"Her name is Lillian von Schnabe.
She is American from the state of
California, married to an older man,
a German immigrant who fled Hitler. As
coincidence would have it, she is
currently in Berlin."
"I merely asked who she was, Father.
Not her biography. How do you know all
this?"
"It was in the recommendation from
the United States Army Information
Service. The military think highly of
her, apparently."
"More than apparently. So, her
husband fled Hitler? One does not turn
away from such compassionate women.
Coupled with the state of food
prices a number of inexpensive papal
dishes is called for. Set up an
appointment, Father. You may tell our
resplendent cardinal, who suffers from
the unfortunate affliction of a
high-decibeled wheeze that we truly
hope our decision is not an affront to
him. Viva Gourmet. The Lord God has
been good to me; it is a mark of
recognition. I wonder why its
correspondent is in -Berlin? There's
a monsignor in Bonn who makes an
excellent Sauerbraten."
"I swear, you've got feathers in
your teeth!" said Lillian as Sam
walked into the room.
"It's better than chickenshit."
"What?"
"My business contact had a strange
method of transpottation."
"What are you talking about?"
"I want to take a shower."
"Not with me, honey!"
"I've never been so hungry in my
life. They wouldn't even stop for
a what the hell is it? A strudel.
Everything was ein, zwei, drei! Mach
schnell! Christ, I'm starved! They
really think they won the war!"
Lillian backed away from him. "You
are the filthiest, most foul-smelling
man I've ever seen. I'm surprised they
let you in the lobby."
"I think we goose-stepped." Sam
noticed a large white business
envelope on the bureau. "What's that?"
149
"The front desk sent it up. They said
it was urgent and they weren't sure
you'd stop for messages." -
"I can only conclude your ex, the
fruitcake, has been
- busy." Devereaux picked up the
envelope. Inside were airline tickets
and a note. He didn't really have to
read the note; the airline tickets said
it all.
Algiers.
Then he read the note.
"No! Goddamn it no! That's less than an
hour from
... .
now!
"What is?" asked Lillian. "The plane?"
"What plane? How the hell do you know
there's a plane?"
"Because MacKenzie called. From
Washington. You can imagine his shock
when I answered "
"Spare me your inventive details!"
roared Devereaux as he raced to the
telephone. "I've got several things to
say to that devious son of a bitchl Even
convicts get a day off! At least time
for a meal and a shower!"
"You can't reach him now" said Lillian
quickly. "That was one of the reasons he
called. He'll be out for the rest of the
day."
Sam turned menacingly. Then he stopped.
This girl could probably cut him in two.
"And I suppose he offered a suggestion
as to why I should be on that plane.
Once he got over the shock of hearing
your lovely voice, of course."
Lillian looked puzzled. It crossed
Devereaux's mind that the puzzlement was
not entirely genuine. "Mac mentioned
something about a German named Koenig.
How anxious this Koenig was for you to
leave Berlin one way or the other."
"The less controversial method being
Air France to Paris and from Paris to
Algiers?"
"Yes, he did say that. Although not in
those exact words. He's terribly fond of
you, Sam. He speaks of you as a son. The
son he never had."
"If there's a Jacob, I'm Esau.
Otherwise, I'm fucked as Absolom."
"Vulgarity isn't called for "
"It's the only thing that is called
for! What the hell is in Algiers?"
150
"A sheik named Azaz-Varak," answered
Lillian Hawkins von Schnabe.
Hawkins left the Watergate in a
hurry. He had no desire to talk to
Sam; he had absolute faith in Lillian,
in all the girls, actually. They were
doing their jobs splendidly! Besides,
he was to meet with- an Israeli major
who, with any luck, could put the
final pieces of the puzzle together
for him. The puzzle being Sheik
Azaz-Varak. By the time Devereaux
reached Algiers a telephone call would
have to be made. The Hawk could not
make it without that final item which
would insure the last of the Shepherd
Company's capitalization.
That Azaz-Varak was a thief on a
global scale was nothing new. During
the Second World War he sold oil at
outrageous prices to the Allies and
the Axis simultaneously, favoring only
those who paid instantly in cash. This
did not make him enemies, however;
instead, his policies engendered
respect, from Detroit to Essen.
But the war was ancient history.
That war. It was Azaz-Varak's behavior
in a far more recent conflagration
that interested Hawkins: the Mideast
crisis.
Azaz-Varak was nowhere to be found.
While oaths were hurled across the
lands of the Middle East, and the
world watched armies clash against
armies, and crisis-laden conferences
took place, and outrageous profits
were made, the greediest sheik of them
all claimed to have a case of shingles
and went to the Virgin Islands.
Goddamn! It didn't make sense! So
MacKenzie went back into Azaz-Varak's
raw files and studied them with the
eye of a professional. He began to
find the pattern in the years between
1946 and 1948. Sheik Azaz-Varak had
apparently spent a considerable amount
of hme in Tel Aviv!
According to the reports, his first
few trips were made quite openly. It
was supposed that Azaz-Varak sought
Israeli women for his harem.
Thereafter, however, Azaz-Varak con-
tinued to By into Tel Aviv, but not
openly; landing at night in outlying
private airfields that could
accommodate his most modern and
expensive private planes.
More women') Hawkins had researched
exhaustively and was unable to unearth
the name of a single Israeli female
151
who ever went back to the sheikdom of
Azaz-Kuwait. Then, what had Aza
z-Varak
been doing in the state of Israel? And
why had he traveled there so
frequently?
MacKenzie's breakthrough came,
strangely enough, from information
supplied by naval intelligence On
island of St. Thomas, where Azaz-Varak
had fled during the Mideast war.
There, he tried to buy up more
property than anyone wished to sell.
Rebuffed, he became furious.
The islanders had enough trouble.
They did not need Arabs with harems
and slaves. Jesust Slaves! The very
idea sent the bureau of tourism into
apoplexy; visions of all that kitchen
help in revolt were positively
nauseating. AzazVarak was
systematically prevented from buying
two buckets of sand. When it was
suspected he was trying to negotiate
through second and third parties,
covenants were included that would
have made Palm Beach green with envy
and the ACLU purple with rage. Simply
put: no Sucking Arabs could own,
lease, sublease, visit, or trespass.
So in his frustration, the
acquisitive sheik angrily, and
hastily, brought in an American
holding company called the Buffalo
Corporation and tried to negotiate
through it. There were laws and St.
Thomas was a United States possession.
And it did not take much research on
Hawkins's part to uncover the fact
that the Buffalo Corporation address:
Albany Street, Buffalo, New York;
telephone: unlisted was a subsidiary
of an unknown company called
Pan-Friendship, main office: Beirut;
telephone: also unlisted.
Subsequent overseas calls to several
Israeli clearinghouses made stunningly
clear what Azaz-Varak had been doing
during all those visits to the Jewish
homeland. He owned half the real
estate in Tel Aviv, much of it in the
poorer sections of town. The sheik was
a Tel Aviv slumlord.
The Buffalo Corporation collected
rents from all over the city. And if
the Israeli major who was in ordnance
and supply confirmed a report the Hawk
had received from some old Cambodian
buddies in the CIA, the Buffalo
Corporation was also in another
business. One that held most
unfortunate implications for the owner
of said Buffalo 152
.,
Corporation, insofar as he was the
very Arab who scared hell out of the
realtors in St. Thomas.
The report was simple; all MacKenzie
needed was one military official to
corroborate it. For the CIA boys
learned that a major expediter of
petrochemicals and fuel for the army
of Israel during the Mideast war was
a little-known American company called
the Buffalo Corporation.
Sheik Azaz-Varak not only owned half
the real estate in Tel Aviv, but at
the height of the conflict, he fed the
Israeli war machine so the maniacs in
Cairo wouldn't damage his investments.
It was the sort of information that
simply demanded a long-distance call,
thought MacKenzie Hawkins. To the
sheikdom of Azaz-Kuwait.
Devereaux appreciated the sympathy
from the Air France stewardess, but he
would have appreciated food more.
There were no supplies in the galley
of the 727, a conditiion that would be
corrected in Paris. Apparently and
there was no way to be sure he
understood correctly the Boche
catering trucks that serviced Air
France had been tied up in a
Russian-induced traffic jam on the
autobahn, and what had been left in
the galley had been stolen by the
Czechoslovakian ground crew in Prague.
And besides, the food was better in
Paris.
So Sam smoked cigarettes, caught
himself chewing bits of tobacco, and
tried to concentrate on the doings of
MacKenzie Hawkins. His seatmate was
some kind of Eastern religious,
perhaps a Sikh, with brown skin tinged
with gray, a very small black beard,
a purple turban, and darting eyes that
were as close as a human's could be to
those of a rat. It made thinking about
MacKenzie easier; there would be
little conversation on the trip to
Paris.
Hawkins had raised his third ten
million. And now there was an Arabian
sheik who was the fourth and final
mark. Whatever it was that MacKenzie
had culled from the raw files had the
effect of thermonuclear blackmail.
Christ! Forty million!
What was he going to do with it? What
kind of "equip153
ment and support personnel" (whatever
the hell they were) could possibly
cost so much?
Granted one did not kidnap a pope
with a dollar and a quarter in his
pocket, but was it necessary to cover
the Italian national debt to do it?
One thing was certain. The Hawk's
plan for the kidnapping included the
exchange of extraordinary sums of mon-
ey. And whoever accepted such sums
were ipso facto accessories to the
most outrageous abduction in history!
It was another avenue he, Sam, could
explore. And a pretty good one at
that. If he could obtain the names of
even a few of Mac's suppliers, he
could scare them right out of the
picture. Certainly the Hawk was not
going to say to someone: Yes, I'll buy
that railroad Brain because I'm going
to kidnap this pope fellow and it'll
be a big help. No, that was hardly the
way of an experienced general officer
who had drugged half the pouch
couriers in Southeast Asia. But if he,
Sam, reached that same someone and
said: You know that train you're
sexing to that bearded idiotP It's
going to be used to kidnap the pope.
Have a good night's sleep well, that
was something else again. The train
would not be sold. And if he could
prevent a train from being sold,
perhaps he could prevent other
supplies from reaching the Hawk.
MacKenzie was army; lines of supply
were paramount to any operation.
Without them whole strategies were
altered, even abandoned. It was
military holy writ.
Yes, resected Devereaux, gazing out
into the German twilight from the
hoodless Air France plane, it was a
very decent avenue to explore. Coupled
with his first consideration finding
out how the Hawk intended to pull off
the kidnapping, and the second
consideration finding out what
specific blackmailing material
MacKenzie held over hi
s investors, the
suppliers were a third, powerful
ingredient. In preventive medicine.
Sam closed his eyes, conjuring up
visions of long ago. He was in the
basement of his home in Quincy,
Massachusetts. On the huge table in
the center of his room was his set of
Lionel trains, going around and
around, weaving in and out of the
miniature shrubbery and over the tiny
154
bridges and through the toy tunnels.
But there was something strange about
the sight. Except for the engine and
the caboose, all the other vehicles
were marked identically: '
Refrigerator Car. Food."
At Orly Airport, the passengers to
Algiers were told to remain on the
plane. For Devereaux nothing mattered
once he saw the white truck pull up
alongside the aircraft and men in
white coats transferring immaculate
steel containers into the galley. He
even smiled at Rat Eyes beside him,
noticing as he did so that his
seatmate's purple turban had slipped
somewhat over his brown forehead. Sam
might have said something he'd learned
long ago that even strangers
appreciated it when you told them
their zippers were open but since
several other turbaned acquaintances
who'd boarded at Orly had come up to
pay their respects and had said
nothing, Devereaux felt it wasn't his
place. Besides most of the other
purple turbans seemed a touch
lopsided. Perhaps it was a custom
indigenous to the particular religious
sect.
Regardless, all Sam could think
about were the immaculate steel trays,
now securely in the Air France galley
broilers, sending out deliriously
inviting wafts of escalope de veau,
tournedos, sauce Bearrzaise, and, if
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