Free The Matarese Countdown by Robert Ludlum

kill was a splendid idea, if it could be accomplished without being traced. The Matarese, letting only a very few know in Washington and Moscow, carried out the assassinations, putting a convincing spin on them that pointed to Vasili and me.”
    “Just like
that?
But again,
why?
”
    “Because they’d been doing it for years. Feeding both superpowers information about their enemies’ newest weapons of annihilation, forcing each to produce more and more, until the arms race became gargantuan. All the while the Matarese made billions, its defense-contractor clients happily paying off.”
    “This is coming too fast.… So Taleniekov made the first move?”
    “He sent me a message from Brussels. ‘We will either kill each other or we will talk.’ He got over here somehow, and after a series of rendezvous, during which we damn near blew each other away, we did talk. We assumed that our names, our personas, if you will, had taken each of our countries to the brink, only the intercession of the Soviet Premier and the American President curbing the hotheads. They convinced each other that neither nation was responsible for the kills, that Taleniekov and I were nowhere near the scenes.”
    “If I may,” interrupted Cameron, holding up the palm ofhis right hand in the candlelight. “As I said, I remembered the death of Yurievich because it was so macabre, but I don’t recall the killing of a General Blackburn; perhaps I was too young. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs doesn’t mean an awful lot to a kid of ten or eleven.”
    “You wouldn’t have recalled it if you’d been
twice
that age,” replied Scofield. “Anthony Blackburn was reported to have died from cardiac arrest while reading the Scriptures in his library at home. A nice touch considering the truth. He was killed in an expensive New York whorehouse having extremely kinky sex.”
    “Why was he a target? Just because he was head of the Joint Chiefs?”
    “Blackburn wasn’t just a figurehead, he was a brilliant tactician. The Soviets in some ways knew him better than we did; they’d studied him in Korea and Vietnam. They knew his primary goal was stability.”
    “Okay, I understand. So you and Taleniekov talked. How did that lead you to the Matarese?”
    “The old KGB director, Krupskova—or some name like that—he’d been shot, the wound was severe, and he called for Vasili. He told Taleniekov that he had analyzed the reports of the kills of Yurievich and Blackburn. He concluded that the assassinations were the work of a secret organization called the Matarese, its origins in Corsica. He explained to Vasili that they were spreading out everywhere, blackmailing high government officials, assuming extraordinary power throughout the Free World and the Eastern bloc countries.”
    “Had this Krupskova worked with them—with it?” asked Pryce.
    “He said we all did, had been for years. Signals would be sent, meetings in fields or forests arranged, away from anyone observing them, men in shadows meeting other shadowed men in darkness. Deals were made in the blackest arts—‘kill
him
or kill
her
, we’ll pay.’ ”
    “They could get
away
with that?”
    “On both sides,” answered Scofield. “It was their tentacles,
its
tentacles. They knew what the extremists wanted and they supplied the results, untraceable to their clients.”
    “There had to be records of disbursements. How were they paid?”
    “Off the books, clandestine operations being beyond scrutiny for reasons of national security. That’s a necessary euphemism for buy whatever you can when you can’t get it legally or morally. The Soviets, of course, had fewer problems in those areas, but we weren’t far behind. To put it bluntly, our governments weren’t officially at war, but
we
were. It was a goddamned bloody mess, and we were the
messees
—on both sides.”
    “You’re pretty cynical, aren’t you?”
    “Of course, he is,” said Antonia Scofield, lurching forward in her