“Well you want him back before Inauguration Day, for openers.”
“Yes, but you knew that. It gives you a little over six days.”
“It’s not likely.”
“Make it likely.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I know. All right. Suppose I tell you I’ve brought an A-team from Langley with me.”
“Then I’d say you’re a damn fool. I suppose you’ve got them running around loose in the Spanish countryside sighting in their scopes on sheep and peasants.”
“Hardly. They’re aboard the Essex. When you need them you ask Sixth Fleet for the Early Birds and they’ll be at your disposal by helicopter.”
Too little sleep, too many cigarettes; he had a headache, his mouth tasted brassy. It was absurd to think about it. Langley was CIA’s sprawling Virginia headquarters, a place which was top secret—Time said so. “An A-team from Langley” was a euphemism for a killer squad.
“These are the best professionals in the Agency. Twenty-eight men. Three helicopters.”
“And carrying as many guns as a heavy cruiser I’m sure.”
“It’s a direct Presidential order, David.”
“Face up on the table, will you? It was your crackbrained notion, you took it to Brewster and he okayed it.”
“Not really. I only provided the methodology.”
“It guarantees you won’t get Fairlie back alive.”
“On the contrary. You don’t use them until you’ve got Fairlie out. Fairlie and the kidnappers. Then you use them.”
Lime understood it up to a point; it was all based on a flimsy assumption regarding the kidnappers’ whereabouts. The premise behind Satterthwaite’s idea was that the kidnappers were holed up on territory belonging to a regime that wouldn’t assist in capturing them and wouldn’t agree to extraditing them to the United States even if it did capture them. So you had to go in, get them, take them out, and leave no clues behind to indicate you had ever been there. It was very Wild Bill Donovan in concept and Lime found it tiresome.
“David, if we put them on trial we have to admit how and where we took them. It could be embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing. For Christ’s sake.” Lime shook his head. “At any rate you’re still jumping to that conclusion.”
“And you’re wasting time in Spain when you should be down there.”
“Not yet. I still want a fact. Suppose they’re halfway to Albania?”
“You’re dragging your heels. Everything points to it—you know that.”
“You’ve already got plenty of gumshoes prowling around down there, I’m sure.”
“Damn few of them with your knowledge of the territory. And none of them with your knowledge of Sturka.”
“That’s two assumptions—the place and the identity—and I’m not buying either one of them yet.”
“Why?”
“Because of the Arab robes.”
“So it’s a bluff,” Satterthwaite said. “You’ve seen bluffs before.”
“The boat headed north. Is that the same kind of bluff?”
“Obviously a different kind of bluff.”
Filled with simmering anger Lime said, “You’ve got to understand this. I can’t do it by myself. I’ve got to have a fact, and then I can start taking advantage of their mistakes. I need their help.”
“Fat chance of getting it.”
“I don’t know. I only need to help plan their mistakes.”
Satterthwaite was silent for a bit; finally he said, “I’m going to let you alone from here on. But I want it clear that you’re under orders to use the A-team if and when you’ve extracted the kidnappers.”
“It’s so fucking cheap.”
“It’s politics. You don’t ask favors when you don’t have to—it only leaves you owing somebody a favor. With that crowd we can’t afford to be obliged to them for anything at all.”
“Then use an intermediary. The Russians?”
“It would have to be the Chinese and we don’t want to be owing them any favors either.” Satterthwaite sat back, reached for the door handle but didn’t open it. “Oh. You asked for Fairlie’s blood type—a wise question. Unfortunately it’s AB negative. I’ve left instructions to have a case on the ready helicopter aboard Essex. Good enough?”
“For the moment.”
An hour later Satterthwaite was on his way back to Washington and Lime was running a battery shaver over his chin in the rancid loo of the annex building. He wanted a shower and a good meal and twelve hours’ sleep; he settled for a quick wash and a desk-corner lunch of bread and cheese and jug sangría from a nearby café.
He locked himself in the tiny office cubicle and stretched out on the floor with his hands interlaced under the back of his head; stared at the ceiling and tried to fit things together in his mind. The way to do this was to let the mind go. His upper thoughts immediately swayed toward Bev Reuland but he made no effort to correct the drift.
Two days ago on his way to Andrews AFB he had made time to see her: called Speaker Luke’s office and arranged to meet her in the Rayburn cafeteria. He had stopped at a claustrophobically narrow shop to get a dozen pink roses and had arrived in the cafeteria carrying them. Bev, in a harlequin skiing jacket of some green-and-white synthetic fiber that glistened like plastic, her hair tied in a horsetail with a small ribbon, had watched his approach with suspicion, a shadow crossing her eyes.
“What’s this for?”
“A little grace if you please.”
“Those are break-it-to-her-gently roses.” She unwrapped enough of the green-wrapped package to see the buds. “They are lovely,” she conceded.
It was the middle of the afternoon and the place was nearly empty; conversations were faint distant mutters across the room. He said, “It’s nothing much. I’ll be gone a little while.”
No reply. She got up and went to the counter and he watched her go through the railed route to the coffee urn, a stop at the cashier, her high-hipped stride as she returned bearing two cups of coffee. She sat down on the edge of her chair as if she expected at any moment it would explode beneath her. “How long?”
“Open-ended.”
“They’ve sent you after Fairlie.” A flat statement, but she was very tense with eyes hungry for information.
“I remember Bev Reuland. The girl who only goes with people if they’re fun.”
“Oh shut up David, you’re not funny.”
Things had changed far more than he had wanted. It had always been no-questions-asked between them. She was a girl with a slow carnal smile and a healthy set of appetites and they liked each other. Now she was a different girl because if something happened to Lime a little piece of Bev would go with him. The cup and saucer rattled in her hand; she put them down. “Well. What are we supposed to say to each other?”
“Nothing. I’ll be back—you can think about what you want to say, and tell me then.”
“You weren’t going out in the field anymore.”
“I know.”
“I suppose they turned your head. It must be very flattering to be told you’re the best they’ve got—the only one who can do the job.” Her lips quivered before she drew them in between her teeth.
“I’m not dead yet,” he said very gently. The roses lay across the table between them; he pushed the roses away and covered her hand with his palm but she drew it away in pique and Lime laughed at her.
“It’s not funny.”
“You said that before.”
“Now I’m sure you’re listening,” she said. “God damn it they’ve got millions of people. It doesn’t have to be you. If you don’t find the kidnappers you’ll be blamed for it for the rest of your life—and if you do find them they’ll probably kill you.”
“I like your overwhelming confidence in me.”
“Oh I know, you’re the master spy, you’re the best in the world—I’ve heard all that drivel from your fawning admirers. I’m not impressed. Shit, David, they’re setti
ng you up for a fall guy.”
“I know they are.”
“Then why in the hell did you agree to it?” She sat snapping her thumbnail against her front teeth. “When you were making up your mind,” she said, “you didn’t think of me at all.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s pretty shitty.”
“I know.”
“I’m beginning to wish you loved me a little.”
“I do.”
Now she smiled but it was crooked. “Well I suppose loving is more important than being loved. But really I don’t like this—we’re starting to sound like two characters in an Ingrid Bergman movie. You’re even beginning to look a little like Paul Henreid.”
She was trying to play at his own game and it pleased him, ludicrously; he pushed his chair back and stood. She opened her handbag, fished for a lipstick, spread it on her mouth and squeezed her lips together to distribute it and inspected the result in her compact mirror. She was the closest to an unselfish human being he had ever known; he waited, keeping the jet waiting at Andrews, and heard the small crisp snap of her handbag and watched her get up and come around the table. She coiled her fingers around his arm. “All right. I’ll wait dutifully. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes.”
“One of these days you may learn to express your feelings. At least I’ve got you admitting you have feelings.”
That was true, and it was why he loved her.
Now his hands remembered the feel of her hard tight little ass and he opened his eyes to look at the ceiling and wondered how long he had dozed. The noise that had awakened him was repeated: urgent loud knuckles against the door. He climbed to his feet and unlocked it to Chad Hill.
“We’ve got a make.” Hill had a teleprinter decode in his hand. Lime took it.
FROM: SHANKLAND
TO: LIME
REF: LATENT FINGERPRINT PALAMOS
SUBJECT IDENTIFIED AS MARIO P. MEZETTI X WHITE
MALE AMERICAN X AGE 24 X HT 5–10 X WT 170 X
HR BLK X EYS BRN X NO IMS X WIREPHOTOS ENROUTE
X TRACER IN PROGRESS X SHANKLAND
Lime read it twice. “Never heard of him.”
“Not one of the people you identified with Sturka last week?”
“No.” Lime’s eyes whipped up from the decode to Hill. “Corby. Renaldo. Peggy Astin. One John Doe.”
“Mezetti could be the John Doe.”
“So could the man in the moon.”
“Alvin Corby’s black. Haven’t you had him in mind for the chopper pilot from the beginning?”
“Offhand how many black revolutionaries would fit the description? The helicopter pilot was twenty pounds heavier than Corby. McNeely’s seen the mug shots of Corby and said it wasn’t the same man.”
He walked out into the bullpen and turned toward the UHF table where technicians were feeding incoming signals into the tape printers. There ought to be more coming in now; with a positive make at last there would be data from all over.
It came in bits and pieces during the next half hour. Mezetti was the son of an important industrialist. Five years ago he had been associated with one of the SDS wings and had been arrested, fingerprinted, questioned and released. No other criminal record. No FBI file; Mezetti was on the list of people not on the list.
Two CIA items: Mezetti had turned up in Singapore two and a half months ago ostensibly as a tourist, had been frisked by Singapore Customs because he looked freaky but had not been found to be carrying drugs of any kind; routine CIA coverage with cross-references to Passport Bureau records showed Mezetti had made fourteen trips from UCLA to Acapulco in ten months two years ago: he had been tossed seven times out of the ten but no drugs had been found on him. Narco Bureau had a note in a dead file that Mezetti had been suspected as a courier but had been found clean; whatever the purpose of his trips to Acapulco, it hadn’t been narcotics. Subsequent notation from CIA’s Acapulco stringer revealed Mezetti’s mother and sister had spent the winter in question in Acapulco. Lime made a face.
SEC records by way of FBI showed Mezetti listed as owner-of-record of thirty-five thousand shares of Mezetti Industries Common. An IRS note appended: he was also listed as an officer of the corporation—probably a tax dodge, a funnel through which his father could pour funds into his son’s account without facing inheritance taxes later on.
FBI was commencing washes of subject’s known hangouts. Routine telephone checks established he was not at home; no one knew where he was; his mother thought he had gone to Europe on company business; his father knew nothing of any such thing.
Then a signal from FBI over Shankland’s signature: Mezetti had flown by Air France from New York to Marseille on Saturday, January eighth.
That was thirty-six hours before Fairlie had been kidnapped.
“Christ,” Hill said. “Walking around right out in bare-ass open.”
“Well they must have done it to find out if he was clean.”
“So he’s their outside contact—they need to know he’s still free to move around.”
“Using a cover—his mother said he told her he was over here on company business.” He considered it. “All right. Items. He was clean Saturday night, they can’t know about the fingerprint, so they’ve got to assume he’s still free to move in the open. They’ll keep using him.” His face changed abruptly: “Mezetti Industries. That’s pretty big stuff. Then the kid’s their bankroll.”
It made it a notch more likely the operation was fully independent—not a hire-contract job paid for by an organization. That made Lime’s job harder; it meant the kidnappers were working alone without a network. You couldn’t infiltrate a network that didn’t exist.
Hill spoke slowly. “Now the question is do we keep it in the family or let the rival firms in?”
The rival firms would come into it in time even without invitation—KGB’s immense machinery in Moscow would find out within twenty-four hours that the hunt was on for one Mario P. Mezetti. Peking would be close on the Russians’ heels.
Lime made his decision in the time it took to formulate the words. “If we haven’t found something by midnight we’d better bring Bizenkev into it.”
“Do we let it drop as if it’s an accident or do we print him a formal invitation?”
“As formal as it can get.” If their help was solicited openly and with the knowledge of the world press, the Soviets would have less room for double crosses.
“And the same with the Chinese, I imagine,” Hill said.
Lime nodded. “Midnight. After that we can put out an APB on Mezetti.”
“What about between now and then?”
“Find out who deals with Mezetti Industries over here. They may even have ofiices of their own on this side. See if he’s made contact with anybody. Put out an APB in the family but try to keep it confidential. The Guardia will have to know who to look for.”
“Tangier?”
“Not yet. Their mouths flap too much.”
“You’re banking on them being on a boat, aren’t you.” The question wasn’t as astute as it seemed; Hill could make his deductions from a simple understanding of the timetable. If the kidnappers were using a boat they wouldn’t have had time to reach Tangier yet. Hill said, “What about SDECE?”
“They’d better be in on it.”
“I know. But it makes it a fair bet the Russians will have it before midnight. If the French don’t leak it the Guardia will.”
Which was being very polite to the CIA, Lime thought, but he let it go.
At half past four Madrid reported that Mezetti had checked through the French-Spanish border on Saturday, January eighth, driving a hired Renault four-door. The car hadn’t turned up yet. Its description and plate number had been broadcast to all Spanish police.
It placed Mezetti in the Barcelona area shortly before the kidnapping; it added little to what Lime had already assumed but it was confirmation and that never hurt.
At five-ten the
break came.
Hill took the call and hanging up turned to Lime: “Agency stringer in Gibraltar. He’s just left the Mezetti Industries office. The kid’s in a hotel there.”
Lime exhaled deeply.
Hill still had his hand on the cradled telephone receiver. “Pick him up?”
“No. I want a tail on him.”
“We could pull him apart, make him talk.”
“Tail him.”
“Jesus I wouldn’t. He loses the tail, our heads roll.”
“And Fairlie’s. Don’t you think I know that? Button him up tight—but don’t touch him.” Lime turned toward the door. “Hustle me up an airplane, will you? I’m going down there.”
3:30 P.M. EST Riva was acting the part of a Puerto Rican tourist. He had papers to prove it, if anyone should care to ask; no one had. His only concession to the need for a precautionary disguise was a hairpiece which filled in his widow’s peak, gave him a head of salt-and-pepper hair and a lower forehead. Nothing more was needed; Riva was amorphous, people had to meet him eight or ten times before they could recall what he looked like.
He had come down from New York on the Metroliner and found a taxi driver at Union Station willing to take him around Washington on a sightseeing tour. Riva told the driver he particularly wanted to see the homes of Congressmen and Senators and Cabinet members.
He and Sturka had gone over the same route several times a month ago to check out locations and security arrangements; the tour today was designed mainly to discern what added security precautions had been taken. If any. Riva was unimpressed by the Americans’ notions of security.
There was a house trailer in the driveway of Senator Ethridge’s place; he had expected that much. The trailer would contain a Secret Service crew. That was all right; they could afford to bypass Ethridge. The cab drove on.
Milton Luke had an apartment in a high-rise building on Wisconsin Avenue. The cab cruised past and Riva saw no armed men on the curb or in the visible sector of the lobby. But that didn’t mean much; later he would have to reconnoiter the building on foot.
On Massachusetts Avenue just above Sheridan Circle was a massive apartment building that housed among others Congressmen Wood and Jethro, Secretary of the Treasury Jonathan Chaney, Senator Fitzroy Grant, and syndicated political columnist J. R. Ilfeld. The concentration of targets made the building important in Riva’s calculations and he studied it with care as they drove past. Again there was no indication of protection or surveillance.
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