Hands reached out and took the shield from me. “Inside, Mr. St. Ives,” a voice said, and I recognized it as belonging to Mr. Ulado, who lifted the shield into the rear of the four-place machine. When it was stowed away he picked up a sub-machine gun that was the twin of the one that Mbwato had had and in a casual, practiced way loosed another burst at the two men with rifles.
“They must have circled around,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Get in,” Ulado said. “Where’s Mr. Mbwato?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Halfway up Henry Hill.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Get in.”
I climbed into the back. Ulado got in the seat next to the pilot, a slim young Negro who wore a green velour shirt and a coconut straw hat with a plain black band. “Dulles,” Ulado barked at him, and the young Negro nodded and shot the helicopter up.
Ulado turned around in his seat to face me. “The pilot,” he yelled. “Trained in Vietnam.” I nodded and sank back in the hard canvas seat. It was a short hop, not more than ten minutes, if that. The pilot talked over his radio to the tower and set the copter down not far from the main terminal. Ulado got out and I crawled after him. He reached into the cockpit of the machine and wrestled the shield out.
“Mbwato said you’d know what to do with it,” I said.
Captain Ulado nodded gravely. “I do, Mr. St. Ives. May I thank you for all your help. We say good-by here. I have a plane standing by on the runway.” He put the shield down so that it rested against his left leg and held out his right hand. I shook it.
“You’ll never know how much we appreciate your efforts,” he said, picked up the shield, turned, and walked off into the dark. I started to call after him, to tell him that he’d forgotten his sub-machine gun, but perhaps he didn’t need it any more.
I walked toward the terminal, found my way up to the main lobby, and then located someone who could tell me what I wanted to know. “You have a chartered plane leaving here in a few minutes with a friend of mine on board,” I said. “I think it’s a prop job.”
The man in blue uniform flipped through some cards on the counter. “Yes,” he said. “A Constellation. Chartered by a Mr. Mbwato — I think that’s how you pronounce it.” He turned and looked at the clock on the wall behind him. “It should be departing any moment now.”
“Could you tell me its destination?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Rotterdam.”
Chapter twenty-five
At eight o’clock the next morning I was lying in a bed in the room at the Madison, staring up at the ceiling, and waiting for someone to come and take me away when the telephone rang. It was a Miss Schulte who said that she worked for Hertz.
“The car that you reported stolen has been found in Silver Spring, Mr. St. Ives. That’s in Maryland. It was undamaged except for the rear window, which apparently has a bullet hole in it.”
“I wonder how that got there?” I said.
She said that she didn’t know but that the insurance would take care of it. Then she asked whether I would like to come down to pay for the rental or would I like her to bill me. I told her to bill me and she said that would be fine.
“And the next time you need a car, Mr. St. Ives, be sure to call Hertz.” I promised that I would and hung up.
I hadn’t reported the car as being either missing or stolen so I assumed that Spencer’s gray-clad private troopers had tidied things up when they got through shooting at me. I also assumed that they had collected the bodies, picked up the spent shell cases, and even policed the area for old cigarette butts before driving the rented Ford to Silver Spring and dumping it there. I wondered what they had done with Mbwato and whether anyone would ever come looking for him, but a billion dollars could hide almost anything, even a dead body as large as that of the colonel from Komporeen who, when alive, may have been the world’s most accomplished liar. I spent a few moments speculating about how much the Dutch-British combine would pay Captain Ulado for the shield in Rotterdam and whether he would spend some of it in Corfu or Acapulco, and if, while spending it, he would ever think about the children with distended bellies who went around eating mud, straw, twigs, and chalk. I felt that if he did think about it, it wouldn’t bother him much, no more than it would have bothered Colonel Mbwato.
I called down for some breakfast and The Washington Post and when they came I read a brief story about how the caretaker at the Manassas National Battlefield Park last night had reported hearing a series of gunshots near the statue of Stonewall Jackson, but after investigating, police said that they had found nothing. I was pouring my third cup of coffee when someone knocked at the door. It was Lieutenant Demeter wearing a green sport shirt and light gray slacks.
“My day off,” he said as he came in the room, looked around with his cop’s eyes, and selected a comfortable chair.
“Coffee?” I said.
“Sure. Black.”
I handed him a cup and then went back to my chair. “Haven’t found it yet,” Demeter said, and sipped at his coffee.
“What?”
“The shield.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t seem much interested, St. Ives.”
“I’m not any more. The Coulter Museum has decided that it no longer needs my services, such as they are.”
Demeter nodded and placed his cup and saucer on a table. “That’s what the Wingo woman told me last night. I gave her a call because I was trying to find you. She was kind of shook up, said that you gave her a rough time — almost accused her of being in on the whole thing.”
“Just talk,” I said.
“That all?”
“That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Demeter said. “That’s what I figured. Reason I was calling you yesterday, I wanted to tell you about your two little pals.”
“What pals?”
“The kid and his girl. The thieves.”
“What about them?”
“They got a lawyer.”
“So?”
“Well, he’s not just a lawyer, he’s about the best that money can buy. A whole lot of money.”
“Who?”
“Wilfred Coley.”
“That’s a whole lot of money,” I said.
“So I was wondering who was going to pick up his tab.”
“Ask Coley,” I said.
“He won’t say.”
“You’re asking me?”
“That’s right, St. Ives, I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know,” I lied. It would be Spencer, of course, still tidying things up.
“I think you do,” Demeter said.
“I’m out of it, Lieutenant, all the way out.”
Demeter leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He looked relaxed, rested, and unhurried. It was his day off and he had no place better to go. “It should be real interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“Watching Coley work on you.”
“Me?”
“At the trial. You’ll be a key witness for the prosecution.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“He’ll cut you up into little pieces. Little, bitty ones.”
“He’s good, I understand.”
“He’ll turn you inside out and every way but loose. But, of course, you’re smart. You won’t tell him anything but the truth. Just like you’re telling me. Oh, you might leave out a little — like the two spades and their curling iron. You might leave that out.”