Reese said nothing. Instead, he lit another cigarette and said, “You got anything to drink around here?”
“Interesting,” Coombs said, producing a pint bottle of California brandy from a bottom drawer. He put it next to the silver water thermos on his desk and watched disapprovingly as Reese poured a large measure into a glass. “We shouldn’t forget that while the Libyans went window-shopping here,” Coombs said, “Felix was being kidnapped in London. A coincidence perhaps, although I have long been convinced that nature abhors them, just as it does vacuums. They’re unnatural.”
“But they happen,” Reese said, finishing off the brandy.
Coombs shrugged and in a thoughtful voice said, “Gambia,” again.
“You finally get there after all, don’t you?”
“Dr. Joseph Mapangou.”
“A nasty little shit.”
“But a useful conduit, I understand,” Coombs said.
“So’s an open sewer. Useful, I mean.”
“Yes, well, I think someone had best have a chat with Dr. Mapangou.” He looked at Reese. “What tribe is that, by the way?” he asked, hoping that Reese wouldn’t know, but realizing that it was a vain hope.
“Mandingo,” Reese said promptly. “If he wasn’t a Mandingo, he wouldn’t have made it to the UN.”
“You will talk to him, won’t you?”
“Mapangou?” Reese said. “Sure, I’ll talk to him.”
12
The retired Maltese smuggler was already past seventy and probably needed glasses, but his eyes were still keen enough to recognize easily the ninety-two-foot yacht with the raked stack. Not many of today’s yachts had stacks raked like the one that had docked that morning. The old man remembered the yacht well, from when it had been built in Valletta under British supervision twenty-five years ago. Or was it twenty-six?
They had built it for the King, he remembered. The King of Libya. He tried to remember the King’s name, but couldn’t, so he gave up and felt content just to sit there on the quay with his back against the sun-warmed wooden crate and let his mind wander as he watched the three customs officials file aboard the yacht.
When the three customs officials hurried off the yacht less than ten minutes later, the old man suspected that each was probably richer by a few quid. He couldn’t blame them. After all, who could really devote himself to a job that required harassing the rich and the powerful? And certainly the Libyans were now both.
The old man didn’t much care for the Libyans, who had been swarming over Malta in recent years with their big talk and their big plans and their oil millions — although the big talk had lessened in recent months. But still he didn’t much care for them — or the British or the Italians or the French, for that matter. The Krauts, too, he decided. They were all over the place nowadays. He didn’t like them either.
The old man had long felt that there were still too many foreigners on Malta. Always had been. Now there were the Libyans and the German tourists and even the Americans with that dungaree factory of theirs. Not so many British any more, though. Not like twenty-five years ago when the British had built that yacht for King Idris.
The old man was pleased when the name of the deposed Libyan King came back to him so easily. But he knew that was the way it always worked. Try to think of it, and you couldn’t. But let your mind go free, let it wander, let it soar a little like a gull riding the air, and it would pop right into your mind. Always. Well, nearly always.
The old man twisted himself into an even more comfortable position against the warm crate, took out a cigarette, and lit it with a French lighter. His name was Mario Cagni, but for years most people had called him Jimmy — or rather Jeemee — because of that American film actor, the one who always played the gangster who got killed, although the actor spelled his name differently — and pronounced it differently, too. But nearly everyone still called the old man Jimmy, although many, especially the young, no longer remembered why — or cared.
Cagni had been a smuggler — and a good one — for more than fifty years, and his interest in boats was more than casual. Retired now and living with his widowed daughter, who couldn’t stand him underfoot all day, the old man spent much of his time down on the waterfront near the boats that for so long had been such an essential tool of his profession.
He had almost decided to rouse himself and head for his favorite cafe and his regular mid-morning cup of coffee when the Japanese went aboard the Libyan yacht. Cagni found that interesting. Not extremely so, perhaps, but interesting enough to keep him on the quay with his back against the warm crate and his eyes on the yacht. He lowered his eyes just long enough to take out a pencil and a scrap of paper and write down, “1 oriental (maybe jap?) 6 ft. w/ camera 10:17 a.m.” Then he settled back with another cigarette to see if anything else interesting might happen.
At ten-twenty the German went aboard. At least he looked German to Cagni — all that blond hair, pale skin, and no neck. So he wrote down, “1 kraut (dutch?) 10:20 a.m. 12–13 stone, 5-10, tres blanc.”
Cagni prided himself on his languages. He more or less spoke four, not including Maltese, and none of them particularly well. He prided himself most of all on his French, which had proved useful in his trade, especially when dealing with the Corsicans. And it was French he used to describe the young dark-haired woman who went aboard the yacht at ten forty-eight that morning. Cagni wrote down that she was “tres jolie.”
After that, Cagni waited until half past eleven, but when nothing else interesting happened, he rose, stretched, and decided to go find the Pole and see whether he could sell him what he had seen.
During the reign of King Idris I, the yacht had been called Sunrise I, and the name had been lettered in gold on her stern and bow in both Arabic and English. Now she had been renamed the True Oasis, out of Tripoli, and all this had been gold-lettered in both English and Arabic in accordance with standard international maritime practice, although the English was noticeably smaller than the Arabic.
Down in the small cabin next to what once had been the royal stateroom, Ko Yoshikawa had his right eye pressed against the fish-eye security viewer that had been inset into the bulkhead. Through it Ko could watch as Dr. Abdulhamid Souri changed the dressing on the left side of Bingo McKay’s head — the side where he no longer had an ear.
Since the abduction of Felix, Ko had assumed command of the fragmented Anvil Five after an election of sorts had been held in Rome. When the subject of who should lead the terrorist group had come up, Ko had been elected by acclamation, the votes consisting of a bored nod from the lashless German, Bernt Diringshoffen, and an indifferent shrug from the Algerian-born Françoise Leget.
In Rome they had screened four possible recruits to Anvil Five — three Italian communists and an American movement veteran. All had been rejected, the Italians because of provincialism, which meant that they had hinted they would like to be home in time for dinner every night, and the American because of dilettantism, which, in translation, meant he was strung out on hashish and Quaaludes and needed money to support his habit.
Ko turned from the fish-eye viewer to look at the lean, jittery Libyan with the tic near his left eye who perched on the edge of the steel-framed chair. The lean man was Ali Arifi, the Libyan Minister of Defense.
“You actually cut it off, didn’t you?” Ko said as Diringshoffen rose and took his place at the viewer. Françoise Leget sat on the edge of the cabin’s bunk smoking, her movements nervous and irritable.