The Mordida Man (7 page)

So brilliantly and logically had the money been stolen that it was three full months before it was even missed. From Panama and Nassau the money was eventually traced to a Luxembourg bank, where it had been quietly withdrawn in cash over a period of two months by employees of an armored car firm who later claimed to have delivered the cash at various dates to (1) a middle-aged Frenchwoman, (2) an elderly Arab, (3) a young Texan, and (4) a nondescript Swede, none of whom could ever be found.

Three years after the embezzlement an anonymous article entitled “How Ma Bell Can Make You Rich” had been received in the mail by
Scientific American.
Although the title was snappy, only one of the learned editors at the magazine could even dimly perceive what the article was trying to explain, so esoteric was its symbolic language and mathematics.

The editors turned the article over to the FBI, who had it translated by a Nobel laureate, who advised them to burn every single copy unless they were willing to watch the national banking system collapse.

The only clue the FBI had was the Rio de Janeiro postmark on the envelope that the article had arrived in. It had taken special agent Jack Spiceman six months to track down Leland Timble in Rio. After a quiet chat lasting no more than fifteen minutes, Spiceman had agreed to go to work for Timble for $300,000 a year. It was Spiceman, in fact, who suggested and negotiated for the sanctuary on the island republic. And it was Spiceman who suggested that Franklin Keeling, the disgraced ex-CIA man, would make a valuable addition to Timble's small entourage.

In a reply now to Timble's suggestion that a ten-million-dollar ransom be considered, Keeling came back with a non sequitur, which was what his conversations with Timble often consisted of.

“The doc's back on the sauce,” he said. “Dead drunk.”

“I should think the United Nations again, don't you?”

“You still want to use Old Black Joe?” Keeling said.

Old Black Joe was what Keeling called Dr. Joseph Mapangou, Gambia's permanent representative to the United Nations. On an annual retainer of fifty thousand dollars, Dr. Mapangou had proved useful in a number of ways, not the least being his uncanny ability to be first with the latest rumor. It was Dr. Mapangou, in fact, who had come up with the hint that Anvil Five might be found in London.

“How much did it all cost?” Timble asked, taking out a small spiral notebook and a ball-point pen. When it came to money, Timble's air of mild bemusement vanished. His large brown eyes narrowed, even glittered, and his face, at twenty-nine still almost as round and unformed as a child's, seemed to lengthen itself into a sterner, more adult shape.

Keeling was ready with the figures. “It took thirty-four thousand just to get the lead on them.”

Timble jotted down the figure.

“Then I jewed Zlatev down to nineteen thousand for the umbrella.”

“The Bulgarian,” Timble said and made another quick note.

Keeling nodded. “The de la Cova woman was a bargain, twenty thousand.”

Timble's small mouth pursed itself into appreciation at the figure as he wrote it down.

“That little fag who used to be with MI 6—he wouldn't budge for less than forty thousand.”

Timble frowned, but said nothing, and made another note.

“That East End crowd I told you about came through with the taxi and driver for five thousand, and then I had to spread another twenty thousand around out at Heathrow.”

“In all, $138,000,” Timble said. “Not bad, although I think you could have sliced just a teeny bit more off the Bulgarian's price for his umbrella.”

“I could have rented it,” Keeling said, not bothering to put much sarcasm into his tone, because Timble never noticed it anyway.

For a moment Timble's face brightened. But it was only for a moment. “No,” he said, “I don't suppose that would have done at all.”

“No.”

“Still, $138,000 isn't bad. I think the ransom will be ten million. Ten million each, of course, or have I already mentioned that?”

Keeling wiped one of his large hands hard across the bottom of his face. “Leland?”

“Yes.”

“Lemme ask you something again?”

“Of course.”

“And this time you'll give me a straight answer?”

“Certainly.”

“Who are we gonna ransom Felix down there feeding the sharks twice to?”

For a moment, Timble's expression changed. The emotion that flitted across it was one of either rage or despair. Like a child, Timble's face had a limited range of expressions which came and went so quickly it was often difficult to determine his feelings.

“You didn't forget my contingency instructions, did you, Franklin? I would be extremely disappointed if you did. Most operations fail because of a lack of contingency planning. An ability to anticipate the unexpected as well as the unforeseen—”

“Leland,” Keeling interrupted.

“Yes.”

“I didn't forget.”

A look of pure joy came and went from Timble's face in less than a second. It was almost subliminal. If I had blinked, Keeling thought, I would have missed it.

“I knew you wouldn't,” Timble said and smiled happily with his lips closed, showing no teeth. When he smiled like that, he reminded Keeling of those dumb faces that some people draw at the bottom of their letters.

“Leland,” Keeling said.

“Yes.”

“Lemme ask you again. Who are we going to ransom Felix down there in the ocean twice to?”

“Didn't I just say?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, first to Israel and then to Libya. Or perhaps vice versa.”

8

The day after his meeting with Paul Grimes, Chubb Dunjee on a very wet Thursday morning flew into Heathrow from Lisbon aboard an Iberia Airlines DC-8. He went through customs and immigration and then headed for the Pan Am counter, where he used his nearly expired American Express card to charge a first-class one-way ticket to Rome on a flight leaving in two hours.

He had decided to put to a test the easy-money proposition Paul Grimes had made him in Sintra. Over the years, Dunjee had abandoned nearly all faith in easy money.

At a pay phone he dialed the London number that Grimes had urged him to memorize. The phone rang its double rings twice before a woman's voice answered with a carefully noncommittal “Yes.”

“This is Dunjee.”

“One moment.”

There were some clicks and whirrings that Dunjee didn't particularly care for, but then Grimes came on the phone with “Where are you?”

“Heathrow. I'll be in the Pan Am VIP lounge for the next hour and twenty minutes. If half of what we talked about in Sintra isn't here by then, I'll be elsewhere by evening.”

“Well, shit, Chubb.”

“It's up to you.”

Grimes sighed. “It'll be there,” he said and hung up.

Dunjee effortlessly talked his way into the Pan Am VIP lounge, which turned out to be a rather grubby place that offered some worn couches and chairs, a TV set, and free help-yourself booze from a rotating circular rack of upside-down bottles. There were also some bowls of peanuts, potato chips, Ritz crackers, and a large mound of glowing orange cheese spread that somehow looked radioactive and no one had touched. Dunjee glanced around, but could spot no one who looked very important. Not even slightly important. He mixed himself a free whisky and water and settled down to wait.

Sixty-two minutes later the messenger from Grimes arrived. The messenger was a tall woman, either approaching thirty or just past it. Even in the rain she had worn large round dark glasses, but removed them as soon as she entered the lounge. Dunjee was mildly relieved to see her put them away in her purse instead of shoving them up on top of her short blond hair that had been turned dark and damp by the rain.

The woman paused to glance around the lounge. She quickly rejected several other waiting male passengers, settled on Dunjee, studied him briefly, and then made her way toward him. Dunjee liked the way she walked.

When the woman reached Dunjee, she stopped and for several moments stood staring at him calmly, almost quizzically. “He said you were a bit cockeyed,” she said. “It's rather nice. I'm Delft Csider. That's spelled with a Cs.”

“Delft?”

“My eyes.”

Dunjee saw that they were indeed blue, perhaps even delft blue. They went with her pale smooth skin and her high-cheek-boned face that seemed to have more than just a touch of Slav in it. For some reason, he found himself wondering how many languages she spoke.

“You were the one on the phone, right?” Dunjee said as he rose.

“Right.”

He indicated the large fat manila envelope that her left hand clutched against her damp oyster-white raincoat. There was no ring on the hand. “That for me?” he said.

She nodded and with her right hand dug deeply into the leather purse that hung from her shoulder. She took out a folded sheet of paper.

“You'll have to sign for it.”

“Sign?”

“You know—your name.”

Dunjee smiled. “You bet.”

He took a ball-point pen from his pocket and without even reading what was on the sheet of paper wrote something on it. Then he handed it back to her.

“Felix Krull,” she read. “That's rather funny.”

“Not as funny as asking me to sign for it.”

She shrugged and handed him the fat manila envelope. “He said I should try.”

Dunjee tapped the envelope. “Would you like a drink while I check what's inside?”

“I would, rather.”

He nodded toward the free-drink dispenser. “Help yourself.”

As Dunjee turned to leave, her hand touched him lightly on the sleeve. “What'll you do if it's not all there?”

“It'll be there.”

“Then why check it?”

“Because if I don't now, I may wish that I had later, which would be too late.”

“That's a complicated attitude.”

“It's a complicated world.”

Dunjee left, found a men's room, and inside a stall opened the manila envelope. It contained fifty thousand dollars in rubber-band-bound packets of fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. There was also a note typed on a small square of flimsy paper. The note said, “I'll call you around noon.” It was unsigned.

Dunjee crumpled the note and dropped it into the toilet. He then went back into the lounge, mixed himself a second drink, and joined Delft Csider, who sat in a corner, well away from everyone else, leafing through a tattered copy of
Country Life.

She looked up at him as he sat down. “All there?”

“All there. Anyone else in on this mess?”

“No. Just he and I.”

“And you're what?”

“The backup.”

“Why you—in particular, I mean?”

“I have the languages, should it come to that.”

“How many?”

“Six.”

“I'll guess: French, German, Spanish, Italian and”—he paused—”Hungarian.”

She acknowledged his guess with a slight nod and an even slighter smile. “You left out one.”

“What?”

“Arabic.”

“Arabic makes seven, not six.”

“I don't count English.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“English?”

“No.”

“I couldn't tell.”

She didn't seem to care. She finished her drink, rattled the ice in her glass and said, “I have a car if you could use a lift.”

“Thanks. I could.”

“Where're you staying, the Connaught?”

“Do I look like the Connaught?”

She again examined him briefly. “Almost.”

Dunjee canceled his seat on the Rome flight while Delft Csider went to get her car, which turned out to be an elderly Morgan 2 + 2 with a patched top. Dunjee put his suitcase in the rear seat and climbed in beside her.

“Old, but reliable,” she said. “The car, I mean.”

They made most of the fast bumpy drive along the M4 in silence. The hard rain fell in sheets that leaked through the top and coated the windshield with what seemed to be thick layers of gray gelatin. The Morgan's worn blades scrubbed away earnestly but with little effect. After fifteen minutes, Dunjee said, “You should get some new blades.”

“Probably.”

“And some new shocks.”

“They are new.”

Five minutes later she said, “I was just wondering.”

“What?”

“What kind of name is Dunjee?”

“I don't know. Scotch, maybe.”

“And Chubb?”

“My father was a locksmith. I had an older brother called Yale, but he died.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. He was three and I was one.”

Dunjee's hotel was the Hilton. After thanking Delft Csider for the lift, he allowed the doorman to fetch his bag from the rear and shield him from the rain with a large black umbrella. Inside, the reservation clerk ran a practiced eye over Dunjee and assigned him to a hundred-and-twenty-two-dollar-a-night room on the sixth floor with a view of Hyde Park. Up in the room, the middle-aged porter, perhaps the last native-born English yeoman still in hotel service, deposited Dunjee's bag on the stand and put the room key on top of the television set. Dunjee took out a twenty-dollar bill, folded it lengthwise, and held it out. The porter pocketed the bill smoothly with thanks and then waited to see what Dunjee expected for his money.

“I might like to do some gambling, but I don't want to wait forty-eight hours. That's the law, isn't it?”

The porter smiled. It was the smile of the practiced conspirator. “These things can be arranged, sir. No trouble at all. If you'll check your box downstairs a bit later this afternoon, you'll find a membership card all made out. And a very nice club it is, too.”

“Poker?”

“Seven-card stud, I believe it is, sir.”

“Thank you.”