The Mordida Man (11 page)

“Impossible.”

“Fuck it then,” Reese said and started to rise.

“Rome.”

Reese sat back down. “London or nothing.”

“Why not Rome? The climate is more salubrious, the food is infinitely better, the work is more rewarding. I'd far rather be chief of station in Rome than London.”

“Pussy,” Reese said. “They've got fourteen-, fifteen-year-old cupcakes in London who'll—”

“All right, London,” Coombs said and whispered, “God forgive me.”

“Wonderful,” Reese said and split his face with a happy, yellowish smile. Above the smile was a big nose that leaned right, then left, then right again. On either side of it two secretive gray eyes gazed out on the world with what seemed to be total disbelief. Thick eyebrows like furry hedgerows guarded a forehead whose thought wrinkles went up and up, and then up some more until they reached where the hairline would have been, if there had been any hair, which there wasn't except for the grayish brown stuff that still sprouted around the ears and down on the nape of the neck. Below all this was an aggressive chin almost as big as a fist. It was an ugly, but somehow wise face, strangely medieval, and strangely corrupt.

“Item one,” Reese said and flicked his cigarette ashes on the carpet. “Bingo's not in Libya any more.”

“How do you know?”

“I got it off the Egyptians.”

“Mercy!” said Coombs, making the word sound almost obscene.

“No choice.”

“I don't accept that.”

Reese didn't seem to care what Coombs accepted. “They came to me first. That slimy Wahab, remember him?”

Coombs nodded.

“He'd heard a rumor that the Israelis had snatched Felix. He wanted to know what we'd heard. I told him I'd look into it providing he'd check something out for me. Then I fed him this fairy tale about a prominent American who'd got lost or strayed in Libya. I told him I needed to know where the American was—exactly where. Well, we've got jack shit in Libya and the Gyppos know this, but still I thought my fairy tale maybe just might work. But when old slimy Wahab got back to me he was practically hysterical—giggling all over the place and smirking like Rumpelstiltskin. The ‘prominent American,' he said, and I could just hear him wrapping the quotes around it, well, the ‘prominent American' had been held in Tripoli for twenty-four hours and then moved—out of the country, except old Wahab, slick and slimy as he is, couldn't find out where. But he knows it's Bingo.”

Coombs sighed. “How long?”

“Will he keep his mouth shut?”

Coombs nodded.

“Maybe a week. I told him there'd be a new 450 SE on his doorstep if he'd keep his mouth shut for a week and I'd break his fucking arm if he didn't. He might last a week; he might not.”

Coombs nodded and made a note. “But the Egyptians now also think we have Felix?”

“Yeah, they think that because that's what the Libyans think. I let it lie.”

“Good,” Coombs said. “It's the only bargaining chip the President has.” He put down his pencil and leaned back in his chair and inspected the back of his left hand. “Our task remains twofold: first, find out who really has Felix and get him back, and second, determine exactly where the President's brother is being held captive.” He shifted his gaze from his hand to Reese. It was a cold gaze, full of reproach, and the tone was even colder. “It would now seem that the sum total of our knowledge is that—one—Bingo McKay is no longer in Libya, although where he is, we haven't the slightest notion, and—two—you haven't even the vaguest clue as to where Felix might be or who might have abducted him.”

“I'm working on that,” Reese said and scratched an ear.

“Work a little harder.”

“Another item,” Reese said. “Paul Grimes.”

Coombs's left eyebrow formed an interested arc. “Oh?”

“He saw the President just after you did, and then he started asking around town about Chubb Dunjee. Remember him?”

Coombs nodded thoughtfully. “Mexico.”

“Yeah, Mexico. Well, Grimes flew to Lisbon and then took a taxi to Sintra, because that's where Dunjee was holed up. A day later, Dunjee flew into London.”

“And Mr. Grimes?”

“He's there, too.”

“Interesting. Mr. Dunjee. What's the current reading on him?”

“Whose?”

“The conventional wisdom.”

“Everybody thinks he's a broken-down politician.”

“And you?”

“Very smooth when he wants to be,” Reese said. “Very slick. A side-stepper, an angle player. No pattern.”

“A brilliant man?”

Reese thought about it. “Smart anyhow.”

“Smart,” Coombs said and made another note. “Well, let's do keep in touch with him. Loosely, of course.”

“Right,” Reese said, rose, and moved to Coombs's desk, where he held his inch-long cigarette ash threateningly over the polished surface until Coombs produced a small ceramic tray from a drawer. After Reese crushed out his cigarette he handed Coombs two closely typed pages.

“What's this?”

“Stray thoughts,” Reese said. “Midnight musings. It's the only copy.”

“Tell me.”

“It's about the Libyan tour. Nobody's quite sure just how it got started.”

“The Libyans asked for it.”

Reese shook his head. “No they didn't.”

Coombs frowned. “Let me think,” he said. “The White House started dropping hints, as I remember. Or perhaps Bingo McKay did. It was really his show, his and the President's.”

Again Reese shook his head. “That's not true either. I checked it out. It began as a rumor in New York, at the UN, as nearly as I can pin it down, although it's like trying to pin down a snow-flake. But the rumor was simple. Oil for arms. The Libyans' oil, our arms. The same rumor popped up at almost exactly the same time in Rome, where all good Libyans still go for R and R. The Embassy there heard it, and then suddenly it becomes more than a rumor. It turns into a nice little story on page twenty-six of the New York
Times,
with a Rome dateline, which says that the Libyans have no intention of making a window-shopping tour of the U.S. The State Department replies politely in about two or three hundred words that the Libyans haven't been invited. And the whole thing dies—for about a week.”

Coombs nodded, as though remembering. “Then what?”

“It was born again.”

“A resurrection?”

“Just about.”

“Who was … present?”

“The Ambassador in Rome, for one. He heard in a roundabout way that the Libyans were having second thoughts.”

“He heard this from whom?”

“The Nigerians. The next thing you know there's a carefully drafted answer to a carefully planted question at a regular State press conference, which, in effect, says that State wouldn't have any objection to a
private
Libyan window-shopping expedition. Well, the guy over at State hardly gets the words out of his mouth before a couple of oil companies down in Houston issue an invitation to the Libyans. Other oil firms chime in, and Bingo McKay becomes the unofficial tour leader and the trip is on.”

Coombs frowned as though having difficulty in adding up a column of figures. “How long did all this take?”

“From start to finish—about three months.”

“But it died once.”

“Twice, in fact.”

“And the Nigerians were present at both resurrections?”

“Both.”

“Have we talked to them?”

“I did. Both here and in New York. As best as their UN people can pin it down, they first heard the rumor from Gambia—although they won't bet the rent on that, because they think the rumor may have been floated simultaneously in Rome.”

“Gambia,” Coombs said thoughtfully. He stared at Reese and repeated to himself, “Gambia.”

Reese said nothing. Instead, he lit another cigarette and said, “You got anything to drink around here?”

“Interesting,” Coombs said, producing a pint bottle of California brandy from a bottom drawer. He put it next to the silver water thermos on his desk and watched disapprovingly as Reese poured a large measure into a glass. “We shouldn't forget that while the Libyans went window-shopping here,” Coombs said, “Felix was being kidnapped in London. A coincidence perhaps, although I have long been convinced that nature abhors them, just as it does vacuums. They're unnatural.”

“But they happen,” Reese said, finishing off the brandy.

Coombs shrugged and in a thoughtful voice said, “Gambia,” again.

“You finally get there after all, don't you?”

“Dr. Joseph Mapangou.”

“A nasty little shit.”

“But a useful conduit, I understand,” Coombs said.

“So's an open sewer. Useful, I mean.”

“Yes, well, I think someone had best have a chat with Dr. Mapangou.” He looked at Reese. “What tribe is that, by the way?” he asked, hoping that Reese wouldn't know, but realizing that it was a vain hope.

“Mandingo,” Reese said promptly. “If he wasn't a Mandingo, he wouldn't have made it to the UN.”

“You
will
talk to him, won't you?”

“Mapangou?” Reese said. “Sure, I'll talk to him.”

12

The retired Maltese smuggler was already past seventy and probably needed glasses, but his eyes were still keen enough to recognize easily the ninety-two-foot yacht with the raked stack. Not many of today's yachts had stacks raked like the one that had docked that morning. The old man remembered the yacht well, from when it had been built in Valletta under British supervision twenty-five years ago. Or was it twenty-six?

They had built it for the King, he remembered. The King of Libya. He tried to remember the King's name, but couldn't, so he gave up and felt content just to sit there on the quay with his back against the sun-warmed wooden crate and let his mind wander as he watched the three customs officials file aboard the yacht.

When the three customs officials hurried off the yacht less than ten minutes later, the old man suspected that each was probably richer by a few quid. He couldn't blame them. After all, who could really devote himself to a job that required harassing the rich and the powerful? And certainly the Libyans were now both.

The old man didn't much care for the Libyans, who had been swarming over Malta in recent years with their big talk and their big plans and their oil millions—although the big talk had lessened in recent months. But still he didn't much care for them—or the British or the Italians or the French, for that matter. The Krauts, too, he decided. They were all over the place nowadays. He didn't like them either.

The old man had long felt that there were still too many foreigners on Malta. Always had been. Now there were the Libyans and the German tourists and even the Americans with that dungaree factory of theirs. Not so many British any more, though. Not like twenty-five years ago when the British had built that yacht for King Idris.

The old man was pleased when the name of the deposed Libyan King came back to him so easily. But he knew that was the way it always worked. Try to think of it, and you couldn't. But let your mind go free, let it wander, let it soar a little like a gull riding the air, and it would pop right into your mind. Always. Well, nearly always.

The old man twisted himself into an even more comfortable position against the warm crate, took out a cigarette, and lit it with a French lighter. His name was Mario Cagni, but for years most people had called him Jimmy—or rather Jeemee—because of that American film actor, the one who always played the gangster who got killed, although the actor spelled his name differently—and pronounced it differently, too. But nearly everyone still called the old man Jimmy, although many, especially the young, no longer remembered why—or cared.

Cagni had been a smuggler—and a good one—for more than fifty years, and his interest in boats was more than casual. Retired now and living with his widowed daughter, who couldn't stand him underfoot all day, the old man spent much of his time down on the waterfront near the boats that for so long had been such an essential tool of his profession.

He had almost decided to rouse himself and head for his favorite cafe and his regular mid-morning cup of coffee when the Japanese went aboard the Libyan yacht. Cagni found that interesting. Not extremely so, perhaps, but interesting enough to keep him on the quay with his back against the warm crate and his eyes on the yacht. He lowered his eyes just long enough to take out a pencil and a scrap of paper and write down, “1 oriental (maybe jap?) 6 ft. w/ camera 10:17 a.m.” Then he settled back with another cigarette to see if anything else interesting might happen.

At ten-twenty the German went aboard. At least he looked German to Cagni—all that blond hair, pale skin, and no neck. So he wrote down, “1 kraut (dutch?) 10:20 a.m. 12-13 stone, 5-10, tres blanc.”

Cagni prided himself on his languages. He more or less spoke four, not including Maltese, and none of them particularly well. He prided himself most of all on his French, which had proved useful in his trade, especially when dealing with the Corsicans. And it was French he used to describe the young dark-haired woman who went aboard the yacht at ten forty-eight that morning. Cagni wrote down that she was “tres jolie.”

After that, Cagni waited until half past eleven, but when nothing else interesting happened, he rose, stretched, and decided to go find the Pole and see whether he could sell him what he had seen.

During the reign of King Idris I, the yacht had been called
Sunrise I,
and the name had been lettered in gold on her stern and bow in both Arabic and English. Now she had been renamed the
True Oasis,
out of Tripoli, and all this had been gold-lettered in both English and Arabic in accordance with standard international maritime practice, although the English was noticeably smaller than the Arabic.