The Mordida Man

20

Later that same day, the day that Chubb Dunjee flew into Rome, the Director of Central Intelligence slowly dealt the Polaroid photographs onto his desk one by one, face up, much in the way that a prescient blackjack dealer will deal out the cards in a hand that he knows is going bust.

Once again Alex Reese forgot and tried to hitch one of the bolted-down chairs closer to the desk so he could study the photographs that Thane Coombs had now dealt out in a neat row. When the chair refused to budge, Reese murmured, “Shit,” rose, and leaned down over the desk to give the photographs a careful inspection. Coombs could smell the bourbon on Reese’s breath.

Coombs leaned back in his chair as far away as possible from Reese’s breath and said, “He wanted to know, in essence, how one man without resources or training could do in a few days what we have been unable to do in — what is it now — five years?”

“You mean these?” Reese said, nodding his big bald head at the photographs.

“Yes. Those.”

“The Kraut,” Reese said, flicking the picture of the nude Diringshoffen with the nail of his middle finger. “He ain’t too well hung, is he?”

“The President was amazed, and a little alarmed, that one man, working alone, could—”

Reese interrupted. “Dunjee got lucky. That’s all.”

“Lucky,” Coombs said, as though it were a foreign word whose pronunciation was in some doubt.

“What else would you call it?”

“Intelligence,” Coombs suggested. “Resourcefulness. Imagination. All combined with a certain element of ruthlessness perhaps? That’s what I might call it.”

“We had a couple of guys on him in London yesterday,” Reese said. “He made them pretty quick.”

“The President wants them called off.”

“That’s what Dunjee told them. He said unless we pull them off, he pulls out. They stuck with him anyhow — until I got word back to them to leave him alone. He flew out of Heathrow this morning to Rome. With him was that what’s-her-name — Csider, that blonde who works for Paul Grimes — and another guy called Harold Hopkins. British.”

“Hopkins?”

“Yeah. Hopkins.”

“And what does he do?”

“Well, he did fifteen months not too long back. He’s a thief.”

“I see. A thief. That might explain these.” Coombs indicated the photographs.

“Maybe.”

“And this Hopkins is now in Dunjee’s employ?”

“It looks that way.”

“Where did Dunjee find him?”

“How the fuck should I know? In a bar maybe, or a pool hall, or maybe down at the labor exchange. He needed some pickup help and he went out and found him. Who cares where?”

“It might be useful.”

“Then again it might not, and we could’ve had our guys running all over London trying to get a line on Dunjee’s thief instead of doing what they were supposed to do, which, for once, they actually did.”

“And that is?”

“Check the passenger roster on Dunjee’s flight. The Csider woman made the reservations. She insisted on three particular seats. All first class. She went all the way up to Alitalia’s PR office to get them. That’s why they remembered it so well.”

“Three seats?”

“Three.”

“Which means that Dunjee wanted one particular seat, doesn’t it? Two on one side of the aisle and one on the other. Who was in the other seat?”

“A Libyan.”

“From their London Embassy?”

“Their Cultural Attaché, Faraj Abedsaid. Oklahoma University. PE degree. About thirty-eight or — nine. Single. He runs what passes for their intelligence operation in London. He’s also PLO-trained. I’d guess he was the contact.”

“Felix’s?”

“Right.”

“And Dunjee sat next to him for two hours on the plane.”

“Two hours and fifteen minutes.”

Coombs opened his bottom drawer, took out the pint of California brandy, and pushed it across the desk toward Reese. It was the first time he had ever offered the other man a drink.

By way of thanks, Reese said, “Ashtray,” and poured brandy into a water glass. Coombs produced the small ceramic ashtray. Reese lit a cigarette. He then took a large swallow of the brandy. After that he said, “All right. Let’s have it.”

“I want to do something that we have just been instructed not to do,” Coombs said.

“With Dunjee in Rome, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“But nobody can know about it.”

“No.”

“Which means I’ll have to go. To Rome.”

“Yes. It would seem so.”

They stared at each other. It was a stare full of acknowledged complicity. Finally Reese said, “But I get London.”

“Yes. You get London.”

“I’ll fly out of New York tomorrow.”

“Why New York?”

“Here,” Reese said and took two sheets of folded paper from his breast pocket. “More midnight musings — all about old Doc Mapangou. He’s on the pad. Leland Timble’s pad. You remember Leland.”

“The computer genius and bank robber. He’s keeping well, I trust, on his island paradise.”

“He got Dr. Mapangou to plant the rumor.”

“About the Libyan shopping expedition?”

“Right. I think Timble got to the Libyans somehow and convinced them that for a price he could set the whole deal up.”

“Is that what Dr. Mapangou says?”

“No. He just admits starting the rumor.”

“Then he brought it off, didn’t he? Timble, I mean.”

“But Felix getting snatched soured it.”

Coombs leaned back in his chair and tapped his teeth with the folded sheets of paper that Reese had given him. “I wonder what was in it for Timble?”

“Money.”

“He has enough. More than enough.”

“What’s enough?”

Coombs shrugged and said, “Our two apostates are still with Timble, I take it?”

“You mean that fucking Keeling and that fucking Spiceman?”

“Yes. You know, I never believed that about Keeling. That he stole all that gold in Angola.”

“He stole it,” Reese said. “He stole it and spent it.”

“I never believed it. I’m still not sure that I do. He was one of the best—”

Again Reese interrupted. “I sent two of our people out of Miami yesterday to see what they could find out about Timble and his setup. They got the shit beat out of them.”

“Whom did you send?”

“Harry Milker and Presse Poole. They broke Harry’s arm, and Poole’s maybe got a concussion.”

“Pity. Who did it to them?”

“The Prime Minister’s goons. They staged it pretty good though — made it look like a waterfront brawl. They even set Harry’s arm.”

“Did they find out anything useful?”

“Nothing — except they made contact with a guy called Cornelius. Peter Cornelius. He’s sort of the local Solzhenitsyn. Probably the resident crybaby. But the Prime Minister’s bunch tolerates him because he puts out a pretty nifty little tabloid — all tits and ass — and who the fuck reads the editorials? Besides, when the Prime Minister wants to brag about freedom of the press, he can always point to Cornelius. Well, anyway, Cornelius is willing to do a little work for us.”

“How will he get it out?”

Reese shook his head. “That’s the problem. We’ll have to send somebody in.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Coombs said and made a note. “Now, about Mapangou?”

“I want to go up to New York and milk him again before I go to Rome. I want to—” He stopped when a middle-aged woman came into the office and silently laid a half sheet of paper on Coombs’s desk. The woman waited while Coombs read and then reread the four typed lines. Coombs thought a moment, then looked up at the woman, and said, “Tell them yes.”

The woman nodded and left.

Coombs again reread the four typed lines on the half sheet of paper. He looked up at Reese. “The Israelis,” he said. “They’ve been offered Felix for ten million dollars. Dr. Mapangou is to be the go-between. The Israelis want to know if we’d like to go half. I said yes.”

“Yeah, I heard you,” Alex Reese said, realizing for the first time that he was perhaps destined to become extremely rich after all.