Hopkins moved into the living room shaking his head. “Nothing — except it’d be ducky if I knew what the hell I was looking for.”
“I don’t know,” Dunjee said.
A small kneehole desk was positioned in front of the windows. Hopkins crossed over and tried the drawers. They were locked. He took a small length of thin steel from his pocket and with a quick move that was almost too fast to follow snapped the desk lock open. He looked up at Dunjee. “You take the desk,” he said.
Hopkins began his search of the living room while Dunjee sat behind the desk and started opening drawers. In the bottom drawer was a thick unsealed envelope. In it was a sheaf of five-and ten-pound notes. Dunjee tossed them onto the desktop. “Here,” he said.
Hopkins rolled back a small, cheap Oriental rug he’d been looking under, moved to the desk, picked up the envelope, and looked inside. “Nice,” he said and stuck the envelope down into his coverall pocket.
The rest of the desk’s contents included a Lloyds Bank checkbook, blank envelopes, stationery, stamps, some dried-out ballpoint pens, and a small key which Dunjee tossed onto the desktop. “What’s this for?” he said.
Hopkins came over to look at it. “A tin box. Or maybe a briefcase. I’ll try the bedroom.”
While Hopkins was gone, Dunjee reopened each of the desk’s seven drawers and ran his hand under their bottoms. He then took each drawer all the way out to see whether anything had been taped to their ends. He was putting the last drawer back when Hopkins came in from the bedroom carrying a small gray steel box.
“In the wardrobe,” he said. “Back behind the luggage.”
Hopkins used the key to open the steel box. When he saw what its contents were, he wrinkled his nose and spun the box around so Dunjee could look. The box’s contents consisted mostly of pictures, eight-by-ten glossies. The pictures were of nude young girls, most of them in their early teens. All were engaged in various homosexual practices. All looked very English. Dunjee sighed and started examining each picture, both back and front. There were forty-two pictures. On the back of the thirty-ninth picture was the name Frank and a phone number written in pencil. With another sigh, Dunjee copied it down into his address book.
The rest of the steel box’s contents consisted of papers for a 450 SLC Mercedes; a .25-caliber Colt automatic, loaded; a switchblade knife with a six-inch blade and a broken spring; a cheap souvenir metal model of the Eiffel tower; a small suede drawstring bag that felt heavy, and a breast-pocket-size notebook whose leather cover was embossed in gold with “Organize Your Day.”
Dunjee thumbed through the notebook. What few entries there were were written in Arabic. He put the notebook into a coverall pocket, picked up the drawstring bag, opened it, and dumped its contents on the desk. Twenty gold Krugerrands spilled out. Dunjee had just finished stacking them into two neat piles when Hopkins came out of the bedroom again shaking his head. At the sight of the gold he stopped shaking his head and smiled.
“Makes you want to go to church, doesn’t it?” Hopkins said as Dunjee shoved the two stacks of gold coins toward him.
“What about this?” Dunjee said, indicating the .25-caliber pistol.
“You mean if I were on me own?”
Dunjee nodded.
“I’d take it. Might fetch a few quid.”
Dunjee shoved the pistol into a hip pocket, repacked the contents of the steel box carelessly, and handed it to Hopkins, who took it back into the bedroom. He came out just as the polite knocking at the door began.
They looked at each other. “I’m not looking to go back inside, friend,” Hopkins said and held out his hand. Dunjee took the pistol from his hip pocket and handed it to him.
Hopkins moved to the door, the pistol in his right hand and behind his back. He used his left hand to open the door.
“Well?” Hopkins said.
Dunjee thought that the voice in the hall seemed to be all adenoids. “He told me to bring it up.”
“Who told you?” Hopkins said.
“The wog at the desk.”
“Bring what up?”
“The tickets. You Mr. — wait a sec — Abedsaid? You don’t look like no Mr. Abedsaid.”
“What kind of tickets?” Hopkins said.
“Airline tickets. These.”
“I’ll give ’em to him,” Hopkins said.
“You gotta sign.”
“Me guvnor does all the signing,” Hopkins said and opened the door wide enough to let in a skinny fifteen-year-old with a face full of angry pimples and know-it-all brown eyes. The eyes swept the room and settled on Dunjee. “You the signer?”
Dunjee nodded.
The messenger handed him a thick blue envelope, produced a receipt book, found the right page, and offered it to Dunjee along with a ball-point pen. Dunjee read the receipt carefully and then signed “Arsène Lupin” on the indicated line and handed it back. The youth read the name, moving his lips. He stared at Dunjee. “That French?”
Dunjee smiled.
The messenger turned to Hopkins. “What’s the matter, don’t he speak English?”
Hopkins jerked his head toward the door. “Out.”
“What about me generous gratuity?” the messenger said. “That’s how I take care of me old mum. We’d starve, we would, sir, mum and me, if it wasn’t for generous gratuities.”
Hopkins dug down into his pocket, found fifty pence, and slapped it into the youth’s outstretched palm. “Out.”
“Leggo my arm,” the youth said as Hopkins steered him through the door and slammed it shut. He moved back to the desk, took the pistol from his pocket, and offered it to Dunjee.
Dunjee again put the pistol away in a hip pocket, picked up the thick blue envelope, ripped it open, and examined the enclosed ticket.
“Where to?” Hopkins asked.
“Rome,” Dunjee said. “First class.”
14
They had slipped the Belgravia Locks Ltd. coveralls off in the Volvo Dunjee had rented and stored them in the car’s trunk. Back up in his room at the Hilton, Dunjee dialed a number while Hopkins counted the Krugerrands.
“What’s gold bringing?” Hopkins asked.
“Eight-oh-two, the last I noticed,” Dunjee said and listened to the phone ring. It was answered just before the third ring by Delft Csider with her usual noncommittal “Yes.”
“You were great,” Dunjee said.
“I got tired of waiting in that phone booth.”
“Sorry,” he said. “How are you at wheedling?”
“Try me.”
“There’s an Alitalia flight to Rome tomorrow morning at eight forty-five, flight 317. I want seat three-B for myself in first class. And I want the two seats just across the aisle from me for my secretary, D. Csider, and my associate, H. Hopkins. Hold on.” He looked at Hopkins. “You got a passport?”
“Rome?” Hopkins said.
“Rome.”
Hopkins thought about it. “I got a passport,” he said.
“He’s got one. Second, I need something else from that instant printer of yours who did the locksmith thing.”
“What?”
“A couple of dozen letterheads. Make them read ‘Anadarko Explorations, Inc.’ Think up some address and phone number for Tulsa. I want letters typed on each one — some long, some short. My name below as president.”
“Anyone going to be reading the letters?”
“Maybe just the salutations. They should include a lot of names and addresses in Kuwait, Oman, and maybe Nigeria.”
“Anything else?”
“Is Grimes around?”
“He’ll be back at four.”
“Tell him I’ll either see him or talk to him then.”
“I’ll tell him. Where do you want to stay in Rome?”