Free The Holcroft Covenant by Robert Ludlum Page B

to take any action, I’ll give you ample warning. But for the time being I won’t interfere.”
    “That’s kind of open ended, isn’t it?”
    “It’s the best you’ll get. Those memories are, indeed, indelibly printed.”
    “But for now you’ll do nothing?”
    “You have my word. It’s not lightly given, nor will it be lightly taken back.”
    “What would change it?”
    “If you disappeared, for one thing.”
    “I’ll stay in touch.”
    Althene Holcroft watched her son walk out of the room. Her face—so tense, so rigid, only moments ago—was relaxed. Her thin lips formed a smile; her wide eyes were reflective, in them a look of quiet satisfaction and strength.
    She reached for the telephone on her desk, pressed the single button
O
, and seconds later spoke.
    “Overseas operator, please. I’d like to place a call to Geneva, Switzerland.”
    He needed a professionally acceptable reason to close up Holcroft, Incorporated. Questions of substance could not be asked. The survivors of Wolfsschanze were killers for whom questions were too easily construed as interference. He had to disappear legitimately.… But one did
not
disappear legitimately: One found plausible explanations that gave the appearance of legitimacy.
    The
appearance
of legitimacy.
    Sam Buonoventura.
    Not that Sam wasn’t legitimate: He was. He was one of the best construction engineers in the business. But Sam had followed the sun so long he had blind spots. He was a fifty-year-old professional drifter, a City College graduate from Tremont Avenue, in the Bronx, who had found a life of instant gratification in the warmer climes.
    A brief tour of duty in the Army Corps of Engineers had convinced Buonoventura that there was a sweeter, more generous world beyond the borders of the United States, preferably south of the Keys. All one had to be was good—good in a job that was part of a larger job inwhich a great deal of money was invested. And during the fifties and sixties, the construction explosion in Latin America and the Caribbean was such that it might have been created for someone like Sam. He built a reputation among corporations and governments as the building tyrant who got things done in the field.
    Once having studied blueprints, labor pools, and budgets, if Sam told his employers that a hotel or an airport or a dam would be operational within a given period of time, he was rarely in error beyond four percent. He was also an architect’s dream, which meant that he did not consider himself an architect.
    Noel had worked with Buonoventura on two jobs outside the country, the first in Costa Rica, where if it had not been for Sam, Holcroft would have lost his life. The engineer had insisted that the well-groomed, courteous architect from the classy side of Manhattan learn to use a handgun, not just a hunting rifle from Abercrombie & Fitch. They were building a postal complex in the back country, and it was a far cry from the cocktail lounges of the Plaza and the Waldorf, and from San José. The architect had thought the weekend exercise ridiculous, but courtesy demanded compliance. Courtesy, and Buonoventura’s booming voice.
    By the end of the following week, however, the architect was profoundly grateful. Thieves had come down from the hills to steal construction explosives. Two men had raced through the camp at night, they’d crashed into Noel’s shack as he slept. When they realized the explosives were not there one man had run outside, shouting instructions to his accomplices.
    “¡Matemos el gringo!”
    But the
gringo
understood the language. He reached his gun—the handgun provided by Sam Buonoventura—and shot his would-be killer.
    Sam had only one comment: “Goddamn. In some cultures I’d have to take care of you for the rest of your life.”
    Noel reached Buonoventura through a shipping company in Miami. He was in the Dutch Antilles, in the town of Willemstad, on the island of Curaçao.
    “How the hell
are
you, Noley?”