Topaz

by Leon Uris

  “Pepe’s bar.”

  “I have a long distance call for a Mr. Pepe Vimont.”

  “This is Pepe Vimont.”

  “Here is your party, sir.”

  “Hello, Pepe. This is Joseph. I called to wish you a happy birthday.”

  Pepe Vimont’s pulse quickened upon hearing the voice of the man he knew only as Joseph. “I think we have a bad connection,” Pepe said quickly, answering the code. “Can you call me back in ten minutes at Eva’s number?”

  “Yes, very well.”

  Pepe set the receiver down, untied his apron and tapped the other bartender on the shoulder.

  “I’ve got to go out for half an hour.”

  Always when the rush is on, the bartender thought, but said nothing. He wasn’t really too unhappy about it because it would give him a chance to pocket a few bucks.

  Pepe left his bar on Southwest Eighth Street in the heart of Miami’s Cuban refugee district and walked a block and a half up the Tamiami Trail, then crossed to where a violent neon display shouted out “Tropicburger” in four colors. At the outdoor stand of the drive-in, Cubans in gleaming white shirts nipped down cafecitos and talked in their loud, quick voices.

  Over the parking lot stood the phone booth coded as Eva. Pepe entered and waited.

  During this time, in Washington André Devereaux left Union Station, crossed the avenue to the Commodore Hotel, where he took up position in a new phone booth and watched the lobby clock tick off. He placed a call to Eva’s number.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello. Is this Pepe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Joseph. You will go to the National ticket counter at the airport tomorrow. There will be round-trip tickets to New York in your name. It will be a short trip. No more than overnight at most.”

  Thank God, Pepe thought.

  “Bring your Tessina camera and several rolls of film.”

  “Yes, go on.”

  André carefully detailed the movements that Pepe was to make in New York and how his contact would link up with him.

  He repeated the instructions to perfection.

  “Good luck,” André said and hung up. He left the Commodore Hotel and plunged into the endless round of African cocktail parties.

  5

  PEPE VIMONT, BORN JOSE Lefebvre, was the son of the foreman of the Vimont plantation on Guadeloupe in the French Antilles.

  When his parents passed away, the elder Vimont, who was without a son, took young Pepe as his own and gave him his name.

  He was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris when the Second World War fell upon France. Choosing to ignore the safe route and return to Guadeloupe, he retreated first into Vichy France, where he joined the fledgling Resistance. The paths of war took him to North Africa, where remnants of defeated France were reuniting under the directorship of Pierre La Croix into the semblance of a combat force and a quasi government.

  Pepe, a light-skinned Negro with sharp features, was able to pass the line easily as a Muslim. He learned Arabic and was soon plunged into the cesspools of Casablanca, the Casbah of Algiers, Cairo, and Dakar as an intelligence agent for the Free French.

  As the war progressed and Pierre La Croix reclaimed Vichy French possessions in the Caribbean, Pepe was tranferred as an operator in that arena.

  The end of the war found the elder Vimont passed away and the plantation in a hopeless state of financial ruin.

  Pepe returned to France and was further trained at an SDECE school at Étampes near Orléans. After a brief mission in Cuba, he resigned from the service and decided to remain in that country and obtained citizenship.

  Pepe Vimont was among the first to flee Castro, emigrating to Miami, where he purchased a small bar in the southwest section among the refugees.

  When his record and whereabouts came to the attention of French Intelligence, André Devereaux sent an agent down to contact him. Pepe agreed to take on special missions for the French to augment his income.

  Pepe liked Miami. It was the first time he had been able to settle long enough to marry and begin a family. His wife was a lovely Cuban girl, and they had a son and another child on the way.

  Only the mysterious voice of Joseph broke the otherwise pastoral existence of family life. Where did the voice come from? He did not know, nor did he inquire. But it was the man coded as Joseph who could trigger him down to Argentina or to the islands.

  It was so strange this time, so very strange, the first call for a mission inside the United States.

  6

  NATIONAL’S DC-7 AFTERNOON flight touched down at Idlewild International at four in the afternoon. Pepe Vimont skimmed through a copy of Ebony as the airport bus passed through the tunnel to the East Side terminal in mid-Manhattan.

  He proceeded to play out the instructions that Joseph had given him over the phone the day before, going by foot to the Doubleday bookstore at Fifty-second Street.

  “Do you have a double album called ‘Roger Williams’ Songs of the Fabulous Forties’?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He asked the clerk to play side one, band five, on the demonstrator and listened to a minute of the Warsaw Concerto. Pepe studied the vibrant sounds of Roger Williams seriously, purchased the record and left the store.

  The hookup was made.

  An agent whom he would know as Maurice trailed him as he continued up Fifth Avenue and crossed over to Central Park opposite the Plaza Hotel. He took up a bench not far from the waiting line of hansom cabs, lit up, puffed and watched the admixture of New York sophisticates enter the Plaza for after-work cocktails and tourists and romanticists clip-clop off through the park in the aged carriages. A big red sun fell suddenly into the Hudson River, immersing the park in evening shadow.

  A nondescript man sat at the opposite end of the bench, also carrying a bag from the Doubleday store.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I believe you left this on the counter.”

  Pepe stared at him blankly, accepted the bag, opened it. It contained a volume, Irving Wallace’s Chapman Report.

  “Yes, this is mine. Thank you.”

  “You are Leonard.”

  “Yes,” Pepe answered, “and you are Maurice.”

  The man nodded. “Follow me at a distance.”

  Pepe kept a trained interval of several hundred feet as Maurice walked toward the East Side all the way across to Second Avenue. After doubling back to check for possible tails he entered an opening, “RITE WAY GARAGE ... PARKING BY THE MONTH.”

  Pepe made up the narrow walk alongside the ramp to the second, third, and, finally, the top level and scanned the field of shiny car hoods. A headlight in the rear of the garage flicked off and on quickly. Pepe wove in and out of the tightly packed vehicles to where Maurice waited and took a seat alongside him.

  Maurice unlocked the glove compartment and withdrew two packets of money and gave clipped, precise instructions, which Pepe repeated.

  “You are working with a Tessina?”

  “Yes,” he answered, showing the camera strapped on his wrist like a watch.

  “If all goes well, you should be out of New York by eight o’clock.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “As soon as you have finished the job, take a taxi to La Guardia Airport. Purchase a TWA flight bag and put the film in it. I’ll be waiting near the main newsstand and will also have a TWA bag. We’ll switch by the paperback book racks.”

  Pepe pocketed the bills and shoved the door open.

  “Good luck,” Maurice said.

  “Thanks.”

  7

  ANDRÉ GLANCED AT HIS watch as Nicole applied her never-ending finishing touches.

  As in any plan in this state of motion, he wondered if and when and how he had left loopholes. Perhaps it was a mistake to put the “dead-letter drop” on a flying aircraft, but he had to move Pepe in and out of New York quickly. If the Americans got wind, they might accuse him of espionage or, at best, be very angry he had not advised them in advance.
Furthermore, he wanted the film out of New York because he did not trust it to that jackass, Gustave Prévost.

  The sitting in the dark, the not knowing, this brought on the tension. Pepe is a good man, André thought. Why the hell am I reviewing him now? At any rate, nothing to do but sweat it out.

  Nicole made her entrance. He admired her, kissed her cheek, and they left the house and drove off.

  His thoughts were on the contents of Rico Parra’s attaché case. It would be a windfall if they were not deliberate fakes. Rico Parra had recently returned from a conference in Moscow in which a number of new pacts had been negotiated. Certainly Rico Parra carried papers to discuss with the Soviet leaders while they were all in New York at the United Nations.

  “Michele phoned today. She’s terribly unhappy about this fight with Tucker.”

  “Eh?”

  Michele ... fight ... Tucker ... Sarah ... blah ... blah.

  Damn him! Nicole thought. Nothing is important. Not me. Not his daughter. Look at him, detached, in another world. And I’ve always been shut out from it.

  “What did you say, dear?”

  “I said the New York Yankees lost to the Washington Redskins.”

  He stopped at Wisconsin and M streets, where the car parker greeted him familiarly and Blaise, the owner of the Rive Gauche, ushered them in.

  Tonight it was an intimate dinner of six. All ININ people. His Italian and German counterparts and their wives. The Italians were palatable. A dull old married pair with flocks of children. The Baron and his wife were something else. In a word, André detested most Germans, and the Baron was no exception. Only an overdue social obligation compelled him to share a table with a German.

  It was the Baron’s wife who annoyed Nicole. A little dumpling, not yet thirty, with a figure unmarred by childbearing. She displayed her bosom to the nth degree. Well, Nicole thought, she was keeping more than one bed warm in Washington, and small wonder. The Baron was an utter, total washout. She wondered if André had gotten around to sleeping with German women, or this one in particular.

  They approached the table. The Baron and the Italian stood, smiling. Nicole’s hand was kissed, and André kissed the hands of the ININ wives.

  Damn her, Nicole thought through smiles, look at the way her dress hangs open.

  André looked at his watch again. Pepe Vimont should be in a taxi now, he thought, heading for the San Martín Hotel.

  8

  “OH, JESUS,” BENNY GARCÍA moaned. He crossed himself. He hadn’t crossed himself for many years. When he entered the ring he used to do that. Suppose something goes wrong, he thought. I should have never got mixed up in this. These Intelligence guys are dangerous.

  He twisted his neck, trying to break loose the kinks. Benny García was queasy in the guts and perspiration popped out over his lip. It was like the night he fought Lupe López. He was stiff and could find no way to break loose. If he could have gotten past Lupe López, it might have meant a title shot. At least, every old pug thinks he once had that chance. But Lupe López caught him cold and worked him over something fearful for five rounds until the referee stopped it. Most of his bad cuts came from that fight.

  The Sugar Cane Kid felt the same stiffness now. He pivoted on the swivel stool at the lunch counter of the coffee shop across the street from the San Martín Hotel.

  That’s him! Benny thought as Pepe Vimont entered. Yeah, that’s him all right. Doubleday book bag and a green necktie.

  Pepe found an empty booth, ordered a milk shake and waited.

  Benny slipped in opposite him, set down a pack of British Players cigarettes. Pepe opened the box and saw the folded two-dollar bill in it and closed it and handed it back.

  “Benny García?”

  “Look, man,” Benny said rapidly, grabbing Pepe’s sleeve. “Something’s gone wrong. Jesus.”

  “Cool it. Get your hands off me. Talk softer and slower.”

  Benny sucked in a half-dozen deep breaths. “Rico Parra was supposed to go to a party uptown at the Russian’s hotel. That’s why we figured on tonight. Luis Uribe could get in and out easier. But Rico’s sick. He’s in his room screaming and hollering and throwing up. People are running in and out like crazy.”

  “Shouldn’t Uribe be able to get the papers out during the commotion?”

  “Suppose he gets caught?”

  The milk shake came. It was watery. Pepe fished around for the blob of ice cream with a long spoon.

  “What did you and Uribe work out?”

  “He needs the bread so he says he’s gonna try to get the papers down to my apartment come hell or high water.”

  “Good. Let’s get over there and wait for him.”

  Benny García’s leather-scarred face contorted with fear.

  Rico Parra stood by the telephone in a faded robe, slapped his forehead and screamed at the man on the other end of the line. The floor was littered with newspapers, empty bottles, and unreclaimed dishes. Rico slammed the phone down, paced, puffed his cigar, and went into a coughing spasm.

  “I want to see the doctor!”

  “Get a doctor” was aped by a half-dozen flunkies, one of whom scurried out.

  A waiter was passed into the room by the outer guards. He rolled a table up to the great man. Rico Parra plopped before it. The waiter lifted the lid of the soup tureen and ladled the contents into a bowl. Rico surveyed the table. “I asked for Coca-Cola! Where the hell is my Coca-Cola?”

  Luis Uribe had entered the room quietly and went to Rico’s desk, a familiar place to him, and began to gather up the papers on it.

  “I’ll bring your Coke right away, sir,” the waiter said.

  “You speak Spanish!”

  “Yes, sir. I am Puerto Rican.”

  Rico arose, coughed, spat, missed the waste-basket, then put his hand on the waiter’s shoulder. “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ There are no servants in Cuba. Only servants of the Revolution. You are my compañero, and one day you will be liberated. Make that a large Coke.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Luis Uribe moved toward the door.

  “Uribe!” Rico shouted.

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you going with those papers?”

  “You asked for translations and notes for tomorrow’s meeting with the Soviet delegates.”

  “I told you to work on them here and not take them from the room.”

  “You were supposed to go out for dinner, but you’re sick. How do you expect me to work with all this noise? I can’t get them done in time.”

  “Well ... all right ... you can do it in your room, but be careful. Hernández, you go and stay with him.”

  Luis Uribe crossed the hall, trying desperately to think out what to do as the hulking Hernández lumbered after him and closed the door behind them.

  Uribe stacked the papers on his own desk and flicked on the lamp. Perhaps he should call down to Benny García. No, that would be too risky.

  He scratched a halfhearted note on the foolscap pad. God! He needed the money. He had been utterly determined to go through with it when he knew he was coming to America.

  Maybe try to deal with Hernández. To guess wrong on him would mean his life. Hernández was oversized for a Cuban. A thug who could destroy with either hand and a devoted bodyguard of Rico Parra.

  Minutes ticked off as he played listlessly with the translation. How long would Benny García wait?

  Hernández sprawled on the couch across the room, thumbing through a Spanish edition of Life. He suddenly threw down the magazine, came to his feet heavily, stretched and grumbled.

  “Goddamnit!”

  “Eh? What’s the matter, Hernández?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then be quiet while I work.”

  “Rico is my compañero. I do anything for him, but sometimes I wonder. He never gives nobody a night off. He doesn’t even think about it. Anyhow, I thought he would be at the Russian dinner tonight. So I asked Benny García to get me a woman. She’s waiti
ng in my room. I haven’t had a woman since I’ve been in New York. How long you be working on that stuff?”

  “Till after midnight.”

  “Goddamn.”

  Hernández cracked his knuckles, then phoned to his room. The woman was still there. He hung up, buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “She won’t wait. She’s got to go home to her husband in an hour. Son of a bitch.”

  Luis Uribe, a man who had lived his life on nerve’s edge, suddenly showed a magnificent moment of calm he never knew he owned. He took off his glasses, shoved his papers aside and folded his hands, looking much like a stern schoolmaster at the sobbing Hernández.

  “Hernández, I am going to do you a favor. I will let you go to your room if you promise to do your business and be back in forty-five minutes.”

  Hernández looked up in disbelief.

  “You are a man. You need a girl.”

  “You really mean it?”

  “Of course.”

  He threw his arms around Uribe in a bear hug. “What a friend! I thought you were an old woman.”

  “For God’s sake be careful,” Uribe said. “We will both get into serious trouble if Rico finds out.”

  Hernández put his finger to his lips in a to-the-death vow, flattened against the wall, opened the door a crack, blew a kiss to Uribe and sneaked out to keep his rendezvous.

  Uribe began to shake. The papers rattled as he gathered them and shoved them into folds of the day’s New York Times.

  Benny García bolted the door of his apartment behind Uribe. “God, man, thought you’d never get here. I was about to give it up.”

  “We do not have long to work,” Uribe said. “Just half an hour.”

  “The papers,” Pepe Vimont commanded tersely.

  “Here ... in here ...”

  “Spread them out on the floor, quickly.”

  Pepe unsnapped the Tessina camera from his wrist, knelt, focused and shot film after film with the calm and precision of an expert marksman.

  “Gather them up.”

  He handed the roll of money to Benny García and beat a hasty retreat from the San Martín Hotel.