“Delicate?”
“Yes. Delicate.”
Ashour nodded. “I see.”
“I think,” Dr. Mapangou said slowly and modestly, “that over the years I have acquired some small reputation for total discretion.”
“Yes. Of course. Total. No question.”
“And this reputation has sometimes — How shall I say it? Propelled, I suppose. Yes, propelled me into situations that are not of my choosing.”
“And you find yourself in such a situation now?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm. More tea?”
“Thank you.”
Ashour topped up Dr. Mapangou’s nearly full cup. Dr. Mapangou took an obligatory sip. Ashour clasped his hands across his chest, leaned back in his chair, and smiled some more.
“Because of my small reputation for discretion, I was recently approached by certain persons whose names I cannot reveal. They gave me a message to give to you, which you may wish to transmit to your government. If you insist that I reveal the identities of these persons, then I think our conversation should end here and now.”
Ashour frowned. The frown made his eyes narrow. The smile had gone. “Continue,” he said.
“With the stipulation that—”
“Yes, no names,” Ashour said. “Go on.”
“Yes, well, I suppose I had best show you something first. Something shocking.”
“Shocking?”
Dr. Mapangou nodded. He put his Borsalino hat on the floor, picked up the chocolate-brown ice cream bag, and placed it on the desk. “Shocking,” he said. “I must apologize.”
Dr. Mapangou opened the ice cream bag. “Do you have a piece of paper?”
“Paper? What kind of paper?”
“Any kind. It’s such a beautiful finish, I don’t want to—”
Ashour opened a drawer, took out a plain sheet of bond, and placed it in the center of the desk.
Dr. Mapangou reached into the paper bag, took out a metal cylinder, and twisted off its cap. He glanced at Ashour, whose dark eyes were now wide and staring.
Dr. Mapangou closed his own eyes and shook the severed finger out onto the sheet of bond. He heard Ashour say several words in Arabic which sounded like exclamations. Dr. Mapangou opened his eyes and was relieved to see that the severed finger was pointing toward Ashour. Not that it meant anything, of course, but still...
Ashour rose and backed away from his desk, still staring down at the finger. Finally he looked up at Dr. Mapangou. “What have you brought me?”
“A finger.”
“I see what it is. Why have you brought it to me? I demand to know why you have done this?”
“I was instructed to. I was also instructed to tell you that the finger comes from the hand of Gustavo Berrio-Brito.”
“Felix,” Ashour whispered.
“The freedom fighter,” Dr. Mapangou said diplomatically.
“Who told you — Who gave you this thing?”
Dr. Mapangou shrugged helplessly. “I cannot tell you.”
The flush started then. It began at the neck and spread up Ashour’s face until it reached his cheeks. It was a dark red flush, quite dangerous-looking. “Tell me!” he yelled.
“I cannot.”
Ashour stared at the finger for several moments. Then he reached out and touched it gingerly, jerking his own finger back. “It’s cold.”
“Frozen.”
Ashour stared at Dr. Mapangou. “What do they want?” His voice was a whisper now. “Money?”
“I am to give you a message. I have no authority to negotiate. I can only tell you what I was told to tell you. Do you understand?”
Ashour nodded.
“This is the message: ‘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. If you have any questions, I will try to answer them.”
“Ten million dollars?”
Dr. Mapangou nodded.
“And you will serve as intermediary?”
Again Dr. Mapangou nodded.
“How do we know this — this thing is Felix’s?”
“Fingerprints,” Dr. Mapangou said. “I was told the Paris police — or perhaps Interpol — could furnish the proof.”
Ashour nodded. “There is a time limit, of course.”
“Forty-eight hours.”
“I must consult with my goverment.”
“I understand.”
Ashour nodded coldly. “We will be in touch with you.”
Dr. Mapangou picked up his hat from the floor and rose. He turned to go, but turned back. “I suggest that you wrap that up in aluminum foil and pop it into the freezer.”
“Get out!” Ashour screamed in his clear tenor voice.
In the elevator on the way down, Dr. Mapangou smiled to himself. On the whole it had gone quite well. The Libyans had turned out to be tabby cats compared to the Israelis. The Israelis earlier that day had been awful. Simply awful.
20
Later that same day, the day that Chubb Dunjee flew into Rome, the Director of Central Intelligence slowly dealt the Polaroid photographs onto his desk one by one, face up, much in the way that a prescient blackjack dealer will deal out the cards in a hand that he knows is going bust.
Once again Alex Reese forgot and tried to hitch one of the bolted-down chairs closer to the desk so he could study the photographs that Thane Coombs had now dealt out in a neat row. When the chair refused to budge, Reese murmured, “Shit,” rose, and leaned down over the desk to give the photographs a careful inspection. Coombs could smell the bourbon on Reese’s breath.
Coombs leaned back in his chair as far away as possible from Reese’s breath and said, “He wanted to know, in essence, how one man without resources or training could do in a few days what we have been unable to do in — what is it now — five years?”
“You mean these?” Reese said, nodding his big bald head at the photographs.
“Yes. Those.”
“The Kraut,” Reese said, flicking the picture of the nude Diringshoffen with the nail of his middle finger. “He ain’t too well hung, is he?”
“The President was amazed, and a little alarmed, that one man, working alone, could—”
Reese interrupted. “Dunjee got lucky. That’s all.”
“Lucky,” Coombs said, as though it were a foreign word whose pronunciation was in some doubt.
“What else would you call it?”
“Intelligence,” Coombs suggested. “Resourcefulness. Imagination. All combined with a certain element of ruthlessness perhaps? That’s what I might call it.”
“We had a couple of guys on him in London yesterday,” Reese said. “He made them pretty quick.”
“The President wants them called off.”
“That’s what Dunjee told them. He said unless we pull them off, he pulls out. They stuck with him anyhow — until I got word back to them to leave him alone. He flew out of Heathrow this morning to Rome. With him was that what’s-her-name — Csider, that blonde who works for Paul Grimes — and another guy called Harold Hopkins. British.”
“Hopkins?”
“Yeah. Hopkins.”
“And what does he do?”
“Well, he did fifteen months not too long back. He’s a thief.”
“I see. A thief. That might explain these.” Coombs indicated the photographs.
“Maybe.”
“And this Hopkins is now in Dunjee’s employ?”
“It looks that way.”
“Where did Dunjee find him?”
“How the fuck should I know? In a bar maybe, or a pool hall, or maybe down at the labor exchange. He needed some pickup help and he went out and found him. Who cares where?”
“It might be useful.”