Road to Omaha by Robert Ludlum

Author:Robert Ludlum [Ludlum, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: American Fiction, Indians of North America
ISBN: 9789579811330
Google: RZ4XAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0553560441
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1991-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

glass doors, and presented his card to a statuesque British

receptionist.

Salvatore DAmbrosia, Consultint. The card was printed by his

cousin on a press at Rikers Island.

"I should like to have a meet with a certain Ivan Salamander,"

said Salvatore.

"Is he expecting you, sir?"

"It don't make no never mind, call it in, pussycat."

"I'm sorry, Mr. D'Ambrosia, but one doesn't call the president of Axel-Burlap without prior notification, and certainly not in person

without a previously scheduled appointment."

"Try me, sweetheart, or maybe I have to break your desk."

"What?

"Just call, capisce?"

Mt D'Ambrosia was instantly admitted into the walnutpaneled

sanctum sanctorum. of one Ivan Salamander, president of Wall

Street's third largest brokerage house.

Page 371

THE ROAD TO OMAHA 355

"What ... whaat?" shrieked the gaunt, bespectacled Salamander, wiping the perpetual sweat that oozed from his hairline. "You gotta scare the shit out of some lousy, receptionist who's got a ton of

class for which I paid airfare, a Blackglama mink, and a salary my

wife can no way find out?"

"We gotta talk, Mr. Salamander, and more important, you gotta

listen. Also, your private secaterry wasn't too perturbed.11

"Certainly, certainly, I told her to stay ice cold!" yelled Ivan the Terrible, as he was known on the Street. "You think I'm dumb? ...

Dumb I'm not, Mr. Musclebound, and I would much prefer that

whatever you have to say to me should be said in some rotten

spaghetti dump in Brooklyn!"

"My associates and me ain't too partial to your smelly salami and your give-into-fish, either. Your delicatessens stink up the

neighborhoods."

"So our culinary differences are settled, what've you got that I should waste my valuable time on a street soldier? Hahn, hahn?"

"Because what I've got for you comes from the big, man himself,

and if you've got a tape job in here, he'll rip your throat out.

Capisce?"

"On my word, on my word, no such thing! You think I'm crazy?

... What does the big man sayT'

"Buy defense, especially aircraft and related-wait a minute, I

gotta read this." D'Ambrosia reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "Yeah, here it is. Aircraft and every related supply component-that's it, component, that's the word I

couldn'tremember."

"And that's crazy! Defense is going into the toilet, the budget's cut everywhere!"

"Here's the rest of it, and I repeat, if you gotta tape rollin', you're on a meat hook."

"Never, are you meshugaT'

"Things have changed one whole hell of a lot." Meat again

looked at his instructions, for several moments reading silently with his lips. "Okay, here it is.... Alarming events have tooken place,"

continued D'Ambrosia, his voice as flat as his eyes, a man recalling

from quasi-rote,

Page 372

356 ROBERT LUDLUM

"which the country can't know too much about because of which the panic that might sue--2'

"Maybe you mean ensue?"

"I'm on your side. Whatever."

"Go ahead."

"There has been a lot of interference with the sub ...

substratisforic military sattelactic transmissions which concludes

high altitudenal aircraft are ... fuckin' up the works."

"High altitude-U-2 types? The Russkies are going back on their

nice words?"

" 'The specific hostile equipment has not been firmly identified,'

" replied Meat, now unfolding the paper and reading-as best he

could. ". . . 'however, as the incidents have increased in numbers and ferocosity, and the .

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