41.
Lucian Savory’s office was downtown, not far from Pfefferkorn’s agent’s office. The next day Pfefferkorn stepped from the bus and was pummeled by a blast of wind, funneled through a chasm of high-rises. He hurried into the lobby, locating Savory’s name on the directory and taking the elevator to the penthouse.
No other tenants shared the floor, leading Pfefferkorn to expect a suite of offices, fronted by a secretary or three. He was surprised to be met at the door by Savory himself.
“About fucking time,” Savory said. “Come in.”
Pfefferkorn stepped into an enormous room, perfectly beige and almost as bare. Two beige chairs stood on opposite sides of a beige desk. A bank of beige file cabinets ran the length of one beige wall. The color scheme gave him the sensation of being smothered in putty.
“I would’ve called first,” Pfefferkorn said, “but you didn’t leave a number.”
“I don’t have a number,” Savory said. He looked exactly as he had at the funeral. Pfefferkorn assumed that someone at such an advanced age would show greater daily wear and tear. But Savory was like a living fossil. He shuffled behind the desk and sat down. “I take it you finally decided to wise up.”
“You didn’t give me much choice.”
Savory smiled.
Pfefferkorn sat down. He took out the pages and flattened them on the desk. The first page read
SHADOWGAME
a novel of suspense
William de Vallée
“Some of your edits were decent,” Savory said. “I’ll grant you that much.”
“Thanks,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Nice title.”
“It was your idea.”
“Still, you had the good sense to use it.”
Pfefferkorn said nothing.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” Savory said.
“I thought I had the only copy.”
“What the hell gave you that impression?”
“Carlotta told me he never showed his unfinished work.”
“Not to her, maybe. And then you went ahead and used my title? It’s like you were screaming for my attention.”
Pfefferkorn shrugged. “Maybe I was.”
“Oh,” Savory said, “I see. It was a cry for help. You wanted to get caught.”
“Sure,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Some sort of deep-rooted Freudian thing. ‘Spank me.’”
“Could be.”
“That’s one theory,” Savory said. “I have my own, though. Want to hear it? Here goes. You didn’t bother to take any of that into account because you’re a lazy, greedy son of a bitch with poor executive function.”
There was a silence.
“That’s possible,” Pfefferkorn said.
Savory slapped the desk. “Well, we’ll never know.”
Pfefferkorn looked at him. “What do you want from me.”
Savory cackled. “Perfect.”
“What is.”
“I was taking bets with myself whether it would be that or ‘Why are you doing this to me.’”
“I don’t see why we have to drag it out. Just tell me how much you want and I’ll tell you if I can afford it. Otherwise we have nothing to talk about.”
“Au contraire,” Savory said.
42.
“A spy?”
“Not quite,” Savory said, “but for simplicity’s sake, we can call it that.”
“But that’s ludicrous,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Says you.”
“I’ve known Bill since I was eleven.”
“And therefore.”
“He wasn’t a spy.”
“Since you seem intent on picking nits, fine: he wasn’t a spy. He was a courier.”
“He was a writer,” Pfefferkorn said. “He wrote thrillers.”
“The man never published a single thing of his own invention,” Savory said. “We gave it all to him. William de Vallée was a perfect fraud, and by that I mean in creating his cover, we all did a perfect job, including Bill. He was a major asset, the result of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars. You can’t imagine how disappointed we were to lose him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Every Dick Stapp novel has contained encrypted directives for operatives embedded in hostile territories where standard means of transmission have proven too difficult.”
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Code,” Savory said.
“Code?”
“Code.”
“Bill wrote in code.”
“I told you, he didn’t write anything. The Boys did.”
“What boys.”
“The Boys. Capital B.”
“Who’re they.”
“That’s not important.”
“They’re not important but they get a capital B?”
“All information will be given on a need-to-know basis.”
“And I don’t need to know.”
“Bingo.”
There was a silence. Pfefferkorn looked up at the ceiling.
“What,” Savory said.
“Where are the cameras.”
“There aren’t any.”
Pfefferkorn stood. “When does the TV crew jump out?”
“Sit down.”
Pfefferkorn walked around the room. “Ha ha,” he said to the walls. “Very funny.”
“We have a lot to discuss, Artie. Sit down. Or don’t, I don’t care. But time’s a-wasting.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Savory shrugged.
“I don’t believe any of it,” Pfefferkorn said. “How can that make sense? Delivering secret messages out in the open. It’s preposterous.”
“That makes it all the more difficult to detect. Try sending an e-mail to North Korea and see how far you get. But a top-notch thriller penetrates like nobody’s business. He wasn’t the only one, mind you. Most blockbuster American novelists are on our payroll. Anything with embossed foil letters, that’s us.”
“But . . .” Frustrated, Pfefferkorn aimed to score a hit. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to use the movies?”
Savory sighed in a way that suggested Pfefferkorn was terribly slow.
“Jesus,” Pfefferkorn said. “Them too?”
“If you think things are bad now, just imagine what might’ve happened if we’d allowed you to sign a film deal. We’ve been playing catch-up as it is.”
“I’m not following you at all.”
“What do you know about Zlabia?” Savory said.
43.
Pfefferkorn told him what he knew.
“That’s not much,” Savory said.
“Sue me.”
“Let me ask you this: when did your first novel come out?”
“Nineteen eighty-three.”
“Not that first novel. Your other first novel.”
“About a year ago.”
“Can you think of anything in recent Zlabian history that happened around then?”
Pfefferkorn thought. “They tried to kill whatsisface.”
Savory cackled. “Gold star for you. For the record, whatsisface’s name is East Zlabian Lord High President Kliment Thithyich, and he’s a very rich, violent, and unstable man, the sort of fellow who doesn’t take kindly to being shot in the ass.”
“What does my book have to do with any of this?”
“Let’s start by reminding ourselves of one key fact. It wasn’t your book. Was it.”
Pfefferkorn said nothing.
“‘In one fluid motion,’” Savory said.
“What?”
“‘In one fluid motion.’ That was the flag. The manuscript you stole wasn’t even finished, and then you had to go ahead and have your way with it.”
“It needed trimming,” Pfefferkorn said.
“Not the kind you gave it. Do you know how many ‘in one fluid motions’ you deleted?”
“It’s cliché,” Pfefferkorn said. “It’s meaningless.”