The Mordida Man

24

No one spoke as the plane taxied onto the runway. There was that familiar pause when the plane seems to gather its strength, as though preparing to lunge. Then the engines screamed, the plane began to move, and Timble’s face paled and stayed that way until the plane was up and level. Reese noted the blanching and filed the fact away in his mind. Maybe it would prove useful. But he wasn’t too hopeful. Reese decided that he had just about run out of hope.

He leaned forward in his chair toward Timble, his arms and big belly resting on his knees. When he spoke, his deep voice was a confidential rumble. “Let’s have it, sonny. The bottom line.”

“‘The bottom line,’” Timble said, as if repeating a scrap of half-forgotten poetry. “Do people still say that? They were saying that years ago when I first — well, went abroad. The... bottom... line. Well, Mr. Reese, the bottom line is simply this: I want to go home.”

“Home? Back to the States?”

“Yes.”

Reese shook his head. “It’s got to be complicated.”

“Yes, it is — and it becomes more so.”

“Leland’s mind,” Keeling said, “it doesn’t work like yours and mine, Alex.”

“I’d sort of like to hear how it does work.”

Timble smiled his happy-face smile, which he almost always did when given a chance to show off. “I think I shall start at the very beginning. Not too far back, of course. Only about six months ago when I awoke one morning and decided that I was, well, homesick.” He smiled again, shyly this time, as if admitting to some minor but forgivable vice. Thumbsucking, perhaps.

“Homesick,” Reese said.

“Yes.”

Reese nodded, trying hard to believe. “Okay.”

“Well, after deciding that there was really only one cure, I also decided that one simply couldn’t return empty-handed. I mean, who knows how long it would be before I again had the opportunity to develop a project that was — well, let’s say, beyond the pale. Do you follow me?”

Reese nodded again. “So far. You wanted to make one last big score, right?”

“Exactly. So I decided to become an honest broker. I decided to patch up relations between the U.S. and Libya.”

“You decided?” Reese said.

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Leland’s got just an awful lot of confidence,” Spiceman said, his face perfectly straight.

“It wasn’t really all that difficult. First of all, we made a discreet approach to the Libyans to see how much they would be willing to pay to repair their ruptured relations with Washington. Eventually we negotiated a most reasonable flat fee, one that included all expenses.”

“How much?” Reese asked, fascinated.

“Twenty million.”

“Dollars?”

“Dollars. That would, of course, include all” — Timble paused to smile — “bribes. Naturally, we told them that the bribes would be simply enormous. They accepted that as a matter of course, and we requested and received an initial payment of five million. Then we went to work.”

“Rumors,” Reese said.

“Yes, rumors and hints. A little cash here and there — not too much — helped things along, and before you could say Jack Robinson the window-shopping trip was on. For arranging that we asked for another five million, and things were going quite nicely until something happened out there in California, which I still can’t understand, and the trip was canceled.”

“That was about the time you were putting the grab on Felix in London,” Reese said.

“Do you think the two might be connected?” Timble said.

Reese shrugged. “Who knows? Tell me about Felix.”

“Yes, well, Felix was to be my ticket home, providing everything worked out according to plan, which it seldom does. But you allow for that. You prepare fall-back positions, contingency arrangements. There is no such thing as too much planning.”

“I’m a little slow,” Reese said. “You’ve got to sort of spell it out for me — I mean, how Felix was going to be your ticket home and all.”

“Public service,” Timble said. “Felix was a simply dreadful man. No conscience whatsoever. Bringing him to justice would be a tremendous public service, don’t you agree? And there would have to be some reciprocation. A quid pro quo — that sort of thing. The Israelis would’ve been most grateful. I’m sure that with their intercession I very quietly would have been granted a pardon, or perhaps even a light suspended sentence, which I was quite willing to settle for.”

“Felix for a pardon,” Reese said. “A trade-off.”

“You got it, pal,” Keeling said.

Reese nodded thoughtfully. “It might’ve worked. Maybe.”

“Except for the fact that poor Felix passed away on us,” Timble said. “We then had no recourse but to fall back on our contingency plan.”

“You sliced off his fingers.”

“Well, we did have to have some evidence that he was, in fact, in our possession. The forefingers served quite nicely. You know the rest, about our use of Dr. Mapangou to serve as our intermediary with the Israelis and the Libyans.”

“Yeah, I know about all that,” Reese said.

Timble smiled and wiggled in his chair. He seemed to be filled with an almost unbearable anticipation. “Don’t you think our operation was just a teeny bit sloppy?”

Reese stared at him. It took him only seconds to run the past week or so through his mind, and after he did he sighed, a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain him of all vitality. “A setup,” he said hoarsely. “From the first, it was a setup.”

“You see,” Timble said, leaning forward, anxious to explain, “when Felix died on us we had to create an unbearable scandal. I purposely stress the word unbearable. What better scandal, especially at this particular juncture and with this particular administration, than a high-ranking CIA official involved in bribery, perhaps treason, and murder—” Timble broke off, his face suddenly coated with alarm. “There was murder, wasn’t there?”

“He broke Mapangou’s neck,” Keeling said.

Timble relaxed and the alarm dropped away from his face to be replaced with a look of sadness, which stayed only for a second, the length of his mourning for the late Dr. Mapangou. Then the sadness went away and its place was taken by a look of curiosity which seemed to be directed toward what Reese would say next.

It was thirty seconds before Reese spoke. “You didn’t know it was going to be me.”

“We really didn’t care, but we are delighted that it is you. All we did was create simply irresistible opportunity. We worked on it — all of us — quite diligently.”

“So what do you do now — turn me over?”

“Certainly not. You take the money — all twenty million. Then you run. We then inform Washington. We offer our silence in exchange for immunity. Or even a light suspended sentence in my case. Otherwise we deliver the photographs—” Again he stopped. “There are photographs?”

“I got it all,” Spiceman said.

“Yes, well, otherwise we deliver to the media our photographs of a high-ranking CIA officer in the very act of murdering a foreign diplomat, along with the rest of our rather sordid evidence, and the administration suffers a crippling international and domestic blow. I don’t quite think they will choose to do so.”

For almost a full minute Alex Reese sat quite still, his belly and his elbows still resting on his knees, his eyes fixed on Timble’s face. It was a hard stare, seemingly endless, full of cold appraisal. Then it went away. The eyes either sparkled or twinkled. Reese sat up. A smile split his face. A harsh chuckle came out of his mouth. He slapped his hands on his knees, then he unbuckled his seat belt and rose. Spiceman was immediately up, the pistol aimed, two-handed, at Reese’s chest.

“You can put it away, Spiceman,” Reese said, still smiling. “You can put it away and break out the booze, because the kid here and I are fixing to cut a deal.” Reese leaned down until his face was no more than a few inches from Timble’s. “California, sonny. You don’t really know what happened in California, do you?”

Spiceman jammed the pistol into Reese’s side. “Sit down.”

“Wait,” Timble commanded. “What happened, Mr. Reese, in California?”

“Bingo McKay.”

“He was on the tour.”

“They sliced off his ear. The Libyans. They sliced it off and sent it to the White House because they think Langley snatched Felix. The Libyans have got Bingo, kid, and it’s all your fault. There ain’t gonna be any pardon. There ain’t even gonna be any light suspended sentence.”

The color drained from Timble’s face, and it became very still. There was no movement in it. None at all. Keeling watched it closely, curious about what the mind behind the face was doing. Nothing happened for nearly thirty seconds. Timble’s face remained perfectly still. Then the lips moved. “Give Mr. Reese a drink,” the lips said. After that the face resumed its remote stillness while Keeling, still fascinated, still watching closely, prepared three drinks and served them.

It was then that Timble smiled. His lips, pressed tightly together, curved up and his eyes narrowed and seemed to form two happy half circles. “Bingo McKay,” he said. “The Libyans have him, you say.”

“That’s right, kid,” Reese said with a savage grin. “The Libyans.”

“Well,” Timble said, “we’ll simply have to get him back, won’t we?”