The Scorpio Illusion (65 page)

“Does the absence of my arm bring back any memories? Certainly, you were told about it.”

“No!… No memories! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, General, although you never saw my face back then—I was simply Captain X, as far as you were concerned—a very particular Captain X.”

“No … no! You’re fantasizing—I never knew you!”

“As I said, not personally, no, you didn’t. Have you any idea how amused I was sitting at a table in front of your interminable Senate hearings, listening to your so-called military expertise, which was pure bullshit, fed to you by our mutual benefactors through Scorpio One? The army graciously provided me with a prosthesis, a false right arm that filled the uniform, for the Pentagon recognized that my talents did not require an arm, only a brain and a certain minor eloquence which is allowed the military.”

“I swear to Christ, I know you only as you
are
, nothing before!”

“Then let me prod your temporary amnesia. Do you remember the south compound? Do you remember hearing that an obscure captain had engineered a foolproof escape? An escape that would have worked.… But it didn’t—because an American officer had tipped off the compound’s prisoner council. The gooks came into our hut, held out my right arm, and cut it off with one of their fucking swords. And in near perfect English the camp translator said, ‘Now you try escape.’ ”

“I had nothing to do with that—with you!”

“Move off it, General, I have you dead to rights. When I was recruited, Neptune showed me the depositions from Hanoi, including a paragraph you never saw. He was the one who told me to watch you. How to alter your telephone if it was ever necessary.”

“That’s all in the past! It doesn’t
matter
anymore!”

“Would you believe it does to me? I’ve waited twenty-five years to pay you back.”

Two shots were fired as a drizzle caressed the old
dilapidated barn in a barren field in Rockville, Maryland.

And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff walked through the high grass toward his concealed civilian Buick. If everything remained on schedule, Little Girl Blood was one step nearer Ground Zero.

A perplexed, frustrated Hawthorne drove the State Department vehicle toward McLean, Virginia, trying to understand the enigma of the family O’Ryan. They were either the dumbest, most gullible bunch of human beings he had ever encountered, or they were taught so well by O’Ryan they could all pass a polygraph claiming they weren’t even on the premises while robbing a bank!

He had arrived at the beach house shortly past 5:30, and by 7:00 o’clock Hawthorne had begun to think that Patrick Timothy O’Ryan was the most close-mouthed Irishman in the history of that Gaelic race. From O’Ryan’s Agency file, delivered to him an hour before he had left the Shenandoah Lodge, Tyrell’s antennae had been assaulted by a gaping omission in the analyst’s background check. The family’s sudden reversal of fortune, from a modest house on a median CIA salary to a much larger residence, as well as a substantial summer home on the beach, was just too pat to be explained by an inheritance from a horse-breeding uncle in Ireland. The Agency had settled for the legal paperwork; they hadn’t gone any deeper. In Hawthorne’s judgment, they should have, much deeper. For starters, O’Ryan had older brothers in the New York City police department. Where were they and why had they been bypassed by a wealthy relative who, according to Mrs. O’Ryan, had never met any of the boys?

“Uncle Finead was a
saint
!” Maria Santoni O’Ryan had shouted through her tears. “The Lord God told him my Paddy was the most beloved of Jesus Christ! In my
hour of sorrow and torment, you’ve got to come here with such questions?”

Not good enough, Mrs. O’Ryan
, Tyrell thought.
But then, you don’t have any answers
. Neither had the three sons and two daughters in varying degrees of innocent anger. Something was rotten, the smell overpowering, but Hawthorne could not locate the source of the odor.

It was close to nine-thirty when he swung into the McLean, Virginia, private road that led to the large colonial house belonging to the Ingersols. The long double-lined circular drive was filled with dark limousines and expensive cars—Jaguars, Mercedes, and a smattering of Cadillacs and Lincolns; a separate lawn to the left of the house was also a parking area, served by attendants who parked the visiting mourners’ automobiles.

He was greeted at the door by David Ingersol’s son, a pleasant young man, sincere, courteous, and with a pool of sadness in his eyes, Tyrell thought as he showed him his credentials.

“I think I’d better get my father’s partner,” said the dead man’s son. “I wouldn’t be of any help to you—whatever you’re here for.”

Edward White, of Ingersol and White, was a compact, medium-size man with a balding head and piercing brown eyes. “I’ll take care of this!” he said curtly after studying Hawthorne’s identification. “Stay by the door, Todd. This gentleman and I will go into the corridor.” Once in a narrow hallway, White continued. “To say that I’m appalled at your appearance here tonight would be an understatement. A State Department investigation, when the poor soul hasn’t even been … finished at the funeral home? How can you?”

“Very easily and very quickly, Mr. White,” replied Tyrell. “Immediacy is vital to us.”

“For God’s sake, why?”

“Because David Ingersol may have been the prime mover in a massive money-laundering operation involving
both the old Medellín and the new Cali drug cartels. Both were brokered out of Puerto Rico.”

“That’s utterly preposterous! We have clients in Puerto Rico, David’s clients mainly, but there’s never been a scintilla of wrongdoing. I was his partner, I ought to know.”

“Perhaps you know less than you think. Suppose I were to tell you that through State Department intercession we’ve learned that David Ingersol has accounts in Zurich and Bern in excess of eight figures, American. Those sums didn’t come from your law firm. You’re rich, but not that rich.”

“You’re either a liar or a paranoiac.… Let’s go into David’s study; this is nowhere to talk. Come this way.” The two men bypassed the crowd inside the large living room and walked down another hallway, where Edward White opened a door. Inside was a book-lined study; it was wood-paneled with dark brown leather everywhere—chairs, tables, two couches, even the tall back of a turned-around desk chair behind the huge surface that held David Ingersol’s papers. “I don’t believe you for an instant,” White said as he closed the door.

“This isn’t an arrest, Counselor, merely one arm of an investigation. If you doubt me, call the State Department. I’m sure you know the right people to reach.”

“You callous son of a bitch! Think of David’s family!”

“I’m thinking of several foreign accounts that could have been designed by the BCCI and an Asmerican citizen who used his considerable influence to keep the drug mobs in business.”

“Are you all things to this highly suspect investigation, Mr. Hawthorne? Police, judge, and jury? Have you ever considered how simple it is to establish ‘foreign accounts’ in any name you like simply by writing out a scan-proof signature?”

“No, I don’t, but you apparently do.”

“Yes, I do, because I’ve made a minor study of them,
and any client of our firm has to have a damn good reason for possessing one, especially if we’re paid from such an account.”

“That’s a world I don’t know anything about,” lied Tyrell, “but if what you say is true, all we have to do is fax David Ingersol’s signature to Zurich and Bern.”

“Machine facsimiles are not acceptable to spectrograph scans. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

“You’re the expert, not me. But I’ll tell you what I am an expert in—I’m a terrific observer. I watch you limousine cowboys drive around this city, bathed in respectability, while you peddle your influence to the highest bidders. And when you cross over the line, I’m there to nail you.”

“That’s hardly State Department language; you sound like a paranoid comic-book avenger, and you’re way out of line. I think I will make that phone call you suggested—”

“Don’t bother, Edward.” A third voice in the room startled both men. Suddenly, the high-backed leather chair behind the desk swiveled around, revealing an old man, slender, obviously quite tall, and dressed so perfectly, so fashionably that Tyrell gasped, believing for a moment in the dim light that he was staring at Nils Van Nostrand.

“My name is Richard Ingersol, Mr. Hawthorne, formerly associate justice of the Supreme Court. I believe we should talk—by ourselves, Edward, but not in this room. Not in any room in this house.”

“I don’t understand, sir,” said the astonished partner of Ingersol and White.

“There’s no way you could, dear fellow. Please keep my daughter-in-law and grandson occupied with all those … limousine sycophants. Mr. Hawthorne and I will slip outside through the kitchen.”

“But Justice Ingersol—”

“My son is dead, Edward, and I don’t think he cares what the society pages of
The Washington Post
write
about his well-heeled mourners, a number of whom in the legal fraternity have undoubtedly sought out his personal clients.” The old man struggled out of the chair and walked around the desk. “Come along, Hawthorne, there’s no one here who can tell you anything. Besides, it’s a lovely night for a stroll.”

A frustrated White held the door as Tyrell followed the elder Ingersol down the hallway, through the hectic kitchen, and out into the fenced back lawn complete with a lighted swimming pool and what appeared to be an immense garden fronting a row of twenty-foot-high hedges. The former associate justice stepped onto the brick deck of the pool and spoke.

“Why are you really here, Mr. Hawthorne, and what do you know?”

“You heard what I told your son’s partner.”

“Money laundering? Drug cartels?… Come, sir, David had neither the inclination nor the audacity even to consider such activities. However, your reference to Swiss accounts is not without merit.”

“Then maybe I should ask you what you know, Justice Ingersol.”

“It’s a macabre story with elements of triumph and anguish and a fair degree of tragedy—Athenian to the core but without the majesty of Greek drama.”

“That’s very eloquent, but it doesn’t tell me anything.”

“You looked at me strangely inside,” said Ingersol, disregarding Tyrell’s remark. “It wasn’t merely the surprise of finding me there; it was something else, wasn’t it?”

“You reminded me of someone.”

“I thought so. Your crude appearance here smacked of a shock strategy—throw the subjects off balance, perhaps into panic. Your reaction to
me
confirmed it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Certainly you do. Nils Van Nostrand—Mr. Neptune, if you prefer.… The similarity of our appearance
struck you instantly; it was in your expression, although I assure you the similarity is surface only. Given certain characteristics—height, figure, and coloring—men of our advanced age and station tend to look alike. In our case it’s basically sartorial. You know Van Nostrand, and the last place on earth you expected to find him was in this house. That told me a great deal.”

“Considering what it told you, I’m surprised you admit you know Neptune.”

“Oh, that’s part of the story,” continued Ingersol, entering a latticed arch to a garden profuse with flowers, an isolated arbor away from the house and the crowds. “Once all the pieces were in place, Nils came to the Costa del Sol a number of times. I didn’t know who he was, of course, but we became friendly. He seemed like so many of us—elderly drifters with enough money to jet from place to place in search of shallow amusement. I even sent him to my personal tailor in London.”

“When did you learn he was Neptune?”

“Five years ago. I’d begun to suspect that there was something off kilter about him, about his sudden brief appearances and abrupt departures, also his family background when he’d discuss it, even his wealth, which seemed elusive at its sources.”

“That’s an odd thing to say,” interrupted Tyrell. “I don’t know too many people from your part of town who open their portfolios for their neighbors.”

“Of course not, but fundamental origins are generally known. A man invents something or provides something the marketplace doesn’t have, filling a gap; or he starts a bank at the right time, or develops real estate; these are the springboards to the portfolios you speak of. In my case, before my ascension to the Court, I was the founder and senior partner of an immensely lucrative law firm with offices both in Washington and New York. I could easily afford the honor of the Court.”

“Yes, you could,” Hawthorne said, recalling the dossier on David Ingersol which included copious data on
the father. The one missing piece was the real reason Richard Ingersol had resigned. Suddenly, Hawthorne knew he was about to hold the missing piece in his hands.

“Neptune,” Ingersol said as if reading Tye’s thoughts. He sat down on a white wrought-iron bench at the far end of the isolated garden. “It’s part of the story, a rather seedy part and unnecessarily brutal. One night on the yacht club veranda, overlooking a moonlit Mediterranean, Van Nostrand, ever observant, said, ‘You find something strange about me, don’t you, Mr. Justice?’ I replied that I assumed he was a homosexual, but that was nothing new. The international set was rife with them. Then, with the most diabolical thin smile I’ve ever seen, he said to me, ‘I’m the man who ruined you, the man who rules the future of your son. I’m Neptune.’ ”

“Jesus Christ! He came right out with it?”

“I was shocked, of course, and asked him why he wanted me to know at this late date. What cruel and perverse satisfaction could he derive? I was eighty-one years of age and hardly in a position to challenge him, much less kill him. My wife had died and I was alone, frankly wondering each night when I went to bed whether I’d wake up in the morning. ‘Why, Nils?’ I asked him again. ‘Why did you do it, and why tell me now?’ ”

“Did he have an answer?”

“Yes, Mr. Hawthorne, he had an answer. It’s why I came back.… My son was not killed by an itinerant drug addict; he was methodically murdered by the people who ‘ruined’ me and ‘ruled’ him, to use Van Nostrand’s words. I’m eighty-six now, and the way I live means I’m living on stolen time, utterly confusing my doctors. But one day soon I won’t wake up to greet the sun, I accept that. What I cannot accept is that I’ll carry to that ostentatious grave of mine the secret that turned a dishonorable life into one of utter disgrace, and in the doing killed my son.”