«Alex?» She placed her hands carefully on his arms and looked up at him. «I know the symptoms. Believe me, I do. They’re not easy to forget… There are things you’re not telling me and I won’t ask. I’ll wait.»
«You’re overdramatizing, Alison.»
«That’s funny.»
«What is?»
«What you just said. I used those words with David. In Malaga. He was nervous, frightened. He was so unsure of himself. And of me. And I said to him: David, you’re being overly dramatic… I know now that it was at that moment he knew.»
McAuliff held her eyes with his own. «You’re not David and I’m not you. That’s as straight as I can put it. Now, I have to get to a telephone. I’ll see you later. Use the latch.»
He kissed her again, went out the door, and closed it behind him. He waited until he heard the metallic sounds of the inserted bolt, then turned toward the elevators.
The doors closed; the elevator descended. The soft music was piped over the heads of assorted businessmen and tourists; the cubicle was full. McAuliff’s thoughts were on his imminent telephone call to Westmore Tallon, his concerns about Sam Tucker.
The elevator stopped at an intermediate floor. Alex looked up at the lighted digits absently, vaguely wondering how another person could fit in the cramped enclosure. There was no need to think about the problem; the two men who waited by the parting doors saw the situation, smiled, and gestured that they would wait for the next elevator.
And then McAuliff saw him. Beyond the slowly closing panels, far down in the corridor. A stocky man in a dark jacket and light trousers. He had unlocked a door and was about to enter a room; as he did so, he pulled back his jacket to replace the key in his pocket. The shirt was yellow.
The door closed.
«Excuse me! Excuse me, please!» said McAuliff rapidly as he reached across a tuxedoed man near the panel of buttons and pushed the one marked 2, the next number in descent. «I forgot my floor. I’m terribly sorry.»
The elevator, its thrust suddenly, electronically interrupted, jerked slightly as it mindlessly prepared for the unexpected stop. The panels opened and Alex sidled past the irritated but accommodating passengers.
He stood in the corridor in front of the bank of elevators and immediately pushed the Up button. Then he reconsidered. Where were the stairs?
The EXIT — STAIRCASE sign was blue with white letters. That seemed peculiar to him; exit signs were always red. It was at the far end of the hallway. He walked rapidly down the heavily carpeted corridor, nervously smiling at a couple who emerged from a doorway at midpoint. The man was in his fifties and drunk; the girl was barely in her twenties, sober and mulatto. Her clothes were the costume of a high-priced whore. She smiled at Alex; another sort of message. He acknowledged, his eyes telling her he wasn’t interested but good luck, take the company drunk for all she could.
He pushed the crossbar on the exit door. Its sound was too loud; he closed it carefully, quietly, relieved to see there was a knob on the inside of the door.
He ran up the concrete stairs on the balls of his feet, minimizing the sound of his footsteps. The steel panel had the Roman numeral III stenciled in black over the beige paint. He twisted the knob slowly and opened the door onto the third-floor corridor.
It was empty. The nocturnal games had begun below; the players would remain in the competitive arenas until the prizes had been won or lost or forgotten in alcoholic oblivion. He had only to be alert for stragglers, or the overanxious, like the pigeon on the second floor who was being maneuvered with such precision by the child-woman mulatto. He tried to recall at which door the man in the yellow shirt had stood. He had been quite far down the hallway, but not at the end. Not by the staircase; two-thirds of the way, perhaps. On the right; he had pulled back his jacket with his right hand, revealing the yellow shirt. That meant he was not inside a door on Alex’s left. Reversing the viewpoint, he focused on three … no, four doors on his left that were possible. Beginning with the second door from the suitcase, one-third the distance to the elevators.
Which one?
McAuliff began walking noiselessly on the thick carpet down the corridor, hugging the left wall. He paused before each door as he passed, his head constantly turning, his eyes alert, his ears listening for the sound of voices, the tinkling of glasses. For anything.
Nothing.
Silence. Everywhere.
He looked at the brass numbers—218, 216, 214, 212. Even 210. Any farther would be incompatible with what he remembered.
He stopped at the halfway point and turned. Perhaps he knew enough. Enough to tell Westmore Tallon. Alison had said that the tolerance range for the electronic bugs was one hundred yards from first positioning to the receiving equipment. This floor, this section of the hotel, was well within that limit. Behind one of those doors was a tape recorder activated by a man in front of a speaker or with earphones clamped over his head.
Perhaps it was enough to report those numbers. Why should he look further?
Yet he knew he would. Someone had seen fit to intrude on his life in a way that filled him with revulsion. Few things caused him to react violently, but one of them was the actual, intended invasion of his privacy. And greed. Greed, too, infuriated him. Individual, academic, corporate.
Someone named Craft—because of his greed—had instructed his minions to invade Alex’s personal moments.
Alexander Tarquin McAuliff was a very angry man.
He started back toward the staircase, retracing his steps, close to the wall, closer to each door, where he stopped and stood immobile. Listening.
212, 214, 216, 218 …
And back once again. It was a question of patience. Behind one of those doors was a man in a yellow shirt. He wanted to find that man.
He heard it.
Room 214.
It was a radio. Or a television set. Someone had turned up the volume of a television set. He could not distinguish the words, but he could hear the excitement behind the rapid bursts of dialogue from a clouded speaker, too loud to avoid distortion.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a harsh, metallic crack of a door latch. Inches away from McAuliff someone had pulled back the bolt and was about to open the door.
Alex raced to the staircase. He could not avoid noise, he could only reduce it as much as possible as he lurched into the dimly lit concrete foyer. He whipped around, pushing the heavy steel door closed as fast and as quietly as he could; he pressed the fingers of his left hand around the edge, preventing the door from shutting completely, stopping the sound of metal against metal at the last half second.
He peered through the crack. The man in the yellow shirt came out of the room, his attention still within it. He was no more than fifty feet away in the silent corridor—silent except for the sound on the television set. He seemed angry, and before he closed the door he looked inside and spoke harshly in a Southern drawl.
«Turn that fuckin’ thing down, you goddamn ape!»
The man in the yellow shirt then slammed the door and walked rapidly toward the elevators. He remained at the end of the corridor, nervously checking his watch, straightening his tie, rubbing his shoes over the back of his trousers until a red light, accompanied by a soft, echoing bell, signaled the approach of an elevator. McAuliff watched from the stairwell two hundred feet away.
The elevator doors closed, and Alex walked out into the corridor. He crossed to Room 214 and stood motionless for a few moments. It was a decision he could abandon, he knew that. He could walk away, call Tallon, tell him the room number, and that would be that.
But it would not be very satisfying. It would not be satisfying at all. He had a better idea: he would take whoever was in that room to Tallon himself. If Tallon didn’t like it, he could go to hell. The same for Hammond. Since it was established that the electronic devices were planted by a man named Craft, who was in no way connected with the elusive Halidon, Arthur Craft could be taught a lesson.