"In the same line of business, boy; but by no means in the same way of business. That sweet little setup I had in Casablanca was the result of thirty years' hard work. You can't replace that overnight. But, thank the dear Lord, I still had me overseas contacts and there were one or two souls were prepared to lend me a quid or two till I was on me feet again – if you see what I mean - so it begins, it begins."
"In that case," Illya said, "maybe you could be of help again."
"But of course, of course. Always ready to oblige an old client. Here, you're still standing up! Sit you down, sit you down. Let me fetch you a little something to refresh yourself. A vodka?"
"I'd rather have a Steinhaegger with a nice cold beer as a chaser, if your cellar can run to that."
"Certainly." The fat man detached a small, square box, louvered on one side, from the arm of his chair, raised it to his mouth, pressed a button, and called, "Joana! Are you there?"
Kuryakin smiled. The device, which would bleep until whoever was carrying its mate answered, was the same pattern as those used for local communications by the operatives of U.N.C,L.E.
"Yes, sir. You wanted something?" The soft voice came from the transceiver in the Irishman's hand.
"I did. A Steinhaegger and pils for my guest; the usual for myself, if you please, my dear."
Again Illya grinned. "The usual," he said. "Still Turkish coffee and Izarra, is it?"
"Ah, yes. If you have the sweet tooth, it doesn't lessen as you get older... Now, how can my poor embryo organization help you?"
The agent pulled a chair out from a delicately wrought white iron table, swung one leg over the seat, and sat down with his forearms folded over its back. "Well, now," he said, "it's like this…"
Twenty minutes later, after the voluptuous eighteen-year-old with the flashing eyes had brought their second round of refreshments, O'Rourke leaned back in his chair and sighed.
"So what you feel might be useful," he said, "is a bit of a rundown on any set of circumstances that might link together the few facts you have and the disappearance of Mr. Williams?"
"That's about it, yes."
"The car accident, the murders, the death of the old man followed immediately by the departure of your friend for Brasilia, the cabled references to rivers and dams, the visit here to the public works bureau - plus, of course, the pretense that the women belonged to this, comic missionary body," the Irishman said, ticking the items off on his fingers one by one. "Seven positive items to balance one negative: the absence of news from your friend." He drained his coffee cup, took the liqueur glass still half full of the acid-yellow Basque digestive in one hand, and wheeled himself away towards the apartment with the other.
"Make yourself at home," he said over his shoulder, and we shall see what we can do. Though it's a case, mind, where I wish we had the use of a computer!"
Illya gulped down his schnapps and sipped the cold beer, relaxing in his chair as the drowsy sounds of afternoon washed over him. Bees probed the trumpets of petunia and busied themselves over the geraniums. An electric blue dragonfly darted under the vines, hovered for a moment in the shade, and then flashed away again into the sun. Across distant roofs the sounds of traffic rumbled.
From where he sat, he could see through a window into a room that seemed to be O'Rourke's office and workroom. There were gray steel filing cabinets along one wall, bounded at one side by the dials and pilot lights of a powerful transmitter, and on the other by two complex tape units with vertically mounted spools and a twelve-channel console. There was nothing to rival the comprehensive anarchy of the Irishman's old head quarters in Casablanca, but there were several tables covered in a chaos of magazines and newspaper cuttings - all of them, Illya guessed, ring outlined and coded and annotated in his own private, multi-colored system of cross-indexing. From time to time the man in the wheelchair himself was visible, crossing and recrossing the window, searching among pile's of paper for pencils or notes, burrowing for the telephone. Once a tall, slim man with a heavy moustache, whom Illya thought he had seen once before, at the airport, came in and talked earnestly for some minutes.
And finally O'Rourke returned, the wheelchair spinning expertly to a halt beside the table, with his bands full of cuttings.
"You're in luck," he said. "I think we can help you… but first I have to ask - you know, the embarrassing bit! I have to -"
"Payment in advance, of course," Kuryakin said, reaching for his wallet. "Business as usual, in fact! What's the price?"
"Well now, you may recall that in the other place - we mention no names at all, in case there is any odium attaching to our former life! - in the other place there was the subscription system, for military attaches and the like continually wanting snippets of information and gossip about their rivals and so on and so forth?"
"Yes, I remember.
"And then there was the straight transaction - for every major piece of information obtained according to contract, one thousand dollars."
"Yes. I remember that even better."
"Just so. Well, here, I'm happy to say, the price is less - both because I'm only starting and you can't charge big league prices in the provincial games, and also be cause I have so far got lower overheads."
"Excellent. What is the new price - nine hundred and ninety-nine?"
"You should never joke about money, Mr. Kuryakin," O'Rourke said reproachfully. "It is the one commodity we can never do without. The price is five hundred dollars."
"Plus twenty-five percent service charge?"
"Plus fifteen per cent. Here, I have less staff - and my service charge was just that: it all went to staff."
"Fine. Any state tax here - for protection, I think it; was?"
"Ten percent only."
"Ten percent! It was one percent in - you know where."
"Sure, this is a modern country. You have to pay for advances in techniques."
"In all truth, the additional charges seem to come to within one percent of what they were before - however you split them up and whatever you call them!"
"On a sum only half the total to begin with, Mr. Kuryakin; on the smaller sum."
Illya shrugged ruefully and peeled off six hundred-dollar bills from his roll. He opened his wallet and added two tens and a five. "There you are, you old rogue," he said. "Now give!"
"The fee buys you to the right to the invective," the Irishman said placidly, folding the money and stuffing it into the breast pocket of his shirt. "And anyway, we've come up with something right away."
"And that is?"
"Dams, me boy. Dams. There are not but two in construction at the moment for which you could use Brasilia as a jumping-off point: one at Guadalara and the other at a place called San Felipe do Caiapo. And the first of these is a government project, all public observation platforms and conducted tours and I don't know what all. So I doubt not 'tis the other we're after."
"And where is this other?"
"San Felipe? In the hills - and bare and barren they are, too! - behind the new city of Getuliana that they're after building. 'Tis a private enterprise, this, that some hook of a European talked the government into okaying, and the whole shoot comes under a small holding company run by a contractor named Moraes."
"You mean that all the subcontractors working on the dam are really tied up with this man's firm?"