The Road to Omaha by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online

and conceivably some heavy drinking.”
    “What did you say to that?”
    “I wasn’t married to Lansing Devereaux without learning a few things, Mr. Pinkus. I know damned well that when a man gets broiled because the pressures become too much, it’s a reasonable petcock to let off steam. Those Janie-come-lately liberated females should give a little in that department. The man still has to keep the lion from invading the cave; that hasn’t changed, and biologically it shouldn’t. He’s the poor fool who has to take the heat—physically, morally, and legally.”
    “I’m beginning to see where Sam gets his acumen.”
    “Then you’d be wrong, Aaron—may I call you Aaron?”
    “With the greatest of my pleasure … Eleanor.”
    “You see, ‘acumen’ or perception or whatever you want to call it can only be useful if there’s imagination first. That’s what my Lansing had, only the macho times restricted my supplying a stronger balance, the supplemental caution, if you like.”
    “You’re a remarkable woman … Eleanor.”
    “Another brandy, Aaron?”
    “Why not? I’m a student in the presence of a teacher of things I have never really considered. I may go home to my wife and fall on my knees.”
    “Don’t overplay it. We like to believe we’re manipulators.”
    “Back to your son,” said Pinkus, sipping his brandy in two swallows rather than one. “You say he didn’t refer to General Hawkins by name or by title, but you implied that he
did
allude to him … when not necessarily sober, which is perfectly understandable. What did he say?”
    “He’d ramble on about ‘the Hawk,’ that’s what he called him,” mused Eleanor softly, her head arched back in the brocaded sofa. “Sam said he was a legitimate hero, a military genius abandoned by the very people who once praised him as their spokesman, their idol, but who fled from him the moment he became an embarrassment. An embarrassment despite the fact that in his actions he was fulfilling their fantasies, their dreams. But he was doing it for real, and that terrified them, because, again, they knew that their fantasies, if acted upon, might lead to disaster. Like most fanatics who’ve never been in a real fight, they find embarrassment and death unattractive.”
    “And
Sam
?”
    “He claimed he never agreed with the Hawk, never wanted to be associated with him, but was somehow forced to—how I don’t know. Sometimes when he just wanted to talk, he’d make up incredible stories, pure nonsense, like meeting hired killers at night on a golf course—he actually named a country club on Long Island.”
    “Long Island, as in New York?”
    “Yes. And how he negotiated contracts worth a great deal of money with British traitors in London’s Belgrave Square and with former Nazis on chicken farms in Germany … even Arab sheiks in the desert who were actually slumlords in Tel Aviv and wouldn’t permit Egypt’s army to shell their properties during the Yom Kippur war.
Insane
stories, Aaron, I tell you they were—
are
—totally mad.”
    “Totally mad,” repeated Pinkus quietly, weakly, a knotforming in his stomach. “You say, ‘are’? He still tells these crazy stories?”
    “Not as much as he used to, but yes, when he’s terribly distressed or has had that extra martini he didn’t need, and wanders down from his lair.”
    “His lair, like in cave, perhaps?”
    “That’s what he calls it, his ‘château’s lair.’ ”
    “ ‘Château,’ like in a very big house or a castle?”
    “Yes, he even speaks now and then of a great château in Zermatt, Switzerland, and of his ‘Lady Anne’ and ‘Uncle Zio’—pure unadulterated fantasies! I believe the word is ‘nuts.’ ”
    “I sincerely hope so,” mumbled Pinkus.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Oh, nothing. Does Samuel spend much time in his ‘lair,’ Eleanor?”
    “He never leaves it except for an occasional dinner with me. It’s actually the east wing of the house,