The Talbot Odyssey by Nelson DeMille

left the room, and Abrams reached around the door and retaped the security chain. Frank relocked the door, and they took the elevator back to the ground floor.
    Abrams stood at the service exit. “Thanks, Frank. Listen, do you think this will affect the committee’s decision on my membership application?”
    Frank smiled gamely. “No, sir.”
    “Good. Good. Don’t tell them about the basement of the pork store, okay? Or the illegal entry, or me pulling a gun on you.
Capice?”
He put his finger to the man’s lips.
“Omerta.”
    Frank nodded enthusiastically and moved off as quickly as he could without actually running.
    Abrams left by the service door, and found himself in an areaway filled with trash bins. He walked down a dark alley toward the front of the building and came out through a stone arch onto 54th Street. He crossed the street and approached an unmarked van. A private detective sat in the driver’s seat. Abrams said, “Anything new?”
    The detective, an ex-policeman like himself, named Walter, squinted in the bad light. “Nah. But it sounds to me like somebody wants to grease this guy Carbury, right? That could get hairy.”
    Abrams lit a cigarette. “He’ll be carrying a briefcase. Keep an eye on that briefcase.”
    “What’s this all about, Abrams?”
    “I don’t know. But be prepared to do whatever you have to do to protect him and whatever he’s carrying. The firm is solidly behind you.”
    “Yippee.”
    Abrams moved away from the van and crossed Fifth Avenue, making his way through the hurrying pedestrians. He wondered if he’d overstepped himself on this assignment. It seemed, though, that Katherine Kimberly was very anxious about this, and he had only reacted accordingly. He realized that he too was anxious, not about Carbury but about Katherine Kimberly’s evaluation of his work.
    But what the hell did she know about this type of work? She sat in her forty-fourth-floor ivory tower and gave him assignments with as much self-assurance as his old captain had. . . . It never occurred to her that she should confide in him. Yet, instead of feeling resentful, he played her game and helped her understand the investigative end of the business, even covered for her a few times. This was a type of loyalty that he’d given to only a few of the very best commanders he’d worked for.
    He thought perhaps he was interested in her, but he knew he couldn’t be, because nothing could come of it but pain. And no rational man wanted pain. Therefore, he was curious but not interested.
    After a time he looked up and was surprised to find he had covered almost twenty blocks and was approaching the street where the town house was located. He walked up to a pay phone, thinking as he dialed the Lombardy that he had never been a guest in a town house before, and certainly never had a tuxedo delivered to one. He remembered a favorite line from Thoreau: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.”

 
     

12
    Katherine Kimberly entered the lobby of the Lombardy Hotel. The concierge, Maurice, rushed forward with words of greeting, adding, “Monsieur Thorpe is in, madame.” Maurice took her umbrella, then escorted her to a back corner of the lobby, opened an elevator with a key, and ushered her in.
    As she rode up she reflected, not for the first time, that
she
did not have a key to the elevator or to the apartment. Peter’s explanation had been simple and rather direct, yet whimsical, as was his manner: “My heart is yours, my possessions are yours, but the suite belongs to my father and is leased to the government for a dollar a year, as is my father himself. No one but Company people may have a key.”
    The elevator stopped at the twenty-second floor, which was the first floor of the penthouse triplex. She stepped into a small mintgreen hallway.
    A voice boomed out over a speaker. “Stand in front of the television camera, and put your hands on your head!”
    Katherine’s face showed a