At thirty-two, Krystosik was single, pudgy, and losing his hair. Because of his weight he had had only a salad for lunch. As Cagni finished his veal, Krystosik took off his tinted glasses, polished them, and then repolished them. He polished them yet another time, put them back on, and said, “Well, what’ve you got?”
Cagni used his right elbow to inch a folded newspaper toward Krystosik. He had rescued the paper from a trash can and slipped his morning notes into it. Krystosik liked folded newspapers, and duplicate plastic briefcases, and twin cigarette packages — all examples of what he thought of as tradecraft. Cagni tried to please him.
Krystosik nodded significantly and let his right hand fall casually on top of the folded newspaper. Cagni swallowed the last of his third glass of wine and signaled for another.
“A Jap and a Kraut,” he said after the wine had come. “Or maybe a Dutchman, and a woman, maybe French, maybe Spanish. All going aboard a Libyan yacht this morning within an hour of each other. What do you think of that, hey?”
Krystosik pushed out his lower lip and nodded significantly, indicating that he wasn’t at all surprised by this new turn of events and their obviously dire implications. “It figures,” he said.
“What does?”
But Krystosik only shook his head cryptically. Cagni wondered whether he should risk ordering yet another glass of wine, but decided against it. No need to go to the well too often. “It’s the True Oasis,” he said.
“What?”
“The name of the yacht. It used to be Sunrise One, but now it’s the True Oasis. I wrote it all down in there. Should be worth a little extra something, hey?”
Krystosik picked up the folded newpaper with his left hand and reached into his pants pocket with his right. He rose and extended his right hand to Cagni. It was now almost clenched into a fist because of the bill he was trying to palm, but Cagni was used to the American’s clumsiness. The old man palmed the bill smoothly, transferred it to his own pocket, then picked up the luncheon check and handed it to Krystosik. “You almost forgot this.”
Once outside the cafe, Cagni looked at the bill. An American twenty. The man’s a complete fool, he thought happily, and headed back down toward the waterfront to the warm wooden crate where he would wait and watch some more.
That evening at the Alamo Manufacturing Company, after everyone had gone for the day, Krystosik locked the door to his office, unzipped his portable Lettera typewriter, and proceeded to translate Cagni’s note into what he considered proper espionagese.
When he was through typing he carefully burned Cagni’s notes in an ashtray, went into the men’s room, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. He then went back to his office and typed out the Rome accommodation address on a plain white envelope.
With luck, the letter would be in Rome the day after tomorrow and delivered the day after that, depending on the mood of the Rome postal workers. Actually, it was to take four days for the letter to reach the Rome accommodation address. And it wasn’t until a day later that the CIA chief of station there finally saw it. But by then Chubb Dunjee had already arrived in Rome.
13
The apartment building was fairly new — new for South Kensington anyway — and the Saudi who owned it was from Jidda on the Red Sea. Although the rents were well up in the stratosphere, it didn’t seem to bother any of the tenants, nearly all of them from the Middle East, and there was a long waiting list, possibly because the place was completely staffed by Arabic-speaking personnel who were, to a man, impecunious if distant members of the Saudi landlord’s enormous family.
Holding down the reception desk when Chubb Dunjee and Harold Hopkins, the thief, walked in at 2 P.M. wearing their gray coveralls with “Belgravia Locks Ltd.” stitched in red across their backs, was Saleh Khoja, the landlord’s twenty-seven-year-old third cousin on Khoja’s father’s second wife’s side.
Hopkins, followed by Dunjee, moved over to the desk, set his tool kit down, fumbled in his breast pocket for a folded sheet of paper, and spread it out on the countertop. He looked at Khoja suspiciously.
“You in charge, mate?” Hopkins said in the extra loud voice he always unconsciously used when addressing those who came from across the sea.
Khoja leaned on the counter and looked off into space. “I am in charge,” he said.
“I got an order here to install two new deadbolts on 531,” Hopkins said, reading from the form, which was headed “Work Order, Belgravia Locks Ltd.” Hopkins squinted at the name written on the form. “Mr. Faraj Abedsaid, if that’s how you pronounce it.”
“I know nothing about it,” Khoja said and yawned.
“You know nothing about it, huh?”
“Nothing.”
Hopkins nodded as if that was exactly what he had expected and turned to Dunjee. “You hear that, Ralph? He don’t know nothing about it. He just works here. He’s just the chief counter holder-downer.”
Dunjee shrugged.
“Let’s go,” Hopkins said and picked up his tool case.
“You cannot go up,” Khoja said, examining the fingernails on his left hand. “It is not permitted.”
Incredulity spread over Hopkins’ face. “Up! You hear that, Ralph? Abdullah here thinks we’re going up. We’re not going up. We’re going back to the shop and ring up Mr. Abedsaid at the Embassy and tell him it’s a no go at Cameldrivers’ Towers and he can bloody well wait another two months to have his locks changed, and if somebody keeps on breaking in and stealing things, then maybe he better talk to the man in charge, which is you, idn’t it?”
Khoja frowned. “Stealing?”
“Got the stereo the other night, they did. Right, Ralph?”
Dunjee nodded.
“I had not heard,” Khoja said.
“Well, he’s not going to be spreading it around now, is he? Not likely.” Hopkins gave the counter a pat of finality. “But you can explain it all to him. Just tell him we wouldn’t go up without your okay. Tell him to give us a ring. We can be back in a month or two.” Hopkins turned away.
“Wait,” Khoja said.
Hopkins turned back.
“I can ring him.”
“Ring him?”
“Yes. The telephone. Here.”
“Well, that’s an idea now, isn’t it? You got his private number?”
“Private number?”
“At the Libyan Embassy. Here.” Hopkins dug out the work order and again spread it in front of Khoja, pointing to a telephone number.
“Ah, yes. His private number.”
Hopkins and Dunjee watched Khoja dial the number. It was answered on the second double ring. Khoja started out hesitantly in English and then with obvious relief switched quickly into voluble Arabic. The conversation went on for several minutes.
After Khoja hung up he turned back to Hopkins. “You can go up.”
“You talked to him, did you?”
“To his assistant.”
“Miss Salem?”
“You know her?”
“She’s the one who called in the order.”
“She gave me instructions,” Khoja said. “You are to clean up afterwards. You are to leave no mess. She was very firm.”
“We never leave any mess, Jack,” Hopkins said and turned toward the elevator.
It was a two-room apartment, or possibly three, counting the small kitchen, which contained some cheap china and stainless steel flatware, a few glasses, and by way of nourishment two containers of frozen orange juice and a jar of instant coffee.
Dunjee watched Hopkins work. Hopkins was both methodical and fast. The kitchen took him only two minutes, and his search included a careful inspection of the oven as well as a fast but thorough look into the small space behind the refrigerator.