"All right, Nick," Hawk said.
"Then I'll see you at your hotel."
I was seated across a large mahogany desk from Herr Ludwig Schmidt, the West German deputy ambassador, who was supposed to have taken Tanya to the reception the night I met her. Schmidt was reclining in his high-backed chair, a long cigarette in his right hand.
"Oh, yes. I took Fraulein Hoffmann to the reception. She wanted to attend a diplomatic function. She is a bright girl, you know. She called in sick right after the reception. Apparently she ate something at a bullfight that upset her stomach terribly. She has still not returned to work."
"How long has she been with you here?" I asked.
"Not long. A Hamburg girl, if I'm not mistaken. Her father was a Russian refugee."
"Is that what she told you?"
"Yes. She speaks German with a slight accent because of her family situation. Her family spoke Russian in the home."
"Yes," I said, "I see."
Herr Schmidt was a very thin, sexless man in his forties, obviously very satisfied with his role in life. "A lovely girl, don't you agree?" he asked.
I remembered the times I'd been with her on the sofa, cot, and bed. "A very lovely girl. Can I reach her at the address listed in your files?" It was the same place she'd taken me the night she'd drugged me.
"Why, I'm sure you can. She is ill, after all."
"Yes. In case I don't find her at home, do you know of anyplace else I might look? Restaurants or cafes or special places for relaxation?"
"But I have told you the girl is ill."
"Please," I said impatiently.
He seemed irritated by my insistence. "Well, I myself have taken her to lunch on occasion at a small caf6 near here. I don't remember the name, but she likes the Venezuelan hallaca, and they serve it there. It is a cornmeal dish."
"I know," I said. I remembered that Tanya had ordered that at El Jardín after the bullfight.
Schmidt smugly stared at the ceiling. "Actually, I think the girl is attracted to me," he said confidentially, "Being a bachelor in this city is a delightfully consuming pastime."
"I suppose," I said. "Well, I'll try to find her at home, Herr Schmidt. Good afternoon to you."
He didn't get up. "My pleasure," he said. He stared up at the ceiling again, probably daydreaming about his sexual potential as an unmarried male in Caracas.
I really didn't expect to find Tanya at her apartment. She must have arranged to leave it the minute the last phase of the operation began — my capture. But I hoped I'd find some land of clue there. I was met on the main floor of the building by a fat Venezuelan portera who didn't speak any English.
"Buenos tardes, señor," she said loudly, a big grin on her face.
"Buenos tardes," I answered. "I'm looking for a young woman named Ilse Hoffmann."
"Ah, yes. But she doesn't live here any more. She moved out very suddenly, several days ago. An unusual foreign girl, if you will excuse me for saying it."
I smiled. "Did she take everything with her?"
"I haven't checked the apartment carefully. There are so many apartments here, and I am a busy woman."
"Would you mind if I took a look upstairs?" I asked.
She gave me a hard look. "It is against the rules. Who are you, please?"
"Just a friend of Miss Hoffmann's," I said. I reached into my pocket and offered the woman a fistful of bolívares.
She looked at them, then back at me. She reached out and took the money, looking around her shoulder down the hall. "It is number eight," she said. "The door is unlocked."
"Thanks," I said.
I climbed the stairs to her apartment. With luck, I might be able to stop Tanya and her comrades before they caught a plane to Moscow. But I was worried — they undoubtedly knew by now that their plot had failed.
Upstairs, I entered the apartment. Memories crashed in on me again in rapid succession. The wide sofa sat in the middle of the room, just as it had on that night when Tanya had bartered her body for the capture of an American agent. I closed the door behind me and looked around. It was all so different now. It lacked the life, the vibrancy, that Tanya had given it. I rummaged through the drawers of a small desk and found nothing but a couple of theater tickets. They wouldn't do me much good in the next twenty-four hours. I moved on through the rest of the apartment. I went into the bedroom and found a crumpled bullfight program in the wastebasket there. I recognized Tanya's handwriting because she scribbled the notes on the program when I was with her at the bullfight. Just some kind of reminder to pick up groceries. It was worthless to me. I'd just thrown it back into the wastebasket when I heard a sound in the living room. The door to the corridor had opened and closed very quietly.
I reached for Wilhelmina and moved up tight against the wall beside the door. There was only silence from the other room. Somebody was stalking me. Somebody who had been watching the apartment building and was worried I'd get too close for comfort. Maybe it was Tanya herself. I heard an almost inaudible squeak of a board under the carpet. I knew the exact location of that board, since I'd stepped on it earlier myself. There didn't seem to be any reason to put off the confrontation. I stepped out into the doorway.
A man stood in the center of the room, holding a revolver. He was my mystery man, and the gun was the same one he'd pointed at my head in Washington and the one I now remembered seeing in the white corridor at the KGB laboratory. He whirled around when he heard me.
"Drop it," I said.
But he had other ideas. He fired. I realized he was going to shoot a split-second before the gun went off, and dived for the floor. The revolver barked out loudly in the room, and the slug slammed into the wall behind me as I hit the floor. The gun roared again and chipped up wood at my side as I rolled over and came up firing. I fired three times. The first slug smashed a lamp behind the gunman. The second entered his chest and drove him backward into the wall. The third shot caught him in the side of the face, just under the cheekbone, and blasted out the side of his head, spattering the wall with a crimson mess. He hit the floor hard, but he never even felt it. The man who had haunted me all through this mission was dead before his body knew it.
"Damn!" I muttered. I'd had a live witness, a man who could have told me everything. But I'd had to kill him.
I got to my feet quickly. People in the building would have heard the shots. I went over to the sprawled figure and looked through his pockets. Nothing. No I.D., false or otherwise. But there was a small scrawled message on a scrap of paper. It said merely:
T. La Masia. 1930.
I jammed the paper into my pocket and went to a window. I could hear footsteps and voices in the corridor. I pulled the window open and stepped out onto a fire escape. In minutes I was on the ground, leaving the building far behind me.
It was getting dark by the time I came out onto the street. The message on the note was turning over and over in my mind. There was a La Masia restaurant on Avenida Casanova. I stopped suddenly, remembering. I'd heard of the place because it was noted for its hallaca, Tanya's favorite Venezuelan dish, if she'd told me and her friend Ludwig the truth. Could it be, I wondered, that the T stood for Tanya and that the mystery man, apparently a Russian agent, intended to meet Tanya there at 19:30 hours — or 7:30 p.m.? It was the only lead I had, so I might as well follow it.
I arrived at the restaurant early. Tanya was nowhere in sight. I took a table at the rear, where I could see everything without being observed, and waited. At 7:32, Tanya walked in.