The Dead Man's Brother (3 page)

I snorted.

"…you were then sent into combat areas on numerous occasions," he went on, "and subsequently shifted to more sensitive work behind the lines. You were listed as missing in action on four different occasions and twice reported as dead."

"I know all those things," I said.

"I will not suppose that you were ever an art thief," he said, turning several more pages, "nor that you and the late Mister Bernini were once closely associated in such activities."

"Thanks."

"I do understand, however, that you make a considerable number of trips to Europe each year…"

"As an art dealer, I visit numerous galleries and museums, attend exhibits and auctions, meet with artists and private collectors and do nothing illegal. I suppose you can supply me with the dates and places of all my trips?"

He shrugged.

"They are not important. I was merely laying some groundwork."

"If you’ve laid enough now, why don’t you tell me what you want of me?"

"It is a somewhat delicate matter," he said, "but you possess a background in intelligence work, as well as the ability to become unobtrusive overseas, and—"

"No!" I said, standing. "I will not spy for you!"

"I did not say anything about espionage," he told me, "though from your reaction I feel you must consider it a somewhat dirty business." He sighed and reached beneath his blotter, extracting a sheet of paper. "No, I did not ask you to be a spy," he said, regarding the page, "but for obvious reasons I am quite sensitive about the term. The image is all wrong, you know, what with newsstand and movie fare, with fanatic anti-Communists looking for enemies behind every door. Let me read you something Harold Macmillan once said concerning spies and defectors. It is quite correct, and I keep it around to cheer me up whenever business is going badly—or when someone reacts as you did if he feels the subject is coming up.

" ‘Defection of anybody in a policy department is not very important,’ " he read. " ‘What does he give them? A few memoranda which, from my recollection of government memoranda, never come down on one side of the question or another…The really dangerous espionage is technical. Some machine, some improvement which probably has the life of what—a year at most? I think it’s all rather exaggerated, the importance of it.’ "

He slipped the paper back beneath the blotter, sighed and said, "So much for spying. If I were a spymaster, Mister Wiley, I would like you to know that the supply exceeds the demand. I would have no need for you. I would employ a professional. I read you Macmillan’s words, though, for your own edification. Spying is dull, dry, uninteresting work—and as I began to say, what I have in mind for you is something of a delicate matter."

I reseated myself.

"Please continue," I said.

He nodded.

"Beyond the things concerning yourself which I’ve already mentioned, it appears barely possible that you may possess another useful quality. I’ll let Doctor Berwick tell you about it," he said, turning his head in that direction.

"I am a statistician," said Berwick, beginning to locate me with his eyes. "Years ago, I was involved in a project funded by the military, two science foundations and a major insurance company. The military was interested in survival potential. Why does an Audie Murphy go through numerous battles virtually unscathed while stronger and perhaps cleverer men are dying all about him? Why does an Eddie Rickenbacker live through so many potentially fatal situations? Persons with similar histories were studied by our group, examined psychologically and physically, with hopes of determining the factors which underlie this sort of luck or good fortune or whatever you wish to name it. Conversely, the insurance company was interested in similar information with respect to accident-proneness. The two lines of occurrence seem part of the same thing, whatever that thing may be, so there was a coming together of interests. Upon completion of the project and submission of our final reports, this organization," and he glanced toward Collins, "retained several members of the original team to continue with the research under their auspices."

At this point, the wheels began to turn and I remembered who Doctor Berwick was.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" I asked.

He looked to Collins once more, and Collins wagged his head slightly.

"I’m not permitted to say," he told me.

Thoughts now ricocheting like bullets in the boiler room of my mind, I inquired, "But you have reason to believe that it is somehow chromosome-linked?"

After but a thick moment or two of silence, Collins came back with, "Quite nimble. But I thought you and your brother were not on speaking terms?"

"That’s right," I said. "But we were back when he was in grad school, and I remember his telling me about some nutty experiments he was paid a buck and a half an hour to participate in. A Professor Berwick was one of the men in charge. You were fat then, too, weren’t you, Doctor?"

He removed his glasses, wiped them, held them up to the light, replaced them, put away his handkerchief.

"Yes," he said. "It runs in my family."

"Well," I said, "since you’ve conned these nice bureaucrats into believing you’re onto something here, and since it seems logical to assume that you used my brother as an example of whatever it is you claim to have proved, why not sic him onto this delicate matter you’ve got in mind?"

Berwick opened his mouth, but Collins’ audible sigh interrupted him. The smile was gone now.

"Mister Wiley," he stated, "you may pat yourself on the back for having correctly guessed that we learned of you through your brother. Everyone in the initial tests had filled out questionnaires, and one item involved a listing of relatives. Only accident-prones and people who alleged several remarkable escapes from harm were accepted for those early tests. It had been suggested that their relatives be contacted to determine whether they, too, exhibited these tendencies. This aspect was never pursued at the time, as the project was concluded prematurely. The government support was withdrawn during a period of budget-cutting and the insurance company lost interest after the preliminary reports. When we picked it up, though, we decided to check out the relatives, on the recommendation of the biological section of the team. That is how we came to locate your record of survival and escapes. I shan’t recite it, for I fear that you will reply, ‘I know all those things.’ "

"Thank you."

"…but on the basis of all these factors," he continued, "when we learned of your present difficulties, it was decided that perhaps you and the agency could be of some benefit to one another."

The left corner of my mouth twitched upward involuntarily.
It was decided
. I have, for most of my adult life, noticed that whenever a large organization gets all impersonal and objective, it is about ready to throw you the shaft. No individual on their end is ever responsible, mind you.
It
is always the culprit, the maker of the sneaky, nasty decision.

"You learned of my ‘present difficulties’ awfully quickly," I observed. "I want to thank you for being so prompt in attending to my welfare."

Here, he reddened slightly, and I went on, "I can’t agree with anything I’ve heard of this idiotic survival bit, so far. It strikes me as a fund-raising scheme. I just believe in luck—good or bad—and I’m obviously having some bad just now. Also, I couldn’t really care less what you know about me. Why don’t you just tell me what it is you want of me and what you’re able to give me for it?"

But Doctor Berwick had snorted, gotten to his feet, crossed the space that had separated us and was glaring down at me while moving his finger in rapid, salami-cutting motions near my nose, all before Collins could reply.

"Young man!" he said. "To take pride in one’s ignorance is a mark of one’s stupidity! You do not know all the facts, yet you presume to pass judgment on years and years of careful, detailed research! Who are you to mock probability theory when you are living proof of its operation? You—"

"Doctor Berwick," Collins said softly.

I once saw the same expression and stance—eyes wide, shoulders suddenly stiffened, head thrown back—occur on a man who had just been shot in the back from ambush.

Berwick dropped his eyes and turned slowly toward Collins.

"I fear I was out of myself for a moment," he said, and returned to his chair.

"It is understandable," Collins replied, "as is Mister Wiley’s reaction to his situation."

At this point, I wondered whether smoke was beginning to emerge from my ears and spiraling up toward the obscene fluorescent lights. Somewhere inside him, I knew that Collins was smirking at me. He just wanted to keep me dangling. He knew I did not give a damn about any hypothesis of Berwick’s. He knew that all I wanted was answers to my questions. He was, I decided, a son of a bitch.

"It should not be especially dangerous," he said. "It will simply be necessary that you take a little trip, speak to a few people, do a bit of legwork and report your findings to one of our representatives. It will most likely turn out to be a pleasant vacation."

While in no position to criticize another’s ethics, it was not without a certain indignation that I saw what was about to come.

"And if I undertake this bit of work for you?" I inquired.

"Then," he said, "I am confident that your difficulties in New York may safely be assumed forgotten."

"I see. Where, specifically, would I be taking my holiday?"

"Mostly Italy, I’d say. Though the thing appears to have broader international ramifications."

My palms were suddenly moist and I felt my heartbeat quicken. When I did finally speak, my words came strangely ragged through my throat.

"If you are implying what I think you are implying, I would be a fool to accept. I’d rather take my chances on a homicide conviction here in the States than poke around that organization whose headquarters are in Palermo. No thanks. Send me back to where you found me."

He smiled and shook his head.

"My interest in international crime is purely academic," he told me, "and I have no desire to spy on the Mafia. That is what we pay the FBI for."

"What then?" I asked, feeling my conjecture drop into the sea of false intuitions with a little plopping sound and no ripples.

"The Vatican," he said. "I want to plant you in the Vatican."

III.

Good old Eileen. I lay there beside her, spent, staring at the ceiling. She rested her head on an outstretched arm, her hair a dark splash on a pillow. I drew on my cigarette and watched the smoke curl and wind its way through the half-lit air.

The room was cool and silent. We relaxed, and I said, "It was rough."

"What?" she asked.

"Everything that has happened to me recently," I told her. "I have been sworn to secrecy."

"So?"

"So I want to tell you all about it."

I let my fingers do some walking, and I began telling her.

"I am going to Europe."

She drew nearer.

"Good," she said, and I felt her softness all along my right side.

Then, "When?" she asked.

"Tuesday."

I felt her muscles jerk.

"That’s only three days," she said, "and I haven’t got…"

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m going alone."

"Oh. What is she like?"

"Not another girl. It’s this business I was about to—"

"You took me once when it was a business trip. I was your secretary for tax purposes."

"It’s not that kind of business," I said.

"Oh. You’re screwing somebody else."

"No, ma’am," I said. "You’re my lovely lady, and I want to keep it at that. I’d like to tell you but you’re not listening."

"I’m listening. Tell."

"I have a job I have to do," I said. "It involves a man who was once a priest."

"I know they’re smart," she said. "What did he do?"

"He stole three million dollars," I told her, "and skipped Rome."

"Why do you have to find him?" she said.

"Let’s leave that out of it," I told her. "I just do."

"Someone’s got something on you."

"Maybe."

Finally, "I think you’re lying," she said.

"Why?"

"A priest wouldn’t do a thing like that."

Finding such logic unassailable, I replied, "Okay, you’ve got me. I have a date with Sofia Loren."

She slapped me lightly then, and I changed the subject the only way I knew how.

But I had had to tell
someone
, since I had promised my boss I wouldn’t.

Good old five feet five, slightly plump, brunette, blue-eyed Eileen. I thank whatever Powers May Be for girls like you, and the fact that I have never been married to one.

Good night, Eileen.

*

Airports. Enough there already. Stop. After we had broken the smog-barrier and a few windows I suppose, we came at last to be above a green glass, lens-like area that looked as if it went on forever. I can become obsessed with the ocean, just as with an enormous mountain or a vast desert; for these things are so out of proportion to myself that they seem to represent a cosmic indifference, another order of existence, or both. They make me feel as if something within me belongs to them, and then I desire to share their destinies. Too much thinking along these lines tends to make me morbid. Which is one of the reasons I prefer both nature and art in its smaller guises. So I turned my attention to the magazine I held in my lap and left the ocean to do whatever it is Byron said it does without me as an accomplice.

Arrowing above the clouds and the water, I read till the blue went out of the sky and the night came down, pausing only to eat a surprisingly good meal and drink two Old Granddad and waters. Sipping the second one, I regarded the stars—so bright out here, up here—lit a cigarette and considered my situation.

Collins had taken me to the Office of the Apostolic Delegate in Washington. There, a rosy-cheeked junior counselor had told me of Father Bretagne, occasionally referring to a thick file on the man. Father Bretagne had worked in the financial offices of the Vatican. He had been a thoroughly screened, highly trusted, highly qualified man. All three were standard requirements, he had explained, with special emphasis on the screening—ever since the days of Monsignor Cippico, the only priest from that office ever defrocked and busted for swindling. Father Bretagne had come out with a record the angels might envy and seemed to be doing a wonderful job for approximately five years. It was in the sixth year that they began getting a whiff of what was going on.