The Mordida Man

11

When Thane Coombs, the Director of Central Intelligence, came into his large seventh-floor office in the Agency’s Langley headquarters, he had to wake up the big bald-headed man who sat slumped asleep in the bolted-down armchair.

Six of the bolted-down chairs, all identical, formed a semicircle around Coombs’s desk. They were the first thing he had ordered after being sworn in as DCI. The radius of the semicircle formed by the chairs was exactly six feet — which, Coombs had calculated, was exactly the distance needed to keep him from smelling the breath of others. As DCI, Coombs saw no reason why he should have to. He had a sensitive nose and wanted to use it to smell his roses — not breaths that reeked of cigarettes, alcohol, and decaying teeth, and especially not poor digestion brought on by ambition and fear and bad marriages.

As he walked over and snapped his fingers in the big man’s left ear, Coombs wrinkled his nose because he could smell whisky and cigarettes and garlic and Scope and probably just a trace of marijuana. It was how the big man nearly always smelled.

The sleeping man’s name was Alex Reese, and he awoke instantly without apology, but with his inevitable comment, “Must have dozed off there for a moment.”

Reese could sleep anywhere, anytime, and often did. He stood six-four and weighed 270 pounds, and a lot of it, although not all, had settled around his gut. He was a man who scoffed at all gods and demons, held most of mankind in utter contempt, and wasn’t particularly fond of animals. Nine years of his life had been spent with the FBI and twelve with the CIA. He drank a fifth of cheap whisky a day, much of it before noon, and had been hired by the CIA four times, fired three, and given two medals in private ceremonies, only to see them snatched back and locked away in the name of national security. He was forty-four years old, thrice married and divorced, and was now sexually inclined toward teen-age girls, whom he pursued shamelessly. Had it not been for his mind, he would have been impossible. His mind was extraordinary.

Coombs went behind his desk and sniffed suspiciously. “Tell me something,” he said. “Do you ever bathe?”

“Every Saturday night,” Reese said and then added because it was so old and awful, “whether I need it or not.” After that he laughed his nerve-racking laugh which lay somewhere between a sea lion’s honk and an old fox’s sly bark.

Coombs sighed and sat down. Reese tried to hitch his bolted-down chair closer to Coombs’s desk. The movement jarred the papers from his lap and they fell to the floor. Reese went down on his hands and knees to retrieve them. “What do you want to bolt these fucking chairs to the floor for anyway?” he said as he sat back down. “Afraid somebody’s gonna crack a fart?”

Coombs closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “Just read what you have.”

Reese picked up a legal-size sheet of paper from his lap and began reading an excerpt from a White House press conference that had been held twenty-two minutes before. He read in a bass monotone that was totally without inflection.

“‘Los Angeles Times: Mr. President, five days ago the Libyan delegation abruptly canceled its tour and flew back to Tripoli. My understanding is that the tour was canceled because your brother refused to let the Libyans go on a gambling junket to Las Vegas. Would you care to comment on that?’

“‘President: Not really. [Laughter.] I will say that I very much doubt that Bingo would ever try to prevent anyone from doing anything he wanted to do — especially gambling. As you know, my brother is something of a free spirit.’ [Laughter.]

“‘United Press International: Mr. President, Frank Milroy, the Las Vegas Chief of Police, says your brother called him from Los Angeles to arrange maximum security for the Libyan delegation. But then the delegation never showed. Chief Milroy has been unable to reach your brother. My question, sir, is can you tell us where your brother is, or if he somehow offended or insulted the Libyan delegation?’

“‘President: That’s two questions. First, Bingo doesn’t check in with me; I check in with him. [Laughter.] I heard from him indirectly a few days back. He did not in any way offend the Libyan delegation, which, I understand, canceled the tour for reasons of its own.’

“‘Chicago Sun-Times: Could you tell us what those reasons were, Mr. President?’

“‘President: I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the Libyan delegation that.’”

“He got off easy,” Reese said as he put the paper back on his lap, took out a cigarette, lit it with a paper match, looked around for an ashtray, and, finding none, dropped the match on the carpet.

Coombs raised himself from his chair just enough to peer over the edge of his desk and make sure the match was out. As he sat back down, he said, “Quite remarkable. He managed to get through it without actually lying. What else?”

Reese didn’t seem to hear the question. He was scratching his crotch and gazing up at the ceiling. “You know what? I think I got crabs.”

“Give me strength,” Coombs whispered.

Reese went on scratching earnestly until he smiled and sighed.

“Ahh! That’s better.” He looked at Coombs then, and the smile vanished. “You gave me this stack of shit when — five days ago? Yeah, five. You gave it to me because I don’t leak and because I’m the only one who might bring it off. Well, I’ve come up with a few juicy items, but before we go into them I wanta talk about the payoff. I want London.”

“Impossible.”

“Fuck it then,” Reese said and started to rise.

“Rome.”

Reese sat back down. “London or nothing.”

“Why not Rome? The climate is more salubrious, the food is infinitely better, the work is more rewarding. I’d far rather be chief of station in Rome than London.”

“Pussy,” Reese said. “They’ve got fourteen-, fifteen-year-old cupcakes in London who’ll—”

“All right, London,” Coombs said and whispered, “God forgive me.”

“Wonderful,” Reese said and split his face with a happy, yellowish smile. Above the smile was a big nose that leaned right, then left, then right again. On either side of it two secretive gray eyes gazed out on the world with what seemed to be total disbelief. Thick eyebrows like furry hedgerows guarded a forehead whose thought wrinkles went up and up, and then up some more until they reached where the hairline would have been, if there had been any hair, which there wasn’t except for the grayish brown stuff that still sprouted around the ears and down on the nape of the neck. Below all this was an aggressive chin almost as big as a fist. It was an ugly, but somehow wise face, strangely medieval, and strangely corrupt.

“Item one,” Reese said and flicked his cigarette ashes on the carpet. “Bingo’s not in Libya any more.”

“How do you know?”

“I got it off the Egyptians.”

“Mercy!” said Coombs, making the word sound almost obscene.

“No choice.”

“I don’t accept that.”

Reese didn’t seem to care what Coombs accepted. “They came to me first. That slimy Wahab, remember him?”

Coombs nodded.

“He’d heard a rumor that the Israelis had snatched Felix. He wanted to know what we’d heard. I told him I’d look into it providing he’d check something out for me. Then I fed him this fairy tale about a prominent American who’d got lost or strayed in Libya. I told him I needed to know where the American was — exactly where. Well, we’ve got jack shit in Libya and the Gyppos know this, but still I thought my fairy tale maybe just might work. But when old slimy Wahab got back to me he was practically hysterical — giggling all over the place and smirking like Rumpelstiltskin. The ‘prominent American,’ he said, and I could just hear him wrapping the quotes around it, well, the ‘prominent American’ had been held in Tripoli for twenty-four hours and then moved — out of the country, except old Wahab, slick and slimy as he is, couldn’t find out where. But he knows it’s Bingo.”

Coombs sighed. “How long?”

“Will he keep his mouth shut?”

Coombs nodded.

“Maybe a week. I told him there’d be a new 450 SE on his doorstep if he’d keep his mouth shut for a week and I’d break his fucking arm if he didn’t. He might last a week; he might not.”

Coombs nodded and made a note. “But the Egyptians now also think we have Felix?”

“Yeah, they think that because that’s what the Libyans think. I let it lie.”

“Good,” Coombs said. “It’s the only bargaining chip the President has.” He put down his pencil and leaned back in his chair and inspected the back of his left hand. “Our task remains twofold: first, find out who really has Felix and get him back, and second, determine exactly where the President’s brother is being held captive.” He shifted his gaze from his hand to Reese. It was a cold gaze, full of reproach, and the tone was even colder. “It would now seem that the sum total of our knowledge is that — one — Bingo McKay is no longer in Libya, although where he is, we haven’t the slightest notion, and — two — you haven’t even the vaguest clue as to where Felix might be or who might have abducted him.”

“I’m working on that,” Reese said and scratched an ear.

“Work a little harder.”

“Another item,” Reese said. “Paul Grimes.”

Coombs’s left eyebrow formed an interested arc. “Oh?”

“He saw the President just after you did, and then he started asking around town about Chubb Dunjee. Remember him?”

Coombs nodded thoughtfully. “Mexico.”

“Yeah, Mexico. Well, Grimes flew to Lisbon and then took a taxi to Sintra, because that’s where Dunjee was holed up. A day later, Dunjee flew into London.”

“And Mr. Grimes?”

“He’s there, too.”

“Interesting. Mr. Dunjee. What’s the current reading on him?”

“Whose?”

“The conventional wisdom.”

“Everybody thinks he’s a broken-down politician.”

“And you?”

“Very smooth when he wants to be,” Reese said. “Very slick. A side-stepper, an angle player. No pattern.”

“A brilliant man?”

Reese thought about it. “Smart anyhow.”

“Smart,” Coombs said and made another note. “Well, let’s do keep in touch with him. Loosely, of course.”

“Right,” Reese said, rose, and moved to Coombs’s desk, where he held his inch-long cigarette ash threateningly over the polished surface until Coombs produced a small ceramic tray from a drawer. After Reese crushed out his cigarette he handed Coombs two closely typed pages.

“What’s this?”

“Stray thoughts,” Reese said. “Midnight musings. It’s the only copy.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s about the Libyan tour. Nobody’s quite sure just how it got started.”

“The Libyans asked for it.”

Reese shook his head. “No they didn’t.”

Coombs frowned. “Let me think,” he said. “The White House started dropping hints, as I remember. Or perhaps Bingo McKay did. It was really his show, his and the President’s.”

Again Reese shook his head. “That’s not true either. I checked it out. It began as a rumor in New York, at the UN, as nearly as I can pin it down, although it’s like trying to pin down a snow-flake. But the rumor was simple. Oil for arms. The Libyans’ oil, our arms. The same rumor popped up at almost exactly the same time in Rome, where all good Libyans still go for R and R. The Embassy there heard it, and then suddenly it becomes more than a rumor. It turns into a nice little story on page twenty-six of the New York Times, with a Rome dateline, which says that the Libyans have no intention of making a window-shopping tour of the U.S. The State Department replies politely in about two or three hundred words that the Libyans haven’t been invited. And the whole thing dies — for about a week.”

Coombs nodded, as though remembering. “Then what?”

“It was born again.”

“A resurrection?”

“Just about.”

“Who was... present?”

“The Ambassador in Rome, for one. He heard in a roundabout way that the Libyans were having second thoughts.”

“He heard this from whom?”

“The Nigerians. The next thing you know there’s a carefully drafted answer to a carefully planted question at a regular State press conference, which, in effect, says that State wouldn’t have any objection to a private Libyan window-shopping expedition. Well, the guy over at State hardly gets the words out of his mouth before a couple of oil companies down in Houston issue an invitation to the Libyans. Other oil firms chime in, and Bingo McKay becomes the unofficial tour leader and the trip is on.”

Coombs frowned as though having difficulty in adding up a column of figures. “How long did all this take?”

“From start to finish — about three months.”

“But it died once.”

“Twice, in fact.”

“And the Nigerians were present at both resurrections?”

“Both.”

“Have we talked to them?”

“I did. Both here and in New York. As best as their UN people can pin it down, they first heard the rumor from Gambia — although they won’t bet the rent on that, because they think the rumor may have been floated simultaneously in Rome.”

“Gambia,” Coombs said thoughtfully. He stared at Reese and repeated to himself, “Gambia.”

Reese said nothing. Instead, he lit another cigarette and said, “You got anything to drink around here?”

“Interesting,” Coombs said, producing a pint bottle of California brandy from a bottom drawer. He put it next to the silver water thermos on his desk and watched disapprovingly as Reese poured a large measure into a glass. “We shouldn’t forget that while the Libyans went window-shopping here,” Coombs said, “Felix was being kidnapped in London. A coincidence perhaps, although I have long been convinced that nature abhors them, just as it does vacuums. They’re unnatural.”

“But they happen,” Reese said, finishing off the brandy.

Coombs shrugged and in a thoughtful voice said, “Gambia,” again.

“You finally get there after all, don’t you?”

“Dr. Joseph Mapangou.”

“A nasty little shit.”

“But a useful conduit, I understand,” Coombs said.

“So’s an open sewer. Useful, I mean.”

“Yes, well, I think someone had best have a chat with Dr. Mapangou.” He looked at Reese. “What tribe is that, by the way?” he asked, hoping that Reese wouldn’t know, but realizing that it was a vain hope.

“Mandingo,” Reese said promptly. “If he wasn’t a Mandingo, he wouldn’t have made it to the UN.”

“You will talk to him, won’t you?”

“Mapangou?” Reese said. “Sure, I’ll talk to him.”