‘Wouldn’t it be better if we waited and took the guards out?’ asked Boella, obviously the spokesman for the proposal. ‘It would take maybe half an hour – perhaps longer – to discover what had happened to them. That would give us much more time. We’d get clear of the island.’
Chambine made a reluctant movement with his head. ‘I said I didn’t want violence if it could be avoided,’ he reminded them.
‘We’re not sure if it’s safe to avoid it,’ pressed Bertrano.
‘If we are out of the car park by twelve-twenty-five, then we will have disposed of the cases by twelve-forty,’ said Chambine. ‘By twelve-fifty you’ll be paid off and on your way. If the alarm is raised promptly at twelve-thirty, I can’t imagine the police getting themselves organised in twenty minutes, can you?’
‘And what happens if we don’t get away from the car park by twelve-twenty-five?’ asked Boella stubbornly.
For several moments, Chambine did not reply. Then he said, ‘I agree it’s a problem.’
‘So how do we resolve it?’ asked Bertrano.
Chambine sighed, reaching the decision. ‘I shall be outside in the car park, with Saxby and Boella,’ he said, addressing them as a group. ‘I’ll be responsible for time checking that part of the operation. If it becomes clear that we’re not going to be able to get away – completely away – a few moments before twelve-twenty-five, then we’ll stay and hit the security people as soon as they enter the room…’ There were relieved smiles from the men in front of him. ‘I’m agreeing to it because it is obviously the sensible thing to do,’ he went on. ‘But if I can, I’ll avoid it…’ He looked specifically at Saxby, Boella and Petrilli. ‘Don’t forget what I said about those guns,’ he warned them. ‘If we get away without trouble, I want them dumped. I’m not having something as sweet as this screwed up by an unlicensed weapon arrest.’
Saxby and Boella nodded and Petrilli said, ‘Sure, I won’t forget.’
‘I mean it,’ stressed Chambine.
‘Okay!’ said Saxby.
Chambine hesitated at the challenge in Saxby’s voice and then decided to let it pass. Instead he looked at Bertrano. ‘I’d like the suite for a meeting.’
‘Sure,’ agreed the man from Chicago.
Chambine extended the conversation, to include them all.
‘And I’d appreciate your all being away from the hotel from noon to maybe four o’clock.’
Saxby grinned. ‘So he’s a shy guy.’
‘Yes,’ said Chambine. ‘He’s a shy man. And for fifty thousand apiece, he buys his right to stay that way.’
‘Nobody minds,’ said Bertrano.
‘I’ll be here before noon,’ said Chambine. ‘At exactly midday, I’ll telephone the Papeete Bay Verandah at the Polynesian Village hotel. I want to know you’re all there.’
Chambine waited for any objection to this expressed doubt that one of them might remain, to discover who the financier was.
‘We said we’d be away from the hotel,’ Bertrano reminded him quietly.
‘And I said he buys the right to remain anonymous,’ said Chambine. He waited, but no one appeared to want to take the conversation further.
‘I think this is going to work,’ said Chambine, wanting to reduce the tension that had arisen between them. ‘I want to thank you all for what you’ve done.’
‘We are as determined for this to succeed as you are,’ said Bertrano.
Chambine nodded. ‘We’ll not meet again, as a group, until Thursday. ‘I’ll be in the foyer, ready for you to arrive.’ He looked at Bertrano. ‘As soon as you enter, I’ll leave, to be in the car park when Saxby and Boella start taking out the lights. I will have earlier in the day put the station waggon and a back-up car into position immediately outside the exhibition room…’
‘What about cars after the pay-off?’ interrupted Petrilli.
‘I’ll be responsible for them, too,’ Chambine assured him. ‘There’s a metre area overlooking the sea on Ocean Boulevard. There’ll be hire cars parked there. I’ll give you the keys and numbers at the same time as the money. I’d like you all to make plane reservations to get out of Florida as soon as you can on Wednesday morning. Probably be safer to fly from Miami.’
There were assorted gestures of agreement from the men before him.
Chambine waved his hands towards the practice area. ‘And I want all this stuff dumped. And I mean dumped. I don’t want anybody trying to hock any of the cameras or lights and being remembered if there’s a police check. Just discard it. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Saxby.
‘It’s going to work,’ repeated Chambine enthusiastically. ‘It’s going to work beautifully.’
He went out of the side door of the warehouse, to which five of Pendlebury’s surveillance squad had followed him from Palm Beach. One man would remain there, later to retrieve the listening device that had been planted after F.B.I. observers attached to the group at the Contemporary Resort had trailed them to the building the day they had begun rehearsing and upon which every practice had been monitored, despite Pendlebury’s initial reluctance.
Within three hours of Chambine’s encounter with the men who were going to carry out the robbery, the recording was on its way, by car, to the F.B.I. controller at the Breakers.
General Valery Kalenin had one friend and the contrast between them made that association inexplicable to the few who knew about it. Alexei Berenkov ranked among the most successful agents ever infiltrated into the West. A flamboyant extrovert of a man, he had remained undetected for nearly fifteen years and behind the facade of a wine importer’s business in the City of London developed a network that had penetrated the NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Cabinets of two British administrations.
His capture had been a setback to Kalenin’s service. But because of their friendship, remote though it had been all those years, the seizure had distressed Kalenin even more than it would have done to have lost any other operative of Berenkov’s calibre. It had been that feeling which had made him cast aside his customary caution and agree so readily to the operation, about eight years earlier, in which the heads of the American and British Intelligence Services had been trapped by an aggrieved British agent; they had provided Kalenin with guaranteed hostages that he had used to get Berenkov repatriated from the British jail in which he had been serving a forty-year sentence.
Since Berenkov’s return, the habit had developed for them to meet at least once a week, alternating between Kalenin’s spartan apartment and Berenkov’s home, where the man’s wife always prepared the Georgian meals she knew Kalenin enjoyed.
This week it was Berenkov’s turn to visit Kutuzovsky Prospekt. They had eaten well but less elaborately than at Berenkov’s house and sat now over coffee and the remains of the French wine of which Kalenin knew his friend had become a connoisseur during his time in the West and which he preferred to Russian products. Berenkov lit a Havana cigar and sat back contentedly, thrusting his legs out before him.
‘It’s a good life,’ he said. ‘I consider myself a lucky man.’
Since his repatriation, Berenkov had been assigned to the spy college on the outskirts of Moscow and established himself as one of the better lecturers. The cowed nervousness that he had had when he first returned had completely disappeared now and only the complete whiteness of his hair remained from his period of imprisonment.
‘I’ve a slight concern,’ said Kalenin, who often used their meetings to talk about any problems that might be particularly troubling him.
‘What?’ asked Berenkov, his attention still on the cigar.
‘Seems I’ve been identified,’ said Kalenin shortly.
‘Identified?’ Berenkov looked up from the cigar, immediately attentive.
‘It really is most bizarre,’ said the K.G.B. chief. ‘There was an anonymous telephone call to the Washington Embassy, warning of a robbery of some Tsarist stamp collection. And the caller identified me by name.’
‘The C.I.A. would know, of course,’ said Berenkov thoughtfully.
‘That’s what makes me suspicious,’ said Kalenin. ‘It could be some peculiar operation to discredit us.’