The Mordida Man

18

There was some discussion, not quite an argument, about who would get the window seat. It was finally decided that the sad-eyed Englishman would sit there because he liked to look out. After more discussion, with the American growing just a trifle exasperated, it was also decided that the woman, who may have been either British or American — it was hard to tell — would sit next to the Englishman, while the American with the skewed left cheekbone that made him look a bit cockeyed would sit across the aisle from her in seat 3-B next to first-class window seat 3-A, which was already occupied by Faraj Abedsaid, Attaché (Cultural Section), of the Libyan Arab Republic’s Embassy in London.

At 8:45 A.M. Dunjee buckled his seat belt just as a flight attendant announced in Italian, English, and French that this was Alitalia flight 317 from London to Rome and flying time would be approximately two hours and fifteen minutes. Dunjee turned to glance at his seat companion and give him what he knew to be his politician’s nod, not too friendly, but not too distant either, a nod that in effect said, Even if you can’t vote for me, pal, maybe you know somebody who can. Abedsaid gave him a slight nod back.

Once the plane had reached cruising altitude, Delft Csider raised the lid on the large attaché case that rested on her lap and, in a clear, penetrating voice, said, “Congressman, do you want to do the mail first, or do you want that spud-in report from Denver?”

“Let’s get the mail over with,” Dunjee said, speaking just slightly louder than he normally would.

Delft Csider handed him a sheaf of letters and a clipboard to write on. Dunjee fumbled for a pen, giving Abedsaid sufficient time to glance at the top letterhead which read, “Anadarko Explorations, Inc.,” and underneath in somewhat smaller letters, “Tulsa, Oklahoma.” There was also an address, a phone number, a telex number, and a cable acronym, ANADEX; but they were all in eight-point type and too small to be read from any distance.

Dunjee started signing the letters with his own name, carefully reading each one first. After signing his name, he passed each letter across the aisle to Delft Csider. Next to her, Harold Hopkins stared out the window at the clouds below. After a few minutes of cloud-staring he leaned back in his seat and went to sleep.

When he reached the last letter in the pile, Dunjee said, “What happened to the one to Minister Obalana in Lagos?”

“You decided it would be better to call him from Rome, Congressman.”

“That’s right. I forgot. Let’s have that Denver report. Never mind, I see it.” Dunjee reached across the aisle toward the open attaché case. The clipboard with the last letter still on it slipped from his lap and fell at Abedsaid’s feet. The Libyan reached down and picked them up, noting that the letter was addressed to The Hon. Salim Abdulrazzak, who happened to be the Minister of Resources for the State of Kuwait.

“Sorry,” Dunjee said.

“Not at all,” Abedsaid said, handing him the letter and the clipboard. Dunjee signed the final letter and passed both it and the clipboard over to Delft Csider.

When he was through, Abedsaid said, “You are a United States Congressman?”

Dunjee turned slightly and gave him his best smile — very white, very warm, very wide. “Not any more. My associates just call me that out of habit. It sometimes helps when it comes to making reservations.”

“But you formerly were a Congressman?”

“That’s right. ’Sixty-nine to ’seventy-one. My name’s Dunjee. Chubb Dunjee.” He held out his hand.

After less than a second, Abedsaid accepted it, shook it, and said, “Abedsaid.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Abedsaid,” Dunjee said, mispronouncing the name just slightly.

“I noticed that the name of your company was Anadarko.”

“Anadarko Explorations, Inc. But we operate out of Tulsa. That’s in Oklahoma.”

“Really,” Abedsaid said. “And you were a Congressman from Oklahoma?”

“No, California. Los Angeles. Where’re you from?”

“Tripoli,” Abedsaid said, adding dryly, “That’s in Libya.”

“Libya’s a little out of my territory right now,” Dunjee said, “but maybe not for long, especially if those Gulf of Sidra finds prove out.”

“You’re—”

“Offshore specialists,” Dunjee supplied him. “Consultants. Started out off Santa Barbara, then did some work up in the North Sea, and after that we got called down to Nigeria.”

“The Port Harcourt area?”

“Closer to Bonny, actually,” Dunjee said, seeing no reason why he should be tripped up so easily. “Are you in the oil business?”

“Not exactly, although I did take a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma.” He smiled slightly. “That’s in Norman.”

Dunjee appeared to be delighted. So delighted that he reached across the aisle and tapped Delft Csider on the arm. “Hey, Delft. Mr. Abedsaid here went to OU.”

Delft Csider smiled coolly. “How nice.”

“I found Oklahoma... fascinating,” Abedsaid said.

“I bet,” Dunjee said. “I’m having a little trouble getting used to it myself. Fortunately, we travel a lot.”

“Why not locate someplace else?”

“Well, first, because my money men are all in Tulsa, and second, that’s where the experts are, there and in Texas. If you want to do any offshore drilling and do it right, you’d better get yourself some good ole boys from Texas and Oklahoma who probably never saw an ocean before they started shaving.”

“Yes,” Abedsaid said, “I’ve heard that. Your President, Mr. McKay, is from Oklahoma, isn’t he?”

“That’s right. Oklahoma City.”

“I believe he also served in the House of Representatives.”

“Two terms.”

“Did you know him there?”

“No, I was there before his time.”

“They were also in the oil business, weren’t they — the McKay brothers, I mean?”

“Still are — except they’ve got it all in a blind trust now. From what everybody says, the McKays were both lucky and good, which is usually how you make it in the oil business.”

“President McKay’s brother. He has a strange nickname, I believe. Strange to me anyway.”

“Bingo.”

“Do you know him?”

“Everybody knows Bingo. We’re not good friends, but we’ve met a few times.”

“In other words you’ve both howdied and shook.”

Dunjee grinned. “You might say that.”

“How long will you be in Rome, Mr. Dunjee?”

“A few days. I’ve got some meetings with the ENI people.”

“And where will you be staying?”

It was then that Dunjee knew he had him. It was more than the nibble, it was the bite. Dunjee played it cautiously. He leaned across the aisle and said to Delft Csider, “Where’re we staying in Rome?”

“The Hassler,” she said.

“The Hassler,” Dunjee said.

“A very nice hotel,” said Abedsaid as he pressed the button that made his chair recline. “I sometimes stay there myself.”

Abedsaid closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep. For the rest of the trip, Dunjee immersed himself in a detailed geological report on a dry hole in west Kansas that had been abandoned at 9,154 feet. Paul Grimes had arranged for the report to be flown in from Denver. It had arrived that morning on the Pan Am flight from Washington. Dunjee read it carefully, turning a page every three or four minutes. Only once did he catch Abedsaid peeking to see whether he was actually reading the report, which ran 159 pages.

After his meeting with Chubb Dunjee the afternoon before, Paul Grimes had gone directly to Heathrow and boarded British Airways flight 189 to Dulles. Flight 189 was the Concorde, which Grimes always took when someone else was paying the $ 1,508 fare. In this instance the someone else was the President of the United States.

The flight left London at 6:30 P.M. and arrived at Dulles at 5:55 P.M. Grimes’s seatmate was a garrulous eighty-year-old retired firetruck salesman whose territory had once been “every state west of the Mississippi.” The old gentleman said he had flown in everything from Ford trimotors to 747s, but this was his first time up in the Concorde.

“The way I figure it,” he said, “if you could stand in Heathrow and holler loud enough to be heard at Dulles, why, we’d get there before the holler did. Now that’s fast.”

At Dulles there had been a White House car to meet Grimes, a black Mercury sedan whose uncommunicative driver, Grimes decided, was probably a member of the Secret Service detail. The driver kept murmuring into a microphone about Firefly and Ginger, and Grimes decided he would rather be Ginger than Firefly if, in fact, the driver was even talking about him.

The car pulled up in front of the old White House Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The driver and Grimes got out and another six-footer, also neatly dressed, slipped wordlessly behind the wheel and drove off. Grimes’s driver said, “This way, Mr. Grimes.”

He escorted Grimes into the building, past the guards, and up to the same denlike room on the third floor where Grimes and the President had met before. The driver produced a walkie-talkie from somewhere, probably his hip pocket, Grimes decided, pulled the aerial up, and murmured something else into it about Firefly and Ginger. The walkie-talkie spluttered a reply, but the driver had the volume down so low that Grimes couldn’t hear what it said.

“The President will be here in a few minutes, Mr. Grimes,” the driver said and then left the room, closing the door behind him.

Actually, it was five minutes before President McKay, dressed in black tie, entered the room and shook hands with Grimes.

McKay slumped down into a chair and put one leg up on the desk. “In twenty-five minutes, I’m having dinner with the mayors of twenty-two big cities and their assorted wives. The mayors all want money. After dinner, entertainment will be provided by a band of Hopi Indian dancers followed by a twenty-two-year-old rock star who’s going to sing some songs whose words I probably won’t be able to understand. You wouldn’t be here unless you had news. If it’s bad, I don’t think I want to hear it.”

“It’s news anyway,” Grimes said and took an envelope from his breast pocket. From the envelope he removed the Polaroid pictures that Dunjee had given him and dealt them onto the desk one by one. “Their names are all on the back.”

McKay turned each picture over. “So that’s what he looks like. Felix, I mean.”

“That’s what he looks like.”

“And the blond guy on the bed with the hard-on. He took the pictures, right?”

“Right.”

“What else?”

“There’s a connection between the blond guy — his name’s Diringshoffen — and a Libyan called Abedsaid who works out of their London Embassy. The Libyan’s flying down to Rome tomorrow. My guy — the guy whose name you don’t want to know — is going to make a move on him.”

McKay leaned back in his chair and stared at Grimes for several moments. Finally he said, “What kind of move?”

Grimes shrugged. “I don’t know. The way he normally works is to make them approach him.”

“And he turned these pictures up?”

Grimes nodded.

“How’d he do it?”

“He spent some money and cut a few corners here and there that you don’t want to know about.”

“The CIA spends money — boxcars full of it — but the only picture it’s got of Felix is the one of him coming out of that French bank with his mouth open. And in — what is it — three days, four? — your guy comes up with a family portrait of the whole fucking bunch. I can have these, can’t I?” McKay waved a hand at the photographs.

“You paid for them. They’re yours. There’s only one hitch.”

“What?”

“You’re going to turn them over to the CIA, right?”

“Right.”

“They’ll want to know where you got them.”

“I’ll give them your name.”

Grimes shook his head. “You’re going to have to give them my guy’s name.”

Again McKay stared at Grimes for several moments. “Then I’ll know it, won’t I?” he said softly.

“There’s no other way.”

“Why?”

“Because he — my guy — wants you to keep the CIA off his back.”

“Are they on it?”

“He didn’t say.”

“He doesn’t tell you much, does he?”

Grimes smiled. “He only tells me what he thinks I should know. Then if something happens — something nasty, say — I won’t know a whole hell of a lot about it. And neither will you. But you are going to have to know his name.”

“All right. What is it?”

“Chubb Dunjee.”

For a long moment the President said nothing. Then he said, “Well, shit. A Congressman.”

“One term.”

“Then what?”

“He was in the oil business.”

“After that.”

“After that he went with the UN.”

“Let’s skip a few years.”

Grimes smiled again. “You must be thinking of Mexico.”

“Mexico. The Mordida Man.”

Grimes kept smiling. “Newspaper stuff.”

“Yeah, I can see it now. ‘President Hires Mordida Man.’ Not too many votes in that.”

“He’s good.”

“He’d better be.”

“There’s only one other thing.”

“What?”

“He’s got this little problem with the IRS.”

“How little?”

“They’re talking about extradition.”

The President rose. “He hasn’t got any problem. Not if he helps get Bingo back.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

McKay shrugged. “I never heard of him.”