Chameleon

6

It was a strange sight. No, O’Hara thought, it was beyond strange, it was bizarre.

O’Hara stood on the deck of the l2-foot yacht as it muttered in the sea a couple of hundred yards offshore. He was wearing blue jeans, a white raw silk shirt and a fur jacket, its collar turned up against the cold off-shore breeze. The heavy field glasses through which he was studying the deserted beach had been offered to him by the first mate, a lean, immaculate ex-Navy commander in his mid-forties named Carmody.

As O’Hara’s eyes swept the desolate Cape Cod shoreline, a couple emerged from a gorge in the bleak, soaring dunes speckled with sea grass that stood sentinel along the beach. The woman, tall and erect, was wearing a tweed jacket over her shoulders, her brown hair tossed by the heavy wind that sent mist from the roiling surf swirling past them.

The man beside her was built like a wrestler from the waist up, his biceps bulging, his shoulders and chest enormous, muscles lumped around a neck as thick as a telephone pole. His head was as bald as the beach except for tufts of white hair that caressed his ears. In jarring contrast to his torso, from the waist down he was a wasted human being. His legs were atrophied into spindles, mere twigs, and he walked in a laborious, shifting gait, swinging one leg in front of the other while supporting himself by two bright-red ski poles.

The man wore dark-blue swimming trunks and an open yellow windbreaker that flapped in the chilly morning air. No shoes. He shuffled painfully past long shadows, cast in the white sand by a sun which had risen only an hour or so earlier, while the woman, ignoring his deformity, kept pace beside him.

She stayed with him until he walked into the surf, then she stopped and waited. He waddled into the sea until the water sloshed at his knees; then, balancing himself unsteadily, he tossed the ski poles back toward her, pulled off the jacket and threw it over his shoulder and fell forward into the ocean and began swimming. His powerful arms pulled him through the big breakers and out beyond into clear water and he swain hard, without letting up until he was fifty feet r so from the Jacob’s ladder of the yacht. He looked up at the deck through piercing black eyes that glimmered under heavy brows, and treading water with his powerful arms, yelled, ‘Ahoy there, would that be Lieutenant O’Hara?’

‘Aye, sir,’ O’Hara yelled back.

‘Good show. Charles Gordon Howe here. It’s a pleasure, sir.’

‘Thank you. The pleasure’s mine. It’s a beautiful boat.’

‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘Fine. Just a little stiff.’

Howe spoke in a strong Boston accent laced with Irish, clipping his words off short, his O’s becoming ah’s.

‘Good enough. Care to join me, sir? What’s the water running there, Mr Carmody?’

‘Fifty-eight degrees, sir. Fourteen and a half Celsius.’

‘Uh . . . thanks, anyway,’ O’Hara said. ‘I think I’ll wait until the shoulder’s feeling a little better.’

‘And the water’s a little warmer, eh?’ Howe laughed, a big, barracks room laugh. ‘My beach cottage is right up there on the hill. I move out here every May and stay until September. I’m thirty minutes by helicopter from downtown Boston. Start off every morning with a dip.’

Howe took half a dozen hard strokes to the dock and hoisted himself up to a sitting position, his wasted legs dangling in the cold sea, then reached up to the Jacob’s ladder, his massive arms bulging, and pulled himself, arm over arm, up the ladder by its railing. The mate, Carmody, was waiting for him with an electric wheelchair and a heavy pea jacket. As he reached the top Howe twisted his entire torso and dropped into the chair. He towelled off, slipped on the jacket and draped a wool blanket over his legs. ‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ he said and held his hand out to O’Hara. It was like shaking hands with a trash masher.

The steward, a young man with a pasty complexion, wearing blue bellbottoms and a white starched jacket with a blue dolphin embroidered over one pocket, asked O’Hara, ‘How do you like your coffee, sir?’

‘Black, please, brandy on the bottom.’

‘Aye aye, sir. The usual, Captain?’ be asked Howe. ‘Strong tea with a touch of vodka. Takes the edge off, y’know. Breakfast in fifteen minutes, please, Mr Lomax.’ Then to O’Hara: ‘Scrod and scrambled eggs, I believe scrod’s a favourite of yours, right, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, thanks. And I prefer simply O’ Hara, if you don’t mind. I’ve been out of the Navy almost six years now.’

‘You earned the rank, by God, sir. Be proud of it.’

‘I resigned the commission, Mr Howe.’

‘But you left honourably, Lieutenant. I’m a strong believer in titles, sir. Aboard this craft, we honour rank.’

The steward returned with the drinks.

‘This should do until we’ve had a chance to shower and dress. We can do our talking over breakfast, Lieutenant.’

A brass christening plate beside the hatch that led to the main salon identified the yacht as:

THE BLACK HAWK

· Catalina Is, Calif

Launched: October 9, 1921

Owner: Edward L. Doheny

The robber baron Edward Doheny? O’Hara wondered. Of course, stupid, what other Edward Doheny could afford a tub like this?

A crew of eighteen. Stateroom space for forty. And it could sleep about sixty ‘in a pinch,’ whatever the hell Howe might consider ‘a pinch’ to be.

The dining room, like the rest of the ship, had the look of a museum piece, its brass portholes and lanterns gleaming like golden Inca treasure, the solid mahogany panelling oiled and black with age, the floors daring to be scuffed. The silverware, like everything else aboard, was elegant, old and defied appraisal. The walls were covered with photographs in thin brass frames of Howe with almost everybody imaginable except God. Most of them, which appeared to have been taken in the thirties and forties, showed a r3uch younger, trimmer Howe.

‘I always enjoy reading your stuff, Lieutenant. A very natural style. Not too formal.’

‘1 write it the way I’d say it. An editor told me that once, and damned if he wasn’t right.’

‘Good advice. Who was the editor’

‘Ben Bradlee.’

‘Oh ... Well, have a seat, sir.’

Howe took a letter from his jacket and leaned it against the water glass in front of his plate.

Ah, he likes drama, O’Hara thought . The letter is obviously part of the script. A little mystery with the scrod.

‘I must admit,’ O’Hara said, ‘I know you only by reputation. Were you in the Navy?’

‘Measured and fitted and one foot in the door,’ Howe said. ‘A week before reporting for duty, some reckless son of a bitch shot me in the spine. A hunting trip dawn in Georgia. Told me I’d never stand again. The hell with doctors. Three things I have no use for, Lieutenant: doctors, cowards and crooked politicians. And nothing I respect more than a damn good reporter. It’s an honour to have you aboard, sir.’

He toasted O’Hara with his coffee mug and took a sip, staring across the brim with his relentless black eyes. O’Hara nodded, raised his mug and stared back. ‘I assume,’ he said finally, ‘that you didn’t bring me halfway around the world just to have breakfast with you.’

‘A proper assumption. I’ve heard you’re quick to get to the point.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ve also heard that you’re tough, that you’re naïve, that you’re relentless, that you’re a pussycat, that you can be difficult, that you’re a dream to work with, that you’re honest to the bone, and that you’re a miserable, lyin’, no-good son of a bitch.

O’Hara laughed. ‘Well, either you’ve talked to a lot of folks or one poor slob who can’t make up his mind.’

It was Howe’s turn to laugh. ‘Also that you have a sense of humour. Three things that are real, sir: God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do the best we can about the third.’

‘I thought John Kennedy said that.’

Howe leaned across the table and winked. ‘I gave Johnny the line.’

Breakfast came, and when the steward had returned to the galley, Howe said, ‘You know a gentleman name of Anthony Virgil Falmouth?’

O’Hara laughed. ‘I didn’t know his middle name was Virgil. There’s a certain irony to that.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, Virgil was a poet. Tony Falmouth is an assassin. Somehow they just don’t equate.’

‘An assassin, you say?’

‘One of the best.’

‘You know that for a fact?’

Pause. O’Hara stared at Howe across the table, and finally said, ‘Yep.’

‘I see. And d’you trust him?’

‘Falmouth? Why?’

‘Believe me, I have good reason, Lieutenant. I appreciate the fact you might have some previous loyalties...’

O’Hara glanced at the letter and then looked down at his plate, moving things about, absently, with his fork. ‘There are no loyalties in Falmouth’s business,’ he said finally. ‘I suppose I trust Tony as much as anyone in the Game.’

‘The Game?’

‘The intelligence game.’

‘You think of it as a game, then?’

‘It’s what they call it. The Game. When you’re in it, it’s the Game. And he’s up to his ass in it. He’s a British agent. M16, Her Majesty’s Secret Service.’

‘Not anymore,’ Howe said.

He reached out and handed the letter, somewhat grandly, to O’Hara.

‘Good,’ O’Hara said, ‘I was wondering when we were getting around to this.’

It was addressed to Charles Gordon Howe, Esq., WCGH, Channel 6, Boston, Mass. And in the lower right hand corner, below the address: ‘For his eyes only.’ The back had been sealed with blue candle wax. There was no stamp.

‘Falmouth always did have a flair for the dramatic,’ O’Hara said.

Howe leaned across the table, his black eyes twinkling, and chuckled. ‘Did anyone ever call him Foulmouth? I can’t help thinking of the reference every time I hear the name.’

O’Hara continued to examine the letter. He said, without looking up, ‘I don’t think anyone’ sever said it out loud. It might be a bit reckless, insulting one of the most efficient killing machines on two legs.’

‘Oh?’ Howe leaned back, and after a moment he added, ‘Sounds like we’re talking about Billy the Kid.’

‘Tony Falmouth makes Billy the Kid look like Little Lord Fauntleroy.’

‘Oh?’ Another pause. ‘And yet you’d trust him?’

I’d trust him as much as any in the Game, which is a long way from saying “I trust him.” Trust is a negligible word in the Game. They buy it, sell it, trade it, negotiate it.’

‘And yet Falmouth gave me what I needed to get this Winter Man off your back,’ Howe said.

‘He wants something.’

‘You think that’s the only reason?’

‘I know it. Look, Tony saved my ass once. No reason for it. Except he earned himself some Green Stamps.’

‘And now he’s redeeming them, that it?’

‘Well, it probably seemed like a good idea to him at the time. If it happened again — say, tomorrow —he might take a slow boat to Bombay and send me a goodbye telegram when he got there.’

‘Cynical, sir. Downright cynical.’

‘Absolutely,’ O’Hara said. ‘The Game is a world of its own, the dirtiest of all possible worlds. Everything is a lie. Your proficiency depends on how well you lie. They may call it misdirection or put some other bureaucratic handle on it, but lying is what it’s all about. In the Game, an honest man is a dead man.’

‘And that’s why you got out?’

‘Let’s just say my string was getting short. Don’t get me wrong, Mr Howe, I’ve still got friends out there. They just aren’t the kind of folks you’d want to, y’know, sit around the fire toasting marshmallows with.’

‘How so, sir?’

‘Let’s just say their values are different.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Well, I once asked Tony what he wanted out of life, and you know what he said? He looked at me and said, and he was dead serious, he said, “Happiness is a confirmed kill.” A Rhodes scholar!’

‘But doesn’t somebody have to do ii?’

‘Why? After a while it becomes self-serving. If I had my way, they’d ban intelligence the way they want to ban the bomb.’

Howe stared at the ceiling. ‘I suppose. But then we’d have all these spies running around with nothing to do.’

‘It’s not my problem anymore.’

‘And yet you were in the Game, as. you call it, for five, six years?’

‘I was snookered. I wasn’t a career man. Dobbs liked my style and arranged for me to get assigned to the Company. Then after I gave ‘em four good years, the bastard tried to have me killed, which is something else we need to talk about, how you got the Winter Man off my ass.’

‘The letter, sir. Read the letter.’

21 January

Dear Mr Howe:

I take pen in hand knowing full well that in all probability this letter will be promptly disposed of as the ramblings of one who is either deranged or has spent too many nights alone with a bottle. I assure you, sir, I am in full command of all my facilities, and drink is not one of my vices.

My reasons for addressing this to you are quite simple. You are noted for your aggressive news policy; and you have a passion to be first.

First of all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Anthony Virgil Falmouth. I retired six months ago, with Queen’s Honours, from Her Majesty’s Secret Service, after twenty-one years’ service. You may verify this by contacting Sir James Townsend, M16, 6 Chancery Lane, London. Telephone: 962-0000, extension 12.

For obvious reasons, I shall ask that you not discuss the contents of this letter with Sir James.

Because of my position, I have become privy during the past few years, but most particularly in the last few months, to the details of a story that is monstrous in concept and terrifying in potential. Its implications reach into the highest political offices of the world. Properly documented, this information would make the Watergate conspiracy seem like mere schoolboy pranks and, in comparison, even the assassination of President Kennedy will pale.

Mere knowledge of this story has put my life in jeopardy. I am on the run, possibly for the rest of my life. Here are my terms:

First, my price for this information is $250,000, to be paid only after your agent is satisfied that the information is true and worth the price.

Second, there is only one person I feel qualified to represent both you and me in this matter. His name is Frank O’Hara. O’Hara is disarmingly honest, he is a former member of the intelligence community, he is a recognized and respected news reporter, and he has known me for more than five years. For these reasons, I feel he is uniquely qualified not only to judge my veracity but to properly appraise the information.

I have not seen, talked to, or communicated in any way with O’Hara for more than a year.

There is an additional problem with respect to O’Hara. I am sure you will recall his series of articles two years ago, exposing a network of illegal covert actions conducted by the CIA in Africa and the Middle East. The stories resulted in the embarrassment, humiliation and demotion of O’Hara’s former CIA section chief, Ralph Dobbs, a,k.a. the Winter Man.

As a result, Dobbs sanctioned the assassination of O’Hara and offered a fee to several professionals to carry out the job.

I know, I was one of them. I refused the sanction.

O’Hara has been on the dodge ever since. To my knowledge, nobody has turned him up yet.

You will find, attached hereto, a notarized statement concerning Dobbs’s offer to me. Since this is a personal vendetta, and in no way officially concerns the CIA, you might threaten to publish the facts. This will neutralize Dobbs and force him to lift the sanction.

If you can find O’Hara and he is interested in the assignment, tell him to contact the Magician. If I have heard nothing by April 1, I will assume you are not interested.

Yours very truly,

Anthony V. Falmouth

The affidavit was attached by paper clip to the letter. O’Hara turned it over, checked out the envelope.

‘How was it delivered? There’s no stamp on it.’

‘One of my correspondents was in Jamaica. It was in his box when he came in from dinner one evening.’

O’Hara reread the letter and the affidavit, then put them on the table in front of Howe. He finished his coffee.

‘Well?’ said Howe.

‘Well what?’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘I’ll tell you what I don’t think. I don’t think I’m going to assume responsibility for your two hundred and fifty thou, or anybody else’s.’

‘We can get to that. What about the letter?’

O’Hara shrugged. ‘A toss-up. Falmouth’s either on to something or he’s trying a fast sting and he figures he can suck me into it with him or floss me. Either way, I don’t like it.’

Having finished his breakfast, Howe carefully put down his knife and fork and pushed his plate a few inches away with a finger. He leaned toward O’Hara and said, almost in a whisper, ‘What do you think it could be?’

‘Hooked ya, hunh?’

‘Enough to bring you in.,

‘And you put it to Dobbs, eh?’

‘Just as Falmouth suggested. We had lunch in my jet, flyin’ around over Washington. Dobbs fell apart very quickly. About the time the salad was served.’

‘Well, I owe one to Tony for that. And to you.’

‘I wouldn’t forget the young lady.’

‘Gunn? Yeah, she looked pretty good in there.’

‘I have a feeling about this, Lieutenant. My instincts’re buzzing. Have been ever since I got the damn letter.’

‘You must be on every mail-order list in the world.’ ‘Really, sir. You do me an injustice. Give me credit for something. I’ve been in the news business since I was twelve, setting type for my grandfather’s weekly up in Maine.’

‘I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just that I know the territory.’

‘It’s an adventure, by God. If I were twenty years younger and had two good legs under me, I’d be off with you.’

‘I told you, I won’t be responsible for your money, or anybody else’s, for that matter. Besides, it’s not an adventure, it’s madness. The whole damn Game is mad and the Players are all a bunch of fucking lunatics.’

‘Makes for a great story,’ Howe cried exuberantly.

‘You may be as nutty as they are,’ O’Hara said.

‘It’s my money, Lieutenant. So it’s my problem, right? Thus far, Falmouth has been on target. You said so yourself— if you could trust anyone, it would be him.’

‘One helluva big “if.”

‘What the hell, it’s a write-off, anyway. And I’ll meet your price. Name it.’

‘I told you I don’t want in.’

‘A thousand a week, with a guarantee of one year.’

‘I said no.’

· O’Hara got up and walked to one of the portholes and stared out at the ocean. The sky was darkening and thunderheads were rumbling down from Provincetown. He felt thunderheads roiling inside him, too.

They’re gonna get me into this, he thought, and the very idea made him angry and it was difficult to explain his feeling to Howe, this overwhelming sense of anger that was growing inside him. He knew the scenario before it was recited, knew the characters, the locations, could even recite a lot of the dialogue. It was not just the pervading sense of dishonour; not the excesses of a Game in which people kill, maim and steal with impunity, a blood sport in which the score was kept in head counts, not numbers. No, O’Hara’s anger sprang from acceptance. He was angry because he was accepted by the Players in this community of hyenas. He was part of it, like it or not. His escape had failed and subconsciously he was angry at Howe for reminding him of the fact. So when he blew up, it came so suddenly and without warning that Howe was stunned by the outburst.

‘I said no, goddammit. NO!’ O’Hara slammed his fist on the solid oak table with such fury that the ice in the glasses rattled.

‘Lieutenant, you’re a journalist. ‘Whatever you fear ain’t gonna be solved by raising dogs in Japan. Or, for that matter, by turning down a chance any self-respecting reporter would commit murder to get.’ Howe took a sip of his vodka-laced tea and said, grinning, ‘Fifteen hundred_ Plus expenses. That’s seventy-eight thousand for the year. And a hundred-thousand- dollar bonus when you turn in the story.’

‘You sure make fast judgments there, Mr Howe. And here we just met.’

Howe picked up the letter and looked it over again. I was sure about you before I sent Gunn after you. This isn’t the Game, Lieutenant. I trust you.’

‘I’m not even sure I have the news judgment. What the hell story is worth a quarter of a million dollars?’

‘Well, if Deep Throat had come to me with Watergate and offered me the story for half a million dollars, I would have taken it like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘That give you an idea?’

O’Hara turned and leaned against the bulkhead. Outside, the first drops of rain began to pelt the deck.

‘Well, shit,’ O’Hara said.

Howe’s eyebrows arched. ‘Uh . . does that mean you’re interested?’

‘I owe you one, for getting me off the hook with Dobbs.’

‘Not on your life. I did that on my own, no obligation.’ But not Tony. He knew Falmouth. He had neutralized the Winter Man, and for that, O’Hara owed him. And even though Howe denied it, he felt an obligation there, too.

‘Shikata ga nai,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

‘An old Japanese expression,’ O’Hara said.

‘And what does it mean?’

‘Freely translated, “fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t.”

‘Well, now, sir, I don’t mean to...’

But O’Hara wasn’t listening. He had made the decision. ‘Six days,’ he said half aloud. ‘The first of April is six days away.’

‘You can get anywhere in the world in six days,’ Howe said quietly.

O’Hara paused for a few more moments.

‘Okay, Mr Howe. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll go find Falmouth and see what he’s got. But even if his info is worth the two hundred and fifty grand, I still want the option to walk away from it, let somebody else do the dirty work.’

Howe’s black eyes twinkled again. He held out the vise. ‘Done. Here’s my hand.’ And they shook. Then he said, ‘Son, you’re too good a reporter to walk away from any yam worth a quarter of a million dollars.’

‘Not if it’s gonna put me back in the middle of Shit City again.’

‘You’re a reporter, lad, not a goddamn spy.’

‘Call it what you will, I’ll be dealing with Tony and the Magician and that puts me back in the Game, like it or not.’

‘You know how to find this Magician?’

O’Hara smiled. ‘I can find the Magician.’

‘And is he also an agent?’

‘The Magician?’ O’Hara laughed. ‘Oh yeah. He’s the last of the red hot spies.’

7

The green-blue Caribbean gleamed below him like a jewel nestled in the hand of God. The Lear jet banked gracefully in the cloudless sky and soared down toward the island of St Lucifer. Coral reefs swept beneath the plane, shimmering deep in the clear sea, like bunches of tiny boutonnieres. Ahead of them, St Lucifer squatted in the blazing sun, a tiny island dominated by a single mountain peak cloaked in bright-green foliage. The main town, Bonne Terre, lay before them, its five-thousand-foot runway beckoning from the edge of town, like a long, bony finger.

From ten thousand feet it had stilt looked like the paradise he remembered, a fertile and unspoiled refuge hidden away between Guadeloupe and Martinique. Although still a French dependency, the island had its own governor and a police force of six. But as the plane whistled down to its landing, O’Hara saw the grim signs of encroaching civilization.

Two years before, when O’Hara had last been to St Lucifer, there was one hotel, which attracted erstwhile journalists, fishermen, expatriates, drunks and mercenaries, who preferred to call themselves soldiers of fortune. Even travel agents had ignored the island, finding it much too dull to recommend to anyone. So it had also become the perfect crossroads for peripatetic intelligence agents assigned to the Caribbean sector, most of them culled from the dregs of their respective agencies: alcoholics, misfits, over-the-hill operatives and men on the verge of mental breakdown, sent to this sunny Siberia, where they spent most of their time spying on one another. When something big came up, the first team was usually sent in. But routine intelligence business vas left to the misfits.

Two years had changed St Lucifer. The commercial lepers had finally discovered it, and the blight was evident from the air as they swept onto the runway. Hilton and Sheraton had invaded its lazy beaches, and condominiums had begun to spring up along the jungled coast, a harbinger of the Styrofoam and Naugahyde invasion that was imminent. O’Hara could see a golf course stretching out beside the once virgin west beach, and swimming pools glittered like vinyl puddles among the fancy homes on the outskirts of town. Even the main road, which twisted, like an eel, the hundred or so miles around the perimeter of the island, had been paved.

O’Hara could guess the rest: the gaining tables, with their semiliterate mobster overlords accompanied by sleek, overdressed, over-jewelled, classless broads. St Lucifer had become just another tacky, tasteless colony for the fat and ugly nouveaux riches and the ephemeral jetsetters. So much for paradise lost.

O’Hara was thinking about the Magician as the plane was taxiing on the runway. What was it Howe had asked — did he know the Magician?

O’Hara smiled to himself. Oh yes, he knew the Magician alright, the one the French called le Sorcier. And oh, what a yarn he could write about him. But the Magician’s unique success lay in the fact that nobody ever talked or wrote about him.

Nobody.

The has-been spy community protected his integrity because they needed him. The Magician was their encyclopaedia, a listening post for au.

Fate had chosen to throw the Magician, the Game and the Caribbean into the same pot, and in so doing, had created a marvellously catastrophic brew; a concoction of sheer madness. The Magician’s macabre sense of humour manifested that madness, while the Caribbean became a bizarre capsule of the insanity of the entire intelligence community. The Magician, a man with no training, no background in the Game, and no particular interest in it, was to become the master Monopolist of Caribbean intelligence; the owner of Boardwalk and Park Place with hotels; King Shit of the territory.

What were his objectives?

None. He had achieved this unique position for the sheer hell of it. It was his hobby. Michael Rothschild, alias Six Fingers, alias the Magician, alias le Sorcier, was wonderfully eccentric.

The Magician had been delighted to hear from O’Hara, delighted his old pal was still alive.

‘Sailor! So you fucked the goddamn Winter Man, after all,’ the Magician had cried out when O’Hara finally reached him via one of the most archaic and unreliable telephone systems in the world. As they spoke, static crackled along the line, like popcorn popping.

‘Poor help,’ O’Hara said.

‘Come on down!’ the Magician cried enthusiastically.

‘I’m looking for Falmouth.’

‘I got all the details.’

‘I’m running out of time.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s cool. I’ll put you with Tony.’

‘Can’t we talk on the phone?’

‘Yeah. But you’re gonna end up here, anyway. So . . . come on down. It’s right on the way.’

‘Okay, pal, warm up the ice cubes.

Howe had supplied the Lear. And tow, as it taxied toward the shack they called a depot, O’ Hara’s adrenaline was pumping furiously. Falmouth was somewhere nearby, and for the first time since he had accepted the assignment, he was eager to find out what was up his sleeve.

II

The man was absolutely unmemorable. He was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, handsome nor ugly. He had no scars or noticeable defects. His accent was basically bland, he could have been from Portland, Oregon, or Dallas, Texas, there was no way of telling. He wore gray: a gray suit, a gray-and-wine tie, a gray-striped shirt. In short, there was nothing in his carriage, demeanour or dress that would either attract attention or make an impression on anyone.

The office was on the twenty-second floor of a sterile glass-and-chromium New Orleans skyscraper that had all the warmth and pizzazz of a fly swatter. He checked his watch as he got off the elevator.

Two minutes early. Perfect.

He entered the office of Sunset Oil International.

‘My name is Duffield,’ he told the secretary. He did not offer a card.

‘Oh yes, Mr Duffield, you’re to go right in,’ she said. ‘Mr Ollinger is expecting you. Do you care for coffee or something cool to drink’?’

‘No, thank you.’

She ushered him into the office. Ollinger was a man in his early forties, with the baby-skin face arid soft hands of the easy life. His soft brown eyes stared bleakly from behind lightly tinted, gold-rimmed spectacles. He was tall and erect and in good physical shape, clean-shaven with short-cropped blond hair, and he was in his shirt sleeves. The city stretched out behind him, a panorama framed by floor-to-ceiling windows. His walnut desk was a study in Spartan organization: ‘in’ boxes and ‘out’ boxes and not a sheet of paper out of place. On the credenza behind him was a single photograph of a woman and two children, and beside it a small brass plaque with ‘Thank you for not smoking’ printed on it. There was not one other personal effect in the room. It was as if Ollinger had just moved in and had not unpacked yet. His manner was cordial but distant. Some might have thought him intimidating, but to Duffield, he was just another executive with a problem.

‘Thanks for getting up here so fast’ Ollinger said after the introductions.

‘You indicated there is some urgency to the matter.’

‘You might say that,’ Ollinger replied with a touch of sarcasm. He sighed, and straightening his arms, placed both hands on his desk, palms down. ‘Before we start,’ he said, ‘I would like it understood that this conversation never happened.’

Duffield smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. Ollinger was new at this, and uncomfortable in a situation that was totally out of his control.

‘Good,’ Ollinger said, with a sense of relief. He opened the desk drawer and took out a yellow legal pad with notes scrawled au over the top page. ‘I hope I can decipher all this,’ he said. ‘I was scribbling notes as fast as I could.’

‘Why not just tell me the basic problem,’ Duffield said.

‘The basic problem is that one of our people has been kidnapped by terrorists in Venezuela,’ Ollinger said, still studying his notes and not looking up.

‘I see.’

‘Actually, he’s a consultant attached to our office in Caracas. It was a mistake. They meant to take the manager of the plant and got the wrong man.’

‘You know that for sure?’

Ollinger nodded. ‘Our manager’s name is Domignon. He was going to take Lavander on a tour of the facilities but something came up at the last minute. He let Lavander use his car and driver and it was raining, so he loaned Lavander his slicker. They jumped the car less than a mile from the main gate.’

‘Lavander’s the one got lifted, then’?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he the oil consultant?’

Ollinger nodded. ‘Yes. You know him?’

‘Only by reputation. When did this happen?’

‘Eight-twenty this morning.’

‘Have you heard from the bastards?’

‘Yes.’

‘What do they want?’

‘Two million dollars.’

‘What’s the time frame?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How much time do you have?’

‘Forty-eight hours.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Make that forty-five.’

‘So we have until approximately eight-thirty the day after tomorrow. Are they aware of their error?’

‘They don’t care. It’s put up or shut up.’

‘How badly do you want him back?’

‘Well, I ... uh, we have to treat him as if—’

‘Mr Ollinger, is he worth two million dollars to your company?’ Ollinger seemed shocked by Duffield’s candour. ‘There’s a man’s life at stake here.’

‘Yes, yes, but that’s not What I asked you. Is the man worth two million dollars to Sunset?’

The weight of events seemed to press down on Ollinger. His shoulders sagged and he looked at his hands. ‘I don’t know anybody that is,’ he said forlornly.

‘Is this political?’

‘Political?’

‘You know, do they want anything else? Do they have prisoners they want released? Is there a union problem in the plant? Are these people revolutionary types? Do they want to nationalize your operation? Is it political?’

‘No. All... all they want’s two million dollars.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or they’ll kill him, take another hostage and raise the ante to four million.’

‘Typical. Do you know these people? Is it a group? A solo with a few hired hands? Some employee with a hard-on?’

‘They call themselves the ... uh, Raf...’ He looked at his notes.

‘Rafsaludi?’ Duffield filled in.

‘That’s it. You know them?’

‘We’ve dealt with them once or twice before. It’s a loose-knit, terror-for-profit group trained by Gaddafi’s people in Libya. They’re not politically motivated.’

‘So it has something to do with oil, then...’

‘Not necessarily. They prey on big American companies. Our last experience with them involved a soft-drink company in Argentina. The Rafsaludi is motivated by greed, not social reform. That’s a help.’

‘A help?’

‘Well, there’s an attitude of fanaticism among political revolutionaries. Tends to make them a bit unpredictable. A greedy terrorist is always easier to deal with.’

‘Oh,’ Ollinger said. It was obvious that he was uneasy dealing with the problem. ‘Can it be done without, you know, a lot of — uh, unnecessary, uh...’

‘You’re new at this,’ Duffield said. It was not a question.

‘Yes. I was in the legal department until they made me vee-pee in charge of international operations two months ago.’

‘You’d better get used to this kind of thing,’ Duffield said. ‘These are cretins. Unless the situation is dealt with harshly, it will happen again.’

Ollinger rubbed his forehead. He was growing more uncomfortable by the minute.

‘I assume you want the man back,’ Duffield said briskly, changing the subject.

Ollinger looked at him with arched eyebrows. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Mr Ollinger, let’s be candid. Of course you want this Lavander back. What I mean is, you want him back, but you don’t want to pay two million dollars for him, right?’

‘That’s why I called you. Derek Frazer recommended—’

‘Yes, yes, I talked to Derek. My point is, this man is only a consultant, he’s not a salaried executive with the company.’

‘We have to think of him as an employee,’ Ollinger said. ‘If word got out that we let terrorists kill a contract consultant...’ He let the sentence trail off,

‘Yes, it would be regarded as a moral responsibility.’

‘You don’t have to remind us...’

‘Excuse me,’ Duffield said quietly, ‘that wasn’t meant to sound like a moral judgment. Tam merely trying to get a proper fix on the situation.’

Ollinger cleared his throat and then nodded. ‘Yes, uh your analysis is quite correct. If possible, we’d like to do this without any media coverage. Lavander himself is a bit reclusive. Very private. I doubt that he would talk about it — that is, if we can get him out and—’

‘It’s not an “if’ situation. We’ll bring him in, if that’s what you want.’

‘We can’t afford to lose him.’

‘So, I repeat, you want him back, but you don’t want to spend two million dollars doing it. Is that a proper appraisal of the situation?’

Ollinger began to fidget. He flexed his shoulders as though he had a stiff neck. Drops of perspiration appeared along his hairline. The armpits of his shirt were black with sweat. Finally he said, ‘Yes, that’s accurate. Also, we’d like to, uh, think it won’t... you know, happen again.’

‘Perfectly understandable. How many people know about this?’

‘No more than seven or eight. The executives at the plant, the driver of the car, who was released after they grabbed Lavander, and the head of plant security.’

‘No Venezuelan cops?’

‘No.’

‘State department? CIA, FBI.

‘No, none of that.’

‘Excellent. Well, Mr Ollinger, I’d like to suggest you leave this matter in our hands. Inform Señor Domignon that he’ll be getting a call sometime within the next hour. I’ll need some basic information, names of executives, phone numbers, location of plant ... uh, we may need to slip some equipment into the country without having to deal with customs. But, basically, all you need to do is call Domignon and tell him I’ll be in touch. Then you can forget about it.’

Ollinger smiled hesitantly. ‘That’s wonderful, really. Now, about the price...’

‘The price will be three hundred thousand dollars. I’ll need it in cash before I leave. My briefcase is empty, you can put the money in there.’

Ollinger seemed shocked. ‘Three hundred thousand!’

Duffield smiled. ‘Look at it this way, Mr Ollinger: you’re investing three hundred thousand and saving one million seven. If there should be a repeat of the situation, we’ll handle it at no additional cost. Oh, and by the way, if the operation should fail for any reason, your money will be cheerfully refunded.’

‘Quill.’

‘Duffield here.’

‘What’s the situation?’

‘First of all, this Ollinger is a wimp. New on the job and very unhappy he has to handle this. Doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Actually, he was so relieved when I told him to forget it and let us handle the thing, I thought he was going to jump across the desk and kiss me.’

‘Any danger he may violate security?’

‘No, he’s quite aware of the need for silence.’

‘What are the details?’

‘The Rafsaludi grabbed a consultant named Lavander in Caracas by mistake; they were after the manager, a man named Domignon. They want two mu by the day after tomorrow, eight-thirty AM., or they snuff the ho-stage, grab another and raise the ante to four mu.’

‘Fairly routine for them.’

‘Yes, very little imagination. The hook is that they lifted the wrong man. But it’s just a wrinkle, nothing that would affect the overall operation.’

‘Media? Police?’

‘No, so far it’s clean. A few executives and the driver of the car Lavander was taken from.’

‘Excellent. State department isn’t involved, or CIA?’

‘No, it’s under wraps. We have the contract and I’ve handled the funds in the usual manner. Three hundred thousand less my commission.’

‘Excellent, I’ll take it from here.. As usual, you did an excellent job, Mr Duffield. At the beep tone, please feed Master all names and contacts and any other information we’ll need.’

‘Thanks very much.’

‘Thank you for moving so quickly. Good day, sir.’

‘So long.’

‘This is Master Control.’

‘Clearance for selection.’

‘One moment, please.’ A few seconds later a recorded voice came on the line. ‘Clearance. Your ID?’

‘Quill. Z-l.’

‘Programming Z- 1. Voice check.’

‘Four score and seven years ago..

‘Voice check cleared. Your number?’

‘730-037-370.’

‘Your program?’

‘Selection.’

‘Programming selection.’ There was another pause and then:

‘This is Selection.’

‘Antiterrorism.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Assassination,’

‘Programmed.’

‘Kidnapping.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Language, Spanish.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Venezuela.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing... intersection.., we have twelve candidates.’

‘File and reselect.’

‘Filed and reprogrammed.’

‘Availability.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing ... intersection ... we have nine candidates.’ ‘File and reselect.’

‘Filed and reprogrammed.’

‘Team operation.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Previous team.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Assassination, non-political.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Caracas.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Tracking.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing... intersection .. . we have one candidate.’ ‘Name.’

‘Hinge.’

‘Subfile and reselect.’

‘Subfiled and reprogrammed.’

‘Delete tracking.

‘Tracking deleted.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing ... intersection ... we have four candidates.’

‘Names.’

‘Falmouth, Gazinsky, Hinge, Kimoto.’

‘File and hold.’

‘Filed ... holding.’

A long pause, then Quill said, ‘Delete Kimoto.’

‘Kimoto deleted.’

‘Hold.’

‘Holding.’

Another pause. Then: ‘Readout ... Falmouth, team ops, A-level.’

‘Falmouth, Tony ... prefers solo ops . . . two previous team ops.. . maximum team size: three.. . commander: one ops... command effectiveness rating: A-plus. . . overall effectiveness rating: A-plus, A-plus.’

‘Delete readout.’

‘Readout deleted.’

‘Readout ... Gazinsky, team ops,. A-level.’

‘Gazinsky, Rado ... four previous teams ops ... commander: one ops ... command effectiveness rating: C .. . overall effectiveness rating: C, A-minus, B, B-plus.’

‘File overall effectiveness rating and delete.’

‘Information deleted... holding.

‘Readout... Hinge, team ops, A—level.’

‘Hinge, Raymond ... four previous team ops ... commander: two ops . . . command effectiveness rating: A, B-plus

overall effectiveness rating: A, B-plus, A, B-plus.’

‘Intersect overall effectiveness rating and score.’

‘Intersection ... scoring: Falmouth, A-plus ... Hinge, A-minus ... Gazinsky, B.’

Falmouth and Hinge were obviously the best men for the job.

As was his custom, Falmouth placed a long-distance call to a 404 area code at eleven o’clock. The telephone was in a small efficiency apartment on the Buford Highway in Atlanta. The apartment contained a small desk, a chair and a telephone with a Code-A-Phone 1400 answering machine. Falmouth paid the rent by the year. Since the phone was used only to collect incoming calls, the bill was fixed and was paid each month by money order. ft answered on the first ring and the recorded voice said: ‘Hello, this is the University Magazine Service. At the tone, please leave your name, number and the time you called. Thank you.’ A beep followed.

Falmouth held a small yellow plastic beeper to the mouthpiece of the phone and pressed the button on the side. A series of musical tones emitted from the beeper. Falmouth could hear the tape in the answering machine rewinding.

‘Skit,’ he said to himself.

The first call was transmitted.

‘This is Quill, eleven-ten, Thursday, 730-037-370. Urgent.’ The second call was almost the same:

‘Quill, eleven fifty-five, Thursday, 730-037-370. Red urgent. One hour.’

Deciphered, that meant Quill had a hot one and needed to make contact with Falmouth within an hour. Falmouth looked at his watch. It was twelve-ten. He had forty-five minutes to get back to Quill.

He had to make a decision fast. Time was running out. Howe had three days left to deliver O’Hara. But if Falmouth failed to call Quill, it could blow his whole plan. His back was against the wall, He decided to make the call.

He dialled the number.

‘Yes?’ the voice answered.

‘Reporting.’

‘Clearance?’

‘Spettro.’

‘Classification?’

‘T- 1.’

‘Voice check.’

‘Jack be nimble, Jack be—’

‘ID number?’

‘730-037-370.’

‘Cleared for routing. Contact?’

‘Quill.’

‘Routing.’

He was on hold for only a few seconds when the cultured voice answered.

‘Quill.’

‘Falmouth.’

‘Is your phone clean?’

‘Yes, it’s a pay phone.’

‘Excellent. Glad you got back to me. I have something for you. It’s a bit dirty, but the price is good.’

‘Yes?’

‘A consultant has been lifted by the Rafsaludi from Sunset Oil in Caracas. They want two million by day after tomorrow. The subject is Avery Lavander. We want to bring him in whole.’

‘Have you a play in mind?’

‘Yes. A variation on the Algerian switch.’

‘That would require a preliminary face-to-face confrontation.’

‘We’ve had a bit of a break in that respect. The plant manager has arranged a meeting between the Rafsaludi and a company rep tomorrow at two. They’re being quite audacious about this, but they’re also a bit stupid. It gives us plenty of time to get in there and set up.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Are you familiar with the play?’

‘Yes. It requires a team.’

‘Affirmative. But only two men. L understand you prefer to operate solo, but you happen to be.

Quill’s voice seemed to fade away. Falmouth was already considering his options. It would be the worst kind of tactic to turn down a red urgent assignment at this point. But a chill coursed through his body into his stomach. He felt as if he had swallowed an ice cube. The timing could not be worse. And a team play into the bargain. He had made his reputation as a solo. Working alone was something e had learned a long time ago

On the outskirts of Newtonabbey, six or seven miles northeast of Belfast, the grim rowhouses seem to stretch for miles. as if reflected in mirrors. They crowd the cobblestone streets, these dismal clones, caked a monochrome gray by decades of industrial dust that has long since disguised whatever colours the houses once were. One of Tony Falmouth’s earliest memories was that his house and all the houses in this drab infinity seemed constantly to be peeling. The grit-caked paint hung in flakes from window sills and porch railings and door frames, like dead skin peeling from a burned body. In his youthful nightmares, the rains would come and the flakes became soggy and the houses began to melt and son the gutters of the claustrophobic streets were flooded with a thick gray mass of putty, and Tony ran along the sidewalk trying to find his own house in that molten river of gray slime. Then he woke up.

13y the time he was ten, Tony Falmouth had already begun to deal with his identity crisis. He had his Uncle Jerry to thank for that. Uncle Jerry was another persistent memory from his youth, although a much more pleasant one. Uncle Jerry, the wiry, hard-talking little Cheshire Cat of a man, always smiling, always humming some nondescript tune; a man so ugly he was beautiful, with a large warty nose and hands so big he could conceal a pint in his fist.

Jerry Devlin, his mother’s brother, listened to his dreams and his fears and talked to him. Nobody else did. His father, Emmett, crushed under the weight of family and job and assigned by fate to the worst kind of drab anonymity, had very little to say to anyone. Every night he sat with his pint or two of ale, staring out the window, down through the endless parade of slums, to a place where he cu1d just barely see the ocean between the houses. One night, when Tony was nine, his father got up from the chair and followed his gaze out the door, down the cobblestone street, and off into the fog and never came home.

The crisis precipitated by the desertion of Emmett Falmouth was resolved by Uncle Jerry and Uncle Martin. Tony was very bright, so it was decided he would stay in school and Jerry and Marty would keep food on the table and make the rent and keep an eye on the kid.

But there was always the weight. He had watched it bend his father until he looked like a hunchback. And now he watched the weight bow his mother, watched the wrinkles spread across her face like ripples on water, watched the colour fade from her hair and the life fade from her eyes until one morning she could no longer get out of bed. It took her a month, lying there choking on her own phlegm, to die.

When Father Donleavy came to the house, Tony made a confession,. He told the priest he hated his father. Father Donleavy suggested a round of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and told him time would ease the pain. He went to live with Marty, and it was another two years before Tony realized Father Donleavy was full of shit. Time and Hail Marys did not get rid of the anger. Instead, it grew inside him, like a snake coiled in his stomach.

Jerry always came at night. He was always armed. And the only time he spoke with bitterness about anything was when he talked about the British. Marty ‘was different. He was apolitical. He had good friends among the British in Ulster. There was no fight in him and he and .Jerry never discussed the Troubles. Nobody ever told Tony his Uncle Jerry was an IRA gunman, after a while he just knew it.

Once, when Tony was twelve, a military payroll was robbed and there was a great deal of shooting and several men on both sides were killed. That night, Jerry came to the house and they sat at the table in the kitchen with the curtains drawn and Jerry took out a package wrapped in yellow oilskin.

‘Hide this fer me, will ye now,’ Jerry said. And Tony climbed out the window of his second-floor room and hid the package in a vent in the roof. Two weeks later Jerry took Tony out to the fields twenty miles from Newtonabbey and he opened up the package. It was a brand-new Webley .38-caliber pistol.

‘A grand weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘And ‘tis toime ye learn to use it. Do it like yer pointin’ yer finger. Keep both eyes open. Imagine yer shootin’ at the bloody Black and Tans.’

Tony took the gun and held it and put his finger on the trigger and it felt good in his hand and he could feel the energy from it charging through his body. He held the gun out at arm’s length and sighted down along the barrel and the gun seemed to be an extension of his arm and his anger flooded down into his finger and he squeezed the trigger.

Boom!

The gun kicked up high and the power of the weapon made him dizzy with excitement and after that he practised whenever he could, watching the bottles and rocks explode as he squeezed off the shots. Only it wasn’t Black and Tans he imagined shooting, it was his father.

“Tis one thing to know how to use a weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘Just remember, plannin’ is most important. Plannin’ is everything. Always know how to get into and how to get out of a fix. And don’t trust nobody. When ye can, work on yer own. Dead heroes ain’t no good to nobody.’

When they were finished, he would hide the gun back in the rooftop vent. Occasionally Jerry would come in the night and get the yellow oilskin wrapper. And then he would return it a day or two later. Then one day they came to the house and told Marty that Jerry was dead, informed on by one of his own, and tracked down and killed by a new British colonel in Newtonabbey.

Nobody came to get the gun. A month or two went by, and Tony realized it was his now.

Tony played soccer in the street near the school which also happened to be across the way from the British patrol station. The colonel, whose name was Floodwell, was a stiff and proper man with waxed moustaches and suspicious eyes. Planning, that was important. And doing it alone. Twice a week at exactly six o’clock the colonel left the patrol station and walked three blocks to a narrow little street without a name that sat on The Bluffs. The street was a dead end and beyond the barrier, the land dropped away fifty or sixty feet to the street below. There were houses built into the side of The Bluffs whose basements were on the lower level. The colonel walked down the dead-end street and, using his own key, entered a house near the dead end and there he had a drink of Scotch and dinner and made love to the young woman who had rooms in the house.

Tony planned his first execution all winter long, following the colonel, watching him from the darkness across the Street. He found an abandoned house and used it as a short cut home from school each night. He memorized the house, knew every step, sat for long periods of time, listening to the rats cavorting in the darkness, making his plans.

Between the vacant house and his own house, there was a small sentry house squatted on the corner and when there was trouble, the troopers stationed there pulled the barbed-wire barriers across the road. Tony had youth on his side. At fourteen, he was still small for his age. When he went home, he went down through the vacant house and out the basement door and crossed the street and walked close to the houses on the other side, staying in the shadows until he was almost to the sentry box. At first he would startle the two troopers at the check point, but they soon got to know him.

On a Monday in early spring, he loaded the Webley, and folded it back in its oilskin wrapper. he got a potato from the pantry and bored a hole about three—quarters of an inch in diameter through the centre of it and put the gun and the potato in the bottom of his canvas knapsack, covering them with books and his lunch. After school, he played soccer in the street near the patrol station. The knapsack lay on the sidewalk in full view of everybody for two hours. By five-thirty it was too dark to play any longer. He said goodbye to his friends and went straight to the deserted house on the nameless street. He got out the oilskin wrapper and unfolded it and held the Webley in his hand and felt its energy, like electricity, sizzling up his arm. He took out the potato. It was a trick Jerry had taught him.

‘It’s good for one shot,’ Jerry had said. Makes a .38 sound like a popgun. Whoever ya hit’ll die with potato all over his mug.’ And he had laughed. Tony twisted it on the end of the barrel. He waited in the dark with the rats. He felt no fear, only exhilaration.

The colonel entered the nameless street whistling a tune, his swagger stick under his arm. He walked with a marching step, jaunty and arrogant, his chin held up high. Tony stepped out of the doorway and stayed close to the house. He started to walk toward the colonel.

He was ten feet away when the colonel saw him. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You gave me a start there, boy. Step out here, let me have a look at you.’

Tony looked up at the colonel, but suddenly he wasn’t looking at the colonel’s thin lips or his long, arrogant nose or his glittering, cold eyes. He was looking, instead, at the face of his father. He stepped out of the dark, held the gun at arm’s length and squeezed the trigger.

The potato muffled the shot.

It went pumf.

And the potato disintegrated and the bullet ripped into the colonel’s head just above his left eye and tore the side of his skull away. Bits of potato splattered against his shocked face. The force of the shot twisted him half around and he staggered sideways, his feet skittering under him, but he did not fall. He kept his balance and turned back toward Tony. The side of his face was a soggy mess. His eye was blown from its socket. Geysers of blood flooded down his jacket. His one good eye stared with disbelief at Tony. He took an unsteady step and fell to his knees.

A window opened down the alley.

‘Whos’at? What’s goin’ on?’ a voice called out.

Tony ducked into the shadows and stared back up the nameless street. A door opened near the end of the street, a shaft of yellow light cut through the darkness.

Tony turned back toward the empty house and then his heart froze. Something grabbed his ankle. He turned, and the colonel had one hand around his ankle and his good eye was glaring up at the youth with hate, and his other hand was clawing at his holster. Blood splashed on Tony’s pants leg. The colonel tried to say something, to scream, but all that came out was a bloody gurgle.

Tony tried to pull away. He dragged the colonel a few feet toward the vacant house, but the officer had Tony’s leg in a death grip. He started to release the pistol from its holster. Tony held the pistol an inch from the man’s forehead and fired again. Floodwell’s forehead exploded. Bits of skull and blood peppered Tony’s face. The colonel rolled over and lay on his back gagging, then a rattle started deep in his throat.

Tony bolted into the doorway of the house, wrapped the gun in its oilcloth packet and stuffed the gun down under his books. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his bloody face as he ran back to the basement steps. He heard footsteps on the street above and he kept running and wiping the blood off his face. When he reached the back door lie stopped. He stuffed the kerchief down with the gun and stepped cautiously into the dark street. It was empty. He walked quickly to other side, where the shadows were deeper and started toward the sentry post. He could see the two troopers inside the small blockhouse in the middle of the road. The street was open. The barbed-wire gate was pulled back on the sidewalk. The two troopers seemed to be working on the radio. He could hear its static as he drew closer.

There was only blood on one of his pants legs. That was a help.

He stayed in the shadows, walking very slowly, his eyes on the two Tans standing near the check booth.

‘I’m tellin’ ya, Striker, it was shots,’ one of them said, ‘at least the second one was.’

‘Awr, ya hear shots in yer sleep, Finch,’ the one called Striker said.

Tony walked toward the two troopers who were silhouetted by the lights in the booth. In the future, he thought walking in the darkness toward them, he would try to think of everything that could go wrong. He would have more than one plan.

Tony reached the barbed-wire gate that had been pulled back on the sidewalk. The two troopers had not seen him, they were busy trying to tune in their radio, but all they were getting was static.

He held his leg against the barbed—wire fence and pushed until he felt one of the steel knots dig through his pants and into his leg. He pulled up and the barb tore deep into his flesh. He screamed.

The trooper called Striker flashed his torch in Tony’s face.

‘Help me, please! I’ve hurt m’self,’ he called out.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Striker cried and rushed over to Tony.

‘You got yerself a bad cut there, son,’ he said, watching blood pumping through Tony’s torn -pants. ‘Dintcha see that wire?’

‘I was in a hurry. Played soccer too long, y’know. I’m really in for it now. Late for dinner and me pants is ruined. My uncle’ll take the strap to me for sure.’

Ere, Finch, get out the kit. Our soccer champ, ‘ere, has got hisself wounded on our wire.’

Finch was hitting the radio with his fist, trying to clear the static. ‘Wonder what the hell’s goin’ on up ‘ere?’ he said. He looked at Tony’s leg. ‘Christ, son, you really tore yourself up, now, dintcha. Hold still a minute, I got some iodine and a bandage in the first aid. Din’ ‘at sound like gunshots to you, Striker?’

‘I was fuckin’ with the radio, Finch, I really didn’t hear it,’ he said. ‘Hang on, son, this’ll have a bite in it.’ He bathed the ragged tear in Tony’s foot with iodine and bandaged it.

The phone in the booth rang and Finch picked it up. ‘Whas’at

whas’at? Jesus, is he a goner? No, there ain’t been a living soul down ‘ere for half an hour. . . just a school kid we know, cut his leg on the wire. . . Rightch’are. We’ll close her off now, but it’s been quiet as a bleedin’ church mouse down ‘ere.’ He hung up. ‘You ain’t gonna believe this, Striker. Somebody just blew the colonel’s head off. Not two blocks from ‘ere, up on The Bluff. We got to close up the street. I told yez I ‘eard shots.’

Tony squinched up his face and forced out some tears. ‘Owww,’ he moaned.

‘How far do ya live?’ Finch asked.

‘Just two roads down, on Mulflower.’

‘Kin ya walk on ‘at?’

‘I think so.’ He tried it. The cut burned but he could stand on it. ‘I can make it okay. Thank ye, for yer help.’

‘Watch yer step, lad. Ther’ s trouble afoot t’night. Get off the street ‘s fast as yer can.’

‘Yes, sir,’ and he limped off into the darkness as Striker and Finch began to move the barbed-wire gate across the road.

By the time Tony was eighteen and had finished high school and had won himself a scholarship to Oxford, he had learned his profession well. To carry the pistol to England would have been foolhardy. Besides, Falmouth wasn’t angry anymore. When he killed Floodwell, all Tony could remember was that getting even felt good, but as time went on, getting even became less and less important. Revenge turned to exhilaration. Now the simple act of killing made him feel good, the same way that a forward feels good when he makes a goal. It was what he did and he did it without remorse or feeling and he did it very well indeed. And he did it alone.

The day before he left, he rode his bike out to Land’s End and threw the Webley as far out into the ocean as he could. It had served its purpose. In four years, Tony had killed nine people. Two had been British, the rest were informers. Only one of them was a woman.

At Oxford, Falmouth had made quite a record for himself, and for reasons known only to himself, after completing his Rhodes studies, Falmouth joined the British Secret Service. There was no record anywhere of Falmouth’s early ‘training,’ and M16 was glad to get him. He never went back to Ireland.

‘...with a first-class man.’

Falmouth snapped back to reality.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘there was some static on the line. Could you repeat that?’

‘Sorry. I see this as a two-man operation. You happen to be very well qualified for the play and F ye teamed you up with a first-rate chap.’

‘Who?’

His name is Hinge. He’s younger but he’s been in the Game for several years. He’s quite good, really. I consider him one of our best. He’s been in on four team operations to date and acquitted himself admirably.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m sorry, in my haste I only did an A-level check on you. Have you ever been involved in the switch play?’

‘Rome. Four months ago. But it was a little different. It was the Red Brigades and we had to lift five people out.’

‘Of course, now I remember. A very good show, I might add.’

‘Thank you. It’s still a very risky play.’

‘But most effective when it works.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Do you know Caracas?’

‘I’ve been there, but I don’t know the city that well. I know a driver there who’s as good as they come.’

‘Excellent.’

‘What are we dealing with, some revolutionary gang?’

‘There’s no politics in this. Just a bunch of local gangsters trained by the Rafsaludi, trying to shake down the company, although we have no fix on just how tough these customers are.’

‘Well, the Rafsaludi can get very nasty.’

‘Quite. It’s a bonus job. Seventy-five thousand.’

Falmouth whistled silently to himself. He was already planning ahead.

‘It will have to be done fast. Perhaps even by tomorrow night. Certainly no later than the next day. The risk increases by the hour.’

‘Yes, I know. Let’s see, today is Monday ... you should have Lavander out no later than Wednesday eve.’

‘All right,’ Falmouth said. ‘I’m in. I assume the operation is mine.’

‘Yes, you’ll be in command. Hinge is already cleared. Is Miami convenient?’

‘Fine.’

‘There’s a flight on Pan Am at ten-ten PM from Miami

International. It arrives at thirty-three minutes after midnight.

Hinge will not be there until eight AM. He’s coming in through

Mexico.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Everything you need will be down there. Your contact is Rafael Domignon. The number is 53-34-631. There will be a packet at the airport for you, as usual.’

‘Good. How do I know Hinge?’

‘Photo ID and the Camel ploy.’

‘Fine. I’ll report when it’s over unless we have a problem.’

‘Excellent, sir, excellent. I’m delighted you’re handling this.’

‘Thanks. Later.’

‘Goodbye.’

Goddamn! What a rotten break. What a rotten, fucking break. But if this Hinge had the stuff, Falmouth could be back in the Bahamas by late Wednesday. If O’Hara shows, he thought, he’ll wait.

The packet was delivered by messenger at the Pan Am ticket counter fifty-five minutes before flight time. Falmouth took it to the men’s room, entered a stall and sat on the toilet, studying its contents. It contained a round-trip ticket to Caracas and a passport, license and two credit cards under the name Eric Sloan, five thousand dollars in cash and unsigned traveller’s checks, a three-by-five colour photograph of Hinge, what appeared to be a slightly fuzzy Polaroid shot of Lavander, a list of all executives at the plant in Caracas, confirmed and prepaid hotel reservations at the Tamanaco Hotel, the best hotel in the city, and a filter-tip Camel cigarette wrapped in aluminium foil. He marked the filter tip with a pen aid put the cigarette in his package of Gitanes. He studied the photo of Hinge for several minutes, started to burn it, then changed his mind and slipped it into a compartment of his passport wallet. He signed the traveller’s checks and put them, with the cash, in his passport wallet, along with the receipt for the hotel. He studied the photograph of Lavander, a gangly, unkempt man with a gray complexion and thin, straggly hair, for several minutes, and when he knew the face, he burned the photograph and flushed the remains.

He left the rest room and went to the airline counter to check

in.

Hinge arrived at ten the next morning. The drive up from the airport to Caracas was hot and uncomfortable, with the air still humid from the rains the day before, and storm clouds threatening to deluge the city again at any moment. To make matters worse, the cab was not air-conditioned. Warm, moist wind blew through the open windows, and Hinge was wind-whipped and sweaty. The traffic, as usual, was wicked and pollution burned his nose and throat.

‘Pit-fuckin’-city,’ Hinge said, only half under his breath. It wasn’t his first trip to the capital of Venezuela. He knew it well. The city fills a narrow nine-mile-long valley between Mount Avila, a sixty-five-hundred-foot forested mountain, to its north, and the foothills of the Cord Del Maria mountains to the south. Beyond the Cord Del Maria, going farther south, there is not much of anything but, jungle and more jungle, and eventually Brazil. The Del Maria foothills had always struck Hinge as un poco loco, a little crazy. Schizoid would probably be closer to it. On the western slopes are some of the worst slums in the world, the ranchitos, thousands of red huts and adobe shacks that huddle together in squalor, while to the east are the haunts of the rich and the powerful, speckled with costly homes, swimming pools and private clubs, the Beverly Hills of Caracas.

Between them is the sprawling downtown section of, as Hinge would have it, ‘pit-fuckin’-city’; made rich by oil, grown up far too fast for its own good, and which, despite its towering glass-and-steel skyscrapers, still suffered the same ills as most boomtowns. It was overbuilt, overpopulated, polluted, had a terrible phone system, water shortages, lousy garbage collections, the worst traffic jams in the world and its ugliest whores.

At night it glitters like Tiffany’s window.

Hinge wiped sweat from his forehead and tried to ignore the discomfort.

What the hell, he could be in Johannesburg.

Pit-fuckin’-city, squared.

Instead, he thought about the job. Out there somewhere, among the three million people, in the nightmare of downtown or among the squalid ranchitos, was poor old Lavander, like a sinner at a prayer meetin’, prayin’ to be saved. Well, Hinge thought, if me and ol’ Spettro can’t spring him, he can’t be sprung.

So they were staying at the fanciest digs in town. Thank Quill for that. Everything first cabin. Hinge registered and took the key, refusing to allow the bellman to carry his black parachute- silk travelling bag. The room was on the fourth floor.

Good. Hinge didn’t like to be up too high. He had once been in a hotel fire in Bangkok, and his fear of hotel fires was paranoid. The elevator whisked him to the fourth floor. The room was large and opulent with a beautiful view of the teleférico, a Swiss-type cable car that carried patrons up one side of Mount Avila and down the other to the Caribbean Sea, twelve miles to the north.

He put his duffel-type bag on the bed and opened it, taking out fresh underwear, a shirt, socks and a pair of khaki pants. Anxiety hummed along his nerves. He was already tuning up for the assignment, but he was even mo re excited knowing that his partner for this job was in the next room. After ten years in the business, he was finally going to meet il Spettro — the Phantom — according to legend the most skilled assassin in the business and a man who could kill you with a dirty look.

At the same time that Hinge was driving toward his hotel in Caracas, O’Hara was pulling up in front of the flamboyant old hotel on St. Lucifer.

Le Grand Gustavsen Hotel sat on the side of a foothill overlooking the main city, Bonne Terre, which had a population of five thousand, to the azure Caribbean beyond. Towering palm trees lined the coral road that led up to its main entrance. Nothing here had changed since O’Hara’s last visit to the island. Driving up to the entrance, O’Hara always felt as if he were lost in time. The sprawling four-story, virginal- white Victorian hotel was perhaps the most elegant old gingerbread castle in the world, its latticework a masterpiece of curlicues and filigrees and spindles and arches. Broad porches surrounded the second and third floors of the ancient old hostelry, and the building was framed by tall ferns and palm trees. The main floor of the hotel was actually on the second floor. The bottom floor, once a basement and wine cellar, had been turned into a kind of mini-international bazaar. Hidden discreetly behind French doors were sift shops from England and Spain and the Orient. A famous French couturier had a small showroom there. And the newsstand boasted periodicals and newspapers from almost every country in the world, including Russia. A fountain bubbled quietly at the front of the hotel, with a winding escalier on either side, leading to the first floor and the main entrance.

The hotel had been built as an investment in 1892 by Olaf Gustavsen, a Norwegian shipbuilder. Three pestering wives and nine children later, old Gus had forsaken it all and retreated to his island castle, where he had married a beautiful local who had borne him a son and died in the doing. Gus welcomed expatriates, soldiers of fortune, itinerate journalists, down- and-out writers, tired-out old spies on the last leg to retirement, and anyone else with a good story to tell. He had, through the years, begrudgingly added plumbing, running water and electricity. His son, Little Gus, who spent most of his time fishing, kept up the tradition of tawdry elegance, never succumbing either to air-conditioning or telephones in the rooms. Messages were accepted by anyone who happened to answer the phone on the desk, and might or might not be delivered. Outwardly, nothing had changed since 1892 except for an occasional coat of white paint. The only modern touch was a small red neon sign near the driveway, which read:

LE GRAND GUSTAVSEN HOTEL

Presents

Six Fingers Rothschild

The Magician of the Keyboard

Appearing nightly

The Magician must have blackmailed the old buzzard to get that put up.

The doorman was a giant of a black man who wore a white short-sleeved shirt and black bellbottoms.

‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ he said, and took O’Hara’s suitcase.

‘Bonjour,’ O’Hara said. ‘Merci.’

The place was as colourful as ever. As he was paying the cab driver, two men approached. They were stubby little black men, each with a straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye and each holding a fighting cock in hand. Behind them, an amateur fire eater popped a flaming torch in and out of his mouth.

‘Excusez-moi, monsieur, s ‘il vous plait,’ said one of the cockfighters, doffing his hat and smiling broadly enough to show a gold tooth at the side of his mouth, ‘Parlez-vous francais? Habla Usted español? Speak English?’

‘Je suis américain,’ O’Hara said.

‘Ah, monsieur! You have the privilege to meet the greatest coq in the islands. This fellow once pecked a tiger to death.’

The rooster had seen much better times. Its cone was chewed and ragged, and it only had one leg.

‘Merde! his companion exclaimed. ‘A blind old grandmère hen bit off his leg.’ He held his cock high in one hand. ‘This guy once killed an eagle in flight.’

‘Ha! Such lies! Monsieur, ten dollair américain and we will settle this thing right now,’ said the man with the one-legged chicken.

‘Some other time,’ O’Hara yelled back, following the doorman up the stairs to the main lobby.

The two locals were undaunted.

‘Je m ‘appelle Toledo. Donnez-moi de vos nouvelles!’ the man with the one-legged bird yelled t him.—I am Toledo. Let me hear from you! And they all laughed.

Double French doors led to the hotel’s enormous main room, which served as its lobby, bar, waiting room, restaurant and registry. Sitting just inside the doors vas a large hulk of a desk, littered with letters, bills, telegrams, messages, and an antiquated French telephone. The hotel’s old-fashioned registration book lay open on one corner. The oak bar, smoothly polished by time, was to the left. Its twenty-foot-long zinc top had once decorated the main room of a famous Parisian brasserie until old Gustavsen had won it from the owner in a game of baccarat and shipped it to the island at great expense. A Montana rancher who had been a regular customer of the hotel for years had presented the old man with a brass plaque when the zinc top arrived. It was mounted at one end of the bar and read: ‘Won fair and square in a game of chance between old man Gustavsen and Gerard Turin, Paris, 4 December 1924.’

To the right of the desk was the restaurant, nothing more than several tables with wicker chairs, but the food was prepared by a young native who had been taught his skill by the previous chef the great Gazerin. The food alone was worth a trip to the island.

The room itself was a collection of oddities, things left behind or donated or bartered across the bar for drinks: an airplane propeller over the bar, hurricane lanterns of every size and shape, an enormous anchor that had lain in the same spot in one corner of the room for thirty-four years, a wine cooler that Hemingway supposedly gave to old Gustavsen, an Australian bush hat, a blow gun and several darts which, according to legend, had been left there by a pygmy in a seersucker suit. There were several autographed photographs of prize fighters and wrestlers and musicians, hanging awry on the walls, and a good-sized tarpon over the upright piano. The room was dark and comfortably cool, stirred by ceiling fans.

‘Tiens, voilà le Mann! Bonjour, bonjour, mon ami,’ someone yelled from the bar, and O’Hara peered through the darkness to see Justice Jolicoeur approaching him.

Justice Jolicoeur stopped a few feet from O’Hara and posed for a moment, as though he were studying a painting.

‘Alors! he said. ‘You have not changed by so much as an eyelash. Obviously you weathered your exile well.’

He was a wiry little man, and every inch, every ounce, was pure dandy. He wore a white-linen three-piece suit, a thin fire-engine-red tie and a blood-red carnation in his lapel. His boots were of black English leather and his cane was polished enamel with a hand-carved golden swan’s head grip. His curly black hair was slicked back tight against his skull, and when he spoke, his polished and cultured patois was superbly refined Creole, although for effect he sometimes lapsed into French, which he spoke like a scholar. Jolicoeur was a Haitian who had left the country with the Tontons, Papa Doe’s vicious secret police, hard on his heels. What he had done to earn the wrath of the dictator was a mystery. Joli, as he liked to be called, never discussed the past. But it was rumoured that he had arrived in St. Lucifer with two hundred one-hundred-dollar gold sovereigns in his hollow cane, and immediately conned Gus Junior into a retainer as the hotel’s official ambassador of good will. It was worth it to Gus to have Joli around. He gave the place a touch of class.

‘Quite,’ said O’Hara. ‘And you, you’ve never looked more prosperous, Joli. Are you keeping busy?’

‘You would not believe it. Thanks to the new hotels I have hardly a moment to myself. Merci, merci, Messieurs Hilton, Sheraton and you, too, Master Host.’ He blew them a kiss. ‘We have had to add a third voodoo show each night, just to satisfy the tourist demand.’

‘Voodoo? There isn’t any voodoo on this island.’

‘There is now, Mann. So far I have imported eighteen families from Port-au-Prince. They make more in tips in one night than they did in a year in Haiti.’

‘I see you’re still working the rooster scam at the door.’

‘Oui. And did you see the fire eater? He adds flavor to the coq fights.’

‘That’s almost a bad pun, Joli.’

‘Monsieur?’

‘Forget it. You know, you really oughta get that one guy a new chicken. That one-legged rooster doesn’t even look good enough to eat.’

‘Hey, that’s one mean bird, Sailor. Think about it — would you not be mean if you were that ugly and had to hop around on one leg to keep from getting your brains pecked out? Certainement he is the world’s champion one-legged fighting coq.’

‘I must tell you, Joli, among the many resourceful people I’ve known in my life, you are the most resourceful of all. You are the king of all con men.’

Joli beamed. His brown eyes twinkled with gratitude. ‘Ah, O’ Hara, you are a true chevalier.’ And he bowed with a flourish.

‘Now, where’s le Sorcier?’ O’Hara demanded.

‘He is waiting for you. Venez avec moi.’

Jolicoeur led him back past the bar and down a short hail. He rapped ferociously on the door with the cane.

The muffled voice behind the door bellowed, ‘Jesus Christ, Jolicoeur, come in, don’t tear my goddamn door down.’

Joli stepped in first and, with a flourish, said, ‘I am pleased to announce the arrival of le Marin, the Sailor, returned from exile.’

‘Hot shit,’ Rothschild said.

And the man they called le Sorcier jumped up and wrapped his arms around O’Hara. ‘Joli,’ he said, ‘go to the bar and bring back the best bottle of Napoleon brandy we have and a couple of glasses.’

‘Do we say “Please”?’ Job said, offended.

‘S’il vous-fucking-plait,’ Rothschild said.

‘Just two glasses?’

‘Okay, Joli, three glasses.’

‘Tout de suite,’ the little man said arid rushed off.

‘Jeez, Sailor, you look better than the last time I saw you. It musta been good for you, bein’ on the dodge.’

Time and the islands had tempered his accent, but it was still definitely Lower East Side Manhattan. He was a slender man, about as tall as O’Hara, deeply tanned, with high cheekbones and a hard, definite jaw. He had the wondrous expression in his eyes and mouth of one constantly about to laugh, which indeed he was. It was the way he looked at life. Life to Rothschild was a joke waiting for the punch-line, and he gazed, through stoned eyes, at the world as a madhouse, filled with frantic, scrambling, driven inmates.

An unruly-looking joint was tucked, unlit and forgotten, in the corner of his mouth, and the sweet smell of marijuana hung lightly in the air.

‘How about a hit? This is home-grown shit from right up there behind us on the mountain.’

‘I’m on a tight timetable, Michael. I don’t have time right now to get whacked out on your smoke.’

‘Suit yourself, Sailor. Grab a seat.’

The Magician rummaged through his tattered white jeans and then the pockets of his faded blue work shirt, trying to find a light. He was wearing white gloves. Rothschild always wore white gloves. He was not embarrassed by the fact that he was missing the two small fingers on each hand — that’s not why he wore gloves. He wore them because people seemed less concerned with his deformity and more concerned with the quality of his piano playing when they could not see where the missing digits had been.

The room was a small office, miserably cluttered, with a roll-top desk, an ancient and decrepit desk chair with a peeling leather seat and two rusty bridge chairs for guests. Junk was jammed in every cubbyhole and opening in the desk. He finally found a book of matches among the debris and lit the roach. He took a deep drag and sighed with relief.

‘What are you doing in Gus’s office?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Well, it’s a long story. But to make it short, Gus Junior is dead.’

O’Hara was genuinely sorrowed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there goes one of the greats.’

‘A true believer,’ said Rothschild. What happened, the old boy went out fishing by himself one day, didn’t come back. We found him the next day, floating just off the South Spike. Heart attack, Musta been fighting a big one The pole was still in the cup and he had strapped himself in the fighting chair. Whatever it was, he killed himself trying to lard it. The fish was gone, hook was bent out straight.’

‘I can’t think of a better way for the old man to go,’ O’Hara said.

‘Anyway, the old bastard left me the place, all his money, everything! I couldn’t believe it, Sailor. I mean, he left it all to me!’

‘A helluva responsibility, pal.’

‘Yeah. I already got some heat about the air-conditioning. I tell everybody, hey, it’s in old Gus’s will. I can’t change a thing. It’s a sacred trust.’

Joli returned with the brandy arid poured three snifters almost to the brim.

‘Merci bien,’ O’Hara said.

‘Ce n ‘est rien,’ said the little man, and raising his glass, offered a toast: ‘A votre santé!

‘To payday!’ O’Hara echoed in English.

‘Goddamn, we gave old Gus a send-off would have made the czar happy,’ Rothschild said. ‘In his will he says he wants a Viking funeral, like in Beau Geste, remember, with Gary Cooper, when they burned the fort with Brian Donlevy at his feet?’

‘Before my time,’ O’Hara said.

‘Mine, too, but I’ve seen it a dozen times on TV. Anyway, that’s the way old Gus wanted to go, so I send Christophe downtown, grab one of these runty little dogs always yapping in the street, and I rent a half-dozen fishing boats and we fill ‘em with stock from the bar and we wrestled the piano on Duprey’s big charter boat and took everybody in the hotel out beyond the South Spike and we laid the dog at his feet and I burned that goddamn fishing boat. I mean Gus, the dog, the boat, every-fuckin’-thing. And I played the damn piano and everybody got drunker than Chinese-fuckin’-New Year. It was beautiful. I’m sure Gus was cryin’, wherever he was. Everybody else was.

‘A thirty-thousand-dollar Chris-Craft, Sailor, and we burned that fucker right to the water line. Well, why the hell not? I’m still running down numbered accounts on every island in the fuckin’ Caribbean. So far I’ve turned up more than three hundred thousand bucks, and I ain’t even been to Switzerland yet.’ The Magician leaned over and winked. ‘God knows what the hell’s in that account, over there.’ He leaned back and took another sip of brandy. ‘So, anyway, you’re lookin’ at the owner of the damn place. If you’re not nice to me, I’ll lose your reservation.’

‘It’s all gonna change, Michael. The chains have discovered St Lucy.’

‘Yes,’ said Joli. ‘Bonjour paradise.’

‘Hell, they never come here. The tourists, I mean. That’s Joli’s job, discouraging visitors. But just before the new hotels opened up, these three guys show up one day. I mean, Sailor, these guys look like they eat nails for breakfast, leaning across the desk there and telling me how we are — we are, right! —gonna convert the lobby and bar and restaurant into a casino and they’re gonna run it for me and I’m gonna get all of ten percent. Ten-fuckin’-percent, can you beat that? So I looks this one bent-nose asshole in the eye and says — shit, O’Hara, you’da been proud of me — I says, “No dice.’ Just like that. The guy with the bent beak kinda rears back, looks at the other two jokers, they look back at me and they flash those this-looks- like - a- smile- but-actually it- means - we’re -gonna-cut- your- heart-out grins and Bent Nose says, “No dice?” Incredulously. And I says, “You heard it, chubby, no dice. D-i-c-e”—spelled it out, kinda rubbing their noses in it. It got tense for a minute, okay, I can tell you it did get tense. Then I tore it. I says, “This place is a CIA front. You wanna start a gang war with the Feds, start shootin’. But no gambling. Period. Everybody got it? And bon-fuckin’-soir to all of ya.”

‘And?’

‘They look at each other, they look at me, they tip their hats, and kinda tiptoe out. That’s a year and a half ago. No problems since. Tell you what, Sailor, why don’t ya quit, come down here, be my partner. I need somebody to help me run this place. I’m a lousy businessman. What saves my ass is, so is everybody else on this crazy knoll.’

‘0th, he needs help,’ said Joli.

‘If I went into business with you, we’d be broke in a week. I have to take off my shoes to count to eleven. Let’s talk about Falmouth. Okay?’

‘You been here ten minutes, ten lousy minutes and you want to get to business already.’

‘I don’t have much time left.’

‘Christ, you haven’t even met Isidore yet.’

‘Who’s Isidore?’

‘Ah! Who is Isadore indeed!’ Joli said.

‘Izzy is my new partner. He lives right over there through that door.’

‘Michael...’

‘Un moment, my friend,’ he said and took out his keys and unlocked the door.

Isidore?

Actually, Rothschild had achieved his unique position in the intelligence community by accident. lie just happened to be in the right place at the right time: an unimpressive little piano bar called Señor Collada’s in Montego Bay, Jamaica. A CIA agent named Jerome Oscarfield was the unwitting catalyst of the gambit.

Oscarfield needed a drop. And there was happy old Six Fingers, the Magician of the Keyboard plinking out tunes night after night, month after month. The perfect drop. One night Oscarfield slipped Rothschild a small envelope, well sealed.

‘Are you a patriot?’ Oscarfield asked in a whisper.

‘American or world?’ asked Rothschild.

‘American!’ Oscarfield responded, a bit alarmed.

‘Just joking,’ said Rothschild. ‘I’m red, white and blue, all the way through.’

Oscarfield was obviously relieved.

‘Now listen carefully. A man who’ll call himself Bob will introduce himself. He’ll ask you to play “Moon Over Miami,” that’s how you’ll know it’s really Bob.

‘I don’t do requests,’ Rothschild said.

‘You don’t have to play the song,’ Oscarfield said, his patience wearing a bit thin. ‘It’s like a code, so you’ll know it’s really him, Just pick a discreet moment and give him the envelope.’

‘Somebody else could ask me to play “Moon Over Miami.” It’s very popular. I’ll tell you a song nobody ever asks for—’

‘The song doesn’t make any difference,’ Oscarfield said, cutting Rothschild off, his voice beginning to rise. ‘You don’t have to play the song. It’s the combination. He’ll say, “Good evening, my name is Bob, will you please play ‘Moon Over Miami.’” You can tell him to go fly a kite, for all I care, just give him the goddamn envelope. There’s two hundred bucks in it for you.’

‘Ah!’ said Rothschild. ‘For two bills I’ll be glad to play “Moon Over Miami.”

Oscarfield lowered his voice again.. He smiled with difficulty. ‘You don’t have to play the song. Tell him you don’t know it. Forget the fucking song. Just remember Bob and “Moon Over Miami.” That’s all you have to do.’

‘Done,’ Rothschild said. ‘What’s this Bob look like?’

‘I — uh, I don’t know what he ... u, looks like. I’ve never

uh, met... Look, what he looks like doesn’t matter.’

Oscarfield stared at Rothschild for quite awhile. It was a bad idea, he was beginning to think. But lie decided to try again. ‘Let me try once more,’ he said. ‘This man named Bob will come to you and ask you to play “Moon Over Miami.” When he does, give him this envelope. It’s like a code, you see? Who cares what he looks like? I don’t care if lie looks like King Kong as long as he gives you the code. Okay?’

‘We’re in business,’ Rothschild said, sticking out his hand. ‘Don’t do that,’ Oscarfield said. ‘People will see us. Put your hand down. Here, take this.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s the two hundred dollars,’

‘A deal is a deal,’ Rothschild said, and as Oscarfield started out of Señor Collada’s, he played a few chords of ‘Moon Over Miami.’

Actually Rothschild was simply toying with Oscarfield. Everybody from the pastry chef to the doorman knew Oscarfield’s dodge. At first Rothschild didn’t really take him seriously. Then, one evening, Bob showed up. It had to be him. He was the size of a Mack truck and wore dark glasses in the middle of the night and he changed tables three times during one set.

That’s him. Got to be, thought Rothschild. Playing musical chairs like that. Nervous as a preacher at a nudist camp. But if this was some kind of undercover job, why would they pick somebody the size of Mount Rushmore?

The answer, he eventually learned, was that the obvious frequently eluded them.

The minute he announced the break, Bob was on his feet and beside him. He stuck out a hand as big as the piano top.

‘I’m Bob,’ he said.

‘Good,’ said the Magician.

‘Do you know “Moon Over Miami”?’

‘I don’t play requests.’

Bob was taken completely aback. He was not programmed for jokes. ‘Do you know “Moon Over Miami”?’ he repeated.

‘Does it go like this?’ Rothschild asked, and began whistling a few bars of ‘Stars Fell on Alabama.’

Bob looked around the place without moving his head. ‘I don’t know how it goes,’ he said. ‘Goddammit, where’s the fuckin’ envelope?’

Realizing the big man had no sense of humour, absolutely none, Rothschild slipped him the envelope.

‘You’re off the wall, y’know that,’ Bob growled under his breath and lumbered out of the place.

Rothschild figured that was the end of that. But two weeks later Oscarfield appeared again. ‘That vas nice, the way you handled that,’ he confided. ‘Really put old Bob to the test. I heard about it.’ He slipped Rothschild another two bills.

Four hundred dollars for not playing ‘Moon Over Miami.’ Rothschild was impressed. After that, Oscarfield used him frequently as a drop. He never saw Bob again. Pretty soon another agent decided to use Rothschild as his Caribbean drop, then another. Then there was Haversham, a British operator with M16. Then an Israeli named Silverblatt. And a Frenchman named...

Within five years Rothschild was the postman for the entire Caribbean intelligence community. He became adept at steaming open envelopes. Then he got into cryptology. It became a hobby. Breaking codes. Keeping files. Cross-references. Before long, Rothschild was quite aware that most of the spies in the islands spent most of their time spying on one another. Sometimes members of one agency even spied on other members of the same outfit. Sometimes they didn’t even know they were both members of the same agency. The madness of it all appealed to Rothschild’s love of the perverse. He began to feel a sense of power. Occasionally he would change the messages slightly, just to see what would happen. In one such instance he almost started a revolution in Guatemala. It was marvellous. It gave the Magician an entirely new outlook on life.

So when he moved to St Lucifer to become pianist in residence at the Great Gustavsen, the epicentre of the Caribbean undercover network just naturally shifted to St Lucifer. Rothschild became so important that once, when he went to the States for a three-week vacation, the entire intelligence community was thrown out of whack. At one time there were eighteen operatives, representing every major country in the world, staying at the Great Gustavsen, waiting for le Sorcier to return.

By the time he acquired Isidore he was knocking down almost five thousand a month in retainers, from the CIA, the KGB, the Sureté, M16, and every other outfit in the network.

Isidore opened up whole new vistas. With Isidore his power became even greater.

Voilà! May I present Izzy,’ Rothschild said as he opened the door to Isidore’s room.

Isidore’s room was a walk-in closet.

Isidore was an Apple II mini-computer.

O’Hara stared at it in mute appreciation, It was beautiful and very compact. It had a keyboard with a telephone cradle attached to it, and it had its own monitor screen and its own high-speed Kube printer. The main box, Izzy’s brain, was about a foot square, with three gates in the front and a large square ready light. A cassette recorder was attached to the telephone modem on the keyboard. The telephone was also equipped with a speakerphone.

Into it, Rothschild had fed mountains of information. But he also made the computer available to agents on a confidential basis, always leaving the room so they could tap out their identification and open up the files of their home-base computers. A video camera built into the wall and aimed at the screen enabled him to collect all of the various codes and machine language necessary to tap into the main computers of most of the major intelligence agencies. By using phone taps, he had also recorded the agents making access calls to their computer centres, and by combining these information banks with his own computer, he had both visual and verbal contact with them.

It was a marvellous hobby.

And it made the Magician one of the most dangerous people in the world.

Having explained his wonderful toy, Rothschild sat down and spread his hands. How about that?’ he said proudly.

You mean you can plug into the base computers for the CIA, the KGB, like that?’ O’Hara asked.

Mostly on a level-two basis, but in some cases I can even tap their top-secret files.’

Where did you get this thing?’

‘Miami. Anybody can buy them. It’s learning to use them that’s the secret. Let me show you how it works.’ He slid a picture on the wall to one side, revealing a large wall safe. He spun the dials and opened the safe. It was filled with cassette tapes and floppy disks and video-tapes. He took out a cassette deck and three disks.

He put a disk in each of the gates, and the cassette in the small tape recorder. ‘These disks store information,’ he explained. ‘The first one has the program on it. That’s what makes all this work. The cassette has the phone access information on it. Once I get the computer on the line, all I need is the proper access code and I can get a visual print-out on the screen.’

He picked up the phone and dialled a number.

‘I hope the phones are working today,’ he said. I’m calling the access line at Langley.’

‘The CIA computer?’

‘Yeah.’

Joli nudged O’Hara. ‘He spends so much time in here, that is why he needs help to run the business,’ he whispered.

Rothschild punched the speaker phone buttons. O’Hara could hear the phone ringing. The connection broke and a voice said, ‘This is Langley Base One. Your identification, please.’

Rothschild put the phone in the cradle attached to the keyboard of the computer and pressed the ‘Play’ button on the tape deck. A recorded voice said: ‘This is Oscarfield, C-One clearance, two-level.’

Rothschild pressed the ‘Pause’ button on the tape deck.

The voice said: ‘Voice ID complete. Access, please.’

Rothschild pressed the ‘Play’ button again: ‘Two-level, file access.’

The voice answered: ‘Tracking, two-level, file access.’ There was a pause and then: ‘Proceed.’

He pressed the ‘Play’ button again. Oscarfield’s taped voice said: ‘Modem readout, two-level.’

Pop! The monitor screen was filled with questions and blank spaces. Rothschild filled them in:

Access identification: OFLD

Agent sector: FIELD

Agent access: L-2

Agent clarity: B-532

Subject name: O’HARA, FRANCIS

Subject agency: PRIVATE

Was subject formerly attchd? Yes x No

Previous afltn: CIA

File Level: BASE

Photos: YES

Other info: NO

Accessing file.

The light on the side of the computer began to blink. After two or three seconds it stopped and a message appeared on the screen:

Press code key to continue...

Rothschild pressed two-three-five and the screen cleared for an instant and then O’Hara’s file flashed on-screen.

‘I’ll be damned,’ O’Hara said.

‘It is truly magic,’ said Joli. ‘The whole world speaks to him on this machine.’

Rothschild pressed a key and the small white cursor moved rapidly down the screen. He stopped at a listing for ‘Current assignment’:

Subject is on special assmnt. Deep storage.

No contact anticipated for several months.

‘The Winter Man really covered his ass, Sailor. As far as your current report goes, you’re a fuckin’ mole somewhere for the CIA. That way he doesn’t have to account for you for maybe a year, until the file is reviewed. So a couple of months from now he’ll send down a report that your assignment fell through, then he’ll report that you’ve retired. As far as your file goes, nobody will ever know you were on the run for a year, dodging his fuckin’ goons.’

Rothschild typed in ‘ACCESS,PHOTO.SUBJECT,CURRENT’ and the letters appeared across the bottom of the monitor screen. He punched the return button on the keyboard and a computerized photo of O’Hara appeared on the screen. He was iii a navy uniform.

‘Hell, that picture was taken when I was in the Navy!’ O’Hara said.

‘You look like a child,’ said Joli.

‘It gets weird sometimes,’ said the Magician.

‘How did you get onto this thing, Michael?’

‘Would you believe I read about it in the New York Times? At first I thought it was just an expensive toy. Then I started realizing the potential. Man, I can tap into the Times, the Washington Post, United Press, You name it, I got it.’

‘Look, I think Izzy’s just great. Right now I’ve got other things on my mind.’

‘If you’re worried about missing Falmouth — I mean, if that’s what’s got you edgy, forget it. Falmouth told me to give you the letter whenever you showed up. lie said if the situation changed, he’d call me and I was to barn the envelope. So far he hasn’t called. If he does, I’ll tell him you’re on your way.’

‘What letter?’

Rothschild reached into a slot in the roll top desk and pulled out a business-size envelope and gave it to O’Hara.

‘You’re going to a travel agency in Fort Lauderdale,’ Rothschild said casually. ‘The agent there, a dame named Jackowitz, has your plans.’

O’Hara looked up at Rothschild. ‘You read my mail,’ he said with indignation.

Rothschild slumped and stared contritely at the floor. ‘Force of habit,’ he said. ‘I know it’s awful. Forgive me.’

‘He does it all the time, everybody’s mail,’ Joli said.

The envelope contained a ticket to Fort Lauderdale and a slip of paper with ‘See Carole Jackowitz, Anders Travel Agency,’ and the address and phone number of the agency written on

‘Doesn’t waste words, does he,’ Rothschild said.

‘What kind of merry-go-round is this? Why not send me straight to Lauderdale, why here?’

‘I guess because he trusts me. This Jackowitz woman is a travel agent. He needed me as a go-between in case something went wrong.’

‘Something went wrong with what?’

‘Whatever you two are up to. He didn’t tell me a thing, Sailor, just that the sanction had been lifted on you and he was expecting to meet up with you and it was very hush-hush, not something to gossip about. That’s all I know.’ He leaned over toward O’Hara with eyebrows arched quizzically and whispered, ‘Want to tell me about it?’

‘Oui,’ said Joli, ‘We have been trying to guess what it is for weeks.’

‘Not yet,’ O’Hara said.

‘Shit. My curiosity’s been eating me alive for three goddamn months and you say “Not yet.”

‘I don’t have anything to tell you.’

‘Well, you can be out of here at seven tonight and be in Miami by ten. Or you can wait until tomorrow morning and we’ll demolish this bottle of brandy and catch up on the past two years.’

‘I vote for the bottle,’ Joli said, offering another round.

‘Michael, I’ve been from Japan to Boston to here in less than three days. My tail is dragging. I’ve got jet lag. But the suspense is driving mc berserk and I’m gonna stay berserk until I find out what’s going on with Falmouth and I won’t know doodly-shit until I catch up with him. So, Joli, pour us some more brandy and make damn sure my jet’s on the way to Lauderdale tonight ... with me on it.’

8

When Hinge arrived at his hotel room, he took a shower and styled his hair with a blower, then he stood, naked, in front of the mirror. His body was hard and tight, sinews standing out like fishing lines along his biceps. He looked at his scars and smiled. Women loved them, loved to trace their fingers along the rigid tissue on his legs and arms and down his left side. He could have written a book with just the lies he had told about those scars. He returned to the bedroom and got dressed. Then he reached into the suitcase and took out a wide, rawhide belt with a large gold buckle on it and held it in his hand for several seconds as though weighing it. The buckle was engraved, its letters aglitter with small diamonds:

UNITED STATES RODEO ASSOCIATION

1963 National Champion

Cheyenne, Wyoming, January 6, 1964

He had come a long way from Del Ray, Texas.

Bucking horses in west Texas in the fresh snow, it didn’t hurt quite so goddamn bad when you went off, even though underneath the clean white blanket, the ground was like a brick. The soft fresh powder, early in the mornings when the horse’s breath was a thick wide cloud mixed with his own, cushioned the fall, so he wasn’t afraid of the crazy ponies with their long winter hair and wild eyes because it didn’t hurt like it hurt in the summer, when the drought had baked the earth in the corral until it cracked and the dust made the horses sneeze and they were mad with the heat anyway and they started fighting the minute they heard the saddle leather creaking, oh, God, he hated the summers.

‘Show some guts, boy, I’ll take th’ fuckin strap t’ yuh.’

‘Yes, Pap.’

‘Git back on that goddamn rogue pony and straighten his ass out or I’ll take an inch a hide off’n yer butt.’

‘Yes, Pap.’

‘Mount up, goddammit, don’t be hangin’ around that fuckin’ water bucket.’

‘Yes, Pap.’

‘Dontcha call me Pap, goddamniit ya bust that fuckin’ pony’s balls, git him on his knees, then I’m your goddamn Pap. We ain’t havin’ no fuckin’ fairies in this family.’

Tall, raw-boned, Texas kid, drawl-voiced and leather- handed, his old man’s venal temper and a two-inch fuse, on the rodeo circuit while he was still in high school, and by the time he was twenty-one and old enough to order his own beer in the endless saloons from Wichita to Cheyenne to Phoenix to El Paso, he had big, swollen knuckles from dusting off all the smart-ass bastards that made fun of his name (‘Hinkie Hinkle’), and he bad the trophies and the belt buckles, and he had hunted with the best of them, brown bear and eight-point buck and jaguar, and he also had more than a dozen broken bones and the miseries and it hurt to get up in the morning and he was living on eggs and bacon and uppers and downers and painkillers and washing it all down with Coors beer.

Twenty-two years old and peaking out.

At the Armed Forces rodeo he got drunk and missed his ride and a honey-voiced lady sergeant from recruiting fucked his brains out all night and all morning and had him signed and on his way to boot camp before his hangover was gone.

Nam,

seven months later,

human game,

fuck breaking horses and shooting longhorn buck.

In eight weeks in 1967 he kills twenty-seven Buddhaheads. Mot Sog, the Army’s special assassination squad, for which all records will be destroyed after the war, taps him. One night near the DMZ, using an infrared scope mounted on a Mannlicher single-action CD 13, from more than a quarter mile away, he picks off a Cong agent, sneaking across the lines, so unbelievable a shot that a couple of guys from the Corps of Engineers measure the distance with a transit, just for the record. Nineteen hundred and twenty-seven feet, the longest kill shot in Army history.

After that, it was a honky tonk shooting gallery, like knocking over ducks, barn, barn, barn.

Back in Texas, he went up for hire. In Rhodesia, where he earned three hundred dollars a day plus per diem, he took a postgraduate course in interrogation, and became an expert in the deadly art of persuasion, hanging captured blacks out of a helicopter at five hundred feet by the ankles until they talked, and letting them go if they didn’t. When he came home after two years, Pap never cussed at him again, even when he changed his name to Hinge. Pap was afraid to.

He decided the belt buckle was too ostentatious. By now, Spettro probably knew everything there was to know about Ray Hinge. He put on a more conservative belt, checked himself out in the mirror, and walking as straight as a sergeant in the Queen’s Guard, he opened his side of the door to the adjoining room and knocked. A moment later Falmouth opened the door from his side.

Hinge was surprised at how tall Spettro was. He was almost dapper in appearance, deeply tanned, with snow-white hair at his temples, and dressed in a three-piece raw-silk navy-blue suit with a tie striped with wine and gray.

Hinge was exactly as Falmouth had expected, raw-boned and hard-looking, with small, agate eyes and leathery hands, and coarse, dishwater-blond hair.

You better be good, Tony thought. For this deal, I need the best there is.

Hinge knew the scenario by heart and recited it with ease. A good actor, that was a help. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in a lazy Texas drawl, ‘I thought this was some kind of closet.’

‘No problem.’

‘Say, yuh wouldn’t have a spare cigarette, would yuh? I just ran out.’

‘Sure.’

Falmouth handed him the Camel and lit it. Hinge took a deep puff and as heat from the glowing tip was drawn up through the tobacco, the word ‘Spettro’ appeared on the side of the cigarette. Hinge smiled and held out his hand.

‘Hinge,’ he said. ‘And it’s a goddamn pleasure, man.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Hinge. Call me Spettro.’

‘Yes, suh.’

Falmouth held the door open and Hinge entered his room. There was a briefcase on the bed.

‘I just left the lads from the plant,’ Falmouth said. ‘We’ve got one big break. This Rafsaludi bunch has agreed to a meeting this afternoon to discuss payment of the ransom. They think a company man is coming in. There were four of them in the group that pinched Lavander, according to Gomez, the chauffeur who was driving Lavander when he was grabbed.’

‘Th’ Rafsaludi, they let this heah Gomez go, hunh’?’

Falmouth nodded.

‘Kinda dumb of them, wasn’t it,’ Hinge said.

‘It’s inconsistent with the rest of their behaviour.’

‘Yuh think he’s one of ‘em?’

Not a bad start, Hinge. ‘Without going into a lot of detail, the whole snatch reeks of a setup,’ Falmouth agreed. ‘Yes, I think it was an inside job. The chauffeur and, my guess is, four others. I think he made a Freudian slip when he said there were four kidnappers, but you’ve got to remember, all this information is second-hand. I haven’t seen Gomez and he has no idea I’m here.’

‘What’s with the chauffeur?’ Hinge asked.

‘All he knows is that a company man is flying in from the States, supposedly to handle the transaction. The bloody son of a bitch has volunteered to drive him to the meeting this afternoon.’

‘We gonna let ‘im?’

‘Sure. If we say no, he may get curious. Best to keep him under hand; we may need him if this thing goes strange.’

He walked over to the bed and opened the brief case. It was fitted with a tray that held a machine gun in a fixed position. The trigger was rigged to the handle. The gun was no more than eighteen inches long, with a metal-frame stock and a flash suppressor and silencer on the barrel. The gun sight was cone-shaped and almost as long as the barrel itself. There was a switch on the side. The clip was longer than the gun itself, but was curved back under the stock, obviously to keep the gun compact. There were ‘o more clips in the tray as well as two pistols and a small metal box. Falmouth detached the trigger mechanism and took the tray out of the briefcase.

‘Have you used this weapon before?’

‘I never seen one quite like it.’

‘It’s an Ungine. Brand-new. Totally silenced and flash-suppressed. You can’t hear it five feet away and you can’t see it at night. Effectively, it fires a thousand rounds a minute. The clips hold a hundred rounds each, forty-five calibre. That’s six seconds of continuous fire per clip. All you have to do is tap the trigger and you get an eight- to ten-round burst, or you can set it to fire single shot.’

Hinge whistled. His eyes were wide with anticipation as Falmouth handed him the machine gun. Hinge looked at it as a jeweller might look at a twenty-carat diamond, turning it over, hefting it to feel the weight.

‘Seven pounds,’ Falmouth said.

‘How about range?’

‘Four hundred meters.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘The laser scope is adjusted to fire the weapon automatically by temperature. It’s set for ninety-eight-point-six. All you have to do is swing the weapon around. Whenever the beam hits a human being, pow. The trigger will override the laser, so it can be used either way. There are two switches in the handle of the briefcase. One turns the laser on, the other is the trigger.’

‘Neat.’

Falmouth took out the small box and opened it. Inside were a dart gun that looked like a cigar, four darts, a small bottle of clear liquid, an electrical device about an inch long that looked like a tiny buss fuse, two buttons and two FM tuners, neither of which was any larger than a calling card.

‘Lookee here,’ Hinge said, taking out the cigar. ‘I usually make these myself. Never saw a store-bought one before.’

‘This is probably more accurate than the homemade variety,’ Falmouth said. He took the cigar, fitted one of the darts into the end, and then turned toward the lamp on the far side of the room. He blew sharply into the cigar-shaped gun, and the dart whistled across the room and imbedded itself in the lamp- shade.

‘It’s very clean up to seven or eight feet,’ he said, and then added, ‘with- a little practice.’

‘What’re we usin’?’ Hinge asked, pointing to the bottle.

‘Sodium dinitrate.’

‘Good stuff.’

‘If you hit an artery or blood vessel, it will knock the subject out in about five seconds. Hit a nerve, and paralysis is almost immediate.’

‘I go for the throat. Right here,’ Hinge said, tapping a spot near his Adam’s apple. ‘Yuh got a good chance of catching this nerve here. Yuh miss, the jugular’s right next to it. I like to go for the nerve. Five seconds can be a long fuckin’ time if the subject’s hip.’

‘I agree.’

‘So, how d’we play it’?’

‘If my information is correct, you’ve been the inside man on two switch operations.’

‘Yes, suh.’

‘I figger you work the inside, I’ll be the shadow.’

‘Sounds like a winner,’ Hinge said. And then, smiling, he added, ‘I’m really lookin’ forward to this, man. Workin’ with you, I mean. Like teamin’ up with Wyatt Earp, fer Chrissakes.’ And he laughed.

‘I’m quite flattered,’ Falmouth said. Hinge’s attitude of hero worship made him uneasy. It seemed unprofessional to Falmouth, although Hinge probably knew his business. Hell, Quill wouldn’t have sent Hinge if he wasn’t first-class. Relax, Falmouth.

‘A few more things,’ Falmouth went on. ‘Your car is a Buick wagon. It’s bugged and equipped with a radio transmitter. We can read the signal up to a mile away. They’re supposed to call at two and give us directions. You’ re to come alone in the company car, although they’ve agreed to let Gomez drive.’

‘I’ll just bet they did.’

‘The Rafsaludi will meet you at their destination. My thinking is, they’ll jump the car somewhere along the way and snatch you, the same way they grabbed Lavander. I’ll be tracking you from another car with the best wheelman in South America.’

‘How about me?’

‘We’ll wire you, too. I’ve got an anal transmitter. It’s a bit uncomfortable but very effective, arid they won’t find it with a pat-down. Thing is, old man, we’ll o our best to avoid losing you.’

‘How about a mike? I could maybe give yuh some verbal clues.’

‘A bit too risky, really. We’ll be able to monitor everything you say in the Buick. If they snatch you, we’ll rely on the transmitters and visuals.’

‘Fair enough. How about Gomez?’

‘Rafael Gomez. Native of Maracibo. Quiet type. Thirty- one. A bachelor. Plays it with his hat in his hand around the big shots at the refinery, but apparently he’s quite the hotshot with the ladies. He’s no genius, quit high school after two years, and no physical threat, so I don’t see him as one of the ring leaders. He’s worked for Sunset Oil for two years. Speaks shaky English.’

‘That’s good enough.’

‘Splendid. We’ve got two hours before we leave, old man. Let’s run through the operation a time or two. Maybe we can prevent any surprises.’

‘Yes, Quill here.’

‘I thought I’d give you an update on Lavander.’

‘What about Lavander?’

‘We’ve got two of our best men on it. I’m sure they’ll bring him in.’

‘That’s not what I mean. How much does he know?’

‘A lot.’

‘Does he know about Midas?’

‘Yes. He analysed the sample and studied the entire location.’

‘Was that smart?’

‘Lavander is known to be very discreet. He’s worked for just about every operation in the world, at one time or another.’

‘Nevertheless, this kidnapping should serve as a warning. Right now it’s very dangerous to have a man outside the organization knowing this much.’

‘He’s very valuable...’

‘I see. Then I suggest we test him. See just how discreet he

is. If he’s reliable, we should try to enlist him. If he’s not...’ ‘I understand.’

‘Good. Keep me updated on this, please.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The Algerian switch was an almost foolproof play. Almost, because one could never discount the human factor, and with it, the unexpected. The switch was designed as a logical exercise in fear and was extremely effective against non-political terrorists — the greedy ones, willing to risk their necks for money, but not willing to die for it. ‘They could be scared. Fanatics were different. Fanatics were dangerous and unpredictable. They could freak out without warning. To them, death was martyrdom, and martyrdom was part of the litany. In this case, Falmouth knew the terrorists were money-hungry, period. There was no political motivation behind the kidnapping of Lavander. These guys were not fiery-eyed disciples of anything. Anything, that is, but greed. Everything added up to

The switch required professionals, and Falmouth had quickly recognized Hinge as an iceman, a totally amoral and compulsive perfectionist, ideal for the job. He did not like Hinge personally. They had nothing in common other than their profession. Hinge was a typical mercenary. Hinge lived for blood and money, and he had no taste, no class. He ate meat and potatoes with boring regularity, drank beer and sour-mash whiskey, and his reading was confined to Soldier of Fortune magazine, the Business Week of the mercs, and the occasional books on new weapons, or the current state of the killing art, published by Paladin Press, named after the legendary roving gunfighter and edited, naturally, in Phoenix, where the spirit of the Old West still prevailed. That was how Hinge saw himself, a roving gunslinger, always riding into the sunset Looking for some new standard to carry, killing Commies and left-wingers and socialists and anyone else politically to the left of Attila the Hun, because somehow that made it acceptable. Like many of his brethren, he was coarse and unrefined, a killing machine who could not judge a good bottle of wine or a good cigar. In short, he was a boor and a bore. But he was good at his work and that’s what they were there for.

Falmouth’s driver, a thin little man in his late forties named Angel, had driven a cab in Paris for three years, so he had little trouble negotiating the ass-tightening curves and threading through the traffic on the road from the plant down to Caracas. The receiver for the anal transmitter Hinge was wearing was beeping loud and clear.

Hinge was clever. He kept up a running conversation with Gomez, all of which was picked up by the bug in the Buick and transmitted to the stereo in Falmouth’s car, a silver-gray BMW.

‘Whaddya call that?’ he heard Hinge ask.

Ees special nursery for strange plants,’ Gomez answered.

‘Strange plants?’

‘You know, señor, different...’

‘Rare plants?’

‘SI. Rare.’

A few moments later: ‘Who’s that?’

‘Ees a statue of our savior, Simon Boilvar, the greatest hero in all of Venezuela.’

‘Whatcha call this part of town? It’s very pretty.’

‘El Este. Very expense. Only rich people live here. We will turn down here and drive through part of it.’

Keep it up, Falmouth thought, you’re doing great. The idea of working as a team was becoming more palatable to him. The fellow was good, no question about that. And Angel was a real pro behind the wheel. Falmouth did not want to get too close. Thus far, Gomez had not seen him and was totally unaware of his existence. It was important to keep it that way. So the BMW followed from a respectable distance as Angel turned into a residential neighbourhood of homes that reminded Falmouth a little of Palm Beach and Coral Gables.

Hinge kept talking, his tough South-western twang coming in loud and clear.

‘This heah’s a terrible road,’ he said. ‘Why don’t they pave

‘Ees the shortest way to go. Ees only a mile, about, from here.’

‘Good.’

Angel chuckled. ‘Bueno. I know where they are.’

‘Good,’ Falmouth said. ‘The signal’s fading. Wherever they are, the reception isn’t worth a farthing.’

‘Thees road they are on, eet follows around the mountain, like the snake. Very bad road.’

‘You know it, then?’

‘But of course, señor. Ees the only dirt road around here.’

Angel circled up through the foothill subdivision and then turned down a paved street, which suddenly ended. He turned to Falmouth.

‘Thees ees the road, señor.’

‘Let’s move with caution. We don’t want them to spot us.’

‘Si. No problem.’

Falmouth was bouncing in the back seat of the car as Angel guided it around the potholes and washes in the miserable dirt trail on the edge of the mountain.

Suddenly Gomez’s voice came through the loudspeaker, much louder than before. ‘Por Dios!’ he cried, trying to act surprised.

‘Well, goddamn!’ Hinge answered, acting equally surprised. A moment later there was a burst of automatic gunfire from somewhere outside the car.

Hinge said, ‘Okay, stop. They got an automatic weapon and they wanna make sure we know they got it.’

There was an edge to his voice, not of fear, but of anger. Jesus, Falmouth thought, don’t lose it now.

‘Okay,’ Falmouth said to Angel, ‘Slow’er down. Give the bastards a chance to do their mischief.’

‘Si:’

Two men with shotguns came toward the car. Gomez got out to meet them, his hands held high over his head. He was putting on a good act. Hinge grabbed the moment.

‘This’s it, the joy ride’s over. Car: dark-blue Pontiac Grand Prix. 1974. Very dirty. Lotsa dents. Two guys with shotguns coming toward us. Another in the bushes with an automatic weapon, one on the hill, spotting. Jesus, it’s Jesse James time. These turkeys have bandannas pulled over their faces. Okay, here comes one. Bonas nokkers.’

The one who approached the car was short and squat, like a box, with long greasy black hair topped by a brown beret. The bandanna did not hide his beard or his funky left eye, a gray mass floating between narrow eyelids. He pulled the door open, holding the shotgun toward Hinge’s chest with one hand. ‘Vamos,’ he ordered and motioned Hinge out of the car. ‘Pronto!’

Hinge got out, holding the briefcase close to his chest. Gray-Eye looked at the case and then back at Hinge. ‘Habla Usted espanol?’ he asked.

Hinge shrugged.

‘You speak Spaneesh’?’ Gray-Eye snapped.

‘No,’ Hinge lied.

‘Hokay, I speak Englis, un poco, leetle beet, si.

He laughed and reached for the briefcase, but Hinge turned away from him, as if to protect the case. The terrorist snatched it away from him and opened it with one hand. A half-dozen file folders spilled out and were whisked away in the wind. Hinge looked distressed. Gray-Eye’s shoulders sagged. ‘Sorry,’ he said in mock apology. He threw the case on the ground, and spinning Hinge around, tied his hands behind his back, then quickly frisked him.

You’re the one gets it, pal, Hinge thought. You sick-eyed spic pig, you go down first.

‘Please, my case.’ Hinge nodded toward his briefcase. ‘It was a gift. From my wife. Uh ... de mi esposa.’ Gray-Eye looked back at the case and sighed and picked it up.

The other gunman, who was younger and had his long hair tied in a pigtail and wore a gold earring in his right ear and was very jumpy, yelled ‘Pronto, pronto.” at Gray-Eye, then got in the car and pulled up to them. He was heading back, toward Falmouth.

‘Oh, goin’ back the way we came?’ Hinge said, in as loud a voice as he dared.

Gray-Eye pushed Hinge into the car and threw the attaché case on the back floor of the Pontiac. They drove off in a whirl of dust, leaving Gomez standing beside the road with his hands still high in the air.

Falmouth had heard Hinge’s last remark above the roar of the getaway car. ‘Jesus,’ he said to Angel, ‘they’re coming back this way!’

Angel slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel, whipping the car around in a perfect one-hundred-and-eighty- degree spin, dropping into low gear as he did, digging out, as the car completed its half turn, and heading back in the opposite direction. Fast.

‘Beautiful,’ Falmouth said.

Angel drove back to the paved road and took the first turn, U-turned and parked. He was ready for them when they came back.

‘Magnifico.” Falmouth said with admiration. He slid down in the seat and took a 9-mm Luger from its armpit holster and slid it under his thigh. If there was trouble, the Game would be over, anyway. It would be survival tulle.

The blue Pontiac came down the dirt road a minute later, squealed around the curve and headed away from them, back toward the main road to Caracas. There were three people in the car.

‘I give ‘em couple blocks, okay?’ Angel asked.

‘No, there were only two of the pistoleros in the car. There should be two more coming right behind them. Let’s give them a minute or so. We don’t want to get in the middle.’ The beeper was going crazy beside him on the seat.

Another minute dragged by and then a black ‘76 Chevy came down the dirt road and followed the first.

‘That should be them,’ Falmouth said. ‘Let’s roll.’

Angel eased away from the curb and followed them.

The beeper was singing loud and clear on the seat beside him as they wound back through the El Este section toward the highway into town. The Chevy was in view, moving at exactly the speed limit. They weren’t taking any chances.

They were almost to the highway when it happened: a kid roaring suddenly out of a driveway on a motorcycle, seeing the BMW too late and veering to miss it, the bike sliding out from under him and the two skidding crazily in front of Angel, and Angel, slamming on the brakes and swerving at the same time, missing the kid and his Honda by inches, fishtailing for a moment too long and the BMW hitting the curb, teetering for a moment as though it were going to turn over, then righting itself, and as it did, the back right tire exploding like a bomb. Angel wrestled the car to a stop and jumped out. The tire was hanging in shreds from the wheel.

Angel kicked the car. ‘Shit,’ he bellowed. ‘Shit, shit, shut!’

In the back seat, Falmouth listened as the tone on the beeper grew fainter and fainter and finally beeped out. Hinge was on his own now. He was not in any immediate danger, but the whole switch operation depended on Falmouth’ s snatching one f the terrorists as they left the meeting. Hinge’s trip was now a total waste.

‘You’re right,’ Falmouth said. ‘Shit.’

*

Falmouth was sitting on the balcony sipping a gin and tonic and watching the teleférico climbing slowly- up the side of Mount Avila. He had left the door between the two rooms open and heard Hinge come in, heard a door close and then heard Hinge’s toilet flush.

A few moments later the Texan joined him on the balcony. The younger man was obviously surprised and distressed. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How come you’re back?’

‘A kid pulled out in front of us on a motorbike. Angel hit a curb and blew a tire.’

‘Well, Je-sus Kee-rist!’ Hinge snapped.

‘Easy,’ Falmouth said. ‘Get yourself a drink and we’ll talk about plan Baker.’

The hard-faced Texan went back into the room. He was edgy, but he was not a complainer. Like Falmouth, he was already thinking about their next move. He poured a generous slug of gin over ice cubes and returned to the balcony.

‘You mean we got a plan Baker,’ he said.

‘There’s always a plan Baker,’ Falmouth said, still watching the cable car as it reached the peak of the mountain.

‘Problem is, we ain’t got one of theirs, we ain’t got shit,’ Hinge said. It was not a pointed remark, he was thinking out loud.

‘What happened at the meeting?’ Falmouth asked quietly.

Hinge sighed. As Spettro had said, there was always the unexpected. Hinge reported in a kind of abbreviated rote, an emotionless summary of the facts.

‘Four of ‘em, like you figured, plus the driver, Gomez. Four creeps, spent a month or so with Gaddafi’s bunch, think they’re the fuckin’ PLO. Blindfolded when I got in the car. My guess is we went downtown. A lot of traffic noise. Drove for about eight minutes. Parked in what sounded like an indoor garage. Never went outside. Up one flight of stairs, straight ahead forty paces to office. Took off blindfold t talk. The four were back-lighted. Three thousand-watt floodlights behind them. Couldn’t see faces clearly. One did the talking. Tough talker, brown beard, left eye is kinda gray. Driver of pickup car wore ponytail and an earring in his ... uh, right ear. Looked to be about thirty. Office was small. Shades over windows, conference table, six chairs, telephone. Period. Not even an ashtray.’ He stopped and took a sip of his drink.

‘What did they ask you?’

‘Did I have the loot? The loot’s nice and safe, I tell ‘em. Are we ready to deal? I gotta know my man’s still alive, I says. They make a phone call. It’s this Lavander. English accent. Scared shitless. All he gets out is his name and “Please help me.” Deal is, we connect again at ten-thirty tonight. I bring the cash, they bring Lavander. Anybody follows me, they terminate the hostage, snatch another one, it’s the same ol’ ballgame but the price doubles.’

‘Where do you meet them?’

‘Same script as first time. They call with an address. I head into town, they intercept me somewhere along the way. They figure it worked the first time, why not use the same gag again. Stupid pipiolos.’

‘You did fine, Hinge,’ Falmouth said, ‘Sorry things got queered. Couldn’t be helped.’

‘Sure. Sorry I got my ass a little outa joint, there. There’s one other thing. The turkey with the weird eye? He’s mine, okay?’

‘My pleasure.’

Hinge smiled. ‘Okay, so... what’s plan Baker?’

Falmouth looked up at him and smiled back.

‘Gomez,’ he said, and handed Hinge a sheet of paper with the chauffeur’s address on it.

The house was a red hut among many red huts on the western ridge of the mountains that separate Caracas from the rest of Venezuela. Its main room was small and barren. The bed doubled as a sofa. A furniture crate beside it served as an end table. There was a small lamp on the crate but it was turned off. Posters of John Travolta, Rod Stewart, Blondie and Farrah Fawcett covered the walls, and a transistor radio, with the heavy beat of disco music pounding from its small speaker, was on the floor beside the sofa bed. The only other furniture was two wooden chairs near the windows, one of them stacked with dirty laundry. There was also a phone on the floor in one corner. A handmade rug covered part of the linoleum floor, its corners ravelled and dirty. Flimsy strips of cotton hung limply over the windows. Beside the lamp on the crate was a small-calibre pistol.

Gomez was getting laid on the sofa bed.

This woman is a noisy one, God, is she noisy, Gomez thought. My neighbours, they will think, I’m killing someone in here. But this tiger, this man-eater, she may kill me.

Todavia no, todavia no! she cried and he was trembling and he felt like exploding. She wiggled under him, squealing with delight, then screaming, then groaning. Her legs were wrapped around his hips, and each time he thrust into her she tightened them a little more, digging deeper into his back with her fingernails. Sweat dripped from his chin onto her forehead and she giggled and then shoved up hard against him, In the semi-dark room he could see her face under his, and her eyes were rolled back and crazy.

Más, más, más,’ she demanded and he didn’t have much more to give and felt himself peaking and his ass getting tighter as he tried to hold back.

He barely heard the door crash open.

For the next few seconds, everything seemed to happen in confused, blurred slow motion: two grim figures framed in the doorway the girl, opening her mouth to scream

a faint sound

bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbup

the woman, her chest erupting into pulp, slamming back against the wall the slugs, ripping into her, making more noise than the gun itself the girl falling on her side, her head dangling limply over the side of the sofa bed, her sweaty black hair hanging straight down to the floor red stains widening across the sheet toward him turning, finally, reaching for the gum again that dull sound, almost inaudible

bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbup

the gun and the lamp and the crate vanishing in an explosion of splinters falling back on the bed, still gasping for breath, still erect, his eyes staring in terror at the form beside the bed, pointing a machine gun at his eye.

It was all over in a few seconds. What in God’s name!

In the semidarkness the finger of light from a flashlight led the other figure into the bathroom, then the kitchen.

‘Qué quiere Usted?’ Gomez cried out finally.

‘Shut up,’ the one with the machine gun snapped. ‘And speak English when ye’re asked.’

He heard the sound of water running into the bathtub. The other one came back and he recognized his drawling voice.

‘Nobody else here. The sucker’s really big time. Got himself a fuckin’ bathtub. Running water. Goddamn new phone over there in the corner. I mean, look at that brand-new phone, I’ll bet there ain’t been five calls made on it yet.’

Hinge picked up one of the chairs and went back toward the bathroom with it. ‘Shit, ol’ Ray-fi-el, he’s dreamin’ of bein’ a fuckin’ millionaire, aintcha there, Ray-fi-el.’

Gomez said nothing. He looked at the girl, at the blood gushing from her butchered chest, like water pouring from an open spigot. He started to get sick.

‘Forget her,’ the Texan ordered. ‘You get sick, I’ll rub your goddamn nose in it.’

Gomez swallowed hard, forcing the sour bile back down. The new one, who was taller and thinner than the Texan, handed his gun to Hinge and stuffed a washcloth in Gomez’s mouth and tied it in place.

The Texan picked up the shattered lamp and carried it into the bathroom.

‘Let’s go,’ the tall one said, pulling Gomez off the bed, half dragging him into the bathroom. They shoved Gomez into the chair and tied his hands behind his back and tied each of his legs to a leg of the chair.

The Texan, the one Gomez knew as Mr Lomax, smiled down at him. He leaned the machine gun against the wall and pulled the double-strand wire from the shattered lamp and separated it into two strips. He took out a knife and stripped a foot or so of insulation off both strands of wire. When he was finished he had two long strands of cleared wire, still connected at one end to the plug.

‘This oughta give ya a little charge,’ Hinge said, and giggled as he wrapped one wire around each of Gomez’s ankles. The chauffeur’s eyes bulged even wider. He twisted violently in the chair.

Hinge turned off the water. He and Falmouth lifted the chair and set it in the bathtub. Gomez looked down. The water was well above his ankles.

Hinge picked up the plug and knelt on the floor near the socket.

‘I didn’t think you’d have electricity there, Ray-fi-el, I thought we’d have to use gasoline on the bottom of your feet.’ He giggled again and held the prongs of the plug in front of the socket and popped it in and out, very quickly. Gomez jerked as if someone had just kicked him. His scream was trapped in the gag. He was breathing hard through his nose, shaking his head, back and forth.

‘Didn’t like that, now did ya, ol’ buddy?’ Hinge said. ‘Lemme tell ya what we’re gonna do. ‘We’re gonna ask you a coupla questions and if we don’t like your answers — well, shit, man, I’m just gonna plug you in and we’re gonna go have ourselves some dinner someplace and come back after dessert. How does that grab yer ass, Ray-fi-el? Hmm?’

Gomez kept shaking his head.

‘The one with the funny eye, uh, el malo ojo, where does he live?’

Gomez looked up at Falmouth, who produced a hotel pad and a pen.

‘He’s gonna untie yer hands, Ray-fi-el, and you just write that sucker’s name and address down, comprende, motherfucker?’

Gomez shook his head no.

Hinge thrust the plug in the socket. This time he left it in for a full second. Gomez jerked forward against the ropes, then snapped back. His head lolled over the back of the chair. His eyes rolled back in their sockets. Falmouth dipped a cloth in the tub water and wiped off his face. He stuck smelling salts under the nose of Gomez. The chauffeur gradually came around. He was grunting and breathing hard through his nose and spit dribbled from the gag at the corners of his mouth. He looked up at Falmouth and then at Hinge, trying to focus.

‘What we want, friend, is names and addresses. The one with the malo ojo and the driver of the car that took me, the little shit with the cute little o1’ earring? And the other two at the meetin’. And we wanna know where ya took me and where this Lavander fellow ya snatched is. Ya savvy all that, or am I talkin’ too fast for ya?’

Gomez stared at him, dull-eyed. He was having trouble breathing.

‘It’s real easy, man. Ya write those names and addresses down on that piece a paper there, and you’re through for the day. Okay? Otherwise, I’m gonna give ya another fuckin’ ride.’

He held the plug down near the socket and slipped the prongs in just far enough to keep the plug from falling out. Gomez stared down at the plug, hanging half in and half out of the socket. He nodded his head hard and murmured through the gag.

‘Well, shit, looka there, that turkey’s ready to talk awready. I tell ya, pardner, the ol’ bathtub trick never fails. Untie him, there, see can he write plain.’

Falmouth untied Gomez’s hands and held the pen toward him. The chauffeur took it with a tremorring left hand.

‘South paw, hunh,’ Hinge said. ‘You shoulda been a baseball player, Ray-fi-el, it’s one helluva lot healthier than the game ye’re in.’

Gomez wrote names and addresses on the tablet.

‘Phone numbers, too,’ Hinge said. ‘Obviously you boys got yuhselves some new phones like that one in on the floor there, hunh? Just for this little caper.’

Gomez wrote the phone numbers below the addresses. His eyes jumped fearfully back to Hinge. He looked like a rabbit staring at a rattlesnake. Hinge took the paper and read the names and addresses.

‘How about Lavander. El prisionero?’

Gomez shook his head wildly.

‘I don’t think he knows where they’ve got Lavander,’ Falmouth said.

Gomez nodded his head in wild-eyed agreement.

‘Hell, he’s just a fink they pulled in to drive the fuckin’ snatch car,’ Hinge said. He looked at the list. ‘Pasco Chiado, Lupo Areno, Billy Zapata and — who’s this ... Chico. Chico what?’

Gomez shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘He means this one only has a surname. That’s common down here,’ Falmouth said. ‘Means this Chico is a bastard. Literally. It’s an acceptable condition in Venezuela.’

‘Which one has the malo ojo? Hinge asked, wiggling a finger in front of his left eye. ‘Chiado?’

Gomez shook his head.

‘Areno?’

And Gomez nodded. Hinge looked at the paper a few more moments. ‘Wanna let yer pal check out this office?’ he said to Falmouth, who took the slip and went into the other room.

‘Case ye’re lyin’,’ Hinge said to Gomez. Gomez shook his head again. He shook his head hard.

‘But supposin’, man?’ Hinge said, smiling.

Gomez raised his eyes as if in prayer, still shaking his head.

‘How’s it goin’?’ he called to Falmouth.

‘He’s calling me right back.’,

‘Four-oh.’

The phone rang and Hinge could hear Falmouth talking very low into the phone, heard him hang up..

‘You were dead on,’ Falmouth said, coming back into the bathroom. ‘It’s an old office building in the La Pastora section. The first floor’s converted into a garage for the tenants.’

‘Hell, I didn’t think he’d lie, pardner. Not ol’ Ray-fi-el. Right, Ray-fi-el?’

Gomez stared back and forth between his two captors. There was abject terror in his eyes.

‘One or two more questions — this Chiado, is he married?’ Yes.

‘Is that his car?’

No.

‘Areno’s car?’

Yes.

‘So how does Chiado get to the meeting?’

Gomez wrote down the words ‘el omnibus.’

‘Sonbitch,’ Hinge said, ‘can you believe it. A two-million- dollar heist and this guy Chiado goes to collect the loot in a fuckin’ bus.’

‘Perfect,’ Falmouth said.

‘Four-oh,’ Hinge said, and he pressed the side of his foot on the plug and shoved it into the socket.

The wire hummed and Gomez thrashed frantically in the chair, his screams muffled by the gag. The chair fell sideways against the wall and the legs slipped out from under it and the chair toppled over backwards in the tub. Bubbles dribbled up from Gomez’s nose. His body was seized with spasms. Then he went limp. After a while the bubbles stopped.

Hinge unplugged him. ‘Doesn’t take but a minute,’ he said.

‘Let’s stuff him and his galfriend in the trunk, let Domignon take care of ‘em. That sonbitch hasn’t done shit in this deal but sit on his ass and thank God he wasn’t the one got snatched.’

Psychologically, it was necessary to take another hostage, one who was married and who was one of the leaders. Gomez would not have worked. Besides, he .vas dead. And Falmouth decided Areno and his pals would probably be glad he was. Fewer people to divide the loot with. So they checked over the list again and the obvious choice was Chiado. He lived close by in the slums of the foothills. And he would be taking the bus to the downtown section, which would leave him wide open.

They drove slowly past the house in a Firebird that Angel had arranged for Falmouth to use. It was, like Gomez’s house, little more than a hut hard by the side of a pockmarked street. Hinge focused his compact Leitz binoculars on the windows as they passed the house. Chiado was eating dinner with his family. His wife, a young woman bordering on obesity, was nursing a small child. There were two other children t the table.

‘He’s there, awright,’ Hinge drawled. ‘Chowin’ down with a fat wife and three rug-runners.’

They drove to the corner, turned and drove six blocks to a main street. Angel was waiting for then.

‘Eleven forty-five, right?’ Hinge said as he got out.

‘Eleven forty-five,’ Falmouth repeated and drove back to the Chiado house while Angel and Hinge went off into the night to be hijacked again.

Hinge felt exhilarated as they took the blindfold off. It was the same room, squalid and bare except for the negotiating table and the telephone and a .45-caliber pistol lying on the table in front of Areno. Hinge sat in the same chair with the briefcase, handcuffed to one wrist, resting in his lap. Now his blood was racing in anticipation of the next few minutes. He felt no fear. He was never afraid. Rather, he was stimulated by the potential danger of the situation. There had been a tense moment when the Rafsaludi intercepted them and Areno realized that Gomez was not driving the car. Hinge explained that Gomez had not shown up and that he had picked another driver, not wanting to be late. Areno nervously accepted the explanation.

Hinge looked at his watch. It was ten forty-one. He looked around the room. No Lavander. No Chiado, either, of course. ‘Where’s our man?’ he asked Areno.

Areno glared at him with his good eye and shrugged. ‘One of our people ees late,’ he said.

‘That don’t answer m’question. Is Lavander with him?’

The leader curled his lips back and showed two rows of ragged yellow teeth. ‘We decide to feel the weight of your money first, gringo. Hokay? Then maybe you get back thees scarecrow of yours.’

The three men laughed.

‘The deal was, we trade here. The money for Lavander. That’s the deal.’

The leader shrugged and held out his hands, palms up. ‘We change our mind, hokay?’

Another round of laughter.

Hinge smiled. ‘No Lavander, no dinero, hokay?’

He shifted in his chair. The handcuffs rattled as he moved the briefcase on his lap. It was pointed at Arena, the spokesman.

‘Hey, señor, I could cut your arm off with one leetle whack of my machete.’

‘Reckon ya could, pal.’

Areno showed his bad teeth again.

Hinge smiled back. ‘The case stays with me until I see Lavander, got it?’

The leader was still grinning, but the grin turned nasty. ‘You talk big, for a leetle man. One needs friends with heem, to talk like that.’

‘Oh, I got a lot of friends. F’r instance — he looked at his watch — ‘one of them is at ol’ Chiados house right now. Why dontcha call him before we do any more talkin’.’

The three terrorists looked at one another quizzically. How did the gringo know Chiado’s name? What kind of trick was he pulling?

‘You better call him,’ Hinge said, in a voice that had become flatter and harder.

The leader stared at him for several seconds and then picked up the receiver and dialled a number.

‘Never know till ya try, right?’ Hinge said.

Falmouth sat behind the wheel of the Firebird about a hundred feet from Chiado’s house. On the back of the front seat on the passenger side there was a small clear plastic dish, no larger than a tea saucer, with a parabolic mike the size of a fingernail in its centre. It was aimed at the open front window of Chiado’s house with a thin cord from the mike to the speaker in Falmouth’s right ear. The setup could pick up conversations a thousand yards away.

Chiado lay beside Falmouth on the front seat. Around his throat was a thread of C-4 plastique no thicker than a nylon fishing line. Imbedded in the back of it was a tiny radio-controlled fuse. Chiado had been dead for more than an hour, ever since Falmouth dropped him in his tracks. Chiado had seen the tall gringo, with the cigar, leaning over the door, locking his car. As Chiado approached him the big man turned to him, pointing to the cigar, and said, in perfect Spanish, ‘Deme Un fosforo, por favor.’ And an instant later Chiado felt something sting his throat and it began to burn and the burning spread like a fire down his neck into his chest and down his arms to his fingers and then the world seemed to spin away from him and the man with the cigar got smaller and smaller. The dart had hit the main nerve in Chiado’s throat. Falmouth threw the terrorist in the front seat, pulled down a dark street and garrotted him.

Falmouth’s ear was deluged with sound. Two crying children, a woman’s shrill commands rising above the blaring radio somewhere in another part of the house, another child whimpering in her arms. Then the phone rang and she answered

‘Que hay!... Buenas noches, Areno ... Quë pasa?

Falmouth put the car into gear, leaned over and shoved Chiado’s body into a sitting position. He drove toward the house, opened the car door, slowed down, and twisting sideways, kicked Chiado out in front of the house. He blew the horn several times as he drove away and saw Chiado’s wife, phone in hand, staring through the window at her husband’s body. Falmouth pressed the fuse button.

The plastique blew Chiado’s head off. It bounced, like a soccer ball, across the yard.

The woman shrieked. And kept shrieking, hysterically, into the phone and then suddenly she began to scream, over and over, ‘No! No! Pasco, no! Está muerto? And she began screaming again.

Falmouth drove, without speeding, six blocks to the first main street, parked the car and went down an alley. He found the rear door of the restaurant, just as Angel had described it, went in through the kitchen and walked casually past the tables and out the front door. Nobody paid an’ attention to him. The cab was waiting.

‘Rico?’ Falmouth asked.

‘Si, señor,’

‘Bueno,’ he said and got in the cat. ‘Lléveme al Hotel Tamanaco, por favor.’

Areno’s eyes bulged as he listened to Chiado’s wife, screaming hysterically over the phone. He slammed down the receiver.

‘Los bastardos lo mataron! he yelled and grabbed for the pistol on the table. Hinge turned the briefcase toward him and pressed the laser trigger hidden in the handle. The green laser ray swept across the wall and pinpointed itself on Areno’s chest. There was a series of faint sounds and the man with the beard was lifted up on his toes and smashed into the corner. His chair clattered against the wall. A dozen bullet holes appeared in his chest. Blood squirted across the table and against the wall as he fell in a limp pile, like a suit falling off a hanger. He lay there, his good eye crossed, the gray eye staring bizarrely at the ceiling. His mouth popped open and he made a deep, gurgling sound and his left foot jerked violently for several seconds. Then it went limp.

The two others stared in disbelief.

Hinge turned the briefcase in their general direction. A green spot roved the wall.

‘Now, lissen here, boys, that little green spot on the wall, that’s called a laser. And if it touches one of you chinches, the gun just naturally goes off. You comprende? Watch.’

He put the briefcase under his arm so nothing was touching the handle and slowly swept it down toward Areno’s body. The bright-green pinpoint of the laser moved across the wall and down to Areno’s forehead.

Bupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbupbup.

Areno’s head seemed to explode from the inside.

‘Now do you assholes comprende?’ Hinge said.

The two terrorists stared at Areno, then at Hinge. They both raised their hands.

‘That ain’t necessary, muchachos. You just listen real good. We want our man back, alive and unharmed. Ya have one hour to drop him off in front of the teleferico station on Cota Mil Street.’ He turned toward Chico, the bastard, and spoke directly to him. ‘And if he’s not there, we’re going to kill you, and yer wife, and all yer children, and yer perros and gatos and cochinos and pollos and we’re going to burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground. You comprende that, asshole?’

He turned to the next man. ‘And then we’re gonna do the same for you, pal. We’re going to kill you, and yer wife and yer children, and yer dogs and cats and pigs and chickens and burn yer house to the fuckin’ ground.

‘And you’re not gonna know when it’s comin’. It could be before the sun rises tomorra, or it could be a month from now.’ Hinge smiled. ‘Get the point? Y’got an hour. Una hora. And don’t let it happen again, hokay?’

And he turned and left the room.

At eleven thirty-two, Avery Lavander, scared, unshaven, gaunt-eyed, but in relatively good health, was shoved rudely from a car in front of the cable-car station in the El Centro district.

9

And two hours later Falmouth, who could not get away from Hinge quickly enough, was on his way back to Miami.

O’Hara walked down to the edge of the pier and squatted, Indian fashion, waiting for the sun to rise. The ocean was as docile as a lake. The cruisers, with their outriggers swaying gently in the morning breeze, were silhouetted against the scarlet dawn. The sun had not yet broken the horizon, but its reflection spread across the night sky like a splash of blood.

Somewhere on the other side of the marina, a motor coughed to life, and a sleek speedboat keeled steeply and growled out toward open water.

If isolation was Falmouth’s game, lie had picked a great place. Walker’s Cay, a reclaimed coral reef not much larger than a football field, hardly deserved to be called an island. One of the Abaco chain, it lay a hundred miles or so due east of Palm Beach, the northernmost fishing atoll in the Bahamas.

The fifteen-hundred-foot oyster-shell. runway was half the length of the island. The beach was a strip of sand two or three hundred feet long near the runway. The customs inspector, a paunchy ebony-skinned man in red-striped black pants and a starched white shirt, was also chief of police and maître d’ of the hotel restaurant. Radiophone service was limited to one hour in the morning and one hour in late afternoon. And from the tiny balconies of the ancient hotel ne could see the entire length of the island and all the boats that entered the marina. It would be almost impossible for anyone to gain access to the island without being seen, day or night. But the place had a kind of battered charm, and the food was excellent.

O’Hara had been on Walker’s Cay for about eighteen hours when the burly, dishevelled fisherman appeared at his door at one-thirty in the morning.

‘Cap’n K. at your disposal, sir,’ the man said, with a smile that revealed several gaps in his teeth. The tart smell of gin drifted in with his words. He offered his card, which looked as if it had been rained on, then left out in the sun to dry, and as O’Hara gave it a cursory glance, Cap’n K. snatched it back, stuffing it in the back pocket of his Levi’s. He wore a windbreaker open almost to the waist, revealing a tangle of graying red chest hair, and lace-up Keds, with a small toe peeking through the torn canvas side of the left one. A rude shock of red hair tumbled from under the peaked captain’s cap, which had seen much, much better times.

‘I’ll be picking you up on Pier Two at five-thirty, sir,’ he said, in a voice cultured in the South Bronx. ‘And we’ll be makin’ wake, toot-sweet,’

‘Oh, really?’ O’Hara said. ‘And just where the hell am I going?’

The grin got bigger, the gaps more prevalent. ‘Why, it’s part of the arrangements made by the travel company,’ Cap’n K. said around a chuckle. ‘The best deep-sea fishin’ in the world is within sight of this very island.’

And with that, Cap’n K. winked and strutted out, a bit rheumatically, and down the hallway, snapping his fingers. ‘It’s the Miami Belle,’ he said over his shoulder, and began singing a badly off-key version of ‘Give Peace a Chance.’

Ah yes, O’Hara said to himself, -welcome to the islands. Twenty-four hours and the nuts were already popping out of the woodwork. ‘Five-thirty,’ he had sighed and closed the door.

So here he was, squatting on a pier in the middle of the ocean at five-thirty and the sun not yet up and not even a cup of coffee in sight, just because some boozy old fart had appeared at his door in the middle of the night.

‘Over here, sir,’ a gravelly voice called through the amber light. Cap’n K. loomed above O’Hara, a bulky shadow framed against the flaming sky, on the flying bridge of a sleek, well-kept fifty-foot cabin cruiser. The captain was sipping from a steaming mug.

‘I was a shark, I’da bitcher foot off by now. Come aboard and get yourself some java. And ya might throw off the lines on your way.’

He turned and pressed a button and the twin five-hundred- horse-power engines under the boat cleared their throats and rumbled to life. O’Hara unhitched the fore and aft lines and jumped aboard. The boat moved beneath him, backed slowly out of its slot and then eased out toward the open sea.

O’Hara went below and checked the cabin. It was empty. So was the galley, which was spotless. A coffee pot steamed on an electric stove. Nearby were a Braun electric grinder and three bags of coffee beans. O’Hara checked the label on one of them. Tanzanian Kilimanjaro.

He poured himself a cup, went back n deck and sat on the gunwale, watching Walker’s Cay grow smaller as the sun made a spectacular entrance. Gulls swept down over the wake and bitched at him. The engines got serious and the Miami Belle picked up speed.

By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Walker’s was a mere speck. Small, sandy islands abounded, protected by jagged peaks of coral jutting from the placid sea. Here and there, fishing boats plied the troughs, trolling for big game. Several big sharks, ten-footers or larger, glided close to the boat, looking for a handout. Clumps of coral drifted below them, thirty feet down, yet seeming close enough to touch through the crystal water.

They had been out fifteen or twenty minutes when Cap’n K. altered his course, circling a flat, sandy island. On the west side, away from the fishing traffic, near the mouth of a tiny inlet, a man was hunched under a broad-brimmed straw hat, fishing from the back of a small rowboat -

‘Ahoy down there,’ Cap’n K. barked. ‘How’s th’ fishin’?’

Tony Falmouth looked up and smiled. ‘The bloody bugs’ve damn near done me in. Thirty minutes, and they’ve sucked me dry. Here, get this lifeboat hooked up and get me aboard while I’ve still got some blood left in me.’

‘Gotcher, toot-sweet,’ the red-haired master of the Miami Belle yelled down. He throttled back and threw a line to Falmouth.

Falmouth looked good, but tense. He seemed taller than O’Hara had remembered and was definitely thinner. A little grayer, too, maybe. But his handsome features were etched by a deep tan and he still had the smile of a rascal. The year and a half had treated him kindly, particularly in a game where a week could sometimes do terrible things to a human being.

The tall man climbed on deck and lit a cigarette. He threw the match underhanded, watching it arc out and vanish, with hardly a sizzle, into the mirror-like sea.

‘Cheers, Sailor,’ he said, as if they had met yesterday. And O’Hara grinned and stuck out his hand.

‘Glad to see you’re in one piece, lad,’ Falmouth said. ‘For a while there I was a little worried maybe they’d get you.’ The years had refined everything about him, including his accent, although it was still softly tempered with an Irish lilt.

‘I knew you were around somewhere,’ O’Hara said.

Falmouth raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? And how’s that?’

‘A discussion we had one night over dinner in San Francisco. About coffee.’

‘Jesus, that must have been four years ago.’

‘About that.’

‘And you remember the kind of coffee I like?’

‘No, I remember you like to grind your own. Now, the captain there, he looks like it would be fine by him if the coffee were made out of buffalo chips. There’s three bags of gourmet coffee and a grinder down in the galley.’

‘Neat,’ Falmouth said. “A” for the course. Want to put some legs under your java?’

‘Brandy?’

‘I think we can accommodate you.’

Falmouth went below and emerged with a bottle of Courvoisier. He doused both cups liberally.

‘Before I forget, thanks for getting me off the hook in Washington,’ O’Hara said.

‘My pleasure, Sailor. Listen here, I was on the cuff to you. Let’s not lose our perspective, eh?’

‘So, we’re starting dead even.’

Falmouth hesitated for just an instant. ‘So to speak,’ he said.

Cap’n K. secured the lifeboat in its rig on the stern. He wiped his hands on an oily rag. Then he asked, ‘Anybody want a bagel with their coffee?’

‘A bagel?’ O’Hara said. ‘Two days ago I was on Howe’s yacht having scrod for breakfast.’

‘Well, fuck it, then,’ Cap’n K. said and disappeared down the hatch toward the galley.

‘Where did you dig him up?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Expatriate American,’ Falmouth said.. ‘Knows these waters better than the fish. Was a lawyer once big pistol. About ten years ago he got fed up, said the hell with it, took his two boys outta school, bought himself a boat and he’s been here ever since. The boys run the business now. They also have an air charter service that works the islands. And a very handy radiophone.’

‘You thinking of becoming a beach bum, now that you’re retired?’

Falmouth looked at him with mild curiosity for a moment and then said, ‘It’s a thought. The bloody rascal not only knows more about these islands than anyone alive, he sees nothing, hears nothing and says nothing.’

‘What in hell are we doing out here in the middle of nowhere?’

‘Nobody can sneak up on you out here.’

‘Getting a little paranoid, aren’t you?’

‘There’s good reason,’ he said, without explaining the remark.

O’Hara had never seen him this edgy. But Falmouth changed his mood quickly. ‘Pour yourself some more mud and try one of Cap’s bagels. We’ll get under way. take a little sun, catch a fish or two. I’ll tell you a story will turn your toes up.’

‘Can we set the lines while we’re lyin’ idle?’ Cap’n K. asked, interrupting them as he emerged from below. For the next few minutes there was a flurry of activity. The captain turned the Miami Belle out toward the open sea and tied down the wheel. He came back to the stern, dragged a four-foot barracuda out of the bait box and buried a hook the size of a grappling iron deep in its gills. He threw the hook overboard and fed the line out about fifteen feet, then set the rod in a bracket in the gunwales. He pulled up some slack from the line, hooked it over a small pulley and reeled the line out to the point of the outrigger and set it in place with a clothespin.

He repeated the procedure with the other rod, using a tattered fish head for bait. Then he leaned on the side of the boat. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘the big ones, the billfish, they hit twice.’ He held up two fingers to make his point.

‘First time, they use that schnozz on the end of their nose, they use that to stun their meal, they lay back a second or two, whap, they hit again. That time the hook goes in, okay? You’ll know it. When they make that first hit , the line’ll snap outa the outrigger, the line picks up the slack so the bait don’t run away from the fish, then bang, he’ll hit it again. Then you haul ass, toot-sweet, set that hook in good, or the fucker’ll spit it Out. Then it’s you and him, one on one.’ He waved disdainfully at the other rod. ‘The other line’s fixed for smaller stuff. They’ll hit it and dive deep. Maybe we’ll pick up something tasty for dinner.’

He went back to the bridge and eased up the throttles. The bait skittered along the surface of the water, fifty or sixty feet behind the boat.

Falmouth settled down in one of the two fighting chairs in the stern. ‘I figgered we’d mix a little pleasure with business,’ he said. ‘Grab a chair and let’s chat.’

‘For the record, Tony, why me? Why pick a guy on the dodge?’

‘Well, Sailor, we know each other and you know the territory and you know I’m not a bullshitter.. . Who else would I pick, Walter-bleedin’-Cronkite? Stickin’ it to that bloody Winter Man and bringin’ you in, I felt I owed you that. Once done, you’re the best man I know for the job.’

‘Job?’ O’Hara said.

‘It’s what you do now, isn’t it? Reporting for a living.’ Falmouth lit a cigarette and threw the match to the wind.

‘How come you turned down the Winter Man’s offer?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Hell, we’re friends. Also I don’t like him. It’s bastards like that give the Company a bad name. Besides, Sailor, I wasn’t all that sure I could turn you up. I’m not a tracker. My specialties are planning and execution. And even if 1 had turned you up, I wasn’t that sure I could take you.’

He looked stone-hard at O’Hara for a moment, then laughed.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what son of a bitch would kill a buddy for a lousy twenty-fiver, right?’

‘Maybe that’s why that cheap bastard got such bad help,’ O’Hara said.

Falmouth took off his shirt and threw it on top of the catch box. ‘To begin with,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to tell you a little story, for it to make sense, if there is any sense to it at all, Sailor. It will put the whole thing in proper perspective. But you won’t mind. It’s one helluva yarn.

‘This was in the fall, eighteen months ago. I had pulled a really shit job. But for two years, most of them had been. I got to tell you, Sailor, I was fed up with the Service. Squalid little executions. Agents who’d turned around. Doubles. Defectors. This one was up in Scotland. M15 — which, as you know, is basically counterespionage — had turned up a mole in a very sensitive spot in one of our nuclear installations, way the hell and gone out in nowhere. A place called Tobermory, on the Island of Mull, over in western Scotland. Colder than a banker’s heart and as dreary as a Russian love story. This chap had been sleeping for twelve years, moving slowly up the ladder until he was where they wanted him. I don’t remember now what turned him up. Like I said, it was an edgy situation. He was politically connected, an earl, something like that. Home Office didn’t want to go through a messy trial. So they sent me in.

My cutout was this pissy little bastard named Coalhelms, who did everything as inconveniently as possible. He was a typical civil servant. A really horrid little man. Anyway, there I was, waiting for Coalhelms to show up with the background on the mark. We were to meet at the Thieves’ Inn, an ale house right on the sea, up over the rocks. Got to be the loneliest pub in the bloody fucking world, Always foggy and damp so it cuts through you. I was taking a dram and sitting there, letting my eyes get accustomed to the place, for it s all candlelit, and I was looking across the room, kind of not focusing on anything in particular and suddenly I realized I was staring at this giant of a bugger sitting at the bar and he’s looking back at me with the coldest pair of eyes you’ve ever seen in all your life. Yellow-haired he was, and wearing tweeds with one of them country-squire, gnarled-up shillelaghs. And a tweedy cap over one eye. Beard and moustache, curled up and waxed at the corners, like a Highland colonel. He looked the perfect Scottish squire.

‘And he was — except when I knew him he had red hair, and when last I saw him he was wearing a navy wet suit and his name was Guy Thornley. I recognized him quickly, even though I hadn’t seen him for eight years or more.

‘You may have forgotten who Guy Thornley was, although I’ll wager the name is familiar to you. Thornley was attached to M15, and his specialty was underwater surveillance and sabotage. But he was a bit of a rogue agent. Did what he wanted. The summer of nineteen sixty-eight, the Russians brought several warships up the Thames for some kind of political shindig and among them was a wireless trawler, an electronic spy ship. It was much too tempting a morsel for Sir Guy to pass up, so he decides to go down and take a peek at her underbelly.

‘Nobody ever saw him again. The Thames didn’t give him up. There was never another word from him. He vanished.

‘The accepted theory is that the Russians had a scuba lock team down there, they wasted Thornley, then took him aboard the trawler and dumped him when they were well out at sea.

‘An acceptable and logical theory. I believed it myself until that October night eighteen months ago. Sitting there in the Thieves’ Inn, looking at him, I knew there was no mistake on his part that I recognized him, and no mistake on mine that he made me.

‘What I did, I went outside and lit up a fag. I figgered whatever he was up to, I might as well give him some room. If I had known what he was up to, I would have got out of there straightaway, although I doubt I would have got far.

‘I wasn’t two puffs into the butt, he comes sauntering out. There we are, in fog as thick as chocolate syrup, and he says, “Coalhelms isn’t coming, old man.” Just like that.

‘Twas like I stuck my finger in an open socket. The hair on my arms stood up as straight as the Queen’s Guard. It was a setup, of course; the worrisome thing was that I had walked into it eyes open. I was in the drop because I had trusted that office monkey and suddenly there I was, standing there in the fog with the ocean crashing down below us, talking to a bloody ghost. Worse, I knew we weren’t alone. Someone else was close by. I could feel him breathing down my neck. I figgered to hear Thornley out, however it played.

‘He had seen my K-file, that was obvious, for he knew about Guardio and Trujillo and that take-out in Brazil four years ago. He knew almost every job I’d ever done, Coalhelms had obviously lifted the file for him.

‘Top-secret information, right?

‘Not on your life. Because it wasn’t Thornley on some deep cover job, nothing like that. What happened is, he offered me a bloody job! Guaranteed me a hundred thousand a year. Told me I’d be called in only when needed. I could live anywhere in the world I wanted to, and all the transactions would be cash deposits in any bank of my choosing.

“We’re non-political,” he says. “This is strictly business. Our clients are the biggest companies in the world. You might say we’re a personal service for world industry. You handle your first assignment, which is a breeze, properly, and you can take early retirement from the Service and live as good as Prince Charlie.”

‘I was that stunned, I could hardly talk. And then he tells me some of the other chaps who’re in on the Game, counting them off on his fingers, and it was then the scope of this Service, as he called it, came clear to me, for he was talking about the best lads in the business.

‘Gazinsky, the KGB man who kidnapped Zhagi Romoloff, right from under the West Germans’ noses; Kimoto, the dapper little Japanese saboteur; Charley Simons, probably the best electronics man in the CIA, maybe in the world; Taven Kaminsky, the tough Jew who set up Israel’s antiterrorist outfit; Kit Willoughby from Australia; Amanet, the Iranian arsonist from the Savak; a couple f lads from the British antiterrorist group.

‘And to top it off, a couple of real beauts: Danilov, the Bulgarian jeweller turned assassin, maybe the most dangerous - man in the bunch. Those skilled hands of his developed a pellet no bigger than the head of a pin infused with a single drop of riticin. Do you know about riticin? A drop no bigger than a grain of sugar can kill a horse. The pellet is air-injected, right through clothing.

‘And finally, the Frenchman known only as Le Croix, who was in charge of the French torture squad in Algeria for two years, had all pictures of himself destroyed, and got his name because he used to crucify his victims.

‘An impressive rogue’s gallery of the keenest and most cold-blooded operatives in the world. Not a thimbleful of warm blood in the lot.

‘My options were pretty bleedin’ thin. Try to take out Thornley, and some shooter lurking behind me in the fog? A dead man’s choice.

‘Go along with it until I got out of the drop, then turn up Thornley and run for my life? There’d always be a Gazinsky or a Lavanieux or a Danilov behind me, waiting to drop the curtain on me.

‘Or listen to his proposition, buy a little time maybe? It wasn’t the money. Hell, there wasn’t any option. I knew that somewhere in that fog my executioner was waiting for my decision.

‘It was join or die. They had made up their minds they wanted me. They left me little damn choice in the matter.

‘What’s a feller to do —right? And now that I’m in, what’re my options? Stay in until I fuck up and either they kill me — or somebody else does. Or run.

‘My first job — my initiation, as Thornley called it — paid me twenty-five thousand dollars.

“Who’s the mark?” I asked.

‘And Thornley says, “Coalhelms.”

‘Just like that. I could hardly get my wits together, it’s that shocked I was. Finally I says to him, “Why? Other than he’s an insufferable little squeeker.”

“You never need to know the why of a thing,” Thornley says. “If it’s to be done, there’s a reason for it. But since it’s your first time out e’ us, I’ll tell you this much: he’s outlived his usefulness. He’s proved to be a baa security risk for your people.”

“They’re your people, too,” I said.

“Not anymore,” he says. “Nor yours, either, after tonight.”

‘Actually, Coalhelms was nothing more than a test.

“And just who in hell runs this club?” I asked.

‘And that was the first time I ever heard of Chameleon.’

Bang!

The line on the port side twanged loose from its outrigger and screamed through the reel: aweee-aweee-aweee-aweee...

It was a game fish, breaching long enough to jump high in the air once, then spitting out the hock. O’Hara used the momentary distraction to try to correlate everything Falmouth was saying.

He ignored the brief fishing drama, concentrating instead on the steady throb of the motors, using the sound as a kind of mantra, slipping briefly into a trancelike form of meditation. Kimura called it shidasu hakamaru, ‘going to the wall.’

To O’Hara, it was like being in a bright white room with no seams or doors. Against this glaring white milieu he projected images and words, imbedding them in his memory. He had only a vague visual recollection of Thornley, but there were others he knew:

Gazinsky, the tall Russian with the cadaverous head and eyes like a cat, always a bit of food in his beard; Tosiru Kirmoto, the Buddha-like Japanese with his three-piece suits and white-on-white shirts, who had once blown up four Russian missile pads and got out without losing his breath; Amanet, the sleek, black-haired little Savak terrorist, whom he once saw in Algiers, drinking fresh goat’s blood as if it were a cocktail.

Then there was the Frenchman, Le Croix. Tall, short, fat, thin? He had no visual impression of the man other than that he had once heard Le Croix had lost an eye in the fighting in Algeria and had exacted a terrible price for it — he had personally executed twenty-two Algerian rebels.

Finally, there was Daniov the Jeweller, whom he had seen only through binoculars, strolling through the Tuileries in Paris. ‘Remember that face,’ his partner had told him, ‘he is one of the most dangerous men in the Game. And watch the umbrella. There’s an air-injection needle in the tip, loaded with poison. He can hit you right through your overcoat.’

O’Hara remembered Daniov well: short, squat, a face round as a cabbage, pencil-thin moustache, thick glasses accentuating gleaming, beady eyes tucked among thick folds of flesh, his tongue, a snake’s tongue, constantly licking nervously at his lips, as though sensing some unsuspecting prey nearby. And the omnipresent black umbrella with its pinhead of death lurking in the tip.

The images would remain, as well as the imagery of Falmouth trapped in a nightmare of his own making, performing a pagan ritual of death as his ‘initiation.’

The concept was terrifying, the Players, themselves, proving the Game far more dangerous than he had imagined.

‘Christ, didn’t I teach ya better’n that?’ Cap’n K. barked from the bridge. The big fish had thrown the line and was gone.

The captain throttled back and came to the stern and baited the big hook again. ‘Ya didn’t snag him ,‘he said irritably. ‘That was a two-hundred-pounder there, Tony. Two-hundred-pounder!’

‘We’re talking business,’ Tony said, setting the line and clamping it by clothespin to the outrigger.

‘Fishin’ and talkin’ don’t mix,’ snapped the captain. He returned to the bridge and slammed the throttles forward.

The activity jarred O’Hara back to reality. He waited until Falmouth was back in his chair.

‘Did you really burn Coalhelms?’ he asked.

Falmouth looked at O’Hara, his gray eyes turning flinty for just a moment, then he nodded. ‘That I did, Sailor.’

‘Why?

‘It was just like any other job.’

‘For twenty-five thousand dollars?’

‘That’s not the point.’

Falmouth’s candour shocked O’Hara. ‘The point! Why didn’t you just go to M15, turn Thornley up for the deserter he is?’

Falmouth seemed to collapse in the middle. His shoulders sagged. His face drew in, the creases around his eyes and mouth growing deeper. His voice was haunted, the voice of a man whose sins were parading past him, the bodiless faces of his victims hovering before his eyes.

‘Look,’ he said finally, ‘I’m tired, okay? I’m pushing fifty. I don’t run as fast as once I did. Nor jump as high, nor move as quick. You can’t stay tops in the Game much past forty. You forget things. Your eyes start to go. You don’t have the stamina you once had. Your reflexes are shot. ‘You Start making little mistakes now and again. Not fatal ones, hut when it happens, that black angel whispers in your ear just the same.’

‘Christ, there must’ve been something you could—’

‘You just don’t get it, do you, man? ‘You’re trying to make a moral issue where there are no morals. Dontcha see, lad, I had no choice. You bet your sweet lovin’ ass I did it. And thankful I did now, or I’d be long gone. You don’t retire from this bunch. You botch it, try to get out, you’re a dead man. What I’m saying, Sailor, you retire in a box and that’s the only way. Well, I ain’t lookin’ to get laid out in McGinty’s front room with a hole in me. I’ve always planned on dying in bed. So forget the moral judgments, hey? We’re not here for judging, we’re here to pop their balloon. You blow this operation open, and I’m a free man. Otherwise I’m on the dodge for the rest of my life, which is not a thing I have a taste for right now.’

There were a few moments of uneasy silence.

‘It isn’t easy, you know, admitting you’re losing your edge, when that’s all you’ve got.’

And more silence. Is this really it? O’Hara wondered. Is it that simple? Is Tony too scared to resist some nameless, faceless assassin in the dark? Or is there more to it? Some kind of plot? He examined his own paranoia, but found no answers. Falmouth’s self-entrapment made as much sense as anything else so far in his chilling yarn.

He changed the subject. ‘What’s the objective of all this and who the hell’s Chameleon?’

Falmouth leaned back, closed his eyes and let the sun bake his face. The pain of admitting that he was growing too old for the Game faded slowly from his handsome features. ‘The objective is greed.’

‘What companies are involved?’

‘The biggest in the world. Our enemies are their competition. If the enemy’s got somethin your client wants, steal it. If you can’t steal it, kill the ones who’re doing the work.

‘Blow up their laboratories. Burn ‘em out. Slow them down.

Drive ‘em out of business. Steal their secrets. Our clients?

Hell, you name it. United Telephone, Continental Motor

Company, Sunset Oil, the Boston Common Bank and Trust,

Global Steel...’

He waved his hands to indicate the futility of listing them

Talk, O’Hara thought. So far Falmouth had given him very little but talk. Nothing could be proven. ‘All I’m hearing is talk,’ he said.

‘All right, how about Guardio, the South American strong man. Did you hear about his assassination while you were on the dodge?’

‘They do have newspapers in Japan, Tony,’ O’Hara said, managing a smile.

‘The whole coup was set up by Chameleon.’

‘You said this was non-political.’

‘Absolutely non-political, old man. Strictly business. American Electric paid the bill. Guardio was planning to nationalize the power companies, and AE had fifty million invested down there. Thornley went in four months ahead and began plotting with the generalissimos. I went in a month before the coup, took me that long to work up the kill. I took out Guardio while he was in church. The generals closed all the doors, trapping the family and loyalists inside. There was a force of four hundred mercenaries just over the border, maybe thirty miles away. Guardio wasn’t cold yet when they hit the park across from the church in choppers. Backup for the army. I was back in New York having dinner at the Four Seasons that night. The mop-up took four days and the price tag was two million dollars.’

‘They have their own army?’

‘A brigade of British Highlanders, under contract to the British Army with agreement that they can take leave anytime, as long as the country isn’t under some kind of military alert. They can be put in the field, fully equipped, in less than thirty days,’

‘We can’t prove any of this,’ O’Hara said.

He got up and leaned over the stern, watching the motors churning up the wake. There were too many holes and not enough details. He needed more names, possible defectors. Anyone who would talk to him. He focused on the sound of the engines, going to the wall again. But it didn’t work. Something stronger than details was pulling at him. This had the makings of a great story and now his reporter’s instincts were humming. He felt the excitement of a scoop nibbling deep in his stomach. But be needed more than Falmouth. He needed to cross-check before he started doling out Howe’s money.

‘How about Thornley?’ he asked. ‘If I can turn him up, it would be a good starting place.’

‘I haven’t seen him since the Guardio business.’

‘Any defectors? Anybody else ever run?’

Falmouth hesitated. He gave himself some thinking time by lighting another Gitane.

‘Well?’ said O’Hara.

‘Do we have a deal?’ Falmouth said.

‘Not yet. I couldn’t begin to put a story together with what you’ve told me. I need names to go with faces, and faces to go with jobs. And I want to know who it is that’s on the run.’

‘I never said anyone was.’

‘You can’t be the first one to want out of this madness.’

‘The world is mad!’ said Falmouth. ‘You were in the Game for five bloody years, O’Hara, didn’t you learn anything from it? With greed comes money and with money comes power, and that’s what it’s all about.’

‘Not the world I want to live in.’

‘Right, Sailor. So here’s your opportunity to change it. Do you doubt I’m risking my life telling you all this?’

O’Hara considered an answer but Falmouth pressed on, ‘Just remember, where there’s a need, there’s always something or someone to fill it.’

‘And that someone is Chameleon?’

‘Chameleon’s just the beginning.’

‘It’ll do for starters. Who is he?’

‘Ah, who is he indeed? A faceless figure. A wisp of air, never seen by the Players, or none that I’ve met. Chameleon’s all I know, and that from some of the other boys I’ve worked with. But he’s the head of it, I’ve heard that often enough to know it’s the truth.’

‘You don’t know where the headquarters is? Where this Chameleon operates from?’

‘No. I can tell you all I know about him in about thirty seconds. He’s Oriental and he’s been around awhile. That’s why you’re a natural for this one, ok man. You know Japan as well as you know your left hand, and you know the Players, so you can understand the significance of what I’m saying.’

‘How do you know he’s an Oriental?’

‘From Thornley. From others I heard he was the most dangerous one in the bunch. It was Chameleon burned Cohn Bradley.’

‘Bradley’s dead?’

‘Aye. Popped up in the East River with a bullet in his brain. Somebody wanted Chameleon taken out and Bradley thought he was up to the job. Got his bloody head blown off. That’s what you get for thinking.’

‘Who wanted him out?’

‘I don’t know the answer to that, but I would guess it was one of the enemy.’

‘You make it sound like war, Tony.’

‘And that it is. But not a cold war, Sailor,’ and he leaned over and said in a rasping stage whisper, ‘a bloody dollar war.’

‘How does this Chameleon conduct business, how does he run this crazy show you’re talking about, if nobody has contact with him?’

‘Through Master.’

‘Master?’

‘A computer. Everything is done by computer. The only human Contact I have on the top side is a man named Quill.’

‘He’s your cutout?’

‘Yes.’

‘Quill?’

‘Yes, Quill.’

O’Hara shook his head. ‘Sounds like you’ve been reading too much Dickens,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s his name, dammit. Quill. Never met him and the only way to reach him is through Master.’

‘And Master’s the computer?’

‘Right. To get into it, you have to go through a series of checks. Voice prints. Number intersects. Variable code names, like that. The operation’s so simple it’s terrifying. A job comes in. Quill programs Master, determines the best man for the job and makes contact. Everything is taken care of. Tickets, money, contacts, hotel reservations, cars. Even weapons, if there’s something special you might need. The pay is deposited in the account of your choice before you get your bags packed. It works as smooth as sand running through an hour glass.’

‘What about the man himself — what’s his background?’

‘Never seen him. Wouldn’t know him if he came up out of the water there and spit in my eye.’

‘You’ve been at this for eighteen months, you’ve never seen any of the top Players?’

‘And maybe never will. It isn’t necessary.’

‘How about some of the operations?’

As the sun swept overhead, boring relentlessly down on them, Falmouth detailed the Guardio operation and then went on, describing the accidental murder of Marza and the destruction of the Aquila car, how he set up the bomb in the computerized dash, where he stayed, trains and planes he took.

‘The Aquila job was so clean they’re still trying to figure out what went wrong. It’s delayed work on the car for months. They still haven’t recovered from the shock of Marza’s death.’

‘I want a deposition from you with all those details.’

Falmouth thought for a moment. ‘When the money’s paid,’ he agreed.

O’Hara pondered that for a moment and then nodded. ‘That seems fair enough,’ he said. ‘There’s got to be a pattern to all of this, something that ties it all together.’

‘I tell you, Sailor, stop looking for some kind of logical order to it.’

But O’Hara’s mind was trained to consider both the logical and illogical possibilities of any situation. There has to be some common thread, some ultimate goal in this madness, he thought, but Falmouth laughed at him when he said so.

‘It’s the Game for fun and profit, plain and simple. There’s a fortune being made. What do you think the Marza play cost? My end was a hundred and fifty thousand. They probably charged the client half a million.’

O’Hara was still unconvinced. To him, there had to be an overall objective to the Master operation other than ‘fun and games.’ Perhaps only Chameleon knew what it was.

‘You try to figger some kinda conspiracy in it, you’ll have a Chinese puzzle on your hands,’ Falmouth insisted. ‘Sometimes the jobs make no sense at all.’ He recounted Hinge’s tale of killing a man in Hawaii to retrieve the negatives of a dozen photographs, then destroying the film he had just killed to acquire.

‘And who is this Hinge?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Bloody cowboy. Kills without thinking or hesitation. Men or women, no matter. He can do the trick with gun or knife, he can do it with darts or with rope. Hell, he could probably spit us both to fucking death.’

‘Nobody can kill you, Tony.’

‘I used to think so, until I worked with this new lad two days ago in Caracas.’

‘What the hell were you doing in Caracas the day before yesterday?’

‘I got an assignment. I didn’t know whether you were going to make it or not. I couldn’t turn them down without showing my hand.’

Who’s this young hotshot, a mere?’

‘Was, before this.’

They’re a dime a dozen, Tony.’

‘Not this one. There aren’t a dozen like him. Made a kill from nineteen hundred feet in Vietnam. And j was using a bloody night scope!’

‘What was this job you two did?’

‘Chap named Lavander got lifted by some local muchachos. We had to bring him in. But it’s what’s happened since that may give you the hook you’re looking for.’

‘And how’s that?’

Falmouth leaned over, his eyes gleaming, and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you that when we have a deal,’ he said.

O’Hara was watching movement twenty or so yards beyond the lines that skittered along the surface ,f the sea. He was still uncomfortable about turning over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Tony Falmouth, but if Falmouth had additional information for him, it could change his mind.

‘I think I’ll go back to Japan,’ O’Hara said. ‘Live a nice, simple life. No computers running private intelligence agencies or ghosts running computers. It’s all too complicated. I didn’t want to take this job in the first place.’

The fin of a big fish sliced the surface for a moment and went under again.

‘You can’t back off now,’ Falmouth said.

‘The hell I can’t.’

‘You do and I’m a dead man.’

‘Just do a few more jobs and then run, said O’Hara. ‘I’m already on the dodge, I agreed last night I’d do another job, but I didn’t return Quill’s call to get the details. You don’t accept a job, then disappear, not without creating a certain level of anxiety in the heart of Mr Quill. By now he’s figuring either I’ve run or something happened to me. Whatever, he’s assigned someone else to the job, and that’s where I can help you.’

‘And how’s that?’ said O’Hara.

Falmouth’s gray eyes were twinkling, his lips playing with a smile. ‘Because I know the mark,’ he said. ‘I know where he’s going to be hit. I know when. And I know the assassin.’

And after he let that sink in, he added, ‘And I’ll give you the runner as a bonus.’

A runner. Someone else on the dodge. Now, that had possibilities. The bonus is what turned O’Hara. If someone other than Tony was dodging Chameleon and he could turn up the runner, he could verify Falmouth’s story.

The fin split the surface of the ocean again, this time about ten yards to the lee side of the line.

‘I’ll make a deal with you,’ said O’Hara. ‘If you give me that information, I’ll pay you half. If! score and the information is clean, I’ll deposit the other half anywhere you say or meet you and give you the rest.’

‘Goddamn, we’re playin rough, aren’t we, Sailor.’

‘It isn’t my money.’

Falmouth nodded very slightly and then stuck out his hand. ‘Done,’ he said, and they shook.

‘Let’s hear it,’ said O’Hara.