«Well, if that’s the case—»
«It’s the case, Sam,» confirmed Hawkins. «As you well know, I don’t make mistakes in that area. Outside of Belgrave Square in London, do I have to remind you of that country club on Long Island, or the chicken farm in Berlin, or that crazy sheik in Tizi Ouzou who wanted to buy my third wife for two camels and a small palace?»
«That will do, General!» said Pinkus firmly. «I remind you that there’ll be no reminiscing on such past events. Now, you and Henry sit down and let’s continue with the business at hand.»
«Certainly, Commander.» The two veterans of El Alamein sat down and the Hawk continued. «But we can’t do a hell of a lot until Little Joseph makes his report.»
«How’s he going to do that?» asked Devereaux. «Sending a coded message by a carrier pigeon that flies from his hotel window directly to the sheikdom of Tizi Ouzou?»
«No, son, by telephone.» And, as Sir Henry might say, on cue the telephone rang. «I’ll get it,» said the Hawk, rising and walking rapidly to the white antique desk against the wall. «Base Camp Steaming Tepee,» he went on, the phone to his ear.
«Hey, fazool,» came the excited voice of Little Joey the Shroud over the line. «You ain’t gonna believe the fuckin’ pig shit you walked into! I swear on the grave of my Aunt Angelina, no shoe repair clown, including my uncle Guido, could scrape it off!»
«Calm down, Joseph, and speak clearly. Just give me the reconn ob-tech, on-scene factors.»
«What crazy language is that?»
«I’m surprised you don’t remember it from the Italian campaign—»
«I was lower than sediment. What the hell you talkin’ about?»
«The technical statistics as you observed them at the hotel—»
«No wonder you fazools are bleeding the taxpayers out of their corpuscals! No son of a bitch can understand you—you just scare the shit out of us!»
«What did you find out, Joseph?»
«For starters, if those jokers are Swedish, I never had a Norway meatball, which on occasion I have, ’cause this blond bomberinna I used to go with a couple of centuries ago made ’em so to prove the Guinea variety wasn’t so hotsytotsy—»
«Joseph, is this going to be a long story? What did you learn?»
«Awright, awright… They got three suites, each with two bedrooms, and by spreading a little bread around with the maids and the waiters I found out they speak regular American, y’know, English. Also, they’re nuts, y’know real fruitcakes. They walk around lookin’ in mirrors and talkin’ funny to themselves, like they didn’t know who they were lookin’ at.»
«What about support troops, firepower?»
«They ain’t got nuthin’! I checked out every staircase, even the nearby rooms with some enchilada named Raul who cost me two hundred little ones to check out the register—nobody nowhere around ’em could even be related by coincidence. The only possibility was some fruitcakereno asshole named Brickford Aldershotty, who it turned out was on a one-night stand.»
«Escape routes?»
«The exit signs to the staircases, what can I tell you?»
«So you’re saying the beach is clear—»
«What beach?»
«Zero target, the hotel, Joseph!»
«Whoever you got can walk in like it was a church in Palermo on Easter Sunday.»
«Anything else?»
«Yeah, here are the room numbers.» The Shroud gave them, then added. «Also, whoever you got should have muscle, y’know what I mean?»
«Explain that, Joseph.»
«Well, like a sharp-eyed maid named Beulah told me, these jokers break bottles with icicle points of glass stickin’ up and do pushups over ’em, sometimes like two hundred. I mean they are fruitcakes!»
22
«Meat» D’Ambrosia walked through the swinging glass doors of the Axel-Burlap building on Wall Street, Manhattan, took the elevator up to the ninety-eighth floor, trudged his way through another pair of glass doors, and presented his card to a statuesque British receptionist.
Salvatore D’Ambrosia, Consultint. The card was printed by his cousin on a press at Rikers Island.
«I should like to have a meet with a certain Ivan Salamander,» said Salvatore.
«Is he expecting you, sir?»
«It don’t make no never mind, call it in, pussycat.»
«I’m sorry, Mr. D’Ambrosia, but one doesn’t call the president of Axel-Burlap without prior notification, and certainly not in person without a previously scheduled appointment.»
«Try me, sweetheart, or maybe I have to break your desk.»
«What?»
«Just call, capisce?»
Mr. D’Ambrosia was instantly admitted into the walnut-paneled sanctum sanctorum of one Ivan Salamander, president of Wall Street’s third largest brokerage house.
«What … whaat?» shrieked the gaunt, bespectacled Salamander, wiping the perpetual sweat that oozed from his hairline. «You gotta scare the shit out of some lousy receptionist who’s got a ton of class for which I paid airfare, a Blackglama mink, and a salary my wife can no way find out?»
«We gotta talk, Mr. Salamander, and more important, you gotta listen. Also, your private secaterry wasn’t too perturbed.»
«Certainly, certainly, I told her to stay ice cold!» yelled Ivan the Terrible, as he was known on the Street. «You think I’m dumb?… Dumb I’m not, Mr. Musclebound, and I would much prefer that whatever you have to say to me should be said in some rotten spaghetti dump in Brooklyn!»
«My associates and me ain’t too partial to your smelly salami and your give-into-fish, either. Your delicatessens stink up the neighborhoods.»
«So our culinary differences are settled, what’ve you got that I should waste my valuable time on a street soldier? Hahn, hahn?»
«Because what I’ve got for you comes from the big man himself, and if you’ve got a tape job in here, he’ll rip your throat out. Capisce?»
«On my word, on my word, no such thing! You think I’m crazy?… What does the big man say?»
«Buy defense, especially aircraft and related—wait a minute, I gotta read this.» D’Ambrosia reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. «Yeah, here it is. Aircraft and every related supply component—that’s it, component, that’s the word I couldn’t remember.»
«And that’s crazy! Defense is going into the toilet, the budget’s cut everywhere!»
«Here’s the rest of it, and I repeat, if you gotta tape rollin’, you’re on a meat hook.»
«Never, are you meshuga?»
«Things have changed one whole hell of a lot.» Meat again looked at his instructions, for several moments reading silently with his lips. «Okay, here it is… Alarming events have tooken place,» continued D’Ambrosia, his voice as flat as his eyes, a man recalling from quasi-rote, «which the country can’t know too much about because of which the panic that might sue—»
«Maybe you mean ensue?»
«I’m on your side. Whatever.»
«Go ahead.»
«There has been a lot of interference with the sub … substratisforic military sattelactic transmissions which concludes high altitudenal aircraft are … fuckin’ up the works.»
«High altitude—U-2 types? The Russkies are going back on their nice words?»