“Then again it might not, and we could’ve had our guys running all over London trying to get a line on Dunjee’s thief instead of doing what they were supposed to do, which, for once, they actually did.”
“And that is?”
“Check the passenger roster on Dunjee’s flight. The Csider woman made the reservations. She insisted on three particular seats. All first class. She went all the way up to Alitalia’s PR office to get them. That’s why they remembered it so well.”
“Three seats?”
“Three.”
“Which means that Dunjee wanted one particular seat, doesn’t it? Two on one side of the aisle and one on the other. Who was in the other seat?”
“A Libyan.”
“From their London Embassy?”
“Their Cultural Attaché, Faraj Abedsaid. Oklahoma University. PE degree. About thirty-eight or — nine. Single. He runs what passes for their intelligence operation in London. He’s also PLO-trained. I’d guess he was the contact.”
“Felix’s?”
“Right.”
“And Dunjee sat next to him for two hours on the plane.”
“Two hours and fifteen minutes.”
Coombs opened his bottom drawer, took out the pint of California brandy, and pushed it across the desk toward Reese. It was the first time he had ever offered the other man a drink.
By way of thanks, Reese said, “Ashtray,” and poured brandy into a water glass. Coombs produced the small ceramic ashtray. Reese lit a cigarette. He then took a large swallow of the brandy. After that he said, “All right. Let’s have it.”
“I want to do something that we have just been instructed not to do,” Coombs said.
“With Dunjee in Rome, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“But nobody can know about it.”
“No.”
“Which means I’ll have to go. To Rome.”
“Yes. It would seem so.”
They stared at each other. It was a stare full of acknowledged complicity. Finally Reese said, “But I get London.”
“Yes. You get London.”
“I’ll fly out of New York tomorrow.”
“Why New York?”
“Here,” Reese said and took two sheets of folded paper from his breast pocket. “More midnight musings — all about old Doc Mapangou. He’s on the pad. Leland Timble’s pad. You remember Leland.”
“The computer genius and bank robber. He’s keeping well, I trust, on his island paradise.”
“He got Dr. Mapangou to plant the rumor.”
“About the Libyan shopping expedition?”
“Right. I think Timble got to the Libyans somehow and convinced them that for a price he could set the whole deal up.”
“Is that what Dr. Mapangou says?”
“No. He just admits starting the rumor.”
“Then he brought it off, didn’t he? Timble, I mean.”
“But Felix getting snatched soured it.”
Coombs leaned back in his chair and tapped his teeth with the folded sheets of paper that Reese had given him. “I wonder what was in it for Timble?”
“Money.”
“He has enough. More than enough.”
“What’s enough?”
Coombs shrugged and said, “Our two apostates are still with Timble, I take it?”
“You mean that fucking Keeling and that fucking Spiceman?”
“Yes. You know, I never believed that about Keeling. That he stole all that gold in Angola.”
“He stole it,” Reese said. “He stole it and spent it.”
“I never believed it. I’m still not sure that I do. He was one of the best—”
Again Reese interrupted. “I sent two of our people out of Miami yesterday to see what they could find out about Timble and his setup. They got the shit beat out of them.”
“Whom did you send?”
“Harry Milker and Presse Poole. They broke Harry’s arm, and Poole’s maybe got a concussion.”
“Pity. Who did it to them?”
“The Prime Minister’s goons. They staged it pretty good though — made it look like a waterfront brawl. They even set Harry’s arm.”
“Did they find out anything useful?”
“Nothing — except they made contact with a guy called Cornelius. Peter Cornelius. He’s sort of the local Solzhenitsyn. Probably the resident crybaby. But the Prime Minister’s bunch tolerates him because he puts out a pretty nifty little tabloid — all tits and ass — and who the fuck reads the editorials? Besides, when the Prime Minister wants to brag about freedom of the press, he can always point to Cornelius. Well, anyway, Cornelius is willing to do a little work for us.”
“How will he get it out?”
Reese shook his head. “That’s the problem. We’ll have to send somebody in.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Coombs said and made a note. “Now, about Mapangou?”
“I want to go up to New York and milk him again before I go to Rome. I want to—” He stopped when a middle-aged woman came into the office and silently laid a half sheet of paper on Coombs’s desk. The woman waited while Coombs read and then reread the four typed lines. Coombs thought a moment, then looked up at the woman, and said, “Tell them yes.”
The woman nodded and left.
Coombs again reread the four typed lines on the half sheet of paper. He looked up at Reese. “The Israelis,” he said. “They’ve been offered Felix for ten million dollars. Dr. Mapangou is to be the go-between. The Israelis want to know if we’d like to go half. I said yes.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Alex Reese said, realizing for the first time that he was perhaps destined to become extremely rich after all.
21
Dunjee found Harold Hopkins where Hopkins had said he would be — in the bar of the Hassler. Hopkins had a drink before him and in his hand a brochure that advertised bus tours of Rome.
“They’ve got a nice one here that leaves at noon and gets back around four,” Hopkins said. “But I’m thinking that today might not be the day for it.”
“No,” Dunjee said. “It won’t be.” He ordered a whisky and water.
“You know how much my room is?” Hopkins said.
“How much?”
“Seventy quid, that’s how much.”
“Nice room?”
“The price ruins it.” He moved his drink around in small circles on the bar as though it helped him think about what he planned to say next. Finally he said, “So far the money’s been right.”
Dunjee waited. When Hopkins remained silent, Dunjee said, “But?”
Hopkins turned to look at Dunjee. The look was cold and speculative. “But I don’t know what it’s all about, do I?”
“It’s simple,” Dunjee said. “We’re looking for someone.”
“And if we find him?”
“Then you’ll make a lot more money.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then you won’t make as much.”
“I could ask who we’re looking for, but it wouldn’t do any good, would it?”
“No. Not yet.”
Hopkins nodded thoughtfully. “I’m thinking that if I’ve got any more questions, I should’ve asked them before we left London, except for maybe one, that being What’s next?”
“That’s a good one,” Dunjee said, took out his wallet, and removed the small creased piece of ruled paper that he had found in Diringshoffen’s effects and seemed to have been torn from a spiral notebook. He handed it to Hopkins. “Remember this?”
Hopkins nodded and read off the initials and the address that were written on the paper. “G. G. Eighteen via Corrado.” He handed it back to Dunjee. “You think whoever we’re looking for might be there?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you thought that. That’d be too simple. Who do you think’s going to be there?”
“I don’t know,” Dunjee said. “Let’s go find out.”
The building in the Quarticciolo section of Rome at 18 via Corrado might have been a gray slum for a hundred years or even a hundred and fifty, it was hard to tell. The cab driver had shaken his head dolefully and said something disparaging in Italian when Dunjee had given him the address.