“Rome.”
Reese sat back down. “London or nothing.”
“Why not Rome? The climate is more salubrious, the food is infinitely better, the work is more rewarding. I’d far rather be chief of station in Rome than London.”
“Pussy,” Reese said. “They’ve got fourteen-, fifteen-year-old cupcakes in London who’ll—”
“All right, London,” Coombs said and whispered, “God forgive me.”
“Wonderful,” Reese said and split his face with a happy, yellowish smile. Above the smile was a big nose that leaned right, then left, then right again. On either side of it two secretive gray eyes gazed out on the world with what seemed to be total disbelief. Thick eyebrows like furry hedgerows guarded a forehead whose thought wrinkles went up and up, and then up some more until they reached where the hairline would have been, if there had been any hair, which there wasn’t except for the grayish brown stuff that still sprouted around the ears and down on the nape of the neck. Below all this was an aggressive chin almost as big as a fist. It was an ugly, but somehow wise face, strangely medieval, and strangely corrupt.
“Item one,” Reese said and flicked his cigarette ashes on the carpet. “Bingo’s not in Libya any more.”
“How do you know?”
“I got it off the Egyptians.”
“Mercy!” said Coombs, making the word sound almost obscene.
“No choice.”
“I don’t accept that.”
Reese didn’t seem to care what Coombs accepted. “They came to me first. That slimy Wahab, remember him?”
Coombs nodded.
“He’d heard a rumor that the Israelis had snatched Felix. He wanted to know what we’d heard. I told him I’d look into it providing he’d check something out for me. Then I fed him this fairy tale about a prominent American who’d got lost or strayed in Libya. I told him I needed to know where the American was — exactly where. Well, we’ve got jack shit in Libya and the Gyppos know this, but still I thought my fairy tale maybe just might work. But when old slimy Wahab got back to me he was practically hysterical — giggling all over the place and smirking like Rumpelstiltskin. The ‘prominent American,’ he said, and I could just hear him wrapping the quotes around it, well, the ‘prominent American’ had been held in Tripoli for twenty-four hours and then moved — out of the country, except old Wahab, slick and slimy as he is, couldn’t find out where. But he knows it’s Bingo.”
Coombs sighed. “How long?”
“Will he keep his mouth shut?”
Coombs nodded.
“Maybe a week. I told him there’d be a new 450 SE on his doorstep if he’d keep his mouth shut for a week and I’d break his fucking arm if he didn’t. He might last a week; he might not.”
Coombs nodded and made a note. “But the Egyptians now also think we have Felix?”
“Yeah, they think that because that’s what the Libyans think. I let it lie.”
“Good,” Coombs said. “It’s the only bargaining chip the President has.” He put down his pencil and leaned back in his chair and inspected the back of his left hand. “Our task remains twofold: first, find out who really has Felix and get him back, and second, determine exactly where the President’s brother is being held captive.” He shifted his gaze from his hand to Reese. It was a cold gaze, full of reproach, and the tone was even colder. “It would now seem that the sum total of our knowledge is that — one — Bingo McKay is no longer in Libya, although where he is, we haven’t the slightest notion, and — two — you haven’t even the vaguest clue as to where Felix might be or who might have abducted him.”
“I’m working on that,” Reese said and scratched an ear.
“Work a little harder.”
“Another item,” Reese said. “Paul Grimes.”
Coombs’s left eyebrow formed an interested arc. “Oh?”
“He saw the President just after you did, and then he started asking around town about Chubb Dunjee. Remember him?”
Coombs nodded thoughtfully. “Mexico.”
“Yeah, Mexico. Well, Grimes flew to Lisbon and then took a taxi to Sintra, because that’s where Dunjee was holed up. A day later, Dunjee flew into London.”
“And Mr. Grimes?”
“He’s there, too.”
“Interesting. Mr. Dunjee. What’s the current reading on him?”
“Whose?”
“The conventional wisdom.”
“Everybody thinks he’s a broken-down politician.”
“And you?”
“Very smooth when he wants to be,” Reese said. “Very slick. A side-stepper, an angle player. No pattern.”
“A brilliant man?”
Reese thought about it. “Smart anyhow.”
“Smart,” Coombs said and made another note. “Well, let’s do keep in touch with him. Loosely, of course.”
“Right,” Reese said, rose, and moved to Coombs’s desk, where he held his inch-long cigarette ash threateningly over the polished surface until Coombs produced a small ceramic tray from a drawer. After Reese crushed out his cigarette he handed Coombs two closely typed pages.
“What’s this?”
“Stray thoughts,” Reese said. “Midnight musings. It’s the only copy.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s about the Libyan tour. Nobody’s quite sure just how it got started.”
“The Libyans asked for it.”
Reese shook his head. “No they didn’t.”
Coombs frowned. “Let me think,” he said. “The White House started dropping hints, as I remember. Or perhaps Bingo McKay did. It was really his show, his and the President’s.”
Again Reese shook his head. “That’s not true either. I checked it out. It began as a rumor in New York, at the UN, as nearly as I can pin it down, although it’s like trying to pin down a snow-flake. But the rumor was simple. Oil for arms. The Libyans’ oil, our arms. The same rumor popped up at almost exactly the same time in Rome, where all good Libyans still go for R and R. The Embassy there heard it, and then suddenly it becomes more than a rumor. It turns into a nice little story on page twenty-six of the New York Times, with a Rome dateline, which says that the Libyans have no intention of making a window-shopping tour of the U.S. The State Department replies politely in about two or three hundred words that the Libyans haven’t been invited. And the whole thing dies — for about a week.”
Coombs nodded, as though remembering. “Then what?”
“It was born again.”
“A resurrection?”
“Just about.”
“Who was... present?”
“The Ambassador in Rome, for one. He heard in a roundabout way that the Libyans were having second thoughts.”
“He heard this from whom?”
“The Nigerians. The next thing you know there’s a carefully drafted answer to a carefully planted question at a regular State press conference, which, in effect, says that State wouldn’t have any objection to a private Libyan window-shopping expedition. Well, the guy over at State hardly gets the words out of his mouth before a couple of oil companies down in Houston issue an invitation to the Libyans. Other oil firms chime in, and Bingo McKay becomes the unofficial tour leader and the trip is on.”
Coombs frowned as though having difficulty in adding up a column of figures. “How long did all this take?”
“From start to finish — about three months.”
“But it died once.”
“Twice, in fact.”
“And the Nigerians were present at both resurrections?”
“Both.”
“Have we talked to them?”
“I did. Both here and in New York. As best as their UN people can pin it down, they first heard the rumor from Gambia — although they won’t bet the rent on that, because they think the rumor may have been floated simultaneously in Rome.”
“Gambia,” Coombs said thoughtfully. He stared at Reese and repeated to himself, “Gambia.”