Vertical Run (17 page)

“Agent? Is that what he says he is?” Mark had also used the word.

“It is not merely what he says he is. It is what he is, a federal …”

“He’s lying. He’s a paid killer.”

The expression on Sandberg’s face was both sympathetic and pitying. Beneath a sienna brown sports jacket, he was wearing a canary yellow waistcoat. Not a vest, a waistcoat. Only a man of his style and presence could pull off such sartorial outlandishness. Sandberg fumbled his fingers into one of its pockets.

“Careful, Doc. They should have warned you that I’m violent.”

“As indeed they did.” He withdrew a white rectangle from his waistcoat. “Ah, here it is. Agent Ransome’s business card. Do take a look at it.”

Dave snapped the card out of Sandberg’s fingers.

There was a phone number, a Washington address, and an embossed official seal.

Dave curled his lip. “Nice print job. But printing’s cheap.”

“It is not a forgery, David.” Sandberg’s voice was low, and a little sad.

“When I picked the bastard’s pocket this morning he was carrying a different card. The Specialist Consulting Group. It said he was …”

“David, I assure you, I have checked Agent Ransome’s credentials quite thoroughly. One does not, you know, reach my age and position without developing a certain circle of acquaintances. Accordingly, I made some discreet inquiries among old friends. They assured me that he is very much what he claims to be.”

Dave shook his head. “The man’s a professional, Fred. He’s fooled you and he’s fooled your friends. That’s what professionals do.”

“Very well, David, if you say so. But then tell me, if he is not a government officer, what is he?”

“Damned if I know. All I know is that ever since breakfast, he and a bunch more like him have been trying to kill me.”

Sandberg’s face wore a look of intense professional interest. It was the sort of expression that said,
Yes, Mr. Elliot, and what did the space aliens do to you after abducting you to Planet X?
It made Dave stutter. “Doc … Fred, don’t
look at me like that. You’ve got to listen to my side of the story.”

“Of course, David. I’ll be pleased to. However, I am afraid that I can imagine the substance of your tale. Succinctly stated, your story is that nameless men from a faceless organization want to kill you for reasons which you cannot fathom. You’ve done nothing. You are an innocent and blameless man. But They—capital ‘T’ They—want you dead. Does that capture the essence of it, David? Is that the tale you wish to recount?”

Dave’s stomach sank. He rubbed his lips and looked at his shoes. Sandberg continued, “David, be so kind as to do me a favor. Think about the yarn you propose to tell me. Consider its credibility. Then tell me if you think that it is not suspect. Tell me that it is not … well … symptomatic of a certain mental malaise.”

Dave frowned, shaking his head. “It’s your turn to be so kind as to do
me
a favor. Think about my story. Think about what would happen if it was true. Think about the kind of lies they would tell if they wanted to persuade everybody that I had gone off my rocker.”

Sandberg spoke as if gently rebuking a recalcitrant child. “It is not a question of stories, David, it is a question of record. They have shown me the papers. All of the papers. As you know, I sit on the Boards of two defense contractors and I am privileged to hold a rather august security clearance. Consequently, the gentlemen who are seeking to … hmm … detain you, were rather easily persuaded to share their files with me. I must say, the portrait they paint is not a pretty picture. No blame falls to you, of course. You were merely an innocent victim. Quite horrifyingly innocent, it seems. I fear it was not our nation’s finest hour, and what they did to you—to you and your good comrades—goes quite beyond the pale.”

Dave spoke through his teeth. “They didn’t do anything to me. They didn’t do anything to us. Whatever any of us did, we did to ourselves. Look, Doc … Fred, the files they showed you are fake. It’s a lie, a
swindle—perfect, rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal.”

“Still quoting Mark Twain, are we, David?”

“I wouldn’t do that if I was crazy.”

“You very well might. David, we have spoken of something relevant to your situation before. I remember your reaction to my concern, and for that reason I hesitate to bring the matter up.”

“What?” Dave bit the word off. “Go ahead, Doc. Lay it on me.”

“Are you still … pardon me, David, I truly dislike asking this … are you still hearing voices?”

“Aw cripes, Doc! That’s … that’s nothing. It’s just my way of … Just like I told you, it’s not really a voice, it’s just me sort of talking to myself.”

Sandberg repeated slowly. “Talking. To. Yourself.” He nodded. The nod said it all.

“Damnit, I …”

“You will remember when you first spoke to me of this—shall we say—idiosyncrasy, I suggested that it would not be a bad thing were you to see a colleague of mine, a specialist as it were.”

“Doc, I said it then and I’ll say it now: I don’t need to see a shrink. I am as sane as you are.”

Sandberg shook his head. “David, David, let me repeat, and it is critical that you understand this—no one claims you are insane. I assure you, you are
not
deranged, not in the usual sense. What has happened, and I have seen irrefutable evidence confirming it, is that you and many of the other men in your Army unit were fed an experimental psychotropic substance. Unforeseen complexities resulted. I am told your own commanding officer …”

Dave slammed his palm into the wall. “Oh Christ! Is that what they are saying? That everything that happened was because we all were on drugs? Jesus!”

“David, do be calm.” Sandberg reached into his waistcoat pocket again. Dave lifted his pistol. Sandberg withdrew a roll of breath mints. “Please, David, you need not
point that thing at me.” He removed one from the pack, popped it into his mouth, and proffered the roll to Dave. Dave shook his head. The doctor continued, “David, I do not doubt that you believe that people are trying to kill you. However, you must realize that all the evidence …”

“What about this?” Dave brandished his pistol.

“They warned me about that. You wrested it away from a policeman.”

“Doc, this is not a policeman’s gun. Look at it. It’s …”

“I know nothing about firearms other than the fact that I despise them.”

Dave growled with frustration.

Sandberg lowered his voice, adopting a more intimate tone. “There’s another thing, David. Helen has called me.”

“Oh hell.”

“She is naturally concerned for you, concerned about the effects of such experimental drugs as you were given. And because she feels that for some time your marriage has not been …”

“Drop it, Doc. I might need to talk to a marriage counselor, but right now it’s not high on my priorities.”

“I might argue that a man whose feelings for his wife are not foremost in his mind is in need of more than mere marital counsel.” Sandberg slipped the roll of mints back into his pocket.

Dave blew out a long sigh. “Damnit, Doc, I …” His voice hardened as he saw what the doctor was up to. “Hand out of the vest pocket, Doc.”

“Waistcoat.”

“Right. What’s in there? What do you have in there other than a pack of Certs?”

Dr. Sandberg smiled sorrowfully. “A small spray dispenser of chemical Mace. They gave them to all of us. The idea, David, is simply to subdue you. I promise you that is all that is intended.”

“Doc, you and I—we are friends, aren’t we?”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“Good, because what I am about to do to you is in the spirit of friendship.”

Sandberg tried to step backward. He couldn’t. Without his noticing it, Dave had maneuvered him so that his back was against the wall.

The decor of a chief executive’s office often discloses more about a company than its annual report. For example, as every stock market analyst knows, it is wise to be wary of any enterprise whose president decorates his inner sanctum with models of jet aircraft—especially Gulf-streams, Learjets, and other high-priced private planes. The presence of such miniatures inevitably means that the corporation owns an awesomely expensive jet fleet, a luxury purchased at shareholder expense because the boss believes it beneath his imperial dignity to travel, like an ordinary commoner, via United, American, or Delta.

By the same token, experienced investors are justifiably suspicious of a corporate leader who subcontracts the decoration of his chambers to an “interior architect” managed by or employing his wife (the second one, the younger one, the blonde one). Usually the results involve opulently upholstered but geometrically odd furniture, ceramic bric-a-brac cast in primary colors by Mercedes-owning folk artists, and lithographs in the styles of Jim Dine, Frank Stella, Sean Scully, or Bruce Nauman, but costing rather more than the genuine works of those modern masters.

At the other end of the spectrum—found less often in New York City than in the high-tech environs of California’s Silicon Valley and Massachusetts’s Route 128—there are the chief executives whose offices are ostentatiously egalitarian: metal desks, vinyl-covered chairs, uncarpeted floors, nothing on the walls but an erasable whiteboard and, perhaps, a few wiring diagrams.
Insiders know that it is wise to be watchful of these officers too. A corporate president is, by definition, the enterprise’s ultimate decision-making authority. However, some CEOs find such responsibility fearfully intimidating. To avoid it, they surround themselves with plebeian trappings, cowering behind a mask of democratic corporate governance. Frugal furnishings are the first and most visible sign of an executive who is too timid to make a decision.

Bernie Levy’s office bespoke none of these things. Like the man who occupied it, it was subdued and representative of traditional values. Only a little larger than the offices of Senterex’s other corporate executives, Bernie’s place of business occupied the northeast corner of the forty-fifth floor. Its windows opened on a panorama that included Central Park to the north (on rare clear days he could see far up the Hudson into Westchester County and beyond), and to the east the United Nations building, the East River, Queens, Long Island, and the sharp, slate gleam of the distant Atlantic. Bernie’s desk was dark mahogany lovingly carved in classic style; his high-backed leather chair had been purchased from the same craftsmen who provision the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; his sofas came from the same source, and were plump and comfortable. Of knick-knacks, gimcracks, and souvenirs there were few: a set of Mont Blanc pens in an obsidian holder, an antique abacus given him by his partner in a Chinese joint venture, a single silver-framed photograph of his wife and children, an etched crystal hexahedron paperweight commemorating one of his many charitable efforts, and an enormous, ugly 14.5-millimeter round for a Soviet PTRD antitank gun. The bullet, seven inches long and one inch in diameter, was engraved with Bernie’s name and a message reading, “Company B, 3rd Battalion: Inchon to the Chosen Reservoir and back, 1950–1952.
Semper Fidelis.
”

For art Bernie had hung a handful of paintings created by the Wyeth family—N. C. through Andrew—and all
paid for out of Bernie’s, rather than Senterex’s, pocket. Dave suspected that the artwork had as much to do with Bernie’s eclectic tastes as with the fact that one of Senterex’s Board members, Scott Thatcher, was an art collector of no small reputation and especially fond of the Brandywine school.

Bernie’s office decor exhibited only two eccentricities: his books and his coffee maker. The books were a decade and a half’s compilation of a genre that Dave thought of as “executive faith healing”—everything from
In Search of Excellence
to
Reengineering the Corporation
. Senterex’s chief executive could not resist a volume that promised to reveal heretofore unknown secrets of improving managerial effectiveness. He bought them all, read them all, believed them all—at least until a new one came along.

Dave ran his finger along their jackets and smiled at the memories they brought.

Then there was Bernie’s coffee maker. That too made Dave smile. Somewhere along the line, probably under the influence of one of his California-based motivational gurus, Bernie had decided that Senterex’s executive secretaries should not be required to perform coffee duties. No longer would visitors to the executive suite be politely met by a gracious secretary who offered them their choice of coffee, tea, or cocoa. Rather it would become the responsibility of each executive to have his or her own coffee maker, supply of tea bags, and cache of hot chocolate.

No one could fathom why Bernie thought it important that executives drawing six-figure salaries should waste their time fumbling with pots, filters, and grounds, but he was adamant about it. The forty-fifth floor kitchenette was converted to a photocopier room, and every executive office was issued a Toshiba coffee maker.

The results were a catastrophe: stained carpets, coffee grounds splattered on critical documents, expensive credenzas bereft of their glossy finishes—to say nothing of embarrassed visitors who, choking at the wretchedness
of the stuff they were served, surreptitiously emptied their cups into potted plants.

After a month of mounting disaster, the secretarial staff rebelled. They started coming in early, sneaking into their bosses’ offices, and making the coffee themselves. Shortly peace was restored to the forty-fifth floor, and everyone, from Bernie downward, seemed to have gotten what they wanted.

Bernie, forgetful in such matters and more reliant on his secretary than he was willing to admit, seemed to have left his coffee machine on again. Dave flicked the off switch. “You’re welcome, Bernie,” he muttered.

The pot was half-full of Bernie’s personal blend, the envy of everyone on the floor. Dave poured himself a cup, sipped, and smiled. Bernie asserted that San Francisco was the only American city in which
every
business prides itself on offering guests a great-tasting brew. Consequently, he arranged for a special San Francisco blend—arabica, Kona, and something else—to be air-freighted to Senterex monthly. But he refused to disclose the name of the source from which he purchased it, or to make the beans available to any other Senterex executives. “I want,” Bernie smirked, “people should remember the best cup of coffee in New York came from Bernie Levy. That way, maybe they come back to have another cup and we do some business. If you want to do the same, you go find your own coffee.”