corporate data bank. Every relevant business figure of our company for the last twenty-five years is retrievable in a split second. And here, below, special gauges compute the working time and wear on every major piece of heavy equipment we, or our subsidiaries, own. Don’t you think, Jonathan, that your father would have loved it?” When Whalen nodded, Macauley continued. “In only forty-five seconds this telecopier transmits—over telephone, radio, and communication satellite—a facsimile of any document or photograph to any part of the world. Here, above, my personal ticker tape gives quotations of our stock and that of our affiliates. In the center are the intercom, the Dictaphones, the paging systems, the data-retrieval subset.”

“Why isn’t there equipment like that to sort out a person’s conflicting ideas and emotions?” asked Whalen.

“Well, there almost is!” exclaimed Macauley. “Pressing this little knob,” he said, pointing to the desk’s side, “activates the latest polygraph—we’ve nicknamed it the Nothing-but-the-Truth Machine—developed by one of our subsidiaries. Like many other technological breakthroughs, Nothing-but-the-Truth grew out of military intelligence research related to the interrogation of prisoners and spies.
By electronically analyzing the unconscious and involuntary stress that affects the muscles controlling the vocal cords and causes microtremor in a person’s voice, this polygraph can tell when a person is telling the truth and when he is not. In addition, it alerts me to the presence of wiretaps, phone bugs, or tape recorders, either installed in my office or carried by a visitor.”

“Isn’t that unethical?”

“Lying and deceiving are unethical, Jonathan. Their deterrents are not.

“When your father was running the company, he was greatly in favor of introducing the latest means of increasing our efficiency. Today this company is a vast conglomerate, one of the largest in the world, with over seventy national and international subsidiaries scattered in nearly as many countries. Each year our revenues are higher than the gross national product of, say, Sweden or Spain, not to mention other less advanced countries. Our labor force, here and abroad, exceeds a million and a half men and women of different colors, speaking dozens of different languages. Metals, once your father’s major preoccupation, are now only our ninth-largest interest. We are, I’m happy to say, among a handful of large corporations that, through their investments, control at least fifteen percent of the stock of the top forty conglomerates. We and the companies we own are involved in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, computers, food, coal mining, hotel chains, gas turbines, oceangoing tankers, offshore drilling, television, semiconductors, insurance, realty development, publishing, and several other industries—from prostaglandins to prefabricated housing.” Reassured by Whalen’s silence, he went on. “Our policies have also changed since your father’s time. Although he opposed any substantial foreign acquisition of our stock, we’ve embarked on a different course. The West Germans, as well as Arab investors from Kuwait and the Emirates,
own slightly over four percent of our equity. However, since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires full disclosure of ownership only when five percent or more of a company’s stock is owned by one investor, we are within our rights to hide the identities of our foreign investors—as well as to shield from our government and the public the actual size and nature of their formidable holdings. I might add that all our foreign investors are proud to know that, without some of the products manufactured by our company, American astronauts might never have walked on the moon.” Grinning, he looked at Whalen.

“So much for the myth that corporate America is owned and controlled by millions of little investors and shareholders,” said Whalen, “a myth my father once fostered among his workers in Whalenburg.”

“Well, you are the largest individual holder of shares in this vast enterprise—and living evidence of the fallacy of that myth, Jonathan. The House Banking Subcommittee on Domestic Finance states that ownership of from five to ten percent of a corporation’s stock means ‘actual control’ of that corporation; that ownership of as little as one or two percent already gives the shareholder ‘tremendous influence.’ Now, in light of these figures, think of your own holdings.”

“I do,” said Whalen, “and I’m impressed by them.”

“But do be seated, Jonathan,” said Macauley. “Tell me what brings you all the way up here?”

Whalen sat down and stared at Macauley, who remained leaning against his desk.

“Wherever I go,” said Whalen calmly, “I’m being followed, around the clock, by several men. They carry the latest walkie-talkies and they drive big sedans.”

Macauley’s expression did not alter. “How do you know that?” he asked.

“I’ve seen them. I managed to lose them once or twice,
but they always come back. They’re probably downstairs waiting for me.”

“Why are you telling me about it?”

“Because whatever happens to me might in some way affect this company.” He paused. “It might also, however remotely, bear on your position, Mr. Macauley.”

“Pete, Jonathan, Pete.”

“Well, Pete, do you, by chance, know why I’m being tailed?”

Macauley looked at him. “I’ll be honest with you, Jonathan. Ever since you returned to America, you’ve been followed—I should say protected—because it was deemed necessary by Walter Howmet, who is the company’s chairman of the board.”

“Does my owning a chunk of shares give Mr. Howmet the right to have me followed—for whatever reason?”

“You’re the inheritor of your family’s vast holdings in this company—”

“I didn’t ask to be protected,” Whalen interrupted.

“Walter Howmet is also your former trustee, and godfather.”

“Mr. Howmet’s trusteeship has ended; and he is neither my god nor my father. Why wasn’t I asked? Why wasn’t I told?”

“Good question. I’ll take the responsibility for that. We were afraid you would be frightened if you knew. Before you arrived we didn’t know much about you, and Walter, as well as other trustees, had always felt that your conduct was, shall we say, unpredictable. Apparently, while you were abroad, you came quite close to death.”