The Matlock Paper (35 page)

Perhaps it was time to threaten—as Herron ultimately had threatened. Nimrod had Pat; he had Herron’s indictment. The life of one human being for the protection of hundreds, perhaps thousands. Even Nimrod had to see their bargaining position. It was irrefutable, the odds were on their side.

He realized as he neared the railroad depot that this kind of thinking, by itself, made him a manipulator, too. Pat had been reduced to
quantity X
, Herron’s diaries,
quantity Y
. The equation would then be postulated and the mathematical observers would make their decisions based on the data presented. It was the ice-cold logic of survival; emotional factors were disregarded, consciously despised.

Frightening!

He turned right at the station and started to drive up College Parkway. Sealfont’s mansion stood at the end. He went as fast as the ’62 Chevy would go, which wasn’t much above thirty miles an hour on the hill. The streets were deserted, washed clean by the storm. The store fronts, the houses, and finally the campus were dark and silent.

He remembered that Kressel’s house was just a half block off College Parkway on High Street. The detour would take him no more than thirty seconds. It was
worth it, he thought. If Kressel hadn’t left for Sealfont’s, he would pick him up and they could talk on the way over. Matlock
had
to talk,
had
to begin. He couldn’t stand the isolation any longer.

He swung the car to the left at the corner of High Street. Kressel’s house was a large gray colonial set back from the street by a wide front lawn bordered by rhododendrons. There were lights on downstairs. With luck, Kressel was still home. There were two cars, one in the driveway; Matlock slowed down.

His eyes were drawn to a dull reflection at the rear of the driveway. Kressel’s kitchen light was on; the spill from the window illuminated the hood of a third car, and the Kressels were a two-car family.

He looked again at the car in front of the house. It was a Carlyle patrol car. The Carlyle police were in Kressel’s house!

Nimrod’s private army was with
Kressel!

Or was Nimrod’s private army with
Nimrod?

He swerved to the left, narrowly missing the patrol car, and sped down the street to the next corner. He turned right and pressed the accelerator to the floor. He was confused, frightened, bewildered. If Sealfont had called Kressel—which he had obviously done—and Kressel worked with Nimrod, or
was
Nimrod, there’d be other patrol cars, other soldiers of the private army waiting for him.

His mind went back to the Carlyle Police Station—a century ago, capsuled in little over a week—the night of Loring’s murder. Kressel had disturbed him then. And even before that—with Loring and Greenberg—Kressel’s hostility to the federal agents had been outside the bounds of reason.

Oh, Christ! It was so clear now! His instincts had been right. The instincts which had served him as the
hunted
as well as the
hunter
had been true! He’d been watched
too
thoroughly, his every action anticipated. Kressel, the
liaison
, was, in fact, Kressel the tracker, the seeker, the supreme killer.

Nothing was ever as it appeared to be—only what one sensed behind the appearance. Trust the senses.

Somehow he had to get to Sealfont. Warn Sealfont that the Judas was Kressel. Now they
both
had to protect themselves, establish some base from which they could strike back.

Otherwise the girl he loved was lost.

There couldn’t be a second wasted. Sealfont had certainly told Kressel that he, Matlock, had Lucas Herron’s diaries, and that was all Kressel would need to know. All Nimrod needed to know.

Nimrod had to get possession of both the Corsican paper
and
the diaries; now he knew where they were. His private army would be told that this was its moment of triumph or disaster. They would be waiting for him at Sealfont’s; Sealfont’s mansion was the trap they expected him to enter.

Matlock swung west at the next corner. In his trouser pocket were his keys, and among them was the key to Pat’s apartment. To the best of his knowledge, no one knew he had such a key, certainly no one would expect him to go there. He had to chance it; he couldn’t risk going to a public telephone, risk being seen under a street lamp. The patrol cars would be searching everywhere.

He heard the roar of an engine behind him and felt the sharp pain in his stomach. A car was following him—closing in on him. And the ’62 Chevrolet was no match for it.

His right leg throbbed from the pressure he exerted on the pedal. His hands gripped the steering wheel as
he turned wildly into a side street, the muscles in his arms tensed and aching. Another turn. He spun the wheel to the left, careening off the edge of the curb back into the middle of the road. The car behind him maintained a steady pace, never more than ten feet away, the headlights blinding in the rear-view mirror.

His pursuer was
not
going to close the gap between them! Not then. Not at that moment. He could have done so a hundred, two hundred yards ago. He was waiting. Waiting for something. But what?

There was so
much
he couldn’t understand! So much he’d miscalculated, misread. He’d been out-maneuvered at every important juncture. He was what they said—an amateur! He’d been beyond his depth from the beginning. And now, at the last, his final assault was ending in ambush. They would kill him, take the Corsican paper, the diaries of indictment. They would kill the girl he loved, the innocent child whose life he’d thrown away so brutally. Sealfont would be finished—he knew too much now! God knew how many others would be destroyed.

So be it.

If it had to be this way, if hope really had been taken from him, he’d end it all with a gesture, at least. He reached into his belt for the automatic.

The streets they now traveled—the pursuer and the pursued—ran through the outskirts of the campus, consisting mainly of the science buildings and a number of large parking lots. There were no houses to speak of.

He swerved the Chevrolet as far to the right as possible, thrusting his right arm across his chest, the barrel of the pistol outside the car window, pointed at the pursuing automobile.

He fired twice. The car behind him accelerated; he
felt the repeated jarring of contact, the metal against metal as the car behind hammered into the Chevrolet’s left rear chassis. He pulled again at the trigger of the automatic. Instead of a loud report, he heard and felt only the single click of the firing pin against an unloaded chamber.

Even his last gesture was futile.

His pursuer crashed into him once more. He lost control; the wheel spun, tearing his arm, and the Chevrolet reeled off the road. Frantic, he reached for the door handle, desperately trying to steady the car, prepared to jump if need be.

He stopped all thought; all instincts of survival were arrested. Within those split seconds, time ceased. For the car behind him had drawn parallel and he saw the face of his pursuer.

There were bandages and gauze around the eyes, beneath the glasses, but they could not hide the face of the black revolutionary. Julian Dunois.

It was the last thing he remembered before the Chevrolet swerved to the right and skidded violently off the road’s incline.

Blackness.

Pain roused him. It seemed to be all through his left side. He rolled his head, feeling the pillow beneath him.

The room was dimly lit; what light there was came from a table lamp on the other side. He shifted his head and tried to raise himself on his right shoulder. He pushed his elbow into the mattress, his immobile left arm following the turn of his body like a dead weight.

He-stopped abruptly.

Across the room, directly in line with the foot of the bed, sat a man in a chair. At first Matlock couldn’t distinguish the features. The light was poor and his eyes were blurred with pain and exhaustion.

Then the man came into focus. He was black and his dark eyes stared at Matlock beneath the perfectly cut semicircle of an Afro haircut. It was Adam Williams, Carlyle University’s firebrand of the Black Left.

When Williams spoke, he spoke softly and, unless Matlock misunderstood—once again—there was compassion in the black’s voice.

“I’ll tell Brother Julian you’re awake. He’ll come in to see you.” Williams got out of the chair and went to the door. “You’ve banged up your left shoulder. Don’t try to get out of bed. There are no windows in
here. The hallway is guarded. Relax. You need rest.”

“I don’t have
time
to rest, you
goddamn fool!
” Matlock tried to raise himself further but the pain was too great. He hadn’t adjusted to it.

“You don’t have a choice.” Williams opened the door and walked rapidly out, closing it firmly behind him.

Matlock fell back on the pillow.… Brother Julian.… He remembered now. The sight of Julian Dunois’s bandaged face watching him through the speeding car window, seemingly inches away from him. And his ears had picked up Dunois’s words, his commands to his driver. They had been shouted in his Caribbean dialect.

“Hit him, mon! Hit him again! Drive him
off
, mon!”

And then everything had become dark and the darkness had been filled with violent noise, crashing metal, and he had felt his body twisting, turning, spiraling into the black void.

Oh, God! How long ago was it? He tried to lift up his left hand to look at his watch, but the arm barely moved; the pain was sharp and lingering. He reached over with his right hand to pull the stretch band off his wrist, but it wasn’t there. His watch was gone.

He struggled to get up and finally managed to perch on the edge of the bed, his legs touching the floor. He pressed his feet against the wood, thankful that he could sit up.… He had to put the pieces together, to reconstruct what had happened, where he was going.

He’d been on his way to Pat’s. To find a secluded telephone on which to reach Adrian Sealfont. To warn him that Kressel was the enemy, Kressel was Nimrod. And he’d made up his mind that Herron’s
diaries would be Pat’s ransom. Then the chase had begun, only it wasn’t a chase. The car behind him, commanded by Julian Dunois, had played a furious game of terror. It had toyed with him as a lethal mountain cat might play with a wounded goat. Finally it had attacked—steel against steel—and driven him to darkness.

Matlock knew he had to escape. But
from where
and
to whom?

The door of the windowless room opened. Dunois entered, followed by Williams.

“Good morning,” said the attorney. “I see you’ve managed to sit up. That’s good. It augurs well for your very abused body.”

“What time is it? Where am I?”

“It’s nearly four thirty. You are in a room at Lumumba Hall. You see? I withhold nothing from you.… Now, you must reciprocate. You must withhold nothing from me.”

“Listen to me!” Matlock kept his voice steady. “I have no fight with you, with
any
of you! I’ve got …”

“Oh, I disagree,” Dunois smiled. “Look at my
face
. It’s only through enormous good fortune that I wasn’t blinded by you. You tried to crush the lenses of my glasses into my eyes. Can you imagine how my work would suffer if I were blind?”

“Goddamn it! You filled me with acid!”

“And you provoked it! You were actively engaged in pursuits inimicable to our brothers! Pursuits you had no
right
to engage in … But this is concentric debate. It will get us nowhere.… We
do
appreciate what you’ve brought us. Beyond our most optimistic ambitions.”

“You’ve got the notebook.…”

“
And
the Corsican document. The Italian invitation
we knew existed. The notebook was only a rumor. A rumor which was fast being ascribed to fiction until tonight—this morning. You should feel proud. You’ve accomplished what scores of your more experienced betters failed to accomplish. You found the treasure. The
real
treasure.”

“I’ve got to have it back!”

“Fat chance!” said Williams, leaning against the wall, watching.

“If I don’t get it back, a girl will
die!
Do whatever you goddamn well please with me, but let me
use
it to get her back. Christ! Please,
please!
”

“You feel deeply, don’t you? I see tears in your eyes.…”

“Oh,
Jesus!
You’re an
educated man!
You can’t
do
this!… 
Listen!
Take whatever information you want out of it! Then give it to me and let me go!… I swear to you I’ll come back. Give her a chance. Just give her a
chance!
”

Dunois walked slowly to the chair by the wall, the chair in which Adam Williams sat when Matlock awoke. He pulled it forward, closer to the bed, and sat down, crossing his knees gracefully. “You feel helpless, don’t you? Perhaps … even without hope.”

“I’ve been through a great deal!”

“I’m sure you have. And you appeal to my reason … as an
educated man
. You realize that it is within my scope to help you and therefore I am superior to you. You would not make such an appeal if it were not so.”

“Oh, Christ! Cut that out!”

“Now you know what it’s like. You are helpless. Without hope. You wonder if your appeal will be lost on a deaf ear.… Do you really, for one second, think that I care for the life of Miss Ballantyne? Do
you honestly believe she has any priority for me? Any
more
than the lives of
our
children,
our
loved ones mean anything to you!”

Matlock knew he had to answer Dunois. The black would offer nothing if he evaded him. It was another game—and he had to play, if only briefly.

“I don’t deserve this and you know it. I loathe the people who won’t do anything for them. You know me—you’ve made that clear. So you must know that.”

“Ahh, but I
don’t
know it! You’re the one who made the choice, the decision to work for the superior mon! The
Washington
mon! For decades, two
centuries, my
people have appealed to the
superior Washington mon!
‘Help us,’ they cry. ‘Don’t leave us without hope!’ they scream. But nobody listens. Now, you expect me to listen to you?”