“The same thing.”
“Which was what?”
“I had to memorize it.”
“You mean Arnold and Benedict made you memorize it?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“I was to tell both Ashour and Efrati this, exactly: ‘If you want the rest of the merchandise, the price will be ten million dollars. Upon receipt of the money, the merchandise will be returned undamaged within twenty-four hours. Dr. Mapangou will serve as intermediary.’ That is the end of the message I had to memorize.” Dr. Mapangou quickly gulped down the remainder of his brandy.
Reese nodded his big head thoughtfully. He leaned across the desk toward Dr. Mapangou and dropped his big bass voice to a confidential rumble. “Tell me something. What do you think the ‘rest of the merchandise’ is?”
Dr. Mapangou swallowed noisily. “I do not know.”
“Come on, Doc. You deliver them each a finger. Now what do you think belongs to a finger?”
“A person?” Dr. Mapangou whispered.
“A person!” Reese said, trying to sound surprised and not succeeding too well. “That’s very good. In fact, for a jungle bunny, that’s damn good. Now why didn’t I think of that? A person!”
Dr. Mapangou tried to smile. “Perhaps a little more whisky?”
“Sure. Why not.” Dr. Mapangou rose as Reese locked his hands behind his big bald head and stared up at the ceiling. “A person. Now what person would both the Israelis and Libyans be willing to pay ten million bucks for, providing he was returned in good condition?”
“Perhaps the person is a she?” Dr. Mapangou said, setting the whisky down in front of Reese.
“A she, huh? Well, that’s an idea, except I don’t think a she would have thick, stubby fingers like that with the nails chewed down to the quick and the cuticles all shot to hell. No, I think it’s a he. That’s what I think.”
He’s playing with me, Dr. Mapangou thought sadly. He thinks I am a fool and now he is going to make me do something awful. For the first time, Dr. Mapangou found himself wishing he had never come to New York.
“You know what I’m gonna do with those two pieces of paper that I’ve got in this envelope,” Reese said, smacking the manila envelope with his left hand.
Dr. Mapangou shook his head no.
“I’m gonna take these down to Washington and then I’m gonna compare ’em with a set of fingerprints that the French got out of a hotel room in Paris and I’ll bet you six boxes of fig newtons that they match up exactly. And you know who those fingerprints that the French got out of that certain hotel room in Paris belong to?”
Again, Dr. Mapangou shook his head no, dreading what Reese would say next.
“Why, they belong to Gustavo Berrio-Brito, that’s who. The well-known freedom fighter. The guy everybody calls Felix. You’ve heard of Felix, haven’t you, Doc?”
“Yes,” Dr. Mapangou whispered. “I’ve heard of him.”
Reese stared at Dr. Mapangou for several moments. When he finally spoke, his deep voice was soft and curiously gentle. “You better tell me the rest of it, Doc. All of it. You know I’m going to get it out of you one way or another.”
Dr. Mapangou stared down at the blotter on his pecan desk. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. A moment later he began to talk in an indistinct, choked voice. It was so low that Reese had to lean forward to hear.
Dr. Mapangou began at the beginning, back when he was $89,831.19 in debt and his creditors were closing in and the man called Arnold appeared suddenly, as if by magic, like some rubbery-faced good fairy, bearing the attaché case full of greenish pieces of paper that turned out to be hundred-dollar bills once Dr. Mapangou had slipped his glasses on.
“This guy Arnold,” Reese said. “What did he look like?”
Dr. Mapangou gave a detailed description of Franklin Keeling, the ex-CIA man, and his constantly exasperated expression, and his sometimes tortured syntax.
“Did he do this a lot?” Reese said and wiped his right hand hard across the bottom half of his face.
“Yes, he does that frequently.”
“And when he talks do his hands move around a lot like this?” Reese made his hands flutter about above the desk blotter.
“Like fat butterflies,” said Dr. Mapangou, a closet poet who prided himself on his imagery, but kept his efforts locked away in the bottom drawer of the pecan desk.
“The other guy, Benedict. What’s he look like?”
Dr. Mapangou’s description of Jack Spiceman, the ex-FBI special agent, was equally exact and equally detailed. “He has very still eyes,” Dr. Mapangou said. “Very... remote, like lost lakes.”
“How much money was in the attaché case?”
“One hundred thousand dollars.”
“For what?”
“It was a... retainer.”
“A retainer, huh? They retained you to do what?”
“Furnish information.”
“To them?”
“And to others.”
Reese rose and moved over to Dr. Mapangou’s wet bar. He picked up a bottle of whisky and examined its label. Still examining it, he said, “About three months ago, in the delegates’ lounge at the UN, a rumor started. The rumor was about Libyan oil and U.S. arms. A trade. Maybe you heard it?”
Dr. Mapangou cleared his throat. “I may have done.”
Reese walked back to the pecan desk and planted the whisky bottle squarely in the center of the blotter. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe you even started it.”
Dr. Mapangou said nothing.
“Well?”
“They... supplied me with the information.”
“Arnold and Benedict?”
Dr. Mapangou nodded.
“And you just dropped a hint here and there.”
Again Dr. Mapangou nodded.
“Maybe to the Nigerians, huh?”
Another nod from Dr. Mapangou — a wretched nod.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Reese said, sitting back down in the chair behind the pecan desk. “You’re a diplomat. You heard some information. You passed it on. That’s what diplomats do, right?”
“Yes,” Dr. Mapangou murmured. “That’s what they do.”
Reese poured two more inches of whisky into his glass. “You mentioned back there a ways that you furnished Arnold and Benedict with information. Was that on a regular basis?”
“Fairly regular, yes.”
“What’s fairly regular?”
“Once a week.”
“Written reports?”
“Yes.”
“You keep copies?”
Dr. Mapangou didn’t answer.
Reese let his eyes wander around the room. “I could rip this place inside out in twenty minutes — or have it done.”
“Yes, I kept copies.”
“What was in the reports — just general gossip?”
“Mostly.”
“And I suppose they sweetened the pot a little.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Reese rubbed his thumb against the insides of his fingers in the ancient gesture signifying money.
“Yes... yes, they did compensate me with a little extra.”
“How much is a little extra?”
Dr. Mapangou closed his eyes because he didn’t want to see the expression on Reese’s face when he answered. He whispered the reply. “Five thousand dollars.”
Reese’s tone was incredulous. “A month!”
Dr. Mapangou nodded, his eyes still tightly closed. “A month.”
“Jesus Christ. How’d you work it?”
“There is a candy store in Twelfth Street in the Village. The proprietor is blind. I dropped my reports off there every Friday. On the first Friday of every month he would give me my compensation.”
“How’d he know it was you if he was blind?”
“A simple code. I would always ask him if he carried Fatimas, a cigarette, I believe, that is no longer manufactured. If he had no instructions for me, he would simply say no. But if he had a message from Mr. Arnold or Mr. Benedict, he would say no, he had no Fatimas, but he did have Murads. Then I would go to a certain phone booth at a certain time and receive my instructions verbally.”