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Antoine Lavalle, gave what amounted to a confidential deposition to be forwarded to the major intelligence organization in Washington. Fortunately, despite the Senate, it came to us.”
    “I would hope so,” said Cameron.
    “Hope is elusive in D.C.,” said Shields. “But thanks tocross-reference computers, we got lucky. The name
Matarese
appeared again. Before he died of his wounds, Mouchistine told Lavalle that the ‘Matarese was back.’ Lavalle said his employer was sure of it because it, or they, knew about the conference and had to stop it.”
    “Why?”
    “Apparently, Mouchistine was divesting himself of his entire financial empire, willing everything to universal charities. With that bequest, he was relinquishing the economic power that goes with his global conglomerates, essentially run under his strict orders by his boards and his attorneys. According to Lavalle, the Matarese could not accept that; they had to stop him so they killed him.”
    “With Mouchistine dead, who runs the international companies?”
    “It’s so serpentine, it’ll take months, if not years, to unravel.”
    “But somewhere in the financial caves could be the Matarese, am I reading you?”
    “We don’t know but we think so. It’s so goddamned amorphous, we simply don’t know.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    “It was in Mouchistine’s last words. ‘Find Beowulf Agate.’ ”
    “
Who?
”
    “Beowulf Agate. It was the code name the KGB and the East German Stasi created for Brandon Scofield, our most successful penetrator during the Cold War. The sublime irony was that he eventually teamed up with a man he hated, and who hated him, when they both uncovered the Matarese in Corsica.”
    “In
Corsica?
That’s wild!”
    “Vasili Taleniekov was his real name, code name Serpent, an infamous KGB intelligence officer. He had engineered the death of Scofield’s wife, and Scofield killed Taleniekov’s younger brother. They were sworn enemies until they both faced an enemy far greater than either of them.”
    “The Matarese?”
    “The Matarese. Ultimately, Taleniekov sacrificed himself to save Beowulf Agate’s life as well as Scofield’s woman, now his wife.”
    “
Jesus
, it sounds like a Greek tragedy.”
    “In many ways, it was.”
    “
So?
”
    “Find Beowulf Agate. Learn the whole story. It’s a place to start, and no one knows it better than Scofield.”
    “Weren’t there any debriefings?”
    “Scofield wasn’t very cooperative. He said it was mission-completed time and there wasn’t anything to learn from ancient history. Everyone who mattered was dead. He just wanted out and damned fast.”
    “That’s pretty strange behavior.”
    “He felt it was justified. You see, at one point he was placed ‘beyond salvage.’ ”
    “Targeted for
execution?
” asked the astonished Pryce. “By his own
people?
”
    “He was considered dangerous to our personnel everywhere. He knew all the secrets. The President himself had to order the ‘salvage’ aborted.”
    “Why was it ever issued in the first place?”
    “I just told you, he was a walking time bomb. He had joined the enemy; he and Taleniekov were working together.”
    “
After
this Matarese!” protested Cameron.
    “We learned that later, almost too late.”
    “Maybe I’d better get to know our President.… Okay, I’ll try to find him. Where do I start?”
    “He’s in seclusion in the Caribbean, one of the islands. We’ve got our feelers operating, but so far no concrete information. We’ll give you everything we have.”
    “Thanks a bunch. It’s a pretty wide area with lots and lots of islands.”
    “Remember, if he’s alive, he’s in his sixties now, probably a lot different from the ID photographs.”
    “ ‘Beowulf Agate,’ what a stupid name.”
    “I don’t know, it’s no worse than ‘Serpent’ forTaleniekov. Incidentally, translated, in Tashkent your code was ‘Camshaft Pussycat.’ ”
    “Oh, shut up, Frank.”
    The