The Road to Gandolfo Read online

  He scrambled to his feet, ran up the steps to the white steel door and began punching the bell and pounding his hand on the metal panel.

  There was no response.

  He banged louder and kept his free hand on the bell. He yelled to those inside and after what seemed like minutes, the single rectangular slot in the door was opened.

  A pair of wide, frightened eyes peered out.

  “For Christ’s sake, it’s Hawkins!” roared MacKenzie, putting his screaming mouth inches in front of the panicked set of eyes. “Open the goddamned door, you son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing?”

  The eyes blinked, but the door did not open.

  Hawkins yelled again, and again the eyes blinked. After several seconds the eyes were replaced by trembling lips.

  “No one’s home, sir,” came the quivering, unbelievable words.

  “What?!”

  “Sorry, General.”

  The shaking lips were now replaced by the rapid slamming of metal. The slot was closed.

  MacKenzie stood there in temporary shock. Then he started pounding once again and yelling again and punching the bell buttons so hard the Bakelite cracked.

  Nothing.

  He looked back at the crowds and the soldiers, and became aware of the screams and grins and wave after wave of giggles.

  Hawkins jumped down the set of steps and began running across the lawn in front of the building. All the windows were not only shut, but the iron inner shutters had been closed behind the grillwork. The whole goddamn mission was sealed tight, an enormous white, rectangular clam.

  He raced around the side. It was the same everywhere: closed windows, iron shutters, grillwork.

  He rounded the back lawn and ran to the large rear entrance. He began pounding the door and yelling louder than he thought he had ever yelled in his life.

  Finally the slot opened and another set of eyes appeared—less frightened than those in front but nevertheless wide and disturbed.

  “Open this fucking door, goddamn it!”

  Once more lips appeared, and now MacKenzie could see the gray moustache. It was the ambassador.

  “Get away from here, Hawkins,” said the deep, anglicized voice, cultivated in the Eastern Establishment. “You’re just not operative!”

  And the slot was closed.

  MacKenzie stood there immobilized. Time and space fused into nothingness. He was vaguely aware that the crowds and the soldiers had moved around the latticework fence at the sides and the rear of the mission.

  Without really thinking, he backed away from the entrance and looked up at the outside wall of the building and at the roof.

  He could do it, using the grillwork of the windows. He jumped to the first window and climbed up the grillwork until he reached the next protrusion of crisscrossing bars.

  In several minutes he had scaled the side of the building and pulled himself over the edge of the sloping tiled roof.

  He trudged up to the apex and looked around.

  The flagpole was centered in the grass on the lawn to the left of the gravel path. The gently waving cloth of Old Glory undulated in the breeze in isolated splendor.

  Lieutenant General MacKenzie Hawkins tested the wind and then unzipped his fly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Devereaux smiled at the doorman of the Beverly Hills Hotel, then walked around the huge automobile to the driver’s side, tipped the parking attendant, and climbed in behind the wheel, the glare of the sunlight bouncing off the hood. It was all so Southern California: doormen, parking attendants, silent tips, oversized cars and blinding sunlight.

  As was the telephone conversation he had held two hours ago with the first Mrs. MacKenzie Hawkins.

  He had decided to begin logically, piecing together a progressive disintegration of the man. Surely a pattern would emerge; it would be easier to document this contemporary version of the Rake’s Progress if he started with the subject’s introduction to the really corrupt world: soft silks and money as opposed to mere killing, torture, and West Point arrogance.

  Regina Sommerville Hawkins was that introduction. According to the data banks, Regina was Virginia Hunt Country, spoiled-rich out of Foxcroft and Finch. She had set her cotillion bonnet for the trophy called Hawkins in 1947, when the celebrated youthful warrior of the Bulge had further impressed the nation with dazzling feats on the gridiron. Since Daddy Sommerville owned most of Virginia Beach, and Ginny was an authentic Southern belle—money and magnolia, not just the fragrance—the match was easily arranged. The heroic up-from-the-ranks West Pointer was met, overwhelmed, and temporarily subdued by the lilting drawl, large breasts, and indigenous conveniences of this soft but persistent daughter of the Confederacy.

  Daddy knew a lot of people in Washington, so, combined with Hawkins’s own talents and track record, Regina expected to be a general’s wife within six months. A year at best.

  In Washington. Or Newport News. Or New York. Or perhaps lovely Hawaii. With servants and uniforms and dances and more servants and …

  However, Hawkins was peculiar, and Daddy did not know that many people who could curb his odd behavior. The Hawk did not want the la-de-da life of Washington, Newport News, or New York. He wanted to be with his troops. And there was a congressional on his sheet; requests were not denied lightly. Regina found herself in out-of-the-way army camps where her husband furiously trained disinterested draftees for a war that wasn’t. So she decided to shed her trophy. Daddy did know enough people to make that easy. Hawkins was transferred to West Germany and Regina’s doctors made it clear she could not take the climate. The distance between them just made it feasible to call the whole thing quietly off.

  Now, nearly thirty years later, Regina Sommerville Hawkins Clark Madison Greenberg was living in a suburb of Los Angeles called Tarzana with her fourth husband, Emmanuel Greenberg, motion picture producer. On the phone two hours ago she had said to Sam Devereaux:

  “Listen, lover, you want to talk about Mac? I’ll get the girls together. We usually meet on Thursdays, but what the hell is a day?”

  So Sam wrote down the directions to Tarzana and was now on his way in a rented car to Regina’s manse. The car radio played Muddied Waters, which seemed appropriate.

  He found the driveway of the Greenberg residence and entered it, ascending, he was sure, the final crest of the hills. Halfway into the property was an iron gate, operated electrically; it swung open as he approached.

  He parked in front of a four-car garage. On the flat asphalt surface there were two Cadillacs, a Silver Cloud Rolls and, in rather obvious counterpoint, a Maserati. Two uniformed chauffeurs were talking idly, leaning against the Rolls. Sam got out of the car with his attaché case and closed the door. “I’m Mrs. Greenberg’s broker,” he said to the chauffeurs.

  “This is the place, man,” laughed the younger chauffeur. “Merrill, Lynch, and The Girls. That’s what they ought to call it.”

  “Maybe they will some day. Is that the path to the door?” Sam gestured toward a flagstone walk that seemed to disappear into a short forest of California fern and miniature orange trees.

  “Yes, sir,” said the older, dignified chauffeur, as if it were important to cut short the younger man’s informality. “To the right. You’ll see it.”

  Sam walked down the path to the front door. He had never seen a pink door before, but if he had to see one, he knew it would be in Southern California. He pushed the doorbell and heard the chimes ring out the opening notes of the Love Story theme. He wondered if Regina knew the ending.

  The door opened and she stood in the foyer, dressed in tight-fitting shorts and an equally tight, translucent shirt that made her huge breasts burst forward in an absolutely challenging fashion.

  Though in her forties, Regina was dark haired, tanned, unlined, and lovely, and she carried her frontage with the assurance of youth.

  “You’re the mayjor?” she asked, the rank emerging in the low, slow, flat A of the Hunt Country.

  “Ma
jor Sam Devereaux,” he confirmed. It was silly to state the name so formally but his attention was on her two titanic challenges.

  “Come on in. I reckon you figured we’d all take offense at a uniform.”

  “Something like that, I guess.” Devereaux smiled foolishly, forced his eyes away from the shirt and walked into the foyer.

  The foyer was short; the entrance to a huge sunken living room, the far wall of which was nothing but glass. Beyond the glass was a kidney-shaped pool surrounded by a terrace of Italian tile, bordered by an ornate iron fence overlooking the valley.

  All this he noticed after, say, fifteen seconds. The first quarter minute was taken up observing three additional pairs of breasts.

  Each pair was magnificent in its individual style. Full and Round. Narrow and Pointed. Sloping yet Argumentative.

  They belonged in turn to Madge, Lillian, and Anne; Regina Greenberg made the introductions swiftly and pleasantly. And Sam automatically related the breasts—the girls to the data in his attaché case.

  Lillian was number three. Palo Alto, California.

  Madge was number two. Tuckahoe, New York.

  Anne was number four. Detroit, Michigan.

  A nice cross-section of Americana.

  Regina—Ginny—was obviously the oldest, not so much in appearance as in authority. For in truth, all the girls were in that vague age range between middle thirties and the next decade—a span Southern California was expert in obscuring. And each was dressed in sexy Southern California: casual but minutely engineered for that effect.

  MacKenzie Hawkins was a man whose tastes and abilities were to be envied.

  The courtesies were gotten over with rapidly, courteously. Sam was offered a drink, which he dared not refuse in this company, and seated in a sunken bean bag from which it was impossible to rise. He managed to place the attaché case at his side, but immediately realized that the contortions required to reach over, pick it up, and open it on his lap would tax Plastic Man, so he hoped it would not be necessary.

  “Well, here we all are,” drawled Regina Greenberg. “Hawkins’s Harem, as it were. What does the Pentagon want? Testimonials?”

  “There’s one we’ll all give without reservation,” said Lillian brightly.

  “Enthusiastically,” said Madge.

  “Oooh,” said Anne.

  “Yes, well. The general’s abilities are enormous,” stammered Sam. “I mean—well, I didn’t expect to meet you all at once. Together. In a group.”

  “Oh, we’re a real sorority, Major.” Madge, Round and Full, sat in a bean bag next to Sam and reached over, touching his arm. “Ginny told you. Hawkins’s—–”

  “Yes, I understood,” said Devereaux, swiftly interrupting.

  “Talk to one of us about Mac, you talk to all of us,” added Lillian—Narrow and Pointed—from across the room in a particularly mellifluous voice.

  “That’s right,” cooed Anne—Sloping yet Argumentative—standing outrageously in front of the center pane of glass on the swimming pool wall.

  “In the event we don’t have a quorum, I act as spokeswoman,” drawled Regina Greenberg from a jaguar-skin couch against the right wall. “That’s because I was there first and have seniority.”

  “Not necessarily in years, dear,” said Madge. “We won’t let you malign yourself.”

  “It’s difficult to know how to begin,” said Sam, who, nevertheless, plunged into the difficulty. He touched first, gently, on the abstract hardships of dealing with a highly individualistic personality. He slowly, gently explained that MacKenzie Hawkins had involved his government in a most delicate situation for which a solution had to be found. And although said government was filled with undeniable and undying gratitude for General Hawkins’s extraordinary contributions, it was often necessary to study a man’s background to help him—and his government—resolve delicate situations. Frequently the partially negative led to the positive, if only to balance and accentuate the affirmative.

  “So you want to screw him,” recapped Regina Greenberg. “It had to happen, didn’t it, girls?”

  There was a chorus of yesses and uh-huhs.

  Sam knew better than to offer a flat denial; there was more intelligence—or perception—in that room than might have been evident at first. “Why do you say that?” he asked Ginny.

  “Gawd Mayjor!” replied Titanic. “Mac’s been on a collision course with the high-brass pricky-shits for years! He sees through their manure piles. That’s why they like it when those Northern liberals make him out a joke. But Mac’s no joke!”

  “Nobody thinks he’s funny right now, Mrs. Greenberg. Let me assure you.”

  “What’s Mac done?” The question was put defensively by Anne, still silhouetted splendidly at the window.

  “He defaced—–” Sam stopped; bad choice of word. “He destroyed a national monument belonging to a government we’re trying to maintain a détente with. Like our Lincoln Memorial.”

  “Was he drunk?” asked Lillian, eyes and narrow frontage leveled at Sam; two sets of sharp artillery.

  “He says he wasn’t.”

  “Then he wasn’t,” stated Madge positively from the bean bag beside him.

  “Mac can drink a whole battalion under a mess hall slop shoot.” Ginny Greenberg’s drawl was punctuated by her affirmatively nodding head. “But he never, never plays the whiskey game to the disadvantage of that uniform.”

  “He wouldn’t put it into words, Major,” said Lillian, “but it was a stronger rule than any oath he ever took.”

  “For two reasons,” added Ginny. “He surely didn’t want to disgrace his rank, but just as important, he didn’t like for the pricky-shits to laugh at him because of booze.”

  “So you see,” stated Madge in the bean bag, “Mac didn’t do what they said he did to the Lincoln Memorial. He just wouldn’t.”

  Sam looked back and forth at the girls. Not one of these ex-Mrs. Hawkinses was going to help him; none would utter a negative word about the man.

  Why?

  He struggled like hell to get out of the bean bag and tried to assume the stance of a cross-examining attorney. A very soft, gentle attorney. He paced slowly in front of the massive window. Anne went to the bean bag.

  “Naturally,” he began, smiling, “these circumstances, this group here, evoke several questions. Not that you’re under any obligation to answer, but frankly, speaking personally, I don’t understand. Let me explain—–”

  “Let me answer,” interrupted Regina. “You can’t figure out why Hawkins’s Harem protects its namesake. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “As spokeswoman,” continued Ginny, receiving nods of assent from the others, “I’ll be brief and to the point. Mac Hawkins is one great guy—in bed and out, and don’t snicker at the bed because most marriages haven’t got it. You can’t live with the son of a bitch, but that’s not his fault.

  “Mac gave us something we’ll never forget because it’s with us every day. He taught us to break our molds. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? ‘Break your mold.’ But, lover, it sets you free. ‘You’re your own goddamned inventory,’ he used to say. ‘There’s nothing you have to do and nothing you can’t do; use your inventory and work like hell.’

  “Now, I don’t think that all of us believe that’s holy writ. But by gawd, he made each one of us try a lot harder. He set us free before it was chic and we haven’t done badly. So, you see, there’s not one of us—if Mac came knocking at the door—who wouldn’t accommodate him. You dig?”

  “I dig,” replied Sam quietly.

  The telephone rang. Regina reached behind the couch to the French phone on the marble table. She turned to Sam. “It’s for you.”

  Sam looked a bit startled. “I left your number with the hotel but I didn’t expect …” He walked to the table and took the phone.

  “He what?!” Blood drained from Sam’s face. He listened again. “Jesus! He didn’t!” And then in the weariness of aftershock: “Yes, sir. I can
see he most certainly did.… I’ll go back to the hotel and await instructions. Unless you’d rather turn this over to someone else; my tour is up in a month, sir. I see. Five days at the outside, sir.”

  He hung up and turned to Hawkins’s Harem. Those four magnificent pairs of mammaries that both invited and defied description.

  “We’re not going to need you, ladies. Although Mac Hawkins may.”

  “I’m your only contact with Sixteen-hundred, Major,” said the young lieutenant as he paced—somewhat childishly, thought Sam—the plush Beverly Hills Hotel room. “You can refer to me as Lodestone. No names, please.”

  “Lieutenant Lodestone, Sixteen-hundred. Has a nice ring to it,” said Devereaux, pouring himself another bourbon.

  “I’d go easy on the alcohol.”

  “Why don’t you go to China instead? Of me, that is.”

  “You do have a long, long flight.”

  “Not if you make it, I don’t.”

  “In a way, I wish I could. Do you realize there are seven hundred million potential consumers over there? I’d really like to get a see-you shot of that market.”

  “A who?”

  “Close-up look. A real peek-see.”

  “Ohh. C-U. Not see-you—–”

  “What an opportunity!” The lieutenant stood by the hotel window, his hands clasped behind his back. Caveat consumer.

  “Then go, for Christ’s sake! In thirty-two days I’ve got a permit to get out of this Disneyland and I don’t want to trade my uniform in for a Chinese smock!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, sir. Sixteen-hundred needs pro-PR now. All the other slambangs are gone. Some are turning out a crackerjack house organ at Dannemora.… Damn!” The lieutenant turned from the window and walked to the writing desk where there were a half dozen photographs, five by seven. “It’s all here, Major. All you need. They’re a little hazy, but they show Brand X, all right! He certainly can’t deny it now.”

  Sam looked at the blurred but definable telephotos from Peking. “He almost reached, didn’t he?”

  “Disgraceful!” The lieutenant winced as he studied the photographs. “There’s nothing left to be said.”