Hour of the Assassins (10 page)

Hanratty was anxiously waiting for him in the men's room at Binion's. Caine went into one of the cubicles and carefully examined the documents. Although he knew that they had been altered, he couldn't see any evidence of it. He was impressed—they were flawless. He counted out the $1,500 and handed it to Hanratty, who never took his eyes off the door. Then he added an extra $200 and the Polaroid pictures of Hanratty's wife and son. Hanratty blanched when he saw tie pictures.

“What's that for?” he asked warily.

“The money's a little extra for a good job. The pictures are to remind you how vulnerable you are. You are never to mention anything about me or William Foster to anybody, including Cassidy.”

“Even the Mob doesn't threaten a man's wife and kid. Besides, I got friends.”

“Forget it, Pete. Your friends can't get at me. I'm not vulnerable. You are. And so are they”—indicating the pictures.

When he left the john, Hanratty was nervously attempting to comb his fringe of side hair across his large bald spot.

Caine spent the rest of the evening dining alone on the excellent escargots, followed by a tender filet mignon at the Top of the Mint. And he finally got to see Harry Belafonte at the Circus Maximus. Before he went upstairs, he told the desk clerk that he would be checking out in the morning. He put $500 in an envelope and mailed it to Cassidy, care of the Las Vegas Sun. Before going upstairs, he used a lobby phone to call and reserve a seat on the morning flight to New York under his own name.

Caine was tired by the time he finished a Scotch and soda in his room. Wearily he color-rinsed his hair in the shower, and after a final cigarette, he went to bed.

In the airport men's room the next morning he flushed Hillary's torn credit cards and driver's license down the toilet and put on his own wraparound sunglasses. He smoothed his hair into place, vaguely relieved to be even briefly back in his own identity. The envelope with the stamp on it, now addressed to William Foster, was in his jacket pocket. At the Western Union booth he sent a terse unsigned cable to Wasserman, telling him that he was flying to Switzerland to deal with the Zurich situation.

The sun was shining warm and clear over the tarmac as he boarded the plane for New York. The smiling stewardess took his boarding pass and asked him how he had done in Vegas, her blue eyes twinkling.

“Not bad.” Caine smiled back boyishly. “Not bad at all.”

CHAPTER 5

Suppose you wanted to find one person among all the billions of people on earth. Someone who might be anywhere in the world and under any name. Someone who had friends and money and who didn't want to be found. How would you do it?

That was the question that Caine asked himself as he finished the last of his lunch. The waiter, resplendent in a red jacket, wheeled over a multitiered serving cart crammed with the delicious pastries Kranzler's was famous for. Caine shook his head with an air of surrender and instead ordered a
Kirschwasser
.

He lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the remains of the broiled veal and potatoes. He watched the people at the tables in the crowded café. A blonde in a ski sweater descended a winding stairway from the upper floor of the café with a flutter of small movements, as if she were dancing down to meet Fred Astaire for the finale.

At the next table a stout Swiss or perhaps German businessman, with shiny pink skin, almost bursting out of his suit like a boiled sausage, paused for a moment to glance with satisfaction at his own reflection in one of the ornate wall mirrors, before resuming his greedy attack on a steaming
Bernerplatte
, piled high with boiled beef and sausages. For a moment Caine wondered what he had done during the war. Then he exhaled the smoke and brought his mind back to the issue.

The problem was complicated by the fact that he had to be very careful about using official channels. If any of the intelligence services were to get interested in what he was doing, it would queer the pitch for good. The waiter brought a glass of the clear white cherry brandy and Caine took a large sip, feeling the warmth of the brandy wash through his body. He was tired and probably suffering from jet lag, he decided. After all, he had been on the go since he had landed at Zurich's Kloten Airport late last night.

Using the William Foster cover, he had checked into the velour-upholstered comfort of the Baur au Lac Hotel. The plush luxury of his lakeside suite was a welcome relief from the cold, driving night rain, and he had gone straight to bed.

In the morning he strolled out of the hotel, shivering slightly against the winter chill. A steel-gray sky hung like an endless sheet of ice over the lake. After checking the lobby to flush any possible tail, he took a crowded blue-and-white tram on the Bahnhofstrasse. The elegant shops along the street were beautifully dressed with Christmas manger scenes and intricate doll displays. At Gübelin's a discreet red-and-white sign proclaimed “
Fröhliche Weihnachten
” over a display of diamond-studded Piaget watches. An exquisite mannequin stood against an Alpine landscape in the window of Grieder's, wearing a Dior throwaway on sale at a price that made Neiman-Marcus look like a Salvation Army giveaway. Caine hopped off the tram at the stop near the massive stone facade of the Union Bank of Switzerland.

As a serious young bank official ushered him into the manager's dark-paneled office, Herr Kröger came from behind his desk and briskly shook Caine's hand. Kröger was tall and slender, with a thatch of well-groomed white hair. He wore a three-piece Savile Row pinstripe suit and a silk Bond Street tie. He was the genuine gilt-edged article, Caine thought. No matter how you chipped away at him, you would find money.

Caine opened a numbered account with $5,000 in traveler's checks, which he countersigned in front of Kröger. Any further instructions from him would be by mail. He would sign his letters with only the account number, reversed on the right margin. Kröger nodded understandingly at what was, for him, a perfectly normal procedure.

Caine then changed another $5,000 in traveler's checks into Swiss francs. As they discussed the details of subsequent transactions, Caine found himself thinking wishfully that if he could get into the numbered accounts, he could probably find Mengele right there and then. But of course that was impossible. Still, that was something he had to remember. It was a prime rule of intelligence investigation—perhaps
the
prime rule: always follow the money.

He explained to Kröger that he anticipated selling a certain asset for something over a quarter of a million dollars and wanted the money immediately converted into Swiss francs at whatever the current rate was on the day of the transaction. Scenting a commission, Kröger delicately inquired if he might be of some assistance in the sale.

It was a difficult moment for Caine. Experience had taught him that the world was still a battlefield, that you could trust people or you could survive, but you couldn't do both. And he was a survivor. Still, he knew that Swiss banks were inviolable. He took the envelope out of his pocket and showed Kröger the stamp.

“Ingenious,” Kröger remarked.

“The currency regulations,” Caine began.

“Of course. That's why we are here: to deal with the inconveniences of business.”

“Do you know someone?”

“Let me see,” Kröger said, and spent a few minutes on the telephone. He replaced the receiver and smiled briefly at Caine. Kröger looked like he wanted to sell him a car, Caine thought.

“The firm of Beckmann
und
Schenck is highly recommended. I am told that Herr Beckmann is perhaps the leading stamp dealer in Europe. You'll find his office on the Uraniastrasse fifty-eight, near the Rudolf Bran Bridge. If you wish, I'll call and tell him to expect you. Once he has authenticated the stamp,” Kröger said, raising his eyebrows slightly to indicate that a fraud would be unthinkable, “you can deposit the stamp in our vault and we can arrange to deliver the stamp to Beckmann when he has a buyer.”

“That's very kind of you.”

Kröger held up his hand as if to forestall any thanks.

“Our fee is five percent of the selling price.”

“Of course,” Caine responded.

Herr Beckmann was a stocky figure in a gray turtle-neck sweater under a worn tweed blazer. His small deep-set eyes were magnified into owl's eyes by wire- rimmed glasses perched on his nose. The walls of his spartan office were lined with sheets of brightly colored stamps displayed in glass cases like butterflies. He smiled briefly at Caine and nodded in a perfunctory Prussian bow. But when Caine handed him the envelope and he saw the stamp, he began to blink rapidly. For a moment his eyes, like giant marbles behind the glass lenses, riveted on the stamp with the total concentration of a hawk spying a distant prey.

“Extraordinary,” he murmured.

“I take it the stamp meets with your approval,” Caine said softly.

“There is no question of its authenticity,” Beckmann replied, his Swiss-German accent sibilant in English. “Where did you get it?”

“From the owner.”

“
Ja
, of course,” Beckmann murmured, almost to himself. “Where did he get it,
bitte?
”

“At a New York auction in 1968.”

“
Ach
, the Teilman auction. But where is the other stamp?”

“I'm still negotiating for it. I expect to have it within six months.” I wish, I wish, Caine thought. Beckmann began to blink again.

“I will find a buyer, or else I will buy it myself.”

“What is it worth?”

Beckmann opened his hands in a bargaining gesture that might have predated Jacob's negotiation with Esau over a bowl of soup.

“The market is down these days and the stamp is by itself. Also, an item of this size is very difficult.”

“What's it worth?” Caine repeated.

There was a long pause while Beckmann calculated. He picked up the stamp again and examined it, like a doctor poking at a patient.

“I cannot guarantee you more than seven hundred seventy-five thousand francs.” Caine tried to keep his face expressionless as he translated the sum. It was more than $310,000. “Of course,” Beckmann added placatingly, “we may be able to get more. I will do my best for you.”

“It's a deal,” Caine replied and put the stamp back in his pocket. Beckmann's eyes followed the stamp, peering at Caine's jacket as if he could see the stamp through the fabric. “I shall deposit the stamp at the bank. When you have a cash buyer, you can make the arrangements through Herr Kröger.”

Caine took a
Klein
taxi back to the bank and deposited the stamp with Kröger. Then he walked over to Kranzler's for a late lunch. So now all he had to do was find Mengele, Caine thought, sipping the
Kirschwasser
. There was nothing to it. All he had to do was get his junior James Bond secret agent kit, throw on his Burberry trench coat, and play a wild hunch. It always worked out in the movies.

He could start by eliminating Asia and Africa, where a white man stood out like a grain of salt in a pepper shaker, he thought. Except for the Middle East, where the Arabs had a penchant for German scientists with whom they could share a common dislike of Jews. Of course Mengele wasn't really a scientist. Still, it was a possibility. He could probably scratch Australia and North America, because the Jewish communities were too large and the climate for notorious Nazis too inhospitable. Europe was almost certainly out, except perhaps Spain. No, even Spain would have been too hot for the Angel of Death, and Mengele wouldn't have gone east. If he had been picked up by the Communists, they wouldn't have bothered with the niceties of a public trial. Still, that was something to keep in mind. The Poles and the Russians still wanted Mengele and just might have some information on him. So that left South America at the top of the list, with the Middle East and Eastern Europe as places to be checked for information. According to the Interpol file Mengele was last heard of in Argentina, but that was in the days of Perón and long before the Eichmann snatch. It was hopeless, Caine thought as he motioned the waiter over for the check.

“
Rechnung, bitte
,” he said, shaking his head. The son of a bitch could be anywhere. He would have to play it by the book. His first targets would be information sources in the Middle East, Poland, and Germany. Then he could narrow it down to someplace in South America with a greater degree of certainty.

The Grill bar in the Baur au Lac is the place to be in Zurich. Long ago the action was at the Odeon Café, where Mata Hari danced for the officers and the young Mussolini played billiards; but since the war it's the Grill. That evening the bar was jammed with laughing businessmen and expensive women flashing jewelry from Meister's and conversation from the society pages. As Caine looked around, he thought he spotted agents from at least half-a-dozen intelligence services. It was like a spies' convention, he mused as he sipped a
marc
. Then he got lucky.

He saw a powerfully built man sitting at a corner table with a stunning blonde who was sensuously licking the cherry in her cocktail. He recognized Mahmoud Ibn Sallah from the briefing he'd had on the Abu Daud hit.

Ibn Sallah had dark curly hair and soft brown eyes nestled under long curling lashes. But the soft eyes that made him irresistible to women concealed a brain that could unravel Byzantine plots with the cunning ruthlessness of his Levantine forebears. His dark business suit did not disguise what was still an impressive body. In his youth he had been an Olympic wrestler.

At the moment Ibn Sallah was pouring champagne for the blonde, and from her reaction he appeared to be mouthing some extravagant courtesy. Caine thought that he looked like a high-class Armenian rug merchant, but in fact Ibn Sallah was the deputy director of the Moukhabarat, the Egyptian secret service.

As Caine looked around for shields, he wondered what Ibn Sallah was doing in Zurich. He grinned to himself as he thought that there must be more than a few men in the bar who would be wondering the same thing. But then why did anyone come to Zurich? There was an OPEC meeting in Geneva and Ibn Sallah probably stopped over in Zurich to do his banking, whether on his own account or somebody else's. Whatever else happened, Ibn Sallah wasn't the sort of man who was planning to retire just on a government pension. As for the blonde, Caine dismissed her. She was almost certainly just window dressing.