The Mordida Man (20 page)

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 bol ted-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.”

“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.

He was still shaking his head when he let Dunjee and Hopkins out in front of the six-story building and sped off down the narrow twisting street that was choked with aged cars.

Hopkins looked up at the building and then over at Dunjee. “You've got the address, but no flat number.”

“No flat number.”

“And no name either.”

“No name.”

“Then let's go home.”

“Not yet,” Dunjee said. Near the building entrance, which seemed to lead into a kind of courtyard, stood a group of young Italians, most of them in their late teens. Dunjee moved over to them and said in slow English, “I am looking for someone.” As he said it, he took out a twenty-dollar bill, folded it lengthwise, folded it again, and then snapped it a couple of times.