The Road to Gandolfo by Robert Ludlum Page A

in the field—operating way the hell behind the lines, of course—when I wondered how I could bring myself to do the things I did. But then the answer was always the same. I was trained to survive, boy. And survive I do.” The Hawk now had four piles of Xeroxes neatly to the left of the briefcase on the desk. He tapped his fingers over them as if playing a piano and then looked over at Sam pensively. “I think you’re going to do real fine. You
will
accept the temporary appointment as my attorney, won’t you? Won’t be for long.”
    “And it’s a little more complicated than investments, isn’t it?” Devereaux remained well back in the couch.
    “A mite, I suspect.”
    “And if I refuse I don’t even have to worry about Brokemichael. He’s minor. Now there’s a small matter of removing classified files from G-two. No statute of limitations on that little caper.”
    “Don’t imagine there is.”
    “What do you want me to do?”
    “Work up some contracts. Pretty simple stuff, I should think. I’m forming a company. A corporation, I guess you’d call it.”
    Sam inhaled deeply. “That’s really kind of amusing, if it weren’t so sad. Purpose and intent notwithstanding, there’s a not-so-minor item called capitalization required when you form a corporation. I know your finances. I hate to disabuse you but you’re not exactly in the corporate assets league.”
    “No faith, that’s your trouble. I expect you’ll change.”
    “And what does that cryptic remark mean?”
    “It means I’ve got the assets figured out to the dollar, that’s what it means.” Hawkins planted his fingers over the Xeroxes in an elongated press. As if he had found the Lost Chord.
    “What assets?”
    “Forty million dollars.”
    “
What!
” In his stunned disbelief, Sam leaped up from the couch. The dangling steel chain followed swiftly and, in a howling instant of pain, the bottom links whipped across his eye.
    His left eye.
    The room went around and around.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Devereaux ripped open the envelope the instant he closed the hotel door. He pulled out the rectangular slip of heavy paper and stared at it.
    It was a cashier’s check made out to his name. The amount was for ten thousand dollars.
    It was absurd.
    Everything was absurd; nothing made any sense at all.
    He had been a civilian for exactly one week. There had been no hitches regarding his discharge; no Brokemichael surfaced, and no last-minute problems developed in the office because he had not gone to the office until an hour before his formal separation from the army. And when he arrived he not only had a patch over his left eye, but a thick bandage around his right wrist. From burns.
    He had moved out of his apartment, sent his belongings to Boston, but did not follow them because a devious son of a bitch named MacKenzie Hawkins stated that he needed “his attorney” in New York. Therefore Sam had a two-room suite at the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue, reserved and paid for. The suite was leased for a month; Hawkins thought it would be enough time.
    For what? MacKenzie was not yet ready to “spell it out.” However, Sam was not to worry; everything was “on the expense account.”
    Whose expense account?
    The corporation’s.
    What corporation?
    The one Sam would soon be forming.
    Absurd!
    Forty million dollars’ worth of delusions that screamed for a frontal lobotomy.
    And now a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars. Free and clear and no receipt required.
    Ridiculous! Hawkins could not afford it. Besides, he had gone too far. People did not send other people (especially lawyers) ten thousand dollars without some kind of explanation. It simply was not healthy.
    Sam walked over to the hotel telephone, checked the confusing litany on the pull-out tab beneath the instrument, and placed a call to MacKenzie.
    “Goddamn, boy! That’s no way to behave! I mean, you might at least say thank you.”
    “What the hell for? Accessory to theft? Where did