Surveying the rows of used cars, the Fat Man, Georges, drew a deep draught on his cigarette and sighed a cloud of smoke stoically: he had the toothache. After fourteen years of neglect he knew he had to see a dentist. The dying molar twinged deep in the root and drove sharp pain through his right eye. Each time it made him hunch his shoulders. Today, he said to the pain, he would go to the dentist. Today.
He watched his men furtively working—as usual. It was just past dawn, and a November sun pushed weak light into the Montmartre district of Paris and through the clouded windows of the old factory building.
The American was supervising the opening of the cartons. Inside each were many small packets wrapped in pink plastic sheeting and bound with plastic tape. His men were fitting them into the huge pans that were to be welded to the bottom of the cars. Twenty pans in rows waiting to be filled.
Aimable: that was the word for the American. Patient. He explained without irritability, answering the same questions over and over. He could make a joke. The men smiled. Still in all, Georges looked at the set of the man’s head on the shoulders, the slope of the arms and the way the man moved: No, he would not like to have to explain to that American why the plan failed. He would not like to see that man angry.
Georges got up and walked over to Brewer. “Why do you have to stop the cars at night?” he asked. “I can put two drivers in each car and they can drive day and night straight through.”
Brewer stood up. “I want a roll call each night. If any cars break down we can double back to find them before we’ve left them too far behind.”
Georges nodded. “Eh, bien. The caravan will leave tomorrow morning first thing.” Georges walked back to his desk. Twenty cars; twenty drivers.
Arranged in rows behind him inside the old factory, twenty cars waited in the faint light of predawn. They seemed innocuous enough: There were old Volkswagens and Renaults and Peugeots and Fiats and Saabs and Volvos and English Fords, all worn beyond their prime, all put into satisfactory running condition for the long trip, all destined to finish their days in the harsh, baking climate of Syria.
With one eye squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, Georges studied his maps. From Paris to ’Stamboul and from ’Stamboul to Damascus, the auto traffic would be at its peak: Long lines of overland buses would be carrying their hordes of travelers and pilgrims; endless caravans of truck traffic would be hauling oil pipe and cement and machine tools and air-conditioning equipment and tons of other items into the Arab world, all at the beck and call of money from those bottomless oil wells.
With such traffic, border checks should be nominal, especially for used cars with temporary transit papers, consigned to a car dealer in Damascus.
McCall found Borden and Dice back at the hotel in Paris, still flogging their way through lists of cab drivers and truckers who might have seen the unloading of Poke’s old Connie. No luck. And now Dice was on the telephone, wearily calling more trucking companies.
McCall held out the bar napkin from the Brussels Airport. “Okay,” he said to them, “we’ve got it.”
Borden took the napkin. “What is it?”
“It’s the license number of the truck that offloaded Brewer’s goodies.”
Dice settled down in a chair, staring at the napkin and chuckling. “Christ, am I glad to see you,” he said to the napkin. “No more fractured French conversations with truck drivers.”
“Let me call that in,” Borden said. He dialed the phone and read the number off. Then he hung up. “It could take a few hours, Bobby, to get the name and address of the truck owner.”
“We also need more men,” McCall replied. “At least four, I’d say.”
Borden made another phone call. Then another. He talked for nearly fifteen minutes. When he hung up he said, “People aren’t as friendly as they used to be. You know that? Disgraceful. You’d think we worked for the competition.”
“So?” McCall demanded.
“Four grunts coming from Brussels,” Borden said.
“That’s the best they can do? They might not get here until tomorrow.”
“They said they’re rounding them up now,” Borden answered. “They should have them on the way in a couple of hours.”
Georges’s mechanics had labored all through the day and into the evening, packing the bundles in the pans. Twenty pans, each filled with pink-wrapped little packages. Brewer had fussed at them all the day, shifting parts from one pan to another like a crapshooter trying to cover all his bets, improve his odds. He was asking himself one question over and over: What if any of these pans failed to get through—what would that mean to the total parts list? He tried to make the loss of any one do minimal damage.
It upset Georges. Brewer was playing dice against the Fates, trying to thwart their will. He was defying God. Only fools and madmen did that. All was written.
Throughout the evening, the little stars of the welding torches created cascades of sparks in the semidarkness of the garage as silhouettes moved in and out of the light. Smoke drifted in the air. Perhaps it was his ailing tooth, but to Georges the garage in the darkness gave an impression of Purgatory.
Nine P.M. had just passed when the last pan was welded to the underbody of the last used car. The caravan was ready—twenty cars, four files, five ranks, sitting there like lumps in the dark garage. The air was heavy with the odor of welding torches and gasoline.
Now, with the smuggling work finished, it was time to examine the drivers. Under the small light of a green lampshade, the Fat Man waited for them. He was seated behind a large tin box that rested on an old kitchen table, and he waited with his habitual cigarette hanging from his mouth, one eye squinting against the rising smoke.
He glanced at the twenty shadowy hulks behind him. Normally, if more than ten of the twenty got through, Georges’s reputation would be well served. But if half of these cars failed to get through the border checks, Monsieur Brewer would be disappointed. Georges preferred to deal with Arabs who could take disappointment philosophically. How would this man react? Badly. A growing premonition of failure possessed Georges’s thoughts.
He drew a deep draught on his cigarette and sighed a cloud of smoke against the sharp pain. In the morning, after the cars had left, he would go to the dentist.
In a few minutes the first driver arrived. He approached the table, a young dark-skinned man, sniffing at the very strong odor of gasoline and frowning at the cigarette.
“Driver’s license and passport,” said Georges. He spoke French with a heavy Syrian accent. The driver handed him the documents and Georges checked the name against his list, then studied the passport. He now spoke exclusively in Syrian Arabic. From the open square tin box he searched through the twenty paper pouches and lifted one out. He opened the pouch and spread the documents on the newspaper.
“These are all the papers you need. These are the transit visas. This is the insurance certificate. It’s the one paper they check at every border. If you lose it they get very difficult. This is the temporary registration of the vehicle’s ownership. It is consigned to this automobile dealer in Damascus. These are your strip maps. They show the route you must take. You will go by way of A-six, Autoroute du Soleil, straight down the Rhone Valley, across the Riviera and the Italian Riviera, around Genoa, across Italy into Yugoslavia, and so forth. Here the way is marked—you see? All through Turkey and into Syria.”
The driver pointed at a road on the map. “Why did you pick that route?”
“Because that is where our way stations are set up. Here are your gasoline vouchers. On these maps the gasoline stations are marked with blue crosses. And here is where you will sleep, and here, and here—where the red circles are. The addresses of the approved houses are on this sheet of paper. At each one, you will be given dinner when you arrive, breakfast in the morning, and a box lunch to eat on the road. If you have any trouble, any trouble at all, you will call this number, or this, or this—depending on where you are. If you fall behind schedule for any rea
son, call. If you lose any of these papers, the authorities may impound the vehicle. If they want to get nasty they may impound you. This envelope contains money for your tolls in the right national currencies. Do you have any questions? No?”
The driver shook his head.
“Good,” said Georges. “Let me see your bag.”
The driver put it on the table. It was an old suitcase, the leather so dried out it was cracked and flaking at the creases and edges and would tear easily. It was closed by two new leather straps.
The Fat Man lit a new cigarette with the end of the old one and hung it from his lips and resumed his pained, one-eyed squint. His hand groped through the contents of the suitcase, the striped shirts, the still-damp cloth bag containing toilet articles, the towels and a second suit, carpet slippers, and a photograph in a glass frame of a seated woman with a child in her lap.
“You have any drugs? Guns? Property without papers?” He watched the man shake his head with each question. “Plants? Seeds? Cameras? Radios? Money? Currency of any kind? French francs? How much? Show me. That’s all? Any diamonds or jewelry? You will be questioned at the borders and you can be searched, so you must be absolutely clean. No free-lance smuggling? No? If you do, you will receive a visit from us in Syria at your home. Your whole family is accountable for you. You understand?”
The driver nodded. The strip map directed him to the Porte de Clichy and from there to the Boulevard Périphérique to A6—Autoroute du Soleil—which runs south to the Riviera.
“Departure time is six A.M.,” Georges said. “I will wake you.” The driver was assigned to one of the twenty-odd cots behind the parked cars.
The next driver sat down and Georges looked briefly at him, unable to shake the premonition that hounded his thoughts. Eh, bien. By morning he would be rid of the cars, the monsieur with the strange eyes, and the toothache. God is good.
Borden sat in the hotel with McCall and Dice. His elbow rested on the table by the telephone. Next to it was the bar napkin with the truck license-plate number McCall had gotten from Poke.
They all waited for the phone to ring.
Borden looked at Dice, who drummed fingertips on a chair arm. “If this number pays out, Dice,” Borden said, “I’ll let you sleep with my mother. Free.”
Dice didn’t laugh.
The phone rang. Borden picked it up. “Yes.” He nodded and wrote on a small white pad a little parade of black numbers and letters. He smiled at McCall.
“The Fat Man,” he said.
“Georges?” McCall asked. “Back from Syria?”
“And back in business. Up in Montmartre.” Borden got out a street map of Paris and the three of them studied it.
“Here,” McCall said. He pointed to a street behind the Sacré Coeur. “Let’s hit it right now.”
Borden looked at his watch. “We’re short-handed, Bobby. We don’t know what we’re going to run into. If we make a hash of this, it’s going to cause a real fracas between Washington and Paris.”
“We can’t wait much longer,” McCall said.
“Give it another hour or so, Bobby,” Borden said. “Those four grunts should be here any minute.”
“They should have been here hours ago,” McCall replied. “Minutes count.”
“They’ll be here,” Borden said. “It’s a long ride from Brussels.”
At 5:00 A.M. there was a light tapping on the hotel door. McCall and Borden had fallen asleep fully dressed on the two double beds. Dice slept fitfully in a small chair.
Dice answered the door. “Who’s there?”
“Brussels.”
Dice admitted four men.
McCall splashed cold water on his face and put on his shoes. Then, without a word, he led them across the city in two cars to Montmartre. By 5:40 they had located the building. There, in the street like a paid informer pointing the way, was the truck itself.
“Seven come eleven,” McCall said. “Get someone to check the back.”
Borden took one of the agents with him and slipped down a dark alley. They returned in a few minutes.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in there,” Borden said.
“That’s not Brewer’s style,” McCall said. “What’s back there?”
“An old wooden door. No braces, no bars. One kick should do it.”
“Kick,” McCall said. He looked at his watch by the pale streetlight. “In five minutes. And we’ll go through this side door. Looks like it leads into an office of some sort.”
“You want to wait for daylight?” Borden asked.
“No.” McCall said. “We’ll draw a crowd. Five minutes.”
Borden was gone with three agents. McCall and Dice and the fourth agent waited at the front. At exactly 5:45, McCall drew back his foot and kicked. The old latch hardly made a sound. It just swung open.
They scrambled into a small office. By flashlight, McCall found an open doorway that led into the main garage. From the back he saw flashlights coming at him: Borden and his men. The garage was completely empty.
Everyone stood looking at Dice as though he knew where Brewer had gone.
“Well,” one of the agents said. “It’s a long way to Brussels.” He walked toward the front door.
McCall watched him. Was it long a way to Iran?
Georges found out about the raid later in the day when he returned and found his doors broken. His premonition had been right.
So had Brewer’s. Brewer had awakened at 4:30 and roused everyone. “Six o’clock is dangerous,” was all he said. The last car left at 5:31, less than ten minutes before McCall arrived.
Immediately after the last car had driven out of the garage and down the hill, the Fat Man himself left the building, intent on the tooth pain that was forcing him now to shut his right eye. The whole side of his face throbbed.
He struggled into his own car and drove, with his right hand gently against his jaw, in quest of a dentist with merciful woman’s hands. He decided to go to a hospital for a painkiller until the dentists of Paris should open their offices. He even forgot to smoke.
Georges was less than four blocks away when the raid on his garage occurred. He later said the toothache was a gift of God.
In three days the seminar would commence, and Peno Rus felt as though he were making his debut at Convent Garden. British executives, born and bred to Western business techniques, might take such things in stride; Major Mudd, in fact, regarded the preparations as beneath him, something for clerks to handle.
But for Peno Rus, even with his recent years of arms dealing, a seminar was a vast unknown continent fraught with mysteries and traps. Each day he discovered new uses and new implications in this seminar. Should the slide presentation on Small Arms Management and Control precede or follow Comparative Firepower and Uniform Calibers? What was the idea he wanted to get over in the symposium titled Third World Armaments: Where to Get Military Financing?
Most important, was the seminar doing its main job of making everyone forget that African famine? He was still astonished at the number of hard-bitten men in the trade who continued to criticize him for it. Really, what difference did it make? Just a bunch of mindless gooks and their brats. Rus still considered it one of his masterstrokes. He just didn’t like being called a monster for it.
But, by trying to erase the memory of the famine with his little dog-and-pony show, he feared making a fool of himself. He was greedy for praise and success. In the end he’d hired a London agency specializing in business meetings and trade shows. And now he fussed and fumed at every detail—agenda books, sharpened pencils, arms catalogues, cut flowers in each room, all persistent worries. The London agency was earning every penny of its fee.
Three days to go.
Rus stood in the marble lobby of his penthouse, ready for his daily cup of wormwood: the ride in the elevator. In his hand he held a list of things to do for his seminar—the product of a sleepless night. The elevator arrived with the ding of the bell chime. The door slid open an
d the car waited for him. Silent and menacing. An empty, upright, upholstered coffin. Peno Rus adjusted his tie, cleared his throat, stepped resolutely into the car, and pushed the ground-floor button. He fought back his never-gone terror as the doors shut.
Slane was pleased. His hundred meres had shaped up very quickly. Taking over the island was going to be a piece of cake even if there was organized resistance—which was extremely unlikely.
He smiled at the endless discussions and disputes that engrossed the movie makers. In three days he would come wading ashore into the lens of the camera, the most unlikely stand-in for the Benevolent Presidente that ever was. Three days and his fortune was made.
Rock called Rumbh in Paris.
“I can handle your deal,” he said.
“Good. I was sure you would,” Rumbh said. “What kind of protection do you need?”
“Not much. Just keep the girl’s family out of the way for a couple of days.”
“Done. No problem at all.”
“Okay. I’ll be in Cairo on the twenty-sixth with all the equipment.”
Jamil loved the Leeward Island Free State. The trade winds flowed constantly over the land, cooling it and creating a constant springtime. The country was dirt-poor; the economy was badly handled and struggling. But the people were warm and the terrain was beautiful. Jamil, with his soul still damp from the autumn rains of Paris, reveled in the sunshine on his back.
The beach where Slane would come ashore was easy to find. The Benevolent Presidente had marked it with a huge monument that bore a statue of himself at the top. Jamil strolled along the beach watching the rolling surf languidly heave up, curl, and spill its water in a booming white spume. All the Europeans in their gray, wet, cold, drafty cities—and here, this magnificent beach and surf. The Benevolent Presidente had to be the world’s worst salesman if he couldn’t fill those beaches.
Jamil turned away from the beach and walked up into a line of palm trees. He would need an elevated platform of some sort from which he could get Slane in his sights. He needed to be able to get rid of the weapon. He needed a getaway vehicle and then an immediate flight from the airport to, probably, Miami.
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