He pressed the Kalishnikov close to Nugent’s ear, and flicked a ballpoint pen across the table with the forefinger of his other hand.
“Please,” he urged gently.
Nugent’s fingers scratched at the table, unable to capture the elusive pen. Finally, he got hold of it and scrawled his signature across the sheet of stationery near the bottom.
The man flipped open Nugent’s wallet and thumbed one of the credit cards onto the table. His eyes darted from plastic to paper and back. Satisfied the signatures matched, he holstered the Kalishnikov, fumbling briefly with the leather tie-down, which refused to fasten over its brass pip.
“Sorry,” Nugent blurted, relieved. “I mean, nothing personal. I was only doing my job. I mean—”
Weapon secured, the man stiffened his hand — fingers aligned, thumb crooked back, palm parallel to the floor — and straightened the bend in his elbow with a sudden snap. The hand exploded from within his sport jacket, covering the short distance from the shoulder holster to Nugent’s head in an eyeblink. The hardened edge drove upward, connected solidly across the width of Nugent’s lower brow, and silenced him. The force of the blow shattered the bones that form the eye sockets and frontal section of the cranium and lifted him off the floor.
Before unleashing the expertly delivered smash, the man stepped to his right — adjusting his angle to insure the momentum would propel Nugent toward the bed, where he landed with a barely audible thud and lay motionless.
The man took a pair of surgeon’s gloves from his pocket, pulling them on as he returned to the table. Then he rolled the sheet of Churchco stationery into the Olivetti and typed a suicide note above Nugent’s signature, copying from a draft he brought with him. When finished, he removed it from the typewriter and slipped it beneath Nugent’s wallet.
Then, he crossed to the bed, hefted Nugent’s limp body over a shoulder, walked out the sliding glass door onto the balcony, and eased him over the railing.
Early the next morning, a pool maintenance crew found Nugent’s broken body on the concrete decking, below a line of balconies.
The caption in the Herald’s late morning edition read: “EXECUTIVE LEAPS TO DEATH.”
The subsequent police and coroner’s investigations concluded that Richard Nugent had taken his own life. They found no evidence of foul play nor witnesses thereto. The suicide note presented a familiar profile: depression, a failed marriage, business pressure, diminishing confidence, debt, thoughts of embezzlement, a meaningless existence.
Reactions of friends and business associates were contradictory, ranging from “Not Dick, no way, not a chance,” to “He was sending out a lot of signals, I just missed them.”
Those in Churchco’s Petroleum Division whose professional shortcomings were revealed by the posthumous publication of Nugent’s report snidely attributed his suicide to guilt. But none of them were reprimanded for the oil tonnage discrepancy. Dick Nugent had caught it for the Kira, and all references to it had been deleted from his report.
BOOK ONE
HOUSTON
“Zealous to aid mankind, each of three was a saint. Fired by the same wise aim, marked by the same restraint. Though each took his own individual course, For all roads lead to Rome.”
Chapter One
On a cool day in February, Theodor Scoville Churcher rode the grounds of his Chappell Hill estate on horseback, as he did every morning. His reined hands punched the air as he let the black Arabian full-out in a grove of aspen.
Soon, the big horse exploded from the trees.
Churcher leaned back exhilarated.
The hard-breathing animal settled into a slower cadence, and pranced toward an early Napoleonic era mansion that presided over acres of lawns and formal gardens where fountains splashed.
Churcher had purchased the structure years ago from a bankrupt French nobleman. He had it dismantled, crated, shipped, and reassembled here—40 miles northwest of Houston — as a wedding present for his wife, Cordelia. The headstone that marked her grave stood beneath an immense live oak on a line between the mansion and his private museum.
As the pick of the prizewinning Arabians he raised cantered beneath him, Churcher thought about the latest addition to his vast art collection. By the time he returned to the stables, he’d become especially anxious to spend the half hour prior to departing for his corporate headquarters with the masterpiece.
Churcher swung down from the saddle and handed the reins to his son, Andrew.
“Hell of a ride! Hell of an animal!” Churcher enthused. “Double our GNP when he gets to stud. Packs the wallop of a twister.”
“Be a good name for his first foal,” Andrew said.
Andrew Churcher was slim and rangy, with reddish hair, glinting eyes, and a love of animals and open spaces — a cowboy in the most noble sense of the word. He was as approachable as his father was intimidating. His preference for saddle over desk chair, chaps over business suit, bedroll over four-poster-that he found the whole of his father’s activities an anathema, and told him so — had once ended communication between Churcher and his only son for almost a year.
Churcher nodded enthusiastically at the name Andrew suggested. “Yeah, I like that!” he bellowed, slapping Andrew across the back. “You got it, boy. That’s what we’ll call him — GNP.”
Andrew scowled.
“What’s that mean?”
“I said, Twister’d be a good name.”
“The hell you did,” Churcher said, his expression softening as he mused, considering it. “Not bad, though.”
“Well, that’s what I meant,” Andrew said, surprised at the admission. He had no doubt it would be short-lived. It was the thing that irritated him most about his father. He would keep coming at you until he found a way to turn things his way. Theodor Churcher was never wrong.
“But, not what you said,” Churcher went on. “Word never came out of your mouth, right?”
Andrew nodded grudgingly.
“You have to articulate, boy. Articulate. Never assume someone’s going to read your mind. And to make sure you don’t forget it, first foal’s going to be named GNP.” He snapped his head, turned, and strode off.
Churcher smiled the instant his back was to Andrew. He was pleased at the exchange; pleased that once bridged, the chasm had continued to narrow, thanks to the Arabians. The spirited animals had provided a common focus, and brought them together. Andrew raised them with the love and dedication he had neither family nor career to absorb. And Churcher reveled at millions they generated in sales and tax write-offs.
Andrew’s eyes had too many lines for his twenty-eight years. They crinkled with admiration as he watched his father leave the stables in that aggressive, jut-jawed strut. The old coot was right, he thought. He swung an apologetic glance to the horse.
“Sorry about that, old buddy,” he whispered.
He polished the glistening coat on the animal’s neck with his palm.
“We’ll name the second foal Twister, okay?”
The Arabian snorted as if it understood.
Andrew grinned. Despite the friction, the newly burgeoning relationship was important to him, too.
After showering and exchanging riding clothes for a Saville Row three-piece, Theodor Churcher crossed the grounds to the entrance to his private art museum.
The stone entrance kiosk perched atop a rolling hillside, and was the only part of the museum above ground. The twelve galleries and immense storage rooms were buried beneath tons of hard packed earth.