“And are you? Sweating?”
“At this altitude? Heavens no.”
“I guess it’s true. The shoptalk. You’ve got no nerves.”
“No nerves,” I agreed, “but plenty of nerve. Cheer up, you may get his fingerprints off the device.”
“Gregorius? No chance.”
Any of the three could have planted it. We could ask the Venezuelans to interrogate every employee in the hotel to find out who might have expressed an interest in my room but it probably would be fruitless and in any case Gregorius would know as soon as the interrogations started and it would only drive him to ground. No; at least now I knew he was in the hotel.
Scruples can be crippling. If our positions had been reversed — if I’d been Gregorius with one of three men after me — I’d simply kill all three of them. That’s how Gregorius would solve the problem.
Sometimes honor is an awful burden. I feel such an anachronism.
The bomb squad lads carried the device out in a heavy armored canister. They wouldn’t find clues, not the kind that would help. We already knew the culprit’s identity.
Cartlidge said, “What next?”
“Here,” I said, and tapped the mound of my belly, “I know which one he is. But I don’t know it here yet.” Finger to temple. “It needs to rise to the surface.”
“You know?”
“In the gut. The gut knows. I have a fact somewhere in there. It’s there; I just don’t know what it is.”
I ordered up two steak dinners from room service and when the tray-table arrived I had Cartlidge’s men make sure there were no bombs under the domed metal covers. Then Cartlidge sat and watched with a kind of awed disgust while I ate everything. He rolled back his cuff and looked at his watch. “We’ve only got about fourteen hours.”
“I know.”
“If you spend the rest of the night in this room he can’t get at you. I’ve got men in the hall and men outside watching the windows. You’ll be safe.”
“I don’t get paid to be safe.” I put away the cheesecake — both portions — and felt better.
Of course it might prove to be a bullet, a blade, a drop of poison, a garrote, a bludgeon — it could but it wouldn’t. It would be a bomb. He’d challenged me and he’d play it through by his own perverse rules.
Cartlidge complained, “There’s just too many places he could hide a satchel bomb. That’s the genius of plastique — it’s so damn portable.”
“And malleable. You can shape it to anything.” I looked under the bed, then tried it. Too soft: it sagged near collapse when I lay back. “I’m going to sleep on it.”
And so I did until shortly after midnight when someone knocked and I came awake with the reverberating memory of a muffled slam of sound. Cartlidge came into the room carrying a portable radio transceiver — a walkie-talkie. “Bomb went off in one of the elevators.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No. It was empty. Probably it was a grenade — the boys are examining the damage. Here, I meant to give you this thing before. I know you’re not much for gizmos and gadgets but it helps us all keep in touch with one another. Even cavemen had smoke signals, right?”
“All right.” I thought about the grenade in the elevator and then went back to bed.
In the morning I ordered up two breakfasts; while they were en route I abluted and clothed the physique that Myerson detests so vilely. One reason why I don’t diet seriously is that I don’t wish to cease offending him. For a few minutes then I toyed with Cartlidge’s walkie-talkie. It even had my name on it, printed onto a plastic strip.
When Cartlidge arrived under the little dark cloud he always carries above him I was putting on my best tie and a jaunty face.
“What’s got you so cheerful?”
“I lost Gregorius once. Today I’m setting it right.”
“You’re sure? I hope you’re right.”
I went down the hall. Cartlidge hurried to catch up; he tugged my sleeve as I reached for the elevator button. “Let’s use the fire stairs, all right?” Then he pressed the walkie-talkie into my hand; I’d forgotten it. “He blew up one elevator last night.”
“With nobody in it,” I pointed out. “Doesn’t it strike you as strange? Look, he only grenaded the elevator to stampede me in to using the stairs. I suggest you send your bomb squad lads to check out the stairs. Somewhere between here and the ground floor they’ll doubtless find a plastique device wired to a pressure-plate under one of the treads, probably set to detonate under a weight of not less than two hundred and fifty pounds.”
He gaped at me, then ran back down the hall to phone. I waited for him to return and then we entered the elevator. His eyes had gone opaque. I pressed the lobby-floor button and we rode down; I could hear his breathing. The doors slid open and we stepped out into the lobby and Cartlidge wiped the sweat off his face. He gave me a wry inquiring look. “I take it you found your fact.”
“I think so.”
“Want to share it?”
“Not just yet. Not until I’m sure. Let’s get to the conference building.”
We used the side exit. The car was waiting, engine running, driver armed.
I could have told Cartlidge which one was Gregorius but there was a remote chance I was wrong and I didn’t like making a fool of myself.
Caracas is a curiously Scandinavian city — the downtown architecture is modern and sterile; even the hillside slums are colorful and appear clean. The wealth of 20th century oil has shaped the city and there isn’t much about its superficial appearance, other than the Spanish-language neon signs, to suggest it’s a Latin town. Traffic is clotted with big expensive cars and the boulevards are self-consciously elegant. Most of the establishments in the central shopping district are branches of American and European companies: banks, appliances, coutouriers, Cadillac showrooms. It doesn’t look the sort of place where bombs could go off: Terrorism doesn’t suit it. One pictures Gregorius and his kind in the shabby crumbling wretched rancid passageways of Cairo or Beirut. Caracas? No; too hygienic.
As we parked the car the walkie-talkies crackled with static. It was one of Cartlidge’s lads — they’d found the armed device on the hotel’s fire stairs. Any heavy man could have set it off. But by then I was no longer surprised by how indiscriminate Gregorius could be, his chilly indifference to the risk to innocents.
We had twenty minutes before the scheduled arrivals of the ministers. I said, “It’ll be here somewhere. The bomb.”
“Why?”
“It’s the only place he can be sure they’ll turn up on schedule. Are the three suspects still under surveillance? Check them out.”
He hunched over the walkie-talkie while I turned the volume knob of mine down to get rid of the distracting noise and climbed out of the car and had my look around; I bounced the walkie-talkie in my palm absently while I considered the possibilities. The broad steps of the palacio where the conference of OPEC ministers would transpire were roped off and guarded by dark-faced cops in Sam Brownes. On the wide landing that separated the two massive flights of steps was a circular fountain that sprayed gaily; normally people sat on the tile ring that contained it but today the security people had cleared the place. There wasn’t much of a crowd; it wasn’t going to be the kind of spectacle that would draw any public interest. There was no television equipment; a few reporters clustered off to one side with microphones and tape recorders. Routine traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. That was useful because it meant Gregorius wouldn’t be able to get in close; there would be no crowd to screen him.
Still, it wasn’t too helpful. All it meant was that he would use a remote-control device to trigger the bomb.
Cartlidge lowered the walkie-talkie from his face. “Did you hear?”
“No.” I had difficulty hearing him now as well: the fountain made white noise, the constant gnashing of water, and I moved closer to him while he scowled at my own walkie-talkie. His eyes accused me forlornly. “Would it kill you to u
se it? All three accounted for. One in his room, one at the hotel pool, one in the dining room having his breakfast.”
I looked up past the rooftops. I could see the upper floors of the Hotel Tamanaco — it sits on high ground on the outskirts — and beyond it the tiny swaying shape of a cable car ascending the lofty mountain. Cotton ball clouds over the peaks. Caracas is cupped in the palm of the mountains; its setting is fabulous. I said to Cartlidge, “He has a thing about stairs, doesn’t he.”
“What?”
“The Hamburg Bahnhof — the bomb was on the platform stairway. The Cairo job, again stairs. This morning, the hotel fire stairs. That’s the thing about stairways — they’re funnels.” I pointed at the flight of stone steps that led up to the portals of the palacio. “The ministers have to climb them to get inside.”
“Stone stairs. How could he hide a bomb there? You can’t get underneath them. Everything’s in plain sight.”
I brooded upon it. He was right. But it had to be: suddenly I realized it had to be — because I was here and the Saudi’s limousine was drawing up at the curb and it meant Gregorius could get both of us with one shot and then I saw the Venezuelan minister walk out of the building and start down the stairs to meet the limousine and it was even more perfect for Gregorius: all three with one explosion. It had to be: right here, right now.
Where was the damned thing? Where?
I had the feeling I needed to find the answer within about seven seconds because it was going to take the Venezuelan minister that long to come this far down the steps while the Saudi was getting out of the limousine; already the Venezuelan was nearly down to the fountain and the Saudi was ducking his berobed head and poking a foot out of the car toward the pavement. The entourage of Arab dignitaries had hurried out of the second limousine and they were forming a double column on the steps for the Saudi to walk through; a police captain drew himself to attention, saluting; coming down the stairs the Venezuelan minister had a wide welcoming smile across his austere handsome face.
They’d picked the limousine at random from a motor pool of six. So it couldn’t be in the car.
It couldn’t be on the steps because the palacio had been guarded inside and out for nearly a week and it had been searched half an hour ago by electronic devices, dogs and human eyes.
It couldn’t be in the fountain either. That had been too obvious. We’d exercised special care in searching the fountain; it had only been switched on ten minutes earlier. In any case you can’t plant a bomb under water because the water absorbs the force of the explosion and all you get is a big bubble and a waterspout.
In other words there was no way for Gregorius to have planted a bomb here. And yet I knew he had done so. I knew where Gregorius was; I knew he had field glasses to his eyes and his finger on the remote-control button that would trigger the bomb by radio signal. When the Saudi met the Venezuelan and they shook hands on the steps not a dozen feet from me Gregorius would set it off.
Six seconds now. The Venezuelan came past the fountain.
The walkie-talkie in my hand crackled with static but I didn’t turn it up. The mind raced at Grand Prix speed. If he didn’t plant the bomb beforehand — and I knew he hadn’t — then there had to be a delivery system.
Five seconds. Gregorius: cold, brutal, neat, ingenious. Then I knew — I was the bomb.
Four seconds and my arm swung back. It has been a long time since I threw a football and I had to pray the instinct was still in the arm and then I was watching the walkie-talkie soar over the Venezuelan’s head and I could only stand and watch while it lofted and descended. It struck the near lip of the fountain and for a moment it looked ready to fall back onto the stairs but then it tipped over the rim and went into the water.
His reaction time would be slowed by distance and the awkwardness of handling binoculars and the unexpectedness of my move. Instinctively he reached for the trigger button but by the time he pressed it the walkie-talkie had gone into the water. The explosion wasn’t loud. Water blistered at the surface and a crack appeared in the surrounding rim; little spouts began to break through the shattered concrete; a great frothy mushroom of water bubbled up over the surface and cascaded down the steps.
Nobody was hurt.
* * *
WE WENT INTO the hotel fast. I was talking to Cartlidge: “I assume the one who’s still upstairs in his room is the blond one with the crew cut.”
“How the hell did you know that?”
“He’s Gregorius. He had to have a vantage point.”
Gregorius was still there in the room because he’d had no reason to believe we’d tumbled to his identity. He was as conceited as I; he was sure he hadn’t made any mistake to give himself away. He was wrong, of course. He’d made only one but it was enough.
Cartlidge’s bomb squad lads were our flying wedge. They kicked the door in and we walked right in on him and he looked at all the guns and decided to sit still.
His window overlooked the palacio and the binoculars were on the sill. I said to Cartlidge, “Have a look for the transmitter. He hasn’t had time to hide it too far away.”
The Blond said, “What is this about?” All injured innocence.
I said, “It’s finished, Gregorius.”
He wasn’t going to admit a thing but I did see the brief flash of rage in his eyes; it was all the confirmation I needed. I gave him my best smile. “You’ll be pleased to talk in time.”
They searched him, handcuffed him, gave the room a toss and didn’t find anything; later that day the transmitter turned up in a cleaning-supplies cupboard down the hall.
To this day Cartlidge still isn’t sure we got the right man because nobody ever told him what happened after we got Gregorius back to the States. Myerson and I know the truth. The computer kids in Debriefing sweated Gregorius for weeks and finally he broke and they’re still analyzing the wealth of information he has supplied. I’d lost interest by that time; my part of it was finished and I knew from the start that I’d got the right man. I don’t make that kind of mistake; it didn’t need confirmation from the shabby hypodermics of Debriefing. As I’d said to Myerson, “The binoculars on the windowsill clinched it, of course. When the Venezuelan and the Saudi shook hands he planned to trigger it — it was the best way to hit all three of us. But I knew it had to be The Blond much earlier. I suppose I might have arrested him first before we went looking for the bomb but I wasn’t absolutely certain.”
“Don’t lie,” Myerson said. “You wanted him to be watching you in his binoculars — you wanted him to know you were the one who defused him. One of these days your brain’s going to slow down a notch or two. Next time maybe it’ll blow up before you throw it in the pond. But all right, since you’re waiting for me to ask — how did you pick the blond one?”
“We knew until recently he’d worn his hair hippie length.”
“So?”
“I saw him at the pool toweling himself dry. I saw him shake his head back the way you do when you want to get the hair back out of your eyes. He had a crew cut. He wouldn’t have made that gesture unless he’d cut his hair so recently that he still had the old habit.”
Myerson said, “It took you twelve hours to figure that out? You are getting old, Charlie.”
“And hungry. Have you got anything to eat around here?”
“No.”
Checkpoint
Charlie
I ALWAYS MISTRUST Myerson but never more so than on those occasions when he pulls me off a job that’s only half done and drags me back all the way from Beirut or Helsinki or Sydney to hand me a new assignment. Usually it means he’s at his wits’ end and needs me to bail him out.
This time it was a short trip back to Langley. I’d been in Montreal and consequently managed to arrive at Myerson’s lair without the usual jet lag; my only complaint was hunger — there’d been nothing but a light snack on the plane.
It was two in the morning but Myerson keeps odd hours and I knew he’d still be in
his fourth-floor office. I trampled the U.S. government seal into the tiles and the security guard ran my card through the scanner and admitted me to the elevator. The fourth-floor hall rang with my footsteps—eerie, hollow like my innards: I was short-tempered with hunger.
“Where do you buy those suits, Charlie,” Myerson greeted me, “a tent shop?”
I hate him too.
I sat down. “It’s late, you’re rude and I’m hungry. Can we get down to it without half an hour of the usual sparring?”
“I guess we’d better.”
I was astonished. “It’s serious then.”
“Desperate, actually. You’ve been following the Quito hijack?”
“Just the headlines.”
“We’re in a bind.”
Myerson’s smile displays a keyboard of teeth reminiscent of an alligator. He rarely employs it to indicate amusement; he uses it mainly when he is anticipating the acute discomfort of someone other than himself.
For a while he smiled without speaking. Then, after he felt he’d struck terror deep into my heart, he resumed.
“The hijackers have nearly one hundred hostages, a Boeing 727 and a variety of explosives and small arms. They have a number of ransom demands as well. They’ve communicated the demands to the world via the plane’s radio equipment.”
“Does anybody know where they are yet?”
“Sure. We’ve known their location from the beginning. Radio triangulation, radar, so forth. It’s a field the Ecuadorians built a few years ago to give their air force a base against the Tuperamo guerrillas. It’s been in disuse since March of last year but the runway was sufficient for the 727, which is a relatively short-roll aircraft. They couldn’t have done it with a jumbo. But they seem to know what they’re doing; undoubtedly they took all these factors into account. We’re not dealing with idiots.”
“Access by road?”
“Forget it, Charlie. It’s not an Entebbe situation. We can’t go in after them. Our hands are tied.”
“Why?”
“International politics. Organization of American States etcetera. Just take my word for it.”
Checkpoint Charlie Page 5