Росс Томас - The Mordida Man

“You’ve got a very quick mouth, Mr. Dunjee,” Reese said with a pleasant smile.

“I’m just trying to keep from getting into a car in a strange town with three guys I don’t know.”

Franklin Keeling wiped a hand across his mouth again. “You haven’t got any choice.”

Dunjee shrugged. “It’s beginning to look that way.” He looked around and found what he needed. A trash receptacle. He removed the folded Herald Tribune from under his arm and took a step toward the receptacle. “Since I’ve already done the puzzle, I’ll just toss this first.”

Reese took the newspaper out of his hand. “I’ll take it,” he said. “I haven’t read the funnies.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Yeah,” Reese said and smiled. “I thought you might be.”

They sandwiched Dunjee in between Reese and Keeling in the back seat. It was a tight fit. Jack Spiceman, the former FBI special agent, drove. The Rome traffic didn’t seem to bother him.

Dunjee paid almost no attention to where they were going. Instead, he watched as Alex Reese carefully opened the Herald Tribune and then began turning it, page by page.

The envelope was where it was supposed to be, between pages eight and nine. The envelope was sealed. Reese examined its front, then its back, and then the front again, reading aloud the name that was printed on its upper left-hand corner.

“The Grand Hotel,” he said. “Nice old place.”

“Just off the Baths of Diocletian,” Dunjee said. “An easy stroll to the Via Veneto.”

Reese put the envelope up to his ear and shook it. “You’re staying at the Hassler, right?”

“That’s nice, too,” Dunjee said. “A little expensive, but what the hell.”

“Let me use your knife, Frank,” Reese said. Keeling dug around in a pants pocket and produced a a small penknife. Reese opened it and carefully slit the letter. He closed the knife and handed it back to Keeling.

“How’d you run into Abedsaid?” Reese said.

“Accidentally,” Dunjee said.

Reese nodded. “I bet.” He peered into the envelope. “A piece of paper.” He took the paper out carefully. It seemed to be a piece of hotel stationery, folded in the conventional manner. Reese unfolded it. “Well, now,” he said. “What do you know — a map.”

“Is that what it is?” Dunjee said.

“Sure. Look. Here’s a road or something and here’s what looks like a house. And here’s the scale down here, see? One centimeter equals five meters. Not a very big map though, is it?”

“Not very,” Dunjee said.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“I’m not really with the Department of Agriculture.”

“You fooled me,” Dunjee said and began looking out the window as the car turned left and started up a steep winding street. He had no idea where he was.

“You know who I’m really with?” Reese said.

“Who?”

“The CIA.”

“That must be interesting.”

“No, it’s really kind of frustrating sometimes,” Reese said. “Take for instance yesterday and today. I flew in here day before yesterday to take charge of a certain operation. We’re looking for somebody, somebody important. You follow me?”

Dunjee nodded. “I think so.”

“Well, we’ve had all our people alerted for days. So I check in with our chief of station here in Rome. That’s what we call them — chiefs of station. So I say to him, Well, what’ve you got? And he gets this funny look on his face.”

Reese fell silent for several seconds as though haunted by what he had seen on the face of the Rome chief of station.

After another few moments, Dunjee said, “A funny look, you said.”

“Yeah, a funny look. Well, it seems that some of our casual help sent in a report. And somehow it dropped between the cracks. Until yesterday. It seems there was this yacht docked in Valletta.”

“In Malta,” Dunjee said.

“Yeah, Malta. A Libyan yacht. A ninety-two-footer called the True Oasis. It was built for King Idris of Libya. Well, to make a long story short this part-time help we’ve got in Malta reported some funny kind of people going aboard the True Oasis. ”

“What kind of funny-looking people?” Dunjee said.

“According to this report that sort of dropped between the cracks, there was an Oriental — maybe a Japanese — a German — or a Dutchman — and a woman, young, thin, brunette, and possibly French.”

“Going aboard a Libyan yacht,” Dunjee said.

“Right. Well, I won’t go into all the details, but we figured these three funny-looking people maybe could’ve led us to the guy we’re really looking for. You follow me?”

“I think so.”

“So quick like a snake I send some of our people over to Valletta, and guess what?”

“No yacht.”

“No yacht. Well, hell, you can’t hide a ninety-two-foot yacht, so we call the Navy. And they send some planes up and guess what?”

“This time I give up.”

“Well, out there in the Mediterranean, halfway between Valletta and Tripoli is the True Oasis, broken down with engine trouble and radioing for help. And the real funny thing about it is that they’re radioing for help when a U.S. destroyer is only about five miles away. Well, this destroyer of ours rushes over and hoves to, or whatever the hell they do in the Navy, and sends a crew aboard. A twelve-man crew. And sure enough those Libyans have got engine trouble, which took our guys about fifteen minutes to fix. Then the Libyans claim that they’ve got a few other problems they’d like the U.S. Navy to look at while they’re there. So our guys are given a tour of the whole fucking yacht, from stem to stern. And you know what? There weren’t any funny-looking people aboard any more — not unless you count the Libyans.”

“That’s quite a story,” Dunjee said as the car reached the top of the hill and turned into a short straight drive which led to a garage that occupied half of the ground floor of a four-story cream-colored villa.

In the front seat, Jack Spiceman took out a small metal box and pointed it at the garage. He pressed a button and the overhead door went up. The car drove into the garage. The overhead door came down.

“This is what in our business we call a safe house,” Reese said.

“A safe house.”

“We’re all going to get out of the car and go upstairs and talk to somebody about that little map of yours.”

“Who’re we going to talk to?” Dunjee asked.

“A patriot.”

“You know something?” Dunjee said.

“What?”

“That’s what somebody accused me of being the other day.’

They went up three flights of stairs, Alex Reese leading the way, with Dunjee next and Keeling and Spiceman bringing up the rear. They were narrow wooden stairs, located in the rear of the building. Dunjee decided they were the servants’ stairs. The building appeared old enough to have been built back when there were still servants to be had.

At the top of the stairs they walked down a short hall and into a large sun-drenched corner room that seemed to be mostly windows and angular furniture made out of chrome and glass and leather. There was also a marble floor. Part of it was covered by a thin worn rug that looked old and expensive.

Seated in one of the chrome and leather chairs was Leland Timble. He wore an Indian-made military style shirt with many busy pockets in the sleeves, tan slacks, and on his face a happy smile that Dunjee thought looked silly. Timble studied Dunjee carefully. Dunjee only glanced at Timble and then looked out the windows at the view of Rome. He decided it was a splendid, probably expensive view, but one that did nothing at all to tell him where he was.