Aaron Elkins - Fellowship Of Fear

"Like hell," the boy said. "This is my radio, man."

"Suppose we go up to my room and see," Gideon said.

"Sir, do you want me to call the MPs?" The orderly stood in the middle of the stairwell, one gigantic hand on each bannister.

"I think that would be a good idea," said Gideon.

"No, wait, man," the boy said. "Okay, I took the radio, but… the door was open…I just saw it there…it was stupid…Hey, let me go, man. I never done anything like this before."

Gideon was sorry for the boy, hemmed in by two threatening men who towered over him, but he didn’t believe his story.

"What were you doing here?" he asked.

"I’m a courier. I was delivering a message. My name’s Manny Pino," he volunteered. "Look, man-"

"To whom?" asked Gideon.

"Huh?"

"To whom were you delivering a message?"

"Major… Major Rosen."

Gideon looked at the orderly. The man shook his crewcut head. No Major Rosen there.

"But," the boy said, "I couldn’t find him, he wasn’t here, so I-"

"Where’s the message?" said Gideon.

The boy began to cry. Gideon kept a firm grip on his arm. "Call the MPs," said Gideon.

The military police had been able to get nothing more from Manny Pino. In the end, they had taken him away snuffling and terrified. They had also taken the radio and had told Gideon to check through his things to see if anything else was missing.

Grumbling, more annoyed than angry, he found the list of his belongings-so well-used that it was beginning to fray along the creases-and quickly checked off the items. As he had somehow expected, nothing else was missing.

He flung himself into the standard-issue green armchair and pondered. He knew why he was so irritated; he was in the dark again. Only a few hours ago, he had considered things pretty well wrapped up. Delvaux had cogently if implausibly explained away almost everything. As far as Gideon had been concerned, the case was closed; he was ready to forget the theft of the socks.

And then he had returned to his room to pack before leaving for the airport, and found everything blown wide open again. Why in the world would anyone take the trouble to break into his room to steal a $14.95 plastic portable radio? The calculator standing there in plain sight was worth five times as much. It made about as much sense as the socks.

He did, however, know a few things for certain. He knew, most comfortingly, that it was definitely not Ferretface’s doing, unless Monkes had arranged for it before he was killed; and he knew that the theft had conveniently occurred during the time Marks had ordered him to stay away from his room. That made it rather likely that whoever was behind it had access to NSD’s instructions…or was acting on NSD’s instructions.

Was it possible that Delvaux had not been leveling with him? He pondered some more, frowning blankly at the neat green lawns below.

Brunssum, Holland, lies in the Dutch Alps, a pleasant region of low hills that serves as a vacation destination for flatlanders who cannot afford to go abroad. To the gourmets of the world, Brunssum is known, if at all, as a good place to spend the night when on pilgrimage to the Prinses Juliana Restaurant in Valkenburg a few miles away. To the military, on the other hand, Brunssum is headquarters of AFCENT, Allied Forces Central Europe, its offices situated in the deep caverns of an old mine on the edge of town.

But for those fortunate few who are both gourmets and members of the military, Brunssum holds a secret unknown to Michelin and Fodor and Arthur Frommer: the International Dining Hall in the AFCENT compound. Here is what many claim to be the finest restaurant in the Netherlands; it is indisputably the best bargain.

Hilaire Delvaux, having shown his ID and paid his $1.50 at the door, had moved through the cafeteria line and helped himself to a double portion of dilled shrimp and asparagus salad, and to consomme madrilene. From the T-shirted man behind the counter, he had ordered the hall’s renowned Friday Night Special, Beef Wellington, accompanied by fresh slivered green beans and mushrooms.

Now he sat at a marred plastic-topped table, the food in front of him. Elfin and plump, with his small feet barely touching the floor, he made an odd figure among the lean, uniformed soldiers dressed in the blues and greens and browns of seven different armies.

Delvaux had looked forward all day to the Beef Wellington; he had more than once described it as England’s sole contribution to the world’s cuisine. Since his hot dog with Gideon that morning, he had eaten nothing, in order to conserve his appetite. But now he wasn’t hungry. The meat lay cooling on his plate, its crust slowly turning soggy.

The conference with Embacher had gone badly. The director general, never an easy man to get along with, was understandably under pressure to solve the case. He had ranted and desk-pounded even more than usual: Who was the Russians’ USOC source? Why hadn’t Delvaux been able to identify him? What was the information the Russians were trying to get out of Torrejon? Exactly what were they going to do with it? Had they or hadn’t they gotten it? What did Delvaux propose to stop them? Didn’t Delvaux understand there were only two days left before Operation Philidor, whatever in God’s name that was?

Yes, Delvaux thought, shuffling string beans with his fork, he understood very well. For all anyone knew, Operation Philidor might be a small adventuristic sortie…or it might be the start of World War III, the end of European civilization. But couldn’t Embacher grasp the kinds of problems he faced? They had doubled his staff of agents to twenty-four, but how could twenty-four men keep track of the forty-four members of the USOC staff? They couldn’t- not when one needed at least three men to keep full-time surveillance on a single person, and not when the entire staff had ID cards that would admit them to nearly any base in Europe.

Later on, a massive review of airline and customs records, and of military records as well, might turn up the source. But how much difference would it make later on? As of now, it could be any one of them. Well, not Professor Oliver and probably not Frederick Rufus. But even there, could one be sure?

He pushed himself away from the table and went to get coffee, nearly bumping absentmindedly into two kilted Scots. What he needed was a hundred men; Embacher should have brought in agents from the CIA, from MI-5. Delvaux had suggested that, and Embacher had just raved on and turned a deeper purple. The man would rather see the end of the world than lose face. That’s what came of putting political appointees in such positions. Leaving Delvaux with no coherent instructions, he had stomped from the room and run off for an airplane to take him to SHAPE headquarters in Mons.

As he sat down with the coffee, an aide from the director general’s office ran breathlessly to his table; there was a top-priority call for him from Spain. Would he come at once?

"Yes, Karl," Delvaux said into the mouthpiece, "I understand. But I wish to hear his exact words. Will you read the transcript to me, please, from the point where he admits what he was doing, or rather, just before?"

Clearly, but crackling and thin, the words came from the agent in Madrid:

Pino: I ain’t no thief, man. I wasn’t stealing nothing. I was putting something in the dude’s room.

Crow: So what were you doing with the radio? Come on, Manny, you better start telling the truth.

Pino: I am telling the truth. I was putting some secret information in one of his books.

Crow: You want to let me have that again?

Pino: Printouts. I copied some stuff off of printouts in the computer room, and I wrote them on a little piece of paper like the guy told me, and I snuck into this guy’s room, and stuck them in his book, like he told me.