So Lime in the Cortina awaited the emergence of a Mario Mezetti he had never laid eyes on. He had a collection of photographs and the information that Mario had been reported this morning wearing a belted brown leather coat, brown slacks and suede desert boots. He’d be difficult to miss; at any rate a gray Rolls with his luggage aboard awaited him in front of the bank and Lime’s men had all the exits covered.
Lime had taken charge last night but had left the routine surveillance to his armies. If Mezetti saw him too often he would begin to recognize Lime’s face. It was always better to let the minions handle shadow jobs with frequent changes of relays—always fresh faces.
Mezetti’s Cessna Citation had a cruising speed of four hundred mph and a range of twelve hundred miles. Lime had inscribed a circle of that radius on a map and arranged for close-interval air cover within it. Sixth Fleet had jets airborne waiting to shadow the Citation and Lime had organized a second-string team of commandeered civilian planes because the Navy Phantoms, easily recognizable, would have to keep their distance and tail mainly by radar to avoid alerting Mezetti. If Mezetti decided to fly at treetop altitudes where ground contours would absorb his radar image, he would lose Navy Air; it was better to keep visual contact. The CIA had set up a complex of ground spotter stations and Lime had a dozen planes ready to pick up the baton depending which direction Mezetti flew—Spanish jets now orbiting Malága and Seville and Cape St. Vincent, a Moroccan oil-company plane over Cape Negro, Portuguese civil-air over Lisbon and Madeira, a pair of seaplanes at Majorca and Mers-el-Kebir.
At ten forty-three the young man for whom the police and security forces of fourteen nations had been searching emerged from the main entrance of the bank carrying a heavy suitcase and entered the rear passenger compartment of the big elderly Rolls.
Lime stirred the Cortina’s transmission and squirted the little car into the northbound street ahead of the Rolls. Another car would be closing in behind it. Lime drove unhurriedly past the old Moorish castle and out past the open crossgates which were closed across the highway whenever an airplane was making use of the GibAir runway. Lime turned into the car park by the terminal, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing the Rolls draw up at the passenger door.
Lime went through private doors, had a brief conference with Chad Hill in the airport manager’s office, passed the customs line without a check and had ensconced himself beside the Navy pilot in the Lear jet before Mario Mezetti came along the runway in a courtesy car and was decanted beside the Citation, which stood warming up about fifty yards down-runway from the Lear.
When Lime’s plane swung around into position to make its takeoff run Lime twisted his head and through the plexiglass saw the Citation begin to roll.
Lime was off the ground, pressed back into his seat by the G-force of takeoff, three minutes ahead of the Citation. The Navy pilot put the Lear out over the Straits and orbited off Tangier until the Citation climbed steeply into sight and banked around toward the northeast.
“That’s enough of a lead,” Lime said. “Let’s go.”
The Navy pilot pulled the Lear around and held a position directly behind, and slightly below, the Citation. It was the Citation’s blind spot: Mezetti’s pilot would not be able to see the Lear in his rearview mirror unless he made a sudden turn or backflip.
The Citation steadied on a course east by northeast. It didn’t climb above three thousand feet. Lime, a few miles behind and five hundred feet lower, studied the millionth-scale map on his lap and reached for the copilot’s headset. “Is this thing locked in?”
“Clear channel,” the pilot said, and reached for a dial.
Lime settled the earphones over his head. “Is there a send button?”
“No. It’s an open two-way. You just talk and listen.”
That simplified things, eliminated the need for an “over” at the end of each transmission. Lime spoke into the mike that hovered before his mouth:
“Hill, this is Lime.”
“Hill right here.” The voice was metallic but clear in the headset.
“Have you got their course?”
“Yes sir. I’ve alerted Majorca.”
“It looks like a change in flight plan.”
“Yes sir. We’re ready for it.”
The Citation flew straight and level for fifteen minutes and then the pilot jogged Lime’s knee. “He’s got his wheels down.”
Lime looked up from the map in time to see the Citation start a slow left turn, the nose going down into an easy glide. The sea was beneath the Lear’s starboard wing, the Spanish coastline immediately below and the foothills rising to his left; the peaks of the Sierras loomed several thousand feet above the airplane, some miles north. It began to appear the Citation was descending straight toward the mountains.
“Hill, this is Lime.”
“Yes sir. We’ve still got him on radar—hold it, he just disappeared.”
“I’ve still got him. He’s put his gear down.”
The airplane ahead was still turning slowly. Lime nodded to the pilot and the Lear followed in the Cessna’s wake.
“You want our gear down, Mr. Lime?”
“No.” There were no commercial airfields in the area toward which the Citation was descending. If Mezetti was about to set down in a pasture it would hardly do to land right behind him. “Keep some altitude,” Lime said. “Swing a little wide—if he lands we want to see the place but we’ll shoot past.”
“All right sir.”
Hill on the headset: “Sir, he picked up the consignment as ordered.”
“Thank you.” Mezetti had telephoned the bank yesterday and requested they have one hundred thousand dollars in cash on hand for him. This was confirmation he had collected it. Clearly then he was doing courier duty and it could be assumed he was now headed for a rendezvous with the others in order to turn over the money.
It all looked a little too easy; but Lime reminded himself they wouldn’t have been shadowing Mezetti at all if it hadn’t been for the single fortuitous fingerprint on the garage light switch in Palamos.
The Cessna was quite low along the foothills, banking back and forth, obviously searching for something. Lime said, “Keep going—make it look as if we’re on a regular flight to Majorca. Don’t slow down and don’t circle.”
Into the microphone he said, “Chad?”
“Yes sir.”
“He’s going down in map sector Jay-Niner, the northwest quadrant.”
“Jay-Niner northwest, yes sir. I’ll alert the nearest ground team.”
“We’re going by. We’ll want a crisscross.”
“Yes sir.”
The Spanish plane from Malága would overfly the sector within four minutes to confirm the Citation had actually landed. Lime, looking back with his cheek to the plexiglass window, had a last glimpse of the little jet descending toward a field encircled by foothills. There were two or three small peasant-farm buildings on the edge of the field and a ribbony road that headed south toward Almería.
“Swing out over the Med and take us back to Gibraltar.”
The Lear touched down neatly and braked the length of the runway and made a slow turn at the end of the strip to taxi back to the terminal.
Chad Hill came loping out to meet him. The young man seemed unable to contain himself. “They’ve got another tape!”
Lime said, “What tape?”
“He left one of those tapes on the roof of the hotel. You know, with a transmitter. Like last time.”
“Fairlie’s voice again?”
“No sir, it’s in Morse.”
He was out of cigarettes. “Anybody got a cigarette?” One of the technicians obliged. It was a Gauloise and when Lime lit up, rancid fumes instantly filled the little room.
The police station was crowded; the CIA people were working on the apparatus Mezetti had left on the hotel roof. It had a timer set to start the tape playback at eight o’clock tonight.