The Mordida Man

30

In his third-floor room in the Hassler Hotel, Harold Hopkins answered his phone on the second ring with a hello.

“This is Dunjee. We’ve got a small problem.”

“A small one, you say? How small?”

“Almost tiny.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I think,” Dunjee said, “that the Arab’s going to try a cross.”

“Shame on him. What kind of cross?”

“I think he’s going to take his money and run.”

“What about all those lovely pictures? Of him and the German gent with all the blond hair.”

“I think he’s decided to bluff it out — if we send them to the Colonel, which he probably doesn’t think we will.”

“And he’s right, isn’t he?”

“There wouldn’t be much point.”

Hopkins was silent for a second or two. Finally he said, “That means no map.”

“No map,” Dunjee agreed. “Unless you’d like to make an extra — say — ten thousand?”

“Ten thousand. Dollars?”

“Dollars.”

“Something to do with the map, most likely.”

“Take it out of his hotel room.”

“For ten thousand?”

“Ten thousand.”

“No thanks,” Hopkins said.

“Look, Harold, it’s a quick in and out. Abedsaid’s not there. He’s negotiating with the Nigerian Ambassador. You’ve got at least an hour — maybe even an hour and a half. Five minutes’ work and you’re fifteen thousand richer.”

“Fifteen now, is it?”

“Fifteen.”

There was a long silence. At last Hopkins broke it. “Okay. What do I look for?”

Dunjee told him exactly what to look for, and Abedsaid’s room number in the Grand Hotel, and where to bring the map after he had stolen it. Hopkins wrote it all down on a sheet of Hassler stationery.

“I still don’t like it,” Hopkins said.

Dunjee sighed over the phone. “Fifteen, Harold.”

“Not much lolly, is it? — considering the risk and all.”

“Fifteen, Harold. Top price.”

“Well, I had to try, didn’t I?” Hopkins said and hung up.

He turned from the telephone, a smile on his face, and looked at the two persons seated in his room, the man in the chair, the woman on the edge of the bed.

“How was I?” Hopkins said.

“Utterly convincing,” Delft Csider said.

Paul Grimes nodded his head and his several chins. “Perfect.”

“Now it gets a bit tricky, I imagine,” Hopkins said.

Again Paul Grimes nodded. “A bit,” he said.

Hopkins got out of the cab in front of the Grand Hotel, overpaid the driver, looked around casually, and entered the lobby. He turned left toward the newsstand and purchased a day-old copy of the Times of London.

When he turned around, the plump woman in the green slacks and the orange sweater and the mouse-colored hair was just coming into the hotel. Hopkins turned toward the elevators and read the headlines as he crossed the lobby.

He came out of the elevator on the third floor and moved quickly down the corridor to room 318. The newspaper was now tucked under his left elbow. He reached into his right pants pocket, looked sharply left and right, took out a key, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.

The Libyan was standing in the center of the room. He was a tall man of about thirty with a prim, disapproving mouth and totally suspicious eyes. Hopkins wordlessly offered him the room key.

The Libyan took the key and in exchange handed over a thick ten-by-fourteen-inch manila envelope. Hopkins slipped it inside the Times, looked at his watch, then back at the Libyan.

“You speak English, mate?”

The Libyan shook his head no.

Hopkins pointed at his watch, then held up his right hand, all four fingers and the thumb widespread. The Libyan nodded. Hopkins looked around, found a chair, sat down, took out his cigarettes, and lit one. The Libyan moved to the dresser, folded his arms, and leaned against it.

After five silent minutes had passed, Hopkins ground out his cigarette, rose, and moved to the door. He turned and said, “Ciao,” to the Libyan. “Ciao,” said the Libyan as Hopkins opened the door and slipped out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind him.

Halfway down the corridor the mousey-haired woman in the green and orange outfit was slowly walking from door to door, a piece of paper in her hand, a frown on her face. She appeared to be looking for a room number. Hopkins put his right hand up to his face and started rubbing his eye. He averted his face slightly as he strode past the woman. She didn’t bother to look at him.

Outside the hotel Hopkins found a taxi and showed the driver the address that Dunjee had spelled out over the phone. The driver nodded. Hopkins got into the back seat butt first. He noticed that the mousey-haired woman was just coming out of the hotel.

The mousey-haired woman watched Hopkins’s taxi drive off. She turned and went back into the hotel. At one of the public telephones she made a call. It was answered on the second ring by a man’s voice.

“Yes.”

“He’s on his way,” the woman said. She spoke English with a slight Italian accent. “He was inside the room approximately five minutes and twenty-one seconds.”

“That’s long enough,” the man’s voice said.

“That’s what I thought,” the woman said and hung up.

It was Alex Reese who took the call from his mousey-haired CIA operative. But it was Jack Spiceman who was standing outside the villa’s garage door when Hopkins’s taxi pulled up.

Spiceman waited until Hopkins paid off the driver and got out of the taxi. Then he moved down the short drive. “You Hopkins?”

“I’m Hopkins. And who might you be?”

“Benedict,” Spiceman said.

“Where’s Dunjee?”

“Upstairs.” Spiceman took out the small black box, aimed it at the garage door, and pressed the button. The overhead door went up.

“Magic,” Hopkins said.

“Magic,” Spiceman agreed.

Hopkins went first up the narrow wooden servants’ stairs. When they ended, Spiceman moved around in front of Hopkins and led him down the hall and into the sunny corner room. Once inside, Hopkins looked slowly around. Leland Timble, seated, was wearing his silly happy-face smile again. Both Alex Reese and Franklin Keeling were standing. Dunjee sat in the chrome and leather chair, one hand still pressed against his stomach.

Hopkins’s eyes settled on Dunjee. “Took in some partners, did we?”

Dunjee nodded. “A few. Did you get it?”

“I got it.”

“Any trouble?”

Hopkins shook his head. “It went a treat.”

“Give it to him,” Dunjee said, nodding at Alex Reese. “The guy with no hair.”

“He must mean you, mate,” Hopkins said as he took the envelope from its newspaper wrapping and handed it to Reese.

It was a large map that Reese unfolded on a glass-topped table near the window. The map was almost five or six feet square and printed on extremely heavy paper. Timble was up now, the sheet of paper which designated the site of the farmhouse in his right hand. “It’s an island,” he said in a surprised tone as he stared at the map.

Reese nodded. “Comino.”

“I never heard of it.”

“It’s the smallest Maltese island,” Reese said, studying the map. “About a mile square. As I remember, the population at last count was nineteen. Maybe twenty.”

“And our piece fits right in here — see the farmhouse,” Timble said. Jack Spiceman and Franklin Keeling moved over to look. While the four men gathered around the map, Hopkins turned toward Dunjee.

“You know what?”

“What?” Dunjee said.

“We went right by it, we did, on the way over. Drove halfway around it, in fact.”

“The Colosseum?”

“The Colosseum. Would’ve been a shame to come all the way and not see it. Looked a bit smallish, I thought, and kind of falling down, but it was a sight.”

At the table, Timble said, “Would you get that ruler over there, please, Franklin?”

“Sure,” Franklin Keeling said. He wiped one large hand across his mouth and moved across the room. He picked up a draftsman’s ruler from a table and started back. When he reached the point just behind Harold Hopkins he paused.

“I’d’ve liked to’ve gone inside, you know,” Hopkins was telling Dunjee. “I’d’ve liked to’ve seen where the lions ate the Christians. I used to read about that in school, I did. Seems a pity not to—”

He never finished his sentence. Keeling took the pistol out of his coat pocket in one smooth motion and placed its muzzle just behind Hopkins’s left ear. It was a small pistol, an Italian-made automatic that used .22 longs. An assassin’s pistol. Keeling pulled the trigger twice.

Hopkins stopped talking in mid-sentence. It may have been surprise that spread over his face. Or pain. It was difficult to tell. He managed to squeeze his eyes shut before he fell, slipping down sideways, a little bent at the waist, his arms limp and useless at his sides. He sprawled on the marble floor then, face down, two small reddish-black holes just below and behind his left ear. His right leg moved, kicked slightly, and after that he was still.

Dunjee was up quickly and then down on his knees beside Hopkins. Dunjee’s right hand moved out, as if to touch Hopkins, possibly comfort him, but it hesitated, and hung there as if Dunjee was trying to decide how best to comfort the dead.

He denied it at first — to himself anyway. He denied the inescapable fact that Hopkins was dead. The evidence was plain, but Dunjee denied that, too, until the anger came. It was a hot anger, white hot almost, and directed not against Hopkins’s killers, but against Hopkins himself. It’s all your fault, you poor sod, Dunjee thought, unconsciously using an English expression to describe the dead Englishman. You should’ve stayed in London with your whore. You should’ve stuck to bits and pieces that fell off lorries. You shouldn’t have been so greedy.

The anger didn’t last long, because it quickly turned into rage instead — a rather fine, cold rage that made Dunjee’s face go stiff until he remembered to smile. What he produced was a small set smile whose seemingly ineradicable permanence made it quite terrible.

With the awful smile still there, Dunjee turned to look up at Leland Timble. “That wasn’t—” He broke off because he had wanted to say that wasn’t right. But he knew they wouldn’t understand that. So he said, “That wasn’t — necessary.”

Timble’s expression was solemn. For some reason his eyes looked wise. “But it was necessary, Mr. Dunjee. For two reasons.”

“I’m listening,” Dunjee said pleasantly, wondering when his lips would start to ache.

“First, after your colleague completed his task, he became redundant, totally redundant. And secondly, we very much needed to get your full attention.”

Dunjee looked down at the dead Harold Hopkins. Then he rose, his eyes fastened on Timble, his lips still smiling their terrible smile.

“My attention,” he said.

Timble nodded. “Yes. Your attention. Your full attention.”

Dunjee nodded back. “You’ve got it, laddy,” he said. “All of it.”