“We do,” Gonzales said, smiling at the unhappy Robl. “Justice will be done.”
“The ransom money has been returned, the United States Treasury will be satisfied.”
“No one leave till ah count it.”
“So it ends. D’Isernia died happy, if anyone can be said to die happy. All the pieces fall into place.”
“What about this one?” Gonzales asked, pointing at Hochhande.
“What about me?” Hochhande shouted, spitting the words at them. “You can do nothing to me, my papers are in order, I have committed no crimes in Mexico except to file under a false name. That was done to protect myself, a matter of survival, no crime. I have a passport in my true name, issued legally by Argentina, so go ahead, export me there. You cannot touch me. You are all fools, never bright enough to see me although I was in full view all the time. A little surgery to resemble the Fiihrer, needed to obtain the paintings, placed in the bank here by Robl in his name. It was done, and once done capitalized upon. How I have laughed at you! Who would have expected a double disguise? Once you had penetrated to the identity of Jakob Platz, dead many years ago on the Russian front if you want to know, you were instantly satisfied. I lived in your midst and laughed at you. I would still be laughing if that fool Italian had not tempted that idiot Robl with his grandiose plans.”
He swayed and almost fell. Goldstein looked at him with eyes that brimmed with centuries of sorrow.
“A very good question, Lieutenant. What shall we do with this
iy6 Montezuma’s revenge
miserable old man? I am sure, as he says, that his papers are legal to remain in Mexico or his passport, a Peron one but still valid witl doubt, will permit his exit to Argentina where he will once more vanish. So, what to do? To my knowledge he has committed no Mexican crimes. He means nothing to you, does he, Lieutenant? If you are concerned for his safety I will be glad to take care of him for you. When we leave here I will see that he goes where he belongs.”
“Stop him, Lieutenant, you have a duty! He wishes to k me, take me to Germany the way he did with that Dummkopf Thasler, smuggle me out in an El Al airplane concealed in a case of kosher pickles. Nein! You must not let this happen.”
Gonzales carefully turned his back on Hochhande and offered Goldstein a cigarette. “This man speaks atrocious English,” he said. “I cannot understand a word of it. You had better see that he gets home safely. You do not seem a man of vengeance.”
“I don’t think I am,” Goldstein said, tiredly, drawing deeply on the cigarette. “Vengeance, revenge, they cannot be satisfied. Look at poor D’Isernia there. There must be an end to killing. But not to law. Millions were killed by these creatures, killing the surviving few will not restore the dead or exact any kind of vengeance. But each trial is a victory for something, if only to remind us what some human beings did to others, and to prevent it from ever happening again. But I think this will be my last operation. The world is running out of live Nazis just as I am running out of energy. If we have not yet learned to live in peace we never will.”
“Amen to that. We are both men of law and peace. You take care of your last Nazi and I’ll take care of mine. The world will surely be a better place without either of them.”
“All tied up then,” Sones said, rubbing his hands together, “A successful operation.”
“Ah ain’t through counting yet.”
“One little unfinished matter,” Timberio said, drawing Tony aside. “Perhaps not important in the light of Cellini paintings, million-dollar ransoms, murderers and Nazi criminals. Our agency does not operate on your American budget, you can well understand that, so there is still the sum of a thousand pesos.”
“Many thanks for the loan. Let me see, a thousand pesos is about eighty dollars, so here is a hundred; you might say the extra twenty is interest and wear and tear on your motor scooters.”
“Grazie tante. And here is your wallet, ticket, papers, all intact.”
“Nobody leave. Even with thu money from their pockets there is a hundred dollars still missing!”
“Come on, Stocker, let us not be petty,” Sones said. “They probably spent it, hiring that boat, chalk it up to profit and loss.”
“And what about my boat?” the striped-shirted man cried. “Who’s going to pay for the damages?”
“You are,” Lieutenant Gonzales said coldly. “Or would you rather I looked into your dealings with criminals, attempts to meet ships on the high seas outside territorial waters, attempts …”
“I relish the opportunity to repair it myself, teniente. Please excuse me.”
“How did you track me down here?” Tony asked the policeman as they trudged back to the cars.
“An accident, I am forced to admit. We monitor the Agenzia Terza’s CB wave length, just as they monitor ours. I came simply to see what the excitement was, it was a happy surprise to find you here. Now, much as I enjoy your company, I sincerely hope that you will be leaving Mexico soon. You seem to draw a good deal of trouble, Mr. Hawkin.”
“Lieutenant, I swear, as much as I love Mexico I shall be on the next plane out of here.”
As they reached the cars Sones drew Tony aside.
“Listen,” he said, “what about the Russian girl? We cannot have word of this fiasco leaking back to Moscow.”
“Don’t worry about that, she’s a double agent who reports to the Albanians and everything she knows goes right to Peking. You can use her to funnel any kind of information you want directly to China.”
“How do you know?”
“I wormed it out of her!”
“You are going to be a good agent, even if you are not a killer, Hawkin.” He hurried away.
Tony squeezed in comfortably next to Lizveta Zlotnikova who was holding the forged painting.
“The Cellini is safe and on its way back to Italy. What you have there is all that is left of the Da Vinci. The rest really was destroyed in the bombing. No one else seems to care about it so why don’t you keep it?”
“That is very kind of you, Tony. The fragment, analysis, most valuable. I am sorry I said unkind things about you. When you are in New York you must come see me at the museum.”
“I’ll do better. I’ll take you out. Do you play ping-pc
“What … ?”
“Nothing. Dinner, a show, we’ll eat together.”
He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, strongly. There was the roar as of many disturbed wasp nests around them as the ranked motor scooters backfired to life, drowning out the complaints of the men who were rowing the unwieldy fishing boat out to sea.
Eighteen
“You will get a commendation,” Sones said.
“I don’t want a commendation,” Tony answered. “I just want out. No, sonny, the big gold FBI badges are a dollar ninety-eight. For your two bits all you can get is a chocolate hand grenade.”
“That is not an easy thing to do, Hawkin, you should realize that. You know a lot about the workings of the FBI, you are an experienced field agent, and besides that He thinks that you did a great job.”
“Wonderful, then why can’t He get me out.”
“Quiet!” Sones hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t let her hear you.”
“And that’s another reason I want out. Well, Sophie, a nice long lunch hour that runs fifteen minutes late?”
“Would you believe the service was so awful, I could hardly get waited on, you can’t blame me, can you?”
“I don’t blame anyone. Take over here, I’ll be in my office.” As they walked down the hall he shook his thumb back at the sturdy laboring figure of Sophie Feinberg now industriously selling tinted portraits, fingerprint kits, candy bullets, “Let her have my job so I can go back to the National Gallery. She knows as much about it as I do by now. More maybe, since she reads my mail even before I do.”
“She cannot do it, Sophie is a plant, a double agent whom we are keeping an eye on.”
“I knew it! I bet she works fo
r the CIA?”
“She wants you to think that, but she reports to Treasury first.
i8o
They are still upset over that hundred dollars you know, I’ve seen their orders to her.”
“I bet she’s not even Jewish.”
“You have an agent’s eye, Hawkin. I told Him that. Her real name, we think, is Mary O’Brien, the other is a cover she took when she was penetrating the B’nai Brith.”
“Where are we going? We just passed my office.”
“Security. Impossible to tell you until we get to a secure part of the building.”
“Can’t you even hint? Am I going to be shot?”
“Usually a sense of humor is a handicap in an agent, but I do appreciate yours. I can tell you this much. Your civil service grade will be increased one rank …”
“With pay to match?”
“Naturally. And you are going to be personally congratulated for the work you did on Operation Buttercup. Even though we lost Davidson the operation is graded a success, his killer is in custody in Mexico and the CIA is still smarting over the way they bungled the disposal job on Davidson’s body. Higginson has been transferred. He is opening a new branch of Coronel Glanders in Santiago, Chile. Very cold there.”
“All of which is very nice, but what is so secret about that that you couldn’t tell me downstairs?” They emerged from a top security elevator and walked swiftly down the sound-proofed hall.
“What I could not tell you there were all the details and, my boy, I do envy you. I said personally congratulated, did you hear that? Personally. You are really part of the family now.”
They stopped before large, golden, double doors, which slowly opened before them, moved by unseen hands. A beam of golden light shone through and wrapped them in its radiance.
They stepped forward, heads high, to the sound of distant bugles.
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