Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

The Theft of the Faded Flag by Edward D. Hoch

© 1988 by Edward D. Hoch.

Art Schraeder was very specific about wanting one of the old Coronado flags, Nick told Gloria when she asked if he couldn’t just buy a new one.

“When does he want it?” she asked.

“I’m planning to scout the consulate tomorrow,” Nick told her. “It’s on upper Madison Avenue, in the Seventies.”

“Don’t lose any sleep over Sandra Paris,” Gloria said. “I’m sure she’s not involved...”

The embassy of the tiny Caribbean nation of Coronado was situated on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, not far from the Naval Observatory and the Vice-President’s house. It was in one of several aging mansions that have found new life in the world of international diplomacy, and each morning at sunrise early-rising residents were sure to see the rainbow-colored flag being raised to the end of the pole that protruded from the center window of the top floor.

This particular morning in September seemed no different from any other. The flag of Coronado, looking just a bit faded from the sun, was run to the top of the pole promptly at 7:00 A.M. by the First Secretary of the delegation, a slick-haired man named Leon Oeste. He stood for a moment in the window as he always did, offering a salute as traffic passed below and a newsboy delivered his morning papers. Then he closed it and went down for breakfast with the ambassador.

Across the street at the entrance to Normanstone Park, Nick Velvet sat in the passenger seat of a compact car driven by a man named Art Schraeder. “That’s the flag,” Schraeder told him. “I want you to steal it.”

“It looks faded. They could use a new one.”

“They’re replacing it with a new one the first of October. That’s why I need it stolen before then.”

“No value?” Nick asked. He was extremely particular about what he stole.

“No value. What’s a faded flag worth?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars to you, if that’s what you’re willing to pay me.”

“I need the flag, and embassies are well protected. I figured I needed to hire the best in the business.”

“You’ve got him,” Nick said.

“Good. And—” Schraeder stopped in midsentence.

“What is it?”

Art Schraeder was craning his neck out the car window. “Where’s the damn flag? It’s gone!”

“Maybe they had to take it in for some reason.”

“They never take it in before sunset. Besides, I was watching it every minute.”

“Not the minute it was taken down, obviously.”

“Suppose somebody beat us to it? Suppose somebody else stole it?”

Nick tried to reassure him. “It’s only seven in the morning. Who’d steal a flag from under our eyes before breakfast?”

But even as he said the words, a possible answer came to him. There was one person, a woman whose path he’d crossed more than once before, who always committed her thefts before breakfast. Sandra Paris, better known in criminal circles as the White Queen.

“ ‘Impossible things before breakfast,’ ” Nick said to Gloria back home that evening. “That’s her motto.”

“You haven’t heard anything from or about Sandra Paris in two years,” Gloria objected. “You have no reason to think she’s connected with this.”

“It’s just a feeling I have.”

“The flag was really stolen?”

“Yes — when the man at the window discovered it was missing, he was out in the street with a couple of security guards looking all over for it. Someone even climbed out on the roof in case it had blown up there somehow. They didn’t find it.”

“But you were down in the street when it happened.”

“Apparently.”

“So you’re out the twenty-five thousand?”

“Maybe not. Schraeder tells me there’s another flag like it at the Coronado consulate in New York. He says that one will do just as well.”

“Couldn’t he just buy a new flag?”

“He’s very specific about wanting one of the old ones. I’ve had far stranger requests in my time.”

“When does he want it?”

“I’m planning to scout the place tomorrow. It’s on upper Madison Avenue, in the Seventies.”

“Don’t lose any sleep about Sandra Paris,” Gloria told him. “I’m sure she’s not involved.”

The following day, Nick took the train into New York and rode the Lexington Avenue subway to Seventy-seventh Street. Walking briskly over to Madison, he observed that no police were on duty in front of the Coronado consulate as they were at some of the other diplomatic missions around Manhattan. The familiar rainbow flag with its obscure seal in the center was in place on the flagpole at the third-floor window.

At first he barely noticed the well dressed grey-haired woman who strolled by, trailing an eager little poodle on a leash. And he might have taken no notice when she turned back and retraced her steps if the poodle hadn’t leaped up on him, as if intent on calling attention to its mistress. As soon as he saw the grey-haired woman’s eyes, he knew.

“Hello, Sandra.”

“Hello, Nick. It’s good to see you again.”

“What brings you here?”

“I’m living just a few blocks from here.” Then, to the poodle, “Get down, Bon Bon! Behave yourself!”

“Your hair has gone completely grey in just two years,” Nick observed with a trace of irony.

She arched an eyebrow at him, a mannerism he remembered from their earlier meetings. “Suppose you buy me a cup of coffee. It’s always fresh at the place across the street.”

“It would be a pleasure, Sandra.”

Over coffee she came to the point. “What are you up to, Nick? What are you doing here?”

“You mean outside the Coronado consulate? I might ask the same of you. Why are you wearing a wig and walking your dog back and forth in front of the building?”

“It’s business,” she said simply.

“Was it business yesterday morning in Washington, too?”

She lowered her eyelids and dipped her head to take a sip of coffee. “You were there?”

“Yes. A bit too late.”

“Then it appears we’re after the same thing.”

“The faded flags of the nation of Coronado.”

She smiled. The time for pretense was past. “Correct.”

“How did you get that flag off the pole yesterday?”

“That’s my secret.”

“Who are you working for?”

“Another secret. Obviously not the same person who hired you.”

“What makes these old flags so valuable all of a sudden?”

She shrugged. “I don’t ask questions.”

“Are we going to have a fight over that flag?”

“Not at all,” she said smugly. “I’m taking it tomorrow morning. If you want it, you’ll have to beat me to it.”

“How did you manage it yesterday, Sandra?”

“Want to see it again? Come by tomorrow morning. I don’t mind playing to an audience.”

Nick knew it would be virtually impossible for him to steal the Coronado flag once it had been stored away for the night. Prowling around a strange building in the dark, with no idea of his goal, was out of the question. That only left the time when the flag was taken down, around seven P.M. if they did it at sundown.

It was obvious that the flagpole couldn’t be reached from the street without attracting attention. The flag had to be stolen from inside the building. When the door opened for a visitor, he could see a formidable-looking guard seated just inside. If there was any sort of back entrance to the consulate, it was completely blocked from the street. A narrow alleyway running between the buildings had a firmly locked iron gate.

Nick took a chance and entered a small dress shop in the building next door. The woman clerk was surprised and a bit apprehensive at the sight of him. “Health inspector,” he explained, showing a badge and I.D. that he carried for such occasions. “We’ve had a report of a foul odor that seems to be coming from the back of your store.”

“What?” The young woman wrinkled her brow in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“All I know is what they tell me. Have you a back door to the shop?”

She seemed dubious. “The owner’s not here right now. I shouldn’t—”

“If there’s no odor, I’ll be finished in a minute,” he assured her.

“All right,” she decided. “Follow me.”

He noticed a nameplate on her blouse identifying her as Ms. Shepherd. Her green-and-white dress was casual but smart. They walked through the stock room and she opened a side door. Nick saw that it led onto the same narrow passageway he’d observed from the street. “See? There’s no odor.”

“Isn’t there a back door?”

“This is the only other door.”

Nick sniffed the air. “Well, I don’t detect any odor. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

A bell sounded inside the shop at the front. “I have a customer,” she said. She closed and bolted the door and escorted Nick back into the shop, where a middle-aged woman was glancing through a rack of dresses.

Out on the street, Nick walked away quickly without a glance at the Coronado consulate. Ms. Shepherd had provided him with everything he needed.

The dress shop closed promptly at six, a full hour before sundown, and Nick was waiting across the street when the Shepherd woman locked the front door and headed uptown. During his few minutes in the shop, he’d managed to check the lock on the front door and slice through a key wire on the alarm system. Now it took him only a moment to cross Madison Avenue and walk up to the door as if he belonged there. He had it unlocked in less than ten seconds and was inside without the alarm sounding. Passersby paid no attention. He walked through the shop to the side door, disconnected the alarm there, and opened it.

Once in the alley separating the two buildings, he walked to the rear. There had to be a reason for the alley and the most likely one was to provide access to the consulate kitchen for deliveries and rubbish removal. He found the door to the kitchen standing open behind an unlocked screen door. The cooks were busy with dinner preparation and only one bare-chested dishwasher noticed him. “Who are you?” the man asked in Spanish.

“Health inspector,” Nick answered, flashing his badge. “Put on a shirt or I’ll have to write you up for a violation.”

The man quickly reached for his shirt and Nick continued on his way. He passed through the kitchen and out the swinging doors that led to the dining area. A few people were seated at tables but none of them challenged him. Coming from the kitchen seemed to provide him with the necessary authority.

The interior of the consulate was decorated in bright colors, with murals depicting various events in Coronado’s history. One in the process of being repainted depicted three sailing ships at anchor in a small cove — Nick recognized it as the same scene repeated in a simplified form in the seal on the rainbow flag.

Nick spotted a white-haired man in a business suit descending the staircase with a folded flag in his hand. “Pardon me,” he said, approaching the man. “Are you Senor Montanya?”

The man frowned at him. “Jose Montanya returned to Coronado three months ago. I am Christopher Onza, the acting envoy.”

Nick silently cursed the outdated reference book he’d consulted. He dredged his mind for another name. “I’m sorry, I was mistaken. Leon Oeste, the First Secretary at the Washington embassy, sent me here to pick up the flag you’ve been flying from the consulate. He said you’ve been informed and would be expecting me.”

“I knew there was to be a change, but my instructions were merely to burn the old flag.”

“No, I’ve been sent to pick it up. Is that it in your hand?”

The man hesitated only an instant. “Yes, I just took it down. Do you wish to give me a receipt for it?”

“Certainly.” Nick took a notebook from his pocket and scrawled a few words, signing it with an alias and giving it to Onza. “Here you are. Good evening.” He tucked the flag under his arm and headed for the front door.

“You have to sign out,” the guard told him at the door.

Nick showed the badge one more time. “Health inspector. I came in through the kitchen.”

“I don’t care if you came down the chimney. You still have to sign out.”

Nick signed out.

That evening in a Times Square hotel room, he delivered the flag to Art Schraeder, who smiled as he accepted it. “That was good work, Velvet. Faster than I’d expected.” He unfolded the flag until it was fully revealed, spread across one of the twin beds. “It doesn’t seem as faded as it should be.”

“He told me that was the flag—” Nick began.

“Well, it isn’t! This flag is new — it’s never been flown anywhere!”

“Does it matter that much?” Nick asked lamely.

“Of course it matters! I hired you to steal a faded flag from the Coronado government, not one of these new ones.”

“It looks exactly the same to me — a rainbow background with the nation’s official seal in the center.”

“I need an old one,” Schraeder insisted. “Whoever gave you this tricked you.”

Nick had already realized that. The man on the stairs hadn’t been the easy mark he appeared to be. By now the flag Schraeder wanted was tucked safely away until morning. “I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” he assured Schraeder. He tried not to think of what else could go wrong. He especially tried not to think of Sandra Paris.

In the morning he was on upper Madison Avenue before dawn, standing in a doorway next to a homeless man who slept bundled inside a shabby overcoat. Precisely at seven, as the first rays of sun appeared over the East River, the man who had given Nick the wrong flag the previous day appeared at the third-floor window. He unwrapped the halyard from the pole and attached the flag to it, unfurling it as he raised it to the end of the pole.

The flag hung out over the sidewalk at what Nick estimated was an angle of about forty-five degrees. He watched as Christopher Onza finished, then left the doorway and prepared to go into action. During the night he’d arranged to hire a truck with a moveable boom with a bucket at the top, used by an outdoor-advertising firm to change its billboards. He saw it coming up the avenue and waved to the driver. He’d have the flag off the pole before anyone knew what had happened.

“All right,” Nick told the driver when the truck pulled up. “Take me up to that flag. When we’re close enough I’ll take over the controls in the bucket myself.”

The driver looked blank. “What flag are you talking about? I don’t see any flag.”

Nick had a sinking feeling as he turned his head and glanced up at the consulate window. The flagpole was empty, its halyard flapping gently in the breeze.

Across the street he noticed that the sleeping man was no longer in the doorway. Only the shabby overcoat remained. Its wearer had vanished as neatly as the flag.

Nick crossed the street and picked up the coat. A small white card fell free of it and he knew what it would say before he bent to pick it up.

Impossible things before breakfast.

“I’ve never seen you so upset, Nicky,” Gloria told him as she poured a second cup of coffee.

“Sandra Paris beat me twice in three days. She stole both of those flags from under my nose and I don’t even know how she did it. The only flag I managed to steal was the wrong one.”

“What did Mr. Schraeder say?”

“I haven’t told him yet.”

When he took the train back to Manhattan that afternoon, Nick fully expected his meeting with Art Schraeder to be a total disaster. He was prepared for the first real failure in his long career, prepared for the news to travel quickly among the people who were most likely to hire him.

He was not prepared for Schraeder to grant him one more chance. The man listened to his story with a sour expression on his face and finally said, “I would have done better hiring this Sandra Paris, apparently. There is one last opportunity to steal an old flag before they’re destroyed at the end of the month, but you’d have to fly to Coronado to do it. What do you think?”

Nick would have traveled to the South Pole to redeem himself at that point. “Where is the flag?”

“In front of the presidential palace in Coronado City. The place is well guarded, of course. Stealing this one will be even harder than stealing the first two.”

“Those first two were pretty difficult for me. It can’t be any worse in Coronado City.”

He arrived there the following Monday morning and took a taxi to the presidential palace. His confidence dwindled when he saw the military guards surrounding the place, and he realized he knew very little about the island nation of Coronado. He picked up a guidebook for tourists and took it along to his hotel room to read. The hotel itself was a white-stucco structure of vaguely Spanish architecture, with balconies overlooking the palace across the square. Around the back was a patio lined with palm trees surrounding a large, inviting swimming pool. Nick changed into his trunks and relaxed there while he read the tourist’s guide.

The island had been discovered by Columbus on his second voyage, which accounted for the three sailing ships at anchor on the nation’s seal — even though, as the book explained, there had really been seventeen ships on that second voyage. The exact point of their anchorage was unknown. Coronado had been a Spanish possession until the late Nineteenth century, when it won its independence. And independent was the right word for Coronado. Nick knew from recent newspaper headlines that both the United States and Cuba were actively courting the tiny nation in an attempt to win rights to a naval base there.

Nick’s reading was interrupted by a gentle tap on his shoulder. “It seems we’re fated to keep meeting like this,” a voice above him said.

He looked up into the pale-blue eyes of Sandra Paris.

She was wearing a one-piece black bathing suit cut fashionably high on her hips — and might have been any young American tourist spending a few days away from the stress of her job. Her smile was both teasing and tempting as she enjoyed the surprise of her sudden appearance.

“What are you doing here?” Nick asked, rising to his feet.

“Can’t a working woman relax once in a while?”

“You’re not here to relax. You’re here to steal another flag.”

“My, my! You have a terrible opinion of me, Nick. Let’s go for a swim and cool off.” Without another word, she dove into the pool.

Nick followed reluctantly, diving deep and then surfacing next to her. “How did you do it?” he asked, treading water. “You were the bum in the doorway, weren’t you?”

“Of course. I wanted to reach out and grab your ankle, but I controlled myself.”

“Still, you were in the doorway and the flag was on the pole. How did you get it without my seeing anything?”

“The same way I did it in Washington. The same way I’ll do it here.”

“The flag at the presidential palace is a lot larger, and there are armed guards all over the place.”

“No problem.” She did a backflip and disappeared from view.

When she surfaced again, some distance away, Nick swam over to her. “This feuding between us is foolish. In a sense we’re both on the same side. Why don’t we team up and split the fees?”

Her pale eyes twinkled. “How would we split the flag?”

“You’ve got two already. Let me have this one.”

“My client needs all three.”

“What for? They’re just like the new ones.”

“No, not quite.”

“Tell me who you’re working for.”

“That’s against the rules.” She swam effortlessly to the ladder and pulled herself up. He followed along and when he reached her side she was toweling droplets of water from her long legs. “But the least I can do is tell you why the flags are important, since your own client obviously hasn’t. Want to come up to my room, or would that compromise you?”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said, as she slipped into a short terry-cloth robe.

She was on the eighth floor, two levels above Nick’s own room, with a perfect view across the park to the presidential palace. He settled into a chair by the balcony and watched while she removed two carefully folded flags from her luggage. Both were the familiar rainbow banners of Coronado, but one was clearly faded, with a tattered edge. “This one is from the Washington embassy,” she explained. “I bought the other one at a flag shop in Manhattan for comparison.” She unfolded the two flags on the bed where Nick could examine them.

“They look alike to me, except for the fading,” he said.

“Look at the seal in the middle.”

“Three sailing ships at anchor. What’s—? Oh, I see what you mean. The shape of the coastline is a little bit different. On the old seal they’re in a sort of cove. On the new flag they’re just along a shoreline.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s what? Why would that make the old flags so important to anyone?”

“Certain factions must want to preserve them. They don’t want them burned.”

“But flags are printed in full color in most almanacs and dictionaries. Anyone could see the old design without stealing the flag itself.”

“Not in this much detail. That seal would only be a tiny spot of color in reproductions. Even a printed description, ‘three sailing ships at anchor,’ wouldn’t tell the whole story. The ships are still there. It’s the coastline that’s changed.”

“You may be right,” Nick admitted, remembering how the mural on the wall of the New York consulate was being altered when he was there.

“Of course I’m right. There are two factions involved. One faction wants to keep the change secret, so it hired me to steal the remaining three flags. The other faction wants to reveal the change for its own purpose, so it only needs one of the flags.”

“What’s so important about the shape of the coastline?”

“That I don’t know,” she admitted.

Nick watched her fold the flags and return them to her suitcase. “Where’s the one from the New York consulate?”

“That’s already been delivered to my client.”

Her bedside telephone rang and she scooped it up with a quick motion. “Hello. Yes. Yes. I can’t talk now. Tomorrow, that’s right. Bye.”

“Your client?” Nick asked as she hung up.

She merely smiled. “I’ll have to ask you to leave now. I’m sure we both have a great deal to do.”

“I have a feeling I’ll see you tomorrow,” Nick said as he departed.

Nick wandered over to the palace at sundown and watched while the flag was lowered and folded by an honor guard of four soldiers. He knew that Sandra would make her move the following morning, true to her motto of impossible things before breakfast. If he hoped to steal the flag himself he would have to act first.

He was just starting away from the palace steps when he spotted a familiar face. It was Christopher Onza, the white-haired gentleman he’d encountered on the stairway of the Coronado consulate in New York. “Pardon me, Senor Onza. You may remember that we met in New York last week.”

Onza frowned at him for just an instant. “Oh, yes. You were the man collecting flags.”

“I received the wrong one from you. I’ll have to return it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Onza started to continue on his way but Nick said, “I understand the flag was stolen from your consulate the following morning.”

“Stolen? I doubt that. It did disappear mysteriously. Apparently it came loose from the pole and was blown away by the wind. We replaced it, as we had planned to do anyway.” He nodded overpolitely and continued on his way. Nick wondered if it was the missing flag that had brought him to Coronado.

Nick had a number of tasks to carry out before morning and was awake much of the night. At three a.m. he stood on the balcony of his room gazing out at the moonlit square and the palace beyond. He felt good about his plans. This time the White Queen would not be quite so impossible before breakfast.

He arrived at the palace guardhouse well before sunrise, dressed in a colonel’s uniform he’d managed to obtain at some expense. An earlier phone call had informed the captain of the guard — convincingly, he hoped — that the President wished a new flag to be flown that day and a colonel would arrive with it before sunrise. The man who met Nick at the door checked his identification and then admitted him. The captain of the guard, a young man with a neat moustache and brooding eyes, took the new flag and produced the old one with some reluctance.

“I understood it was not to be burned until the first of the month,” he said.

“You can see how faded it is,” Nick told him. “There will be special visitors at the palace today and the President wants everything perfect.”

“Certainly.” The captain passed over the flag without further question.

Nick returned his salute and left quickly. It had been as simple as that. The palace flag was much larger than those at the embassies, but he knew it would fit in his suitcase for the flight back to New York. The sun was rising beyond the palm trees by the time he completed his walk to the hotel. As he turned and stood for a moment, watching the honor guard march out to raise the new flag, he saw the white puffs of two exploding smoke bombs, quite near the soldiers, and he knew Sandra was at work. You’re too late this time, Sandra, he said to himself.

He hurried through the lobby and pressed the elevator button as the few guests and employees who were in the lobby rushed outside to see what was happening. Upstairs, unlocking the door to his room, he stepped inside, tossed the folded flag on the bed, and began to shed his uniform. Then he heard a sound from the bathroom, but before he could turn a harsh voice stopped him. “Stand very still, Mr. Velvet. I have a pistol pointed at the back of your spine, and in this country they would award me a medal for shooting you.”

Nick recognized the voice at once. It was Christopher Onza.

“Don’t I deserve an explanation before you shoot me?” Nick asked, keeping his hands carefully raised.

“Of course. Since I am known to have an interest in the matter of the flags, the captain of the guard telephoned me after he received your call. I told him to give you the flag, and then arranged to be here when you returned. I will kill you, take the flag, and avoid having to pay that foolish woman I hired.”

“If you mean Sandra Paris, she’s over there risking her life for you right now.”

“Life is cheap in these parts. Lie down on the floor, please.”

Nick turned instead to face him. “I knew you were the one who hired her.”

“Did she tell you?”

“She didn’t have to. When I met you in the New York consulate, you knew enough to give me a new flag instead of the old one. That told me you were involved in the conspiracy, whatever it was. Sandra still has the flag from Washington, although she told me the New York one has already been delivered. That told me two things — how it was stolen and who hired her.”

“You are a clever man, Mr. Velvet.”

“She didn’t have to deliver the consulate flag to you because you stole it yourself. I first assumed that somehow she had stolen it from the doorway across the street, but actually she was only watching to make certain her device worked properly. It’s the same trick stage magicians use to make a small object vanish from their hands. You ran the flag out to the end of the pole with a heavy elastic band attached. Instead of hooking it to the halyard as usual, you merely secured it with tape. After a few minutes, when the pull of the elastic overcame the resistance of the tape, the flag came free and was yanked back down the pole and into the open window. Right into your hands. Of course, the purpose of the charade was in case someone other than Sandra was watching, someone like me, so that it would appear the flag had been stolen.”

“You should be a detective rather than a thief, Velvet.”

“I’ve been told that before. How do you know my name?”

“We had a report that you had been hired by a private group with ties to the American government.”

“Oh?” Nick thought about Art Schraeder and decided it was possible.

“Enough talk — lie down on the floor!”

“Don’t I have a right to know the flags’ big secret? I already know it involves the shape of the coastline on the seal.”

Onza seemed surprised. “One more reason why I can’t leave you alive. National flags and seals have changed the course of history more than once, and we don’t intend to let it happen again. If you remember your Central American history, you know that Nicaragua lost the canal to Panama because the seal of the country showed an active volcano, which frightened members of the American Congress. In Coronado’s case, both our seal and flag show three sailing ships from the second voyage of Columbus at anchor in Coronado Bay, a place we have insisted to both the Americans and Cubans is too shallow to serve as a naval base. We now contend that Columbus landed at some uncertain place along the coast rather than in the bay. Our seal has been changed to indicate that, and the flags are being changed, too. Reproductions of the flag are too small to show the critical details, and our government thought all of the flags had been safely replaced, but when it became known that the Americans were after one of them I hired this woman to steal the last three in use before they got to them.”

“What does your President think of all this? You’re acting without his knowledge, certainly, or you wouldn’t have needed to steal the flags. He could have ordered them withdrawn at once.”

“Our President—” Onza began. He never finished the sentence. The door burst open and the room was full of uniformed men with automatic weapons pointed at both of them.

Nick was an hour early for his flight back to New York that afternoon. He saw Sandra Paris seated in the private lounge of the airline club and went over to join her. “Returning to New York?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Los Angeles. I heard they found the flag in your room.”

Nick nodded glumly. “It was right there on the bed when the security police burst in. At least I’m alive. Your friend Onza was about to kill me.”

“He’s no friend of mine. He denies now that he ever hired me.”

Nick ordered a couple of drinks for them. “How did those smoke bombs of yours work? I saw them go off.”

“They worked fine, and in the confusion I got the flag away from the honor guard, but when I realized it was a new one I hesitated just long enough for them to capture me. So I figured that if I was having a failed mission, you might as well join me, so I gave them your room number. I hope you didn’t mind.”

“It probably saved my life, even if it did cost me my twenty-five-thousand-dollar fee.”

“Onza says you were working indirectly for the American government.”

“I guess so. I didn’t know it until he told me. Apparently they wanted a flag to use as evidence of that harbor. Onza was acting on his own, without the President’s knowledge, which is why he had to hire you to steal the flags rather than simply take them himself. I suspect he was working out his own deal with Cuba for a naval base, and perhaps even planning a coup. He had to remove the flags before they fell into the wrong hands, and before the President learned of his special interest in them.”

“Did Onza tell you how we stole the flag in New York?”

“Yes, but how did you work the theft in Washington? Was Leon Oeste an accomplice, too?”

“No.” She sipped her drink and smiled at him. “I hired an embassy maid to cut through the halyard in two places and glue the rope ends lightly together. The weight of the flag pulled them apart after a few minutes and the flag simply fell to the sidewalk. I picked it up and walked away. I was a newsboy that morning and the flag went into my sack of papers. You didn’t see me.”

“I saw you, but I didn’t recognize you.”

She glanced at her watch. “My flight should be boarding.” She stood, gathering up her things, and smiled at Nick. “It’s been fun.”

He walked her to the gate and watched the plane. Once it was off the ground, he sent a telegram to her at the Los Angeles airport, to be delivered on her arrival: